Arthur

by Eugène Sue

I was very little astonished at hearing about this peculiar person, for I had already been told that M. de Cernay had a perfect mania for celebrities of every kind; and that no sooner did an Arab, a Persian, an Indian, or any foreigner of distinction arrive in Paris, than M. de Cernay would fly to be presented to him. Was it by way of attracting attention to himself, that he liked to be surrounded with extraordinary acolytes, or had his reputation as a fashionable man reached beyond the shores of the Ganges and Nile? I can't say why, but the fact was so. "Will you stay and take tea with me?" said, therefore, M. de Cernay. "Leaving aside my renegade, you will meet one of the most eccentric and clever men that I know of, and one of the silliest and most ridiculous: the first one is Lord Falmouth, the other is M. du Pluvier."

"I have frequently heard Lord Falmouth spoken of," said I, "and I shall consider myself very fortunate in being able to meet him; but I thought he was in India?"

"He has only been back for the last month," said M. de Cernay; "but you must be aware of the way he decided on that voyage. You may perhaps know that Falmouth always goes to bed at six in the morning. Well, one day, about eighteen months ago, he waked up about four o'clock in the afternoon; he had slept very badly, was restless, excited, nervous; besides, he had just been winning enormous sums at play, and so was deprived of those feelings of interest which sometimes awaked him from the lethargy of his colourless life; the fact is, he was more than usually bored to death. He calls his valet de chambre and asks him what the weather is like. The weather was gloomy, dismal, foggy. 'Ah, this everlasting fog! Never a ray of sunshine!' says Falmouth, yawning fearfully; then in his coolest way he adds, 'Send for the horses.' The horses arrive, his travelling carriage is always in readiness; they harness the horses; his valet de chambre, who is accustomed to his master's ways, packs up the trunks, and two hours afterwards my lord came down-stairs and said to his hall porter, 'If any one asks for me you can say I have gone—'and he hesitated a moment between Constantinople and Calcutta. Finally deciding for the latter, he said, with a yawn, 'Gone to Calcutta.' In fact he had gone there, and there he remained for three months, and now he comes back as imperturbable as ever, as if he had simply gone off to Baden and back again."

"Lord Falmouth is an extremely distinguished man?" said I to the count.

"He has a great deal of esprit and of the best kind," he answered me, "a prodigious amount of learning, and a no less marvellous practical experience of men and things, having travelled in the four quarters of the globe, and seen all the courts of Europe as only an English peer can visit them. Son of one of the greatest lords in the three kingdoms, he possesses five or six hundred thousand francs of revenue in his own right; and yet, with all this, Falmouth is the only really blasé and bored man that I know of, he has exhausted everything, nothing amuses him any more."

"And M. du Pluvier," said I to M. de Cernay, "what is he like?"

"Oh, M. le Baron Sébastien du Pluvier," said the count, with a scornful and mocking air, "M. du Pluvier is I don't know who, and he comes from I don't know where; I was forced to be presented to him. He has disembarked from some old castle in Normandy, I believe, with his miserable twenty or thirty thousand francs income, which he is stupidly going to melt away in this hell of Paris, in two or three winters. He will be one of those numerous pale meteors which shine for an instant in the blazing sky of the great city, and suddenly disappear for ever, in darkness and forgetfulness, amidst the jeers of those they leave behind. But he is a good speaking-trumpet; as soon as I want to spread abroad any absurd rumour or any news from that other monde, I pick up M. du Pluvier, put him to my mouth, and—well, he does the rest! I don't mind making fun of him, because he is not contented with being a fool, but he must be conceited and vain as well. You should see the mysterious way in which he shows you the envelopes he receives that are sealed with coats of arms, all addressed to him, by the way; you should hear the tone in which he asks you, as he plumes himself with pride, 'Do you know the handwriting of the Countess of ——? of the Marquise of ——? of the Duchess of ——?' (Such an ordinary word as madame is beneath his notice.) And then the little man will show you such and such handwritings, which are letters from lady patronesses, enclosing tickets for charities, balls, lotteries, nobody knows what; for all the women of my acquaintance, to whom I introduce him, are sure to victimise him without the smallest scruple, so that he is the most ridiculously philanthropic fellow that I know of.

"But," said M. de Cernay, interrupting himself, "I hear a carriage, I would wager it was Du Pluvier; you shall see something that is worth admiring."

We then went to the window, and saw entering into the courtyard an open carriage drawn by two very handsome horses; but both carriage and harness were loaded down with ornaments in the worst possible taste. His men, dressed in liveries all covered with gold braid, looked like church beadles, and all this ridiculous and dazzling parade was to go and take lunch with a man in the morning.

Very soon M. du Pluvier entered noisily. He was a stout little man, short, puffy red as a cherry, fair, and, though he only looked to be about twenty-five, he was quite bald. His eyes were greenish and dull; he spoke loudly with a Norman accent; he was dressed with the most ridiculous show and pretension, wore jewels, a waistcoat with silver embroidery, and more than I can think of that was out of place. M. de Cernay presented us to one another, and as soon as he had spoken my name M. du Pluvier exclaimed: "Ah, parbleu, I have seen you some place."