A little before eleven that evening, Marianne emerged from her room and made her way to the great salon. The guests who had not been present at the dinner were beginning to arrive and the party about to begin. The courtyard and the street had been filled for several minutes past with the rattle of carriages and the jingle of harness, accompanied by the shouts of coachmen and lackeys, almost drowning the strains of violins rising from below.
Passing a long mirror, Marianne paused. However little enthusiasm she felt for the evening, she knew she looked her best. Her dress of almond green tulle suited her to perfection, although she acknowledged some doubts about the deep décolletage. Despite the small spray of lilac at its lowest point, it was cut to the very limits of decency, displaying to advantage the golden skin and full, rich curves of her breasts and shoulders. The hands that held the music of the song she was to sing were clad in long, lilac mittens and there were a few sprays of lilac caught up with ribbons of green tulle among the crown of glossy, dark ringlets piled high on her head. Marianne decided she looked very nice. This was a discovery she owed to Paris, to Leroy and to this elegant household who had taught her to understand her own beauty. Until then, she had not really been aware of it, although she had already discovered her power to arouse desire in men. But now, she was sure of it. Perhaps because a man like Talleyrand had told her. He had taught her, in a way, to look at herself and she was not yet tired of the novel enjoyment.
She lingered a moment before the glass, enjoying her own radiant reflection enhanced by the soft candlelight. Her green eyes were sparkling and there was a moist sheen on her lips, and suddenly, Marianne sighed. How she would have loved to look as beautiful as this a year ago! Then, perhaps Francis would have loved her for herself and not for her fortune. Perhaps they might really have been happy together! But Francis was dead and this dazzling reflection was only the ghost of Marianne d'Asselnat inhabiting the body of a stranger, a homeless wanderer whose flesh was already a woman's flesh but whose heart held nothing now but emptiness. And yet, it would have been good to love and be loved, to make of this useless beauty a gift for the eyes of a man in love.
She saw her reflected image part its lips and shape them into a kiss and closed her eyes, overcome by a sudden languor. She opened them again almost at once with a little cry. A pair of arms were round her and a pair of warm lips pressed hungrily against the nape of her neck. She saw herself in the glass, held prisoner by two anonymous but trembling hands. A head of which she could make out nothing at first beyond dark, curly hair, was buried in her shoulder. She struggled as hard as she could, lips tight closed to prevent herself crying out, and finally succeeded in breaking her attacker's grip and sending him reeling from a blow that would have done credit to a washerwoman. He staggered back against the wrought iron balusters and only luck saved him from plunging head-first down the stairs. Not until then did Marianne recognize Charlotte's tutor, Monsieur Fercoc.
'You? But what possessed you? Are you mad?'
'I believe – oh, I daresay I may be! I lost my head – and my spectacles. Oh, Lord! I suppose you can't see them anywhere? All I can see of you is a green mist – I am a fool, indeed!'
'Indeed you are!' Marianne agreed. Her anger had vanished entirely and she felt only an overwhelming urge to laugh. Fercoc, blinking and groping blindly at the empty air, was more comical than alarming. He seemed dreadfully upset and perfectly harmless.
Catching the gleam of his spectacles from the floor beneath a gilded console table, she picked them up and having first assured herself that they had suffered no damage in their fall, replaced them on the tutor's nose, inquiring wickedly:
'And can you see better now?'
'Oh! Yes – oh! Thank you! How kind you are, how very—'
'How very foolish you should say. My dear sir, I have returned good for ill. Will you be good enough to tell me what this assault might signify?'
With the recovery of his spectacles, Fercoc had also recovered both his manners and his confusion. He hung his head.
'I ask your pardon, Mademoiselle Marianne. As I said, I lost my head. You were looking at yourself in the mirror and you were so lovely, so luminous, so exactly the way I see you in my dreams—'
'You dream about me?' She asked with instinctive coquetry.
'Very often – but not as much as I should like! I wish that I could dream of you every night because at night you notice me, you come to me – and then I dare such things, in my dreams. I thought I was still dreaming.'
