The truth of the matter was that Raoul de Mengis had a friend who lived immediately opposite the house in the Rue d’Angoulême, and that he went every morning to smoke a cigar with this friend; the result of this cementing of friendship, of this daily consumption of cigars, was, that, failing to see what took place inside the house, the curtains of which were as closely drawn for him as for the others. Raoul was careful to notice whatever happened in the street outside.

  However, although Monsieur de Mengis had at first paid but little attention, or rather, had appeared to pay but little attention, to his nephew’s disclosures, he had nevertheless been impressed by them, and that so deeply, that he at once wrote to Amaury, asking him for a short interview.

  This took place on the 30th May, a Thursday.

  Amaury received Monsieur de Mengis’ letter as he was leaving the house, and at once complied with the request of an old gentleman whom he truly respected, and who, at all times, had shown him an almost fatherly affection.

  “My dear sir,” said the Count, on seeing him, “allow me first to thank you for your speedy reply to my invitation; I know that you were about to go out when my message reached you, but I shall not detain you long, and am sure you will understand, without my entering into lengthy details, what I wish to consult you about.

  “Am I right in believing that you have promised Monsieur d’Avrigny to watch over his niece? to be her adviser, her guide, her brother?”

  “Yes! sir, I have made such a promise, and I hope to keep it.”

  “Then her good name is dear and sacred to you?”

  “Dearer than my own, sir.”

  “Then I must tell you that a young man,” — and Monsieur de Mengis laid stress on every single word, “blinded no doubt by his passion, for we must make allowance for those who love deeply, is seriously compromising Antoinette by continually walking up and down the street in which she lives; he even pushes his impudence so far as to stop now and again, probably without thinking what he is doing, opposite her windows.”

  “My dear Count, what you tell me is nothing new, I have been aware of this for some time.”

  “But,” Monsieur de Mengis continued, wishing to impress upon one of the two culprits the full gravity of the position, “did you really suppose that, with the exception of yourself, no one knew of this?”

  “I did, sir,” replied Amaury, growing more and more severe, “I thought that I alone knew of this foolery; evidently, I was mistaken.”

  “Well then, you can understand, my dear Monsieur de Léoville,” the Count went on, “that the honour of Antoinette is, indeed, far above any suspicions which such behaviour might give rise to. But — ”

  “But,” interrupted Amaury, “I believe, my dear Count, that you are of my opinion, that such unseemly attentions must be put a stop to, as they are distinctly ill-advised.”

  “This I will admit (and I hope, my dear Monsieur Amaury, that you will pardon my frankness) was my object in asking you to call and see me.”

  “Well! sir,” said Amaury, “I give you my word of honour that, from to-day, this will not happen again.”

  “Your word is quite sufficient, my dear Monsieur Amaury,” replied Monsieur de Mengis, “and from this very moment my eyes and my ears are shut.”

  “And I, sir, can only thank you for having been so frank with me; and for having entrusted me with the task of repressing the attention of a hare-brained and insolent fellow.”

  “Why! what do you mean?”

  “Sir,” said Amaury, bowing gravely, “I have the honour to wish you a very good morning.”

  “Excuse me, my young friend; but I think you must be labouring under some misapprehension, — that you have not Understood my meaning.”

  “Not at all, my dear sir, I have understood you perfectly.”

  And bowing a second time, he waved his hand to Monsieur de Mengis, as if to imply that any more words were unnecessary.

  “Ah! unhappy Philip!” cried Amaury, as he threw himself into his brougham, never doubting for a moment that he was the guilty party; so I was not mistaken, and it really was your royal highness whom I have seen prowling about the house in the Rue d’Angoulême. So you are compromising Antoinette! Egad! I have been itching to lay hands on you this long time, and since a man like Monsieur de Mengis advises me to do so, I shall not spare you.” As the footman closed the door he asked for instructions where to drive, as his master had given no orders.

