“I told the coachman to take the carriage back to the place it came from. They will not follow an empty carriage; were they to do so, they would get nothing for their pains, as it came from a livery stable managed by the wife of Jumeau, that accountant of whom I spoke just now.”
Rochefort looked in astonishment at this man, whose methods were as intricate and minute as the reasoning power that directed them; whose life was a maze to which he alone possessed the clue, and whose path was never in a straight line.
He followed implicitly the instructions he had received, conscious all the time that he was being tracked, and once glimpsing a stealthy form that slipped from house-shadow to house-shadow. When he returned, de Sartines had vanished, and, casting himself on his bed dressed as he was, wearied with the night’s work, he fell asleep.
CHAPTER V
FERMINARD
WHEN he awoke, with the full daylight staring into the room, the first remembrance that came to him was that of Mademoiselle Fontrailles. The whole of the past night seemed like some page torn from a romance; only this girl from the South seemed real. He was in love, for the first time in his life, and he did not recognize the fact that his passion had bound him openly to the Dubarrys, cast him head over heels into politics, to sink or swim with that exceedingly dubious family.
Rochefort had a big stake to lose; he had estates in Auvergne, his youth and his position in society. He had no political ambitions, but he had an ambition, ever living and always being gratified, to shine in his own peculiar way. He set the fashion in coats and morals, his sayings were repeated, even though many of them were scarcely worth repetition; his eccentricities, which were genuine and not assumed, were a feature of Paris life. Paris was his true home, and though he was seen frequently at Versailles, he was seen more often at the Café de Régence. He was the first of the dandies, the predecessor of the boulevardier of the Boulevard de Gand and the Café de Paris, the prefiguration in flesh of Tortoni’s and the Second Empire.
Our present utilitarian age could no more produce a Rochefort than one of our engineers could produce a butterfly; only the full summer of social life which fell on Athens four hundred years before Christ, which fell on France in the time of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., and which brushed England with its wing in the time of the Regency, can produce these rare and useless human flowers. Useless, that is to say, as fine pictures, Ming figures, and live dragon-flies are useless.
He had, then, a big stake to lose by venturing into the stormy arena of politics, for the hand of de Choiseul was a heavy hand, and with the famous diamond-rimmed snuff-box held many things, including confiscation, exile, and even imprisonment. But Rochefort never thought of this, and, if he had thought of it, he would have pursued his present course absolutely unchecked. This dandy and trifler with life had no thought at all for danger, and the prudence that arises from self-interest was not one of his possessions. Leaving all that aside, he was in love, and the object of his love was in the path of his present progress.