“I tell you all this to show you that I can, to this very hour, account for every minute of that day, one of the most memorable of my whole life, from the moment of my leaving M. de Voltaire; and when I returned home, late as was the hour, before retiring to rest, I sat down to begin a letter to my uncle, the Cardinal de Perigord, in order to recount to him the adventure of the morning, and above all, to tell him the anecdote concerning our family, which M. de Voltaire had related, and in which I knew my uncle would take a most peculiar delight, both from the source whence it came, and the personal interest inspired by the subject. Judge, then, of the mortification I experienced upon finding that, in spite of all my endeavours to collect my wandering ideas to the one point in question, I could not recollect the story which M. de Voltaire had been at so much pains to tell me, to which I had listened with so much attention and with such extraordinary relish; I could not even write in my letter the immediate object of the story—neither detail, nor hero, nor point, (which last I remembered had diverted me beyond measure,) would present itself to my remembrance; and, after much vexation of spirit, I was fain to leave my letter unfinished, until I had met with Champfort, whose memory I doubted not would be fully able to supply the deficiency of mine.
“I was determined to lose no time in assuring myself of this, and called upon the poet the very next day. What, think you, was his answer to my urgent entreaties that he would assist me? ‘Parbleu, mon cher, I was too much occupied in thinking what I should say to M. de Voltaire to notice what he was saying to me. I heard not a word of his story, but you must own that I completely succeeded in proving the false quantity in the second canto of the Henriade.’
“He had not even heard the story! so there was no hope in that quarter, and I was obliged to content myself with the trust, that at some future day I might be fortunate enough again to meet M. de Voltaire, and induce him to tell the tale once more. As I have already said, however, I had not the good fortune to see him afterwards.
“Often and often, in the long years that have passed since then, have I endeavoured to catch the purport of his tale, but in vain. The whole scene of that interview rises at command—the welcome, the farewell, and the various arguments of the two beaux-esprits—but that narrative, which I would often give much to remember, is gone for ever! The pre-occupation of the scene, the wonder, the delight inspired by the philosopher’s conversation, have left a blank, which neither time nor reflection have ever been able to fill up; and even now I cannot remember the incident without feeling the same kind of embarrassment which I experienced on that occasion, and often surprise myself when, falling into reverie, chasing the phantoms of that hour through my puzzled brain, and endeavouring, in spite of experience, to arrest the fugitive impressions made by the story at the time, but without success.”
The prince now paused, and leant back in his chair for a moment, with his eyes closed, evidently lost in thought. It was well that no one spoke, or we might have been deprived of the tale which followed, and in which, at the age I was then, I took more interest, and remembered with more pleasure, than any which had preceded it.
“How mysterious a thing is memory,” said he, as he bent forward once more, and smiled upon his listeners. “The name of Champfort has brought to my mind the story, long-forgotten, of his fellow-prisoner, a young officer formerly in the mousquetaires. His name we all know, for he is among us still, and, in short, he has promised that he will visit us, before the autumn is over, here at Valençay. He was, without exception, the handsomest youth I have ever seen; and his manners and address being remarkable for a grace peculiarly his own, and his reputation for high courage and chivalrous bearing having been fully established by one or two affaires brillantes in which he had been engaged, it may naturally be supposed that his succès of every kind left him nothing to desire. But he sought no conquest, even where the enemy held out offers of surrender; he seemed callous and indifferent to all the advances, the allurements, of which he was the object, until, such was the state of morals at that time, the ladies of the great world in which he moved began to act as spies upon each other, being fully convinced of the impossibility of his having remained so long insensible to the arts and blandishments by which he was surrounded.
“For a long time his secret remained impenetrable; his part was so well acted, his measures so well taken, that the scandal-mongers were in despair, and the charitable souls, of whom there are always a few, were beginning to hope, when the mystery was divulged in a most extraordinary manner, and formed the town talk for many a day; and, as the story has been told with divers variations, and has got abroad under different versions, I will tell you the right one, which I had from the Marquis de J——’s own lips:
“In those days there were fermiers généraux, and the said fermiers généraux were almost always among the oldest, ugliest, richest, and most disagreeable men that the kingdom could produce. One of these, who united in himself all these superlatives, had just deceived all the cherished hopes of the ladies of the court by marrying a young girl from his own province, of noble birth, although of slender fortune, who was described as being of little beauty, and glad to acquire by marriage, wealth and station, even at the sacrifice of those other qualities in a husband which are generally sought for by young ladies.
“A year had elapsed since the return of M. de B. from Besançon, where the marriage had taken place. No one had seen his bride; she remained entirety at his country house—a delicious little ‘Folie,’ so it was said, at Auteuil, close to the Bois de Boulogne. The lady had not been presented at court, and M. de B. had never requested any of his friends to visit her, so that she was at first supposed to be imbecile or ugly, and was then forgotten. But the devil’s hoof, which certainly is busy with all men’s concerns, trotted one day through the muddled brain of the old Dowager de Marville, and suggested to her that it would be a mighty pleasant thing to have a feu d’artifice in the Bois de Bologne, on some dark night when there would be no moon, and that it would be quite a funny sight to behold all the skirts of the wood festooned with coloured lamps, and adorned with flambeaux; and then she began to torment M. de B. to throw open his ‘Folie’ to the élite, and give a fête there to his friends without delay. He was a good-natured man, but, nevertheless, he took a great deal of persuading before he would consent to have his privacy thus broken in upon. He offered the ladies of his acquaintance a ball at his own hôtel in Paris, with interludes of opera-dancers. But no, the fête at the ‘Folie’—nothing else would do, and the poor man was obliged at last to promise the much-desired entertainment. His excuses had all a relation to his wife; her ignorance of the world, her innocence and utter simplicity, had all been put forward as motives for refusing, but no excuse could be taken. Give the fête he must, and the ladies, on their part, promised to treat the rustic bride with indulgence, and not to crush her by too great an assumption of superiority.
“The day of the fête arrived. The most brilliant anticipations had been formed of the entertainment to be given in such a sweet place, by so rich a man, and they were most certainly not disappointed. Every arrangement was of the best, and the whole place illuminated like a dream of fairy-land; which last circumstance did not vex the ladies so much as one would have imagined, for it helped to prove that the opinions which had been formed of the bride of M. de B. were correct in all points. She was very young, very timid, and very reserved and gauche, like a little pensionnaire de couvent as she was; and, what was worse, like all provinciales, who think nothing more beautiful than what is to be found in their own province, she never once expressed the slightest admiration or astonishment at anything she saw—nay, she preserved the same cold, unmoved air, even when her husband presented to her, in due form, the vanquisher of all hearts, the renowned Marquis de J——! Some of the ladies said that she was pretty; some said not; some that she might become dangerous in time, from her paleness and the languishing expression of her eyes. Others again laughed at this opinion, and felt sure that there would never be anything to dread from her. These last expressed surprise that she had even made the conquest of her stupid old husband.