“Did she? It seemed to me that, in health at least, she did not look very well. Have you heard what day M. Thiers will speak on the war?”
“Thiers? No. Who cares about Thiers? Thank heaven his day is past! I don’t know any unmarried woman in Paris, not even Valerie—I mean Mademoiselle Duplessis—who has so exquisite a taste in dress as Mademoiselle Cicogna. Generally speaking, the taste of a female author is atrocious.”
“Really—I did not observe her dress. I am no critic on subjects so dainty as the dress of ladies, or the tastes of female authors.”
“Pardon me,” said the beau Marquis, gravely. “As to dress, I think that so essential a thing in the mind of woman, that no man who cares about women ought to disdain critical study of it. In woman, refinement of character is never found in vulgarity of dress. I have only observed that truth since I came up from Bretagne.”
“I presume, my dear Marquis, that you may have read in Bretagne books which very few not being professed scholars have ever read at Paris; and possibly you may remember that Horace ascribes the most exquisite refinement in dress, denoted by the untranslatable words, ‘simplex munditiis,’ to a lady who was not less distinguished by the ease and rapidity with which she could change her affection. Of course that allusion does not apply to Mademoiselle Cicogna, but there are many other exquisitely dressed ladies at Paris of whom an ill-fated admirer
‘fidem
Mutatosque deos flebit.’
“Now, with your permission, we will adjourn to the box of letters.”
The box being produced and unlocked, Alain looked with conscientious care at its contents before he passed over to Graham’s inspection a few epistles, in which the Englishman immediately detected the same handwriting as that of the letter from Louise which Richard King had bequeathed to him.
They were arranged and numbered chronologically.
LETTER I.
DEAR M. LE MARQUIS,—How can I thank you sufficiently for obtaining
and remitting to me those certificates? You are too aware of the
unhappy episode in my life not to know how inestimable is the
service you render me. I am saved all further molestation from the
man who had indeed no right over my freedom, but whose persecution
might compel me to the scandal and disgrace of an appeal to the law
for protection, and the avowal of the illegal marriage into which I
was duped. I would rather be torn limb from limb by wild horses,
like the Queen in the history books, than dishonour myself and the
ancestry which I may at least claim on the mother’s side, by
proclaiming that I had lived with that low Englishman as his wife,
when I was only—O heavens, I cannot conclude the sentence!
“No, Mons. le Marquis, I am in no want of the pecuniary aid you so
generously wish to press on me. Though I know not where to address
my poor dear uncle,—though I doubt, even if I did, whether I could
venture to confide to him the secret known only to yourself as to
the name I now bear—and if he hear of me at all he must believe me
dead,—yet I have enough left of the money he last remitted to me
for present support; and when that fails, I think, what with my
knowledge of English and such other slender accomplishments as I
possess, I could maintain myself as a teacher or governess in some
German family. At all events, I will write to you again soon, and I
entreat you to let me know all you can learn about my uncle. I feel
so grateful to you for your just disbelief of the horrible calumny
which must be so intolerably galling to a man so proud, and,
whatever his errors, so incapable of a baseness.
“Direct to me Poste restante, Augsburg.
“Yours with all consideration,
LETTER II.