The Swiss Ambassador and Mme de Vérans’ Fan

The first day of the year of grace 1819 was drawing cheerfully to a close in the chateau de Vérans.[1] The big house was full of guests, and they were all gay to-night, from its young mistress down to the old Marquis de S——, who remembered 81 similar anniversaries. Dinner was nearly over. At the head of the long table Mme de Vérans, a four-years’ widow at twenty-seven, sat like a queen who has never known the cares of state. A high tortoise shell comb in her fair locks crowned her with a semblance of royalty, and it was plain that every one at the board, save perhaps, Madlle de Vérans, who played propriety to her nephew’s widow, accorded her a sovereign homage. The fortunate men on her either hand, of whom one chanced to be the octogenarian Marquis, were fully conscious of their privileges. Further down the table others bent on her admiring glances and strained towards her laughing utterances an ear sometimes inattentive to their neighbours’ voices, and to some half-dozen young men in their highcollared coats and enormous stocks and shirt-frills the sight of their hostess appeared more than meat and drink. There was one, however, of whom this could not be said; a slim, well-featured young man of nine and twenty or so, who had paid his excellent dinner and his pretty neighbour quite their due share of appreciation, and was now taking more interest in the conversation of his vis-a-vis than in either.

This person, indeed, seemed almost a rival focus of attention to the brilliant little apparition at the far end of the table, though he himself could lay claim to neither of those epithets. He was a middle-aged man of great bulk with an ugly face not lacking in character, where a pair of pale prominent eyes, set at an almost Chinese angle, seemed to have attracted into a parallel slope a somewhat loose-lipped and sardonic mouth, at present expanded into an amiable smile.

“Ah, my dear M. d’Avricourt,’ he was saying, in a French impregnated with a subtle Teutonic flavour, “when you are older you will doubtless be a philosopher like me. But for its being perhaps a trifle impolite, when I find myself in such good company, I would say that all places are alike to me. An exile, you know, must always feel something of the sort.”

Laurent d’Avricourt, the young man who had scarcely looked at his hostess during the whole of dinner, shrugged his shoulders. “In that region of experience, I must confess, you have the advantage of me, M. Granson,” he said, and while someone else immediately took up the argument, bestowed a long keen glance upon the philosopher. This person interested without pleasing him. In the first place, for a man to call himself by the name of a Swiss town all the while tacitly admitting, and with a certain enjoyment, that it was not his own, struck him as a ridiculous and misplaced piece of incognito. In the second place there hung about M. Granson, Swiss or German, the mysterious aroma of political exile; but with what justification, nobody knew, nor indeed the precise country which had ostracised the stout savant. But as the exile had chosen his title from Swiss nomenclature, Swiss he was assumed to be, and certain young bloods had christened him the Swiss ambassador. “A friend of my husband’s,” Mme de Vérans would say, with a gesture which conveyed that she was not responsible for him in any way. “Que voulez-vous? I do not know why I ask him, but though he is fat and stupid he never bores me. I daresay that he was exiled for being so ugly.” But Madlle de Vérans, sinking the already deep voice which so suitable accompanied her moustache, would hint impressively at the potential revelations which might proceed out of M. Granson’s large mouth. “Ah, if he only told all he knew, as my dear nephew used to say.” What, however, was the subject matter of this mysterious omniscience nobody had succeeded in fathoming. Personally, Laurent d’Avricourt believed M. Granson to be a bankrupt entomologist or botanist with a turn for cheap paradox and an unlimited facility for hoodwinking his immediate associates. He had no belief in the awe-inspiring and shadowy past of the soi-disant exile, but the way in which he contrived to move about with it, as a sort of lucrative portable background interested, while, as has been said, it did not please him.

M. d’Avricourt was thinking of quite other matters when after dinner he strolled by himself into the empty but lighted ball-room. There was to be dancing later on, and after a glance at the floor he turned and looked out through the nearest window at the moon, riding high in the clear heavens, and throwing sharp bluish shadows on the snowy garden. A step behind him made him turn, dropping the curtain, to perceive the bulk of the Swiss ambassador in the doorway.

M. Granson smiled amiably, and advanced over the polished floor with a tread heavy enough, but not clumsy.

“Your argument at dinner interested me very much, M. d’Avricourt,’ said he. “But if I may take the liberty of saying so, it was not sound, not quite sound.”

