The Comte de Chagny, standing up in his box, listened to all this
frenzy and took part in it by loudly applauding. Philippe Georges
Marie Comte de Chagny was just forty-one years of age. He was a great
aristocrat and a good-looking man, above middle height and with
attractive features, in spite of his hard forehead and his rather cold
eyes. He was exquisitely polite to the women and a little haughty to
the men, who did not always forgive him for his successes in society.
He had an excellent heart and an irreproachable conscience. On the
death of old Count Philibert, he became the head of one of the oldest
and most distinguished families in France, whose arms dated back to the
fourteenth century. The Chagnys owned a great deal of property; and,
when the old count, who was a widower, died, it was no easy task for
Philippe to accept the management of so large an estate. His two
sisters and his brother, Raoul, would not hear of a division and waived
their claim to their shares, leaving themselves entirely in Philippe's
hands, as though the right of primogeniture had never ceased to exist.
When the two sisters married, on the same day, they received their
portion from their brother, not as a thing rightfully belonging to
them, but as a dowry for which they thanked him.
The Comtesse de Chagny, nee de Moerogis de La Martyniere, had died in
giving birth to Raoul, who was born twenty years after his elder
brother. At the time of the old count's death, Raoul was twelve years
of age. Philippe busied himself actively with the youngster's
education. He was admirably assisted in this work first by his sisters
and afterward by an old aunt, the widow of a naval officer, who lived
at Brest and gave young Raoul a taste for the sea. The lad entered the
Borda training-ship, finished his course with honors and quietly made
his trip round the world. Thanks to powerful influence, he had just
been appointed a member of the official expedition on board the Requin,
which was to be sent to the Arctic Circle in search of the survivors of
the D'Artoi's expedition, of whom nothing had been heard for three
years. Meanwhile, he was enjoying a long furlough which would not be
over for six months; and already the dowagers of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain were pitying the handsome and apparently delicate
stripling for the hard work in store for him.
The shyness of the sailor-lad--I was almost saying his innocence--was
remarkable. He seemed to have but just left the women's apron-strings.
As a matter of fact, petted as he was by his two sisters and his old
aunt, he had retained from this purely feminine education manners that
were almost candid and stamped with a charm that nothing had yet been
able to sully. He was a little over twenty-one years of age and looked
eighteen. He had a small, fair mustache, beautiful blue eyes and a
complexion like a girl's.