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Updated: June 24, 2025
The near presence of the Marquise d'Espard, a Parisian Mme. de Bargeton, was so damaging to her; the brilliancy of the Parisienne brought out all the defects in her country cousin so clearly by contrast; that Lucien, looking out over the fashionable audience in the superb building, and then at the great lady, was twice enlightened, and saw poor Anais de Negrepelisse as she really was, as Parisians saw her a tall, lean, withered woman, with a pimpled face and faded complexion; angular, stiff, affected in her manner; pompous and provincial in her speech; and, and above all these things, dowdily dressed.
Right or wrong, the woman whom they thus treated so lightly was sacred to d'Arthez; his desire to meet her needed no spur; he consented to do so at the first word, which was all the two friends wanted of him. Madame d'Espard went to see the princess as soon as she had received this answer. "My dear, do you feel yourself in full beauty and coquetry?" she said.
Madame de Montcornet perceived that the princess and Madame d'Espard had a word to say to each other, and she drew around her d'Arthez, Rastignac, and Blondet, amusing them with one of those clever paradoxical attacks which Parisian women understand so thoroughly. "Well," said the marquise to Diane, "what do you think of him?" "He is an adorable child, just out of swaddling-clothes!
"Let M. Chardon first put himself in such a position that he will not compromise those who take an interest in him," she said. "If he wishes to drop his patronymic and to bear his mother's name, he should at any rate be on the right side, should he not?" "In less than two months I will arrange everything," said Lucien. "Very well," returned Mme. d'Espard.
"'Has the honor to submit to you, Monsieur the President, that for a year past the moral and intellectual powers of her husband, M. d'Espard, have undergone so serious a change, that at the present day they have reached the state of dementia and idiocy provided for by Article 448 of the Civil Code, and require the application of the remedies set forth by that article, for the security of his fortune and his person, and to guard the interest of his children whom he keeps to live with him.
For eighteen months now he had sat on the most important Bench in the kingdom; and had once, at the desire of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, had an opportunity of forwarding the ends of a lady not less influential than the Duchess, namely, the Marquise d'Espard, but he had failed.
"'Madame Jeanne Clementine Athenais de Blamont-Chauvry, wife of M. Charles Maurice Marie Andoche, Comte de Negrepelisse, Marquis d'Espard' a very good family 'landowner, the said Mme. d'Espard living in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, No. 104, and the said M. d'Espard in the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, No. 22, to be sure, the President told me he lived in this part of the town 'having for her solicitor Maitre Desroches' Desroches! a pettifogging jobber, a man looked down upon by his brother lawyers, and who does his clients no good "
'Bah! it is always a triumph to bring the dead to life; it is all she can now do, replied my best friend, a relation, she, at whose house I met you " "Madame d'Espard!" cried Daniel, with a gesture of horror. "Oh! I have forgiven her. Besides, it was very witty; and I have myself made just as cruel epigrams on other poor women as innocent as myself."
"You are clever," the Marquise d'Espard continued; "but we women, when we love, are cleverer than the cleverest man. My cousin tried to make that absurd Chatelet useful Oh!" she broke off, "I owe not a little amusement to you; your articles on Chatelet made me laugh heartily." Lucien knew not what to think of all this.
Her object was to give no hold for criticism to the Marquise d'Espard or the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, in a call so early as between eight and nine in the morning. Amelie Cecile Camusot, nee Thirion, it must be said, only half succeeded; and in a matter of dress is this not a twofold blunder?
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