Chapter XIV: Circe and Ulysses

“And do you ask what game she plays?
With me ’tis lost or won;
With thee ’tis playing still; with him
It is not well begun;
But ’tis a game she plays with all
Beneath the sway of the sun.

“Thou seest the card that falls—she knows
The card that followeth;
Her game in thy tongue is called Life,
As ebbs thy daily breath;
When she shall speak, thou’lt learn her tongue,
And know she calls it Death.”
—D. G. ROSSETTI, _The Card-dealer_.

No woman like Madame d’Espaze, with her notoriety, her lovers, her political intriguery, her secret power (how great, a matter for speculation), had ever crossed Gilbert’s path in life. He had time this morning, as he threaded the streets, to make some picture of her to himself. Two types of beauty presented themselves to his imagination; the one dark, voluptuous, imperious, a sort of empress of vice, the other of that fair and child-like mould which rules by cajolery. At the door of the Comtesse’s salon he was still speculating which class would claim her, for his success might depend upon it.

But she belonged to neither. The Marquis beheld, on a small sofa covered with yellow damask, a woman—a girl almost—wearing a simple virginal gown of light Indian muslin, made after the new mode. She rose as Château-Foix was announced, and he was struck with her grace, her height, and the grave, nunlike style of her beauty. Here were no meretricious enhancements; she was not painted, and her beautiful brown hair, gathered simply into a knot, was innocent of powder or of any sort of adornment. The trailing folds of white fell from breast to foot. Gilbert was taken aback, he scarcely knew why. The Comtesse threw him a look of calm enquiry out of her long placid eyes, ere she responded to his bow.

“You have come to see me on business, Monsieur, I understand,” she said, as she rose from her curtsy. “I regret that I could not receive you last night. Be seated, I pray.”

Gilbert bowed again slightly, but remained standing. “I have come, Madame,” he said, with great directness, “to know if you can give me any news of my unfortunate cousin, the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay.”

Madame d’Espaze’s delicate eyebrows went up. “Mon Dieu! Monsieur le Marquis, you take away my breath,” she said. “Is M. de Saint-Ermay lost, then?”

“He has been arrested,” replied Château-Foix shortly. Little versed as he was in the ways of women, he saw that she was going to play with him, and the prospect was not alluring.

“Ah, he has been arrested, the poor Saint-Ermay?” queried the Comtesse. “I am desolated, but what would you have? Politics is a dangerous game.” She breathed out a light little sigh, and sank down on the sofa. “You should have kept him out of it, Monsieur le Marquis.”

To this remark, delivered with an indescribable airy malice, Gilbert made no answer for the moment. But he took the chair which his hostess had previously indicated to him, and, once seated, he observed coldly: “You will pardon me for saying, Madame, that this is not a case for levity.”

“But, Monsieur,” retorted the lady, “I am all seriousness. Though I do not quite see,” she added, pursing her lips, “why it should be demanded of me.”

“You did not know then, Madame, that M. de Saint-Ermay was in prison?” asked Gilbert, looking at her steadily.

Madame d’Espaze shrugged her shoulders. “How should I?”

“Then I must tell you about it,” replied Château-Foix. “I found, a short time ago, that my cousin was becoming entangled in a scheme which did not commend itself to me—a scheme which I need not particularise to you, Madame, and one in which, to be frank, I suspected a trap. I therefore came to Paris; I endeavoured to dissuade him from further compromising himself, and especially from continuing his visits to the chief meeting-place of the two parties—your house. I failed; and the Vicomte attended your salon last Saturday night, as he had intended. This morning he was arrested, and I am ignorant even of the place of his imprisonment.”

Madame d’Espaze had listened quite gravely to this recital, and now said, without any particular expression in her lazy voice: “I do not know, Monsieur le Marquis, why you are telling me all this.”

“You do not, then,” retorted her guest, “see any connection between the constant meetings of Vergniaud and his followers with these young men at your house, his denunciation of them yesterday in the Manège, and their almost simultaneous arrest? I do.”

The attack was so direct, and in all probability so unexpected, that the Comtesse for the first time showed signs of discomposure. She got up and moved away, her white robe trailing softly on the shining floor. Half over her shoulder she said: “You talk very strangely, M. de Château-Foix.”

“Yet I think that what I say is just,” replied Gilbert, on his feet.

“I wonder——” said the Comtesse. Then she turned and faced him. “But even if it were, it is not a way in which I should allow many people to speak to me in my house.”

“But not many people come on my mission.”

“Mon Dieu, no, fortunately!” exclaimed Madame d’Espaze with vivacity. “Fortunately, people do not often come to me and expect me to make myself responsible for every young hothead who gets himself into trouble with the authorities. Fortunately, that chair has not often served as a pulpit nor this sofa as a bench for the congregation. . . . Never mind, Monsieur le Marquis, but resume your sermon!”

“I was not aware, Madame, that I was preaching,” said Château-Foix a trifle stiffly. “It was not my intention. I come rather as a suppliant.”

“With what a menacing tone!” exclaimed the Comtesse, with a little laugh and a shrug of her beautiful shoulders. She trailed slowly back to the sofa and sank on the cushions. “And for what, pray, are you supplicating?”

