Examining this society carefully,it was seen to present not only the brilliant tones and colors and outward adornment,but to have a soul,--it lived,it felt,it thought.Hidden passions gave it a physiognomy;mischievous or malignant looks were exchanged;fair and giddy girls betrayed desires;jealous women told each other scandals behind their fans,or paid exaggerated compliments.Society,anointed,curled,and perfumed,gave itself up to social gaiety which went to the brain like a heady liquor.It seemed as if from all foreheads,as well as from all hearts,ideas and sentiments were exhaling,which presently condensed and reacted in a volume on the coldest persons present,and excited them.At the most animated moment of this intoxicating party,in a corner of a gilded salon where certain bankers,ambassadors,and the immoral old English earl,Lord Dudley,were playing cards,Madame Felix de Vandenesse was irresistibly drawn to converse with Raoul Nathan.Possibly she yielded to that ball-intoxication which sometimes wrings avowals from the most discreet.
At sight of such a fete,and the splendors of a world in which he had never before appeared,Nathan was stirred to the soul by fresh ambition.Seeing Rastignac,whose younger brother had just been made bishop at twenty-seven years of age,and whose brother-in-law,Martial de la Roche-Hugon,was a minister,and who himself was under-secretary of State,and about to marry,rumor said,the only daughter of the Baron de Nucingen,--a girl with an illimitable "dot";seeing,moreover,in the diplomatic body an obscure writer whom he had formerly known translating articles in foreign journals for a newspaper turned dynastic since 1830,also professors now made peers of France,--he felt with anguish that he was left behind on a bad road by advocating the overthrow of this new aristocracy of lucky talent,of cleverness crowned by success,and of real merit.Even Blondet,so unfortunate,so used by others in journalism,but so welcomed here,who could,if he liked,enter a career of public service through the influence of Madame de Montcornet,seemed to Nathan's eyes a striking example of the power of social relations.Secretly,in his heart,he resolved to play the game of political opinions,like de Marsay,Rastignac,Blondet,Talleyrand,the leader of this set of men;to rely on facts only,turn them to his own profit,regard his system as a weapon,and not interfere with a society so well constituted,so shrewd,so natural.
"My influence,"he thought,"will depend on the influence of some woman belonging to this class of society."With this thought in his mind,conceived by the flame of this frenzied desire,he fell upon the Comtesse de Vandenesse like a hawk on its prey.That charming young woman in her head-dress of marabouts,which produced the delightful "flou"of the paintings of Lawrence and harmonized well with her gentle nature,was penetrated through and through by the foaming vigor of this poet wild with ambition.Lady Dudley,whom nothing escaped,aided this tete-a-tete by throwing the Comte de Vandenesse with Madame de Manerville.Strong in her former ascendancy over him,Natalie de Manerville amused herself by leading Felix into the mazes of a quarrel of witty teasing,blushing half-confidences,regrets coyly flung like flowers at his feet,recriminations in which she excused herself for the sole purpose of being put in the wrong.
These former lovers were speaking to each other for the first time since their rupture;and while her husband's former love was stirring the embers to see if a spark were yet alive,Madame Felix de Vandenesse was undergoing those violent palpitations which a woman feels at the certainty of doing wrong,and stepping on forbidden ground,--emotions that are not without charm,and which awaken various dormant faculties.Women are fond of using Bluebeard's bloody key,that fine mythological idea for which we are indebted to Perrault.
The dramatist--who knew his Shakespeare--displayed his wretchedness,related his struggle with men and things,made his hearer aware of his baseless grandeur,his unrecognized political genius,his life without noble affections.Without saying a single definite word,he contrived to suggest to this charming woman that she should play the noble part of Rebecca in Ivanhoe,and love and protect him.It was all,of course,in the ethereal regions of sentiment.Forget-me-nots are not more blue,lilies not more white than the images,thoughts,and radiantly illumined brow of this accomplished artist,who was likely to send his conversation to a publisher.He played his part of reptile to this poor Eve so cleverly,he made the fatal bloom of the apple so dazzling to her eyes,that Marie left the ball-room filled with that species of remorse which resembles hope,flattered in all her vanities,stirred to every corner of her heart,caught by her own virtues,allured by her native pity for misfortune.
Perhaps Madame de Manerville had taken Vandenesse into the salon where his wife was talking with Nathan;perhaps he had come there himself to fetch Marie,and take her home;perhaps his conversation with his former flame had awakened slumbering griefs;certain it is that when his wife took his arm to leave the ball-room,she saw that his face was sad and his look serious.The countess wondered if he was displeased with her.No sooner were they seated in the carriage than she turned to Felix and said,with a mischievous smile,--"Did not I see you talking half the evening with Madame de Manerville?"Felix was not out of the tangled paths into which his wife had led him by this charming little quarrel,when the carriage turned into their court-yard.This was Marie's first artifice dictated by her new emotion;and she even took pleasure in triumphing over a man who,until then,had seemed to her so superior.