An Old Maid | Page 5

classical
bass voices, the tone of it was pleasing from a slightly muffled quality
like that of an English bugle, which is firm and sweet, strong but
velvety.
The chevalier had repudiated the ridiculous costume still preserved by
certain monarchical old men; he had frankly modernized himself. He
was always seen in a maroon-colored coat with gilt buttons, half-tight
breeches of poult-de-soie with gold buckles, a white waistcoat without
embroidery, and a tight cravat showing no shirt-collar,--a last vestige of

the old French costume which he did not renounce, perhaps, because it
enabled him to show a neck like that of the sleekest abbe. His shoes
were noticeable for their square buckles, a style of which the present
generation has no knowledge; these buckles were fastened to a square
of polished black leather. The chevalier allowed two watch-chains to
hang parallel to each other from each of his waistcoat pockets,--another
vestige of the eighteenth century, which the Incroyables had not
disdained to use under the Directory. This transition costume, uniting
as it did two centuries, was worn by the chevalier with the high-bred
grace of an old French marquis, the secret of which is lost to France
since the day when Fleury, Mole's last pupil, vanished.
The private life of this old bachelor was apparently open to all eyes,
though in fact it was quite mysterious. He lived in a lodging that was
modest, to say the best of it, in the rue du Cours, on the second floor of
a house belonging to Madame Lardot, the best and busiest
washerwoman in the town. This circumstance will explain the
excessive nicety of his linen. Ill-luck would have it that the day came
when Alencon was guilty of believing that the chevalier had not always
comported himself as a gentleman should, and that in fact he was
secretly married in his old age to a certain Cesarine,--the mother of a
child which had had the impertinence to come into the world without
being called for.
"He had given his hand," as a certain Monsieur du Bousquier remarked,
"to the person who had long had him under irons."
This horrible calumny embittered the last days of the dainty chevalier
all the more because, as the present Scene will show, he had lost a hope
long cherished to which he had made many sacrifices.
Madame Lardot leased to the chevalier two rooms on the second floor
of her house, for the modest sum of one hundred francs a year. The
worthy gentleman dined out every day, returning only in time to go to
bed. His sole expense therefore was for breakfast, invariably composed
of a cup of chocolate, with bread and butter and fruits in their season.
He made no fire except in the coldest winter, and then only enough to
get up by. Between eleven and four o'clock he walked about, went to

read the papers, and paid visits. From the time of his settling in
Alencon he had nobly admitted his poverty, saying that his whole
fortune consisted in an annuity of six hundred francs a year, the sole
remains of his former opulence,--a property which obliged him to see
his man of business (who held the annuity papers) quarterly. In truth,
one of the Alencon bankers paid him every three months one hundred
and fifty francs, sent down by Monsieur Bordin of Paris, the last of the
procureurs du Chatelet. Every one knew these details because the
chevalier exacted the utmost secrecy from the persons to whom he first
confided them.
Monsieur de Valois gathered the fruit of his misfortunes. His place at
table was laid in all the most distinguished houses in Alencon, and he
was bidden to all soirees. His talents as a card-player, a narrator, an
amiable man of the highest breeding, were so well known and
appreciated that parties would have seemed a failure if the dainty
connoisseur was absent. Masters of houses and their wives felt the need
of his approving grimace. When a young woman heard the chevalier
say at a ball, "You are delightfully well-dressed!" she was more pleased
at such praise than she would have been at mortifying a rival. Monsieur
de Valois was the only man who could perfectly pronounce certain
phrases of the olden time. The words, "my heart," "my jewel," "my
little pet," "my queen," and the amorous diminutives of 1770, had a
grace that was quite irresistible when they came from his lips. In short,
the chevalier had the privilege of superlatives. His compliments, of
which he was stingy, won the good graces of all the old women; he
made himself agreeable to every one, even to the officials of the
government, from whom he wanted nothing. His behavior at cards had
a lofty distinction which everybody noticed: he never