The Parisians, Complete - Edward Bulwer Lytton
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THE PARISIANS
By Edward Bulwer-Lytton
PREFATORY NOTE.
(BY THE AUTHOR'S SON.)
"The Parisians" and "Kenelm Chillingly" were begun about the same time,
and had their common origin in the same central idea. That idea first
found fantastic expression in "The Coming Race;" and the three books,
taken together, constitute a special group, distinctly apart from all the
other works of their author.
The satire of his earlier novels is a protest against false social
respectabilities; the humour of his later ones is a protest against the
disrespect of social realities. By the first he sought to promote social
sincerity and the free play of personal character; by the last, to
encourage mutual charity and sympathy amongst all classes, on whose
interrelation depends the character of society itself. But in these three
books, his latest fictions, the moral purpose is more definite and
exclusive. Each of them is an expostulation against what seemed to him
the perilous popularity of certain social and political theories, or a
warning against the influence of certain intellectual tendencies upon
individual character and national life. This purpose, however, though
common to the three fictions, is worked out in each of them by a
different method. "The Coming Race" is a work of pure fancy, and the
satire of it is vague and sportive. The outlines of a definite purpose
are more distinctly drawn in "Chillingly,"--a romance which has the
source of its effect in a highly wrought imagination. The humour and
pathos of "Chillingly" are of a kind incompatible with the design of "The
Parisians," which is a work of dramatized observation. "Chillingly" is a
romance; "The Parisians" is a novel. The subject of "Chillingly" is
psychological; that of "The Parisians" is social. The author's object in
"Chillingly" being to illustrate the effects of "modern ideas" upon an
individual character, he has confined his narrative to the biography of
that one character; hence the simplicity of plot and small number of
dramatis personae, whereby the work gains in height and depth what it
loses in breadth of surface. "The Parisians," on the contrary, is
designed to illustrate the effect of "modern ideas" upon a whole
community. This novel is therefore panoramic in the profusion and variety
of figures presented by it to the reader's imagination. No exclusive
prominence is vouchsafed to any of these figures. All of them are drawn
and coloured with an equal care, but by means of the bold, broad touches
necessary for their effective presentation on a canvas so large and so
crowded. Such figures are, indeed, but the component features of one
great form, and their actions only so many modes of one collective
impersonal character,--that of the Parisian Society of Imperial and
Democratic France; a character everywhere present and busy throughout the
story, of which it is the real hero or heroine. This society was
doubtless selected for characteristic illustration as being the most
advanced in the progress of "modern ideas." Thus, for a complete
perception of its writer's fundamental purpose, "The Parisians" should be
read in connection with "Chillingly," and these two books in connection
with "The Coming Race." It will then be perceived that through the medium
of alternate fancy, sentiment, and observation, assisted by humour and
passion, these three books (in all other respects so different from each
other) complete the presentation of the same purpose under different
aspects, and thereby constitute a group of fictions which claims a
separate place of its own in any thoughtful classification of their
author's works.
One last word to those who will miss from these pages the connecting and
completing touches of the master's hand. It may be hoped that such a
disadvantage, though irreparable, is somewhat mitigated by the essential
character of the work itself. The aesthetic merit of this kind of novel
is in the vivacity of a general effect produced by large, swift strokes
of character; and in such strokes, if they be by a great artist, force
and freedom of style must still be apparent, even when they are left
rough and unfinished. Nor can any lack of final verbal correction much
diminish the intellectual value which many of the more thoughtful
passages of the present work derive from a long, keen, and practical
study of political phenomena, guided by personal experience of public
life, and enlightened by a large, instinctive knowledge of the human
heart.
Such a belief is, at least, encouraged by the private communications
spontaneously made to him who expresses it, by persons of political
experience and social position in France, who have acknowledged the
general accuracy of the author's descriptions, and noticed the suggestive
sagacity and penetration of his occasional comments on the circumstances
and sentiments he describes.
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
They who chance to have read the "Coming Race" may perhaps remember that
I, the adventurous discoverer of the land without a sun, concluded the
sketch of my adventures by a brief reference to the malady which, though
giving no perceptible notice of its encroachments, might, in the opinion
of my medical attendant, prove suddenly fatal.
I had brought my little book to this somewhat melancholy close a few
years before the date of its publication, and in the meanwhile I was
induced to transfer my residence to Paris, in order to place myself under
the care of an English physician, renowned for his successful treatment
of complaints analogous to my own.
