Ferragus | Page 7

and found himself unable to get away
from the centre of it by the dinner-hour? Such a man will know how to
excuse this vagabondizing start upon our tale; which, however, we here
sum up in an observation both useful and novel, as far as any
observation can be novel in Paris, where there is nothing new,--not
even the statue erected yesterday, on which some young gamin has
already scribbled his name.
Well, then! there are streets, or ends of streets, there are houses,
unknown for the most part to persons of social distinction, to which a
woman of that class cannot go without causing cruel and very
wounding things to be thought of her. Whether the woman be rich and
has a carriage, whether she is on foot, or is disguised, if she enters one
of these Parisian defiles at any hour of the day, she compromises her
reputation as a virtuous woman. If, by chance, she is there at nine in the
evening the conjectures that an observer permits himself to make upon
her may prove fearful in their consequences. But if the woman is young
and pretty, if she enters a house in one of those streets, if the house has
a long, dark, damp, and evil-smelling passage-way, at the end of which

flickers the pallid gleam of an oil lamp, and if beneath that gleam
appears the horrid face of a withered old woman with fleshless fingers,
ah, then! and we say it in the interests of young and pretty women, that
woman is lost. She is at the mercy of the first man of her acquaintance
who sees her in that Parisian slough. There is more than one street in
Paris where such a meeting may lead to a frightful drama, a bloody
drama of death and love, a drama of the modern school.
Unhappily, this scene, this modern drama itself, will be comprehended
by only a small number of persons; and it is a pity to tell the tale to a
public which cannot enter into its local merit. But who can flatter
himself that he will ever be understood? We all die unknown-- 'tis the
saying of women and of authors.
At half-past eight o'clock one evening, in the rue Pagevin, in the days
when that street had no wall which did not echo some infamous word,
and was, in the direction of the rue Soly, the narrowest and most
impassable street in Paris (not excepting the least frequented corner of
the most deserted street),--at the beginning of the month of February
about thirteen years ago, a young man, by one of those chances which
come but once in life, turned the corner of the rue Pagevin to enter the
rue des Vieux-Augustins, close to the rue Soly. There, this young man,
who lived himself in the rue de Bourbon, saw in a woman near whom
he had been unconsciously walking, a vague resemblance to the
prettiest woman in Paris; a chaste and delightful person, with whom he
was secretly and passionately in love,--a love without hope; she was
married. In a moment his heart leaped, an intolerable heat surged from
his centre and flowed through all his veins; his back turned cold, the
skin of his head crept. He loved, he was young, he knew Paris; and his
knowledge did not permit him to be ignorant of all there was of
possible infamy in an elegant, rich, young, and beautiful woman
walking there, alone, with a furtively criminal step. /She/ in that mud!
at that hour!
The love that this young man felt for that woman may seem romantic,
and all the more so because he was an officer in the Royal Guard. If he
had been in the infantry, the affair might have seemed more likely; but,
as an officer of rank in the cavalry, he belonged to that French arm
which demands rapidity in its conquests and derives as much vanity
from its amorous exploits as from its dashing uniform. But the passion

of this officer was a true love, and many young hearts will think it
noble. He loved this woman because she was virtuous; he loved her
virtue, her modest grace, her imposing saintliness, as the dearest
treasures of his hidden passion. This woman was indeed worthy to
inspire one of those platonic loves which are found, like flowers amid
bloody ruins, in the history of the middle-ages; worthy to be the hidden
principle of all the actions of a young man's life; a love as high, as pure
as the skies when blue; a love without hope and to which men bind
themselves because it can never deceive; a love that is prodigal of
unchecked enjoyment, especially at an age when the heart is ardent, the
imagination keen, and