The Ball at Sceaux | Page 8

banker; the President very sensibly found a wife in a
young lady whose father, twice or thrice a millionaire, had traded in

salt; and the third brother, faithful to his plebeian doctrines, married
Mademoiselle Grossetete, the only daughter of the Receiver- General at
Bourges. The three sisters-in-law and the two brothers-in- law found
the high sphere of political bigwigs, and the drawing-rooms of the
Faubourg Saint-Germain, so full of charm and of personal advantages,
that they united in forming a little court round the overbearing Emilie.
This treaty between interest and pride was not, however, so firmly
cemented but that the young despot was, not unfrequently, the cause of
revolts in her little realm. Scenes, which the highest circles would not
have disowned, kept up a sarcastic temper among all the members of
this powerful family; and this, without seriously diminishing the regard
they professed in public, degenerated sometimes in private into
sentiments far from charitable. Thus the Lieutenant-General's wife,
having become a Baronne, thought herself quite as noble as a
Kergarouet, and imagined that her good hundred thousand francs a year
gave her the right to be as impertinent as her sister-in-law Emilie,
whom she would sometimes wish to see happily married, as she
announced that the daughter of some peer of France had married
Monsieur So-and-So with no title to his name. The Vicomtesse de
Fontaine amused herself by eclipsing Emilie in the taste and
magnificence that were conspicuous in her dress, her furniture, and her
carriages. The satirical spirit in which her brothers and sisters
sometimes received the claims avowed by Mademoiselle de Fontaine
roused her to wrath that a perfect hailstorm of sharp sayings could
hardly mitigate. So when the head of the family felt a slight chill in the
King's tacit and precarious friendship, he trembled all the more because,
as a result of her sisters' defiant mockery, his favorite daughter had
never looked so high.
In the midst of these circumstances, and at a moment when this petty
domestic warfare had become serious, the monarch, whose favor
Monsieur de Fontaine still hoped to regain, was attacked by the malady
of which he was to die. The great political chief, who knew so well
how to steer his bark in the midst of tempests, soon succumbed. Certain
then of favors to come, the Comte de Fontaine made every effort to
collect the elite of marrying men about his youngest daughter. Those
who may have tried to solve the difficult problem of settling a haughty
and capricious girl, will understand the trouble taken by the unlucky

father. Such an affair, carried out to the liking of his beloved child,
would worthily crown the career the Count had followed for these ten
years at Paris. From the way in which his family claimed salaries under
every department, it might be compared with the House of Austria,
which, by intermarriage, threatens to pervade Europe. The old Vendeen
was not to be discouraged in bringing forward suitors, so much had he
his daughter's happiness at heart, but nothing could be more absurd
than the way in which the impertinent young thing pronounced her
verdicts and judged the merits of her adorers. It might have been
supposed that, like a princess in the Arabian Nights, Emilie was rich
enough and beautiful enough to choose from among all the princes in
the world. Her objections were each more preposterous than the last:
one had too thick knees and was bow-legged, another was short-sighted,
this one's name was Durand, that one limped, and almost all were too
fat. Livelier, more attractive, and gayer than ever after dismissing two
or three suitors, she rushed into the festivities of the winter season, and
to balls, where her keen eyes criticised the celebrities of the day,
delighted in encouraging proposals which she invariably rejected.
Nature had bestowed on her all the advantages needed for playing the
part of Celimene. Tall and slight, Emilie de Fontaine could assume a
dignified or a frolicsome mien at her will. Her neck was rather long,
allowing her to affect beautiful attitudes of scorn and impertinence. She
had cultivated a large variety of those turns of the head and feminine
gestures, which emphasize so cruelly or so happily a hint of a smile.
Fine black hair, thick and strongly-arched eyebrows, lent her
countenance an expression of pride, to which her coquettish instincts
and her mirror had taught her to add terror by a stare, or gentleness by
the softness of her gaze, by the set of the gracious curve of her lips, by
the coldness or the sweetness of her smile. When Emilie meant to
conquer a heart, her pure voice did not lack melody; but she could also
give it a sort of curt clearness when she was minded to paralyze