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Title: The Lesser Bourgeoisie
Author: Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850
Language: English
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THE LESSER BOURGEOISIE
(The Middle Classes)
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated By
Katharine Prescott Wormeley
DEDICATION
To Constance-Victoire.
Here, madame, is one of those books which come into the mind,
whence no one knows, giving pleasure to the author before he can
foresee what reception the public, our great present judge, will
accord to it. Feeling almost certain of your sympathy in my
pleasure, I dedicate the book to you. Ought it not to belong to
you as the tithe formerly belonged to the Church in memory of God,
who makes all things bud and fruit in the fields and in the
intellect?
A few lumps of clay, left by Moliere at the feet of his colossal
statue of Tartuffe, have here been kneaded by a hand more daring
than able; but, at whatever distance I may be from the greatest of
comic writers, I shall still be glad to have used these crumbs in
showing the modern Hypocrite in action. The chief encouragement
that I have had in this difficult undertaking was in finding it
apart from all religious questions,--questions which ought to be
kept out of it for the sake of one so pious as yourself; and also
because of what a great writer has lately called our present
"indifference in matters of religion."
May the double signification of your names be for my book a
prophecy! Deign to find here the respectful gratitude of him who
ventures to call himself the most devoted of your servants.
De Balzac.
THE LESSER BOURGEOISIE
(The Middle Classes)
PART I
THE LESSER BOURGEOIS OF PARIS
CHAPTER I
DEPARTING PARIS
The tourniquet Saint-Jean, the narrow passage entered through a
turnstile, a description of which was said to be so wearisome in the
study entitled "A Double Life" (Scenes from Private Life), that naive
relic of old Paris, has at the present moment no existence except in
our said typography. The building of the Hotel-de-Ville, such as we
now see it, swept away a whole section of the city.
In 1830, passers along the street could still see the turnstile
painted on the sign of a wine-merchant, but even that house, its last
asylum, has been demolished. Alas! old Paris is disappearing with
frightful rapidity. Here and there, in the course of this history of
Parisian life, will be found preserved, sometimes the type of the
dwellings of the middle ages, like that described in "Fame and Sorrow"
(Scenes from Private Life), one or two specimens of which exist to the
present day; sometimes a house like that of Judge Popinot, rue du
Fouarre, a specimen of the former bourgeoisie; here, the remains of
Fulbert's house; there, the old dock of the Seine as it was under
Charles IX. Why should not the historian of French society, a new Old
Mortality, endeavor to save these curious expressions of the past, as
Walter Scott's old man rubbed up the tombstones? Certainly, for the
last ten years the outcries of literature in this direction have not
been superfluous; art is beginning to disguise beneath its floriated
ornaments those ignoble facades of what are called in Paris "houses of
product," which one of our poets has jocosely compared to chests of
drawers.
Let us remark here, that the creation of the municipal commission "del
ornamento" which superintends at Milan the architecture of street
facades, and to which every house owner is compelled to subject his
plan, dates from the seventeenth century. Consequently, we see in that
charming capital the effects of this public spirit on the part of
nobles and burghers, while we admire their buildings so full of
character and originality. Hideous, unrestrained speculation which,
year after year, changes the uniform level of storeys, compresses a
whole apartment into the space of what used to be a salon, and wages
war upon gardens, will infallibly react on Parisian manners and
morals. We shall soon be forced to live more without than within. Our
sacred private life, the freedom and liberty of home, where will they
be?--reserved for those who can muster fifty thousand francs a year!
In fact, few millionaires now allow themselves the luxury of a house
to themselves, guarded by a courtyard on a street and protected from
public curiosity by a shady garden at the back.
By levelling fortunes, that section of the Code which regulates
testamentary bequests, has produced these huge stone phalansteries, in
which thirty families are often lodged, returning a rental of a
hundred thousand francs a year. Fifty years hence we shall be able to
count on our fingers the few remaining houses which resemble that
occupied, at the moment our narrative begins, by the Thuillier family,
--a really curious house which deserves the honor of an exact
description, if only to compare the life of the bourgeoisie of former
times with that of to-day.
The situation and the aspect of this house, the frame of our present
Scene of manners and morals, has, moreover, a flavor, a perfume of the
lesser bourgeoisie, which may attract or repel attention according to
the taste of each reader.
In the first place, the Thuillier house did not belong to either
Monsieur or Madame Thuillier, but to Mademoiselle Thuillier, the
sister of Monsieur Thuillier.
This house, bought during the first six months which followed the
revolution of July by Mademoiselle Marie-Jeanne-Brigitte Thuillier,
a spinster of full age, stands about the middle of the rue
Saint-Dominique d'Enfer, to the right as you enter by the rue d'Enfer,
so that the main building occupied by Monsieur Thuillier faces south.
The progressive movement which is carrying the Parisian population to
the heights along the right bank of the Seine had long injured the
sale of property in what is called the "Latin quarter," when reasons,
which will be given when we come to treat of the character and habits
of Monsieur Thuillier, determined his sister to the purchase of real
estate. She obtained this property for the small sum of forty-six
thousand francs; certain extras amounted to six thousand more; in all,
the price paid was fifty-two thousand francs. A description of the
property given in the style of an advertisement, and the results
obtained by Monsieur Thuillier's exertions, will explain by what means
so many fortunes increased enormously after July, 1830, while so many
others sank.
Toward the street the house presents a facade of rough stone covered
with plaster, cracked by weather and lined by the mason's instrument
into a semblance of blocks of cut stone. This frontage is so common
in Paris and so ugly that the city ought to offer premiums to
house-owners who would build their facades of cut-stone blocks.
Seven windows lighted the gray front of this house which was raised
three storeys, ending in a mansard roof covered with slate. The
porte-cochere, heavy and solid, showed by its workmanship and style
that the front building on the street had been erected in the days of
the Empire, to utilize a part of the courtyard of the vast old mansion,
built at an epoch when the quarter d'Enfer enjoyed a certain vogue.
On one side was the porter's lodge; on the other the staircase of the
front building. Two wings, built against the adjoining houses, had
formerly served as stables, coach-house, kitchen and offices to the
rear dwelling; but since 1830, they had been converted into warerooms.
The one on the right was let to a certain M. Metivier, jr., wholesale
dealer in paper; that on the left to a bookseller named Barbet. The
offices of each were above the warerooms; the bookseller occupying the
first storey, and the paper-dealer the second storey of the house on
the street. Metivier, jr., who was more of a commission merchant in
paper than a regular dealer, and Barbet, much more of a money lender
and discounter than a bookseller, kept these vast warerooms for the
purpose of storing,--one, his stacks of paper, bought of needy
manufacturers, the other, editions of books given as security for
loans.
The shark of bookselling and the pike of paper-dealing lived on the
best of terms, and their mutual operations, exempt from the turmoil of
retail business, brought so few carriages into that tranquil courtyard
that the concierge was obliged to pull up the grass between the paving
stones. Messrs. Barbet and Metivier paid a few rare visits to their
landlords, and the punctuality with which they paid their rent classed
them as good tenants; in fact, they were looked upon as very honest
men by the Thuillier circle.
As for the third floor on the street, it was made into two apartments;
one of which was occupied by M. Dutocq, clerk of the justice of peace,
a retired government employee, and a frequenter of the Thuillier
salon; the other by the hero of this Scene, about whom we must content
ourselves at the present moment by fixing the amount of his rent,
--namely, seven hundred francs a year,--and the location he had chosen
in the heart of this well-filled building, exactly three years before
the curtain rises on the present domestic drama.
The clerk, a bachelor of fifty, occupied the larger of the two
apartments on the third floor. He kept a cook, and the rent of the
rooms was a thousand francs a year. Within two years of the time of
her purchase, Mademoiselle Thuillier was receiving seven thousand two
hundred francs in rentals, for a house which the late proprietor had
supplied with outside blinds, renovated within, and adorned with
mirrors, without being able to sell or let it. Moreover, the
Thuilliers themselves, nobly lodged, as we shall see, enjoyed also a
fine garden,--one of the finest in that quarter,--the trees of which
shaded the lonely little street named the rue Neuve-Saint-Catherine.
Standing between the courtyard and the garden, the main building,
which they inhabited, seems to have been the caprice of some enriched
bourgeois in the reign of Louis XIV.; the dwelling, perhaps, of a
president of the parliament, or that of a tranquil savant. Its noble
free-stone blocks, damaged by time, have a certain air of
Louis-the-Fourteenth grandeur; the courses of the facade define the
storeys; panels of red brick recall the appearance of the stables at
Versailles; the windows have masks carved as ornaments in the centre
of their arches and below their sills. The door, of small panels in
the upper half and plain below, through which, when open, the garden
can be seen, is of that honest, unassuming style which was often
employed in former days for the porter's lodges of the royal chateaux.
This building, with five windows to each course, rises two storeys
above the ground-floor, and is particularly noticeable for a roof of
four sides ending in a weather-vane, and broken here and there by
tall, handsome chimneys, and oval windows. Perhaps this structure is
the remains of some great mansion; but after examining all the
existing old maps of Paris, we find nothing which bears out this
conjecture. Moreover, the title-deeds of property under Louis XIV. was
Petitot, the celebrated painter in miniature, who obtained it
originally from President Lecamus. We may therefore believe that
Lecamus lived in this building while he was erecting his more famous
mansion in the rue de Thorigny.
So Art and the legal robe have passed this way in turn. How many
instigations of needs and pleasures have led to the interior
arrangement of the dwelling! To right, as we enter a square hall
forming a closed vestibule, rises a stone staircase with two windows
looking on the garden. Beneath the staircase opens a door to the
cellar. From this vestibule we enter the dining-room, lighted from the
courtyard, and the dining-room communicates at its side with the
kitchen, which forms a continuation of the wing in which are the
warerooms of Metivier and Barbet. Behind the staircase extends, on the
garden side, a fine study or office with two large windows. The first
and second floor form two complete apartments, and the servants'
quarters are shown by the oval windows in the four-sided roof.
A large porcelain stove heats the square vestibule, the two glass
doors of which, placed opposite to each other, light it. This room,
paved in black and white marble, is especially noticeable for a
ceiling of beams formerly painted and gilt, but which had since
received, probably under the Empire, a coat of plain white paint. The
three doors of the study, salon and dining-room, surmounted by oval
panels, are awaiting a restoration that is more than needed. The
wood-work is heavy, but the ornamentation is not without merit. The
salon, panelled throughout, recalls the great century by its tall
mantelpiece of Languedoc marble, its ceiling decorated at the corners,
and by the style of its windows, which still retain their little panes.
The dining-room, communicating with the salon by a double door, is
floored with stone; the wood-work is oak, unpainted, and an atrocious
modern wall-paper has been substituted for the tapestries of the olden
time. The ceiling is of chestnut; and the study, modernized by
Thuillier, adds its quota to these discordances.
The white and gold mouldings of the salon are so effaced that nothing
remains of the gilding but reddish lines, while the white enamelling
is yellow, cracked, and peeling off. Never did the Latin saying "Otium
cum dignitate" have a greater commentary to the mind of a poet than in
this noble building. The iron-work of the staircase baluster is worthy
of the artist and the magistrate; but to find other traces of their
taste to-day in this majestic relic, the eyes of an artistic observer
are needed.
The Thuilliers and their predecessors have frequently degraded this
jewel of the upper bourgeoisie by the habits and inventions of the
lesser bourgeoisie. Look at those walnut chairs covered with
horse-hair, that mahogany table with its oilcloth cover, that
sideboard, also of mahogany, that carpet, bought at a bargain, beneath
the table, those metal lamps, that wretched paper with its red border,
those execrable engravings, and the calico curtains with red fringes,
in a dining-room, where the friends of Petitot once feasted! Do you
notice the effect produced in the salon by those portraits of Monsieur
and Madame and Mademoiselle Thuillier by Pierre Grassou, the artist
par excellence of the modern bourgeoisie. Have you remarked the
card-tables and the consoles of the Empire, the tea-table supported by
a lyre, and that species of sofa, of gnarled mahogany, covered in
painted velvet of a chocolate tone? On the chimney-piece, with the
clock (representing the Bellona of the Empire), are candelabra with
fluted columns. Curtains of woollen damask, with under-curtains of
embroidered muslin held back by stamped brass holders, drape the
windows. On the floor a cheap carpet. The handsome vestibule has
wooden benches, covered with velvet, and the panelled walls with their
fine carvings are mostly hidden by wardrobes, brought there from time
to time from the bedrooms occupied by the Thuilliers. Fear, that
hideous divinity, has caused the family to add sheet-iron doors on the
garden side and on the courtyard side, which are folded back against
the walls in the daytime, and are closed at night.
It is easy to explain the deplorable profanation practised on this
monument of the private life of the bourgeoisie of the seventeenth
century, by the private life of the bourgeoisie of the nineteenth. At
the beginning of the Consulate, let us say, some master-mason having
bought the ancient building, took the idea of turning to account the
ground which lay between it and the street. He probably pulled down
the fine porte-cochere or entrance gate, flanked by little lodges
which guarded the charming "sejour" (to use a word of the olden time),
and proceeded, with the industry of a Parisian proprietor, to impress
his withering mark on the elegance of the old building. What a curious
study might be made of the successive title-deeds of property in
Paris! A private lunatic asylum performs its functions in the rue des
Batailles in the former dwelling of the Chevalier Pierre Bayard du
Terrail, once without fear and without reproach; a street has now been
built by the present bourgeois administration through the site of the
hotel Necker. Old Paris is departing, following its kings who
abandoned it. For one masterpiece of architecture saved from
destruction by a Polish princess (the hotel Lambert, Ile Saint-Louis,
bought and occupied by the Princess Czartoriska) how many little
palaces have fallen, like this dwelling of Petitot, into the hands of
such as Thuillier.
Here follows the causes which made Mademoiselle Thuillier the owner of
the house.
CHAPTER II
THE HISTORY OF A TYRANNY
At the fall of the Villele ministry, Monsieur Louis-Jerome Thuillier,
who had then seen twenty-six years' service as a clerk in the ministry
of finance, became sub-director of a department thereof; but scarcely
had he enjoyed the subaltern authority of a position formerly his
lowest hope, when the events of July, 1830, forced him to resign it.
He calculated, shrewdly enough, that his pension would be honorably
and readily given by the new-comers, glad to have another office at
their disposal. He was right; for a pension of seventeen hundred
francs was paid to him immediately.
When the prudent sub-director first talked of resigning, his sister,
who was far more the companion of his life than his wife, trembled for
his future.
"What will become of Thuillier?" was a question which Madame and
Mademoiselle Thuillier put to each other with mutual terror in their
little lodging on a third floor of the rue d'Argenteuil.
"Securing his pension will occupy him for a time," Mademoiselle
Thuillier said one day; "but I am thinking of investing my savings in
a way that will cut out work for him. Yes; it will be something like
administrating the finances to manage a piece of property."
"Oh, sister! you will save his life," cried Madame Thuillier.
"I have always looked for a crisis of this kind in Jerome's life,"
replied the old maid, with a protecting air.
Mademoiselle Thuillier had too often heard her brother remark: "Such a
one is dead; he only survived his retirement two years"; she had too
often heard Colleville, her brother's intimate friend, a government
employee like himself, say, jesting on this climacteric of
bureaucrats, "We shall all come to it, ourselves," not to appreciate
the danger her brother was running. The change from activity to
leisure is, in truth, the critical period for government employees of
all kinds.
Those of them who know not how to substitute, or perhaps cannot
substitute other occupations for the work to which they have been
accustomed, change in a singular manner; some die outright; others
take to fishing, the vacancy of that amusement resembling that of
their late employment under government; others, who are smarter men,
dabble in stocks, lose their savings, and are thankful to obtain a
place in some enterprise that is likely to succeed, after a first
disaster and liquidation, in the hands of an abler management. The
late clerk then rubs his hands, now empty, and says to himself, "I
always did foresee the success of the business." But nearly all these
retired bureaucrats have to fight against their former habits.
"Some," Colleville used to say, "are victims to a sort of 'spleen'
peculiar to the government clerk; they die of a checked circulation; a
red-tapeworm is in their vitals. That little Poiret couldn't see the
well-known white carton without changing color at the beloved sight;
he used to turn from green to yellow."
Mademoiselle Thuillier was considered the moving spirit of her
brother's household; she was not without decision and force of
character, as the following history will show. This superiority over
those who immediately surrounded her enabled her to judge her brother,
although she adored him. After witnessing the failure of the hopes she
had set upon her idol, she had too much real maternity in her feeling
for him to let herself be mistaken as to his social value.
Thuillier and his sister were children of the head porter at the
ministry of finance. Jerome had escaped, thanks to his
near-sightedness, all drafts and conscriptions. The father's ambition
was to make his son a government clerk. At the beginning of this
century the army presented too many posts not to leave various
vacancies in the government offices. A deficiency of minor officials
enabled old Pere Thuillier to hoist his son upon the lowest step of the
bureaucratic hierarchy. The old man died in 1814, leaving Jerome on
the point of becoming sub-director, but with no other fortune than
that prospect. The worthy Thuillier and his wife (who died in 1810)
had retired from active service in 1806, with a pension as their only
means of support; having spent what property they had in giving Jerome
the education required in these days, and in supporting both him and
his sister.
The influence of the Restoration on the bureaucracy is well known.
From the forty and one suppressed departments a crowd of honorable
employees returned to Paris with nothing to do, and clamorous for
places inferior to those they had lately occupied. To these acquired
rights were added those of exiled families ruined by the Revolution.
Pressed between the two floods, Jerome thought himself lucky not to
have been dismissed under some frivolous pretext. He trembled until
the day when, becoming by mere chance sub-director, he saw himself
secure of a retiring pension. This cursory view of matters will serve
to explain Monsieur Thuillier's very limited scope and knowledge. He
had learned the Latin, mathematics, history, and geography that are
taught in schools, but he never got beyond what is called the second
class; his father having preferred to take advantage of a sudden
opportunity to place him at the ministry. So, while the young
Thuillier was making his first records on the Grand-Livre, he ought to
have been studying his rhetoric and philosophy.
While grinding the ministerial machine, he had no leisure to cultivate
letters, still less the arts; but he acquired a routine knowledge of
his business, and when he had an opportunity to rise, under the
Empire, to the sphere of superior employees, he assumed a superficial
air of competence which concealed the son of a porter, though none of
it rubbed into his mind. His ignorance, however, taught him to keep
silence, and silence served him well. He accustomed himself to
practise, under the imperial regime, a passive obedience which pleased
his superiors; and it was to this quality that he owed at a later
period his promotion to the rank of sub-director. His routine habits
then became great experience; his manners and his silence concealed
his lack of education, and his absolute nullity was a recommendation,
for a cipher was needed. The government was afraid of displeasing both
parties in the Chamber by selecting a man from either side; it
therefore got out of the difficulty by resorting to the rule of
seniority. That is how Thuillier became sub-director. Mademoiselle
Thuillier, knowing that her brother abhorred reading, and could
substitute no business for the bustle of a public office, had wisely
resolved to plunge him into the cares of property, into the culture of
a garden, in short, into all the infinitely petty concerns and
neighborhood intrigues which make up the life of the bourgeoisie.
The transplanting of the Thuillier household from the rue d'Argenteuil
to the rue Saint-Dominique d'Enfer, the business of making the
purchase, of finding a suitable porter, and then of obtaining tenants
occupied Thuillier from 1831 to 1832. When the phenomenon of the
change was accomplished, and the sister saw that Jerome had borne it
fairly well, she found him other cares and occupations (about which we
shall hear later), all based upon the character of the man himself, as
to which it will now be useful to give information.
Though the son of a ministerial porter, Thuillier was what is called a
fine man, slender in figure, above middle height, and possessing a
face that was rather agreeable if wearing his spectacles, but
frightful without them; which is frequently the case with near-sighted
persons; for the habit of looking through glasses has covered the
pupils of his eyes with a sort of film.
Between the ages of eighteen and thirty, young Thuillier had much
success among women, in a sphere which began with the lesser bourgeois
and ended in that of the heads of departments. Under the Empire, war
left Parisian society rather denuded of men of energy, who were mostly
on the battlefield; and perhaps, as a great physician has suggested,
this may account for the flabbiness of the generation which occupies
the middle of the nineteenth century.
Thuillier, forced to make himself noticeable by other charms than
those of mind, learned to dance and to waltz in a way to be cited; he
was called "that handsome Thuillier"; he played billiards to
perfection; he knew how to cut out likenesses in black paper, and his
friend Colleville coached him so well that he was able to sing all the
ballads of the day. These various small accomplishments resulted in
that appearance of success which deceives youth and befogs it about
the future. Mademoiselle Thuillier, from 1806 to 1814, believed in her
brother as Mademoiselle d'Orleans believed in Louis-Philippe. She was
proud of Jerome; she expected to see him the director-general of his
department of the ministry, thanks to his successes in certain salons,
where, undoubtedly, he would never have been admitted but for the
circumstances which made society under the Empire a medley.
But the successes of "that handsome Thuillier" were usually of short
duration; women did not care to keep his devotion any more than he
desired to make his devotion eternal. He was really an unwilling Don
Juan; the career of a "beau" wearied him to the point of aging him;
his face, covered with lines like that of an old coquette, looked a
dozen years older than the registers made him. There remained to him
of all his successes in gallantry, a habit of looking at himself in
mirrors, of buttoning his coat to define his waist, and of posing in
various dancing attitudes; all of which prolonged, beyond the period
of enjoying his advantages, the sort of lease that he held on his
cognomen, "that handsome Thuillier."
The truth of 1806 has, however, become a fable, in 1826. He retains a
few vestiges of the former costume of the beaux of the Empire, which
are not unbecoming to the dignity of a former sub-director. He still
wears the white cravat with innumerable folds, wherein his chin is
buried, and the coquettish bow, formerly tied by the hands of beauty,
the two ends of which threaten danger to the passers to right and
left. He follows the fashions of former days, adapting them to his
present needs; he tips his hat on the back of his head, and wears
shoes and thread stockings in summer; his long-tailed coats remind one
of the well-known "surtouts" of the Empire; he has not yet abandoned
his frilled shirts and his white waistcoats; he still plays with his
Empire switch, and holds himself so erect that his back bends in. No
one, seeing Thuillier promenading on the boulevards, would take him
for the son of a man who cooked the breakfasts of the clerks at a
ministry and wore the livery of Louis XVI.; he resembles an imperial
diplomatist or a sub-prefect. Now, not only did Mademoiselle Thuillier
very innocently work upon her brother's weak spot by encouraging in
him an excessive care of his person, which, in her, was simply a
continuation of her worship, but she also provided him with family
joys, by transplanting to their midst a household which had hitherto
been quasi-collateral to them.
It was that of Monsieur Colleville, an intimate friend of Thuillier.
But before we proceed to describe Pylades let us finish with Orestes,
and explain why Thuillier--that handsome Thuillier--was left without a
family of his own--for the family, be it said, is non-existent without
children. Herein appears one of those deep mysteries which lie buried
in the arena of private life, a few shreds of which rise to the
surface at moments when the pain of a concealed situation grows
poignant. This concerns the life of Madame and Mademoiselle Thuillier;
so far, we have seen only the life (and we may call it the public
life) of Jerome Thuillier.
Marie-Jeanne-Brigitte Thuillier, four years older than her brother,
had been utterly sacrificed to him; it was easier to give a career to
one than a "dot" to the other. Misfortune to some natures is a pharos,
which illumines to their eyes the dark low corners of social
existence. Superior to her brother both in mind and energy, Brigitte
had one of those natures which, under the hammer of persecution,
gather themselves together, become compact and powerfully resistant,
not to say inflexible. Jealous of her independence, she kept aloof
from the life of the household; choosing to make herself the sole
arbiter of her own fate. At fourteen years of age, she went to live
alone in a garret, not far from the ministry of finance, which was
then in the rue Vivienne, and also not far from the Bank of France,
then, and now, in the rue de la Vrilliere. There she bravely gave
herself up to a form of industry little known and the perquisite of a
few persons, which she obtained, thanks to the patrons of her father.
