Between two thieves

by Richard Dehan

Those little yellow eyes of the dentist’s nephew were sharp. The brain behind them, though shallow, worked excellently in the interests of Pédelaborde. It occurred to him that when next Madame Cornu should clamor for the discharge of her bill for sweetstuff and pastry, the little affair of the trick fall might advantageously be mentioned again.

X

Alain-Joseph-Henri-Jules, cadet of the illustrious and ducal house of de Moulny, recovered of his wound, much to the gratification of his noble family, more by grace of a sound constitution and the faithful nursing of the Infirmary Sisters than by skill of the surgeons, who knew appallingly little in those days of the treatment of internal wounds. He left the Royal School of Technical Military Instruction to travel abroad under the grandmaternal care of the Duchesse, for what the Chief Director gracefully termed the “reconstitution of his health.” Later he was reported to have entered as a student at the Seminary of Saint Sulpice. It was vain to ask Redskin whether this was true. You got no information out of the fellow. He had turned sulky, the pupils said, since the affair of the duel, which invested him in the eyes even of the great boys of the Senior Corps, to which he was shortly afterwards promoted, with a luridly-tinted halo of distinction.

So nobody save Hector was aware that after the first short, stiff letter or two Alain had ceased to write. In silence the Redskin bucklered his pride. Hitherto he had not permitted his love of study to interfere with the more serious business of amusement. Now he applied himself to the acquisition of knowledge with a dogged, savage concentration his Professors had never remarked in him before. Attending one of the stately half-yearly School receptions, arrayed in all the obsolete but imposing splendors of his gold-encrusted, epauletted, frogged, high-stocked uniform of ceremony, adorned with the Cross of the Legion of Honor,—an Imperial decoration severely ignored by the Monarchy,—Marshal Dunoisse was complimented by the General-Commandant and the Chief Director upon the brilliant abilities and remarkable progress of his son.

“So it seems the flea of work has bitten you?” the affectionate parent commented a few days later, tweaking Hector’s ear in the Napoleonic manner, and turning upon his son the fanged and gleaming smile, that in conjunction with its owner’s superb height, fine form, boldly-cut swarthy features, fierce black eyes, and luxuriant black whiskers, had earned for the ex-aide-de-camp of Napoleon I. the reputation of an irresistible lady-killer.

The handsome features of the elderly dandy were thickened and inflamed by wine and good living, the limbs in the tight-fitting white stockinet pantaloons, for which he had reluctantly exchanged his golden-buckled knee-breeches; the extremities more often encased in narrow-toed, elastic-sided boots, or buckled pumps, than in the spurred Hessians, were swollen and shapeless with rheumatic gout. The hyacinthine locks, or the greater part of them, came from the atelier of Michalon Millière, His Majesty’s own hairdresser, in the Rue Feydeau; the whiskers owed their jetty gloss to a patent pomade invented by the same highly-patronized tonsorial artist. The broad black eyes were bloodshot, and could blaze under their bushy brows at times with an ogre-like ferocity, but were not brilliant any more.

Yet, from the three maids to the stout Bretonne who was cook, from the cook to Miss Smithwick,—who had acted in the capacity of dame de compagnie to Madame Dunoisse; had become governess to her son when the gates of the Convent clashed once more behind the remorse and sorrow of that unhappy lady; and in these later years, now that Hector had outgrown her mild capacity for instruction, fulfilled the duties of housekeeper at No. 000, Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin,—the female staff of the ex-military widower’s household worshiped Monsieur the Marshal.

“Do you think papa so handsome?” Hector, when a very small boy, would pipe out boldly. “He has eyes that are always angry, even when he smiles. He gnashes his teeth when he laughs. He kicked Moustapho” (the poodle) “so hard in the chest with the sharp toe of his shiny boot, when Moustapho dropped a macaroon he did not want, that Moustapho cried out loud with pain. He bullies the menservants and swears at them. He smells of Cognac, and is always spilling his snuff about on the carpets, and tables, and chairs. Me, I think him ugly, for my part.”

“Your papa, my Hector, possesses in an eminent degree those personal advantages to which the weakness of the female sex renders its members fatally susceptible,” the gentle spinster said to her pupil; and she had folded her tidy black mittens upon her neat stomacher as she said it, and shaken her prim, respectable head with a sigh, adding, as her mild eye strayed between the lace and brocade window-curtains to the smart, high-wheeled cabriolet waiting in the courtyard below; the glittering turnout with the showy, high-actioned mare in the shafts, and the little top-booted, liveried, cockaded, English groom hanging to her nose:

“I would that your dear mother had found it compatible with the fulfillment of her religious duties to remain at home! For the Domestic Affections, Hector, which flourish by the connubial fireside, are potent charms to restrain the too-ardent spirit, and recall the wandering heart.” And then Miss Smithwick had coughed and ended.