De Berniers would have gnashed his teeth, but that he had not yet recovered from the exertion of his previous cackle. For a week thenceforth he was the sport of Paris, and, to complete his disgust, the adventure was circulated by the celebrated raconteur, M. de Lugeac, in the salons of the Dauphine and elsewhere, with embellishments by no means favorable to his reputation as a bel esprit.
Raoul de Montalvan was a young gentleman of moderate fortune, who, at the age of twenty, sold his small estates in Avignon in order to equip a company and join the Chevalier de Modène in the campaign of 1745, under the Maréchal Saxe. At Fontenoy he was acknowledged to have distinguished himself; but his recollections of that battle were embittered by the fact that the Comte de Lally had robbed him of the honor which he most coveted,—that of having detected, by a bold reconnoissance, the weak point in the enemy's front, by piercing which the field was ultimately won.[102] Nevertheless, he had been praised; and praise, at that period, was his best reward. With a light heart and high hopes he started for Paris, in further pursuit of fortune. In company with his patron, M. de Modène, he presented himself at court. The sentinel on duty curiously eyed their uniforms, and refused to admit them. The King, fatigued with war's alarms, and anxious to banish from court all memories of carnage and confusion, had ordered that no military dresses should appear in his salons. In vain the young soldiers represented that they had parted with all their possessions to serve their monarch, and that they had surrendered the last means of otherwise arraying themselves; in vain they insisted that the noblest decorations in the eyes of his Majesty should be the dust and blood of the field of Fontenoy. They were repulsed. De Modène revenged himself by the famous epigram which caused an order of arrest, and compelled his flight. De Montalvan, taking the insult more to heart, swore furiously that, excepting as a soldier and in soldier's dress, he would never enter the French court, and from that time had steadfastly persisted in the rigorous costume which excited M. de Berniers's criticism. There were, indeed, some who declared that he claimed as a virtue of obstinacy that which was only a necessity of poverty; but for such aspersions he cared little.
As a further mark of his disgust, he quitted France altogether, and, in his twenty-first year, joined the expedition of the Pretender; but as his fortunes were not materially improved by this enterprise, he next year became loyal, and assisted M. de Belle-Isle in the extirpation of the Austrians from Dauphiny. In 1748 he again followed his old leader, M. de Saxe, to victory, after which, the war in France having ceased, he turned his attention to foreign fields of glory and profit. He served two years in India, with Dupleix, where he found that, although the glory was free to any man's clutch, the profit was sacred to a few. After Dupleix's fall, he joined the French troops in America, where, with his comrades, he assisted in the defeat of Lieutenant-Colonel Washington in the action which followed the massacre of M. de Jumonville. Finally, after ten years of military hardship and heroism, he returned to Paris, bringing with him as the result of his career a high repute for skill and courage, a well-worn sword, and a dozen deep scars.
It may be imagined that these ten years had not softened the asperity with which M. de Montalvan regarded the court and society. His manners were bizarre, his language was cynical, and his wilful deviations from the strict etiquette of the day could never have been tolerated excepting for the brilliant notoriety he had gained as a daring adventurer. He permitted himself to mingle in fashionable circles, that he might the better ridicule them, which he did audaciously. The edict against military dress was no longer in force, so that he was enabled to hover upon the outskirts of the court without sacrifice of dignity. But nothing in that effeminate world seemed to satisfy his turbulent instincts. Homo erat,—yet everything human, in that sphere, was foreign to him. At one of the court balls, however, an incident occurred which momentarily turned him from the course of his ill-humor.