It consisted in making bags to hold coin for the Bank, the Treasury,
and the great financial houses. At the end of three years she employed
two workwomen. By investing her savings on the Grand-Livre, she found
herself, in 1814, the mistress of three thousand six hundred francs a
year, earned in fifteen years. As she spent little, and dined with her
father as long as he lived, and, as government securities were very
low during the last convulsions of the Empire, this result, which
seems at first sight exaggerated, explains itself.
On the death of their father, Brigitte and Jerome, the former being
twenty-seven, the latter twenty-three, united their existence. Brother
and sister were bound together by an extreme affection. If Jerome,
then at the height of his success, was pinched for money, his sister,
clothed in serge, and her fingers roughened by the coarse thread with
which she sewed her bags, would give him a few louis. In Brigitte's
eyes Jerome was the handsomest and most charming man in the whole
French Empire. To keep house for this cherished brother, to be
initiated into the secrets of Lindor and Don Juan, to be his
handmaiden, his spaniel, was Brigitte's dream. She immolated herself
lovingly to an idol whose selfishness, always great, was enormously
increased by her self-sacrifice. She sold her business to her
fore-woman for fifteen thousand francs and came to live with Thuillier
in the rue d'Argenteuil, where she made herself the mother, protectress,
and servant of this spoiled child of women. Brigitte, with the natural
caution of a girl who owed everything to her own discretion and her
own labor, concealed the amount of her savings from Jerome,--fearing,
no doubt, the extravagance of a man of gallantry. She merely paid a
quota of six hundred francs a year to the expenses of the household,
and this, with her brother's eighteen hundred, enabled her to make
both ends meet at the end of the year.
From the first days of their coming together, Thuillier listened to
his sister as to an oracle; he consulted her in his trifling affairs,
kept none of his secrets from her, and thus made her taste the fruit
of despotism which was, in truth, the one little sin of her nature.
But the sister had sacrificed everything to the brother; she had
staked her all upon his heart; she lived by him only. Brigitte's
ascendancy over Jerome was singularly proved by the marriage which she
procured for him about the year 1814.
Seeing the tendency to enforced reduction which the new-comers to
power under the Restoration were beginning to bring about in the
government offices, and particularly since the return of the old
society which sought to ride over the bourgeoisie, Brigitte
understood, far better than her brother could explain it to her, the
social crisis which presently extinguished their common hopes. No more
successes for that handsome Thuillier in the salons of the nobles who
now succeeded the plebeians of the Empire!
Thuillier was not enough of a person to take up a politic opinion and
choose a party; he felt, as his sister did for him, the necessity of
profiting by the remains of his youth to make a settlement. In such a
situation, a sister as jealous of her power as Brigitte naturally
would, and ought, to marry her brother, to suit herself as well as to
suit him; for she alone could make him really happy, Madame Thuillier
being only an indispensable accessory to the obtaining of two or three
children. If Brigitte did not have an intellect quite the equal of her
will, at least she had the instinct of her despotism; without, it is
true, education, she marched straight before her, with the headstrong
determination of a nature accustomed to succeed. She had the genius of
housekeeping, a faculty for economy, a thorough understanding of how
to live, and a love for work. She saw plainly that she could never
succeed in marrying Jerome into a sphere above their own, where
parents might inquire into their domestic life and feel uneasy at
finding a mistress already reigning in the home. She therefore sought
in a lower grade for persons to dazzle, and found, almost beside her,
a suitable match.
The oldest usher at the Bank, a man named Lemprun, had an only
daughter, called Celeste. Mademoiselle Celeste Lemprun would inherit
the fortune of her mother, the only daughter of a rich farmer. This
fortune consisted of some acres of land in the environs of Paris,
which the old father still worked; besides this, she would have the
property of Lemprun himself, a man who had left the firms of Thelusson
and of Keller to enter the service of the Bank of France. Lemprun, now
the head of that service, enjoyed the respect and consideration of the
governors and auditors.
The Bank council, on hearing of the probable marriage of Celeste to an
honorable employee at the ministry of finance, promised a wedding
present of six thousand francs. This gift, added to twelve thousand
given by Pere Lemprun, and twelve thousand more from the maternal
grandfather, Sieur Galard, market-gardener at Auteuil, brought up the
dowry to thirty thousand francs. Old Galard and Monsieur and Madame
Lemprun were delighted with the marriage. Lemprun himself knew
Mademoiselle Thuillier, and considered her one of the worthiest and
most conscientious women in Paris. Brigitte then, for the first time,
allowed her investments on the Grand-Livre to shine forth, assuring
Lemprun that she should never marry; consequently, neither he nor his
wife, persons devoted to the main chance, would ever allow themselves
to find fault with Brigitte. Above all, they were greatly struck by
the splendid prospects of the handsome Thuillier, and the marriage
took place, as the conventional saying is, to the general
satisfaction.
The governor of the Bank and the secretary were the bride's witnesses;
Monsieur de la Billardiere, director of Thuillier's department, and
Monsieur Rabourdin, head of the office, being those of the groom. Six
days after the marriage old Lemprun was the victim of a daring robbery
which made a great noise in the newspapers of the day, though it was
quickly forgotten during the events of 1815. The guilty parties having
escaped detection, Lemprun wished to make up the loss; but the Bank
agreed to carry the deficit to its profit and loss account;
nevertheless, the poor old man actually died of the grief this affair
had caused him. He regarded it as an attack upon his aged honor.
Madame Lemprun then resigned all her property to her daughter, Madame
Thuillier, and went to live with her father at Auteuil until he died
from an accident in 1817. Alarmed at the prospect of having to manage
or lease the market-garden and the farm of her father, Madame Lemprun
entreated Brigitte, whose honesty and capacity astonished her, to wind
up old Galard's affairs, and to settle the property in such a way that
her daughter should take possession of everything, securing to her
mother fifteen hundred francs a year and the house at Auteuil. The
landed property of the old farmer was sold in lots, and brought in
thirty thousand francs. Lemprun's estate had given as much more, so
that Madame Thuillier's fortune, including her "dot," amounted in 1818
to ninety thousand francs. Joining the revenue of this property to
that of the brother and sister, the Thuillier household had an income,
in 1818, amounting to eleven thousand francs, managed by Brigitte
alone on her sole responsibility. It is necessary to begin by stating
this financial position, not only to prevent objections but to rid the
drama of difficulties.
Brigitte began, from the first, by allowing her brother five hundred
francs a month, and by sailing the household boat at the rate of five
thousand francs a year. She granted to her sister-in-law fifty francs
a month, explaining to her carefully that she herself was satisfied
with forty. To strengthen her despotism by the power of money,
Brigitte laid by the surplus of her own funds. She made, so it was
said in business offices, usurious loans by means of her brother, who
appeared as a money-lender. If, between the years 1813 and 1830,
Brigitte had capitalized sixty thousand francs, that sum can be
explained by the rise in the Funds, and there is no need to have
recourse to accusations more or less well founded, which have nothing
to do with our present history.
From the first days of the marriage, Brigitte subdued the unfortunate
Madame Thuillier with a touch of the spur and a jerk of the bit, both
of which she made her feel severely. A further display of tyranny was
useless; the victim resigned herself at once. Celeste, thoroughly
understood by Brigitte, a girl without mind or education, accustomed
to a sedentary life and a tranquil atmosphere, was extremely gentle by
nature; she was pious in the fullest acceptation of the word; she
would willingly have expiated by the hardest punishments the
involuntary wrong of giving pain to her neighbor. She was utterly
ignorant of life; accustomed to be waited on by her mother, who did
the whole service of the house, for Celeste was unable to make much
exertion, owing to a lymphatic constitution which the least toil
wearied. She was truly a daughter of the people of Paris, where
children, seldom handsome, and of no vigor, the product of poverty and
toil, of homes without fresh air, without freedom of action, without
any of the conveniences of life, meet us at every turn.
At the time of the marriage, Celeste was seen to be a little woman,
fair and faded almost to sickliness, fat, slow, and silly in the
countenance. Her forehead, much too large and too prominent, suggested
water on the brain, and beneath that waxen cupola her face, noticeably
too small and ending in a point like the nose of a mouse, made some
people fear she would become, sooner or later, imbecile. Her eyes,
which were light blue, and her lips, always fixed in a smile, did not
contradict that idea. On the solemn occasion of her marriage she had
the manner, air, and attitude of a person condemned to death, whose
only desire is that it might all be over speedily.
"She is rather round," said Colleville to Thuillier.
Brigitte was just the knife to cut into such a nature, to which her
own formed the strongest contrast. Mademoiselle Thuillier was
remarkable for her regular and correct beauty, but a beauty injured by
toil which, from her very childhood, had bent her down to painful,
thankless tasks, and by the secret privations she imposed upon herself
in order to amass her little property. Her complexion, early
discolored, had something the tint of steel. Her brown eyes were
framed in brown; on the upper lip was a brown floss like a sort of
smoke. Her lips were thin, and her imperious forehead was surmounted
by hair once black, now turning to chinchilla. She held herself as
straight as the fairest beauty; but all things else about her showed
the hardiness of her life, the deadening of her natural fire, the cost
of what she was!
To Brigitte, Celeste was simply a fortune to lay hold of, a future
mother to rule, one more subject in her empire. She soon reproached
her for being _weak_, a constant word in her vocabulary, and the jealous
old maid, who would strongly have resented any signs of activity in
her sister-in-law, now took a savage pleasure in prodding the languid
inertness of the feeble creature. Celeste, ashamed to see her
sister-in-law displaying such energy in household work, endeavored to
help her, and fell ill in consequence. Instantly, Brigitte was devoted
to her, nursed her like a beloved sister, and would say, in presence of
Thuillier: "You haven't any strength, my child; you must never do
anything again." She showed up Celeste's incapacity by that display of
sympathy with which strength, seeming to pity weakness, finds means to
boast of its own powers.
But, as all despotic natures liking to exercise their strength are
full of tenderness for physical sufferings, Brigitte took such real
care of her sister-in-law as to satisfy Celeste's mother when she came
to see her daughter. After Madame Thuillier recovered, however, she
called her, in Celeste's hearing, "a helpless creature, good for
nothing!" which sent the poor thing crying to her room. When Thuillier
found her there, drying her eyes, he excused her sister, saying:--
"She is an excellent woman, but rather hasty; she loves you in her own
way; she behaves just so with me."
Celeste, remembering the maternal care of her sister-in-law during her
illness, forgave the wound. Brigitte always treated her brother as the
king of the family; she exalted him to Celeste, and made him out an
autocrat, a Ladislas, an infallible pope. Madame Thuillier having lost
her father and grandfather, and being well-nigh deserted by her
mother, who came to see her on Thursdays only (she herself spending
Sundays at Auteuil in summer), had no one left to love except her
husband, and she did love him,--in the first place, because he was her
husband, and secondly, because he still remained to her "that handsome
Thuillier." Besides, he sometimes treated her like a wife, and all
these reasons together made her adore him. He seemed to her all the
more perfect because he often took up her defence and scolded his
sister, not from any real interest in his wife, but for pure
selfishness, and in order to have peace in the household during the
very few moments that he stayed there.
In fact, that handsome Thuillier was never at home except at dinner,
after which meal he went out, returning very late at night. He went to
balls and other social festivities by himself, precisely as if he were
still a bachelor. Thus the two women were always alone together.
Celeste insensibly fell into a passive attitude, and became what
Brigitte wanted her,--a helot. The Queen Elizabeth of the household
then passed from despotism to a sort of pity for the poor victim who
was always sacrificed. She ended by softening her haughty ways, her
cutting speech, her contemptuous tones, as soon as she was certain
that her sister-in-law was completely under the yoke. When she saw the
wounds it made on the neck of her victim, she took care of her as a
thing of her own, and Celeste entered upon happier days. Comparing the
end with the beginning, she even felt a sort of love for her torturer.
To gain some power of self-defence, to become something less a cipher
in the household, supported, unknown to herself, by her own means, the
poor helot had but a single chance, and that chance never came to her.
Celeste had no child. This barrenness, which, from month to month,
brought floods of tears from her eyes, was long the cause of
Brigitte's scorn; she reproached the poor woman bitterly for being fit
for nothing, not even to bear children. The old maid, who had longed
to love her brother's child as if it were her own, was unable, for
years, to reconcile herself to this irremediable sterility.
At the time when our history begins, namely, in 1840, Celeste, then
forty-six years old, had ceased to weep; she now had the certainty of
never being a mother. And here is a strange thing. After twenty-five
years of this life, in which victory had ended by first dulling and
then breaking its own knife, Brigitte loved Celeste as much as Celeste
loved Brigitte. Time, ease, and the perpetual rubbing of domestic
life, had worn off the angles and smoothed the asperities; Celeste's
resignation and lamb-like gentleness had brought, at last, a serene
and peaceful autumn. The two women were still further united by the
one sentiment that lay within them, namely, their adoration for the
lucky and selfish Thuillier.
Moreover, these two women, both childless, had each, like all women
who have vainly desired children, fallen in love with a child. This
fictitious motherhood, equal in strength to a real motherhood, needs
an explanation which will carry us to the very heart of our drama, and
will show the reason of the new occupation which Mademoiselle
Thuillier provided for her brother.
CHAPTER III
COLLEVILLE
Thuillier had entered the ministry of finance as supernumerary at the
same time as Colleville, who has been mentioned already as his
intimate friend. In opposition to the well-regulated, gloomy household
of Thuillier, social nature had provided that of Colleville; and if it
is impossible not to remark that this fortuitous contrast was scarcely
moral, we must add that, before deciding that point, it would be well
to wait for the end of this drama, unfortunately too true, for which
the present historian is not responsible.
Colleville was the only son of a talented musician, formerly first
violin at the Opera under Francoeur and Rebel, who related, at least
six times a month during his lifetime, anecdotes concerning the
representations of the "Village Seer"; and mimicked Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, taking him off to perfection. Colleville and Thuillier were
inseparable friends; they had no secrets from each other, and their
friendship, begun at fifteen years of age, had never known a cloud up
to the year 1839. The former was one of those employees who are
called, in the government offices, pluralists. These clerks are
remarkable for their industry. Colleville, a good musician, owed to
the name and influence of his father a situation as first clarionet at
the Opera-Comique, and so long as he was a bachelor, Colleville, who
was rather richer than Thuillier, shared his means with his friend.
But, unlike Thuillier, Colleville married for love a Mademoiselle
Flavie, the natural daughter of a celebrated danseuse at the Opera;
her reputed father being a certain du Bourguier, one of the richest
contractors of the day. In style and origin, Flavie was apparently
destined for a melancholy career, when Colleville, often sent to her
mother's apartments, fell in love with her and married her. Prince
Galathionne, who at that time was "protecting" the danseuse, then
approaching the end of her brilliant career, gave Flavie a "dot" of
twenty thousand francs, to which her mother added a magnificent
trousseau. Other friends and opera-comrades sent jewels and
silver-ware, so that the Colleville household was far richer in
superfluities than in capital. Flavie, brought up in opulence, began
her married life in a charming apartment, furnished by her mother's
upholsterer, where the young wife, who was full of taste for art and
for artists, and possessed a certain elegance, ruled, a queen.
Madame Colleville was pretty and piquant, clever, gay, and graceful;
to express her in one sentence,--a charming creature. Her mother, the
danseuse, now forty-three years old, retired from the stage and went
to live in the country,--thus depriving her daughter of the resources
derived from her wasteful extravagance. Madame Colleville kept a very
agreeable but extremely free and easy household. From 1816 to 1826 she
had five children. Colleville, a musician in the evening, kept the
books of a merchant from seven to nine in the morning, and by ten
o'clock he was at his ministry. Thus, by blowing into a bit of wood by
night, and writing double-entry accounts in the early morning, he
managed to eke out his earnings to seven or eight thousand francs a
year.
Madame Colleville played the part of a "comme il faut" woman; she
received on Wednesdays, gave a concert once a month and a dinner every
fortnight. She never saw Colleville except at dinner and at night,
when he returned about twelve o'clock, at which hour she was
frequently not at home herself. She went to the theatres, where boxes
were sometimes given to her; and she would send word to Colleville to
come and fetch her from such or such a house, where she was supping
and dancing. At her own house, guests found excellent cheer, and her
society, though rather mixed, was very amusing; she received and
welcomed actresses, artists, men of letters, and a few rich men.
Madame Colleville's elegance was on a par with that of Tullia, the
leading prima-donna, with whom she was intimate; but though the
Collevilles encroached on their capital and were often in difficulty
by the end of the month, Flavie was never in debt.
Colleville was very happy; he still loved his wife, and he made
himself her best friend. Always received by her with affectionate
smiles and sympathetic pleasure, he yielded readily to the
irresistible grace of her manners. The vehement activity with which he
pursued his three avocations was a part of his natural character and
temperament. He was a fine stout man, ruddy, jovial, extravagant, and
full of ideas. In ten years there was never a quarrel in his
household. Among business men he was looked upon, in common with all
artists, as a scatter-brained fellow; and superficial persons thought
that the constant hurry of this hard worker was only the restless
coming and going of a busybody.
Colleville had the sense to seem stupid; he boasted of his family
happiness, and gave himself unheard-of trouble in making anagrams, in
order at times to seem absorbed in that passion. The government clerks
of his division at the ministry, the office directors, and even the
heads of divisions came to his concerts; now and then he quietly
bestowed upon them opera tickets, when he needed some extra indulgence
on account of his frequent absence. Rehearsals took half the time that
he ought to have been at his desk; but the musical knowledge his
father had bequeathed to him was sufficiently genuine and
well-grounded to excuse him from all but final rehearsals. Thanks to
Madame Colleville's intimacies, both the theatre and the ministry lent
themselves kindly to the needs of this industrious pluralist, who,
moreover, was bringing up, with great care, a youth, warmly
recommended to him by his wife, a future great musician, who sometimes
took his place in the orchestra with a promise of eventually
succeeding him. In fact, about the year 1827 this young man became the
first clarionet when Colleville resigned his position.
The usual comment on Flavie was, "That little slip of a coquette,
Madame Colleville." The eldest of the Colleville children, born in
1816, was the living image of Colleville himself. In 1818, Madame
Colleville held the cavalry in high estimation, above even art; and
she distinguished more particularly a sub-lieutenant in the dragoons
of Saint-Chamans, the young and rich Charles de Gondreville, who
afterwards died in the Spanish campaign. By that time Flavie had had a
second son, whom she henceforth dedicated to a military career. In
1820 she considered banking the nursing mother of trade, the supporter
of Nations, and she made the great Keller, that famous banker and
orator, her idol. She then had another son, whom she named Francois,
resolving to make him a merchant,--feeling sure that Keller's
influence would never fail him. About the close of the year 1820,
Thuillier, the intimate friend of Monsieur and Madame Colleville, felt
the need of pouring his sorrows into the bosom of this excellent
woman, and to her he related his conjugal miseries. For six years he
had longed to have children, but God did not bless him; although that
poor Madame Thuillier had made novenas, and had even gone, uselessly,
to Notra-Dame de Liesse! He depicted Celeste in various lights, which
brought the words "Poor Thuillier!" from Flavie's lips. She herself
was rather sad, having at the moment no dominant opinion. She poured
her own griefs into Thuillier's bosom. The great Keller, that hero of
the Left, was, in reality, extremely petty; she had learned to know
the other side of public fame, the follies of banking, the emptiness
of eloquence! The orator only spoke for show; to her he had behaved
extremely ill. Thuillier was indignant. "None but stupid fellows know
how to love," he said; "take me!" That handsome Thuillier was
henceforth supposed to be paying court to Madame Colleville, and was
rated as one of her "attentives,"--a word in vogue during the Empire.
"Ha! you are after my wife," said Colleville, laughing. "Take care;
she'll leave you in the lurch, like all the rest."
A rather clever speech, by which Colleville saved his marital dignity.
From 1820 to 1821, Thuillier, in virtue of his title as friend of the
family, helped Colleville, who had formerly helped him; so much so,
that in eighteen months he had lent nearly ten thousand francs to the
Colleville establishment, with no intention of ever claiming them. In
the spring of 1821, Madame Colleville gave birth to a charming little
girl, to whom Monsieur and Madame Thuillier were godfather and
godmother. The child was baptized Celeste-Louise-Caroline-Brigitte;
Mademoiselle Thuillier wishing that her name should be given among
others to the little angel. The name of Caroline was a graceful
attention paid to Colleville. Old mother Lemprun assumed the care of
putting the baby to nurse under her own eyes at Auteuil, where Celeste
and her sister-in-law Brigitte, paid it regularly a semi-weekly visit.
As soon as Madame Colleville recovered she said to Thuillier, frankly,
in a very serious tone:--
"My dear friend, if we are all to remain good friends, you must be our
friend only. Colleville is attached to you; well, that's enough for
you in this household."
"Explain to me," said the handsome Thuillier to Tullia after this
remark, "why women are never attached to me. I am not the Apollo
Belvidere, but for all that I'm not a Vulcan; I am passably
good-looking, I have sense, I am faithful--"
"Do you want me to tell you the truth?" replied Tullia.
"Yes," said Thuillier.
"Well, though we can, sometimes, love a stupid fellow, we never love a
silly one."
Those words killed Thuillier; he never got over them; henceforth he
was a prey to melancholy and accused all women of caprice.
The secretary-general of the ministry, des Lupeaulx, whose influence
Madame Colleville thought greater than it was, and of whom she said,
later, "That was one of my mistakes," became for a time the great man
of the Colleville salon; but as Flavie found he had no power to
promote Colleville into the upper division, she had the good sense to
resent des Lupeaulx's attentions to Madame Rabourdin (whom she called
a minx), to whose house she had never been invited, and who had twice
had the impertinence not to come to the Colleville concerts.
Madame Colleville was deeply affected by the death of young
Gondreville; she felt, she said, the finger of God. In 1824 she turned
over a new leaf, talked of economy, stopped her receptions, busied
herself with her children, determined to become a good mother of a
family; no favorite friend was seen at her house. She went to church,
reformed her dress, wore gray, and talked Catholicism, mysticism, and
so forth. All this produced, in 1825, another little son, whom she
named Theodore. Soon after, in 1826, Colleville was appointed
sub-director of the Clergeot division, and later, in 1828, collector
of taxes in a Paris arrondissement. He also received the cross of the
Legion of honor, to enable him to put his daughter at the royal school
of Saint-Denis. The half-scholarship obtained by Keller for the eldest
boy, Charles, was transferred to the second in 1830, when Charles
entered the school of Saint-Louis on a full scholarship. The third
son, taken under the protection of Madame la Dauphine, was provided
with a three-quarter scholarship in the Henri IV. school.
In 1830 Colleville, who had the good fortune not to lose a child, was
obliged, owing to his well-known attachment to the fallen royal
family, to send in his resignation; but he was clever enough to make a
bargain for it,--obtaining in exchange a pension of two thousand four
hundred francs, based on his period of service, and ten thousand
francs indemnity paid by his successor; he also received the rank of
officer of the Legion of honor. Nevertheless, he found himself in
rather a cramped condition when Mademoiselle Thuillier, in 1832,
advised him to come and live near them; pointing out to him the
possibility of obtaining some position in the mayor's office, which,
in fact, he did obtain a few weeks later, at a salary of three
thousand francs. Thus Thuillier and Colleville were destined to end
their days together. In 1833 Madame Colleville, then thirty-five years
old, settled herself in the rue d'Enfer, at the corner of the rue des
Deux-Eglises with Celeste and little Theodore, the other boys being at
their several schools. Colleville was equidistant between the mayor's
office and the rue Saint-Dominique d'Enfer. Thus the household, after
a brilliant, gay, headlong, reformed, and calmed existence, subsided
finally into bourgeois obscurity with five thousand four hundred
francs a year for its sole dependence.
