Passing from inanimate things to people, Landri studied one after another, first in the salons, afterward in the dining-hall, the familiar faces of M. de Claviers' guests and of M. de Claviers himself. On the day when those Férussacs and Hautchemins and Traverses and Sicards and Saint-Larys and all the rest, and Louis de Bressieux and Florimund de Charlus, should learn of their host's downfall, would they pity him much more than his secretary did? Their egoisms, their fickleness, their indifference seemed to become visible to the son's grief-stricken imagination.
Meanwhile the dinner had begun. The servants in the Claviers-Grandchamp livery were passing to and fro behind the guests. The light fabrics of the décolleté gowns alternated with the black coats, eyes shone, lips laughed, the dishes succeeded one another, wine filled the glasses, and the marquis, at the centre of his table, contemplated the fête with eyes sparkling with life. It was as if all the Claviers-Grandchamps were entertaining in his person, superbly. Hardly more than a suspicion of dissatisfaction veiled his eyes, when, turning in his son's direction, he observed his evident preoccupation. "Poor Landri is thinking of his Madame Olier!" he said to himself; and his magnanimous old heart felt a vague remorse which he banished by raising his head and gazing at the portrait of the lieutenant-general, wounded at Fontenoy.
The voices rose higher and higher. The laughter became more and more uproarious. Complexions tingling with the country air assumed a ruddier hue in the atmosphere of the dining-hall. Landri's suffering became more and more acute. Was it possible that this fête was really the last? But what was he to do? What was he to do? He could scarcely force himself to talk of indifferent subjects with his two neighbors in turn, one of whom, at his left, was the pretty, fair-haired and insignificant Madame de Férussac. The other, clever Marie de Charlus, carried her jovial humor to ever greater lengths as the dinner proceeded. She realized that she did not exist, so far as Landri was concerned, and she yielded to the instinct that has ruined the happiness of so many love-lorn women: to make an impression at any cost on the man they love, and to disgust him rather than not be noticed at all by him. Ascribing her conduct to the atmosphere, she began to run through a long list of satirical sobriquets, such as it was the fashion in Paris, last winter, to distribute at random.
"And Bressieux," she said at one moment, "do you know what they call Bressieux? Monsieur le Vicomte de la Rochebrocante. And poor Jaubourg, on account of his swell associates among us? Jaubourg-Saint-Germain. For my part, I call it very amusing!"
"Jaubourg-Saint-Germain?" said Sicard, the spiteful damsel's right-hand neighbor. "I don't know him. True, it is amusing!"
The most amusing part of it was that the Sicard couple had their own nick-name—unknown to the parties concerned, of course:—"The three halves." This wretched pun signified that the very diminutive Madame de Sicard, married to the very diminutive M. de Sicard, was supposed to have a tender penchant for the very diminutive M. de Travers. The historian of contemporary manners would apologize for noting, even cursorily, such trifles, were it not that they have a slight documentary value. This innocent fooling of a society so threatened measured the degree of its heedlessness.
Ordinarily these idiocies of the prevailing mode annoyed Landri de Claviers. That refined and intelligent youth lacked, it must be confessed, the precious gift of smiling, which the marquis had, and which the English call by an untranslatable phrase, "the sense of humor." He took everything alike too much au sérieux. However, he did not think at that moment of taking offence at Marie's wretched taste. The epigram concerning Bressieux had suddenly reminded him that his father and himself had surprised the gentleman-broker in conversation with Chaffin. He looked at him across the table and saw that the other was looking at him. Was Bressieux mixed up in the schemes of the Altona gang? Was that possible, too?—Oh! what to do? what to do? And, above all, how to learn the truth?
The second of the sobriquets mentioned by Mademoiselle de Charlus started Landri's mind upon another scent.—Jaubourg? But he was to see Jaubourg to-morrow. Suppose Jaubourg, who knew everybody in their circle, as that absurd name indicated, suppose that Jaubourg, too, knew that imminent peril menaced their house? Suppose that was what he wanted to speak about to his friend's son, being unable to induce that friend himself to listen? And in the event that he knew nothing, why should not Landri tell him the truth, in order to obtain the advice for which his longing became more and more intense? Jaubourg was really fond of M. de Claviers-Grandchamp. The young man's mind fastened upon this idea, which he did nothing but turn over and over all the evening.
How long it seemed to him before the last carriage, rumbling over the pavement of the courtyard, had borne away the last guest! And no less long the beginning of the night, when, having gone up to his room, and being left to himself, he tried to formulate an appeal to the experience and affection of a man with whom he had never felt at his ease! He had too often encountered M. Jaubourg's interference, always concealed, in matters that concerned only M. de Claviers and himself. He had never learned anything of it except by chance. So it was to-day with this Charlus project. And with it all, Jaubourg had never manifested to Landri that good-humored affection which is the privilege of old family friends who have seen us grow up. He had kept the child, and, later, the young man, at a distance, by an attitude of constant criticism, courteous and scornful at the same time. There had always been an atmosphere of constraint between them. Chaffin's prevision was accurate on this first point. Nor had he gone astray upon the second. The more Landri dwelt on the idea of relying upon Jaubourg, the more the wonted antipathy revived. "Besides," he concluded, "sick as he is, incapable of taking any active step, ignorant of the Code, of what assistance can he be to me, if there's a conspiracy to be foiled and legal precautions to be taken?"
Then it was, as the thought of possible litigation came to his mind, that he remembered Métivier, the notary. "Where were my wits?" he thought. "Métivier's the man I must see. One can appeal from a judgment. One can resist. A notary knows how to do it. He knows the ways to borrow money. My fortune is still intact. Chaffin admitted as much. Métivier will tell me if I can use it to save Grandchamp, and how to go about it."