“That is quite impossible,” returned Laurent coolly.

M. Granson made a gesture as who should acknowledge a magnanimous foe. “But I do not propose to renew it, my dear sir,” he said—at which Laurent was indeed considerably relieved. “Only—will you spare me a moment, there is another little theory of mine, not unconnected . . . May I sit down? just a little theory . . .” He sank heavily into a convenient chair by the wall, and Laurent, with as good a grace as he could muster, sat down in another.[2]

“May I begin by saying that I hope you are a good Protestant, M. d’Avricourt,” said Granson pleasantly, settling himself in the creaking chair.

At this astounding exordium Laurent could only stare at him.

“I am afraid that I am not, sir,” he returned curtly.

“You wonder why I was hoping it?” said Granson. “Because, if you were a Protestant, you would not have fasted to-day, and when one has fasted one is—have you ever heard it said that Friday is the devil’s day?”

“No, I have not,” returned the young man a little haughtily and more than a little puzzled.

“It merely means,” went on Granson in the same confidential tone, “that on a fast day one is, to speak Scripturally, empty and swept,[3] and that Satan finds a ready entrance. One is not so much master of oneself. I was therefore wondering whether you submitted to the Church’s regimen to-day, or were, like myself, a fortunate heretic.”

“Really, M. Granson, I do not see—” began Laurent d’Avricourt.

“Ah, my dear Sir,” said Granson deprecatingly, “I begin to realise[4] that you are indeed a good Catholic. If you had not fasted you would not be so ready to take fire.” He chuckled, and leant back in his chair. “I am interested in these things,” he protested, waving his plump hands. “You have fasted; the Devil lurks about you—someone comes up to you and taps you on the shoulder and says something—no matter what—some trifle that if ’twere not a jour maigre you would laugh at. Well, in some countries a little contemptuous noise with the tongue would be enough under such circumstances to provoke a challenge. Like this.” He made a series of strange clucking sounds.

“I have never been in those outlandish regions,” remarked Laurent easily, yielding himself to the discussion. It did not strike him at the time that his interlocutor’s eyes were watching him with an intentness not exactly in harmony with the role of a philosopher demonstrating a theory. “Ma foi, what an odd country!”

“On the contrary, you are just as odd here,” objected Granson genially. “Look you what are words but sounds? Now supposing I came behind you after your orthodox maigre dinner, when you have no good meat inside you, and I said to you—” He paused, and Laurent, suffering a revulsion of feeling, began to be quite certain that he was drunk. The whole conversation struck him anew as so extraordinary that he felt as if he were dreaming it. He was just about to ask what the speaker would have said when he was conscious of someone at his elbow, and turning, saw the dainty little Elise, Mme de Vérans’ — year-old daughter.[5] She made a minute but stately curtsey.

“Maman says, M. d’Avricourt, that she desires you some time to see the fan that Madame your sister has sent her from Paris. She is making a display of her etrennes[6] in her boudoir.”

Laurent, who was very fond of the child, put his arm round her, smiling. “Certainly, I will come in a few moments. Meanwhile run away, mon enfant. M. Granson’s conversation is too learned for little girls.”

The child disengaged herself reluctantly and went, her little feet pattering on the parquet of the great room, and Laurent, looking after the little[7] figure, did not see an extraordinary gleam come into the eyes of the Swiss.

“Well, M. Granson?” he said, turning again to his companion. “Your remarks are vastly interesting.”

“I do not bore you?” enquired M. Granson graciously. “I was saying . . . ah yes!—how on these occasions the devil in the void sometimes snatches up a trifle—a jest—as an offence. For instances, supposing that I said to you—”

“Yes?” asked Laurent, “supposing that you said . . . ?”

Granson burst into his jolly laugh. “There you are, you see! Empty and swept—if I uttered my harmless little pleasantry you would take it up at once—and who knows what it might lead to. I have proved my point!”

Laurent surveyed him very dubiously. Was he drunk, or did he mean to be offensive, or was he really stating a pet theory of his own—if an extravagant one? After a moment’s wary puzzling the absurdity of the thing came over d’Avricourt and he began to laugh.

