Marquis and Marquise de Bois-l'Héry, second floor, Boulevard Haussmann. Furniture like the Tuileries, blue satin on all the walls, pictures, mantel ornaments, curiosities, a genuine museum, I tell you! overflowing on to the landings. Service very stylish: six servants, chestnut-colored livery in winter, nankeen livery in summer. You see those people everywhere,—at the small Monday parties, at the races, at first nights, at ambassadors' balls, and their names always in the newspapers, with remarks as to Madame's fine toilets and Monsieur's amazing chic. Well! all that is nothing but flim-flam, veneer, outside show, and if the marquis needed a hundred sous, no one would loan them to him on his worldly possessions. The furniture is hired by the fortnight from Fitily, the cocottes' upholsterer. The curiosities, the pictures, belong to old Schwalbach, who sends his customers there and makes them pay double price, because a man doesn't haggle when he thinks he is buying from a marquis, an amateur. As for the marchioness's dresses, the milliner and dress-maker furnish her with them for exhibition every season, make her wear the new styles, a little ridiculous sometimes, but instantly adopted by society, because Madame is still a very beautiful woman, and of high repute in the matter of fashion; she is what is called a lanceuse. And the servants! Provisional like all the rest, changed every week at the pleasure of the intelligence office, which sends them there to give them practice before taking serious positions. They may have neither sponsors nor certificates; they may have just come from prison or elsewhere. Glanard, the great place-broker on Rue de la Paix, supplies Boulevard Haussmann. The servants stay there one week, two weeks, long enough to purchase recommendations from the marquis, who, mark you, pays nothing and barely feeds them; for in that house the kitchen ovens are cold most of the time, as Monsieur and Madame dine out almost every evening, or attend balls at which supper is served. It is a positive fact that there are people in Paris who take the buffet seriously, and eat their first meal of the day after midnight. The Bois-l'Hérys are well posted as to houses where there is a buffet. They will tell you that you get a very good supper at the Austrian embassy, that the Spanish embassy is a little careless in the matter of wines, and that the Minister of Foreign Affairs gives you the best chaud-froid de volailles. Such is the life of that curious household. Nothing of all they have is sewn on; everything is basted or pinned. A gust of wind, and away it all goes. But at all events they are sure of losing nothing. That is what gives the marquis that blagueur, Père Tranquille air, as he looks you in the face with both hands in his pockets, as much as to say: "Well, what then? What can you do to me?"
And the little tiger, in the aforesaid attitude, with his prematurely old, vicious child's face, copied his master so perfectly that it seemed to me as if I were looking at the man himself sitting in our administrative council, facing the Governor, and overwhelming him with his cynical jests. After all, we must agree that Paris is a wonderful great city, for any one to be able to live here in that way for fifteen years, twenty years of tricks and dodges and throwing dust in people's eyes, without everybody finding him out, and to go on making a triumphant entry into salons in the wake of a footman shouting his name at the top of his voice: "Monsieur le Marquis de Bois-l'Héry."
You see, you must have been to a servants' party before you can believe all that one learns there, and what a curious thing Parisian society is when you look at it thus from below, from the basement. For instance, happening to be between M. Francis and M. Louis, I caught this scrap of confidential conversation concerning Sire de Monpavon. M. Louis said:
"You are doing wrong, Francis, you are in funds just now. You ought to take advantage of it to return that money to the Treasury."
"What can you expect?" replied M. Francis, disconsolately. "Play is consuming us."
"Yes, I know. But beware. We shall not always be at hand. We may die or go out of the government. In that case you will be called to account over yonder. It will be a terrible time."
I had often heard a whisper of the marquis's forced loan of two hundred thousand francs from the State, at the time when he was receiver-general; but the testimony of his valet de chambre was the worst of all. Ah! if the masters suspected what the servants know, all that they tell in their quarters, if they could hear their names dragged about in the sweepings of the salons and the kitchen refuse, they would never again dare to say so much as: "Close the door," or "Order the carriage." There's Dr. Jenkins, for example, with the richest practice in Paris, has lived ten years with a magnificent wife, who is eagerly welcomed everywhere; he has done everything he could to conceal his real position, announced his marriage in the newspapers in the English style, and hired only foreign servants who know barely three words of French, but all to no purpose. With these few words, seasoned with faubourg oaths and blows on the table, his coachman Joe, who detests him, told us his whole history while we were at supper.
"She's going to croak, his Irishwoman, his real wife. Now we'll see if he'll marry the other one. Forty-five years old Mistress Maranne is, and not a shilling. You ought to see how afraid she is that he'll turn her out. Marry her, not marry her—kss-kss—what a laugh we'll have." And the more they gave him to drink, the more he told, speaking of his unfortunate mistress as the lowest of the low. For my part, I confess that she excited my interest, that false Madame Jenkins, who weeps in every corner, implores her husband as if he were the headsman, and is in danger of being sent about her business when all society believes her to be married, respectable, established for life. The others did nothing but laugh, especially the women. Dame! it is amusing when one is in service to see that these ladies of the upper ten have their affronts too, and tormenting cares which keep them awake.
At that moment our party presented a most animated aspect, a circle of merry faces turned toward the Irishman, who carried off the palm by his anecdote. That aroused envy; every one rummaged his memory and dragged out whatever he could find there of old scandals, adventures of betrayed husbands, all the domestic secrets that are poured out on the kitchen table with the remains of dishes and the dregs of bottles. The champagne was beginning to lay hold of its victims among the guests. Joe insisted on dancing a jig on the cloth. The ladies, at the slightest suggestion that was a trifle broad, threw themselves back with the piercing laughter of a person who is being tickled, letting their embroidered skirts drag under the table, which was piled with broken victuals, and covered with grease. M. Louis had prudently withdrawn. The glasses were filled before they were emptied; a chambermaid dipped a handkerchief in hers, which was full of water, and bathed her forehead with it because her head was going round, she said. It was time that it should end; in fact, an electric bell, ringing loudly in the hall, warned us that the footman on duty at the theatre had called the coachmen. Thereupon Monpavon proposed a toast to the master of the house, thanking him for his little party. M. Noël announced that he would repeat it at Saint-Romans, during the festivities in honor of the bey, to which most of those present would probably be invited. And I was about to rise in my turn, being sufficiently familiar with banquets to know that on such occasions the oldest of the party is expected to propose a toast to the ladies, when the door was suddenly thrown open and a tall footman, all muddy, breathless and perspiring, with a dripping umbrella in his hand, roared at us, with no respect for the guests:
"Come, get out of here, you pack of cads; what are you doing here? Don't I tell you it's done!"