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Every one looked very sportsmanlike. M. Davilliers gave me his arm for dejeuner. He told me a great deal which I did not want to know about hunting-dogs. For instance, "Les chiens anglais," he said, "etaient tres raillants, tres percants, mais hesitants dans les fourres." So much Greek to me, but I pretended to understand.
M. Jacques, I am mighty glad to see you on the road to fortune. Real merit is always discovered. You'll see my bedroom, which is copied from that of Mademoiselle Davilliers. It is covered all over with looking- glass and there are lots of grotesque figures. How is the old fellow your father? Between ourselves, he somewhat neglects his wife and his cook-shop.
All lovers of art, furniture, and decoration generally can but echo M. Davilliers' hope that the art of painting and stamping on leather may be ere long revived at Cordova. So much for the artistic treat in store for those art-lovers who find their way to the Chateau of Ferrieres, where none will fail to add to his previous stock of knowledge.
Thereupon, Lemoal thinks the matter over, and deems it prudent to cover up his private extortion by a public one. Accordingly, he sends for M. Davilliers: "It is now essential for you to openly contribute one hundred and fifty thousand livres more for the necessities of the Republic. I will introduce you to the representatives to whom you should make the offer."
The book was printed at Amsterdam by Marc-Michel Key, with an allegoric frontispiece, and Mademoiselle Davilliers received the first copy of it just when she went on the stage to sing the great aria of Armida. "Anger made her voice hoarse and shaky. She sang false and was hooted.
Lemoal, on his side, is anxious to receive the money for his note, while poor Davilliers, "struck with terror by nocturnal arrests," and seeing that Lemoal is always on the top of the ladder, concludes to pay; at first, he gives him thirty thousand livres, and next, the charges, amounting in all to forty-one thousand livres, when, being at the end of his resources, he begs and entreats to have his note returned to him.
For example, at Bordeaux, where one of these clandestine markets had been set up, M. Jean Davilliers, one of the partners in a large commercial house, is under arrest in his own house, guarded by four sans-culottes; on the 8th of Brumaire, he is taken aside and told "that he is in danger if he does not come forward and meet the indispensable requirements of the Revolution in its secret expenditures."
But I did not succeed as well as she did. On her recommendation I entered the service of Mistress de Saint Ernest, an opera dancer, who, aware of my talents, ordered me to write after her dictation a lampoon on Mademoiselle Davilliers, against whom she had some grievance. I was a pretty good secretary, and well deserved the fifty crowns she had promised me.
In the same carriage with me was the Duchess de Persigny, Count Golz, and others; and although it was very cold, we did not mind, as we were well wrapped in furs and had plenty of rugs. We enjoyed intensely the beautiful drive through the forest of Compiegne. Monsieur Davilliers told me that the forest contains about fifteen thousand hectares.
The chicken being officially plucked in this way, nobody would suppose that it had been first privately plucked, and, moreover, the inquisitive, if there were any, would be thrown off the scent by the confusion arising from two sums of equal amount. M. Davilliers begs to be allowed to consult his partners, and, as they are not in prison, they refuse.
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