“You don’t catch me giving an opinion on your countess this time,” he said; “I put my foot in it once. That’s a d—d underhand thing to do, by the way—coming round to sound a fellow upon the woman you are going to marry. You deserve anything you get. Then of course you rush and tell her, and she takes care to make it pleasant for the poor spiteful wretch the first time he calls. I will do you the justice to say, however, that you don’t seem to have told Madame de Cintré; or if you have, she’s uncommonly magnanimous. She was very nice; she was tremendously polite. She and Lizzie sat on the sofa, pressing each other’s hands and calling each other chère belle, and Madame de Cintré sent me with every third word a magnificent smile, as if to give me to understand that I too was a handsome dear. She quite made up for past neglect, I assure you; she was very pleasant and sociable. Only in an evil hour it came into her head to say that she must present us to her mother—her mother wished to know your friends. I didn’t want to know her mother, and I was on the point of telling Lizzie to go in alone and let me wait for her outside. But Lizzie, with her usual infernal ingenuity, guessed my purpose and reduced me by a glance of her eye. So they marched off arm in arm, and I followed as I could. We found the old lady in her armchair, twiddling her aristocratic thumbs. She looked at Lizzie from head to foot; but at that game Lizzie, to do her justice, was a match for her. My wife told her we were great friends of Mr. Newman. The marquise started a moment, and then said, ‘Oh, Mr. Newman! My daughter has made up her mind to marry a Mr. Newman.’ Then Madame de Cintré began to fondle Lizzie again, and said it was this dear lady that had planned the match and brought them together. ‘Oh, ‘tis you I have to thank for my American son-in-law,’ the old lady said to Mrs. Tristram. ‘It was a very clever thought of yours. Be sure of my gratitude.’ And then she began to look at me and presently said, ‘Pray, are you engaged in some species of manufacture?’ I wanted to say that I manufactured broom-sticks for old witches to ride on, but Lizzie got in ahead of me. ‘My husband, Madame la Marquise,’ she said, ‘belongs to that unfortunate class of persons who have no profession and no business, and do very little good in the world.’ To get her poke at the old woman she didn’t care where she shoved me. ‘Dear me,’ said the marquise, ‘we all have our duties.’ ‘I am sorry mine compel me to take leave of you,’ said Lizzie. And we bundled out again. But you have a mother-in-law, in all the force of the term.”
“Oh,” said Newman, “my mother-in-law desires nothing better than to let me alone.”
Betimes, on the evening of the 27th, he went to Madame de Bellegarde’s ball. The old house in the Rue de l’Université looked strangely brilliant. In the circle of light projected from the outer gate a detachment of the populace stood watching the carriages roll in; the court was illumined with flaring torches and the portico carpeted with crimson. When Newman arrived there were but a few people present. The marquise and her two daughters were at the top of the staircase, where the sallow old nymph in the angle peeped out from a bower of plants. Madame de Bellegarde, in purple and fine laces, looked like an old lady painted by Vandyke; Madame de Cintré was dressed in white. The old lady greeted Newman with majestic formality, and looking round her, called several of the persons who were standing near. They were elderly gentlemen, of what Valentin de Bellegarde had designated as the high-nosed category; two or three of them wore cordons and stars. They approached with measured alertness, and the marquise said that she wished to present them to Mr. Newman, who was going to marry her daughter. Then she introduced successively three dukes, three counts, and a baron. These gentlemen bowed and smiled most agreeably, and Newman indulged in a series of impartial hand-shakes, accompanied by a “Happy to make your acquaintance, sir.” He looked at Madame de Cintré, but she was not looking at him. If his personal self-consciousness had been of a nature to make him constantly refer to her, as the critic before whom, in company, he played his part, he might have found it a flattering proof of her confidence that he never caught her eyes resting upon him. It is a reflection Newman did not make, but we nevertheless risk it, that in spite of this circumstance she probably saw every movement of his little finger. Young Madame de Bellegarde was dressed in an audacious toilet of crimson crape, bestrewn with huge silver moons—thin crescent and full disks.
“You don’t say anything about my dress,” she said to Newman.
“I feel,” he answered, “as if I were looking at you through a telescope. It is very strange.”
“If it is strange it matches the occasion. But I am not a heavenly body.”
“I never saw the sky at midnight that particular shade of crimson,” said Newman.
“That is my originality; anyone could have chosen blue. My sister-in-law would have chosen a lovely shade of blue, with a dozen little delicate moons. But I think crimson is much more amusing. And I give my idea, which is moonshine.”
“Moonshine and bloodshed,” said Newman.
“A murder by moonlight,” laughed Madame de Bellegarde. “What a delicious idea for a toilet! To make it complete, there is the silver dagger, you see, stuck into my hair. But here comes Lord Deepmere,” she added in a moment. “I must find out what he thinks of it.” Lord Deepmere came up, looking very red in the face, and laughing. “Lord Deepmere can’t decide which he prefers, my sister-in-law or me,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “He likes Claire because she is his cousin, and me because I am not. But he has no right to make love to Claire, whereas I am perfectly disponible. It is very wrong to make love to a woman who is engaged, but it is very wrong not to make love to a woman who is married.”