Celeste was by this time twelve years of age, and she promised to be
pretty. She needed masters, and her education ought to cost not less
than two thousand francs a year. The mother felt the necessity of
keeping her under the eye of her godfather and godmother. She
therefore very willingly adopted the proposal of Mademoiselle
Thuillier, who, without committing herself to any engagement, allowed
Madame Colleville to understand that the fortunes of her brother, his
wife, and herself would go, ultimately, to the little Celeste. The
child had been left at Auteuil until she was seven years of age,
adored by the good old Madame Lemprun, who died in 1829, leaving
twenty thousand francs, and a house which was sold for the enormous
sum of twenty-eight thousand. The lively little girl had seen very
little of her mother, but very much of Mademoiselle and Madame
Thuillier when she first returned to the paternal mansion in 1829; but
in 1833 she fell under the dominion of Flavie, who was then, as we
have said, endeavoring to do her duty, which, like other women
instigated by remorse, she exaggerated. Without being an unkind
mother, Flavie was very stern with her daughter. She remembered her
own bringing-up, and swore within herself to make Celeste a virtuous
woman. She took her to mass, and had her prepared for her first
communion by a rector who has since become a bishop. Celeste was all
the more readily pious, because her godmother, Madame Thuillier, was a
saint, and the child adored her; she felt that the poor neglected
woman loved her better than her own mother.
From 1833 to 1840 she received a brilliant education according to the
ideas of the bourgeoisie. The best music-masters made her a fair
musician; she could paint a water-color properly; she danced extremely
well; and she had studied the French language, history, geography,
English, Italian,--in short, all that constitutes the education of a
well-brought-up young lady. Of medium height, rather plump,
unfortunately near-sighted, she was neither plain nor pretty; not
without delicacy or even brilliancy of complexion, it is true, but
totally devoid of all distinction of manner. She had a great fund of
reserved sensibility, and her godfather and godmother, Mademoiselle
Thuillier and Colleville, were unanimous on one point,--the great
resource of mothers--namely, that Celeste was capable of attachment.
One of her beauties was a magnificent head of very fine blond hair;
but her hands and feet showed her bourgeois origin.
Celeste endeared herself by precious qualities; she was kind, simple,
without gall of any kind; she loved her father and mother, and would
willingly sacrifice herself for their sake. Brought up to the deepest
admiration for her godfather by Brigitte (who taught her to say "Aunt
Brigitte"), and by Madame Thuillier and her own mother, Celeste
imbibed the highest idea of the ex-beau of the Empire. The house in
the rue Saint-Dominique d'Enfer produced upon her very much the effect
of the Chateau des Tuileries on a courtier of the new dynasty.
Thuillier had not escaped the action of the administrative rolling-pin
which thins the mind as it spreads it out. Exhausted by irksome toil,
as much as by his life of gallantry, the ex-sub-director had well-nigh
lost all his faculties by the time he came to live in the rue
Saint-Dominique. But his weary face, on which there still reigned an
air of imperial haughtiness, mingled with a certain contentment, the
conceit of an upper official, made a deep impression upon Celeste. She
alone adored that haggard face. The girl, moreover, felt herself to be
the happiness of the Thuillier household.
CHAPTER IV
THE CIRCLE OF MONSIEUR AND MADAME THUILLIER
The Collevilles and their children became, naturally, the nucleus of
the circle which Mademoiselle Thuillier had the ambition to group
around her brother. A former clerk in the Billardiere division of the
ministry, named Phellion, had lived for the last thirty years in their
present quarter. He was promptly greeted by Colleville and Thuillier
at the first review. Phellion proved to be one of the most respected
men in the arrondissement. He had one daughter, now married to a
school-teacher in the rue Saint-Hyacinthe, a Monsieur Barniol.
Phellion's eldest son was a professor of mathematics in a royal
college; he gave lectures and private lessons, being devoted, so his
father was wont to say, to pure mathematics. A second son was in the
government School of Engineering. Phellion had a pension of nine
hundred francs, and he possessed a little property of nine thousand
and a few odd hundred francs; the fruit of his economy and that of his
wife during thirty years of toil and privation. He was, moreover, the
owner of a little house and garden where he lived in the "impasse" des
Feuillantines,--in thirty years he had never used the old-fashioned
word "cul-de-sac"!
Dutocq, the clerk of the justice of peace, was also a former employee
at the ministry of finance. Sacrificed, in former days, to one of
those necessities which are always met with in representative
government, he had accepted the position of scapegoat, receiving,
privately, a round sum of money and the opportunity to buy his present
post of clerk in the arrondissement. This man, not very honorable, and
known to be a spy in the government offices, was never welcomed as he
thought he ought to be by the Thuilliers; but the coldness of his
landlords only made him the more persistent in going to see them. He
was a bachelor and had various vices; he therefore concealed his life
carefully, knowing well how to maintain his position by flattering his
superiors. The justice of peace was much attached to Dutocq. This man,
base as he was, managed, in the end, to make himself tolerated by the
Thuilliers, chiefly by coarse and cringing adulation. He knew the
facts of Thuillier's whole life, his relations with Colleville, and,
above all, with Madame Colleville. One and all they feared his tongue,
and the Thuilliers, without admitting him to any intimacy, endured his
visits.
The family which became the flower of the Thuillier salon was that of
a former ministerial clerk, once an object of pity in the government
offices, who, driven by poverty, left the public service, in 1827, to
fling himself into a business enterprise, having, as he thought, an
idea. Minard (that was his name) foresaw a fortune in one of those
wicked conceptions which reflect such discredit on French commerce,
but which, in the year 1827, had not yet been exposed and blasted by
publicity. Minard bought tea and mixed it with tea-leaves already
used; also he adulterated the elements of chocolate in a manner which
enabled him to sell the chocolate itself very cheaply. This trade in
colonial products, begun in the quartier Saint-Marcel, made a merchant
of Minard. He started a factory, and through these early connections
he was able to reach the sources of raw material. He then did
honorably, and on a large scale, a business begun in the first
instance dishonorably. He became a distiller, worked upon untold
quantities of products, and, by the year 1835, was considered the
richest merchant in the region of the Place Maubert. By that time he
had bought a handsome house in the rue des Macons-Sorbonne; he had
been assistant mayor, and in 1839 became mayor of his arrondissement
and judge in the Court of Commerce. He kept a carriage, had a
country-place near Lagny; his wife wore diamonds at the court balls,
and he prided himself on the rosette of an officer of the Legion of
honor in his buttonhole.
Minard and his wife were exceedingly benevolent. Perhaps he wished to
return in retail to the poor the sums he had mulcted from the public
by the wholesale. Phellion, Colleville, and Thuillier met their old
comrade, Minard, at election, and an intimacy followed; all the closer
with the Thuilliers and Collevilles because Madame Minard seemed
enchanted to make an acquaintance for her daughter in Celeste
Colleville. It was at a grand ball given by the Minards that Celeste
made her first appearance in society (being at that time sixteen and a
half years old), dressed as her Christian named demanded, which seemed
to be prophetic of her coming life. Delighted to be friendly with
Mademoiselle Minard, her elder by four years, she persuaded her father
and godfather to cultivate the Minard establishment, with its gilded
salons and great opulence, where many political celebrities of the
"juste milieu" were wont to congregate, such as Monsieur Popinot, who
became, after a time, minister of commerce; Cochin, since made Baron
Cochin, a former employee at the ministry of finance, who, having a
large interest in the drug business, was now the oracle of the Lombard
and Bourdonnais quarters, conjointly with Monsieur Anselme Popinot.
Minard's eldest son, a lawyer, aiming to succeed those barristers who
were turned down from the Palais for political reasons in 1830, was
the genius of the household, and his mother, even more than his
father, aspired to marry him well. Zelie Minard, formerly a
flower-maker, felt an ardent passion for the upper social spheres, and
desired to enter them through the marriages of her son and daughter;
whereas Minard, wiser than she, and imbued with the vigor of the
middle classes, which the revolution of July had infiltrated into the
fibres of government, thought only of wealth and fortune.
He frequented the Thuillier salon to gain information as to Celeste's
probable inheritance. He knew, like Dutocq and Phellion, the reports
occasioned by Thuillier's former intimacy with Flavie, and he saw at a
glance the idolatry of the Thuilliers for their godchild. Dutocq, to
gain admittance to Minard's house, fawned upon him grossly. When
Minard, the Rothschild of the arrondissement, appeared at the
Thuilliers', he compared him cleverly to Napoleon, finding him stout,
fat, and blooming, having left him at the ministry thin, pale, and
puny.
"You looked, in the division Billardiere," he said, "like Napoleon
before the 18th Brumaire, and I behold you now the Napoleon of the
Empire."
Notwithstanding which flattery, Minard received Dutocq very coldly and
did not invite him to his house; consequently, he made a mortal enemy
of the former clerk.
Monsieur and Madame Phellion, worthy as they were, could not keep
themselves from making calculations and cherishing hopes; they thought
that Celeste would be the very wife for their son the professor;
therefore, to have, as it were, a watcher in the Thuillier salon, they
introduced their son-in-law, Monsieur Barniol, a man much respected in
the faubourg Saint-Jacques, and also an old employee at the mayor's
office, an intimate friend of theirs, named Laudigeois. Thus the
Phellions formed a phalanx of seven persons; the Collevilles were not
less numerous; so that on Sundays it often appeared that thirty
persons were assembled in the Thuillier salon. Thuillier renewed
acquaintance with the Saillards, Baudoyers, and Falleixs,--all persons
of respectability in the quarter of the Palais-Royal, whom they often
invited to dinner.
Madame Colleville was, as a woman, the most distinguished member of
this society, just as Minard junior and Professor Phellion were
superior among the men. All the others, without ideas or education,
and issuing from the lower ranks, presented the types and the
absurdities of the lesser bourgeoisie. Though all success, especially
if won from distant sources, seems to presuppose some genuine merit,
Minard was really an inflated balloon. Expressing himself in empty
phrases, mistaking sycophancy for politeness, and wordiness for wit,
he uttered his commonplaces with a brisk assurance that passed for
eloquence. Certain words which said nothing but answered all things,
--progress, steam, bitumen, National guard, order, democratic element,
spirit of association, legality, movement, resistance,--seemed, as
each political phase developed, to have been actually made for Minard,
whose talk was a paraphrase on the ideas of his newspaper. Julien
Minard, the young lawyer, suffered from his father as much as his
father suffered from his wife. Zelie had grown pretentious with
wealth, without, at the same time, learning to speak French. She was
now very fat, and gave the idea, in her rich surroundings, of a cook
married to her master.
Phellion, that type and model of the petty bourgeois, exhibited as
many virtues as he did absurdities. Accustomed to subordination during
his bureaucratic life, he respected all social superiority. He was
therefore silent before Minard. During the critical period of
retirement from office, he had held his own admirably, for the
following reason. Never until now had that worthy and excellent man
been able to indulge his own tastes. He loved the city of Paris; he
was interested in its embellishment, in the laying out of its streets;
he was capable of standing for hours to watch the demolition of
houses. He might now have been observed, stolidly planted on his legs,
his nose in the air, watching for the fall of a stone which some mason
was loosening at the top of a wall, and never moving till the stone
fell; when it had fallen he went away as happy as an academician at
the fall of a romantic drama. Veritable supernumeraries of the social
comedy, Phellion, Laudigeois, and their kind, fulfilled the functions
of the antique chorus. They wept when weeping was in order, laughed
when they should laugh, and sang in parts the public joys and sorrows;
they triumphed in their corner with the triumphs of Algiers, of
Constantine, of Lisbon, of Sainte-Jean d'Ulloa; they deplored the
death of Napoleon and the fatal catastrophes of the Saint-Merri and
the rue Transnonnain, grieving over celebrated men who were utterly
unknown to them. Phellion alone presents a double side: he divides
himself conscientiously between the reasons of the opposition and
those of the government. When fighting went on in the streets,
Phellion had the courage to declare himself before his neighbors; he
went to the Place Saint-Michel, the place where his battalion
assembled; he felt for the government and did his duty. Before and
during the riot, he supported the dynasty, the product of July; but,
as soon as the political trials began, he stood by the accused. This
innocent "weather-cockism" prevails in his political opinions; he
produces, in reply to all arguments, the "colossus of the North."
England is, to his thinking, as to that of the old "Constitutionnel,"
a crone with two faces,--Machiavellian Albion, and the model nation:
Machiavellian, when the interests of France and of Napoleon are
concerned; the model nation when the faults of the government are in
question. He admits, with his chosen paper, the democratic element,
but refuses in conversation all compact with the republican spirit.
The republican spirit to him means 1793, rioting, the Terror, and
agrarian law. The democratic element is the development of the lesser
bourgeoisie, the reign of Phellions.
The worthy old man is always dignified; dignity serves to explain his
life. He has brought up his children with dignity; he has kept himself
a father in their eyes; he insists on being honored in his home, just
as he himself honors power and his superiors. He has never made debts.
As a juryman his conscience obliges him to sweat blood and water in
the effort to follow the debates of a trial; he never laughs, not even
if the judge, and audience, and all the officials laugh. Eminently
useful, he gives his services, his time, everything--except his money.
Felix Phellion, his son, the professor, is his idol; he thinks him
capable of attaining to the Academy of Sciences. Thuillier, between
the audacious nullity of Minard, and the solid silliness of Phellion,
was a neutral substance, but connected with both through his dismal
experience. He managed to conceal the emptiness of his brain by
commonplace talk, just as he covered the yellow skin of his bald pate
with thready locks of his gray hair, brought from the back of his head
with infinite art by the comb of his hairdresser.
"In any other career," he was wont to say, speaking of the government
employ, "I should have made a very different fortune."
He had seen the _right_, which is possible in theory and impossible in
practice,--results proving contrary to premises,--and he related the
intrigues and the injustices of the Rabourdin affair.
"After that, one can believe all, and believe nothing," he would say.
"Ah! it is a queer thing, government! I'm very glad not to have a son,
and never to see him in the career of a place-hunter."
Colleville, ever gay, rotund, and good-humored, a sayer of
"quodlibets," a maker of anagrams, always busy, represented the
capable and bantering bourgeois, with faculty without success,
obstinate toil without result; he was also the embodiment of jovial
resignation, mind without object, art with usefulness, for, excellent
musician that he was, he never played now except for his daughter.
The Thuillier salon was in some sort a provincial salon, lighted,
however, by continual flashes from the Parisian conflagration; its
mediocrity and its platitudes followed the current of the times. The
popular saying and thing (for in Paris the thing and its saying are
like the horse and its rider) ricochetted, so to speak, to this
company. Monsieur Minard was always impatiently expected, for he was
certain to know the truth of important circumstances. The women of the
Thuillier salon held by the Jesuits; the men defended the University;
and, as a general thing, the women listened. A man of intelligence
(could he have borne the dulness of these evenings) would have
laughed, as he would at a comedy of Moliere, on hearing, amid endless
discussion, such remarks as the following:--
"How could the Revolution of 1789 have been avoided? The loans of
Louis XIV. prepared the way for it. Louis XV., an egotist, a man of
narrow mind (didn't he say, 'If I were lieutenant of police I would
suppress cabriolets'?), that dissolute king--you remember his Parc aux
Cerfs?--did much to open the abyss of revolution. Monsieur de Necker,
an evil-minded Genovese, set the thing a-going. Foreigners have always
tried to injure France. The maximum did great harm to the Revolution.
Legally Louis XVI. should never have been condemned; a jury would have
acquitted him. Why did Charles X. fall? Napoleon was a great man, and
the facts that prove his genius are anecdotal: he took five pinches of
snuff a minute out of a pocket lined with leather made in his
waistcoat. He looked into all his tradesmen's accounts; he went to
Saint-Denis to judge for himself the prices of things. Talma was his
friend; Talma taught him his gestures; nevertheless, he always refused
to give Talma the Legion of honor! The emperor mounted guard for a
sentinel who went to sleep, to save him from being shot. Those were
the things that made his soldiers adore him. Louis XVIII., who
certainly had some sense, was very unjust in calling him Monsieur de
Buonaparte. The defect of the present government is in letting itself
be led instead of leading. It holds itself too low. It is afraid of
men of energy. It ought to have torn up all the treaties of 1815 and
demanded the Rhine. They keep the same men too long in the ministry";
etc., etc.
"Come, you've exerted your minds long enough," said Mademoiselle
Thuillier, interrupting one of these luminous talks; "the altar is
dressed; begin your little game."
If these anterior facts and all these generalities were not placed
here as the frame of the present Scene, to give an idea of the spirit
of this society, the following drama would certainly have suffered
greatly. Moreover, this sketch is historically faithful; it shows a
social stratum of importance in any portrayal of manners and morals,
especially when we reflect that the political system of the Younger
branch rests almost wholly upon it.
The winter of the year 1839 was, it may be said, the period when the
Thuillier salon was in its greatest glory. The Minards came nearly
every Sunday, and began their evening by spending an hour there, if
they had other engagements elsewhere. Often Minard would leave his
wife at the Thuilliers and take his son and daughter to other houses.
This assiduity on the part of the Minards was brought about by a
somewhat tardy meeting between Messieurs Metivier, Barbet, and Minard
on an evening when the two former, being tenants of Mademoiselle
Thuillier, remained rather longer than usual in discussing business
with her. From Barbet, Minard learned that the old maid had money
transactions with himself and Metivier to the amount of sixty thousand
francs, besides having a large deposit in the Bank.
"Has she an account at the Bank?" asked Minard.
"I believe so," replied Barbet. "I give her at least eighty thousand
francs there."
Being on intimate terms with a governor of the Bank, Minard
ascertained that Mademoiselle Thuillier had, in point of fact, an
account of over two hundred thousand francs, the result of her
quarterly deposits for many years. Besides this, she owned the house
they lived in, which was not mortgaged, and was worth at least one
hundred thousand francs, if not more.
"Why should Mademoiselle Thuillier work in this way?" said Minard to
Metivier. "She'd be a good match for you," he added.
"I? oh, no," replied Metivier. "I shall do better by marrying a
cousin; my uncle Metivier has given me the succession to his business;
he has a hundred thousand francs a year and only two daughters."
However secretive Mademoiselle Thuillier might be,--and she said
nothing of her investments to any one, not even to her brother,
although a large amount of Madame Thuillier's fortune went to swell
the amount of her own savings,--it was difficult to prevent some ray
of light from gliding under the bushel which covered her treasure.
Dutocq, who frequented Barbet, with whom he had some resemblance in
character and countenance, had appraised, even more correctly than
Minard, the Thuillier finances. He knew that their savings amounted,
in 1838, to one hundred and fifty thousand francs, and he followed
their progress secretly, calculating profits by the help of that
all-wise money-lender, Barbet.
"Celeste will have from my brother and myself two hundred thousand
francs in ready money," the old maid had said to Barbet in confidence,
"and Madame Thuillier wishes to secure to her by the marriage contract
the ultimate possession of her own fortune. As for me, my will is
made. My brother will have everything during his lifetime, and Celeste
will be my heiress with that reservation. Monsieur Cardot, the notary,
is my executor."
Mademoiselle Thuillier now instigated her brother to renew his former
relations with the Saillards, Baudoyers, and others, who held a
position similar to that of the Thuilliers in the quartier
Saint-Antoine, of which Monsieur Saillard was mayor. Cardot, the notary,
had produced his aspirant for Celeste's hand in the person of Monsieur
Godeschal, attorney and successor to Derville; an able man, thirty-six
years of age, who had paid one hundred thousand francs for his
practice, which the two hundred thousand of the "dot" would doubly
clear off. Minard, however, got rid of Godeschal by informing
Mademoiselle Thuillier that Celeste's sister-in-law would be the
famous Mariette of the Opera.
"She came from the stage," said Colleville, alluding to his wife, "and
there's no need she should return to it."
"Besides, Monsieur Godeschal is too old for Celeste," remarked
Brigitte.
"And ought we not," added Madame Thuillier, timidly, "to let her marry
according to her own taste, so as to be happy?"
The poor woman had detected in Felix Phellion a true love for Celeste;
the love that a woman crushed by Brigitte and wounded by her husband's
indifference (for Thuillier cared less for his wife than he did for a
servant) had dreamed that love might be,--bold in heart, timid
externally, sure of itself, reserved, hidden from others, but
expanding toward heaven. At twenty-three years of age, Felix Phellion
was a gentle, pure-minded young man, like all true scholars who
cultivate knowledge for knowledge's sake. He had been sacredly brought
up by his father, who, viewing all things seriously, had given him
none but good examples accompanied by trivial maxims. He was a young
man of medium height, with light chestnut hair, gray eyes, and a skin
full of freckles; gifted with a charming voice, a tranquil manner;
making few gestures; thoughtful, saying little, and that little
sensible; contradicting no one, and quite incapable of a sordid
thought or a selfish calculation.
"That," thought Madame Thuillier, "is what I should have liked my
husband to be."
One evening, in the month of February, 1840, the Thuillier salon
contained the various personages whose silhouettes we have just traced
out, together with some others. It was nearly the end of the month.
Barbet and Metivier having business with mademoiselle Brigitte, were
playing whist with Minard and Phellion. at another table were Julien
the advocate (a nickname given by Colleville to young Minard), Madame
Colleville, Monsieur Barniol, and Madame Phellion. "Bouillotte," at
five sous a stake, occupied Madame Minard, who knew no other game,
Colleville, old Monsieur Saillard, and Bandoze, his son-in-law. The
substitutes were Laudigeois and Dutocq. Mesdames Falleix, Baudoyer,
Barniol, and Mademoiselle Minard were playing boston, and Celeste was
sitting beside Prudence Minard. Young Phellion was listening to Madame
Thuillier and looking at Celeste.
At a corner of the fireplace sat enthroned on a sofa the Queen
Elizabeth of the family, as simply dressed as she had been for the
last thirty years; for no prosperity could have made her change her
habits. She wore on her chinchilla hair a black gauze cap, adorned
with the geranium called Charles X.; her gown, of plum-colored stuff,
made with a yoke, cost fifteen francs, her embroidered collarette was
worth six, and it ill disguised the deep wrinkle produced by the two
muscles which fastened the head to the vertebral column. The actor,
Monvel, playing Augustus Caesar in his old age, did not present a
harder and sterner profile than that of this female autocrat, knitting
socks for her brother. Before the fireplace stood Thuillier in an
attitude, ready to go forward and meet the arriving guests; near him
was a young man whose entrance had produced a great effect, when the
porter (who on Sundays wore his best clothes and waited on the
company) announced Monsieur Olivier Vinet.
A private communication made by Cardot to the celebrated
"procureur-general," father of this young man, was the cause of his
visit. Olivier Vinet had just been promoted from the court of
Arcis-sur-Aube to that of the Seine, where he now held the post of
substitute "procureur-de-roi." Cardot had already invited Thuillier
and the elder Vinet, who was likely to become minister of justice,
with his son, to dine with him. The notary estimated the fortunes
which would eventually fall to Celeste at seven hundred thousand
francs. Vinet junior appeared charmed to obtain the right to visit
the Thuilliers on Sundays. Great dowries make men commit great and
unbecoming follies without reserve or decency in these days.
