Atlantida by Pierre Benoît (whitelam books txt) 📗
- Author: Pierre Benoît
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I stood up and pushed him off.
"Stay, stay," he implored. "I will tell you everything you want to know, how I came here, things I have never told anyone. Stay, I must unbosom myself to a true friend. I will tell you everything, I repeat. I trust you. You are a Frenchman, a gentleman. I know that you will repeat nothing to her."
"That I will repeat nothing to her?... To whom?"
His voice stuck in his throat. I thought I saw a shudder of fear pass over him.
"To her ... to Antinea," he murmured.
I sat down again.
XIII THE HETMAN OF JITOMIR'S STORY
Count Casimir had reached that stage where drunkenness takes on a kind of gravity, of regretfulness.
He thought a little, then began his story. I regret that I cannot reproduce more perfectly its archaic flavor.
"When the grapes begin to color in Antinea's garden, I shall be sixty-eight. It is very sad, my dear boy, to have sowed all your wild oats. It isn't true that life is always beginning over again. How bitter, to have known the Tuileries in 1860, and to have reached the point where I am now!
"One evening, just before the war (I remember that Victor Black was still living), some charming women whose names I need not disclose (I read the names of their sons from time to time in the society news of the Gaulois) expressed to me their desire to rub elbows with some real demi-mondaines of the artist quarter. I took them to a ball at the Grande Chaumière. There was a crowd of young painters, models, students. In the midst of the uproar, several couples danced the cancan till the chandeliers shook with it. We noticed especially a little, dark man, dressed in a miserable top-coat and checked trousers which assuredly knew the support of no suspenders. He was cross-eyed, with a wretched beard and hair as greasy as could be. He bounded and kicked extravagantly. The ladies called him Léon Gambetta.
"What an annoyance, when I realize that I need only have felled this wretched lawyer with one pistol shot to have guaranteed perfect happiness to myself and to my adopted country, for, my dear fellow, I am French at heart, if not by birth.
"I was born in 1829, at Warsaw, of a Polish father and a Russian mother. It is from her that I hold my title of Hetman of Jitomir. It was restored to me by Czar Alexander II on a request made to him on his visit to Paris, by my august master, the Emperor Napoleon III.
"For political reasons, which I cannot describe without retelling the history of unfortunate Poland, my father, Count Bielowsky, left Warsaw in 1830, and went to live in London. After the death of my mother, he began to squander his immense fortune—from sorrow, he said. When, in his time, he died at the period of the Prichard affair, he left me barely a thousand pounds sterling of income, plus two or three systems of gaming, the impracticability of which I learned later.
"I will never be able to think of my nineteenth and twentieth years without emotion, for I then completely liquidated this small inheritance. London was indeed an adorable spot in those days. I had a jolly bachelor's apartment in Piccadilly.
The whirling of wheels and the murmur of trees.'
"Fox hunting in a briska, driving a buggy in Hyde Park, the rout, not to mention the delightful little parties with the light Venuses of Drury Lane, this took all my time. All? I am unjust. There was also gaming, and a sentiment of filial piety forced me to verify the systems of the late Count, my father. It was gaming which was the cause of the event I must describe to you, by which my life was to be so strangely changed.
"My friend, Lord Malmesbury, had said to me a hundred times, 'I must take you to see an exquisite creature who lives in Oxford Street, number 277, Miss Howard.' One evening I went with him. It was the twenty-second of February, 1848. The mistress of the house was really marvelously beautiful, and the guests were charming. Besides Malmesbury, I observed several acquaintances: Lord Clebden, Lord Chesterfield, Sir Francis Mountjoye, Major in the Second Life Guards, and Count d'Orsay. They played cards and then began to talk politics. Events in France played the main part in the conversation and they discussed endlessly the consequences of the revolt that had broken out in Paris that same morning, in consequence of the interdiction of the banquet in the 12th arrondissement, of which word had just been received by telegram. Up to that time, I had never bothered myself with public affairs. So I don't know what moved me to affirm with the impetuosity of my nineteen years that the news from France meant the Republic next day and the Empire the day after....
"The company received my sally with a discreet laugh, and their looks were centered on a guest who made the fifth at a bouillotte table where they had just stopped playing.
"The guest smiled, too. He rose and came towards me. I observed that he was of middle height, perhaps even shorter, buttoned tightly into a blue frock coat, and that his eye had a far-off, dreamy look.
"All the players watched this scene with delighted amusement.
"'Whom have I the honor of addressing?' he asked in a very gentle voice.
"'Count Bielowsky,' I answered coolly to show him that the difference in our ages was not sufficient to justify the interrogation.
"Well, my dear Count, may your prediction indeed be realized; and I hope that you will not neglect the Tuileries,' said the guest in the blue coat, with a smile.
"And he added, finally consenting to present himself:
"'Prince Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte.'
"I played no active rôle in the coup d'état, and I do not regret it. It is a principle with me that a stranger should not meddle with the internal affairs of a country. The prince understood this discretion, and did not forget the young man who had been of such good omen to him.
"I was one of the first whom he called to the Elysée. My fortune was definitely established by a defamatory note on 'Napoleon the little.' The next year, when Mgr. Sibour was out of the way, I was made Gentleman of the Chamber, and the Emperor was even so kind as to have me marry the daughter of the Marshal Repeto, Duke of Mondovi.
"I have no scruple in announcing that this union was not what it should have been. The Countess, who was ten years older than I, was crabbed and not particularly pretty. Moreover, her family had insisted resolutely on a marriage portion. Now I had nothing at this time except the twenty-five thousand pounds for my appointment as Gentleman of the Chamber. A sad lot for anyone on intimate terms with the Count d'Orsay and the Duke of Gramont-Caderousse! Without the kindness of the Emperor, where would I have been?
