Book the Third.
Holy Institution.
Chapter I.
The Value of an Opera-Glass.
Paris!—City of fashion, pleasure, beauty, wealth, rank, talent, and indeed all the glories of the earth. City of palaces, in which La Vallière smiled, and Scarron sneered; under whose roofs the echoes of Bossuet's voice have resounded, while folly, coming to be amused, has gone away in tears, only to forget to-morrow what it has heard to-night. Glorious city, in which a bon mot is more famous than a good action; which is richer in the records of Ninon de Lenclos than in those of Joan of Arc; for which Beaumarchais wrote, and Marmoutel moralised; which Scottish John Law infected with a furious madness, in those halcyon days when jolly, good-tempered, accomplished, easy-going Philippe of Orleans held the reins of power. Paris, which young Arouet, afterwards Voltaire, ruled with the distant jingle of his jester's wand, from the far retreat of Ferney. Paris, in which Madame du Deffand dragged out those weary, brilliant, dismal, salon-keeping years, quarrelling with Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse, and corresponding with Horace Walpole; ce cher Horace, who described those brilliant French ladies as women who neglected all the duties of life, and gave very pretty suppers.
Paris, in which Bailly spoke, and Madame Roland dreamed; in which Marie Antoinette despaired, and gentle Princess Elizabeth laid down her saintly life; in which the son of St. Louis went calmly to the red mouth of that terrible machine invented by the charitable doctor who thought to benefit his fellow creatures. City, under whose roofs bilious Robespierre suspected and feared; beneath whose shadow the glorious twenty-two went hand in hand to death, with the psalm of freedom swelling from their lips. Paris, which rejoiced when Marengo was won, and rang joy-bells for the victories of Lodd Arcola, Austerlitz, Auerstadt, and Jena; Paris, which mourned over fatal Waterloo, and opened its arms, after weary years of waiting, to take to its heart only the ashes of the ruler of its election; Paris, the marvellous; Paris, the beautiful, whose streets are streets of palaces—fairy wonders of opulence and art;—can it be that under some of thy myriad roofs there are such incidental trifles as misery, starvation, vice, crime, and death? Nay, we will not push the question, but enter at once into one of the most brilliant of the temples of that goddess whose names are Pleasure, Fashion, Folly, and Idleness: and what more splendid shrine can we choose whereat to worship the divinity called Pleasure than the Italian Opera House?
To-night the house is thronged with fashion and beauty. Bright uniforms glitter in the backgrounds of the boxes, and sprinkle the crowded parterre. The Citizen King is there—not King of France; no such poor title will he have, but King of the French. His throne is based, not on the broad land, but on the living hearts of his people. May it never prove to be built on a shallow foundation! In eighteen hundred and forty-two all is well for Louis Philippe and his happy family.
In the front row of the stalls, close to the orchestra, a young man lounges, with his opera-glass in his hand. He is handsome and very elegant, and is dressed in the most perfect taste and the highest fashion. Dark curling hair clusters round his delicately white forehead; his eyes are of a bright blue, shaded by auburn lashes, which contrast rather strangely with his dark hair. A very dark and thick moustache only reveals now and then his thin lower lip and a set of dazzling white teeth. His nose is a delicate aquiline, and his features altogether bear the stamp of aristocracy. He is quite alone, this elegant lounger, and of the crowd of people of rank and fashion around him not one turns to speak to him. His listless white hand is thrown on the cushion of the stall on which he leans, as he glances round the house with one indifferent sweep of his opera-glass. Presently his attention is arrested by the conversation of two gentlemen close to him, and without seeming to listen, he hears what they are saying.
"Is the Spanish princess here to-night?" asks one.
"What, the marquis's niece, the girl who has that immense property in Spanish America? Yes, she is in the box next to the king's; don't you see her diamonds? They and her eyes are brilliant enough to set the curtains of the box on fire."
"She is immensely rich, then?"
"She is an Eldorado. The Marquis de Cevennes has no children, and all his property will go to her; her Spanish American property comes from her mother. She is an orphan, as you know, and the marquis is her guardian."
"She is handsome; but there's just a little too much of the demon in those great almond-shaped black eyes and that small determined mouth. What a fortune she would be to some intriguing adventurer!"
"An adventurer! Valerie de Cevennes the prize of an adventurer! Show me the man capable of winning her, without rank and fortune equal to hers; and I will say you have found the eighth wonder of the world."
The listener's eyes light up with a strange flash, and lifting his glass, he looks for a few moments carelessly round the house, and then fixes his gaze upon the box next to that occupied by the royal party.
