Oscar; "my
stomach is much too
delicate to
digest the victuals of a
tavern."
"'Victuals' is a word as
delicate and
refined as your
stomach," said
Georges.
"Ah! I like that word 'victuals,'" cried the great
painter.
"The word is all the fashion in the best society," said Mistigris. "I
use it myself at the cafe of the Black Hen."
"Your tutor is,
doubtless, some
celebrated professor, isn't he?--
Monsieur Andrieux of the Academie Francaise, or Monsieur Royer-
Collard?" asked Schinner.
"My tutor is or was the Abbe Loraux, now vicar of Saint-Sulpice,"
replied Oscar, recollecting the name of the confessor at his school.
"Well, you were right to take a private tutor," said Mistigris.
"'Tuto, tutor, celeritus, and jocund.' Of course, you will
reward him
well, your abbe?"
"Undoubtedly he will be made a
bishop some day," said Oscar.
"By your family influence?" inquired Georges gravely.
"We shall probably
contribute to his rise, for the Abbe Frayssinous is
constantly at our house."
"Ah! you know the Abbe Frayssinous?" asked the count.
"He is under obligations to my father," answered Oscar.
"Are you on your way to your estate?" asked Georges.
"No,
monsieur; but I am able to say where I am going, if others are
not. I am going to the Chateau de Presles, to the Comte de Serizy."
"The devil! are you going to Presles?" cried Schinner, turning as red
as a cherry.
"So you know his Excellency the Comte de Serizy?" said Georges.
Pere Leger turned round to look at Oscar with a stupefied air.
"Is Monsieur de Serizy at Presles?" he said.
"Apparently, as I am going there," replied Oscar.
"Do you often see the count," asked Monsieur de Serizy.
"Often," replied Oscar. "I am a comrade of his son, who is about my
age, nineteen; we ride together on
horseback nearly every day."
"'Aut Caesar, aut Serizy,'" said Mistigris, sententiously.
Pierrotin and Pere Leger exchanged winks on
hearing this statement.
"Really," said the count to Oscar, "I am
delighted to meet with a
young man who can tell me about that
personage. I want his influence
on a rather serious matter, although it would cost him nothing to
oblige me. It concerns a claim I wish to press on the American
government. I should be glad to
obtain information about Monsieur de
Serizy."
"Oh! if you want to succeed," replied Oscar, with a
knowing look,
"don't go to him, but go to his wife; he is madly in love with her; no
one knows more than I do about that; but she can't
endure him."
"Why not?" said Georges.
"The count has a skin disease which makes him
hideous. Doctor Albert
has tried in vain to cure it. The count would give half his fortune if
he had a chest like mine," said Oscar, swelling himself out. "He lives
a
lonely life in his own house; gets up very early in the morning and
works from three to eight o'clock; after eight he takes his remedies,
--sulphur-baths, steam-baths, and such things. His valet bakes him in
a sort of iron box--for he is always in hopes of getting cured."
"If he is such a friend of the King as they say he is, why doesn't he
get his Majesty to touch him?" asked Georges.
"The count has
lately promised thirty thousand francs to a
celebratedScotch doctor who is coming over to treat him," continued Oscar.
"Then his wife can't be blamed if she finds better--" said Schinner,
but he did not finish his sentence.
"I should say so!" resumed Oscar. "The poor man is so shrivelled and
old you would take him for eighty! He's as dry as
parchment, and,
unluckily for him, he feels his position."
"Most men would," said Pere Leger.
"He adores his wife and dares not find fault with her," pursued Oscar,
rejoicing to have found a topic to which they listened. "He plays
scenes with her which would make you die of laughing,--exactly like
Arnolphe in Moliere's comedy."
The count, horror-stricken, looked at Pierrotin, who,
finding that the
count said nothing, concluded that Madame Clapart's son was telling
falsehoods.
"So,
monsieur," continued Oscar, "if you want the count's influence, I
advise you to apply to the Marquis d'Aiglemont. If you get that former
adorer of Madame de Serizy on your side, you will win husband and wife
at one stroke."
"Look here!" said the
painter, "you seem to have seen the count
without his clothes; are you his valet?"
"His valet!" cried Oscar.
"Hang it! people don't tell such things about their friends in public
conveyances," exclaimed Mistigris. "As for me, I'm not listening to
you; I'm deaf: 'discretion plays the better part of adder.'"
"'A poet is nasty and not fit,' and so is a tale-bearer," cried
Schinner.
"Great
painter," said Georges, sententiously, "learn this: you can't
say harm of people you don't know. Now the little one here has proved,
indubitably, that he knows his Serizy by heart. If he had told us
about the
countess, perhaps--?"
"Stop! not a word about the Comtesse de Serizy, young men," cried the
count. "I am a friend of her brother, the Marquis de Ronquerolles, and
whoever attempts to speak disparagingly of the
countess must answer to
me."
"Monsieur is right," cried the
painter; "no man should blaguer women."
"God, Honor, and the Ladies! I believe in that melodrama," said
Mistigris.
"I don't know the guerrilla
chieftain, Mina, but I know the Keeper of
the Seals," continued the count, looking at Georges; "and though I
don't wear my decorations," he added, looking at the
painter, "I
prevent those who do not
deserve them from
obtaining any. And finally,
let me say that I know so many persons that I even know Monsieur
Grindot, the
architect of Presles. Pierrotin, stop at the next inn; I
want to get out a moment."
