As they reached the Vaudeville theater, he asked: "Have you warned that lady that you are going to take me to her house to see her?"Servigny began to laugh: "Forewarn the Marquise Obardi! Do you warn an omnibus driver that you shall enter his stage at the corner of the boulevard?"Saval, a little perplexed, inquired: "What sort of person is this lady?"His friend replied: "An upstart, a charming hussy, who came from no one knows where, who made her appearance one day, nobody knows how, among the adventuresses of Paris, knowing perfectly well how to take care of herself.Besides, what difference does it make to us? They say that her real name, her maiden name--for she still has every claim to the title of maiden except that of innocence--is Octavia Bardin, from which she constructs the name Obardi by prefixing the first letter of her first name and dropping the last letter of the last name.""Moreover, she is a lovable woman, and you, from your physique, are inevitably bound to become her lover.Hercules is not introduced into Messalina's home without making some disturbance.Nevertheless I make bold to add that if there is free entrance to this house, just as there is in bazaars, you are not exactly compelled to buy what is for sale.Love and cards are on the programme, but nobody compels you to take up with either.And the exit is as free as the entrance.""She settled down in the Etoile district, a suspicious neighborhood, three years ago, and opened her drawing-room to that froth of the continents which comes to Paris to practice its various formidable and criminal talents.""I don't remember just how I went to her house.I went as we all go, because there is card playing, because the women are compliant, and the men dishonest.I love that social mob of buccaneers with decorations of all sorts of orders, all titled, and all entirely unknown at their embassies, except to the spies.They are always dragging in the subject of honor, quoting the list of their ancestors on the slightest provocation, and telling the story of their life at every opportunity, braggarts, liars, sharpers, dangerous as their cards, false as their names, brave because they have to be, like the assassins who can not pluck their victims except by exposing their own lives.In a word, it is the aristocracy of the bagnio.""I like them.They are interesting to fathom and to know, amusing to listen to, often witty, never commonplace as the ordinary French guests.Their women are always pretty, with a little flavor of foreign knavery, with the mystery of their past existence, half of which, perhaps, spent in a House of Correction.They generally have fine eyes and glorious hair, the true physique of the profession, an intoxicating grace, a seductiveness which drives men to folly, an unwholesome, irresistible charm! They conquer like the highwaymen of old.They are rapacious creatures; true birds of prey.I like them, too.""The Marquise Obardi is one of the type of these elegant good-for-nothings.Ripe and pretty, with a feline charm, you can see that she is vicious to the marrow.Everybody has a good time at her house, with cards, dancing, and suppers; in fact there is everything which goes to make up the pleasures of fashionable society life.""Have you ever been or are you now her lover?" Leon Saval asked.
"I have not been her lover, I am not now, and I never shall be.Ionly go to the house to see her daughter.""Ah! She has a daughter, then?"
"A daughter! A marvel, my dear man.She is the principal attraction of the den to-day.Tall, magnificent, just ripe, eighteen years old, as fair as her mother is dark, always merry, always ready for an entertainment, always laughing, and ready to dance like mad.Who will be the lucky man, to capture her, or who has already done so?
Nobody can tell that.She has ten of us in her train, all hoping.""Such a daughter in the hands of a woman like the Marquise is a fortune.And they play the game together, the two charmers.No one knows just what they are planning.Perhaps they are waiting for a better bargain than I should prove.But I tell you that I shall close the bargain if I ever get a chance.""That girl Yvette absolutely baffles me, moreover.She is a mystery.
If she is not the most complete monster of astuteness and perversity that I have ever seen, she certainly is the most marvelous phenomenon of innocence that can be imagined.She lives in that atmosphere of infamy with a calm and triumphing ease which is either wonderfully profligate or entirely artless.Strange scion of an adventuress, cast upon the muck-heap of that set, like a magnificent plant nurtured upon corruption, or rather like the daughter of some noble race, of some great artist, or of some grand lord, of some prince or dethroned king, tossed some evening into her mother's arms, nobody can make out what she is nor what she thinks.But you are going to see her."Saval began to laugh and said: "You are in love with her.""No.I am on the list, which is not precisely the same thing.I will introduce you to my most serious rivals.But the chances are in my favor.I am in the lead, and some little distinction is shown to me.""You are in love," Saval repeated.
"No.She disquiets me, seduces and disturbs me, attracts and frightens me away.I mistrust her as I would a trap, and I long for her as I long for a sherbet when I am thirsty.I yield to her charm, and I only approach her with the apprehension that I would feel concerning a man who was known to be a skillful thief.to her presence I have an irrational impulse toward belief in her possible purity and a very reasonable mistrust of her not less probable trickery.I feel myself in contact with an abnormal being, beyond the pale of natural laws, an exquisite or detestable creature--Idon't know which."
For the third time Saval said: "I tell you that you are in love.You speak of her with the magniloquence of a poet and the feeling of a troubadour.Come, search your heart, and confess."Servigny walked a few steps without answering.Then he replied:
