Pride: One of the Seven Cardinal Sins. Эжен Сю

know very well."

      "I haven't the slightest idea what you mean."

      "Come, come, my dear Madame Barbançon, why will you not be perfectly frank with me? I was one of Madame de Beaumesnil's most intimate friends, and I know all about that orphan – you know – that orphan."

      "That orphan?"

      "Yes, that young girl, I need say no more. You see I know all about it."

      "Then if you know all about it, why do you come here to question me?"

      "I come in the interest of the young girl – you know who I mean – to ask you to give me her address, as I have a very important communication to make to her."

      "Really?"

      "Really."

      "Well, well, did anybody ever hear the equal of that?" snorted the housekeeper, indignantly.

      "But my dear Madame Barbançon, what is there so very extraordinary in what I am saying to you?"

      "This," yelled the housekeeper, "this – that you are nothing more or less than a miserable old roué!"

      "I?"

      "Yes, a miserable scoundrel who is trying to bribe me, and make me blab all I know by promises of gold."

      "But, my dear madame, I assure you – "

      "But understand me once for all: if that hump of yours was stuffed with napoleons, and you authorised me to help myself to all I wanted, I wouldn't tell you a word more than I chose to. That is the kind of a woman I am!"

      "But, Madame Barbançon, do pray listen to me. You are a worthy and honest woman."

      "Yes, I flatter myself that I am."

      "And very justly, I am sure. That being the case, if you would only hear me to the end you would answer very differently, I am sure, for – "

      "I should do nothing of the kind. Oh, I understand, you came here intending to pump me and get all you could out of me, but, thank Heaven, I was smart enough to see through you from the very first, and now I tell you once for all you had better let me alone."

      "But one word, I beg, my dear friend," pleaded the marquis, trying to take his irascible companion's hand.

      "Don't touch me, you vile libertine," shrieked the housekeeper, springing back in prudish terror. "I know you now for the serpent that you are! First it was 'madame,' and then 'my dear madame,' and now 'my dear friend,' and you'll wind up with 'my treasure,' I suppose!"

      "But Madame Barbançon, I do assure you – "

      "I have always heard it said that humpbacked people were worse than monkeys," exclaimed the housekeeper, recoiling still further. "If you don't take yourself off, sir, and at once, I'll call the neighbours; I'll yell for the police; I'll cry fire!"

      "You must be crazy, woman," exclaimed the marquis, exasperated by the complete failure of his efforts so far as Madame Barbançon was concerned. "What the devil do you mean by all this pretended indignation and prudery? You are very nearly as ugly as I am, and we are not calculated to tempt each other. I say once more, and for the last time, and you had better weigh my words well, I came here in the hope of being of assistance to a poor and worthy young girl whom you must know. And if you do know her, you are doing her an irreparable wrong – do you understand me? – by refusing to tell me where she is and to assist me in finding her. Consider well – the future of this young girl is in your hands, and I am sure you are really too kind-hearted to wish to injure a worthy girl who has never harmed you."

      M. de Maillefort spoke with so much feeling, his tone was so earnest and sincere, that Madame Barbançon began to feel that there was really no just cause for her distrust, after all.

      "Well, monsieur, I may have been mistaken in thinking that you were trying to make love to me," she began.

      "You certainly were."

      "But as for telling you anything I oughtn't to tell you, you won't make me do that, however hard you may try. It is quite possible that you're a respectable man, and that your intentions are good, but I'm an honest woman, too, and I know what I ought and what I ought not to tell; so, though you might cut me in pieces, you wouldn't get a treacherous word out of me. That is the kind of a woman I am!"

      "Where the devil can one hope to find a woman of sense?" M. de Maillefort said to himself as he left Madame Barbançon, quite despairing of getting any information out of the worthy housekeeper, and realising only too well the futility of his first efforts to discover Madame de Beaumesnil's illegitimate child.

      CHAPTER XIII

      UNEXPECTED CONSOLATION

      Two months had elapsed since the death of Madame de Beaumesnil, and great activity reigned in the house of M. le Baron de la Rochaiguë, who had been appointed guardian of Ernestine de Beaumesnil at a family council convoked shortly after the demise of the countess.

      The servants of the household were hurrying to and fro arranging articles of furniture, under the superintendence of the baron, his wife, and his sister, Mlle. Helena de la Rochaiguë, an old maid about forty-five years of age, whose plain black dress, downcast eyes, white, pinched face, and severely arranged white hair made her look very much like a religieuse, though she had never taken monastic vows.

      M. de la Rochaiguë, a very tall, thin man, between sixty and seventy years of age, was quite bald. He had a receding forehead and chin, prominent blue eyes, and a long nose. His lips were wreathed in a perpetual smile, which displayed exceedingly white, but unusually long, teeth, that imparted a decidedly sheep-like character to his physiognomy. He had an excellent figure, and by holding himself rigidly erect and buttoning his long black coat straight up to his white cravat, he managed to make himself a living copy of the portrait of Canning, "the perfect type of a gentleman statesman," as the baron often remarked.

      M. de la Rochaiguë was not a statesman, however, though he had long aspired to become one. In fact, this ambition had developed into a sort of mania with him. Believing himself an unknown Canning, and being unable to air his eloquence in the councils of the nation, he took advantage of each and every opportunity to make a speech, and always assumed a parliamentary tone and attitude in discussing the most trivial matter.

      One of the most salient characteristics of the baron's oratory was a redundancy of adjectives and adverbs, which seemed to him to treble the effect of his finest thoughts, though if we might venture to adopt the baron's phraseology, we could truly say that nothing could be more insignificant, more commonplace, and more void of meaning than what he styled his thoughts.

      Madame de la Rochaiguë, who was now about forty-five, had been extremely pretty, coquettish, and charming. Her figure was still slender and graceful, but the youthfulness and elaborateness of her toilets seemed ill-suited to one of her mature years.

      The baroness was passionately fond of luxury and display. There was nothing that she loved better than to organise and preside at magnificent entertainments, but unfortunately, her fortune, though considerable, did not correspond with her very expensive tastes. Besides, she had no intention of impoverishing herself; so being an extremely shrewd and economical woman, she managed to enjoy the prestige which lavish expenditure imparts to one by frequently acting as the patroness of the many obscure but enormously rich foreigners or provincials – meteors – who, after dazzling Paris a few years, vanish for ever in darkness and oblivion.

      Madame de la Rochaiguë in such cases did not allow her protégés the slightest liberty, even in the selection of their guests. She gave them a list of the persons they were to entertain, not even granting them permission to invite such of their friends or compatriots as she did not consider worthy to appear in aristocratic society.

      The baroness, holding a high social position herself, could easily launch her clients in the best society, but in the meantime she was really the mistress of their house. It was she alone who planned their entertainments, and it was to her that persons applied for a place on the list of guests bidden to these sumptuous and exclusive reunions.

      It is needless to say that she considered a box at the opera and other fashionable places of amusement an absolute necessity,