After dinner, while pouring out the coffee, Madame de Bonmont offered no sugar to the Abbé, who always took it, and gave it to Baron Wallstein, who suffered from diabetes and had to be very careful in his diet. She did not do this with any malice aforethought, but her mind was full of other matters that engaged her undivided attention. Her depression, which, simple soul that she was, she was incapable of hiding, was caused by a telegram from Paris, worded with a twofold meaning; one literal and commonplace, obvious to all, referring to a delay in forwarding some plants; the other, the real and ingenious one, understood, to her unhappiness, by herself alone, indicated that her lover could not come to Montil but was in dire straits and forced to remain in Paris.
It was nothing new for Raoul Marcien to be in need of money. Since he attained his majority, fifteen years previously, he had just managed to keep himself going by a series of bold and clever coups. But this year, his difficulties, which had continued to increase and multiply, were positively appalling.
Madame de Bonmont was nearly always worried and depressed about him and his affairs, for she loved him truly and tenderly with all her soul and with all her body.
“Two lumps for you, M. de Terremondre?”
Yes, she adored her Raoul, her Rara, with all the strength of her placid soul. She would have liked him to be loving and faithful, pure-minded and studious. He was not what she wished him to be, and in her grief and fear of losing him, she regularly burned candles for his benefit in the church of Saint-Antoine.
M. de Terremondre, who was by way of being a connoisseur, examined the pictures. They were all modern works of art, paintings by Daubigny, Theodore Rousseau, Jules Dupré, Chintreuil, Diaz, and Corot, and consisted of mournful-looking pools bordered by deep woods, dew-brushed meadows, village streets, forest glades bathed in the golden light of the setting sun, and willows emerging from the silver mists of morning. The prevailing tones were white, fawn, green, blue, and grey. In massive gilt frames they stood out against the crimson damask hangings that accorded ill with the gigantic Renaissance chimney-piece, with the loves of the nymphs and the metamorphoses of the gods sculptured in the stone. The pictures undoubtedly marred the effect of the wonderful old ceiling, the painted compartments of which reproduced in infinite variety the peacock of Bernard de Paves tied by the foot to the lute of Nicolette de Vaucelles.
“That’s a fine Millet,” said M. de Terremondre, coming to a standstill before a goosegirl, whose figure stood out, terrible in its rustic solemnity, against a background of pale gold.
“It’s a pretty picture,” answered Baron Wallstein. “I have the same thing at my house in Vienna, but mine is a shepherd, not a goosegirl. I don’t know what my brother gave for this one.” Cup in hand, he began to stroll round the gallery. “This Jules Dupré cost my brother-in-law 50,000 francs; this Theodore Rousseau 60,000, and this Corot 100,000.”
“I am acquainted with the views of the late Baron in regard to pictures,” replied M. de Terremondre, following the Baron round the room. “One day he met me going down the staircase of the Hôtel des Ventes, with a little picture under my arm. He caught hold of my sleeve, as he was fond of doing, and said, ‘What are you carrying off there?’ With the satisfied pride of the complacent dabbler in art I replied, ‘A Ruisdael, M. de Bonmont, a genuine Ruisdael. It has been engraved and I happen to have a print in my portfolio.’ ‘What did you give for your Ruisdael?’ ‘The sale was in a dark room on the ground floor and the dealer did not know what he was selling. Thirty francs!’”
“‘What a pity! What a pity!’ he ejaculated, and, seeing my surprise, gave another tug at my sleeve. ‘My dear M. de Terremondre, you ought to have given 10,000 francs for it; if you had paid as much as that it would have been worth 30,000 francs to you. The little picture only cost you thirty francs and will never fetch a high price, say twenty-five louis at the most. The value of a thing cannot rise at a jump from thirty francs to 30,000!’ Ah!” concluded M. de Terremondre, “the Baron was a clever man!”