The particularity of this information startled me. What wonderful clock-work! What secret wheels! What intelligent mechanism! It is the machine of Marly applied to a human river. At Rome a special niche would have been devoted to the goddess of Police.
What a lesson to us! How circumspect it should make us! Our walls are diaphanous, our words are overheard; our steps are watched ... everything said and done reaches by secret informers and invisible threads the central office of Jerusalem street. It is enough to make one tremble!!!
At the château of Mad. de Lorgeville!
I walked along repeating this sentence to myself, with a thousand variations: At the château of Mad. de Lorgeville.
After a decennial absence, I know nobody in Paris—I am just as much of a stranger as the ambassador of Siam.... Who knows Mad. de Lorgeville? M. de Balaincourt is the only person in Paris who can give me the desired information—he is a living court calendar. I fly to see M. de Balaincourt.
This oracle answers me thus: Mad. de Lorgeville is a very beautiful woman, between twenty-four and twenty-six years of age. She possesses a magnificent mezzo-soprano voice, and twenty thousand dollars income. She learnt miniature painting from Mad. Mirbel, and took singing lessons from Mad. Damoyeau. Last winter she sang that beautiful duo from Norma, with the Countess Merlin, at a charity concert.
I requested further details.
Madame de Lorgeville is the sister of the handsome Léon de Varèzes.
Oh! ray of light! glimmer of sun through a dark cloud!
The handsome Léon de Varèzes! The ugly idea of troubadour beauty! A fop fashioned by his tailor, and who passes his life looking at his figure reflected in four mirrors as shiny and cold as himself!