Ten minutes later another young man, who had been talking with
Thuillier before the arrival of Olivier Vinet, raised his voice
eagerly, in a political discussion, and forced the young magistrate to
follow his example in the vivacious argument which now ensued. The
matter related to the vote by which the Chamber of Deputies had just
overthrown the ministry of the 12th of May, refusing the allowance
demanded for the Duc de Nemours.
"Assuredly," said the young man, "I am far from belonging to the
dynastic party; I am very far from approving of the rise of the
bourgeoisie to power. The bourgeoisie ought not, any more than the
aristocracy of other days, to assume to be the whole nation. But the
French bourgeoisie has now taken upon itself to create a new dynasty,
a royalty of its own, and behold how it treats it! When the people
allowed Napoleon to rise to power, it created with him a splendid and
monumental state of things; it was proud of his grandeur; and it nobly
gave its blood and sweat in building up the edifice of the Empire.
Between the magnificence of the aristocratic throne and those of the
imperial purple, between the great of the earth and the People, the
bourgeoisie is proving itself petty; it degrades power to its own
level instead of rising up to it. The saving of candle-ends it has so
long practised behind its counters, it now seeks to impose on its
princes. What may perhaps have been virtue in its shops is a blunder
and a crime higher up. I myself have wanted many things for the
people, but I never should have begun by lopping off ten millions of
francs from the new civil list. In becoming, as it were, nearly the
whole of France, the bourgeoisie owed to us the prosperity of the
people, splendor without ostentation, grandeur without privilege."
The father of Olivier Vinet was just now sulking with the government.
The robe of Keeper of the Seals, which had been his dream, was slow in
coming to him. The young substitute did not, therefore, know exactly
how to answer this speech; he thought it wise to enlarge on one of its
side issues.
"You are right, monsieur," said Olivier Vinet. "But, before
manifesting itself magnificently, the bourgeoisie has other duties to
fulfil towards France. The luxury you speak of should come after duty.
That which seems to you so blameable is the necessity of the moment.
The Chamber is far from having its full share in public affairs; the
ministers are less for France than they are for the crown, and
parliament has determined that the administration shall have, as in
England, a strength and power of its own, and not a mere borrowed
power. The day on which the administration can act for itself, and
represent the Chamber as the Chamber represents the country,
parliament will be found very liberal toward the crown. The whole
question is there. I state it without expressing my own opinion, for
the duties of my post demand, in politics, a certain fealty to the
crown."
"Setting aside the political question," replied the young man, whose
voice and accent were those of a native of Provence, "it is certainly
true that the bourgeoisie has ill understood its mission. We can see,
any day, the great law officers, attorney-generals, peers of France in
omnibuses, judges who live on their salaries, prefects without
fortunes, ministers in debt! Whereas the bourgeoisie, who have seized
upon those offices, ought to dignify them, as in the olden time when
aristocracy dignified them, and not occupy such posts solely for the
purpose of making their fortune, as scandalous disclosures have
proved."
"Who is this young man?" thought Olivier Vinet. "Is he a relative?
Cardot ought to have come with me on this first visit."
"Who is that little monsieur?" asked Minard of Barbet. "I have seen
him here several times."
"He is a tenant," replied Metivier, shuffling the cards.
"A lawyer," added Barbet, in a low voice, "who occupies a small
apartment on the third floor front. Oh! _He_ doesn't amount to much; he
has nothing."
"What is the name of that young man?" said Olivier Vinet to Thuillier.
"Theodose de la Peyrade; he is a barrister," replied Thuillier, in a
whisper.
At that moment the women present, as well as the men, looked at the
two young fellows, and Madame Minard remarked to Colleville:--
"He is rather good-looking, that stranger."
"I have made his anagram," replied Colleville, "and his name,
Charles-Marie-Theodose de la Peyrade, prophecies: 'Eh! monsieur
payera, de la dot, des oies et le char.' Therefore, my dear Mamma
Minard, be sure you don't give him your daughter."
"They say that young man is better-looking than my son," said Madame
Phellion to Madame Colleville. "What do you think about it?"
"Oh! in the matter of physical beauty a woman might hesitate before
choosing," replied Madame Colleville.
At that moment it occurred to young Vinet as he looked round the
salon, so full of the lesser bourgeoisie, that it might be a shrewd
thing to magnify that particular class; and he thereupon enlarged upon
the meaning of the young Provencal barrister, declaring that men so
honored by the confidence of the government should imitate royalty and
encourage a magnificence surpassing that of the former court. It was
folly, he said, to lay by the emoluments of an office. Besides, could
it be done, in Paris especially, where costs of living had trebled,
--the apartment of a magistrate, for instance, costing three thousand
francs a year?
"My father," he said in conclusion, "allows me three thousand francs a
year, and that, with my salary, barely allows me to maintain my rank."
When the young substitute rode boldly into this bog-hole, the
Provencal, who had slyly enticed him there, exchanged, without being
observed, a wink with Dutocq, who was just then waiting for the place
of a player at bouillotte.
"There is such a demand for offices," remarked the latter, "that they
talk of creating two justices of the peace to each arrondissement in
order to make a dozen new clerkships. As if they could interfere with
our rights and our salaries, which already require an exhorbitant
tax!"
"I have not yet had the pleasure of hearing you at the Palais," said
Vinet to Monsieur de la Peyrade.
"I am advocate for the poor, and I plead only before the justice of
peace," replied la Peyrade.
Mademoiselle Thuillier, as she listened to young Vinet's theory of the
necessity of spending an income, assumed a distant air and manner, the
significance of which was well understood by Dutocq and the young
Provencal. Vinet left the house in company with Minard and Julien the
advocate, so that the battle-field before the fire-place was abandoned
to la Peyrade and Dutocq.
"The upper bourgeoisie," said Dutocq to Thuillier, "will behave, in
future, exactly like the old aristocracy. The nobility wanted girls
with money to manure their lands, and the parvenus of to-day want the
same to feather their nests."
"That's exactly what Monsieur Thuillier was saying to me this
morning," remarked la Peyrade, boldly.
"Vinet's father," said Dutocq, "married a Demoiselle de Chargeboeuf
and has caught the opinions of the nobility; he wants a fortune at any
price; his wife spends money regally."
"Oh!" said Thuillier, in whom the jealousy between the two classes of
the bourgeoisie was fully roused, "take offices away from those
fellows and they'd fall back where they came."
Mademoiselle was knitting with such precipitous haste that she seemed
to be propelled by a steam-engine.
"Take my place, Monsieur Dutocq," said Madame Minard, rising. "My feet
are cold," she added, going to the fire, where the golden ornaments of
her turban made fireworks in the light of the Saint-Aurora wax-candles
that were struggling vainly to light the vast salon.
"He is very small fry, that young substitute," said Madame Minard,
glancing at Mademoiselle Thuillier.
"Small fry!" cried la Peyrade. "Ah, madame! how witty!"
"But madame has so long accustomed us to that sort of thing," said the
handsome Thuillier.
Madame Colleville was examining la Peyrade and comparing him with
young Phellion, who was just then talking to Celeste, neither of them
paying any heed to what was going on around them. This is, certainly,
the right moment to depict the singular personage who was destined to
play a signal part in the Thuillier household, and who fully deserves
the appellation of a great artist.
CHAPTER V
A PRINCIPAL PERSONAGE
There exists in Provence, especially about Avignon, a race of men with
blond or chestnut hair, fair skin, and eyes that are almost tender,
their pupils calm, feeble, or languishing, rather than keen, ardent,
or profound, as they usually are in the eyes of Southerners. Let us
remark, in passing, that among Corsicans, a race subject to fits of
anger and dangerous irascibility, we often meet with fair skins and
physical natures of the same apparent tranquillity. These pale men,
rather stout, with somewhat dim and hazy eyes either green or blue,
are the worst species of humanity in Provence; and
Charles-Marie-Theodose de la Peyrade presents a fine type of that race,
the constitution of which deserves careful examination on the part of
medical science and philosophical physiology. There rises, at times,
within such men, a species of bile,--a bitter gall, which flies to
their head and makes them capable of ferocious actions, done,
apparently, in cold blood. Being the result of an inward intoxication,
this sort of dumb violence seems to be irreconcilable with their
quasi-lymphatic outward man, and the tranquillity of their benignant
glance.
Born in the neighborhood of Avignon, the young Provencal whose name we
have just mentioned was of middle height, well-proportioned, and
rather stout; the tone of his skin had no brilliancy; it was neither
livid nor dead-white, nor colored, but gelatinous,--that word can
alone give a true idea of the flabby, hueless envelope, beneath which
were concealed nerves that were less vigorous than capable of enormous
resistance at certain given moments. His eyes, of a pale cold blue,
expressed in their ordinary condition a species of deceptive sadness,
which must have had great charms for women. The forehead, finely cut,
was not without dignity, and it harmonized well with the soft, light
chestnut hair curling naturally, but slightly, at its tips. The nose,
precisely like that of a hunting dog, flat and furrowed at the tip,
inquisitive, intelligent, searching, always on the scent, instead of
expressing good-humor, was ironical and mocking; but this particular
aspect of his nature never showed itself openly; the young man must
have ceased to watch himself, he must have flown into fury before the
power came to him to flash out the sarcasm and the wit which
embittered, tenfold, his infernal humor. The mouth, the curving lines
and pomegranate-colored lips of which were very pleasing, seemed the
admirable instrument of an organ that was almost sweet in its middle
tones, where its owner usually kept it, but which, in its higher key,
vibrated on the ear like the sound of a gong. This falsetto was the
voice of his nerves and his anger. His face, kept expressionless by an
inward command, was oval in form. His manners, in harmony with the
sacerdotal calmness of the face, were reserved and conventional; but
he had supple, pliant ways which, though they never descended to
wheedling, were not lacking in seduction; although as soon as his back
was turned their charm seemed inexplicable. Charm, when it takes its
rise in the heart, leaves deep and lasting traces; that which is
merely a product of art, or of eloquence, has only a passing power; it
produces its immediate effect, and that is all. But how many
philosophers are there in life who are able to distinguish the
difference? Almost always the trick is played (to use a popular
expression) before the ordinary run of men have perceived its methods.
Everything about this young man of twenty-seven was in harmony with
his character; he obeyed his vocation by cultivating philanthropy,
--the only expression which explains the philanthropist. Theodose
loved the People, for he limited his love for humanity. Like the
horticulturist who devotes himself to roses, or dahlias, or
heart's-ease, or geraniums, and pays no attention to the plants his
fancy has not selected, so this young La Rochefoucault-Liancourt gave
himself to the workingmen, the proletariat and the paupers of the
faubourgs Saint-Jacques and Saint-Marceau. The strong man, the man of
genius at bay, the worthy poor of the bourgeois class, he cut them off
from the bosom of his charity. The heart of all persons with a mania
is like those boxes with compartments, in which sugarplums are kept in
sorts: "suum cuique tribuere" is their motto; they measure to each duty
its dose. There are some philanthropists who pity nothing but the man
condemned to death. Vanity is certainly the basis of philanthropy; but
in the case of this Provencal it was calculation, a predetermined
course, a "liberal" and democratic hypocrisy, played with a perfection
that no other actor will ever attain.
Theodose did not attack the rich; he contented himself with not
understanding them; he endured them; every one, in his opinion, ought
to enjoy the fruits of his labor. He had been, he said, a fervent
disciple of Saint-Simon, but that mistake must be attributed to his
youth: modern society could have no other basis than heredity. An
ardent Catholic, like all men from the Comtat, he went to the earliest
morning masses, and thus concealed his piety. Like other
philanthropists, he practised a sordid economy, and gave to the poor
his time, his legal advice, his eloquence, and such money as he
extracted for them from the rich. His clothes, always of black cloth,
were worn until the seams became white. Nature had done a great deal
for Theodose in not giving him that fine manly Southern beauty which
creates in others an imaginary expectation, to which it is more than
difficult for a man to respond. As it was, he could be what suited him
at the moment,--an agreeable man or a very ordinary one. Never, since
his admission to the Thuilliers', had he ventured, till this evening,
to raise his voice and speak as dogmatically as he had risked doing to
Olivier Vinet; but perhaps Theodose de la Peyrade was not sorry to
seize the opportunity to come out from the shade in which he had
hitherto kept himself. Besides, it was necessary to get rid of the
young substitute, just as the Minards had previously ruined the hopes
of Monsieur Godeschal. Like all superior men (for he certainly had
some superiority), Vinet had never lowered himself to the point where
the threads of these bourgeois spider-webs became visible to him, and
he had therefore plunged, like a fly, headforemost, into the almost
invisible trap to which Theodose inveigled him.
To complete this portrait of the poor man's lawyer we must here relate
the circumstances of his first arrival at the Thuilliers'.
Theodose came to lodge in Mademoiselle Thuillier's house toward the
close of the year 1837. He had taken his degree about five years
earlier, and had kept the proper number of terms to become a
barrister. Circumstances, however, about which he said nothing, had
interfered to prevent his being called to the bar; he was, therefore,
still a licentiate. But soon after he was installed in the little
apartment on the third floor, with the furniture rigorously required
by all members of his noble profession,--for the guild of barristers
admits no brother unless he has a suitable study, a legal library, and
can thus, as it were, verify his claims,--Theodose de la Peyrade began
to practise as a barrister before the Royal Court of Paris.
The whole of the year 1838 was employed in making this change in his
condition, and he led a most regular life. He studied at home in the
mornings till dinner-time, going sometimes to the Palais for important
cases. Having become very intimate with Dutocq (so Dutocq said), he
did certain services to the poor of the faubourg Saint-Jacques who
were brought to his notice by that official. He pleaded their cases
before the court, after bringing them to the notice of the attorneys,
who, according to the statutes of their order, are obliged to take
turns in doing business for the poor. As Theodose was careful to plead
only safe cases, he won them all. Those persons whom he thus obliged
expressed their gratitude and their admiration, in spite of the young
lawyer's admonitions, among their own class, and to the porters of
private houses, through whom many anecdotes rose to the ears of the
proprietors. Delighted to have in their house a tenant so worthy and
so charitable, the Thuilliers wished to attract him to their salon,
and they questioned Dutocq about him. The mayor's clerk replied as the
envious reply; while doing justice to the young man he dwelt on his
remarkable avarice, which might, however, be the effect of poverty.
"I have had other information about him. He belongs to the Peyrades,
an old family of the 'comtat' of Avignon; he came here toward the end
of 1829, to inquire about an uncle whose fortune was said to be
considerable; he discovered the address of the old man only three days
before his death; and the furniture of the deceased merely sufficed to
bury him and pay his debts. A friend of this useless uncle gave a
couple of hundred louis to the poor fortune-hunter, advising him to
finish his legal studies and enter the judiciary career. Those two
hundred louis supported him for three years in Paris, where he lived
like an anchorite. But being unable to discover his unknown friend and
benefactor, the poor student was in abject distress in 1833. He worked
then, like so many other licentiates, in politics and literature, by
which he kept himself for a time above want--for he had nothing to
expect from his family. His father, the youngest brother of the dead
uncle, has eleven other children, who live on a small estate called
Les Canquoelles. He finally obtained a place on a ministerial
newspaper, the manager of which was the famous Cerizet, so celebrated
for the persecutions he met with, under the Restoration, on account of
his attachment to the liberals,--a man whom the new Left will never
forgive for having made his paper ministerial. As the government of
these days does very little to protect even its most devoted servants
(witness the Gisquet affair), the republicans have ended by ruining
Cerizet. I tell you this to explain how it is that Cerizet is now a
copying clerk in my office. Well, in the days when he flourished as
managing editor of a paper directed by the Perier ministry against the
incendiary journals, the 'Tribune' and others, Cerizet, who is a
worthy fellow after all, though he is too fond of women, pleasure, and
good living, was very useful to Theodose, who edited the political
department of the paper; and if it hadn't been for the death of
Casimir Perier that young man would certainly have received an
appointment as substitute judge in Paris. As it was, he dropped back
in 1834-35, in spite of his talent; for his connection with a
ministerial journal of course did him harm. 'If it had not been for my
religious principles,' he said to me, 'I should have thrown myself
into the Seine.' However, it seems that the friend of his uncle must
have heard of his distress, for again he sent him a sum of money;
enough to complete his terms for the bar; but, strange to say, he has
never known the name or the address of this mysterious benefactor.
After all, perhaps, under such circumstances, his economy is
excusable, and he must have great strength of mind to refuse what the
poor devils whose cases he wins by his devotion offer him. He is
indignant at the way other lawyers speculate on the possibility or
impossibility of poor creatures, unjustly sued, paying for the costs
of their defence. Oh! he'll succeed in the end. I shouldn't be
surprised to see that fellow in some very brilliant position; he has
tenacity, honesty, and courage. He studies, he delves."
Notwithstanding the favor with which he was greeted, la Peyrade went
discreetly to the Thuilliers'. When reproached for this reserve he
went oftener, and ended by appearing every Sunday; he was invited to
all dinner-parties, and became at last so familiar in the house that
whenever he came to see Thuillier about four o'clock he was always
requested to take "pot-luck" without ceremony. Mademoiselle Thuillier
used to say:--
"Then we know that he will get a good dinner, poor fellow!"
A social phenomenon which has certainly been observed, but never, as
yet, formulated, or, if you like it better, published, though it fully
deserves to be recorded, is the return of habits, mind, and manners to
primitive conditions in certain persons who, between youth and old
age, have raised themselves above their first estate. Thus Thuillier
had become, once more, morally speaking, the son of a concierge. He
now made use of many of his father's jokes, and a little of the slime
of early days was beginning to appear on the surface of his declining
life. About five or six times a month, when the soup was rich and good
he would deposit his spoon in his empty plate and say, as if the
proposition were entirely novel:--
"That's better than a kick on the shin-bone!"
On hearing that witticism for the first time Theodose, to whom it was
really new, laughed so heartily that the handsome Thuillier was
tickled in his vanity as he had never been before. After that,
Theodose greeted the same speech with a knowing little smile. This
slight detail will explain how it was that on the morning of the day
when Theodose had his passage at arms with Vinet he had said to
Thuillier, as they were walking in the garden to see the effect of a
frost:--
"You have much more wit than you give yourself credit for."
To which he received this answer:--
"In any other career, my dear Theodose, I should have made my way
nobly; but the fall of the Emperor broke my neck."
"There is still time," said the young lawyer. "In the first place,
what did that mountebank, Colleville, ever do to get the cross?"
There la Peyrade laid his finger on a sore wound which Thuillier hid
from every eye so carefully that even his sister did not know of it;
but the young man, interested in studying these bourgeois, had divined
the secret envy that gnawed at the heart of the ex-official.
"If you, experienced as you are, will do the honor to follow my
advice," added the philanthropist, "and, above all, not mention our
compact to any one, I will undertake to have you decorated with the
Legion of honor, to the applause of the whole quarter."
"Oh! if we succeed in that," cried Thuillier, "you don't know what I
would do for you."
This explains why Thuillier carried his head high when Theodose had
the audacity that evening to put opinions into his mouth.
In art--and perhaps Moliere had placed hypocrisy in the rank of art by
classing Tartuffe forever among comedians--there exists a point of
perfection to which genius alone attains; mere talent falls below it.
There is so little difference between a work of genius and a work of
talent, that only men of genius can appreciate the distance that
separates Raffaelle from Correggio, Titian from Rubens. More than
that; common minds are easily deceived on this point. The sign of
genius is a certain appearance of facility. In fact, its work must
appear, at first sight, ordinary, so natural is it, even on the
highest subjects. Many peasant-women hold their children as the famous
Madonna in the Dresden gallery holds hers. Well, the height of art in
a man of la Peyrade's force was to oblige others to say of him later:
"Everybody would have been taken in by him."
Now, in the salon Thuillier, he noted a dawning opposition; he
perceived in Colleville the somewhat clear-sighted and criticising
nature of an artist who has missed his vocation. The barrister felt
himself displeasing to Colleville, who (as the result of circumstances
not necessary to here report) considered himself justified in
believing in the science of anagrams. None of this anagrams had ever
failed. The clerks in the government office had laughed at him when,
demanding an anagram on the name of the poor helpless
Auguste-Jean-Francois Minard, he had produced, "J'amassai une si
grande fortune"; and the event had justified him after the lapse of
ten years! Theodose, on several occasions, had made advances to the
jovial secretary of the mayor's office, and had felt himself rebuffed
by a coldness which was not natural in so sociable a man. When the
game of bouillotte came to an end, Colleville seized the moment to
draw Thuillier into the recess of a window and say to him:--
"You are letting that lawyer get too much foothold in your house; he
kept the ball in his own hands all the evening."
"Thank you, my friend; forewarned is forearmed," replied Thuillier,
inwardly scoffing at Colleville.
Theodose, who was talking at the moment to Madame Colleville, had his
eye on the two men, and, with the same prescience by which women know
when and how they are spoken of, he perceived that Colleville was
trying to injure him in the mind of the weak and silly Thuillier.
"Madame," he said in Flavie's ear, "if any one here is capable of
appreciating you it is certainly I. You seem to me a pearl dropped
into the mire. You say you are forty-two, but a woman is no older than
she looks, and many women of thirty would be thankful to have your
figure and that noble countenance, where love has passed without ever
filling the void in your heart. You have given yourself to God, I
know, and I have too much religion myself to regret it, but I also
know that you have done so because no human being has proved worthy of
you. You have been loved, but you have never been adored--I have
divined that. There is your husband, who has not known how to please
you in a position in keeping with your deserts. He dislikes me, as if
he thought I loved you; and he prevents me from telling you of a way
that I think I have found to place you in the sphere for which you
were destined. No, madame," he continued, rising, "the Abbe Gondrin
will not preach this year through Lent at our humble Saint-Jacques du
Haut-Pas; the preacher will be Monsieur d'Estival, a compatriot of
mine, and you will hear in him one of the most impressive speakers
that I have ever known,--a priest whose outward appearance is not
agreeable, but, oh! what a soul!"
"Then my desire will be gratified," said poor Madame Thuillier. "I
have never yet been able to understand a famous preacher."
A smile flickered on the lips of Mademoiselle Thuillier and several
others who heard the remark.
"They devote themselves too much to theological demonstration," said
Theodose. "I have long thought so myself--but I never talk religion;
if it had not been for Madame _de_ Colleville, I--"
"Are there demonstrations in theology?" asked the professor of
mathematics, naively, plunging headlong into the conversation.
"I think, monsieur," replied Theodose, looking straight at Felix
Phellion, "that you cannot be serious in asking me such a question."
"Felix," said old Phellion, coming heavily to the rescue of his son,
and catching a distressed look on the pale face of Madame Thuillier,
--"Felix separates religion into two categories; he considers it from
the human point of view and the divine point of view,--tradition and
reason."
"That is heresy, monsieur," replied Theodose. "Religion is one; it
requires, above all things, faith."
Old Phellion, nonplussed by that remark, nodded to his wife:--
"It is getting late, my dear," and he pointed to the clock.
"Oh, Monsieur Felix," said Celeste in a whisper to the candid
mathematician, "Couldn't you be, like Pascal and Bossuet, learned and
pious both?"
The Phellions, on departing, carried the Collevilles with them. Soon
no one remained in the salon but Dutocq, Theodose, and the Thuilliers.
The flattery administered by Theodose to Flavie seems at the first
sight coarsely commonplace, but we must here remark, in the interests
of this history, that the barrister was keeping himself as close as
possible to these vulgar minds; he was navigating their waters; he
spoke their language. His painter was Pierre Grassou, and not Joseph
Bridau; his book was "Paul and Virginia." The greatest living poet for
him was Casimire de la Vigne; to his eyes the mission of art was,
above all things, utility. Parmentier, the discoverer of the potato,
was greater to him that thirty Raffaelles; the man in the blue cloak
seemed to him a sister of charity. These were Thuillier's expressions,
and Theodose remembered them all--on occasion.
"That young Felix Phellion," he now remarked, "is precisely the
academical man of our day; the product of knowledge which sends God to
the rear. Heavens, what are we coming to? Religion alone can save
France; nothing but the fear of hell will preserve us from domestic
robbery, which is going on at all hours in the bosom of families, and
eating into the surest fortunes. All of you have a secret warfare in
your homes."
After this shrewd tirade, which made a great impression upon Brigitte,
he retired, followed by Dutocq, after wishing good evening to the
three Thuilliers.
"That young man has great capacity," said Thuillier, sententiously.
"Yes, that he has," replied Brigitte, extinguishing the lamps.
"He has religion," said Madame Thuillier, as she left the room.
"Monsieur," Phellion was saying to Colleville as they came abreast of
the Ecole de Mines, looking about him to see that no one was near, "it
is usually my custom to submit my insight to that of others, but it is
impossible for me not to think that that young lawyer plays the master
at our friend Thuillier's."
"My own opinion," said Colleville, who was walking with Phellion
behind his wife, Madame Phellion, and Celeste, "is that he's a Jesuit;
and I don't like Jesuits; the best of them are no good. To my mind a
Jesuit means knavery, and knavery for knavery's sake; they deceive for
the pleasure of deceiving, and, as the saying is, to keep their hand
in. That's my opinion, and I don't mince it."
"I understand you, monsieur," said Phellion, who was arm-in-arm with
Colleville.
"No, Monsieur Phellion," remarked Flavie in a shrill voice, "you don't
understand Colleville; but I know what he means, and I think he had
better stop saying it. Such subjects are not to be talked of in the
street, at eleven o'clock at night, and before a young lady."
"You are right, wife," said Colleville.
When they reached the rue des Deux-Eglises, which Phellion was to
take, they all stopped to say good-night, and Felix Phellion, who was
bring up the rear, said to Colleville:--
"Monsieur, your son Francois could enter the Ecole Polytechnique if he
were well-coached; I propose to you to fit him to pass the
examinations this year."
"That's an offer not to be refused! Thank you, my friend," said
Colleville. "We'll see about it."
"Good!" said Phellion to his son, as they walked on.
"Not a bad stroke!" said the mother.
"What do you mean by that?" asked Felix.
"You are very cleverly paying court to Celeste's parents."
"May I never find the solution of my problem if I even thought of it!"
cried the young professor. "I discovered, when talking with the little
Collevilles, that Francois has a strong turn for mathematics, and I
thought I ought to enlighten his father."
"Good, my son!" repeated Phellion. "I wouldn't have you otherwise. My
prayers are granted! I have a son whose honor, probity, and private
and civic virtues are all that I could wish."
Madame Colleville, as soon as Celeste had gone to bed, said to her
husband:--
"Colleville, don't utter those blunt opinions about people without
knowing something about them. When you talk of Jesuits I know you mean
priests; and I wish you would do me the kindness to keep your opinions
on religion to yourself when you are in company with your daughter. We
may sacrifice our own souls, but not the souls of our children. You
don't want Celeste to be a creature without religion? And remember, my
dear, that we are at the mercy of others; we have four children to
provide for; and how do you know that, some day or other, you may not
need the services of this one or that one? Therefore don't make
enemies. You haven't any now, for you are a good-natured fellow; and,
thanks to that quality, which amounts in you to a charm, we have got
along pretty well in life, so far."
"That's enough!" said Colleville, flinging his coat on a chair and
pulling off his cravat. "I'm wrong, and you are right, my beautiful
Flavie."
"And on the next occasion, my dear old sheep," said the sly creature,
tapping her husband's cheek, "you must try to be polite to that young
lawyer; he is a schemer and we had better have him on our side. He is
playing comedy--well! play comedy with him; be his dupe apparently; if
he proves to have talent, if he has a future before him, make a friend
of him. Do you think I want to see you forever in the mayor's office?"
"Come, wife Colleville," said the former clarionet, tapping his knee
to indicate the place he wished his wife to take. "Let us warm our
toes and talk.--When I look at you I am more than ever convinced that
the youth of women is in their figure."
"And in their heart."
"Well, both," assented Colleville; "waist slender, heart solid--"
"No, you old stupid, deep."
"What is good about you is that you have kept your fairness without
growing fat. But the fact is, you have such tiny bones. Flavie, it is
a fact that if I had life to live over again I shouldn't wish for any
other wife than you."
"You know very well I have always preferred you to _others_. How
unlucky that monseigneur is dead! Do you know what I covet for you?"
"No; what?"
"Some office at the Hotel de Ville,--an office worth twelve thousand
francs a year; cashier, or something of that kind; either there, or at
Poissy, in the municipal department; or else as manufacturer of
musical instruments--"
"Any one of them would suit me."
"Well, then! if that queer barrister has power, and he certainly has
plenty of intrigue, let us manage him. I'll sound him; leave me to do
the thing--and, above all, don't thwart his game at the Thuilliers'."
Theodose had laid a finger on a sore sport in Flavie Colleville's
heart; and this requires an explanation, which may, perhaps, have the
value of a synthetic glance at women's life.
At forty years of age a woman, above all, if she has tasted the
poisoned apple of passion, undergoes a solemn shock; she sees two
deaths before her: that of the body and that of the heart. Dividing
women into two great categories which respond to the common ideas, and
calling them either virtuous or guilty, it is allowable to say that
after that fatal period they both suffer pangs of terrible intensity.
If virtuous, and disappointed in the deepest hopes of their nature
--whether they have had the courage to submit, whether they have
buried their revolt in their hearts or at the foot of the altar--they
never admit to themselves that all is over for them without horror.
That thought has such strange and diabolical depths that in it lies
the reason of some of those apostasies which have, at times, amazed
the world and horrified it. If guilty, women of that age fall into one
of several delirious conditions which often turn, alas! to madness, or
end in suicide, or terminate in some with passion greater than the
situation itself.
The following is the "dilemmatic" meaning of this crisis. Either they
have known happiness, known it in a virtuous life, and are unable to
breathe in any air but that surcharged with incense, or act in any but
a balmy atmosphere of flattery and worship,--if so, how is it possible
to renounce it?--or, by a phenomenon less rare than singular, they
have found only wearying pleasures while seeking for the happiness
that escaped them--sustained in that eager chase by the irritating
satisfactions of vanity, clinging to the game like a gambler to his
double or quits; for to them these last days of beauty are their last
stake against despair.
"You have been loved, but never adored."
That speech of Theodose, accompanied by a look which read, not into
her heart, but into her life, was the key-note to her enigma, and
Flavie felt herself divined.
The lawyer had merely repeated ideas which literature has rendered
trivial; but what matter where the whip comes from, or how it is made,
if it touches the sensitive spot of a horse's hide? The emotion was in
Flavie, not in the speech, just as the noise is not in the avalanche,
though it produces it.
A young officer, two fops, a banker, a clumsy youth, and Colleville,
were poor attempts at happiness. Once in her life Madame Colleville
had dreamed of it, but never attained it. Death had hastened to put an
end to the only passion in which she had found a charm. For the last
two years she had listened to the voice of religion, which told her
that neither the Church, nor its votaries, should talk of love or
happiness, but of duty and resignation; that the only happiness lay in
the satisfaction of fulfilling painful and costly duties, the rewards
for which were not in this world. All the same, however, she was
conscious of another clamoring voice; but, inasmuch as her religion
was only a mask which it suited her to wear, and not a conversion, she
did not lay it aside, thinking it a resource. Believing also that
piety, false or true, was a becoming manner in which to meet her
future, she continued in the Church, as though it were the cross-roads
of a forest, where, seated on a bench, she read the sign-posts, and
waited for some lucky chance; feeling all the while that night was
coming on.
Thus it happened that her interest was keenly excited when Theodose
put her secret condition of mind into words, seeming to promise her
the realization of her castle in the air, already built and overthrown
some six or eight times.
From the beginning of the winter she had noticed that Theodose was
examining and studying her, though cautiously and secretly. More than
once, she had put on her gray moire silk with its black lace, and her
headdress of Mechlin with a few flowers, in order to appear to her
best advantage; and men know very well when a toilet has been made to
please them. The old beau of the Empire, that handsome Thuillier,
overwhelmed her with compliments, assuring her she was queen of the
salon, but la Peyrade said infinitely more to the purpose by a look.
Flavie had expected, Sunday after Sunday, a declaration, saying to
herself at times:--
"He knows I am ruined and haven't a sou. Perhaps he is really pious."
Theodose did nothing rashly; like a wise musician, he had marked the
place in his symphony where he intended to tap his drum. When he saw
Colleville attempting to warn Thuillier against him, he fired his
broadside, cleverly prepared during the three or four months in which
he had been studying Flavie; he now succeeded with her as he had,
earlier in the day, succeeded with Thuillier.
While getting into bed, Theodose said to himself:--
"The wife is on my side; the husband can't endure me; they are now
quarrelling; and I shall get the better of it, for she does what she
likes with that man."
The lawyer was mistaken in one thing: there was no dispute whatever,
and Colleville was sleeping peacefully beside his dear little Flavie,
while she was saying to herself:--
"Certainly Theodose must be a superior man."
Many men, like la Peyrade, derive their superiority from the audacity,
or the difficulty, of an enterprise; the strength they display
increases their muscular power, and they spend it freely. Then when
success is won, or defeat is met, the public is astonished to find how
small, exhausted, and puny those men really are. After casting into
the minds of the two persons on whom Celeste's fate chiefly depended,
an interest and curiosity that were almost feverish, Theodose
pretended to be a very busy man; for five or six days he was out of
the house from morning till night, in order not to meet Flavie until
the time when her interest should increase to the point of
overstepping conventionality, and also in order to force the handsome
Thuillier to come and fetch him.
The following Sunday he felt certain he should find Madame Colleville
at church; he was not mistaken, for they came out, each of them, at
the same moment, and met at the corner of the rue des Deux-Eglises.
Theodose offered his arm, which Flavie accepted, leaving her daughter
to walk in front with her brother Anatole. This youngest child, then
about twelve years old, being destined for the seminary, was now at
the Barniol institute, where he obtained an elementary education;
Barniol, the son-in-law of the Phellions, was naturally making the
tuition fees light, with a view to the hoped-for alliance between
Felix and Celeste.
"Have you done me the honor and favor of thinking over what I said to
you so badly the other day?" asked the lawyer, in a caressing tone,
pressing the lady's arm to his heart with a movement both soft and
strong; for he seemed to wish to restrain himself and appear
respectful, in spite of his evident eagerness. "Do not misunderstand
my intentions," he continued, after receiving from Madame Colleville
one of those looks which women trained to the management of passion
know how to give,--a look that, by mere expression, can convey both
severe rebuke and secret community of sentiment. "I love you as we
love a noble nature struggling against misfortune; Christian charity
enfolds both the strong and the weak; its treasure belongs to both.
Refined, graceful, elegant as you are, made to be an ornament of the
highest society, what man could see you without feeling an immense
compassion in his heart--buried here among these odious bourgeois, who
know nothing of you, not even the aristocratic value of a single one
of your attitudes, or those enchanting inflections of your voice! Ah!
if I were only rich! if I had power! your husband, who is certainly a
good fellow, should be made receiver-general, and you yourself could
get him elected deputy. But, alas! poor ambitious man, my first duty
is to silence my ambition. Knowing myself at the bottom of the bag
like the last number in a family lottery, I can only offer you my arm
and not my heart. I hope all from a good marriage, and, believe me, I
shall make my wife not only happy, but I shall make her one of the
first in the land, receiving from her the means of success. It is so
fine a day, will you not take a turn in the Luxembourg?" he added, as
they reached the rue d'Enfer at the corner of Colleville's house,
opposite to which was a passage leading to the gardens by the stairway
of a little building, the last remains of the famous convent of the
Chartreux.
The soft yielding of the arm within his own, indicated a tacit consent
to this proposal, and as Flavie deserved the honor of a sort of
enthusiasm, he drew her vehemently along, exclaiming:--
"Come! we may never have so good a moment--But see!" he added, "there
is your husband at the window looking at us; let us walk slowly."
"You have nothing to fear from Monsieur Colleville," said Flavie,
smiling; "he leaves me mistress of my own actions."
"Ah! here, indeed, is the woman I have dreamed of," cried the
Provencal, with that ecstasy that inflames the soul only, and in tones
that issue only from Southern lips. "Pardon me, madame," he said,
recovering himself, and returning from an upper sphere to the exiled
angel whom he looked at piously,--"pardon me, I abandon what I was
saying; but how can a man help feeling for the sorrows he has known
himself when he sees them the lot of a being to whom life should bring
only joy and happiness? Your sufferings are mine; I am no more in my
right place than you are in yours; the same misfortune has made us
brother and sister. Ah! dear Flavie, the first day it was granted to
me to see you--the last Sunday in September, 1838--you were very
beautiful; I shall often recall you to memory in that pretty little
gown of mousseline-de-laine of the color of some Scottish tartan! That
day I said to myself: 'Why is that woman so often at the Thuilliers';
above all, why did she ever have intimate relations with Thuillier
himself?--'"
"Monsieur!" said Flavie, alarmed at the singular course la Peyrade was
giving to the conversation.
"Eh! I know all," he cried, accompanying the words with a shrug of his
shoulders. "I explain it all to my own mind, and I do not respect you
less. You now have to gather the fruits of your sin, and I will help
you. Celeste will be very rich, and in that lies your own future. You
can have only one son-in-law; chose him wisely. An ambitious man might
become a minister, but you would humble your daughter and make her
miserable; and if such a man lost his place and fortune he could never
recover it. Yes, I love you," he continued. "I love you with an
unlimited affection; you are far above the mass of petty
considerations in which silly women entangle themselves. Let us
understand each other."
Flavie was bewildered; she was, however, awake to the extreme
frankness of such language, and she said to herself, "He is not a
secret manoeuvrer, certainly." Moreover, she admitted to her own mind
that no one had ever so deeply stirred and excited her as this young
man.
"Monsieur," she said, "I do not know who could have put into your mind
so great an error as to my life, nor by what right you--"
"Ah! pardon me, madame," interrupted the Provencal with a coolness
that smacked of contempt. "I must have dreamed it. I said to myself,
'She is all that!' But I see I was judging from the outside. I know
now why you are living and will always live on a fourth floor in the
rue d'Enfer."
And he pointed his speech with an energetic gesture toward the
Colleville windows, which could be seen through the passage from the
alley of the Luxembourg, where they were walking alone, in that
immense tract trodden by so many and various young ambitions.
"I have been frank, and I expected reciprocity," resumed Theodose. "I
myself have had days without food, madame; I have managed to live,
pursue my studies, obtain my degree, with two thousand francs for my
sole dependence; and I entered Paris through the Barriere d'Italie,
with five hundred francs in my pocket, firmly resolved, like one of my
compatriots, to become, some day, one of the foremost men of our
country. The man who has often picked his food from baskets of scraps
where the restaurateurs put their refuse, which are emptied at six
o'clock every morning--that man is not likely to recoil before any
means,--avowable, of course. Well, do you think me the friend of the
people?" he said, smiling. "One has to have a speaking-trumpet to
reach the ear of Fame; she doesn't listen if you speak with your lips;
and without fame of what use is talent? The poor man's advocate means
to be some day the advocate of the rich. Is that plain speaking? Don't
I open my inmost being to you? Then open your heart to me. Say to me,
'Let us be friends,' and the day will come when we shall both be
happy."
"Good heavens! why did I ever come here? Why did I ever take your
arm?" cried Flavie.
"Because it is in your destiny," he replied. "Ah! my dear, beloved
Flavie," he added, again pressing her arm upon his heart, "did you
expect to hear the vulgarities of love from me? We are brother and
sister; that is all."
And he led her towards the passage to return to the rue d'Enfer.
Flavie felt a sort of terror in the depths of the contentment which
all women find in violent emotions; and she took that terror for the
sort of fear which a new passion always excites; but for all that, she
felt she was fascinated, and she walked along in absolute silence.
"What are you thinking of?" asked Theodose, when they reached the
middle of the passage.
"Of what you have just said to me," she answered.
"At our age," he said, "it is best to suppress preliminaries; we are
not children; we both belong to a sphere in which we should understand
each other. Remember this," he added, as they reached the rue d'Enfer.
--"I am wholly yours."
So saying, he bowed low to her.
"The iron's in the fire now!" he thought to himself as he watched his
giddy prey on her way home.
CHAPTER VI
A KEYNOTE
When Theodose reached home he found, waiting for him on the landing, a
personage who is, as it were, the submarine current of this history;
he will be found within it like some buried church on which has risen
the facade of a palace. The sight of this man, who, after vainly
ringing at la Peyrade's door, was now trying that of Dutocq, made the
Provencal barrister tremble--but secretly, within himself, not
betraying externally his inward emotion. This man was Cerizet, whom
Dutocq had mentioned to Thuillier as his copying-clerk.
Cerizet was only thirty-eight years old, but he looked a man of fifty,
so aged had he become from causes which age all men. His hairless head
had a yellow skull, ill-covered by a rusty, discolored wig; the mask
of his face, pale, flabby, and unnaturally rough, seemed the more
horrible because the nose was eaten away, though not sufficiently to
admit of its being replaced by a false one. From the spring of this
nose at the forehead, down to the nostrils, it remained as nature had
made it; but disease, after gnawing away the sides near the
extremities, had left two holes of fantastic shape, which vitiated
pronunciation and hampered speech. The eyes, originally handsome, but
weakened by misery of all kinds and by sleepless nights, were red
around the edges, and deeply sunken; the glance of those eyes, when
the soul sent into them an expression of malignancy, would have
frightened both judges and criminals, or any others whom nothing
usually affrights.
The mouth, toothless except for a few black fangs, was threatening;
the saliva made a foam within it, which did not, however, pass the
pale thin lips. Cerizet, a short man, less spare than shrunken,
endeavored to remedy the defects of his person by his clothes, and
although his garments were not those of opulence, he kept them in a
condition of neatness which may even have increased his forlorn
appearance. Everything about him seemed dubious; his age, his nose,
his glance inspired doubt. It was impossible to know if he were
thirty-eight or sixty; if his faded blue trousers, which fitted him
well, were of a coming or a past fashion. His boots, worn at the
heels, but scrupulously blacked, resoled for the third time, and very
choice, originally, may have trodden in their day a ministerial
carpet. The frock coat, soaked by many a down-pour, with its
brandebourgs, the frogs of which were indiscreet enough to show their
skeletons, testified by its cut to departed elegance. The satin
stock-cravat fortunately concealed the shirt, but the tongue of the
buckle behind the neck had frayed the satin, which was re-satined,
that is, re-polished, by a species of oil distilled from the wig. In
the days of its youth the waistcoat was not, of course, without
freshness, but it was one of those waistcoats, bought for four francs,
which come from the hooks of the ready-made clothing dealer. All these
things were carefully brushed, and so was the shiny and misshapen hat.
They harmonized with each other, even to the black gloves which covered
the hands of this subaltern Mephistopheles, whose whole anterior life
may be summed up in a single phrase:--
He was an artist in evil, with whom, from the first, evil had
succeeded; a man misled by these early successes to continue the
plotting of infamous deeds within the lines of strict legality.
Becoming the head of a printing-office by betraying his master [see
"Lost Illusions"], he had afterwards been condemned to imprisonment as
editor of a liberal newspaper. In the provinces, under the
Restoration, he became the bete noire of the government, and was
called "that unfortunate Cerizet" by some, as people spoke of "the
unfortunate Chauvet" and "the heroic Mercier." He owed to this
reputation of persecuted patriotism a place as sub-prefect in 1830.
Six months later he was dismissed; but he insisted that he was judged
without being heard; and he made so much talk about it that, under the
ministry of Casimir Perier, he became the editor of an anti-republican
newspaper in the pay of the government. He left that position to go
into business, one phase of which was the most nefarious stock-company
that ever fell into the hands of the correctional police. Cerizet
proudly accepted the severe sentence he received; declaring it to be a
revengeful plot on the part of the republicans, who, he said, would
never forgive him for the hard blows he had dealt them in his journal.
He spent the time of his imprisonment in a hospital. The government by
this time were ashamed of a man whose almost infamous habits and
shameful business transactions, carried on in company with a former
banker, named Claparon, led him at last into well-deserved public
contempt.
Cerizet, thus fallen, step by step, to the lowest rung of the social
ladder, had recourse to pity in order to obtain the place of copying
clerk in Dutocq's office. In the depths of his wretchedness the man
still dreamed of revenge, and, as he had nothing to lose, he employed
all means to that end. Dutocq and himself were bound together in
depravity. Cerizet was to Dutocq what the hound is the huntsman.
Knowing himself the necessities of poverty and wretchedness, he set up
that business of gutter usury called, in popular parlance, "the loan
by the little week." He began this at first by help of Dutocq, who
shared the profits; but, at the present moment this man of many legal
crimes, now the banker of fishwives, the money-lender of
costermongers, was the gnawing rodent of the whole faubourg.
"Well," said Cerizet as Dutocq opened his door, "Theodose has just
come in; let us go to his room."
The advocate of the poor was fain to allow the two men to pass before
him.
All three crossed a little room, the tiled floor of which, covered
with a coating of red encaustic, shone in the light; thence into a
little salon with crimson curtains and mahogany furniture, covered
with red Utrecht velvet; the wall opposite the window being occupied
by book-shelves containing a legal library. The chimney-piece was
covered with vulgar ornaments, a clock with four columns in mahogany,
and candelabra under glass shades. The study, where the three men
seated themselves before a soft-coal fire, was the study of a lawyer
just beginning to practise. The furniture consisted of a desk, an
armchair, little curtains of green silk at the windows, a green
carpet, shelves for lawyer's boxes, and a couch, above which hung an
ivory Christ on a velvet background. The bedroom, kitchen, and rest of
the apartment looked out upon the courtyard.
"Well," said Cerizet, "how are things going? Are we getting on?"
"Yes," replied Theodose.
"You must admit," cried Dutocq, "that my idea was a famous one, in
laying hold of that imbecile of a Thuillier?"
"Yes, but I'm not behindhand either," exclaimed Cerizet. "I have come
now to show you a way to put the thumbscrews on the old maid and make
her spin like a teetotum. We mustn't deceive ourselves; Mademoiselle
Thuillier is the head and front of everything in this affair; if we
get her on our side the town is won. Let us say little, but that
little to the point, as becomes strong men with each other. Claparon,
you know, is a fool; he'll be all his life what he always was,--a
cat's-paw. Just now he is lending his name to a notary in Paris, who
is concerned with a lot of contractors, and they are all--notary and
masons--on the point of ruin. Claparon is going headlong into it. He
never yet was bankrupt; but there's a first time for everything. He is
hidden now in my hovel in the rue des Poules, where no one will ever
find him. He is desperate, and he hasn't a penny. Now, among the five
or six houses built by these contractors, which have to be sold,
there's a jewel of a house, built of freestone, in the neighborhood of
the Madeleine,--a frontage laced like a melon, with beautiful
carvings,--but not being finished, it will have to be sold for what it
will bring; certainly not more than a hundred thousand francs. By
spending twenty-five thousand francs upon it it could be let,
undoubtedly, for ten thousand. Make Mademoiselle Thuillier the
proprietor of that house and you'll win her love; she'll believe that
you can put such chances in her way every year. There are two ways of
getting hold of vain people: flatter their vanity, _or_ threaten them;
and there are also two ways of managing misers: fill their purse, or
else attack it. Now, this stroke of business, while it does good to
Mademoiselle Thuillier, does good to us as well, and it would be a
pity not to profit by the chance."
