Raoul’s moral costume was therefore in keeping with his clothes. He was fitted to be what he became to the Eve who was bored in her paradise in the rue du Rocher,—the fascinating serpent, the fine talker with magnetic eyes and harmonious motions who tempted the first woman. No sooner had the Comtesse Marie laid eyes on Raoul than she felt an inward emotion, the violence of which caused her a species of terror. The glance of that fraudulent great man exercised a physical influence upon her, which quivered in her very heart, and troubled it. But the trouble was pleasure. The purple mantle which celebrity had draped for a moment round Nathan’s shoulders dazzled the ingenuous young woman. When tea was served, she rose from her seat among a knot of talking women, where she had been striving to see and hear that extraordinary being. Her silence and absorption were noticed by her false friends.
The countess approached the divan in the centre of the room, where Raoul was perorating. She stood there with her arm in that of Madame Octave de Camp, an excellent woman, who kept the secret of the involuntary trembling by which these violent emotions betrayed themselves. Though the eyes of a captivated woman are apt to shed wonderful sweetness, Raoul was too occupied at that moment in letting off fireworks, too absorbed in his epigrams going up like rockets (in the midst of which were flaming portraits drawn in lines of fire) to notice the naive admiration of one little Eve concealed in a group of women. Marie’s curiosity—like that which would undoubtedly precipitate all Paris into the Jardin des Plantes to see a unicorn, if such an animal could be found in those mountains of the moon, still virgin of the tread of Europeans—intoxicates a secondary mind as much as it saddens great ones; but Raoul was enchanted by it; although he was then too anxious to secure all women to care very much for one alone.
“Take care, my dear,” said Marie’s kind and gracious companion in her ear, “and go home.”
The countess looked at her husband to ask for his arm with one of those glances which husbands do not always understand. Felix did so, and took her home.
“My dear friend,” said Madame d’Espard in Raoul’s ear, “you are a lucky fellow. You have made more than one conquest to-night, and among them that of the charming woman who has just left us so abruptly.”
“Do you know what the Marquise d’Espard meant by that?” said Raoul to Rastignac, when they happened to be comparatively alone between one and two o’clock in the morning.
“I am told that the Comtesse de Vandenesse has taken a violent fancy to you. You are not to be pitied!” said Rastignac.
“I did not see her,” said Raoul.
“Oh! but you will see her, you scamp!” cried Emile Blondet, who was standing by. “Lady Dudley is going to ask you to her grand ball, that you may meet the pretty countess.”
Raoul and Blondet went off with Rastignac, who offered them his carriage. All three laughed at the combination of an eclectic under-secretary of State, a ferocious republican, and a political atheist.