Among those who speedily took up the tone of the Imperial counsels, the salons of the Hôtel Glichy were conspicuous. English habits, as regarded table equipage; English servants; even to English cookery did French politeness extend its complaisance; and many of the commonest habitudes and least cultivated tastes were imported as the daily observances of fashionable people outremer.
In this headlong Anglomania, my English birth and family (I say English, because abroad the petty distinctions of Irishman or Scotchman are not attended to) marked me out for peculiar attention in society; and although my education and residence in France had well-nigh rubbed off all or the greater part of my national peculiarities, yet the flatterers of the day found abundant traits to admire in what they recognized as my John Bull characteristics. And in this way, a blunder in French, a mistake in grammar, or a false accentuation became actually a succès de salon. Though I could not help smiling at the absurdity of a vogue whose violence alone indicated its unlikeliness to last, yet I had sufficient of the spirit of my adopted country to benefit by it while it did exist, and never spent a single day out of company.
At the Hôtel Clichy I was a constant guest; and while with Mademoiselle de Lacostellerie my acquaintance made little progress, with the countess I became a special favorite,—she honoring me so far as to take me into her secret counsels, and tell me all the little nothings which Fouché usually disseminated as state secrets, and circulated twice or thrice a week throughout Paris. From him, too, she learned the names of the various English who each day arrived in Paris from Verdun, and thus contrived to have a succession of those favored guests at her dinner and evening parties.
During all this time, as I have said, my intimacy with mademoiselle advanced but slowly, and certainly showed slight prospect of verifying the prophecy of Duchesne at parting. Her manner had, indeed, lost its cold and haughty tone; but in lieu of it there was a flippant, half impertinent, moqueur spirit, which, however easily turned to advantage by a man of the world like the chevalier, was terribly disconcerting to a less forward and less enterprising person like myself. Dobretski still continued an invalid; and although she never mentioned his name nor alluded to him in any instance, I could see that she suspected I knew something more of his illness and the cause of it than I had ever confessed. It matters little what the subject of it be, let a secret once exist between a young man and a young woman,—let there be the tacit understanding that they mutually know of something of which others are in ignorance,—and from that moment a species of intelligence is established between them of the most dangerous kind. They may not be disposed to like each other; there may be attachments elsewhere; there may be a hundred reasons why love should not enter into the case; yet will there be a conscious sense of this hidden link which binds them; strangely at variance with their ordinary regard for each other, eternally mingling in all their intercourse, and suggesting modes of acting and thinking at variance with the true tenor of the acquaintanceship.
Such, then, was my position at the Hôtel Clichy, at which I was almost daily a visitor or a guest, in the morning, to hear the chit-chat of the day,—the changes talked of in the administration, the intended plans of the Emperor, or the last modes in dress introduced by the Empress, whose taste in costume and extravagant habits were much more popular with the tradespeople than with Napoleon.
An illness of a few days' duration had confined me to the Luxembourg, and unhappily deprived me of the Court ball, for which I had received my invitation several weeks before. It seemed as if my fate forbade any chance of my ever seeing her once more whose presence in Paris was the great hope I held out to myself when coming. Already a rumor was afloat that several officers had received orders to join their regiments; and now I began to fear lest I should leave the capital without meeting her, and was thinking of some plan by which I could attain that object, when a note arrived from Mademoiselle de Lacostellerie, written with more than her usual cordiality, and inviting me to dinner on the following day with a very small party, but when I should meet one of my oldest friends.
I thought of every one in turn who could be meant under the designation, but without ever satisfying my mind that I had hit upon the right one. Tascher it could not be, for the very last accounts I had seen from Germany spoke of him as with his regiment. My curiosity was sufficiently excited to make me accept the invitation; and, true to time, I found myself at the Hôtel Clichy at the hour appointed.
On entering the salon, I discovered that I was alone. None of the guests had as yet arrived, nor had the ladies of the house made their appearance; and I lounged about the splendid drawing-room, where every appliance of luxury was multiplied: pictures, vases, statues, and bronzes abounded,—for the apartment had all the ample proportions of a gallery,—battle scenes from the great «vents of the Italian and Egyptian campaigns; busts of celebrated generals and portraits of several of the marshals, from the pencils of Gerard and David. But more than all was I struck by one picture: it was a likeness of Pauline herself, in the costume of a Spanish peasant. Never had artist caught more of the character of his subject than in that brilliant sketch,—for it was no more. The proud tone of the expression; the large, full eye, beaming a bright defiance; the haughty curl of the lip; the determined air of the figure, as she stood one foot in advance, and the arms hanging easily on either side,—all conveyed an impression of high resolve and proud determination quite her own.
I was leaning over the back of a chair, my eye steadfastly fixed on the painting, when I heard a slight rustling of a dress near me. I turned about: it was mademoiselle herself. Although the light of the apartment was tempered by the closed jalousies, and scarcely more than a mere twilight admitted, I could perceive that she colored and seemed confused as she said,—
“I hope you don't think that picture is a likeness?”