  “Drive to M. Philippe Auvray’s,” Amaury replied, in a tone which, to a keen observer, was full of menace.

  CHAPTER L.

  IT was a long drive, because Philip, doubtless on account of his being wedded to old habits, still lived in the Quartier Latin.

  Consequently there was ample time, during the drive, for Amaury’s ill-humour to turn into positive anger, and when Orestes reached the door of his former Pylades, we make no exaggeration when we say that a perfect hurricane was raging in his bosom.

  Amaury pulled the bell violently, not even noticing, in his perturbation, that the hare’s foot of St. Nicolas-du-Chardonneret fame, had been transformed into a deer’s foot.

  The door was opened by a stout blousy servant girl.

  With his ever-juvenile freshness, Philip had maintained his old custom of being waited upon by a woman.

  Philip was in his study, his two elbows on his desk, his head buried in his hands, his fingers clutching desperately at his hair; he was studying the legal intricacies connected with a party wall.

  The stout maid, who had not even considered it necessary to ask Amaury his name, before enquiring whether Philip were at home or not, marched on in front of him, and opened the door, announcing the visitor in this simple formula:

  “Sir, here is a gentleman who wishes to see you.”

  Philip looked up with a sigh, which proves that the question of ownership is more fraught with melancholy than might at first appear probable, and a cry of astonishment escaped him on recognising Amaury.

  “What! you, is it?” he exclaimed. “Oh! my dear Amaury, how delighted I am to see you.”

  But Amaury, unmoved by these demonstrations of delight, remained cold and stern.

  “Do you know what brings me here, sir,” he said.

  “Not yet; all I do know is that for the last four or five days I have been trying to make up my mind whether to go and see you or not, and was still undecided.”

  Amaury’s lips curled scornfully and a bitter smile passed across his face.

  “I can understand,” he said, “that you should hesitate.”

  “You can understand that I should hesitate” — the poor young fellow murmured, turning suddenly pale, “then you know — .”

  I know, Monsieur Phillippe,” interrupted Amaury, in a harsh, grating voice, “that Monsieur d’Avrigny has commissioned me to watch over his niece.”

  “I know that I am responsible if any circumstance should arise which might, in any way, be hurtful to this young girl’s reputation.”

  “Apart from this, I know that I have met you three or four times acting the lover beneath her windows, I know that others besides myself have seen you; finally, I know that in all this you are guilty of most culpable thoughtlessness, to say the least, and I come to ask you what you mean by it.”

  “My dear friend,” said Philip, closing his book with the air of a man anxious to give his undivided attention for the time to the subject under discussion, “that is the very reason why, for the last three or four days, I have been hesitating whether to call upon you; I wished to ask your advice on these little matters.”

  “What! little matters !” Amaury indignantly exclaimed; “you designate as ‘little matters ‘such questions as a lady’s honour, reputation, future welfare.”

  “My dear Amaury, surely you know that when I say ‘little matters,’ it is merely a figure of speech; I should have made use of the term ‘great things,’ for true love is indeed a great thing.”

  “Ah! so you have at last put it into words. You admit that you are in love with Antoinette?”

  At once Philippe’s face assumed a most contrite expression.

  “Well! yes! I do admit it, my friend,” said he.

  Amaury crossed his arms, and indignantly raised his eyes to heaven.

  “But, of course, my pretensions are strictly honourable,” Philip continued.

  “You love Antoinette!”

  “My friend,” said Philip, “you may not have heard that another uncle of mine died lately, so I have now an income of fifty thousand francs a year.”

  “What has that to do with the question?”

  “Well! I thought it would be no detriment.”

  “No, of course not, but what complicates matters is that eight months ago you loved Madeleine with as ardent an affection as you now love Antoinette.”

  “Alas! Amaury,” cried Philippe in the saddest tone imaginable, “you open my wound afresh, you torture my already goaded conscience; but allow me ten minutes in which to explain everything, and then instead of blaming me, you will see that I am the first to be pitied.”