I was the more readily persuaded to undertake this journey,--partly
because I enjoyed a familiar acquaintance with the eminent physician
referred to, who had commenced his career and founded his reputation in
the United States; partly because I had become a solitary man, the ties
of home broken, and dear friends of mine were domiciled in Paris, with
whom I should be sure of tender sympathy and cheerful companionship. I
had reason to be thankful for this change of residence: the skill of Dr.
C______ soon restored me to health. Brought much into contact with various
circles of Parisian society, I became acquainted with the persons and a
witness of the events that form the substance of the tale I am about to
submit to the public, which has treated my former book with so generous
an indulgence. Sensitively tenacious of that character for strict and
unalloyed veracity which, I flatter myself, my account of the abodes and
manners of the Vril-ya has established, I could have wished to preserve
the following narrative no less jealously guarded than its predecessor
from the vagaries of fancy. But Truth undisguised, never welcome in any
civilized community above ground, is exposed at this time to especial
dangers in Paris; and my life would not be worth an hour's purchase if I
exhibited her 'in puris naturalibus' to the eyes of a people wholly
unfamiliarized to a spectacle so indecorous. That care for one's personal
safety which is the first duty of thoughtful man compels me therefore to
reconcile the appearance of 'la Verite' to the 'bienseances' of the
polished society in which 'la Liberte' admits no opinion not dressed
after the last fashion.
Attired as fiction, Truth may be peacefully received; and, despite the
necessity thus imposed by prudence, I indulge the modest hope that I do
not in these pages unfaithfully represent certain prominent types of the
brilliant population which has invented so many varieties of Koom-Posh;
[Koom-Posh, Glek-Nas. For the derivation of these terms and their
metaphorical signification, I must refer the reader to the "Coming
Race," chapter xii., on the language of the Vril-ya. To those who
have not read or have forgotten that historical composition, it may
be convenient to state briefly that Koom-Posh with the Vril-ya is
the name for the government of the many, or the ascendency of the
most ignorant or hollow, and may be loosely rendered Hollow-Bosh.
When Koom-Posh degenerates from popular ignorance into the popular
ferocity which precedes its decease, the name for that state of
things is Glek-Nas; namely, the universal strife-rot.]
and even when it appears hopelessly lost in the slough of a Glek-Nas,
re-emerges fresh and lively as if from an invigorating plunge into the
Fountain of Youth. O Paris, 'foyer des idees, et oeil du
monde!'--animated contrast to the serene tranquillity of the Vril-ya,
which, nevertheless, thy noisiest philosophers ever pretend to make the
goal of their desires: of all communities on which shines the sun and
descend the rains of heaven, fertilizing alike wisdom and folly, virtue
and vice; in every city men have yet built on this earth,--mayest thou, O
Paris, be the last to brave the wands of the Coming Race and be reduced
into cinders for the sake of the common good!
TISH.
PARIS, August 28, 1872.
THE PARISIANS.
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
It was a bright day in the early spring of 1869. All Paris seemed to have
turned out to enjoy itself. The Tuileries, the Champs Elysees, the Bois
de Boulogne, swarmed with idlers. A stranger might have wondered where
Toil was at work, and in what nook Poverty lurked concealed. A
millionaire from the London Exchange, as he looked round on the magasins,
the equipages, the dresses of the women; as he inquired the prices in the
shops and the rent of apartments,--might have asked himself, in envious
wonder, How on earth do those gay Parisians live? What is their fortune?
Where does it come from?
As the day declined, many of the scattered loungers crowded into the
Boulevards; the cafes and restaurants began to light up.
About this time a young man, who might be some five or six and twenty,
was walking along the Boulevard des Italiens, heeding little the throng
through which he glided his solitary way: there was that in his aspect
and bearing which caught attention. He looked a somebody; but though
unmistakably a Frenchman, not a Parisian. His dress was not in the
prevailing mode: to a practised eye it betrayed the taste and the cut of
a provincial tailor. His gait was not that of the Parisian,--less
lounging, more stately; and, unlike the Parisian, he seemed indifferent
to the gaze of others.
