第108章 THE NORMAL HISTORY OF AN UPPER-CLASS GRISETTE(5)

"I can conceive," she said one night, after lashing the horses for some time with her lively wit, "that princes and rich men should set their hearts on horse-flesh, but only for the good of the country, not for the paltry satisfactions of a betting man. If you had a stud farm on your property and could raise a thousand or twelve hundred horses, and if all the horses of France and of Navarre could enter into one great solemn competition, it would be fine; but you buy animals as the managers of theatres trade in artists; you degrade an institution to a gambling game; you make a Bourse of legs, as you make a Bourse of stocks. It is unworthy. Don't you spend sixty thousand francs sometimes merely to read in the newspapers: 'Lelia, belonging to Monsieur de Rochefide beat by a length Fleur-de-Genet the property of Monsieur le Duc de Rhetore'? You had much better give that money to poets, who would carry you in prose and verse to immortality, like the late Montyon."By dint of being prodded, the marquis was brought to see the hollowness of the turf; he realized that economy of sixty thousand francs; and the next year Madame Schontz remarked to him,--"I don't cost you anything now, Arthur."

Many rich men envied the marquis and endeavored to entice Madame Schontz away from him, but like the Russian prince they wasted their old age.

"Listen to me," she said to Finot, now become immensely rich. "I am certain that Rochefide would forgive me a little passion if I fell in love with any one, but one doesn't leave a marquis with a kind heart like that for a /parvenu/ like you. You couldn't keep me in the position in which Arthur has placed me; he has made me half a wife and a lady, and that's more than you could do even if you married me."This was the last nail which clinched the fetters of that happy galley-slave, for the speech of course reached the ears for which it was intended.

The fourth phase had begun, that of /habit/, the final victory in these plans of campaign, which make the women of this class say of a man, "I hold him!" Rochefide, who had just bought the little hotel in the name of Mademoiselle Josephine Schiltz (a trifle of eighty thousand francs), had reached, at the moment the Duchesse de Grandlieu was forming plans about him, the stage of deriving vanity from his mistress (whom he now called Ninon II.), by vaunting her scrupulous honesty, her excellent manners, her education, and her wit. He had merged his own defects, merits, tastes, and pleasures in Madame Schontz, and he found himself at this period of his life, either from lassitude, indifference, or philosophy, a man unable to change, who clings to wife or mistress.

We may understand the position won in five years by Madame Schontz from the fact that presentation at her house had to be proposed some time before it was granted. She refused to receive dull rich people and smirched people; and only departed from this rule in favor of certain great names of the aristocracy.

"They," she said, "have a right to be stupid because they are well-bred."

She possessed ostensibly the three hundred thousand francs which Rochefide had given her, and which a certain good fellow, a broker named Gobenheim (the only man of that class admitted to her house)invested and reinvested for her. But she manipulated for herself secretly a little fortune of two hundred thousand francs, the result of her savings for the last three years and of the constant movement of the three hundred thousand francs,--for she never admitted the possession of more than that known sum.

"The more you make, the less you get rich," said Gobenheim to her one day.

"Water is so dear," she answered.

This secret hoard was increased by jewels and diamonds, which Aurelie wore a month and then sold. When any one called her rich, Madame Schontz replied that at the rate of interest in the Funds three hundred thousand francs produced only twelve thousand, and she had spent as much as that in the hardest days of her life.