“What! so early, citizen?”
“Is it too early?” said Lebeau, glancing at his watch. “So it is; I was not aware of the time. But I am tired with waiting; let me into the salon. I will wait for the rest; I shall not be sorry for a little repose.”
“Bon,” said the porter, sententiously; “while man reposes men advance.”
“A profound truth, citizen Le Roux; though if they advance on a reposing foe, they have blundering leaders unless they march through unguarded by-paths and with noiseless tread.”
Following the porter up a dingy broad staircase, Lebeau was admitted into a large room, void of all other furniture than a table, two benches at its sides, and a fauteuil at its head. On the mantelpiece there was a huge clock, and some iron sconces were fixed on the panelled walls.
Lebeau flung himself, with a wearied air, into the fauteuil. The porter looked at him with a kindly expression. He had a liking to Lebeau, whom he had served in his proper profession of messenger or commissionnaire before being placed by that courteous employer in the easy post he now held. Lebeau, indeed, had the art, when he pleased, of charming inferiors; his knowledge of mankind allowed him to distinguish peculiarities in each individual, and flatter the amour propre by deference to such eccentricities. Marc le Roux, the roughest of “red caps,” had a wife of whom he was very proud. He would have called the empress Citoyenne Eugenie, but he always spoke of his wife as Madame. Lebeau won his heart by always asking after Madame.
“You look tired, citizen,” said the porter; “let me bring you a glass of wine.”
“Thank you, mon ami, no. Perhaps later, if I have time, after we break up, to pay my respects to Madame.”
The porter smiled, bowed, and retired muttering, “Nom d’un petit bonhomme; il n’y a rien de tel que les belles manieres.”
Left alone, Lebeau leaned his elbow on the table, resting his chin on his hand, and gazing into the dim space,—for it was now, indeed, night, and little light came through the grimy panes of the one window left unclosed by shutters. He was musing deeply. This man was, in much, an enigma to himself. Was he seeking to unriddle it? A strange compound of contradictory elements. In his stormy youth there had been lightning-like flashes of good instincts, of irregular honour, of inconsistent generosity,—a puissant wild nature, with strong passions of love and of hate, without fear, but not without shame. In other forms of society that love of applause which had made him seek and exult in the notoriety which he mistook for fame might have settled down into some solid and useful ambition. He might have become great in the world’s eye, for at the service of his desires there were no ordinary talents. Though too true a Parisian to be a severe student, still, on the whole, he had acquired much general information, partly from books, partly from varied commerce with mankind. He had the gift, both by tongue and by pen, of expressing himself with force and warmth; time and necessity had improved that gift. Coveting, during his brief career of fashion, the distinctions which necessitate lavish expenditure, he had been the most reckless of spendthrifts; but the neediness which follows waste had never destroyed his original sense of personal honour. Certainly Victor de Mauleon was not, at the date of his fall, a man to whom the thought of accepting, much less of stealing, the jewels of a woman who loved him could have occurred as a possible question of casuistry between honour and temptation. Nor could that sort of question have, throughout the sternest trials or the humblest callings to which his after-life had been subjected, forced admission into his brain. He was one of those men, perhaps the most terrible though unconscious criminals, who are the offsprings produced by intellectual power and egotistical ambition. If you had offered to Victor de Mauleon the crown of the Caesars, on condition of his doing one of those base things which “a gentleman” cannot do, pick a pocket, cheat at cards,—Victor de Mauleon would have refused the crown. He would not have refused on account of any laws of morality affecting the foundations of the social system, but from the pride of his own personality. “I, Victor de Mauleon! I pick a pocket! I cheat at cards! I!” But when something incalculably worse for the interests of society than picking a pocket or cheating at cards was concerned; when for the sake either of private ambition or political experiment hitherto untested, and therefore very doubtful, the peace and order and happiness of millions might be exposed to the release of the most savage passions, rushing on revolutionary madness or civil massacre, then this French dare-devil would have been just as unscrupulous as any English philosopher whom a metropolitan borough might elect as its representative. The system of the empire was in the way of Victor de Mauleon,—in the way of his private ambition, in the way of his political dogmas; and therefore it must be destroyed, no matter what nor whom it crushed beneath its ruins. He was one of those plotters of revolutions not uncommon in democracies, ancient and modern, who invoke popular agencies with the less scruple because they have a supreme contempt for the populace. A man with mental powers equal to De Mauleon’s, and who sincerely loves the people and respects the grandeur of aspiration with which, in the great upheaving of their masses, they so often contrast the irrational credulities of their ignorance and the blind fury of their wrath, is always exceedingly loath to pass the terrible gulf that divides reform from revolution. He knows how rarely it happens that genuine liberty is not disarmed in the passage, and what sufferings must be undergone by those who live by their labour during the dismal intervals between the sudden destruction of one form of society and the gradual settlement of another. Such a man, however, has no type in a Victor de Mauleon. The circumstances of his life had placed this strong nature at war with society, and corrupted into misanthropy affections that had once been ardent. That misanthropy made his ambition more intense, because it increased his scorn for the human instruments it employed.