"But why does the notary let it slip through his fingers?" asked
Dutocq.
"The notary, my dear fellow! Why, he's the very one who saves us.
Forced to sell his practice, and utterly ruined besides, he reserved
for himself this crumb of the cake. Believing in the honesty of that
idiot Claparon, he has asked him to find a dummy purchaser. We'll let
him suppose that Mademoiselle Thuillier is a worthy soul who allows
Claparon to use her name; they'll both be fooled, Claparon and the
notary too. I owe this little trick to my friend Claparon, who left me
to bear the whole weight of the trouble about his stock-company, in
which we were tricked by Conture, and I hope you may never be in that
man's skin!" he added, infernal hatred flashing from his worn and
withered eyes. "Now, I've said my say, gentlemen," he continued,
sending out his voice through his nasal holes, and taking a dramatic
attitude; for once, at a moment of extreme penury, he had gone upon
the stage.
As he finished making his proposition some one rang at the outer door,
and la Peyrade rose to go and open it. As soon as his back was turned,
Cerizet said, hastily, to Dutocq:--
"Are you sure of him? I see a sort of air about him--And I'm a good
judge of treachery."
"He is so completely in our power," said Dutocq, "that I don't trouble
myself to watch; but, between ourselves, I didn't think him as strong
as he proves to be. The fact is, we thought we were putting a barb
between the legs of a man who didn't know how to ride, and the rogue
is an old jockey!"
"Let him take care," growled Cerizet. "I can blow him down like a
house of cards any day. As for you, papa Dutocq, you are able to see
him at work all the time; watch him carefully. Besides, I'll feel his
pulse by getting Claparon to propose to him to get rid of us; that
will help us to judge him."
"Pretty good, that!" said Dutocq. "You are daring, anyhow."
"I've got my hand in, that's all," replied Cerizet.
These words were exchanged in a low voice during the time that it took
Theodose to go to the outer door and return. Cerizet was looking at
the books when the lawyer re-entered the room.
"It is Thuillier," said Theodose. "I thought he'd come; he is in the
salon. He mustn't see Cerizet's frock-coat; those frogs would frighten
him."
"Pooh! you receive the poor in your office, don't you? That's in your
role. Do you want any money?" added Cerizet, pulling a hundred francs
out of his trousers' pocket. "There it is; it won't look amiss."
And he laid the pile on the chimney-piece.
"And now," said Dutocq, "we had better get out through the bedroom."
"Well, good-bye," said Theodose, opening a hidden door which
communicated from the study to the bedroom. "Come in, Monsieur
Thuillier," he called out to the beau of the Empire.
When he saw him safely in the study he went to let out his two
associates through the bedroom and kitchen into the courtyard.
"In six months," said Cerizet, "you'll have married Celeste and got
your foot into the stirrup. You are lucky, you are, not to have sat,
like me, in the prisoners' dock. I've been there twice: once in 1825,
for 'subversive articles' which I never wrote, and the second time for
receiving the profits of a joint-stock company which had slipped
through my fingers! Come, let's warm this thing up! Sac-a-papier!
Dutocq and I are sorely in need of that twenty-five thousand francs.
Good courage, old fellow!" he added, holding out his hand to Theodose,
and making the grasp a test of faithfulness.
The Provencal gave Cerizet his right hand, pressing the other's hand
warmly:--
"My good fellow," he said, "be very sure that in whatever position I
may find myself I shall never forget that from which you have drawn me
by putting me in the saddle here. I'm simply your bait; but you are
giving me the best part of the catch, and I should be more infamous
than a galley-slave who turns policeman if I didn't play fair."
As soon as the door was closed, Cerizet peeped through the key-hole,
trying to catch sight of la Peyrade's face. But the Provencal had
turned back to meet Thuillier, and his distrustful associate could not
detect the expression of his countenance.
That expression was neither disgust nor annoyance, it was simply joy,
appearing on a face that now seemed freed. Theodose saw the means of
success approaching him, and he flattered himself that the day would
come when he might get rid of his ignoble associates, to whom he owed
everything. Poverty has unfathomable depths, especially in Paris,
slimy bottoms, from which, when a drowned man rises to the surface of
the water, he brings with him filth and impurity clinging to his
clothes, or to his person. Cerizet, the once opulent friend and
protector of Theodose, was the muddy mire still clinging to the
Provencal, and the former manager of the joint-stock company saw very
plainly that his tool wanted to brush himself on entering a sphere
where decent clothing was a necessity.
"Well, my dear Theodose," began Thuillier, "we have hoped to see you
every day this week, and every evening we find our hopes deceived. As
this is our Sunday for a dinner, my sister and my wife have sent me
here to beg you to come to us."
"I have been so busy," said Theodose, "that I have not had two minutes
to give to any one, not even to you, whom I count among my friends,
and with whom I have wished to talk about--"
"What? have you really been thinking seriously over what you said to
me?" cried Thuillier, interrupting him.
"If you had not come here now for a full understanding, I shouldn't
respect you as I do," replied la Peyrade, smiling. "You have been a
sub-director, and therefore you must have the remains of ambition
--which is deucedly legitimate in your case! Come, now, between
ourselves, when one sees a Minard, that gilded pot, displaying himself
at the Tuileries, and complimenting the king, and a Popinot about to
become a minister of State, and then look at you! a man trained to
administrative work, a man with thirty years' experience, who has seen
six governments, left to plant balsams in a little garden! Heavens and
earth!--I am frank, my dear Thuillier, and I'll say, honestly, that I
want to advance you, because you'll draw me after you. Well, here's my
plan. We are soon to elect a member of the council-general from this
arrondissement; and that member must be you. And," he added, dwelling
on the word, "it _will_ be you! After that, you will certainly be deputy
from the arrondissement when the Chamber is re-elected, which must
surely be before long. The votes that elect you to the municipal
council will stand by you in the election for deputy, trust me for
that."
"But how will you manage all this?" cried Thuillier, fascinated.
"You shall know in good time; but you must let me conduct this long
and difficult affair; if you commit the slightest indiscretion as to
what is said, or planned, or agreed between us, I shall have to drop
the whole matter, and good-bye to you!"
"Oh! you can rely on the absolute dumbness of a former sub-director;
I've had secrets to keep."
"That's all very well; but these are secrets to keep from your wife
and sister, and from Monsieur and Madame Colleville."
"Not a muscle of my face shall reveal them," said Thuillier, assuming
a stolid air.
"Very good," continued Theodose. "I shall test you. In order to make
yourself eligible, you must pay taxes on a certain amount of property,
and you are not paying them."
"I beg your pardon; I'm all right for the municipal council at any
rate; I pay two francs ninety-six centimes."
"Yes, but the tax on property necessary for election to the chamber is
five hundred francs, and there is no time to lose in acquiring that
property, because you must prove possession for one year."
"The devil!" cried Thuillier; "between now and a year hence to be
taxed five hundred francs on property which--"
"Between now and the end of July, at the latest, you must pay that
tax. Well, I feel enough interest in you to tell you the secret of an
affair by which you might make from thirty to forty thousand francs a
year, by employing a capital of one hundred and fifty thousand at
most. I know that in your family it is your sister who does your
business; I am far from thinking that a mistake; she has, they tell
me, excellent judgment; and you must let me begin by obtaining her
good-will and friendship, and proposing this investment to her. And
this is why: If Mademoiselle Thuillier is not induced to put faith in
my plan, we shall certainly have difficulty with her. Besides, it
won't do for YOU to propose to her that she should put the investment
of her money in your name. The idea had better come from me. As to my
means of getting you elected to the municipal council, they are these:
Phellion controls one quarter of the arrondissement; he and Laudigeois
have lived in it these thirty years, and they are listened to like
oracles. I have a friend who controls another quarter; and the rector
of Saint-Jacques, who is not without influence, thanks to his virtues,
disposes of certain votes. Dutocq, in his close relation to the
people, and also the justice of peace, will help me, above all, as I'm
not acting for myself; and Colleville, as secretary of the mayor's
office, can certainly manage to obtain another fourth of the votes."
"You are right!" cried Thuillier. "I'm elected!"
"Do you think so?" said la Peyrade, in a voice of the deepest sarcasm.
"Very good! then go and ask your friend Colleville to help you, and
see what he'll say. No triumph in election cases is ever brought about
by the candidate himself, but by his friends. He should never ask
anything himself for himself; he must be invited to accept, and appear
to be without ambition."
"La Peyrade!" cried Thuillier, rising, and taking the hand of the
young lawyer, "you are a very capable man."
"Not as capable as you, but I have my merits," said the Provencal,
smiling.
"If we succeed how shall I ever repay you?" asked Thuillier, naively.
"Ah! that, indeed! I am afraid you will think me impertinent, but
remember, there is a true feeling in my heart which offers some excuse
for me; in fact, it has given me the spirit to undertake this affair.
I love--and I take you for my confidant."
"But who is it?" said Thuillier.
"Your dear little Celeste," replied la Peyrade. "My love for her
will be a pledge to you of my devotion. What would I not do for a
_father-in-law_! This is pure selfishness; I shall be working for
myself."
"Hush!" cried Thuillier.
"Eh, my friend!" said la Peyrade, catching Thuillier round the body;
"if I hadn't Flavie on my side, and if I didn't know _all_ should I
venture to be talking to you thus? But please say nothing to Flavie
about this; wait till she speaks to you. Listen to me; I'm of the
metal that makes ministers; I do not seek to obtain Celeste until I
deserve her. You shall not be asked to give her to me until the day
when your election as a deputy of Paris is assured. In order to be
deputy of Paris, we must get the better of Minard; and in order to
crush Minard you must keep in your own hands all your means of
influence; for that reason use Celeste as a hope; we'll play them off,
these people, against each other and fool them all--Madame Colleville
and you and I will be persons of importance one of these days. Don't
think me mercenary. I want Celeste without a 'dot,' with nothing more
than her future expectations. To live in your family with you, to keep
my wife in your midst, that is my desire. You see now that I have no
hidden thoughts. As for you, my dear friend, six months after your
election to the municipal council, you will have the cross of the
Legion of honor, and when you are deputy you will be made an officer
of it. As for your speeches in the Chamber--well! we'll write them
together. Perhaps it would be desirable for you to write a book,--a
serious book on matters half moral and philanthropic, half political;
such, for instance, as charitable institutions considered from the
highest stand-point; or reforms in the pawning system, the abuses of
which are really frightful. Let us fasten some slight distinction to
your name; it will help you,--especially in the arrondissement. Now, I
say again, trust me, believe in me; do not think of taking me into
your family until you have the ribbon in your buttonhole on the morrow
of the day when you take your seat in the Chamber. I'll do more than
that, however; I'll put you in the way of making forty thousand francs
a year."
"For any one of those three things you shall have our Celeste," said
Thuillier.
"Ah! what a pearl she is!" exclaimed la Peyrade, raising his eyes to
heaven. "I have the weakness to pray to God for her every day. She is
charming; she is exactly like you--oh! nonsense; surely you needn't
caution me! Dutocq told me all. Well, I'll be with you to-night. I
must go to the Phellions' now, and begin to work our plan. You don't
need me to caution you not to let it be known that you are thinking of
me for Celeste; if you do, you'll cut off my arms and legs. Therefore,
silence! even to Flavie. Wait till she speaks to you herself. Phellion
shall to-night broach the matter of proposing you as candidate for the
council."
"To-night?" said Thuillier.
"Yes, to-night," replied la Peyrade, "unless I don't find him at home
now."
Thuillier departed, saying to himself:--
"That's a very superior man; we shall always understand each other.
Faith! it might be hard to do better for Celeste. They will live with
us, as in our own family, and that's a good deal! Yes, he's a fine
fellow, a sound man."
To minds of Thuillier's calibre, a secondary consideration often
assumes the importance of a principal reason. Theodose had behaved to
him with charming bonhomie.
CHAPTER VII
THE WORTHY PHELLIONS
The house to which Theodose de la Peyrade now bent his steps had been
the "hoc erat in votis" of Monsieur Phellion for twenty years; it was
the house of the Phellions, just as much as Cerizet's frogged coat was
the necessary complement of his personality.
This dwelling was stuck against the side of a large house, but only to
the depth of one room (about twenty feet or so), and terminated at
each end in a sort of pavilion with one window. Its chief charm was a
garden, one hundred and eighty feet square, longer than the facade of
the house by the width of a courtyard which opened on the street, and
a little clump of lindens. Beyond the second pavilion, the courtyard
had, between itself and the street, an iron railing, in the centre of
which was a little gate opening in the middle.
This building, of rouge stone covered with stucco, and two storeys in
height, had received a coat of yellow-wash; the blinds were painted
green, and so were the shutters on the lower storey. The kitchen
occupied the ground-floor of the pavilion on the courtyard, and the
cook, a stout, strong girl, protected by two enormous dogs, performed
the functions of portress. The facade, composed of five windows, and
the two pavilions, which projected nine feet, were in the style
Phellion. Above the door the master of the house had inserted a tablet
of white marble, on which, in letters of gold, were read the words,
"Aurea mediocritas." Above the sun-dial, affixed to one panel of the
facade, he had also caused to be inscribed this sapient maxim: "Umbra
mea vita, sic!"
The former window-sills had recently been superceded by sills of red
Languedoc marble, found in a marble shop. At the bottom of the garden
could be seen a colored statue, intended to lead casual observers to
imagine that a nurse was carrying a child. The ground-floor of the
house contained only the salon and the dining-room, separated from
each other by the well of the staircase and the landing, which formed
a sort of antechamber. At the end of the salon, in the other pavilion,
was a little study occupied by Phellion.
On the first upper floor were the rooms of the father and mother and
that of the young professor. Above were the chambers of the children
and the servants; for Phellion, on consideration of his own age and
that of his wife, had set up a male domestic, aged fifteen, his son
having by that time entered upon his duties of tuition. To right, on
entering the courtyard, were little offices where wood was stored, and
where the former proprietor had lodged a porter. The Phellions were no
doubt awaiting the marriage of their son to allow themselves that
additional luxury.
This property, on which the Phellions had long had their eye, cost
them eighteen thousand francs in 1831. The house was separated from
the courtyard by a balustrade with a base of freestone and a coping of
tiles; this little wall, which was breast-high, was lined with a hedge
of Bengal roses, in the middle of which opened a wooden gate opposite
and leading to the large gates on the street. Those who know the
cul-de-sac of the Feuillantines, will understand that the Phellion
house, standing at right angles to the street, had a southern exposure,
and was protected on the north by the immense wall of the adjoining
house, against which the smaller structure was built. The cupola of the
Pantheon and that of the Val-de-Grace looked from there like two
giants, and so diminished the sky space that, walking in the garden,
one felt cramped and oppressed. No place could be more silent than
this blind street.
Such was the retreat of the great unknown citizen who was now tasting
the sweets of repose, after discharging his duty to the nation in the
ministry of finance, from which he had retired as registration clerk
after a service of thirty-six years. In 1832 he had led his battalion
of the National Guard to the attack on Saint-Merri, but his neighbors
had previously seen tears in his eyes at the thought of being obliged
to fire on misguided Frenchmen. The affair was already decided by the
time his legion crossed the pont Notre-Dame at a quick step, after
debouching by the flower-market. This noble hesitation won him the
respect of his whole quarter, but he lost the decoration of the Legion
of honor; his colonel told him in a loud voice that, under arms, there
was no such thing as deliberation,--a saying of Louis-Philippe to the
National Guard of Metz. Nevertheless, the bourgeois virtues of
Phellion, and the great respect in which he was held in his own
quarter had kept him major of the battalion for eight years. He was
now nearly sixty, and seeing the moment coming when he must lay off
the sword and stock, he hoped that the king would deign to reward his
services by granting him at last the Legion of honor.
Truth compels us to say, in spite of the stain this pettiness will put
upon so fine a character, that Commander Phellion rose upon the tips
of his toes at the receptions in the Tuileries, and did all that he
could to put himself forward, even eyeing the citizen-king perpetually
when he dined at his table. In short, he intrigued in a dumb sort of
way; but had never yet obtained a look in return from the king of his
choice. The worthy man had more than once thought, but was not yet
decided, to beg Monsieur Minard to assist him in obtaining his secret
desire.
Phellion, a man of passive obedience, was stoical in the matter of
duty, and iron in all that touched his conscience. To complete this
picture by a sketch of his person, we must add that at fifty-nine
years of age Phellion had "thickened," to use a term of the bourgeois
vocabulary. His face, of one monotonous tone and pitted with the
small-pox, had grown to resemble a full moon; so that his lips,
formerly large, now seemed of ordinary size. His eyes, much weakened,
and protected by glasses, no longer showed the innocence of their
light-blue orbs, which in former days had often excited a smile; his
white hair now gave gravity to much that twelve years earlier had
looked like silliness, and lent itself to ridicule. Time, which does
such damage to faces with refined and delicate features, only improves
those which, in their youth, have been course and massive. This was
the case with Phellion. He occupied the leisure of his old age in
making an abridgment of the History of France; for Phellion was the
author of several works adopted by the University.
When la Peyrade presented himself, the family were all together.
Madame Barniol was just telling her mother about one of her babies,
which was slightly indisposed. They were dressed in their Sunday
clothes, and were sitting before the fireplace of the wainscoted salon
on chairs bought at a bargain; and they all felt an emotion when
Genevieve, the cook and portress, announced the personage of whom they
were just then speaking in connection with Celeste, whom, we must here
state, Felix Phellion loved, to the extent of going to mass to behold
her. The learned mathematician had made that effort in the morning,
and the family were joking him about it in a pleasant way, hoping in
their hearts that Celeste and her parents might understand the
treasure that was thus offered to them.
"Alas! the Thuilliers seem to me infatuated with a very dangerous
man," said Madame Phellion. "He took Madame Colleville by the arm this
morning after church, and they went together to the Luxembourg."
"There is something about that lawyer," remarked Felix Phellion, "that
strikes me as sinister. He might be found to have committed some crime
and I shouldn't be surprised."
"That's going too far," said old Phellion. "He is cousin-germain to
Tartuffe, that immortal figure cast in bronze by our honest Moliere;
for Moliere, my children, had honesty and patriotism for the basis of
his genius."
It was at that instant that Genevieve came in to say, "There's a
Monsieur de la Peyrade out there, who wants to see monsieur."
"To see me!" exclaimed Phellion. "Ask him to come in," he added, with
that solemnity in little things which gave him even now a touch of
absurdity, though it always impressed his family, which accepted him
as king.
Phellion, his two sons, and his wife and daughter, rose and received
the circular bow made by the lawyer.
"To what do we owe the honor of your visit, monsieur?" asked Phellion,
stiffly.
"To your importance in this arrondissement, my dear Monsieur Phellion,
and to public interests," replied Theodose.
"Then let us go into my study," said Phellion.
"No, no, my friend," said the rigid Madame Phellion, a small woman,
flat as a flounder, who retained upon her features the grim severity
with which she taught music in boarding-schools for young ladies; "we
will leave you."
An upright Erard piano, placed between the two windows and opposite to
the fireplace, showed the constant occupation of a proficient.
"Am I so unfortunate as to put you to flight?" said Theodose, smiling
in a kindly way at the mother and daughter. "You have a delightful
retreat here," he continued. "You only lack a pretty daughter-in-law
to pass the rest of your days in this 'aurea mediocritas,' the wish of
the Latin poet, surrounded by family joys. Your antecedents, my dear
Monsieur Phellion, ought surely to win you such rewards, for I am told
that you are not only a patriot but a good citizen."
"Monsieur," said Phellion, embarrassed, "monsieur, I have only done my
duty." At the word "daughter-in-law," uttered by Theodose, Madame
Barniol, who resembled her mother as much as one drop of water is like
another, looked at Madame Phellion and at Felix as if she would say,
"Were we mistaken?"
The desire to talk this incident over carried all four personages into
the garden, for, in March, 1840, the weather was spring-like, at least
in Paris.
"Commander," said Theodose, as soon as he was alone with Phellion, who
was always flattered by that title, "I have come to speak to you about
the election--"
"Yes, true; we are about to nominate a municipal councillor," said
Phellion, interrupting him.
"And it is apropos of that candidacy that I have come to disturb your
Sunday joys; but perhaps in so doing we shall not go beyond the limits
of the family circle."
It would be impossible for Phellion to be more Phellion than Theodose
was Phellion at that moment.
"I shall not let you say another word," replied the commander,
profiting by the pause made by Theodose, who watched for the effect of
his speech. "My choice is made."
"We have had the same idea!" exclaimed Theodose; "men of the same
character agree as well as men of the same mind."
"In this case I do not believe in that phenomenon," replied Phellion.
"This arrondissement had for its representative in the municipal
council the most virtuous of men, as he was the noblest of
magistrates. I allude to the late Monsieur Popinot, the deceased judge
of the Royal courts. When the question of replacing him came up, his
nephew, the heir to his benevolence, did not reside in this quarter.
He has since, however, purchased, and now occupies, the house where
his uncle lived in the rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve; he is the
physician of the Ecole Polytechnique and that of our hospitals; he
does honor to this quarter; for these reasons, and to pay homage in
the person of the nephew to the memory of the uncle, we have decided
to nominate Doctor Horace Bianchon, member of the Academy of Sciences,
as you are aware, and one of the most distinguished young men in the
illustrious faculty of Paris. A man is not great in our eyes solely
because he is celebrated; to my mind the late Councillor Popinot was
almost another Saint Vincent de Paul."
"But a doctor is not an administrator," replied Theodose; "and,
besides, I have come to ask your vote for a man to whom your dearest
interests require that you should sacrifice a predilection, which,
after all, is quite unimportant to the public welfare."
"Monsieur!" cried Phellion, rising and striking an attitude like that
of Lafon in "Le Glorieux," "Do you despise me sufficiently to suppose
that my personal interests could ever influence my political
conscience? When a matter concerns the public welfare, I am a citizen
--nothing more, and nothing less."
Theodose smiled to himself at the thought of the battle which was now
to take place between the father and the citizen.
"Do not bind yourself to your present ideas, I entreat you," he said,
"for this matter concerns the happiness of your dear Felix."
"What do you mean by those words?" asked Phellion, stopping short in
the middle of the salon and posing, with his hand thrust through the
bosom of his waistcoat from right to left, in the well-known attitude
of Odilon Barrot.
"I have come in behalf of our mutual friend, the worthy and excellent
Monsieur Thuillier, whose influence on the destiny of that beautiful
Celeste Colleville must be well known to you. If, as I think, your
son, whose merits are incontestable, and of whom both families may
well be proud, if, I say, he is courting Celeste with a view to a
marriage in which all expediencies may be combined, you cannot do more
to promote that end than to obtain Thuillier's eternal gratitude by
proposing your worthy friend to the suffrages of your fellow-citizens.
As for me, though I have lately come into the quarter, I can, thanks
to the influence I enjoy through certain legal benefits done to the
poor, materially advance his interests. I might, perhaps, have put
myself forward for this position; but serving the poor brings in but
little money; and, besides, the modesty of my life is out of keeping
with such distinctions. I have devoted myself, monsieur, to the
service of the weak, like the late Councillor Popinot,--a sublime man,
as you justly remarked. If I had not already chosen a career which is
in some sort monastic, and precludes all idea of marriage and public
office, my taste, my second vocation, would lead me to the service of
God, to the Church. I do not trumpet what I do, like the
philanthropists; I do not write about it; I simply act; I am pledged
to Christian charity. The ambition of our friend Thuillier becoming
known to me, I have wished to contribute to the happiness of two young
people who seem to me made for each other, by suggesting to you the
means of winning the rather cold heart of Monsieur Thuillier."