“Pardon me,” he said, pushing back his chair and rising. “I must go. But indeed, M. Granson, your fanciful idea won’t hold water. You see I am amiability itself, and really, after you have entertained me so well, I don’t think any of these little trifles would rouse the devil in me—even on a Friday.” He gave vent again to his rather rare laugh, leaning for a moment against the wainscotting and surveying his entertainer with amused and indolent eyes. But the Swiss suddenly got up too with surprising quickness, and came nearer. The fashion of his complacent visage was changed.

“Not even if I called you                                                                 he said in a very different voice.[8]

And at that the devil did look out of the young man’s eyes. He started forward from the wall.

“That is different,” he said, and without a moment’s hesitation struck Granson full in the face.

“You have been a long time coming to see my fan,” said Mme de Vérans a little later. “I have a mind to be piqued. Elise said you were talking to that old M. Granson. Evidently his conversation is more interesting than mine.” She stood in her boudoir, looking enthralling young and pretty.[9]

“It was quite—interesting,” said Laurent drily. “But now that I am here, make haste and show me the treasure . . . if you can find it.”

Indeed, Mme de Vérans’ etrennes made a considerable show in her little room, and more than half a dozen people of both sexes were admiring the display. The owner shrugged her shoulders. “I am not sure that I shall put myself to the trouble,” she said. “I think, from the look of you, that the Swiss Ambassador has made you stupid. Have you nothing to say to me? I have already been told that I was in looks to-night.”

“You have never heard such a two-edged compliment from me, I am glad to think,” observed the young man. “I never suggest comparisons—which for one thing have no foundation.”

“Laboured, and not very new,” was the lady’s reply. “But as ’twas well meant, I accept it. Come then and see your sister’s gift. No, I will fetch it.” And slipping away she returned with it in her hand—a dainty toy of rose silk and ivory exquisitely painted in Louis Seize fashion with cupids and doves. She put it into his hand without a word, and d’Avricourt stood looking at it without examining it in detail, with a little smile round his mouth. As a matter of fact he had seen it before.

“I hope you like it,” he said, returning it.[10]

Madame de Vérans threw him a little look. “Now that you have really given it to me I can really thank you,” she answered softly. Her little hand fluttered for a moment on to his arm. “Thank you, thank you, Laurent—at least—” she began to smile again—“thank Charlotte a thousand times. Her taste is perfection, and the colour becomes me.” The expanse of the fan suddenly shot out, and she waved it gently to and fro. “I knew that it was not really from her, though it came direct from Paris.” She furled it again and looked at it reflectively. “Too costly for a New Year’s gift, mon ami. It must have taken a life to paint it.”

“Perhaps,” said Laurent, smiling. “But should I give you what costs nothing, even though it cost a life to give it?”

“Mon Dieu, what fervour!” exclaimed Mme de Vérans. “You make me feel like a heroine when you speak like that, and with so much gravity—but I never know if you mean it,” she concluded a trifle wistfully. “Come and look at the rest. It will soon be time to dance.—How many dances did I promise you?”[11]

A couple of hours later Laurent d’Avricourt sat in his own room, writing. A fire burnt brightly, and the clock pointed to nearly midnight. He wrote busily on, as one somewhat pressed for time, but occasionally a pause of considerable duration took place in the scratching of his pen, and he would fall into a deep reflection. It was during one of these that there came a faint rap at the door, to which his back was turned.

“Come in,” said Laurent, without looking round. “Well?”

“Confound it, it is not at all well,” was the response, and at that Laurent turned round to see his friend the Chevalier Georges de Saignelay. He was frowning and he carried a leather case in his hand.

“Come in and sit down,” said Laurent equably, motioning with his quill to a chair in front of the fire. “Where is du Perray?”

“I don’t know,” replied the other, sitting slowly down. “I told him it was no use his coming—he had better go to bed. I wanted to see you alone.[12]”

Laurent, still at the table, worked himself further round in his chair. “My dear Georges, you sound uncommonly gloomy. Come, tell me what you have done.”

“The whole thing is so deuced odd and irregular,” burst out his second in a fresh access of ill-temper.

“You have scruples, eh, about acting for me?”

“No, confound you, only I wish—it’s the other side . . . I can’t make it out!”