There was such warmth and fervour in his voice that Marianne was quite disarmed. She smiled and looked at him with more attention. If he did not look always so timid and down-trodden, she thought, he would be quite a nice looking boy. His eyes behind his spectacles were kind and gentle, too gentle. The eyes of a devoted dog, not of a lover! All the other eyes she had seen bent on her had been masterful and demanding. Francis' eyes had been cold, Jean Le Dru's hot and fierce, while that other, the impudent American who thought that he had bought her, had had eyes like a bird of prey; not one of them had had eyes like these, soft and heavy with untold tenderness which went some way to banish her distrust of men.
'Do you forgive me?' He asked timidly. 'You are not angry with me?'
'No, I am not angry. It is not your fault – if you love me.'
It was a statement rather than a question. She knew that this boy loved her. He would not have looked at her like that had it been simple desire. It was a new and rather refreshing experience. The young man's eyes lit up at her words.
'Oh! You understand? You know I love you.'
'It was not hard to guess. And I have only just found out.'
'And – do you think that, one day, you—'
'That one day I might love you?' Marianne's smile was sad. 'How can you ask me that? I like you and I think we can be friends – but as for love! I do not know if I can love again.'
'Then, you have been in love?' he said in a low voice.
'Yes. And my life has been one long regret ever since. So, please, be kind and never speak to me of love.'
'And he?' Fercoc muttered with sudden violence. 'Does he never speak to you of love?'
'He? Who is he?'
'The prince. I may be shortsighted but with my spectacles I can see clearly enough. I have seen him look at you with his cold snake's eyes.'
Marianne stepped closer and gave the tutor's cheek a gentle, sisterly pat.
'I should not think a snake's eyes so very ardent! So let us have no more nonsense, my friend. The prince's looks mean nothing, to me of all people.'
'And yet I thought – that she had sent you here for him more than for her.'
There was a rustle of tulle as Marianne's hands dropped heavily to her side. It seemed that once again she had fallen into a trap. But now, the boy's innocence annoyed her. Perhaps because it echoed too clearly her own suspicions as to Fouché's private intentions regarding her. She saw that apart from the Countess de Périgord, who knew the truth more or less, everyone she met in this house with some knowledge of its master could have but one idea, that although she might spend her days with the princess her nights must belong to the prince. She had had more than enough of being taken for something she was not. It was insufferable! And this boy was no better than all the rest!
Alarmed by her silence, Fercoc was about to say something more but she silenced him with a gesture.
'No. Don't say any more. I have no time. I must go down. But let me tell you one thing, that whatever you may believe, I am not here for the prince. Good evening to you, Monsieur Fercoc.'
He made an effort to detain her.
'Mademoiselle – one moment – if I have annoyed you—'
But Marianne was no longer listening. The moment's gentleness had passed. He leaned over the baluster and watched her glide swiftly down the stairs, light as an iridescent shade, unaware that her irritation was directed more against herself than him. She was running away from her own weakness as well as from the image that others seemed determined to make of her. The love that he had offered her might have been sweet and soothing. Why did he have to spoil its freshness with his clumsy suspicions? They were insulting and irrelevant. Were there really only three kinds of men, cynics, brutes and fools? Would there never be one who was different?
At her approach, the footman's white-gloved hand pushed open the small door in the panelling of the great salon, which enabled her to avoid entering by the main double doors. She was met by a wave of light and heat, perfume and music. The great white and gold room, adorned with huge banks of pale pink tulips sent that very morning from the hot houses of Valencay, glittered at its most brilliant in the light of immense crystal chandeliers ablaze with innumerable candles. It was filled with a cheerful hubbub of conversation, punctuated by the flutter of fans, the silky swish of trains brushing the carpets, almost drowning invisible violins. Gowns shimmered, diamonds glittered and against a background of white uniforms, Russian or Austrian, that proclaimed the prince's cosmopolitan hospitality, Marianne beheld the gorgeous purple and gold of a marshal of the Empire and recognized the features of Leonine de Ney, Duke of Elchingen. She saw the Duchess of Courland reclining on a sofa wearing a plumed pink turban. Dorothée de Périgord, who was seated next to a tall, thin, talkative woman, Countess Kielmannsegg, smiled and beckoned to her. Last of all, she saw Talleyrand standing watching her. Her eye, at first drawn by the prince, a sombre and magnificent figure in a plain but perfectly cut black coat studded with foreign decorations, moved on insensibly to the other and still taller figure, also in black, standing beside him.
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