Mlle. Virginie de Terville, a noble Nantaise, whose life, though not one of seclusion, had been judiciously kept apart from the corrupting influences of the capital, was at Paris for the first time, with her uncle, an ex-officer of the king's household. To the fair neophyte the scene was one of rare enchantment; and although her keen instincts enabled her to conform with aptitude to the usages of the lively world around her, there was a freshness and a naïveté in her manner which contrasted charmingly with the effete and ceremonious forms of the experienced. M. de Montalvan met her at a masked ball, and was captivated with becoming rapidity. Although poor beyond description, his family was among the best, and he found no difficulty in making M. de Terville's acquaintance, and in due season that of his niece. For once he abandoned his acerbity, and returned to the character which had been natural to him ten years before. None could be more winning than M. de Montalvan if the impulse prompted him; and his graceful conversation, overflowing with anecdote and illustration which the homely wits of the home-keeping youth of Paris could not rival, made a vivid impression upon Virginie's imagination. They met only twice; for, just as M. de Montalvan was beginning to take serious thought of where this would lead him, he received an appointment from M. de Richelieu to the command of a company in the Minorca expedition, and was obliged to sail for Port Mahon without even the opportunity of a hasty adieu. Partly by good luck, partly by hard fighting, and partly owing to the blunders of Admiral Byng, the island was captured in a few months, and it was not long after his return from victory—as full of honors and as empty in purse as ever—that De Montalvan encountered his "little Fronsacquin" on the threshold of the Café de la Régence.
Louis de Berniers was the incarnation of aristocratic niaiserie. He was young, titled, not ill-looking, and had vast wealth at his command. But for this latter possession he might possibly have distinguished himself otherwise than by his follies; for he was not without one or two good qualities,—for example, generosity. But with him generosity took the form of a reckless prodigality, which caused him to be surrounded by a swarm of flatterers and parasites, male and female, who so fed and pampered his raging vanity that he believed himself a Crichton at eighteen. His ambition soared only to the height of emulating the boudoir exploits of M. de Richelieu, and he fancied himself a master of all the social ceremonies of the capital. So far as his languid nature would allow him, he sought notoriety in every quarter. "No man's pie was free from his ambitious finger." He had acted with Madame de Pompadour's company of amateurs at Versailles, and, though surrounded by clever gentlemen like D'Entragues and De Maillebois, firmly believed himself the only worthy supporter of Madame d'Etioles. On the strength of his supposed supremacy, he had from time to time graciously volunteered his aid to Lekain and Mlle. Clairon in the preparation of their most difficult rôles. He had supplied the poet Beauverset with now and then a topic, and imagined himself to be the true source whence that incendiary rhymer drew his choicest inspirations. After the success of Rousseau's Devin du Village, he had driven the composer wild by his offers to assist him in the purification of his melodies. Nothing in the way of notoriety was too high or too low for him. He had laid out a plan for the replanting of the Trianon gardens, and was disgusted because Richard, the king's gardener, politely declined to adopt it; and he had been heard to say that in the composition of sauces and ragoûts he could easily rival his Majesty himself, and would prove his superiority, but for the fear of losing favor at court.
M. de Berniers and M. de Montalvan had met a short time before the attack upon Minorca. The gallant soldier was no flatterer, but the conceited little Parisian amused him sufficiently to occupy a good share of his leisure. He satirized De Berniers mercilessly from morning till night, to the latter's great astonishment, he having up to that time received only adulation and deference from his companions. But the name of "Fronsacquin," which De Montalvan had jestingly applied, so gratified his puerile vanity, that for a few days he looked upon the warlike adventurer almost with affection. Their intimacy had, however, been broken off a few days before De Montalvan's departure, in consequence of De Berniers's chagrin at losing a wager he had boastingly made. He had declared himself capable of securing the attention of any lady, however distinguished in appearance and however reserved in manner, that his friends might indicate, at a certain masked ball, and of bringing her openly to sup with them. De Montalvan defied him, and, selecting a fresh-faced lad from the opera, trained him to a perfect illustration of feminine modesty and simplicity, and set De Berniers upon him. Of course the farce was easily carried through. After the requisite preliminaries of shy evasion and coy resistance, the supposed fair one was led triumphantly to the supper-table,—the mask was removed, the secret exposed, and for ten humiliating days De Berniers was the laugh of the town.
It may be supposed that his peevishness was not diminished by the loss of a second public wager; but his opponent had been wounded, and that afforded him some comfort. Besides, he was still confident of winning his revenge, so he stifled his angry feelings, and renewed the request that De Montalvan would accompany him to Nantes. De Montalvan was moody, and swore he would go and join Montcalm in Canada. But his own recollection of the charms of Mademoiselle de Terville, added to the solicitations of De Berniers,—who was all unconscious that they had ever known one another,—induced him to change his resolution, and he half graciously consented.