"But she never goes out at this hour. I wish to see her on important business. I must see her."
And Jacqueline passed the concierge, only to encounter another refusal from a footman, who insisted that Madame la Comtesse was at home to no one.
"But me, she will see me. Go and tell her it is Mademoiselle de
Nailles."
Moved by her persistence, the footman went in to inquire, and came back immediately with the answer:
"Madame la Comtesse can not see Mademoiselle."
"Ah!" thought Jacqueline, "she, too, throws me off, and it is natural. I have no friends left. No one will tell me anything!—I think it will drive me mad?"
She was half-mad already. She stopped at a newsstand and bought all the evening journals; then, up in her garret, in her poor little nest under the roof-which, as she felt bitterly, was her only refuge, she began to look over those printed papers in which she might possibly find out the true cause of the duel. Nearly all related the event in almost the exact terms used by the Figaro. Ah!—here was a different one! A reporter who knew something more added, in Gil Blas: "We have stated the cause of the dispute as it has been given to the public, but in affairs of this nature more than in any others, it is safe to remember the old proverb: 'Look for the woman.' The woman could doubtless have been found enjoying herself on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean, while men were drawing swords in her defense."
Jacqueline went on looking through the newspapers, crumpling up the sheets as she laid them down. The last she opened had the reputation of being a repository of scandals, never to be depended on, as she well knew. Several times it had come to her hand and she had not opened it, remembering what her father had always said of its reputation. But where would she be more likely to find what she wanted than in the columns of a journal whose reporters listened behind doors and peeped through keyholes? Under the heading of 'Les Dessous Parisiens', she read on the first page:
"Two hens lived in peace; a cock came
And strife soon succeeded to joy;
E'en as love, they say, kindled the flame
That destroyed the proud city of Troy.
"This quarrel was the outcome of a violent rupture between the two hens in question, ending in the flight of one of them, a young and tender pullet, whose voice we trust soon to hear warbling on the boards at one of our theatres. This was the subject of conversation in a low voice at the Cercle, at the hour when it is customary to tell such little scandals. M. de C——- was enlarging on the somewhat Bohemian character of the establishment of a lovely foreign lady, who possesses the secret of being always surrounded by delightful friends, young ladies who are self-emancipated, quasi- widows who, by divorce suits, have regained their liberty, etc. He was speaking of one of the beauties who are friends of his friend Madame S——, as men speak of women who have proved themselves careless of public opinion; when M. d'A——, in a loud voice, interrupted him; the lie was given in terms that of course led to the hostile meeting of which the press has spoken, attributing it to a dispute about the Queen of Spades, when it really concerned the Queen of Hearts."