amenity. Kings enjoy
contradicting more than people think. Like most
youngest children, Emilie de Fontaine was a Benjamin spoilt by almost
everybody. The King's
coolness,
therefore, caused the Count all the
more regret, because no marriage was ever so difficult to arrange as
that of this
darling daughter. To understand all the obstacles we must
make our way into the fine
residence where the official was housed at
the expense of the nation. Emilie had spent her
childhood on the
family
estate, enjoying the
abundance which suffices for the joys of
early youth; her lightest wishes had been law to her sisters, her
brothers, her mother, and even her father. All her relations doted on
her. Having come to years of
discretion just when her family was
loaded with the favors of fortune, the
enchantment of life continued.
The
luxury of Paris seemed to her just as natural as a
wealth of
flowers or fruit, or as the rural plenty which had been the joy of her
first years. Just as in her
childhood she had never been thwarted in
the
satisfaction of her
playful desires, so now, at fourteen, she was
still obeyed when she rushed into the whirl of fashion.
Thus, accustomed by degrees to the
enjoyment of money,
elegance of
dress, of gilded drawing-rooms and fine carriages, became as necessary
to her as the compliments of
flattery,
sincere or false, and the
festivities and vanities of court life. Like most spoiled children,
she tyrannized over those who loved her, and kept her blandishments
for those who were
indifferent. Her faults grew with her growth, and
her parents were to gather the bitter fruits of this disastrous
education. At the age of nineteen Emilie de Fontaine had not yet been
pleased to make a choice from among the many young men whom her
father's
politics brought to his entertainments. Though so young, she
asserted in society all the freedom of mind that a married woman can
enjoy. Her beauty was so
remarkable that, for her, to appear in a room
was to be its queen; but, like sovereigns, she had no friends, though
she was everywhere the object of attentions to which a finer nature
than hers might perhaps have succumbed. Not a man, not even an old
man, had it in him to
contradict the opinions of a young girl whose
lightest look could rekindle love in the coldest heart.
She had been educated with a care which her sisters had not enjoyed;
painted pretty well, spoke Italian and English, and played the piano
brilliantly; her voice, trained by the best masters, had a ring in it
which made her singing irresistibly
charming. Clever, and intimate
with every branch of
literature, she might have made folks believe
that, as Mascarille says, people of quality come into the world
knowing everything. She could argue fluently on Italian or Flemish
painting, on the Middle Ages or the Renaissance;
pronounced at
haphazard on books new or old, and could
expose the defects of a work
with a
cruellygraceful wit. The simplest thing she said was accepted
by an admiring crowd as a fetfah of the Sultan by the Turks. She thus
dazzled
shallow persons; as to deeper minds, her natural tact enabled
her to
discern them, and for them she put forth so much fascination
that, under cover of her charms, she escaped their scrutiny. This
enchanting veneer covered a
careless heart; the opinion--common to
many young girls--that no one else dwelt in a
sphere so lofty as to be
able to understand the merits of her soul; and a pride based no less
on her birth than on her beauty. In the
absence of the overwhelming
sentiment which, sooner or later, works havoc in a woman's heart, she
spent her young ardor in an im
moderate love of distinctions, and
expressed the deepest
contempt for persons of
inferior birth.
Supremely impertinent to all newly-created
nobility, she made every
effort to get her parents recognized as equals by the most illustrious
families of the Saint-Germain quarter.
These sentiments had not escaped the observing eye of Monsieur de
Fontaine, who more than once, when his two elder girls were married,
had smarted under Emilie's sarcasm. Logical readers will be surprised
to see the old Royalist bestowing his
eldest daughter on a Receiver-
General, possessed, indeed, of some old
hereditaryestates, but whose
name was not preceded by the little word to which the
throne owed so
many partisans, and his second to a magistrate too
lately Baronified
to obscure the fact that his father had sold
firewood. This noteworthy
change in the ideas of a noble on the verge of his sixtieth year--an
age when men
rarelyrenounce their convictions--was due not merely to
his
unfortunateresidence in the modern Babylon, where, sooner or
later, country folks all get their corners rubbed down; the Comte de
Fontaine's new political
conscience was also a result of the King's
advice and friendship. The
philosophicalprince had taken pleasure in
converting the Vendeen to the ideas required by the advance of the
nineteenth century, and the new
aspect of the Monarchy. Louis XVIII.
