The Jealousies of a Country Town | Page 7

gules, and gules, five mascles or, placed end to end;
on a chief sable, a cross argent. For crest, a knight's helmet. For motto:
"Valeo." Bearing such noble arms, the so-called bastard of the Valois
had the right to get into all the royal carriages of the world.
Many persons envied the quiet existence of this old bachelor, spent on
whist, boston, backgammon, reversi, and piquet, all well played, on
dinners well digested, snuff gracefully inhaled, and tranquil walks
about the town. Nearly all Alencon believed this life to be exempt from
ambitions and serious interests; but no man has a life as simple as
envious neighbors attribute to him. You will find in the most out-
of-the way villages human mollusks, creatures apparently dead, who
have passions for lepidoptera or for conchology, let us say,--beings
who will give themselves infinite pains about moths, butterflies, or the
concha Veneris. Not only did the chevalier have his own particular
shells, but he cherished an ambitious desire which he pursued with a
craft so profound as to be worthy of Sixtus the Fifth: he wanted to
marry a certain rich old maid, with the intention, no doubt, of making
her a stepping-stone by which to reach the more elevated regions of the
court. There, then, lay the secret of his royal bearing and of his
residence in Alencon.

CHAPTER II
SUSANNAH AND THE ELDERS
On a Wednesday morning, early, toward the middle of spring, in the
year 16,--such was his mode of reckoning,--at the moment when the
chevalier was putting on his old green-flowered damask dressing-gown,
he heard, despite the cotton in his ears, the light step of a young girl
who was running up the stairway. Presently three taps were discreetly
struck upon the door; then, without waiting for any response, a
handsome girl slipped like an eel into the room occupied by the old
bachelor.
"Ah! is it you, Suzanne?" said the Chevalier de Valois, without
discontinuing his occupation, which was that of stropping his razor.
"What have you come for, my dear little jewel of mischief?"
"I have come to tell you something which may perhaps give you as
much pleasure as pain?"
"Is it anything about Cesarine?"
"Cesarine! much I care about your Cesarine!" she said with a saucy air,
half serious, half indifferent.
This charming Suzanne, whose present comical performance was to
exercise a great influence in the principal personages of our history,
was a work-girl at Madame Lardot's. One word here on the topography
of the house. The wash-rooms occupied the whole of the ground floor.
The little courtyard was used to hang out on wire cords embroidered
handkerchiefs, collarets, capes, cuffs, frilled shirts, cravats, laces,
embroidered dresses,--in short, all the fine linen of the best families of
the town. The chevalier assumed to know from the number of her capes
in the wash how the love-affairs of the wife of the prefect were going
on. Though he guessed much from observations of this kind, the
chevalier was discretion itself; he was never betrayed into an epigram

(he had plenty of wit) which might have closed to him an agreeable
salon. You are therefore to consider Monsieur de Valois as a man of
superior manners, whose talents, like those of many others, were lost in
a narrow sphere. Only--for, after all, he was a man--he permitted
himself certain penetrating glances which could make some women
tremble; although they all loved him heartily as soon as they discovered
the depth of his discretion and the sympathy that he felt for their little
weaknesses.
The head woman, Madame Lardot's factotum, an old maid of forty-six,
hideous to behold, lived on the opposite side of the passage to the
chevalier. Above them were the attics where the linen was dried in
winter. Each apartment had two rooms,--one lighted from the street, the
other from the courtyard. Beneath the chevalier's room there lived a
paralytic, Madame Lardot's grandfather, an old buccaneer named
Grevin, who had served under Admiral Simeuse in India, and was now
stone-deaf. As for Madame Lardot, who occupied the other lodging on
the first floor, she had so great a weakness for persons of condition that
she may well have been thought blind to the ways of the chevalier. To
her, Monsieur de Valois was a despotic monarch who did right in all
things. Had any of her workwomen been guilty of a happiness
attributed to the chevalier she would have said, "He is so lovable!"
Thus, though the house was of glass, like all provincial houses, it was
discreet as a robber's cave.
A born confidant to all the little intrigues of the work-rooms, the
chevalier never passed the door, which usually stood open, without
giving something to his little ducks,--chocolate, bonbons, ribbons, laces,
gilt crosses, and such