When the Younger branch, preceded by the Parisian populace, had trodden down the Elder branch and was seated on the throne, Maxime reproduced his attachment to Napoleon, for whom he cared as much as for his first love.He then did great services to the newcomers, who soon found the payment for them onerous; for Maxime too often demanded payment of men who knew how to reckon those services.At the first refusal, Maxime assumed at once an attitude of hostility, threatening to reveal unpleasant details; for budding dynasties, like infants, have much soiled linen.De Marsay, during his ministry, repaired the mistake of his predecessors, who had ignored the utility of this man.
He gave him those secret missions which require a conscience made malleable by the hammer of necessity, an adroitness which recoils before no methods, impudence, and, above all, the self-possession, the coolness, the embracing glance which constitute the hired bravi of thought and statesmanship.Such instruments are both rare and necessary.
As a matter of calculation, de Marsay maintained Comte Maxime de Trailles in the highest society; he described him as a man ripened by passions, taught by experience, who knew men and things, to whom travel and a certain faculty for observation had imparted an understanding of European interests, of foreign cabinets, and of all the ramifications of the great continental families.De Marsay convinced Maxime of the necessity of doing himself credit; he taught him discretion, less as a virtue than a speculation; he proved to him that the governing powers would never abandon a solid, safe, elegant, and polished instrument.
"In politics," he said, blaming Maxime for having uttered a threat, "we should never blackmail but once."Maxime was a man who could sound the depths of that saying.
De Marsay dead, Comte Maxime de Trailles had fallen back into his former state of existence.He went to the baths every year and gambled; he returned to Paris for the winter; but, though he received some large sums from the depths of certain niggardly coffers, that sort of half-pay to a daring man kept for use at any moment and possessing many secrets of the art of diplomacy, was insufficient for the dissipations of a life as splendid as that of the king of dandies, the tyrant of several Parisian clubs.Consequently Comte Maxime was often uneasy about matters financial.Possessing no property, he had never been able to consolidate his position by being made a deputy;also, having no ostensible functions, it was impossible for him to hold a knife at the throat of any minister to compel his nomination as peer of France.At the present moment he saw that Time was getting the better of him; for his lavish dissipations were beginning to wear upon his person, as they had already worn out his divers fortunes.In spite of his splendid exterior, he knew himself, and could not be deceived about that self.He intended to "make an end"--to marry.
A man of acute mind, he was under no illusion as to the apparent consideration in which he was held; he well knew it was false.No women were truly on his side, either in the great world of Paris or among the bourgeoisie.Much secret malignity, much apparent good-humor, and many services rendered were necessary to maintain him in his present position; for every one desired his fall, and a run of ill-luck might at any time ruin him.Once sent to Clichy or forced to leave the country by notes no longer renewable, he would sink into the gulf where so many political carcasses may be seen,--carcasses of men who find no consolation in one another's company.Even this very evening he was in dread of a collapse of that threatening arch which debt erects over the head of many a Parisian.He had allowed his anxieties to appear upon his face; he had refused to play cards at Madame d'Espard's; he had talked with the women in an absent-minded manner, and finally he had sunk down silent and absorbed in the arm-chair from which he had just risen like Banquo's ghost.
Comte Maxime de Trailles now found himself the object of all glances, direct and indirect, standing as he did before the fireplace and illumined by the cross-lights of two candelabra.The few words said about him compelled him, in a way, to bear himself proudly; and he did so, like a man of sense, without arrogance, and yet with the intention of showing himself to be above suspicion.A painter could scarcely have found a better moment in which to seize the portrait of a man who, in his way, was truly extraordinary.Does it not require rare faculties to play such a part,--to enable one through thirty years to seduce women; to constrain one to employ great gifts in an underhand sphere only,--inciting a people to rebel, tracking the secrets of austere politicians, and triumphing nowhere but in boudoirs and on the back-stairs of cabinets?
Is there not something, difficult to say what, of greatness in being able to rise to the highest calculations of statesmen and then to fall coldly back into the void of a frivolous life? Where is the man of iron who can withstand the alternating luck of gambling, the rapid missions of diplomacy, the warfare of fashion and society, the dissipations of gallantry,--the man who makes his memory a library of lies and craft, who envelops such diverse thoughts, such conflicting manoeuvres, in one impenetrable cloak of perfect manners? If the wind of favor had blown steadily upon those sails forever set, if the luck of circumstances had attended Maxime, he could have been Mazarin, the Marechal de Richelieu, Potemkin, or--perhaps more truly--Lauzun, without Pignerol.