"One morning in the spring of 1852, I was in my study opening my mail. There was a letter from His Majesty, calling me to the Tuileries at four o'clock; a letter from Clémentine, informing me that she expected me at five o'clock at her house. Clémentine was the beautiful one for whom, just then, I was ready to commit any folly. I was so proud of her that, one evening at the Maison Dorée, I flaunted her before Prince Metternich, who was tremendously taken with her. All the court envied me that conquest; and I was morally obliged to continue to assume its expenses. And then Clémentine was so pretty! The Emperor himself.... The other letters, good lord, the other letters were the bills of the dressmakers of that young person, who, in spite of my discreet remonstrances, insisted on having them sent to my conjugal dwelling.
"There were bills for something over forty thousand francs: gowns and ball dresses from Gagelin-Opigez, 23 Rue de Richelieu; hats and bonnets from Madame Alexandrine, 14 Rue d'Antin; lingerie and many petticoats from Madame Pauline, 100 Rue de Clery; dress trimmings and gloves from the Ville de Lyon, 6 Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin; foulards from the Malle des Indes; handkerchiefs from the Compagnie Irlandaise; laces from Ferguson; cosmetics from Candès.... This whitening cream of Candès, in particular, overwhelmed me with stupefaction. The bill showed fifty-one flasks. Six hundred and twenty-seven francs and fifty centimes' worth of whitening cream from Candès.... Enough to soften the skin of a squadron of a hundred guards!
"'This can't keep on,' I said, putting the bills in my pocket.
"At ten minutes to four, I crossed the wicket by the Carrousel.
"In the Salon of the aides de camp I happened on Bacciochi.
"'The Emperor has the grippe,' he said to me. 'He is keeping to his room. He has given orders to have you admitted as soon as you arrive. Come.'
"His Majesty, dressed in a braided vest and Cossack trousers, was meditating before a window. The pale green of the Tuileries showed luminously under a gentle warm shower.
"'Ah! Here he is,' said Napoleon. 'Here, have a cigarette. It seems that you had great doings, you and Gramont-Caderousse, last evening, at the Château de Fleurs.'
"I smiled with satisfaction.
"'So Your Majesty knows already....'
"'I know, I know vaguely.'
"'Do you know Gramont-Caderousse's last "mot"?'
"'No, but you are going to tell it to me.'
"'Here goes, then. We were five or six: myself, Viel-Castel, Gramont, Persigny....'
"'Persigny!' said the Emperor. 'He has no right to associate with Gramont, after all that Paris says about his wife.'
"'Just so Sire. Well, Persigny was excited, no doubt about it. He began telling us how troubled he was because of the Duchess's conduct.'
"'This Fialin isn't over tactful,' muttered the Emperor.
"'Just so, Sire. Then, does Your Majesty know what Gramont hurled at him?'
"'What?'
"'He said to him, "Monsieur le Duc, I forbid you to speak ill of my mistress before me."
"'Gramont goes too far,' said Napoleon with a dreamy smile.
"'That is what we all thought, including Viel-Castel, who was nevertheless delighted.'
"'Apropos of this,' said Napoleon after a silence, 'I have forgotten to ask you for news of the Countess Bielowsky.'
"'She is very well, Sire, I thank Your Majesty,'
"'And Clémentine? Still the same dear child?'
"'Always, Sire. But....'
"'It seems that M. Baroche is madly in love with her.'
"'I am very much honored, Sire. But this honor becomes too burdensome.'
"I had drawn from my pocket that morning's bills and I spread them out under the eyes of the Emperor.
"He looked at them with his distant smile.
"'Come, come. If that is all, I can fix that, since I have a favor to ask of you.'
"'I am entirely at Your Majesty's service.'
"He struck a gong.
"'Send for M. Mocquard.'
"'I have the grippe,' he said. 'Mocquard will explain the affair to you.'
"The Emperor's private secretary entered.
"'Here is Bielowsky, Mocquard,' said Napoleon. 'You know what I want him to do. Explain it to him.'
"And he began to tap on the window-panes against which the rain was beating furiously.
"'My dear Count,' said Mocquard, taking a chair, 'it is very simple. You have doubtless heard of a young explorer of promise, M. Henry Duveyrier.'
"I shook my head as a sign of negation, very much surprised at this beginning.
"'M. Duveyrier,' continued Mocquard, 'has returned to Paris after a particularly daring trip to South Africa and the Sahara. M. Vivien de Saint Martin, whom I have seen recently has assured me that the Geographical Society intends to confer its great gold medal upon him, in recognition of these exploits. In the course of his trip, M. Duveyrier has entered into negotiations with the chief of the people who always have been so rebellious to His Majesty's armies, the Tuareg.'
"I looked at the Emperor. My bewilderment was such that he began to laugh.
"'Listen,' he said.
"'M. Duveyrier,' continued Mocquard, 'was able to arrange to have a delegation of these chiefs come to Paris to present their respects to His Majesty. Very important results may arise from this visit, and His Excellency the Colonial Minister, does not despair of obtaining the signature of a treaty of commerce, reserving special advantages to our fellow countrymen. These chiefs, five of them, among them Sheik Otham, Amenokol or Sultan of the Confederation of Adzjer, arrive to-morrow morning at the Gare de Lyon. M. Duveyrier will meet them. But the Emperor has thought that besides....'
"'I thought,' said Napoleon III, delighted by my bewilderment, 'I thought that it was correct to have some one of the Gentlemen of my Chamber wait upon the arrival of these Mussulman dignitaries. That is why you are here, my poor Bielowsky. Don't be frightened,' he added, laughing
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