Nevertheless there was about him that air of dignity or distinction which
those who are reared from their cradle in the pride of birth acquire so
unconsciously that it seems hereditary and inborn. It must also be
confessed that the young man himself was endowed with a considerable
share of that nobility which Nature capriciously distributes among her
favourites with little respect for their pedigree and blazon, the
nobility of form and face. He was tall and well shaped, with graceful
length of limb and fall of shoulders; his face was handsome, of the
purest type of French masculine beauty,--the nose inclined to be
aquiline, and delicately thin, with finely-cut open nostrils; the
complexion clear,--the eyes large, of a light hazel, with dark
lashes,--the hair of a chestnut brown, with no tint of auburn,--the beard
and mustache a shade darker, clipped short, not disguising the outline of
lips, which were now compressed, as if smiles had of late been unfamiliar
to them; yet such compression did not seem in harmony with the
physiognomical character of their formation, which was that assigned by
Lavater to temperaments easily moved to gayety and pleasure.
Another man, about his own age, coming quickly out of one of the streets
of the Chausee d'Antin, brushed close by the stately pedestrian above
described, caught sight of his countenance, stopped short, and exclaimed,
"Alain!" The person thus abruptly accosted turned his eye tranquilly on
the eager face, of which all the lower part was enveloped in black beard;
and slightly lifting his hat, with a gesture of the head that implied,
"Sir, you are mistaken; I have not the honour to know you," continued his
slow indifferent way. The would-be acquaintance was not so easily
rebuffed. "Peste," he said, between his teeth, "I am certainly right. He
is not much altered: of course I AM; ten years of Paris would improve an
orang-outang." Quickening his step, and regaining the side of the man he
had called "Alain," he said, with a well-bred mixture of boldness and
courtesy in his tone and countenance,
"Ten thousand pardons if I am wrong. Put surely I accost Alain de
Kerouec, son of the Marquis de Rochebriant."
"True, sir; but--"
"But you do not remember me, your old college friend, Frederic
Lemercier?"
"Is it possibly?" cried Alain, cordially, and with an animation which
charged the whole character of his countenance. "My dear Frederic, my
dear friend, this is indeed good fortune! So you, too, are at Paris?"
"Of course; and you? Just come, I perceive," he added, somewhat
satirically, as, linking his arm in his new-found friend's, he glanced at
the cut of that friend's coat-collar.
"I have been herd a fortnight," replied Alain.
"Hem! I suppose you lodge in the old Hotel de Rochebriant. I passed it
yesterday, admiring its vast facade, little thinking you were its
inmate."
"Neither am I; the hotel does not belong to me; it was sold some years
ago by my father."
"Indeed! I hope your father got a good price for it; those grand hotels
have trebled their value within the last five years. And how is your
father? Still the same polished grand seigneur? I never saw him but once,
you know; and I shall never forget his smile, style grand monarque, when
he patted me on the head and tipped me ten napoleons."
"My father is no more," said Alain, gravely; "he has been dead nearly
three years."
"Ciel! forgive me; I am greatly shocked. Hem! so you are now the Marquis
de Rochebriant, a great historical name, worth a large sum in the market.
Few such names left. Superb place your old chateau, is it not?"
"A superb place, no--a venerable ruin, yes!"
"Ah, a ruin! so much the better. All the bankers are mad after ruins: so
charming an amusement to restore them. You will restore yours, without
doubt. I will introduce you to such an architect! has the 'moyen age' at
his fingers' ends. Dear,--but a genius."
The young Marquis smiled,--for since he had found a college friend, his
face showed that it could smile,--smiled, but not cheerfully, and
answered,
"I have no intention to restore Rochebriant. The walls are solid: they
have weathered the storms of six centuries, they will last my time, and
with me the race perishes."
"Bah! the race perish, indeed! you will marry. 'Parlez moi de ca': you
could not come to a better man. I have a list of all the heiresses at
Paris, bound in russia leather. You may take your choice out of twenty.
Ah, if I were but a Rochebriant! It is an infernal thing to come into the
world a Lemercier. I am a democrat, of course. A Lemercier would be in a
false position if he were not. But if any one would leave me twenty acres
of land, with some antique right to the De and a title, faith, would not
I be an aristocrat, and stand up for my order? But now we have met, pray
let us dine together. Ah! no doubt you are engaged every day for a month.
A Rochebriant just new to Paris must be 'fete' by all the Faubourg."
"No," answered Alain, simply, "I am not engaged; my range of acquaintance
is more circumscribed than you suppose."
"So much the better for me. I am luckily disengaged today, which is not
often the case, for I am in some request in my own set, though it is not
that of the Faubourg. Where shall we dine?--at the Trois Freres?"