  Amaury nodded his head as a sign that he was quite ready to listen, but at the same time pursed up his lips incredulously, as if to imply that he was not so ready to believe.

  “To begin with,” said Philip, “if we are to believe the words of the Gospel, and if to them that love much, much is forgiven, then I hope much will be forgiven me; because I am naturally of a most amorous disposition, to quote our great Molière, and have loved often and passionately. I may truly say, and surely this will but accentuate my claim to Divine indulgence, that up to the present I have loved without the least hope of return. Why! you yourself are aware that I have loved Florence and that I have loved Madeleine. Of course neither suffered any inconvenience from my affection, because, unless you yourself told them of it, they never suspected that I loved them; nevertheless my passion, for the latter in particular, was as deep as it was reverential.

  “You appear not to believe what I say, Amaury, because this last deep affection has not prevented my falling victim to a third passion for a third object. Oh! but if you only knew with what pangs of anguish and remorse this new love has been born in my heart.

  “As to Madeleine, listen well to what I have to say, and let my words be a warning to you, should you ever find yourself in a similar position; as regards Madeleine, I myself was unaware of it. Had anyone warned me of it I should have denied it; had anyone proved it to me, I think I should have felt horrified.

  “But I saw Mademoiselle Antoinette nearly every day, I spoke of Madeleine, of her grace, of her beauty, and -even as we talked of this, I perceived more and more that Antoinette was as graceful, and as beautiful as her cousin. Now, tell me, Amaury, do you think it possible to feast one’s eyes for long on such grace and beauty and not fall madly in love?”

  Amaury, who had grown more and more pensive, sat with his head bent and his hand pressed to his heart, and only replied by a sigh so deep it might have been mistaken for a groan. Philip waited some moments for an explanation of this dismal groan, but seeing that none was forthcoming, he went on, in a solemn voice; “And now I am going to tell you how your unfortunate and too weak-minded friend first became aware of his love.”

  Philip heaved a sigh, compared with which Amaury’s dull groan was the merest trifle, then he continued:

  “To begin with, in spite of myself, and without my being aware of it, my steps invariably strayed, so to speak, in the direction of the Rue d’Angoulême.”

  “Every time I left home, were it in the morning on my way to the Palais de Justice, or in the evening on my way to the Opéra-Comique, for you will remember, Amaury, how fond I have always been of this style of national entertainment, I invariably found myself, after walking absently about for an hour or so, opposite Monsieur d’Avrigny’s house.”

  “I had no hope of seeing her who reigned over my heart, I had no aim, no definite idea; I was drawn, led, guided, by some irresistible power; and this irresistible power, I was compelled to own it to myself, Amaury, was the power of love.”

  Philip paused again, to see what impression this phrase, upon which he rather congratulated himself, had produced upon Amaury; but Amaury contented himself with adding one more wrinkle to the many wrinkles on his brow, and by allowing a second sigh to escape him, deeper and more heart-broken than the first.

  Philip, nothing doubting that the deep meditation in which Amaury was plunged, was the result of his eloquence, continued:

  “The second symptom which revealed me to myself,” and now the speaker attempted to lend to his speaking countenance an expression in harmony with the words he was about to say, “The second symptom was jealousy.

  “When, at the beginning of this month, I saw how charming Miss Antoinette was to you, Amaury, I felt as if I almost hated you; yes, even you, the friend of my childhood. But I soon reflected that, even were you beloved, you, faithful adorer of a cherished memory, could never love again.”

  Amaury shuddered.

  “Oh! “Philip hastened to add, “the suspicion was but short-lived, and, as you see, I hastened to do you justice.

  “But I was filled with something more than spite, more than hatred, more than rage, when it dawned upon me that that coxcomb De Mengis had, in his turn, ingratiated himself in the esteem of her, who, all unknown to myself, had already become so dear to me. He leaned familiarly over the back of her chair, he chatted to her in low tones, he joked with her; in fact he behaved in such a manner as, in the light of my amended ideas regarding yourself, I considered that you alone, her friend from childhood, had any right to do.