The Spanish beauty is indeed a glorious creature; of a loveliness rich alike in form and colour, but with hauteur and determination expressed in every feature of her face. A man of some fifty years of age is seated by her side, and behind her chair two or three gentlemen stand, the breasts of whose coats glitter with stars and orders. They are speaking to her; but she pays very little attention to them. If she answers, it is only by a word, or a bend of her proud head, which she does not turn towards them. She never takes her eyes from the curtain, which presently rises. The opera is La Sonnambula. The Elvino is the great singer of the day—a young man whose glorious voice and handsome face have made him the rage of the musical world. Of his origin different stories are told. Some say he was originally a shoemaker, others declare him to be the son of a prince. He has, however, made his fortune at seven-and-twenty, and can afford to laugh at these stories. The opera proceeds, and the powerful glass of the lounger in the stalls records the minutest change in the face of Valerie de Cevennes. It records one faint quiver, and then a firmer compression of the thin lips, when the Elvino appears; and the eyes of the lounger fasten more intently, if possible, than before upon the face of the Spanish beauty.
Presently Elvino sings the grand burst of passionate reproach, in which he upbraids Amina's fancied falsehood. As the house applauds at the close of the scene, Valerie's bouquet falls at the feet of the Amina. Elvino, taking it in his hand, presents it to the lady, and as he does so, the lounger's glass—which, more rapidly than the bouquet has fallen, has turned to the stage—records a movement so quick as to be almost a feat of legerdemain. The great tenor has taken a note from the bouquet. The lounger sees the triumphant glance towards the box next the king's, though it is rapid as lightning. He sees the tiny morsel of glistening paper crumpled in the singer's hand; and after one last contemplative look at the proud brow and set lips of Valerie de Cevennes, he lowers the glass.
"My glass is well worth the fifteen guineas I paid for it," he whispers to himself. "That girl can command her eyes; they have not one traitorous flash. But those thin lips cannot keep a secret from a man with a decent amount of brains."
When the opera is over, the lounger of the stalls leaves his place by the orchestra, and loiters in the winter night outside the stage-door. Perhaps he is enamoured of some lovely coryphée—lovely in all the gorgeousness of flake white and liquid rouge; and yet that can scarcely be, or he would be still in the stalls, or hovering about the side-scenes, for the ballet is not over. Two or three carriages, belonging to the principal singers, are waiting at the stage-door. Presently a tall, stylish-looking man, in a loose over-coat, emerges; a groom opens the door of a well-appointed little brougham, but the gentleman says—
"No, Farée, you can go home. I shall walk."
"But, monsieur," remonstrates the man, "monsieur is not aware that it rains."
Monsieur says he is quite aware of the rain; but that he has an umbrella, and prefers walking. So the brougham drives off with the distressed Farée, who consoles himself at a café high up on the boulevard, where he plays écarté with a limp little pack of cards, and drinks effervescing lemonade.
The lounger of the stalls, standing in the shadow, hears this little dialogue, and sees also, by the light of the carriage-lamps, that the gentleman in the loose coat is no less a personage than the hero of the opera. The lounger also seems to be indifferent to the rain, and to have a fancy for walking; for when Elvino crosses the road and turns into an opposite street, the lounger follows. It is a dark night, with a little drizzling rain—a night by no means calculated to tempt an elegantly-dressed young man to brave all the disagreeables and perils of dirty pavements and overflowing gutters; but neither Elvino nor the lounger seem to care for mud or rain, for they walk at a rapid pace through several streets—the lounger always a good way behind and always in the shadow. He has a light step, which wakes no echo on the wet pavement; and the fashionable tenor has no idea that he is followed. He walks through long narrow streets to the Rue Rivoli, thence across one of the bridges. Presently he enters a very aristocratic but retired street, in a lonely quarter of the city. The distant roll of carriages and the tramp of a passing gendarmes are the only sounds that break the silence. There is not a creature to be seen in the wide street but the two men. Elvino turns to look about him, sees no one, and walks on till he comes to a mansion at the corner, screened from the street by a high wall, with great gates and a porter's lodge. Detached from the house, and sheltered by an angle of the wall, is a little pavilion, the windows of which look into the courtyard or garden within. Close to this pavilion is a narrow low door of carved oak, studded with great iron nails, and almost hidden in the heavy masonry of the wall which frames it. The house in early times has been a convent, and is now the property of the Marquis de Cevennes. Elvino, with one more glance up and down the dimly-lighted street, approaches this doorway, and stooping down to the key-hole whistles softly three bars of a melody from Don Giovanni—La ci darem la mano.
"So!" says the lounger, standing in the shadow of a house opposite, "we are getting deeper into the mystery; the curtain is up, and the play is going to begin."
As the clocks of Paris chime the half-hour after eleven the little door turns on its hinges, and a faint light in the courtyard within falls upon the figure of the fashionable tenor. This light comes from a lamp in the hand of a pretty-looking, smartly-dressed girl, who has opened the door.
"She is not the woman I took her for, this Valerie," says the lounger, "or she would have opened that door herself. She makes her waiting-maid her confidante—a false step, which proves her either stupid or inexperienced. Not stupid; her face gives the lie to that. Inexperienced then. So much the better."
As the spy meditates thus, Elvino passes through the doorway, stooping as he crosses the threshold, and the light disappears.
"This is either a private marriage, or something worse," mutters the lounger. "Scarcely the last. Hers is the face of a woman capable of a madness, but not of degradation—the face of a Phaedra rather than a Messalina. I have seen enough of the play for to-night."