"Wherever you please. I know no restaurant at Paris, except a very
ignoble one, close by my lodging."
"'Apropos', where do you lodge?"
"Rue de l'Universite, Numero --."
"A fine street, but 'triste'. If you have no longer your family hotel,
you have no excuse to linger in that museum of mummies, the Faubourg St.
Germain; you must go into one of the new quarters by the Champs Elysees.
Leave it to me; I'll find you a charming apartment. I know one to be had
a bargain,--a bagatelle,--five hundred naps a-year. Cost you about two or
three thousand more to furnish tolerably, not showily. Leave all to me.
In three days you shall be settled. Apropos! horses! You must have
English ones. How many?--three for the saddle, two for your 'coupe'? I'll
find them for you. I will write to London to-morrow: Reese [Rice] is your
man."
"Spare yourself that trouble, my dear Frederic. I keep no horses and no
coupe. I shall not change my apartment." As he said this, Rochebriant
drew himself up somewhat haughtily.
"Faith," thought Lemercier, "is it possible that the Marquis is poor? No.
I have always heard that the Rochebriants were among the greatest
proprietors in Bretagne. Most likely, with all his innocence of the
Faubourg St. Germain, he knows enough of it to be aware that I, Frederic
Lemercier, am not the man to patronize one of its greatest nobles. 'Sacre
bleu!' if I thought that; if he meant to give himself airs to me, his old
college friend,--I would--I would call him out."
Just as M. Lemercier had come to that bellicose resolution, the Marquis
said, with a smile which, though frank, was not without a certain grave
melancholy in its expression, "My dear Frederic, pardon me if I seem to
receive your friendly offers ungraciously. But I believe that I have.
reasons you will approve for leading at Paris a life which you certainly
will not envy;" then, evidently desirous to change the subject, he said
in a livelier tone, "But what a marvellous city this Paris of ours is!
Remember I had never seen it before: it burst on me like a city in the
Arabian Nights two weeks ago. And that which strikes me most--I say it
with regret and a pang of conscience--is certainly not the Paris of
former times, but that Paris which M. Buonaparte--I beg pardon, which the
Emperor--has called up around him, and identified forever with his reign.
It is what is new in Paris that strikes and enthrals me. Here I see the
life of France, and I belong to her tombs!"
"I don't quite understand you," said Lemercier. "If you think that
because your father and grandfather were Legitimists, you have not the
fair field of living ambition open to you under the Empire, you never
were more mistaken. 'Moyen age,' and even rococo, are all the rage. You
have no idea how valuable your name would be either at the Imperial Court
or in a Commercial Company. But with your fortune you are independent of
all but fashion and the Jockey Club.
"And 'apropos' of that, pardon me,--what villain made your coat?--let me
know; I will denounce him to the police." Half amused, half amazed, Alain
Marquis de Rochebriant looked at Frederic Lemercier much as a
good-tempered lion may look upon a lively poodle who takes a liberty with
his mane, and after a pause he replied curtly, "The clothes I wear at
Paris were made in Bretagne; and if the name of Rochebriant be of any
value at all in Paris, which I doubt, let me trust that it will make me
acknowledged as 'gentilhomme,' whatever my taste in a coat or whatever
the doctrines of a club composed--of jockeys."
"Ha, ha!" cried Lemercier, freeing himself from the arm of his friend,
and laughing the more irresistibly as he encountered the grave look of
the Marquis. "Pardon me,--I can't help it,--the Jockey Club,--composed of
jockeys!--it is too much!--the best joke. My dear, Alain, there is some
of the best blood of Europe in the Jockey Club; they would exclude a
plain bourgeois like me. But it is all the same: in one respect you are
quite right. Walk in a blouse if you please: you are still Rochebriant;
you would only be called eccentric. Alas! I am obliged to send to London
for my pantaloons: that comes of being a Lemercier. But here we are in
the Palais Royal."
CHAPTER II.
The salons of the Trois Freres were crowded; our friends found a table
with some little difficulty. Lemercier proposed a private cabinet, which,
for some reason known to himself, the Marquis declined.
Lemercier spontaneously and unrequested ordered the dinner and the wines.
While waiting for their oysters, with which, when in season, French
'bon-vivants' usually commence their dinner, Lemercier looked round the
salon with that air of inimitable, scrutinizing, superb impertinence
which distinguishes the Parisian dandy. Some of the ladies returned his
glance coquettishly, for Lemercier was 'beau garcon;' others turned aside
indignantly, and muttered something to the gentlemen dining with them.
