“Then M. de Villeparisis won’t be long. They’ve been here a month now, and it’s only once that they didn’t have a meal together,” said the waiter.
I was asking myself who the relative could be with whom she was travelling, and who was named M. de Villeparisis, when I saw, a few | moments later, advance towards the table and sit down by her side, her j old lover, M. de Norpois.
His great age had weakened the resonance of his voice, but had in | compensation given to his language, formerly so reserved, a positive in—j temperance. The cause of this was to be sought, perhaps, in certain ambitions for the realisation of which little time, he felt, remained to him, and which filled him all the more with vehemence and ardour; perhaps in the fact that, having been discarded from a world of politics to which he longed to return, he imagined, in the simplicity of his desire, that he could turn out of office, by the pungent criticisms which he launched at them, the men whose places he was anxious to fill. Thus we see politicians convinced that the Cabinet of which they are not members cannot hold out for three days. It would, however, be an exaggeration to suppose that M. de Norpois had entirely lost the traditions of diplomatic speech. Whenever ‘important matters’ were involved, he at once became, as we shall see, the man whom we remember in the past, but at all other times he would inveigh against this man and that with the senile violence of certain octogenarians which hurls them into the arms of women to whom they are no longer capable of doing any serious damage.
Mme. de Villeparisis preserved, for some minutes, the silence of an old woman who in the exhaustion of age finds it difficult to rise from memories of the past to consideration of the present. Then, turning to one of those, eminently practical questions that indicate the survival of a mutual af—f fection:
“Did you call at Salviati’s?”
“Yes.”
“Will they send it to-morrow?”
“I brought the bowl back myself. You shall see it after dinner. Let us see what there is to eat.”
“Did you send instructions about my Suez shares?”
“No; at the present moment the market is entirely taken up with oil shares. But there is no hurry, they are still fetching an excellent price. Here is the bill of fare. First of all, there are red mullets. Shall we try them?”
“For me, yes, but you are not allowed them. Ask for a risotto instead.
But they don’t know how to cook it.”
“That doesn’t matter. Waiter, some mullets for Madame and a risotto for me.”
A fresh and prolonged silence.
“Why, I brought you the papers, the Corrière della Sera, the Gazzetta del Popolo, and all the rest of them. Do you know, there is a great deal of talk about a diplomatic change, the first scapegoat in which is to be Paléologue, who is notoriously inadequate in Serbia. He will perhaps be succeeded by Lozé, and there will be a vacancy at Constantinople. But,” M. de Norpois hastened to add in a bitter tone, “for an Embassy of such scope, in a capital where it is obvious that Great Britain must always, whatever may happen, occupy the chief place at the council-table, it would be prudent to turn to men of experience better armed to resist the ambushes of the enemies of our British ally than are diplomats of the modern school who would walk blindfold into the trap.” The angry volubility with which M. de Norpois uttered the last words was due principally to the fact that the newspapers, instead of suggesting his name, as he had requested them to do, named as a ‘hot favourite’ a young official of—the Foreign Ministry.
“Heaven knows that the men of years and experience may well hesitate, as a result of all manner of tortuous manoeuvres, to put themselves forward in the place of more or less incapable recruits. I have known many of these self-styled diplomats of the empirical method who centred all their hopes in a soap bubble which it did not take me long to burst. There can be no question about it, if the Government is so lacking in wisdom as to entrust the reins of state to turbulent hands, at the call of duty an old conscript will always answer ‘Present!’ But who knows” (and here M. de Norpois appeared to know perfectly well to whom he was referring) “whether it would not be the same on the day when they came in search of some veteran full of wisdom and skill. To my mind, for everyone has a right to his own opinion, the post at Constantinople should not be accepted until we have settled our existing difficulties with Germany. We owe no man anything, and it is intolerable that every six months they should come and demand from us, by fraudulent machinations, and extort by force and fear, the payment of some debt or other, always hastily offered by a venal press. This must cease, and naturally a man of high distinction who has proved his merit, a man who would have, if I may say so, the Emperor’s ear, would wield greater authority than any ordinary person in bringing the conflict to an end.”
A gentleman who was finishing his dinner bowed to M. de Norpois.
“Why, there is Prince Foggi,” said the Marquis.
“Ah, I’m not sure that I know whom you mean,” muttered Mme. de Villeparisis.
“Why, of course you do. It is Prince Odone. The brother-in-law of your cousin Doudeauville. You cannot have forgotten that I went shooting with him at Bonnétable?”
“Ah! Odone, that is the one who went in for painting?”
“Not at all, he’s the one who married the Grand Duke N—‘s sister.”
M. de Norpois uttered these remarks in the cross tone of a schoolmaster who is dissatisfied with his pupil, and stared fixedly at Mme. de Villeparisis out of his blue eyes.
When the Prince had drunk his coffee and was leaving his table, M. de Norpois rose, hastened towards him and with a majestic wave of his arm, himself retiring into the background, presented him to Mme. de Villeparisis. And during the next few minutes while the Prince was standing beside their table, M. de Norpois never ceased for an instant to keep his azure pupils trained on Mme. de Villeparisis, from the weakness or severity of an old lover, principally from fear of her making one of those mistakes in Italian which he had relished but which he dreaded. Whenever she said anything to the Prince that was not quite accurate he corrected her mistake and stared into the eyes of the abashed and docile Marquise with the steady intensity of a hypnotist.
A waiter came to tell me that my mother was waiting for me, I went to her and made my apologies to Mme. Sazerat, saying that I had been interested to see Mme. de Villeparisis. At the sound of this name, Mme. Sazerat turned pale and seemed about to faint. Controlling herself with an effort: “Mme. de Villeparisis, who was Mlle. de Bouillon?” she inquired.
“Yes.”
“Couldn’t I just get a glimpse of her for a moment? It has been the desire of my life.”
“Then there is no time to lose, Madame, for she will soon have finished her dinner. But how do you come to take such an interest in her?”
“Because Mme. de Villeparisis was, before her second marriage, the Duchesse d’Havre, beautiful as an angel, wicked as a demon, who drove my father out of his senses, ruined him and then forsook him immediately. Well, she may have behaved to him like any girl out of the gutter, she may have been the cause of our having to live, my family and myself, in a humble position at Combray; now that my father is dead, my consolation is to think that he was in love with the most beautiful woman of his generation, and as I have never set eyes on her, it will, after all, be a pleasure….”
I escorted Mme. Sazerat, trembling with emotion, to the restaurant and pointed out Mme. de Villeparisis.
But, like a blind person who turns his face in the wrong direction, so Mme. Sazerat did not bring her gaze to rest upon the table at which Mme. de Villeparisis was dining, but, looking towards another part of the room, said:
“But she must have gone, I don’t see her in the place you’re pointing to.”
And she continued to gaze round the room, in quest of the loathed, adored vision that had haunted her imagination for so long.
“Yes, there she is, at the second table.”
“Then we can’t be counting from the same point. At what I call the second table there are only two people, an old gentleman and a little hunchbacked, red-faced woman, quite hideous.”
“That is she!”
In the meantime, Mme. de Villeparisis having asked M. de Norpois to make Prince Foggi sit down, a friendly conversation followed among the three of them; they discussed politics, the Prince declared that he was not interested in the fate of the Cabinet and would spend another week at least at Venice. He hoped that in the interval all
