In the Days of My Youth. Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards
were still eating their ices and sipping their eau-sucré as though, instead of being past eleven at night, it was scarcely eleven in the morning. In a few minutes, we had once more turned aside out of the great thoroughfare, and stopped at a private house in a quiet street. A carriage driving off, a cab drawing up behind our own, open windows with drawn blinds, upon which were profiled passing shadows of the guests within, and the ringing tones of a soprano voice, accompanied by a piano, gave sufficient indication of a party, and had served to attract a little crowd of soldiers and gamins about the doorway.
Having left our over-coats with a servant, we were ushered upstairs, and, as the song was not yet ended, slipped in unannounced and stationed ourselves just between two crowded drawing-rooms, where, sheltered by the folds of a muslin curtain, we could see all that was going on in both. I observed, at a glance, that I was now in a society altogether unlike that which I had just left.
At Rachel's there were present only two ladies besides herself, and those were members of her own family. Here I found at least an equal proportion of both sexes. At Rachel's a princely magnificence reigned. Here the rooms were elegant, but simple; the paintings choice but few; the ornaments costly, but in no unnecessary profusion.
"It is just the difference between taste and display," said Dalrymple. "Rachel is an actress, and Madame de Courcelles is a lady. Rachel exhibits her riches as an Indian chief exhibits the scalps of his victims--Madame de Courcelles adorns her house with no other view than to make it attractive to her friends."
"As a Greek girl covers her head with sequins to show the amount of her fortune, and an English girl puts a rose in her hair for grace and beauty only," said I, fancying that I had made rather a clever observation. I was therefore considerably disappointed when Dalrymple merely said, "just so."
The lady in the larger room here finished her song and returned to her seat, amid a shower of bravas.
"She sings exquisitely," said I, following her with my eyes.
"And so she ought," replied my friend. "She is the Countess Rossi, whom you may have heard of as Mademoiselle Sontag."
"What! the celebrated Sontag?" I exclaimed.
"The same. And the gentleman to whom she is now speaking is no less famous a person than the author of Pelham."
I was as much delighted as a rustic at a menagerie, and Dalrymple, seeing this, continued to point out one celebrity after another till I began no longer to remember which was which. Thus Lamartine, Horace Vernet, Scribe, Baron Humboldt, Miss Bremer, Arago, Auber, and Sir Edwin Landseer, were successively indicated, and I thought myself one of the most fortunate fellows in Paris, only to be allowed to look upon them.
"I suppose the spirit of lion-hunting is an original instinct," I said, presently. "Call it vulgar excitement, if you will; but I must confess that to see these people, and to be able to write about them to my father, is just the most delightful thing that has happened to me since I left home."
"Call things by their right names, Damon," said Dalrymple, good-naturedly. "If you were a parvenu giving a party, and wanted all these fine folks to be seen at your house, that would be lion-hunting; but being whom and what you are, it is hero-worship--a disease peculiar to the young; wholesome and inevitable, like the measles."
"What have I done," said a charming voice close by, "that Captain Dalrymple will not even deign to look upon me?"
The charming voice proceeded from the still more charming lips of an exceedingly pretty brunette in a dress of light green silk, fastened here and there with bouquets of rosebuds. Plump, rosy, black-haired, bright-eyed, bewilderingly coquettish, this lady might have been about thirty years of age, and seemed by no means unconscious of her powers of fascination.
"I implore a thousand pardons, Madame. … " began my friend.
"Comment! A thousand pardons for a single offence!" exclaimed the lady. "What an unreasonable culprit!"
To which she added, quite audibly, though behind the temporary shelter of her fan:--
"Who is this beau garçon whom you seem to have brought with you?"
I turned aside, affecting not to hear the question; but could not help listening, nevertheless. Of Dalrymple's reply, however, I caught but my own name.
"So much the better," observed the lady. "I delight in civilizing handsome boys. Introduce him."
Dalrymple tapped me on the arm.
"Madame de Marignan permits me to introduce you, mon ami," said he. "Mr. Basil Arbuthnot--Madame de Marignan."
I bowed profoundly--all the more profoundly because I felt myself blushing to the eyes, and would not for the universe have been suspected of overhearing the preceding conversation; nor was my timidity alleviated when Dalrymple announced his intention of going in search of Madame de Courcelles, and of leaving me in the care of Madame de Marignan.
"Now, Damon, make the most of your opportunities," whispered he, as he passed by. "Vogue la galère!"
Vogue la galère, indeed! As if I had anything to do with the galère, except to sit down in it, the most helpless of galley-slaves, and blindly submit to the gyves and chains of Madame de Marignan, who, regarding me as the lawful captive of her bow and spear, carried me off at once to a vacant causeuse in a distant corner.
To send me in search of a footstool, to make me hold her fan, to overwhelm me with questions and bewilder me with a thousand coquetries, were the immediate proceedings of Madame de Marignan. A consummate tactician, she succeeded, before a quarter of an hour had gone by, in putting me at my ease, and in drawing from me everything that I had to tell--all my past; all my prospects for the future; the name and condition of my father; a description of Saxonholme, and the very date of my birth. Then she criticized all the ladies in the room, which only drew my attention more admiringly upon herself; and she quizzed all the young men, whereby I felt indirectly flattered, without exactly knowing why; and she praised Dalrymple in terms for which I could have embraced her on the spot had she been ten times less pretty, and ten times less fascinating.
I was an easy victim, after all, and scarcely worth the powder and shot of an experienced franc-tireur; but Madame de Marignan, according to her own confession, had a taste for civilizing "handsome boys," and as I may, perhaps, have come under that category a good many years ago, the little victory amused her! By the time, at all events, that Dalrymple returned to tell me it was past one o'clock in the morning, and I must be introduced to the mistress of the house before leaving, my head was as completely turned as that of old Time himself.
"Past one!" I exclaimed. "Impossible! We cannot have been here half-an hour."
At which neither Dalrymple nor Madame de Marignan could forbear smiling.
"I hope our acquaintance is not to end here, monsieur," said Madame de Marignan. "I live in the Rue Castellane, and am at home to my friends every Wednesday evening."
I bowed almost to my boots.
"And to my intimates, every morning from twelve to two," she added very softly, with a dimpled smile that went straight to my heart, and set it beating like the paddle-wheels of a steamer.
I stammered some incoherent thanks, bowed again, nearly upset a servant with a tray of ices, and, covered with confusion, followed Dalrymple into the farther room. Here I was introduced to Madame de Courcelles, a pale, aristocratic woman some few years younger than Madame de Marignan, and received a gracious invitation to all her Monday receptions. But I was much less interested in Madame de Courcelles than I should have been a couple of hours before. I scarcely looked at her, and five minutes after I was out of her presence, could not have told whether she was fair or dark, if my life had depended on it!
"What say you to walking home?" said Dalrymple, as we went down stairs. "It is a superb night, and the fresh air would be delightful after these hot rooms."
I assented gladly; so we dismissed the cab, and went out, arm-in-arm, along a labyrinth