The said gentlemen, when old, shook their heads, and continued to eat
unmoved; when young, turned briskly round, and looked at first fiercely
at M. Lemercier, but, encountering his eye through the glass which he had
screwed into his socket, noticing the hardihood of his countenance and
the squareness of his shoulders, even they turned back to the tables,
shook their heads, and continued to eat unmoved, just like the old ones.
"Ah!" cried Lemercier, suddenly, "here comes a man you should know, 'mon
cher.' He will tell you how to place your money,--a rising man, a coming
man, a future minister. Ah! 'bon jour,' Duplessis, 'bon jour,'" kissing
his hand to a gentleman who had just entered and was looking about him
for a seat. He was evidently well and favourably known at the Trois
Freres. The waiters had flocked round him, and were pointing to a table
by the window, which a saturnine Englishman, who had dined off a
beefsteak and potatoes, was about to vacate.
M. Duplessis, having first assured himself, like a prudent man, that his
table was secure, having ordered his oysters, his chablis, and his
'potage a la bisque,' now paced calmly and slowly across the salon, and
halted before Lemercier.
Here let me pause for a moment, and give the reader a rapid sketch of the
two Parisians.
Frederic Lemercier is dressed, somewhat too showily, in the extreme of
the prevalent fashion. He wears a superb pin in his cravat,--a pin worth
two thousand francs; he wears rings on his fingers, 'breloques' to his
watch-chain. He has a warm though dark complexion, thick black eyebrows,
full lips, a nose somewhat turned up, but not small, very fine large dark
eyes, a bold, open, somewhat impertinent expression of countenance;
withal decidedly handsome, thanks to colouring, youth, and vivacity of
regard.
Lucien Duplessis, bending over the table, glancing first with curiosity
at the Marquis de Rochebriant, who leans his cheek on his hand and seems
not to notice him, then concentrating his attention on Frederic
Lemercier, who sits square with his hands clasped,--Lucien Duplessis is
somewhere between forty and fifty, rather below the middle height,
slender, but not slight,--what in English phrase is called "wiry." He is
dressed with extreme simplicity: black frockcoat buttoned up; black
cravat worn higher than men who follow the fashions wear their neckcloths
nowadays; a hawk's eye and a hawk's beak; hair of a dull brown, very
short, and wholly without curl; his cheeks thin and smoothly shaven, but
he wears a mustache and imperial, plagiarized from those of his
sovereign, and, like all plagiarisms, carrying the borrowed beauty to
extremes, so that the points of mustache and imperial, stiffened and
sharpened by cosmetics which must have been composed of iron, looked like
three long stings guarding lip and jaw from invasion; a pale olive-brown
complexion, eyes small, deep-sunk, calm, piercing; his expression of face
at first glance not striking, except for quiet immovability. Observed
more heedfully, the expression was keenly intellectual,--determined about
the lips, calculating about the brows: altogether the face of no ordinary
man, and one not, perhaps, without fine and high qualities, concealed
from the general gaze by habitual reserve, but justifying the confidence
of those whom he admitted into his intimacy.
"Ah, mon cher," said Lemercier, "you promised to call on me yesterday at
two o'clock. I waited in for you half an hour; you never came."
"No; I went first to the Bourse. The shares in that Company we spoke of
have fallen; they will fall much lower: foolish to buy in yet; so the
object of my calling on you was over. I took it for granted you would not
wait if I failed my appointment. Do you go to the opera to-night?"
"I think not; nothing worth going for: besides, I have found an old
friend, to whom I consecrate this evening. Let me introduce you to the
Marquis de Rochebriant. Alain, M. Duplessis."
The two gentlemen bowed.
"I had the honour to be known to Monsieur your father," said Duplessis.
"Indeed," returned Rochebriant. "He had not visited Paris for many years
before he died."
"It was in London I met him, at the house of the Russian Princess C____."
The Marquis coloured high, inclined his head gravely, and made no reply.
Here the waiter brought the oysters and the chablis, and Duplessis
retired to his own table.
"That is the most extraordinary man," said Frederic, as he squeezed the
lemon over his oysters, "and very much to be admired."
"How so? I see nothing at least to admire in his face," said the Marquis,
with the bluntness of a provincial.