  “You cannot imagine how I fumed when I noticed these unmistakeable signs of the good understanding which existed between them; then only did I realize that this anger was the anger of love. ‘But, Amaury, you are not listening.’”

  On the contrary, Amaury was listening only too well. Each word of Philip’s found a mournful echo in his own heart; the hot blood rushed to his head, coursed feverishly through his veins, and buzzed in his ears.

  Philip continued, crushed by this condemnatory silence: “Of course, Amaury, I do not pretend that all this is not a forgetting of old vows, an acknowledgment of unfaithfulness to the memory of Madeleine; but how can it be helped. All men are not, like you, a model of constancy and inflexibility.

  “Then she loved you; she was to be your wife; she had promised to be yours for ever; the sweet thought that you were to be Madeleine’s husband, had twined itself round your heart. Whilst to me it had been but a fond, momentary hope, which you had destroyed at one fell stroke. I am none the less guilty, and have sincerely grieved over my fault and deplored it, and were you to heap upon me the harshest names possible, I should not murmur.

  “Give me a few moment’s more attention, and you will see that there are perhaps some extenuating circumstances, which should be taken into consideration, and should plead for the man who, after having loved Madeleine, has the misfortune to fall in love with Antoinette.”

  “I am listening,” Amaury said with the keenest interest, as he drew his chair nearer to Philip’s.

  CHAPTER LI.

  “IMPRIMIS,” resumed the rival of Cicero and Monsieur Dupin, flattered by the impression which he appeared to be making on his friend, “imprimis, the infidelity of which, at first sight, I seem to be guilty towards Madeleine, is lessened by the fact that my new passion is not offered to a stranger, but to one who has lived beside her; to her friend, her cousin, her sister, who is, so to say, a duplicate of herself, and in whose every gesture, every word, she lives again.

  “To love her, who was her sister, is but to love her again; to love Antoinette, is to continue loving Madeleine.”

  “There is some truth in what you say,” replied Amaury thoughtfully, while unknown to himself, his expression visibly brightened.

  “You see,” Philip cried, with delight, “you admit the justice of my theory yourself.

  “Now you will agree, sccutido, that love is the most uncontrollable, the most spontaneous, the most independent expression of our will, in the whole world.”

  “Unfortunately, yes! “Amaury muttered.

  “That is not all,” Philip rejoined with increasing eloquence; “that is not yet all; if, tertio, my youthful spirit and power of loving have revived in me a strong, living passion, have I the right to sacrifice this natural, legitimate, divine instinct, to conventional ideas which are against all the laws of nature, to false notions of constancy, foreign to mankind, and which Bacon would have classed in his category of idola fori.”

  “Quite true,” Amaury stammered out.

  “Therefore,” Philip continued triumphant in his conclusion of the whole matter, “then you do not entirely blame me, my dear Amaury, you think, do you not, that there are many excuses to be made for my loving Mlle. Antoinette?”

  “But what is it to me, after all,” cried Amaury, “whether you do, or do not love Antoinette.”

  At these words a slight smile of infinite self-conceit played on Philip’s lips.

  “Ah! my dear Amaury,” said Philip mincingly, “that is my own affair.”

  “What! “Amaury exclaimed, “after having compromised Antoinette by your indiscreet behaviour, would your dare insinuate that she has a preference for you?”

  “I say nothing, my dear Amaury; and if I compromise myself by my indiscretions, for I presume you allude to my walks in the Rue d’Angoulême, at least, I do not compromise myself by my words.”

  “Listen to me, sir,” said Amaury, “have you the impertinence to say to my face that you are beloved?”

  “Well! it seems to me that I should say it to you, who are her guardian, rather than to anyone else.”

  “Yes! but still, you would not say it.”

  “And why should I not say it, if it were true? “Philip hastily replied, feeling the blood rush to his head at this unexpected turn of the conversation.