aimed at fusing parties as Napoleon had fused things and men. The
legitimate King, who was not less clever perhaps than his rival, acted
in a
contrary direction. The last head of the House of Bourbon was
just as eager to satisfy the third
estate and the creations of the
Empire, by curbing the
clergy, as the first of the Napoleons had been
to attract the grand old
nobility, or to endow the Church. The Privy
Councillor, being in the secret of these royal projects, had
insensibly become one of the most
prudent and
influential leaders of
that
moderate party which most desired a fusion of opinion in the
interests of the nation. He preached the
expensive doctrines of
constitutional government, and lent all his weight to
encourage the
political see-saw which enabled his master to rule France in the midst
of storms. Perhaps Monsieur de Fontaine hoped that one of the sudden
gusts of
legislation, whose
unexpected efforts then startled the
oldest politicians, might carry him up to the rank of peer. One of his
most rigid principles was to recognize no
nobility in France but that
of the peerage--the only families that might enjoy any privileges.
"A
nobilitybereft of privileges," he would say, "is a tool without a
handle."
As far from Lafayette's party as he was from La Bourdonnaye's, he
ardently engaged in the task of general
reconciliation, which was
to result in a new era and splendid fortunes for France. He
strove to
convince the families who frequented his drawing-room,
or those whom he visited, how few
favorable openings would
henceforth be offered by a civil or military
career. He urged
mothers to give their boys a start in independent and industrial
professions, explaining that military posts and high Government
appointments must at last
pertain, in a quite constitutional
order, to the younger sons of members of the peerage. According
to him, the people had conquered a
sufficiently large share in
practical government by its elective
assembly, its appointments
to law-offices, and those of the
exchequer, which, said he, would
always, as
heretofore, be the natural right of the distinguished
men of the third
estate.
These new notions of the head of the Fontaines, and the
prudentmatches for his
eldest girls to which they had led, met with strong
resistance in the bosom of his family. The Comtesse de Fontaine
remained
faithful to the ancient beliefs which no woman could disown,
who, through her mother, belonged to the Rohans. Although she had for
a while opposed the happiness and fortune awaiting her two
eldestgirls, she yielded to those private considerations which husband and
wife
confide to each other when their heads are resting on the same
pillow. Monsieur de Fontaine
calmlypointed out to his wife, by exact
arithmetic that their
residence in Paris, the necessity for
entertaining, the
magnificence of the house which made up to them now
for the privations so
bravely shared in La Vendee, and the expenses of
their sons, swallowed up the chief part of their
income from salaries.
They must
therefore seize, as a boon from heaven, the opportunities
which offered for settling their girls with such
wealth. Would they
not some day enjoy sixty--eighty--a hundred thousand francs a year?
Such
advantageous matches were not to be met with every day for girls
without a
portion. Again, it was time that they should begin to think
of economizing, to add to the
estate of Fontaine, and re-establish the
old
territorial fortune of the family. The Countess yielded to such
cogent arguments, as every mother would have done in her place, though
perhaps with a better grace; but she declared that Emilie, at any
rate, should marry in such a way as to satisfy the pride she had
unfortunately contributed to
foster in the girl's young soul.
Thus events, which ought to have brought joy into the family, had
introduced a small
leaven of
discord. The Receiver-General and the
young
lawyer were the objects of a ceremonious
formality which the
Countess and Emilie contrived to create. This
etiquette soon found
even ampler opportunity for the display of
domestictyranny; for
Lieutenant-General de Fontaine married Mademoiselle Mongenod, the
daughter of a rich
banker; the President very sensibly found a wife in
a young lady whose father, twice or
thrice a
millionaire, had traded
in salt; and the third brother,
faithful to his
plebeian doctrines,
married Mademoiselle Grossetete, the only daughter of the Receiver-
General at Bourges. The three sisters-in-law and the two brothers-in-