TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.
ARE YOU MY WIFE?
BY THE AUTHOR OF “A SALON IN PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” “NUMBER THIRTEEN,” “PIUS VI.,” ETC.
CHAPTER III.
THE LILIES.
My first step was to pay a visit to the Préfecture de Police. I was received with the utmost courtesy and many half-spoken, half-intimated expressions of sympathy that were touching and unexpected. All that my sensitive pride most shrank from in my misfortune was ignored with a tact and delicacy that were both soothing and encouraging. I had felt more than once, when exposing my miserable and extraordinary situation to the police agents at home, that it required the strongest effort of professional gravity on their part not to burst out laughing in my face. No such struggle was to be seen in the countenances of the French police. They listened with interest, real or feigned, to my story, and invited what confidence I had to give by the matter-of-fact simplicity with which they set to work to put the few pieces of the puzzle together, and to endeavor to read some clew in them. I returned to my hotel after this interview more cheered and sanguine than the incident itself reasonably warranted.
It was scarcely two years since I had been in Paris, yet since that first visit I found it singularly altered. I could not say exactly how; but it was not the same. It had struck me when I first saw it as the place above all I had yet seen for a man to build an earthly paradise to himself; the air was full of brightness, redolent of light-hearted pleasure; the aspect of the city, the looks of the people, suggested at every point the Epicurean motto, “Eat, drink, and be merry; for to-morrow we die!” But it was different now. Perhaps the change was in me; in the world within rather than the world without. The chord that had formerly answered to the touch of the vivacious gayety of the place was broken. I walked through the streets and boulevards now with wide-open, disenchanted eyes, critical and unsympathetic. Things that had passed unheeded before appeared to me with a new meaning. What struck me as most disagreeable, and with a sense of complete novelty, was the widespread popularity which the devil apparently enjoyed amongst the Parisians. If, as we may assume, the popularity of a name implies the popularity of the person or the idea that it represents, it is difficult to exaggerate the esteem and favor which Satan commands in the city of bonnets and revolutions. You can scarcely pass through any of the thoroughfares without seeing his name emblazoned on a shop-window, or his figure carved or bedaubed in some grotesque or hideous guise on a sign-board inviting you to enter and spend your money under his patronage. There are devils dancing and devils grinning, devils fat and devils lean, a diable vert and a diable rose, a bon diable, a diable à quatre—every conceivable shape and color of diable, in fact, in the range of the infernal hierarchy. He stands as high in favor with the literary guild as with the shop-keepers; books and plays are called after him; his name is a household word in the press; it gives salt to the editor’s joke and point to his epigram. The devil is welcome everywhere, and everywhere set up as a sign not to be contradicted. Angels, on the other hand, are at a discount. Now and then you chance upon some honorable mention of the ange gardien, but the rare exception only serves as a contrast which vindicates the overwhelming popularity of the fallen brethren. Is this the outcome of the promise, “I will give my angels charge over thee”? And does Beelzebub’s protection of his Parisian votaries justify their interpretation of the message? I was revolving some such vague conjectures in my mind as I turned listlessly into the Rue de Rivoli, and saw a cab driving in under the porte cochère of my hotel. I quickened my pace, for I fancied I recognized a familiar face in the distance. The glass door at the foot of the stairs was still swinging, as I pushed it before me, and heard a voice calling my name on the first floor. “Hollo! here you are, uncle!” I cried, and, clearing the intervening stair at three bounds, I seized the admiral by both arms, as he stood with his hand still on my bell-rope.
“Come in, my boy. Come in,” he said, and pushed in without turning his head towards me.
“You have bad news!” I said. I read it in his averted face and the subdued gravity of his greeting. He deliberately took off his hat and flung his light travelling surtout on the sofa before he answered me. Then he came up and laid his hand on my shoulder. “Yes, very bad news, my poor fellow; but you will bear up like a man. It doesn’t all end here, you know.”