Phellion was bewildered by this tirade, admirably delivered; he was
dazzled, attracted; but he remained Phellion; he walked up to the
lawyer and held out his hand, which la Peyrade took.
"Monsieur," said the commander, with emotion, "I have misjudged you.
What you have done me the honor to confide to me will die _there_,"
laying his hand on his heart. "You are one of the men of whom we have
too few,--men who console us for many evils inherent in our social
state. Righteousness is seen so seldom that our too feeble natures
distrust appearances. You have in me a friend, if you will allow me
the honor of assuming that title. But you must learn to know me,
monsieur. I should lose my own esteem if I nominated Thuillier. No, my
son shall never own his happiness to an evil action on his father's
part. I shall not change my candidate because my son's interests
demand it. That is civic virtue, monsieur."
La Peyrade pulled out his handkerchief and rubbed it in his eye so
that it drew a tear, as he said, holding out his hand to Phellion, and
turning aside his head:--
"Ah! monsieur, how sublime a struggle between public and private duty!
Had I come here only to see this sight, my visit would not have been
wasted. You cannot do otherwise! In your place, I should do the same.
You are that noblest thing that God has made--a righteous man! a
citizen of the Jean-Jacques type! With many such citizens, oh France!
my country! what mightest thou become! It is I, monsieur, who solicit,
humbly, the honor to be your friend."
"What can be happening?" said Madame Phellion, watching the scene
through the window. "Do see your father and that horrid man embracing
each other."
Phellion and la Peyrade now came out and joined the family in the
garden.
"My dear Felix," said the old man, pointing to la Peyrade, who was
bowing to Madame Phellion, "be very grateful to that admirable young
man; he will prove most useful to you."
The lawyer walked for about five minutes with Madame Barniol and
Madame Phellion beneath the leafless lindens, and gave them (in
consequence of the embarrassing circumstances created by Phellion's
political obstinacy) a piece of advice, the effects of which were to
bear fruit that evening, while its first result was to make both
ladies admire his talents, his frankness, and his inappreciable good
qualities. When the lawyer departed the whole family conducted him to
the street gate, and all eyes followed him until he had turned the
corner of the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Jacques. Madame Phellion then took
the arm of her husband to return to the salon, saying:--
"Hey! my friend! what does this mean? You, such a good father, how can
you, from excessive delicacy, stand in the way of such a fine marriage
for our Felix?"
"My dear," replied Phellion, "the great men of antiquity, Brutus and
others, were never fathers when called upon to be citizens. The
bourgeoisie has, even more than the aristocracy whose place it has
been called upon to take, the obligations of the highest virtues.
Monsieur de Saint-Hilaire did not think of his lost arm in presence of
the dead Turenne. We must give proof of our worthiness; let us give it
at every state of the social hierarchy. Shall I instruct my family in
the highest civic principles only to ignore them myself at the moment
for applying them? No, my dear; weep, if you must, to-day, but
to-morrow you will respect me," he added, seeing tears in the eyes of
his starched better half.
These noble words were said on the sill of the door, above which was
written, "Aurea mediocritas."
"I ought to have put, 'et digna,'" added Phellion, pointing to the
tablet, "but those two words would imply self-praise."
"Father," said Marie-Theodore Phellion, the future engineer of "ponts
et chaussees," when the family were once more seated in the salon, "it
seems to me that there is nothing dishonorable in changing one's
determination about a choice which is of no real consequence to public
welfare."
"No consequence, my son!" cried Phellion. "Between ourselves I will
say, and Felix shares my opinion, Monsieur Thuillier is absolutely
without capacity; he knows nothing. Monsieur Horace Bianchon is an
able man; he will obtain a thousand things for our arrondissement, and
Thuillier will obtain none! Remember this, my son; to change a good
determination for a bad one from motives of self-interest is one of
those infamous actions which escape the control of men but are
punished by God. I am, or I think I am, void of all blame before my
conscience, and I owe it to you, my children, to leave my memory
unstained among you. Nothing, therefore, can make me change my
determination."
"Oh, my good father!" cried the little Barniol woman, flinging herself
on a cushion at Phellion's knees, "don't ride your high horse! There
are many fools and idiots in the municipal council, and France gets
along all the same. That old Thuillier will adopt the opinions of
those about him. Do reflect that Celeste will probably have five
hundred thousand francs."
"She might have millions," said Phellion, "and I might see them there
at my feet before I would propose Thuillier, when I owe to the memory
of the best of men to nominate, if possible, Horace Bianchon, his
nephew. From the heaven above us Popinot is contemplating and
applauding me!" cried Phellion, with exaltation. "It is by such
considerations as you suggest that France is being lowered, and the
bourgeoisie are bringing themselves into contempt."
"My father is right," said Felix, coming out of a deep reverie. "He
deserves our respect and love; as he has throughout the whole course
of his modest and honored life. I would not owe my happiness either to
remorse in his noble soul, or to a low political bargain. I love
Celeste as I love my own family; but, above all that, I place my
father's honor, and since this question is a matter of conscience with
him it must not be spoken of again."
Phellion, with his eyes full of tears, went up to his eldest son and
took him in his arms, saying, "My son! my son!" in a choking voice.
"All that is nonsense," whispered Madame Phellion in Madame Barniol's
ear. "Come and dress me; I shall make an end of this; I know your
father; he has put his foot down now. To carry out the plan that pious
young man, Theodose, suggested, I want your help; hold yourself ready
to give it, my daughter."
At this moment, Genevieve came in and gave a letter to Monsieur
Phellion.
"An invitation for dinner to-day, for Madame Phellion and Felix and
myself, at the Thuilliers'," he said.
The magnificent and surprising idea of Thuillier's municipal
advancement, put forth by the "advocate of the poor" was not less
upsetting in the Thuillier household than it was in the Phellion
salon. Jerome Thuillier, without actually confiding anything to his
sister, for he made it a point of honor to obey his Mephistopheles,
had rushed to her in great excitement to say:--
"My dearest girl" (he always touched her heart with those caressing
words), "we shall have some big-wigs at dinner to-day. I'm going to
ask the Minards; therefore take pains about your dinner. I have
written to Monsieur and Madame Phellion; it is rather late; but
there's no need of ceremony with them. As for the Minards, I must
throw a little dust in their eyes; I have a particular need of them."
"Four Minards, three Phellions, four Collevilles, and ourselves; that
makes thirteen--"
"La Peyrade, fourteen; and it is worth while to invite Dutocq; he may
be useful to us. I'll go up and see him."
"What are you scheming?" cried his sister. "Fifteen to dinner! There's
forty francs, at the very least, waltzing off."
"You won't regret them, my dearest. I want you to be particularly
agreeable to our young friend, la Peyrade. There's a friend, indeed!
you'll soon have proofs of that! If you love me, cosset him well."
So saying, he departed, leaving Brigitte bewildered.
"Proofs, indeed! yes, I'll look out for proofs," she said. "I'm not to
be caught with fine words, not I! He is an amiable fellow; but before
I take him into my heart I shall study him a little closer."
After inviting Dutocq, Thuillier, having bedizened himself, went to
the hotel Minard, rue des Macons-Sorbonne, to capture the stout Zelie,
and gloss over the shortness of the invitation.
Minard had purchased one of those large and sumptuous habitations
which the old religious orders built about the Sorbonne, and as
Thuillier mounted the broad stone steps with an iron balustrade, that
proved how arts of the second class flourished under Louis XIII., he
envied both the mansion and its occupant,--the mayor.
This vast building, standing between a courtyard and garden, is
noticeable as a specimen of the style, both noble and elegant, of the
reign of Louis XIII., coming singularly, as it did, between the bad
taste of the expiring renaissance and the heavy grandeur of Louis
XIV., at its dawn. This transition period is shown in many public
buildings. The massive scroll-work of several facades--that of the
Sorbonne, for instance,--and columns rectified according to the rules
of Grecian art, were beginning to appear in this architecture.
A grocer, a lucky adulterator, now took the place of the former
ecclesiastical governor of an institution called in former times
L'Economat; an establishment connected with the general agency of the
old French clergy, and founded by the long-sighted genius of
Richelieu. Thuillier's name opened for him the doors of the salon,
where sat enthroned in velvet and gold, amid the most magnificent
"Chineseries," the poor woman who weighed with all her avoirdupois on
the hearts and minds of princes and princesses at the "popular balls"
of the palace.
"Isn't she a good subject for 'La Caricature'?" said a so-called lady
of the bedchamber to a duchess, who could hardly help laughing at the
aspect of Zelie, glittering with diamonds, red as a poppy, squeezed
into a gold brocade, and rolling along like the casts of her former
shop.
"Will you pardon me, fair lady," began Thuillier, twisting his body,
and pausing in pose number two of his imperial repertory, "for having
allowed this invitation to remain in my desk, thinking, all the while,
that it was sent? It is for to-day, but perhaps I am too late?"
Zelie examined her husband's face as he approached them to receive
Thuillier; then she said:--
"We intended to drive into the country and dine at some chance
restaurant; but we'll give up that idea and all the more readily
because, in my opinion, it is getting devilishly vulgar to drive out
of Paris on Sundays."
"We will have a little dance to the piano for the young people, if
enough come, as I hope they will. I have sent a line to Phellion,
whose wife is intimate with Madame Pron, the successor--"
"Successor_ess_," interrupted Madame Minard.
"No," said Thuillier, "it ought to be success'ress; just as we say
may'ress, dropping the O, you know."
"Is it full dress?" asked Madame Minard.
"Heavens! no," replied Thuillier; "you would get me finely scolded by
my sister. No, it is only a family party. Under the Empire, madame, we
all devoted ourselves to dancing. At that great epoch of our national
life they thought as much of a fine dancer as they did of a good
soldier. Nowadays the country is so matter-of-fact."
"Well, we won't talk politics," said the mayor, smiling. "The King is
grand; he is very able. I have a deep admiration for my own time, and
for the institutions which we have given to ourselves. The King, you
may be sure, knows very well what he is doing by the development of
industries. He is struggling hand to hand against England; and we are
doing him more harm during this fruitful peace than all the wars of
the Empire would have done."
"What a deputy Minard would make!" cried Zelie, naively. "He practises
speechifying at home. You'll help us to get him elected, won't you,
Thuillier?"
"We won't talk politics now," replied Thuillier. "Come at five."
"Will that little Vinet be there?" asked Minard; "he comes, no doubt,
for Celeste."
"Then he may go into mourning," replied Thuillier. "Brigitte won't
hear of him."
Zelie and Minard exchanged a smile of satisfaction.
"To think that we must hob-nob with such common people, all for the
sake of our son!" cried Zelie, when Thuillier was safely down the
staircase, to which the mayor had accompanied him.
"Ha! he thinks to be deputy!" thought Thuillier, as he walked away.
"These grocers! nothing satisfies them. Heavens! what would Napoleon
say if he could see the government in the hands of such people! I'm a
trained administrator, at any rate. What a competitor, to be sure! I
wonder what la Peyrade will say?"
The ambitious ex-beau now went to invite the whole Laudigeois family
for the evening, after which he went to the Collevilles', to make sure
that Celeste should wear a becoming gown. He found Flavie rather
pensive. She hesitated about coming, but Thuillier overcame her
indecision.
"My old and ever young friend," he said, taking her round the waist,
for she was alone in her little salon, "I won't have any secret from
you. A great affair is in the wind for me. I can't tell you more than
that, but I can ask you to be particularly charming to a certain young
man--"
"Who is it?"
"La Peyrade."
"Why, Charles?"
"He holds my future in his hands. Besides, he's a man of genius. I
know what that is. He's got this sort of thing,"--and Thuillier made
the gesture of a dentist pulling out a back tooth. "We must bind him
to us, Flavie. But, above all, don't let him see his power. As for me,
I shall just give and take with him."
"Do you want me to be coquettish?"
"Not too much so, my angel," replied Thuillier, with a foppish air.
And he departed, not observing the stupor which overcame Flavie.
"That young man is a power," she said to herself. "Well, we shall
see!"
For these reasons she dressed her hair with marabouts, put on her
prettiest gown of gray and pink, which allowed her fine shoulders to
be seen beneath a pelerine of black lace, and took care to keep
Celeste in a little silk frock made with a yoke and a large plaited
collarette, telling her to dress her hair plainly, a la Berthe.
CHAPTER VIII
AD MAJOREM THEODOSIS GLORIAM
At half-past four o'clock Theodose was at his post. He had put on his
vacant, half-servile manner and soft voice, and he drew Thuillier at
once into the garden.
"My friend," he said, "I don't doubt your triumph, but I feel the
necessity of again warning you to be absolutely silent. If you are
questioned about anything, especially about Celeste, make evasive
answers which will keep your questioners in suspense. You must have
learned how to do that in a government office."
"I understand!" said Thuillier. "But what certainty have you?"
"You'll see what a fine dessert I have prepared for you. But please be
modest. There come the Minards; let me pipe to them. Bring them out
here, and then disappear yourself."
After the first salutations, la Peyrade was careful to keep close to
the mayor, and presently at an opportune moment he drew him aside to
say:--
"Monsieur le maire, a man of your political importance doesn't come to
bore himself in a house of this kind without an object. I don't want
to fathom your motives--which, indeed, I have no right to do--and my
part in this world is certainly not to mingle with earthly powers; but
please pardon my apparent presumption, and deign to listen to a piece
of advice which I shall venture to give you. If I do you a service
to-day you are in a position to return it to me to-morrow; therefore,
in case I should be so fortunate as to do you a good turn, I am really
only obeying the law of self-interest. Our friend Thuillier is in
despair at being a nobody; he has taken it into his head that he wants
to become a personage in this arrondissement--"
"Ah! ah!" exclaimed Minard.
"Oh! nothing very exalted; he wants to be elected to the municipal
council. Now, I know that Phellion, seeing the influence such a
service would have on his family interests, intends to propose your
poor friend as candidate. Well, perhaps you might think it wise, in
your own interests, to be beforehand with him. Thuillier's nomination
could only be favorable for you--I mean agreeable; and he'll fill his
place in the council very well; there are some there who are not as
strong as he. Besides, owing to his place to your support, he will see
with your eyes; he already looks to you as one of the lights of the
town."
"My dear fellow, I thank you very much," replied Minard. "You are
doing me a service I cannot sufficiently acknowledge, and which proves
to me--"
"That I don't like those Phellions," said la Peyrade, taking advantage
of a slight hesitation on the part of the mayor, who feared to express
an idea in which the lawyer might see contempt. "I hate people who
make capital out of their honesty and coin money from fine
sentiments."
"You know them well," said Minard; "they are sycophants. That man's
whole life for the last ten years is explained by this bit of red
ribbon," added the mayor, pointing to his own buttonhole.
"Take care!" said the lawyer, "his son is in love with Celeste, and
he's fairly in the heart of the family."
"Yes, but my son has twelve thousand a year in his own right."
"Oh!" said Theodose, with a start, "Mademoiselle Brigitte was saying
the other day that she wanted at least as much as that in Celeste's
suitor. Moreover, six months hence you'll probably hear that Thuillier
has a property worth forty thousand francs a year."
"The devil! well, I thought as much. Yes, certainly, he shall be made
a member of the municipal council."
"In any case, don't say anything about me to him," said the advocate
of the poor, who now hastened away to speak to Madame Phellion. "Well,
my fair lady," he said, when he reached her, "have you succeeded?"
"I waited till four o'clock, and then that worthy and excellent man
would not let me finish what I had to say. He is much to busy to
accept such an office, and he sent a letter which Monsieur Phellion
has read, saying that he, Doctor Bianchon, thanked him for his good
intentions, and assured him that his own candidate was Monsieur
Thuillier. He said that he should use all his influence in his favor,
and begged my husband to do the same."
"And what did your excellent husband say?"
"'I have done my duty,' he said. 'I have not been false to my
conscience, and now I am all for Thuillier.'"
"Well, then, the thing is settled," said la Peyrade. "Ignore my visit,
and take all the credit of the idea to yourselves."
Then he went to Madame Colleville, composing himself in the attitude
and manner of the deepest respect.
"Madame," he said, "have the goodness to send out to me here that
kindly papa Colleville. A surprise is to be given to Monsieur
Thuillier, and I want Monsieur Colleville to be in the secret."
While la Peyrade played the part of man of the world with Colleville,
and allowed himself various witty sarcasms when explaining to him
Thuillier's candidacy, telling him he ought to support it, if only to
exhibit his incapacity, Flavie was listening in the salon to the
following conversation, which bewildered her for the moment and made
her ears ring.
"I should like to know what Monsieur Colleville and Monsieur de la
Peyrade can be saying to each other to make them laugh like that,"
said Madame Thuillier, foolishly, looking out of the window.
"A lot of improper things, as men always do when they talk together,"
replied Mademoiselle Thuillier, who often attacked men with the sort
of instinct natural to old maids.
"No, they are incapable of that," said Phellion, gravely. "Monsieur de
la Peyrade is one of the most virtuous young men I have ever met.
People know what I think of Felix; well, I put the two on the same
line; indeed, I wish my son had a little more of Monsieur de la
Peyrade's beautiful piety."
"You are right; he is a man of great merit, who is sure to succeed,"
said Minard. "As for me, my suffrages--for I really ought not to say
protection--are his."
"He pays more for oil than for bread," said Dutocq. "I know that."
"His mother, if he has the happiness to still possess her, must be
proud of him," remarked Madame Thuillier, sententiously.
"He is a real treasure for us," said Thuillier. "If you only knew how
modest he is! He doesn't do himself justice."
"I can answer for one thing," added Dutocq; "no young man ever
maintained a nobler attitude in poverty; he triumphed over it; but he
suffered--it is easy to see that."
"Poor young man!" cried Zelie. "Such things make my heart ache!"
"Any one could safely trust both secrets and fortune to him," said
Thuillier; "and in these days that is the finest thing that can be
said of a man."
"It is Colleville who is making him laugh," cried Dutocq.
Just then Colleville and la Peyrade returned from the garden the very
best friends in the world.
"Messieurs," said Brigitte, "the soup and the King must never be kept
waiting; give your hand to the ladies."
Five minutes after this little pleasantry (issuing from the lodge of
her father the porter) Brigitte had the satisfaction of seeing her
table surrounded by the principal personages of this drama; the rest,
with the one exception of the odious Cerizet, arrived later.
The portrait of the former maker of canvas money-bags would be
incomplete if we omitted to give a description of one of her best
dinners. The physiognomy of the bourgeois cook of 1840 is, moreover,
one of those details essentially necessary to a history of manners and
customs, and clever housewives may find some lessons in it. A woman
doesn't make empty bags for twenty years without looking out for the
means to fill a few of them. Now Brigitte had one peculiar
characteristic. She united the economy to which she owed her fortune
with a full understanding of necessary expenses. Her relative
prodigality, when it concerned her brother or Celeste, was the
antipodes of avarice. In fact, she often bemoaned herself that she
couldn't be miserly. At her last dinner she had related how, after
struggling ten minute and enduring martyrdom, she had ended by giving
ten francs to a poor workwoman whom she knew, positively, had been
without food for two days.
"Nature," she said naively, "is stronger than reason."
The soup was a rather pale bouillon; for, even on an occasion like
this, the cook had been enjoined to make a great deal of bouillon out
of the beef supplied. Then, as the said beef was to feed the family on
the next day and the day after that, the less juice it expended in the
bouillon, the more substantial were the subsequent dinners. The beef,
little cooked, was always taken away at the following speech from
Brigitte, uttered as soon as Thuillier put his knife into it:--
"I think it is rather tough; send it away, Thuillier, nobody will eat
it; we have other things."
The soup was, in fact, flanked by four viands mounted on old hot-water
chafing-dishes, with the plating worn off. At this particular dinner
(afterwards called that of the candidacy) the first course consisted
of a pair of ducks with olives, opposite to which was a large pie with
forcemeat balls, while a dish of eels "a la tartare" corresponded in
like manner with a fricandeau on chicory. The second course had for
its central dish a most dignified goose stuffed with chestnuts, a
salad of vegetables garnished with rounds of beetroot opposite to
custards in cups, while lower down a dish of turnips "au sucre" faced
a timbale of macaroni. This gala dinner of the concierge type cost, at
the utmost, twenty francs, and the remains of the feast provided the
household for a couple of days; nevertheless, Brigitte would say:--
"Pest! when one has to have company how the money goes! It is
fearful!"
The table was lighted by two hideous candlesticks of plated silver
with four branches each, in which shone eight of those thrifty
wax-candles that go by the name of Aurora. The linen was dazzling
in whiteness, and the silver, with beaded edges, was the fruit,
evidently, of some purchase made during the Revolution by Thuillier's
father. Thus the fare and the service were in keeping with the house,
the dining-room, and the Thuilliers themselves, who could never, under
any circumstances, get themselves above this style of living. The
Minards, Collevilles, and la Peyrade exchanged now and then a smile
which betrayed their mutually satirical but repressed thoughts. La
Peyrade, seated beside Flavie, whispered in her ear:--
"You must admit that they ought to be taught how to live. But those
Minards are no better in their way. What cupidity! they've come here
solely after Celeste. Your daughter will be lost to you if you let
them have her. These parvenus have all the vices of the great lords of
other days without their elegance. Minard's son, who has twelve
thousand francs a year of his own, could very well find a wife
elsewhere, instead of pushing his speculating rake in here. What fun
it would be to play upon those people as one would on a bass-viol or a
clarionet!"
While the dishes of the second course were being removed, Minard,
afraid that Phellion would precede him, said to Thuillier with a grave
air:--
"My dear Thuillier, in accepting your dinner, I did so for the purpose
of making an important communication, which does you so much honor
that all here present ought to be made participants in it."
Thuillier turned pale.
"Have you obtained the cross for me?" he cried, on receiving a glance
from Theodose, and wishing to prove that he was not without craft.
"You will doubtless receive it ere long," replied the mayor. "But the
matter now relates to something better than that. The cross is a favor
due to the good opinion of a minister, whereas the present question
concerns an election due to the consent of your fellow citizens. In a
word, a sufficiently large number of electors in your arrondissement
have cast their eyes upon you, and wish to honor you with their
confidence by making you the representative of this arrondissement in
the municipal council of Paris; which, as everybody knows, is the
Council-general of the Seine."
"Bravo!" cried Dutocq.
Phellion rose.
"Monsieur le maire has forestalled me," he said in an agitated voice,
"but it is so flattering for our friend to be the object of eagerness
on the part of all good citizens, and to obtain the public vote of
high and low, that I cannot complain of being obliged to come second
only; therefore, all honor to the initiatory authority!" (Here he
bowed respectfully to Minard.) "Yes, Monsieur Thuillier, many electors
think of giving you their votes in that portion of the arrondissement
where I keep my humble penates; and you have the special advantage of
being suggested to their minds by a distinguished man." (Sensation.)
"By a man in whose person we desired to honor one of the most virtuous
inhabitants of the arrondissement, who for twenty years, I may say,
was the father of it. I allude to the late Monsieur Popinot,
counsellor, during his lifetime, to the Royal court, and our delegate
in the municipal council of Paris. But his nephew, of whom I speak,
Doctor Bianchon, one of our glories, has, in view of his absorbing
duties, declined the responsibility with which we sought to invest
him. While thanking us for our compliment he has--take note of
this--indicated for our suffrages the candidate of Monsieur le maire
as being, in his opinion, capable, owing to the position he formerly
occupied, of exercising the magisterial functions of the aedileship."
And Phellion sat down amid approving murmurs.
"Thuillier, you can count on me, your old friend," said Colleville.