Pierrotin
hurried his horses through the village street of Moisselles,
at the end of which was the inn where all travellers stopped. This
short distance was done in silence.
"Where is that young fool going?" asked the count,
drawing Pierrotin
into the inn-yard.
"To your
steward. He is the son of a poor lady who lives in the rue de
la Cerisaie, to whom I often carry fruit, and game, and
poultry from
Presles. She is a Madame Husson."
"Who is that man?" inquired Pere Leger of Pierrotin when the count had
left him.
"Faith, I don't know," replied Pierrotin; "this is the first time I
have
driven him. I shouldn't be surprised if he was that
prince who
owns Maffliers. He has just told me to leave him on the road near
there; he doesn't want to go on to Isle-Adam."
"Pierrotin thinks he is the master of Maffliers," said Pere Leger,
addressing Georges when he got back into the coach.
The three young fellows were now as dull as
thieves caught in the act;
they dared not look at each other, and were
evidentlyconsidering the
consequences of their fibs.
"This is what is called 'suffering for license sake,'" said Mistigris.
"You see I did know the count," said Oscar.
"Possibly. But you'll never be an ambassador," replied Georges. "When
people want to talk in public conveyances, they ought to be careful,
like me, to talk without
saying anything."
"That's what speech is for," remarked Mistigris, by way of conclusion.
The count returned to his seat and the coucou rolled on amid the
deepest silence.
"Well, my friends," said the count, when they reached the Carreau
woods, "here we all are, as silent as if we were going to the
scaffold."
"'Silence gives content,'" muttered Mistigris.
"The weather is fine," said Georges.
"What place is that?" said Oscar, pointing to the
chateau de
Franconville, which produces a fine effect at that particular spot,
backed, as it is, by the noble forest of Saint-Martin.
"How is it," cried the count, "that you, who say you go so often to
Presles, do not know Franconville?"
"Monsieur knows men, not castles," said Mistigris.
"Budding diplomatists have so much else to take their minds," remarked
Georges.
"Be so good as to remember my name," replied Oscar,
furious. "I am
Oscar Husson, and ten years hence I shall be famous."
After that speech, uttered with bombastic
assumption, Oscar flung
himself back in his corner.
"Husson of what, of where?" asked Mistigris.
"It is a great family," replied the count. "Husson de la Cerisaie;
monsieur was born beneath the steps of the Imperial throne."
Oscar colored
crimson to the roots of his hair, and was penetrated
through and through with a
dreadful foreboding.
They were now about to
descend the steep hill of La Cave, at the foot
of which, in a narrow
valley, flanked by the forest of Saint-Martin,
stands the
magnificentchateau of Presles.
"Messieurs," said the count, "I wish you every good fortune in your
various careers. Monsieur le
colonel, make your peace with the King of
France; the Czerni-Georges ought not to snub the Bourbons. I have
nothing to wish for you, my dear Monsieur Schinner; your fame is
already won, and nobly won by splendid work. But you are much to be
feared in
domestic life, and I, being a married man, dare not invite
you to my house. As for Monsieur Husson, he needs no
protection; he
possesses the secrets of statesmen and can make them tremble. Monsieur
Leger is about to pluck the Comte de Serizy, and I can only exhort him
to do it with a firm hand. Pierrotin, put me out here, and pick me up
at the same place to-morrow," added the count, who then left the coach
and took a path through the woods, leaving his late companions
confused and bewildered.
"He must be that count who has hired Franconville; that's the path to
it," said Leger.
"If ever again," said the false Schinner, "I am caught blague-ing in a
public coach, I'll fight a duel with myself. It was your fault,
Mistigris," giving his rapin a tap on the head.
"All I did was to help you out, and follow you to Venice," said
Mistigris; "but that's always the way, 'Fortune belabors the slave.'"
"Let me tell you," said Georges to his neighbor Oscar, "that if, by
chance, that was the Comte de Serizy, I wouldn't be in your skin for a
good deal,
healthy as you think it."
Oscar, remembering his mother's injunctions, which these words
recalled to his mind, turned pale and came to his senses.
"Here you are, messieurs!" cried Pierrotin, pulling up at a fine iron
gate.
"Here we are--where?" said the
painter, and Georges, and Oscar all at
once.
"Well, well!" exclaimed Pierrotin, "if that doesn't beat all! Ah ca,
monsieurs, have none of you been here before? Why, this is the
chateaude Presles."
"Oh, yes; all right, friend," said Georges, recovering his audacity.
"But I happen to be going on to Les Moulineaux," he added, not wishing
his companions to know that he was really going to the
chateau.
"You don't say so? Then you are coming to me," said Pere Leger.
"How so?"
"Why, I'm the farmer at Moulineaux. Hey,
colonel, what brings you
there?"
"To taste your butter," said Georges, pulling out his portfolio.
"Pierrotin," said Oscar, "leave my things at the
steward's. I am going
straight to the
chateau."
Whereupon Oscar plunged into a narrow path, not
knowing, in the least,
where he was going.
"Hi! Monsieur l'ambassadeur," cried Pere Leger, "that's the way to the
forest; if you really want to get to the
chateau, go through the
little gate."
Thus compelled to enter, Oscar disappeared into the grand court-yard.
While Pere Leger stood watching Oscar, Georges, utterly confounded by
the discovery that the farmer was the present
occupant of Les