At length, in order to realise a long-cherished dream of his, he had bought a country-house.
While Frederick was talking to the picture-dealer’s clerk, Mademoiselle Vatnaz suddenly made her appearance, and was disappointed at not seeing Arnoux. He would, perhaps, be remaining away two days longer. The clerk advised her “to go there” — she could not go there; to write a letter — she was afraid that the letter might get lost. Frederick offered to be the bearer of it himself. She rapidly scribbled off a letter, and implored of him to let nobody see him delivering it.
Forty minutes afterwards, he found himself at Saint-Cloud. The house, which was about a hundred paces farther away than the bridge, stood half-way up the hill. The garden-walls were hidden by two rows of linden-trees, and a wide lawn descended to the bank of the river. The railed entrance before the door was open, and Frederick went in.
Arnoux, stretched on the grass, was playing with a litter of kittens. This amusement appeared to absorb him completely. Mademoiselle Vatnaz’s letter drew him out of his sleepy idleness.
“The deuce! the deuce! — this is a bore! She is right, though; I must go.”
Then, having stuck the missive into his pocket, he showed the young man through the grounds with manifest delight. He pointed out everything — the stable, the carthouse, the kitchen. The drawing-room was at the right, on the side facing Paris, and looked out on a floored arbour, covered over with clematis. But presently a few harmonious notes burst forth above their heads: Madame Arnoux, fancying that there was nobody near, was singing to amuse herself. She executed quavers, trills, arpeggios. There were long notes which seemed to remain suspended in the air; others fell in a rushing shower like the spray of a waterfall; and her voice passing out through the Venetian blind, cut its way through the deep silence and rose towards the blue sky. She ceased all at once, when M. and Madame Oudry, two neighbours, presented themselves.
Then she appeared herself at the top of the steps in front of the house; and, as she descended, he caught a glimpse of her foot. She wore little open shoes of reddish-brown leather, with three straps crossing each other so as to draw just above her stockings a wirework of gold.
Those who had been invited arrived. With the exception of Maître Lefaucheur, an advocate, they were the same guests who came to the Thursday dinners. Each of them had brought some present — Dittmer a Syrian scarf, Rosenwald a scrap-book of ballads, Burieu a water-colour painting, Sombary one of his own caricatures, and Pellerin a charcoal-drawing, representing a kind of dance of death, a hideous fantasy, the execution of which was rather poor. Hussonnet dispensed with the formality of a present.
Frederick was waiting to offer his, after the others.
She thanked him very much for it. Thereupon, he said:
“Why, ‘tis almost a debt. I have been so much annoyed — — “
“At what, pray?” she returned. “I don’t understand.”
“Come! dinner is waiting!” said Arnoux, catching hold of his arm; then in a whisper: “You are not very knowing, certainly!”
Nothing could well be prettier than the dining-room, painted in water-green. At one end, a nymph of stone was dipping her toe in a basin formed like a shell. Through the open windows the entire garden could be seen with the long lawn flanked by an old Scotch fir, three-quarters stripped bare; groups of flowers swelled it out in unequal plots; and at the other side of the river extended in a wide semicircle the Bois de Boulogne, Neuilly, Sèvres, and Meudon. Before the railed gate in front a canoe with sail outspread was tacking about.
They chatted first about the view in front of them, then about scenery in general; and they were beginning to plunge into discussions when Arnoux, at half-past nine o’clock, ordered the horse to be put to the carriage.
“Would you like me to go back with you?” said Madame Arnoux.
“Why, certainly!” and, making her a graceful bow: “You know well, madame, that it is impossible to live without you!”
Everyone congratulated her on having so good a husband.
“Ah! it is because I am not the only one,” she replied quietly, pointing towards her little daughter.
Then, the conversation having turned once more on painting, there was some talk about a Ruysdaél, for which Arnoux expected a big sum, and Pellerin asked him if it were true that the celebrated Saul Mathias from London had come over during the past month to make him an offer of twenty-three thousand francs for it.
“‘Tis a positive fact!” and turning towards Frederick: “That was the very same gentleman I brought with me a few days ago to the Alhambra, much against my will, I assure you, for these English are by no means amusing companions.”
Frederick, who suspected that Mademoiselle Vatnaz’s letter contained some reference to an intrigue, was amazed at the facility with which my lord Arnoux found a way of passing it off as a perfectly honourable transaction; but his new lie, which was quite needless, made the young man open his eyes in speechless astonishment.
The picture-dealer added, with an air of simplicity:
“What’s the name, by-the-by, of that young fellow, your friend?”
“Deslauriers,” said Frederick quickly.
And, in order to repair the injustice which he felt he had done to his comrade, he praised him as one who possessed remarkable ability.
“Ah! indeed? But he doesn’t look such a fine fellow as the other — the clerk in the wagon-office.”
Frederick bestowed a mental imprecation on Dussardier. She would now be taking it for granted that he associated with the common herd.
Then they began to talk about the ornamentation of the capital — the new districts of the city — and the worthy Oudry happened to refer to M. Dambreuse as one of the big speculators.
Frederick, taking advantage of the opportunity to make a good figure, said he was acquainted with that gentleman. But Pellerin launched into a harangue against shopkeepers — he saw no difference between them, whether they were sellers of candles or of money. Then Rosenwald and Burieu talked about old china; Arnoux chatted with Madame Oudry about gardening; Sombary, a comical character of the old school, amused himself by chaffing her husband, referring to him sometimes as “Odry,” as if he were the actor of that name, and remarking that he must be descended from Oudry, the dog-painter, seeing that the bump of the animals was visible on his forehead. He even wanted to feel M. Oudry’s skull; but the latter excused himself on account of his wig; and the dessert ended with loud bursts of laughter.
When they had taken their coffee, while they smoked, under the linden-trees, and strolled about the garden for some time, they went out for a walk along the river.
The party stopped in front of a fishmonger’s shop, where a man was washing eels. Mademoiselle Marthe wanted to look at them. He emptied the box in which he had them out on the grass; and the little girl threw herself on her knees in order to catch them, laughed with delight, and then began to scream with terror. They all got spoiled, and Arnoux paid for them.
He next took it into his head to go out for a sail in the cutter.
One side of the horizon was beginning to assume a pale aspect, while on the other side a wide strip of orange colour showed itself in the sky, deepening into purple at the summits of the hills, which