“For my cousin’s release,” said the Marquis.

Half leaning back among the yellow cushions the Comtesse d’Espaze surveyed him indolently as he stood before her, very straight, his hand on the back of his chair. “Why not ask for the moon, Monsieur le Marquis?” she said at last.

“I do not admit the suitability of the metaphor,” retorted Gilbert, controlling himself with difficulty. “I am asking for the life of a friend of your own, Madame. Surely my request is not a very strange one.”

“And what makes you think that M. de Saint-Ermay is a friend of mine?” she asked at that. “You abound in strange suppositions, Monsieur.”

“Because I know my cousin rather well, Madame,” answered the Marquis. “And since I have seen you——” he concluded, bowing.

“Merci, Monsieur!” cried the lady. “And because, as I am to understand, Monsieur le Vicomte has done me the honour to admire me, I am to feel that his blood is on my head?”

“If not responsibility, I should expect you to feel interest,” retorted Gilbert sternly. “But if you have no concern for the boy, I am only wasting your time and my own.” He made a movement as if to take his leave.

Madame d’Espaze put out her hand. “Stay a moment, M. de Château-Foix. I am not as insensible as you think to the fate of my friends. But you must see that I cannot afford to sacrifice my party to my personal friendships. You will say that politics is not a game for a woman—I am sure that is one of your ideas—but since I have taken it up I must play it. And these people are not friends; they only come here to pay me compliments, and I have had my fill of those for more years than I should care to acknowledge to you. Those are not the stakes for which I play now. . . . I wonder why I am saying these things to you. . . . You have come to the wrong person; it is nothing to me—not the snap of a finger—if all these young fools pay the penalty of their folly.” She was on her feet by now, walking rapidly about. “You have come to the wrong person,” she reiterated.

“Madame, I do not think I have,” said Gilbert quietly.

Suddenly she turned on him. “You credit me, I suppose, with being Louis’ mistress?”

“That is not a matter which concerns or interests me, Madame. I want my cousin’s life, not an account of the way in which he spends it.”

The Comtesse stopped in her restless walk as if struck by a sudden idea. “Then you do not know—you do not consider yourself his mentor?”

“Most certainly not.”

She looked at him with an interest which, undisguised as it was, held something more concealed behind it.

“Have you seen much of him lately?—No, I know that you have not. Do you know that he fought the Comte de Bercy the morning after you came to Paris?”

“Yes,” said Gilbert, wondering whither this was tending, “I do know it.”

“But do you know why?”

“No.”

“You are a singular person, M. de Château-Foix,” said his hostess slowly. “If you will take my advice—but of course you will not—do not try to find out!” She turned away again and said, after a moment’s pause: “And now, if I cannot help you, what will you do?”

“Ah, no, Madame,” returned Gilbert, shaking his head with the glimmer of a smile. “If you will not help me, I dare not reveal to you such poor resources as I may have, independent of your aid.”

“In other words, I must be ally or enemy? You have no liking for half-measures, I see, Monsieur le Marquis. . . . Well, no more have I. And I am convinced, from what I have already seen, that I prefer you when you smile to when you frown at me. So . . . let us be allies. Will that satisfy you?”

“Madame——” began Gilbert, scarcely daring to believe her words, accompanied by that brilliant and half-mocking smile.

Madame d’Espaze held up both her slim hands. “No thanks, Monsieur, I beg. But instead of them, tell me, since you are so clear-sighted, how I am to set about this business of Monsieur le Vicomte?”

And under her malicious gaze Château-Foix had the certain conviction that she meant to see how he would avoid saying in so many words: “You have but to ask your lover for his release.” He began a careful phrase full of generalities about influence, but ere he had finished it she seemed to have lost interest in the reply to her question, and he stopped and looked at her, as she stood in the middle of the white and gold room with her head bent and a hand to her cheek. It seemed to him quite a long time that she stood thus, till she said reflectively: “Yes, I think I can do it. It will not be easy, however. You shall have an order of release to-day if I can possibly procure it. Do I know where you are staying?”

The Marquis told her.

“There is one condition—one thing you must promise me—both for Louis’ sake and . . . that of others. Once he is out of prison he must leave Paris immediately.”

It was the least that could be expected, and a condition that did not displease Gilbert at all—or would not have done so two days ago. “I promise it on my honour,” he said. “What can I do—what can I possibly do—to show my gratitude?”

The Comtesse spread out her hands. “You can keep a better eye on your scapegrace of a cousin,” she said lightly. “I make him over to you. . . . Next time, too, that you are in Paris, my friend, come and see me on your own account. You have just seen how amenable I am to good influence.” She floated nearer to him, and gave him her hand, bare of rings and incredibly small and white.

Gilbert raised it to his lips. “I shall be only too happy, Comtesse. There is no means by which I can thank you sufficiently.”

“You have only yourself to thank, M. de Château-Foix, for I assure you that I have not that good heart to which I have been afraid you would refer. Yet if it is any consolation to you, Marquis, reflect that, in this changing world, I may some day be needing help from you. . . . But that is not why I am your ally now.” She smiled at him charmingly.