Madame Schontz was a pretty enough woman to put a very high price on the interest on her beauty, while reserving absolute ownership for Lousteau, the man of her heart. Like all those women who get the name in Paris of /Lorettes/, from the Church of Notre Dame de Lorette, round about which they dwell, she lived in the Rue Flechier, a stone's throw from Lousteau. This lady took a pride and delight in teasing her friends by boasting of having a Wit for her lover.
These details of Lousteau's life and fortune are indispensable, for this penury and this bohemian existence of a man to whom Parisian luxury had become a necessity, were fated to have a cruel influence on Dinah's life. Those to whom the bohemia of Paris is familiar will now understand how it was that, by the end of a fortnight, the journalist, up to his ears in the literary environment, could laugh about his Baroness with his friends and even with Madame Schontz. To such readers as regard such things as utterly mean, it is almost useless to make excuses which they will not accept.
"What did you do at Sancerre?" asked Bixiou the first time he met Lousteau.
"I did good service to three worthy provincials--a Receiver-General of Taxes, a little cousin of his, and a Public Prosecutor, who for ten years had been dancing round and round one of the hundred 'Tenth Muses' who adorn the Departments," said he. "But they had no more dared to touch her than we touch a decorated cream at dessert till some strong-minded person has made a hole in it.""Poor boy!" said Bixiou. "I said you had gone to Sancerre to turn Pegasus out to grass.""Your joke is as stupid as my Muse is handsome," retorted Lousteau.
"Ask Bianchon, my dear fellow."
"A Muse and a Poet! A homoeopathic cure then!" said Bixiou.
On the tenth day Lousteau received a letter with the Sancerre post-mark.
"Good! very good!" said Lousteau.
" 'Beloved friend, idol of my heart and soul----' twenty pages of it!
all at one sitting, and dated midnight! She writes when she finds herself alone. Poor woman! Ah, ha! And a postscript--" 'I dare not ask you to write to me as I write, every day; still, Ihope to have a few lines from my dear one every week, to relieve my mind.'--What a pity to burn it all! it is really well written," said Lousteau to himself, as he threw the ten sheets of paper into the fire after having read them. "That woman was born to reel off copy!"Lousteau was not much afraid of Madame Schontz, who really loved him for himself, but he had supplanted a friend in the heart of a Marquise. This Marquise, a lady nowise coy, sometimes dropped in unexpectedly at his rooms in the evening, arriving veiled in a hackney coach; and she, as a literary woman, allowed herself to hunt through all his drawers.
A week later, Lousteau, who hardly remembered Dinah, was startled by another budget from Sancerre--eight leaves, sixteen pages! He heard a woman's step; he thought it announced a search from the Marquise, and tossed these rapturous and entrancing proofs of affections into the fire--unread!
"A woman's letter!" exclaimed Madame Schontz, as she came in. "The paper, the wax, are scented--""Here you are, sir," said a porter from the coach office, setting down two huge hampers in the ante-room. "Carriage paid. Please to sign my book.""Carriage paid!" cried Madame Schontz. "It must have come from Sancerre.""Yes, madame," said the porter.
"Your Tenth Muse is a remarkably intelligent woman," said the courtesan, opening one of the hampers, while Lousteau was writing his name. "I like a Muse who understands housekeeping, and who can make game pies as well as blots. And, oh! what beautiful flowers!" she went on, opening the second hamper. "Why, you could get none finer in Paris!--And here, and here! A hare, partridges, half a roebuck!--We will ask your friends and have a famous dinner, for Athalie has a special talent for dressing venison."Lousteau wrote to Dinah; but instead of writing from the heart, he was clever. The letter was all the more insidious; it was like one of Mirabeau's letters to Sophie. The style of a true lover is transparent. It is a clear stream which allows the bottom of the heart to be seen between two banks, bright with the trifles of existence, and covered with the flowers of the soul that blossom afresh every day, full of intoxicating beauty--but only for two beings. As soon as a love letter has any charm for a third reader, it is beyond doubt the product of the head, not of the heart. But a woman will always be beguiled; she always believes herself to be the determining cause of this flow of wit.
By the end of December Lousteau had ceased to read Dinah's letters;they lay in a heap in a drawer of his chest that was never locked, under his shirts, which they scented.
Then one of those chances came to Lousteau which such bohemians ought to clutch by every hair. In the middle of December, Madame Schontz, who took a real interest in Etienne, sent to beg him to call on her one morning on business.
"My dear fellow, you have a chance of marrying.""I can marry very often, happily, my dear.""When I say marrying, I mean marrying well. You have no prejudices: Ineed not mince matters. This is the position: A young lady has got into trouble; her mother knows nothing of even a kiss. Her father is an honest notary, a man of honor; he has been wise enough to keep it dark. He wants to get his daughter married within a fortnight, and he will give her a fortune of a hundred and fifty thousand francs--for he has three other children; but--and it is not a bad idea--he will add a hundred thousand francs, under the rose, hand to hand, to cover the damages. They are an old family of Paris citizens, Rue des Lombards----""Well, then, why does not the lover marry her?""Dead."
