"Did you ever present Ismaël to her, as she requested you?"
"Impossible," replied the count, "he is as savage as a bear, capricious as a woman, and stubborn as a mule. I never could prevail on him to accompany me to the Hôtel de Pënâfiel, so I fancy it is more out of spite than from any respect of public opinion that Madame de Pënâfiel has decided to leave town."
I admit that this sudden departure in the middle of the gay season seemed as strange as the request to be presented to Ismaël. But while I wished to continue on a subject which interested me, I was weary of all this revolting gossip, so I said to the count:
"What sort of a man was the Marquis de Pënâfiel?"
"A very illustrious and powerful lord of Aragon, grandee of Spain, and ambassador to Rome; it was there he met for the first time Mlle. de Blémur, now Madame de Pënâfiel, who was travelling in Italy with her uncle and aunt."
"Was the marquis young?"
"He was about thirty-five years old," said the count, "besides being very handsome and agreeable, and a grand seigneur in every way; and yet they say it was not a love match, but only a marriage of convenance. M. de Pënâfiel had a colossal fortune, but Mlle. de Blémur was enormously rich. She was an orphan and her own mistress. Why, then, did she decide to marry a man she did not love? Nobody knows. The marquis had always been extremely desirous of living in France; so as soon as they became engaged he hastened to Madrid to see the king and hand in his resignation, then he left Spain for ever, and came to Paris, where he married Mlle. de Blémur. After they had been married two years, he died of some long sickness that ends in 'is,' whose diabolical name I don't remember."
"And before her marriage, what did people say about Mlle. de Blémur?"
"Well, although she was as beautiful as the graces themselves, she had already made herself unpopular by her coquetry and her affectations, but above all by her pretensions to scholarship, which were worthy of one of the femmes savantes of Molière; for she had made her uncle, who did whatever his niece desired, give her masters in astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, and I know not what all besides! So, thanks to the fine education she had received, Mlle. de Blémur thought she had the right to behave with great contempt, and ridicule the men of her acquaintance who had not studied all those wonderful things. Now you easily see how many friends she made by her airs of superiority; but all this did not prevent her being flattered and surrounded with admirers, for, after all, one is willing to put up with a great deal from an heiress who has four hundred thousand francs a year in her own right, and who is of such a disposition that she will marry anybody she may take a fancy to; so that when she married a foreigner she made enemies of all the young men who had aspired to her hand."
"That I can readily believe, so many hours and so many sighs were all thrown away. But, at least, this enmity was patriotic," said I, with a smile. "Then this marriage was only one of convenience, you say, although M. de Pënâfiel was very agreeable."