“Neither can I,” said Laurent coolly. “If you don’t tell me soon I shall be obliged to return to my correspondence. I want to get to bed.”

De Saignelay got out of the armchair, throwing the case he held on to the seat, and stood facing his principal with his back to the fire.

“It’s like this,” he said. “Who would you say had the choice of weapons? if you had been in my place for instance.”

Laurent looked at him a moment. “My dear Georges . . . why, speaking without reflection, I.”

“They say that he has.”

“Ah!” said d’Avricourt slowly, “I see.”

“We contend that as you struck him, he challenged you for the blow. The choice in that case is obviously with you, as the challenged party. But they say that in the first place you must have challenged him, since he insulted you.—The blow was later—and not en règle.”

“I daresay it was not,” commented Laurent grimly, “and no doubt I should have kept my hands off him. But after all, what does it matter. Let them have the choice, for it is a difficult point, if you put it in that way.”

De Saigneley[13] turned round and kicked savagely at the fire. “It does matter,” he said indistinctly. “They want pistols.”

“Eh bien? I have fired a pistol before now.”

“They said that a man of his age and size would have no chance against you with the sword. We said that you were not much of a shot.”

“Complimentary,” muttered Laurent, tilting back his chair.

His second scowled at him. “You know you are not. They know, I suppose, what a good swordsman you are. So as neither of us would give way about the choice of weapons, we tossed for it.”

“The devil you did!” said Laurent, amused. “Well, that was not en règle if you like.”

“I know it,” said de Saigneley sulkily. “And it fell to them. They chose pistols . . . And it appears that the fat Granson is a crack shot.”

“So much the better for him then,” said Laurent. “But really, Georges, I am not such a fool with a pistol as you seem to imagine. And what a long time you have taken coming to the point. Why, I knew what you had settled when you came in with the case in your hand.” He got up and coming towards him put a hand on his second’s shoulder.

“We didn’t settle it,” growled the latter. “The cursed coin did that. And[14]—I don’t believe that it was the only part of this confounded business that was settled by the drawing of lots!”

Laurent’s hand fell from his shoulder.

“What on earth do you mean?” he demanded, astonished.

It was obvious that the Chevalier de Seignelay[15] regretted his remark. He displayed a fresh hesitation. “Sit down then,” he said at last, “and don’t look at me like that. It is devilish difficult to explain to you, and you may not thank me when I have done.”

Laurent raised his eyebrows and sat down obediently in the other armchair. His second did the like, first putting the case of pistols on the table, and began after a new pause, looking at the fire,

“I don’t know what Granson said to you—and I don’t ask—but you must forgive me for saying that I can make something of a guess.”

“Go on.”

“Could you not better have imagined his . . . remark. . . coming from some one else . . . from—but I need not mention names?”

Laurent seemed to reflect; at least there was a silence, and his face was not visible to the other even had he looked at it.[16]

“Yes . . . perhaps I could.”

“You never thought that stout adventurer had any grudge against you . . . least of all any grudge connected with the reason which you must pardon my assuming?”

“No.”

“In fact, it seems to me ridiculous to suppose it. Well, there are, in this house and neighbourhood, not a few men who do not regard you with favour. You understand . . . .? They took counsel, and (unless I am very much misinterpreting the chance expression which was dropped this evening) they drew lots as to which should quarrel with you. . . . and the lot fell upon M. Granson, the amiable, philosophic, fugitive M. Granson.”

“You mean that they paid him?” asked Laurent in a hard voice.

“Mon Dieu, no. If I thought that you should not fight him. You are thinking of course that the Swiss have always been a nation of mercenaries. But I think that he joined this infernal conspiracy—God only knows why—and drew the number, or however they managed the affair.”

Laurent was silent.

“He meant you to challenge him, so that he could choose his own weapon . . . And now he has won the choice, and he is a dead shot. . . . Damn duels!” concluded the Chevalier.

There was another long pause. D’Avricourt was thinking hard, his head propped in his hands. De Saignelay was not usually imaginative. He was himself quite aware that many of the men at Vérans were none too cordial to him, and the reason was perhaps not far to seek, but from dislike or coldness to organised conspiracy was a far step, and his head whirled as he descried it.