At this moment the guests were sincerely touched by the sight
presented of old Mademoiselle Brigitte and Madame Thuillier. Brigitte,
pale as though she were fainting, was letting the slow tears run,
unheeded, down her cheeks, tears of deepest joy; while Madame
Thuillier sat, as if struck by lightning, with her eyes fixed.
Suddenly the old maid darted into the kitchen, crying out to Josephine
the cook:--
"Come into the cellar my girl, we must get out the wine behind the
wood!"
"My friends," said Thuillier, in a shaking voice, "this is the finest
moment of my life, finer than even the day of my election, should I
consent to allow myself to be presented to the suffrages of my
fellow-citizens" ("You must! you must!"); "for I feel myself much worn
down by thirty years of public service, and, as you may well believe,
a man of honor has need to consult his strength and his capacities
before he takes upon himself the functions of the aedileship."
"I expected nothing less of you, Monsieur Thuillier," cried Phellion.
"Pardon me; this is the first time in my life that I have ever
interrupted a superior; but there are circumstances--"
"Accept! accept!" cried Zelie. "Bless my soul! what we want are men
like you to govern us."
"Resign yourself, my chief!" cried Dutocq, and, "Long live the future
municipal councillor! but we haven't anything to drink--"
"Well, the thing is settled," said Minard; "you are to be our
candidate."
"You think too much of me," replied Thuillier.
"Come, come!" cried Colleville. "A man who has done thirty years in
the galleys of the ministry of finance is a treasure to the town."
"You are much too modest," said the younger Minard; "your capacity is
well known to us; it remains a tradition at the ministry of finance."
"As you all insist--" began Thuillier.
"The King will be pleased with our choice; I can assure you of that,"
said Minard, pompously.
"Gentlemen," said la Peyrade, "will you permit a recent dweller in the
faubourg Saint-Jacques to make one little remark, which is not without
importance?"
The consciousness that everybody had of the sterling merits of the
advocate of the poor produced the deepest silence.
"The influence of Monsieur le maire of an adjoining arrondissement,
which is immense in ours where he has left such excellent memories;
that of Monsieur Phellion, the oracle--yes, let the truth be spoken,"
he exclaimed, noticing a gesture made by Phellion--"the _oracle_ of his
battalion; the influence, no less powerful, which Monsieur Colleville
owes to the frank heartiness of his manner, and to his urbanity; that
of Monsieur Dutocq, the clerk of the justice court, which will not be
less efficacious, I am sure; and the poor efforts which I can offer in
my humble sphere of activity,--are pledges of success, but they are
not success itself. To obtain a rapid triumph we should pledge
ourselves, now and here, to keep the deepest secrecy on the
manifestation of sentiments which has just taken place. Otherwise, we
should excite, without knowing or willing it, envy and all the other
secondary passions, which would create for us later various obstacles
to overcome. The political meaning of the new social organization, its
very basis, its token, and the guarantee for its continuance, are in a
certain sharing of the governing power with the middle classes,
classes who are the true strength of modern societies, the centre of
morality, of all good sentiments and intelligent work. But we cannot
conceal from ourselves that the principle of election, extended now to
almost every function, has brought the interests of ambition, and the
passion for being _something_, excuse the word, into social depths where
they ought never to have penetrated. Some see good in this; others see
evil; it is not my place to judge between them in presence of minds
before whose eminence I bow. I content myself by simply suggesting
this question in order to show the dangers which the banner of our
friend must meet. See for yourselves! the decease of our late
honorable representative in the municipal council dates back scarcely
one week, and already the arrondissement is being canvassed by
inferior ambitions. Such men put themselves forward to be seen at any
price. The writ of convocation will, probably, not take effect for a
month to come. Between now and then, imagine the intrigues! I entreat
you not to expose our friend Thuillier to the blows of his
competitors; let us not deliver him over to public discussion, that
modern harpy which is but the trumpet of envy and calumny, the pretext
seized by malevolence to belittle all that is great, soil all that is
immaculate and dishonor whatever is sacred. Let us, rather, do as the
Third Party is now doing in the Chamber,--keep silence and vote!"
"He speaks well," said Phellion to his neighbor Dutocq.
"And how strong the statement is!"
Envy had turned Minard and his son green and yellow.
"That is well said and very true," remarked Minard.
"Unanimously adopted!" cried Colleville. "Messieurs, we are men of
honor; it suffices to understand each other on this point."
"Whoso desires the end accepts the means," said Phellion,
emphatically.
At this moment, Mademoiselle Thuillier reappeared, followed by her two
servants; the key of the cellar was hanging from her belt, and three
bottles of champagne, three of hermitage, and one bottle of malaga
were placed upon the table. She herself was carrying, with almost
respectful care, a smaller bottle, like a fairy Carabosse, which she
placed before her. In the midst of the hilarity caused by this
abundance of excellent things--a fruit of gratitude, which the poor
spinster in the delirium of her joy poured out with a profusion which
put to shame the sparing hospitality of her usual fortnightly dinners
--numerous dessert dishes made their appearance: mounds of almonds,
raisins, figs, and nuts (popularly known as the "four beggars"),
pyramids of oranges, confections, crystallized fruits, brought from
the hidden depths of her cupboards, which would never have figured on
the table-cloth had it not been for the "candidacy."
"Celeste, they will bring you a bottle of brandy which my father
obtained in 1802; make an orange-salad!" cried Brigitte to her
sister-in-law. "Monsieur Phellion, open the champagne; that bottle is
for you three. Monsieur Dutocq, take this one. Monsieur Colleville,
you know how to pop corks!"
The two maids distributed champagne glasses, also claret glasses, and
wine glasses. Josephine also brought three more bottles of Bordeaux.
"The year of the comet!" cried Thuillier, laughing, "Messieurs, you
have turned my sister's head."
"And this evening you shall have punch and cakes," she said. "I
have sent to the chemists for some tea. Heavens! if I had only
known the affair concerned an election," she cried, looking at
her sister-in-law, "I'd have served the turkey."
A general laugh welcomed this speech.
"We have a goose!" said Minard junior.
"The carts are unloading!" cried Madame Thuillier, as "marrons glaces"
and "meringues" were placed upon the table.
Mademoiselle Thuillier's face was blazing. She was really superb to
behold. Never did sisterly love assume such a frenzied expression.
"To those who know her, it is really touching," remarked Madame
Colleville.
The glasses were filled. The guests all looked at one another,
evidently expecting a toast, whereupon la Peyrade said:--
"Messieurs, let us drink to something sublime."
Everybody looked curious.
"To Mademoiselle Brigitte!"
They all rose, clinked glasses, and cried with one voice,
"Mademoiselle Brigitte!" so much enthusiasm did the exhibition of a
true feeling excite.
"Messieurs," said Phellion, reading from a paper written in pencil,
"To work and its splendors, in the person of our former comrade, now
become one of the mayors of Paris,--to Monsieur Minard and his wife!"
After five minutes' general conversation Thuillier rose and said:--
"Messieurs, To the King and the royal family! I add nothing; the toast
says all."
"To the election of my brother!" said Mademoiselle Thuillier a moment
later.
"Now I'll make you laugh," whispered la Peyrade in Flavie's ear.
And he rose.
"To Woman!" he said; "that enchanting sex to whom we owe our
happiness,--not to speak of our mothers, our sisters, and our wives!"
This toast excited general hilarity, and Colleville, already somewhat
gay, exclaimed:--
"Rascal! you have stolen my speech!"
The mayor then rose; profound silence reigned.
"Messieurs, our institutions! from which come the strength and
grandeur of dynastic France!"
The bottles disappeared amid a chorus of admiration as to the
marvellous goodness and delicacy of their contents.
Celeste Colleville here said timidly:--
"Mamma, will you permit me to give a toast?"
The good girl had noticed the dull, bewildered look of her godmother,
neglected and forgotten,--she, the mistress of that house, wearing
almost the expression of a dog that is doubtful which master to obey,
looking from the face of her terrible sister-in-law to that of
Thuillier, consulting each countenance, and oblivious of herself; but
joy on the face of that poor helot, accustomed to be nothing, to
repress her ideas, her feelings, had the effect of a pale wintry sun
behind a mist; it barely lighted her faded, flabby flesh. The gauze
cap trimmed with dingy flowers, the hair ill-dressed, the gloomy brown
gown, with no ornament but a thick gold chain--all, combined with the
expression of her countenance, stimulated the affection of the young
Celeste, who--alone in the world--knew the value of that woman
condemned to silence but aware of all about her, suffering from all
yet consoling herself in God and in the girl who now was watching her.
"Yes, let the dear child give us her little toast," said la Peyrade to
Madame Colleville.
"Go on, my daughter," cried Colleville; "here's the hermitage still to
be drunk--and it's hoary with age," he added.
"To my kind godmother!" said the girl, lowering her glass respectfully
before Madame Thuillier, and holding it towards her.
The poor woman, startled, looked through a veil of tears first at her
husband, and then at Brigitte; but her position in the family was so
well known, and the homage paid by innocence to weakness had something
so beautiful about it, that the emotion was general; the men all rose
and bowed to Madame Thuillier.
"Ah! Celeste, I would I had a kingdom to lay at your feet," murmured
Felix Phellion.
The worthy Phellion wiped away a tear. Dutocq himself was moved.
"Oh! the charming child!" cried Mademoiselle Thuillier, rising, and
going round to kiss her sister-in-law.
"My turn now!" said Colleville, posing like an athlete. "Now listen:
To friendship! Empty your glasses; refill your glasses. Good! To the
fine arts,--the flower of social life! Empty your glasses; refill your
glasses. To another such festival on the day after election!"
"What is that little bottle you have there?" said Dutocq to
Mademoiselle Thuillier.
"That," she said, "is one of my three bottles of Madame Amphoux'
liqueur; the second is for the day of Celeste's marriage; the third
for the day on which her first child is baptized."
"My sister is losing her head," remarked Thuillier to Colleville.
The dinner ended with a toast, offered by Thuillier, but suggested to
him by Theodose at the moment when the malaga sparkled in the little
glasses like so many rubies.
"Colleville, messieurs, has drunk to _friendship_. I now drink, in
this most generous wine, To my friends!"
An hurrah, full of heartiness, greeted that fine sentiment, but Dutocq
remarked aside to Theodose:--
"It is a shame to pour such wine down the throats of such people."
"Ah! if we could only make such wine as that!" cried Zelie, making her
glass ring by the way in which she sucked down the Spanish liquid.
"What fortunes we could get!"
Zelie had now reached her highest point of incandescence, and was
really alarming.
"Yes," replied Minard, "but ours is made."
"Don't you think, sister," said Brigitte to Madame Thuillier, "that we
had better take coffee in the salon?"
Madame Thuillier obediently assumed the air of mistress of the house,
and rose.
"Ah! you are a great wizard," said Flavie Colleville, accepting la
Peyrade's arm to return to the salon.
"And yet I care only to bewitch you," he answered. "I think you more
enchanting than ever this evening."
"Thuillier," she said, to evade the subject, "Thuillier made to think
himself a political character! oh! oh!"
"But, my dear Flavie, half the absurdities of life are the result of
such conspiracies; and men are not alone in these deceptions. In how
many families one sees the husband, children, and friends persuading a
silly mother that she is a woman of sense, or an old woman of fifty
that she is young and beautiful. Hence, inconceivable contrarieties
for those who go about the world with their eyes shut. One man owes
his ill-savored conceit to the flattery of a mistress; another owes
his versifying vanity to those who are paid to call him a great poet.
Every family has its great man; and the result is, as we see it in the
Chamber, general obscurity of the lights of France. Well, men of real
mind are laughing to themselves about it, that's all. You are the mind
and the beauty of this little circle of the petty bourgeoisie; it is
this superiority which led me in the first instance to worship you. I
have since longed to drag you out of it; for I love you sincerely
--more in friendship than in love; though a great deal of love is
gliding into it," he added, pressing her to his heart under cover of
the recess of a window to which he had taken her.
"Madame Phellion will play the piano," cried Colleville. "We must all
dance to-night--bottles and Brigitte's francs and all the little
girls! I'll go and fetch my clarionet."
He gave his empty coffee-cup to his wife, smiling to see her so
friendly with la Peyrade.
"What have you said and done to my husband?" asked Flavie, when
Colleville had left them.
"Must I tell you all our secrets?"
"Ah! you don't love me," she replied, looking at him with the
coquettish slyness of a woman who is not quite decided in her mind.
"Well, since you tell me yours," he said, letting himself go to the
lively impulse of Provencal gaiety, always so charming and apparently
so natural, "I will not conceal from you an anxiety in my heart."
He took her back to the same window and said, smiling:--
"Colleville, poor man, has seen in me the artist repressed by all
these bourgeois; silent before them because I feel misjudged,
misunderstood, and repelled by them. He has felt the heat of the
sacred fire that consumes me. Yes I am," he continued, in a tone of
conviction, "an artist in words after the manner of Berryer; I could
make juries weep, by weeping myself, for I'm as nervous as a woman.
Your husband, who detests the bourgeoisie, began to tease me about
them. At first we laughed; then, in becoming serious, he found out
that I was as strong as he. I told him of the plan concocted to make
_something_ of Thuillier, and I showed him all the good he could get
himself out of a political puppet. 'If it were only,' I said to him,
'to make yourself Monsieur _de_ Colleville, and to put your
charming wife where I should like to see her, as the wife of a
receiver-general, or deputy. To make yourself all that you and she
ought to be, you have only to go and live a few years in the Upper or
Lower Alps, in some hole of a town where everybody will like you, and
your wife will seduce everybody; and this,' I added, 'you cannot fail
to obtain, especially if you give your dear Celeste to some man who can
influence the Chamber.' Good reasons, stated in jest, have the merit of
penetrating deeper into some minds than if they were given soberly. So
Colleville and I became the best friends in the world. Didn't you hear
him say to me at table, 'Rascal! you have stolen my speech'? To-night
we shall be theeing and thouing each other. I intend to have a choice
little supper-party soon, where artists, tied to the proprieties at
home, always compromise themselves. I'll invite him, and that will
make us as solidly good friends as he is with Thuillier. There, my
dear adorned one, is what a profound sentiment gives a man the courage
to produce. Colleville must adopt me; so that I may visit your house
by his invitation. But what couldn't you make me do? lick lepers,
swallow live toads, seduce Brigitte--yes, if you say so, I'll impale
my own heart on that great picket-rail to please you."
"You frightened me this morning," she said.
"But this evening you are reassured. Yes," he added, "no harm will
ever happen to you through me."
"You are, I must acknowledge, a most extraordinary man."
"Why, no! the smallest as well as the greatest of my efforts are
merely the reflections of the flame which you have kindled. I intend
to be your son-in-law that we may never part. My wife, heavens! what
could she be to me but a machine for child-bearing? whereas the
divinity, the sublime being will be--you," he whispered in her ear.
"You are Satan!" she said, in a sort of terror.
"No, I am something of a poet, like all the men of my region. Come, be
my Josephine! I'll go and see you to-morrow. I have the most ardent
desire to see where you live and how you live, the furniture you use,
the color of your stuffs, the arrangement of all things about you. I
long to see the pearl in its shell."
He slipped away cleverly after these words, without waiting for an
answer.
Flavie, to whom in all her life love had never taken the language of
romance, sat still, but happy, her heart palpitating, and saying to
herself that it was very difficult to escape such influence. For the
first time Theodose had appeared in a pair of new trousers, with gray
silk stockings and pumps, a waistcoat of black silk, and a cravat of
black satin on the knot of which shone a plain gold pin selected with
taste. He wore also a new coat in the last fashion, and yellow gloves,
relieved by white shirt-cuffs; he was the only man who had manners, or
deportment in that salon, which was now filling up for the evening.
Madame Pron, nee Barniol, arrived with two school-girls, aged
seventeen, confided to her maternal care by families residing in
Martinique. Monsieur Pron, professor of rhetoric in a college presided
over by priests, belonged to the Phellion class; but, instead of
expanding on the surface in phrases and demonstrations, and posing as
an example, he was dry and sententious. Monsieur and Madame Pron, the
flowers of the Phellion salon, received every Monday. Though a
professor, the little man danced. He enjoyed great influence in the
quarter enclosed by the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, the Luxembourg,
and the rue de Sevres. Therefore, as soon as Phellion saw his friend,
he took him by the arm into a corner to inform him of the Thuillier
candidacy. After ten minutes' consultation they both went to find
Thuillier, and the recess of a window, opposite to that where Flavie
still sat absorbed in her reflections, no doubt, heard a "trio"
worthy, in its way, of that of the Swiss in "Guillaume Tell."
"Do you see," said Theodose, returning to Flavie, "the pure and honest
Phellion intriguing over there? Give a personal reason to a virtuous
man and he'll paddle in the slimiest puddle; he is hooking that little
Pron, and Pron is taking it all in, solely to get your little Celeste
for Felix Phellion. Separate them, and in ten minutes they'll get
together again, and that young Minard will be growling round them like
an angry bulldog."
Felix, still under the strong emotion imparted to him by Celeste's
generous action and the cry that came from the girl's heart, though no
one but Madame Thuillier still thought of it, became inspired by one
of those ingenuous artfulnesses which are the honest charlatanism of
true love; but he was not to the manner born of it, and mathematics,
moreover, made him somewhat absent-minded. He stationed himself near
Madame Thuillier, imagining that Madame Thuillier would attract
Celeste to her side. This astute calculation succeeded all the better
because young Minard, who saw in Celeste nothing more than a "dot,"
had no such sudden inspiration, and was drinking his coffee and
talking politics with Laudigeois, Monsieur Barniol, and Dutocq by
order of his father, who was thinking and planning for the general
election of the legislature in 1842.
"Who wouldn't love Celeste?" said Felix to Madame Thuillier.
"Little darling, no one in the world loves me as she does," replied
the poor slave, with difficulty restraining her tears.
"Ah! madame, we both love you," said the candid professor, sincerely.
"What are you saying to each other?" asked Celeste, coming up.
"My child," said the pious woman, drawing her god-daughter down to her
and kissing her on the forehead. "He said that you both loved me."
"Do not be angry with my presumption, mademoiselle. Let me do all I
can to prove it," murmured Felix. "Ah! I cannot help it, I was made
this way; injustice revolts me to the soul! Yes, the Saviour of men
was right to promise the future to the meek heart, to the slain lamb!
A man who did not love you, Celeste, must have adored you after that
sublime impulse of yours at table. Ah, yes! innocence alone can
console the martyr. You are a kind young girl; you will be one of
those wives who make the glory and the happiness of a family. Happy be
he whom you will choose!"
"Godmamma, with what eyes do you think Monsieur Felix sees me?"
"He appreciates you, my little angel; I shall pray to God for both of
you."
"If you knew how happy I am that my father can do a service to
Monsieur Thuillier, and how I wish I could be useful to your
brother--"
"In short," said Celeste, laughing, "you love us all."
"Well, yes," replied Felix.
True love wraps itself in the mysteries of reserve, even in its
expression; it proves itself by itself; it does not feel the
necessity, as a false love does, of lighting a conflagration. By an
observer (if such a being could have glided into the Thuillier salon)
a book might have been made in comparing the two scenes of
love-making, and in watching the enormous preparations of Theodose
and the simplicity of Felix: one was nature, the other was society,
--the true and the false embodied. Noticing her daughter glowing with
happiness, exhaling her soul through the pores of her face, and
beautiful with the beauty of a young girl gathering the first roses
of an indirect declaration, Flavie had an impulse of jealousy in her
heart. She came across to Celeste and said in her ear:--
"You are not behaving well, my daughter; everybody is observing you;
you are compromising yourself by talking so long to Monsieur Felix
without knowing whether we approve of it."
"But, mamma, my godmother is here."
"Ah! pardon me, dear friend," said Madame Colleville; "I did not
notice you."
"You do as others do," said the poor nonentity.
That reply stung Madame Colleville, who regarded it as a barbed arrow.
She cast a haughty glance at Felix and said to Celeste, "Sit there, my
daughter," seating herself at the same time beside Madame Thuillier
and pointing to a chair on the other side of her.
"I will work myself to death," said Felix to Madame Thuillier. "I'll
be a member of the Academy of Sciences; I'll make some great
discovery, and win her hand by force of fame."
"Ah!" thought the poor woman to herself, "I ought to have had a
gentle, peaceful, learned man like that. I might have slowly developed
in a life of quietness. It was not thy will, O God! but, I pray thee,
unite and bless these children; they are made for one another."
And she sat there, pensive, listening to the racket made by her
sister-in-law--a ten-horse power at work--who now, lending a hand to
her two servants, cleared the table, taking everything out of the
dining-room to accommodate the dancers, vociferating, like the captain
of a frigate on his quarter-deck when taking his ship into action:
"Have you plenty of raspberry syrup?" "Run out and buy some more
orgeat!" "There's not enough glasses. Where's the 'eau rougie'? Take
those six bottles of 'vin ordinaire' and make more. Mind that
Coffinet, the porter, doesn't get any." "Caroline, my girl, you are to
wait at the sideboard; you'll have tongue and ham to slice in case
they dance till morning. But mind, no waste! Keep an eye on
everything. Pass me the broom; put more oil in those lamps; don't make
blunders. Arrange the remains of the dessert so as to make a show on
the sideboard; ask my sister to come and help us. I'm sure I don't
know what she's thinking about, that dawdle! Heavens, how slow she is!
Here, take away these chairs, they'll want all the room they can get."
The salon was full of Barniols, Collevilles, Phellions, Laudigeois,
and many others whom the announcement of a dance at the Thuilliers',
spread about in the Luxembourg between two and four in the afternoon,
the hour at which the bourgeoisie takes its walk, had drawn thither.
"Are you ready, Brigitte?" said Colleville, bolting into the
dining-room; "it is nine o'clock, and they are packed as close as
herrings in the salon. Cardot, his wife and son and daughter and
future son-in-law have just come, accompanied by that young Vinet;
the whole faubourg Saint Antoine is debouching. Can't we move the
piano in here?"
Then he gave the signal, by tuning his clarionet, the joyous sounds of
which were greeted with huzzas from the salon.
It is useless to describe a ball of this kind. The toilets, faces, and
conversations were all in keeping with one fact which will surely
suffice even the dullest imagination; they passed round, on tarnished
and discolored trays, common tumblers filled with wine, "eau rougie,"
and "eau sucree." The trays on which were glasses of orgeat and
glasses of syrup and water appeared only at long intervals. There were
five card-tables and twenty-five players, and eighteen dancers of both
sexes. At one o'clock in the morning, all present--Madame Thuillier,
Mademoiselle Brigitte, Madame Phellion, even Phellion himself--were
dragged into the vivacities of a country-dance, vulgarly called "La
Boulangere," in which Dutocq figured with a veil over his head, after
the manner of the Kabyl. The servants who were waiting to escort their
masters home, and those of the household, were audience to this
performance; and after the interminable dance had lasted one whole
hour it was proposed to carry Brigitte in triumph when she gave the
announcement that supper was served. This circumstance made her see
the necessity of hiding a dozen bottles of old burgundy. In short, the
company had amused themselves so well, the matrons as well as the
young girls, that Thuillier found occasion to say:--
"Well, well, this morning we little thought we should have such a fete
to-night."
"There's never more pleasure," said the notary Cardot, "than in just
such improvised balls. Don't talk to me of parties where everybody
stands on ceremony."
This opinion, we may remark, is a standing axiom among the
bourgeoisie.
"Well, for my part," said Madame Minard, "I prefer the dignified old
ways."
"We didn't mean that for you, madame; your salon is the chosen haunt
of pleasure," said Dutocq.
When "La Boulangere" came to an end, Theodose pulled Dutocq from the
sideboard where he was preparing to eat a slice of tongue, and said to
him:--
"Let us go; we must be at Cerizet's very early in the morning; we
ought both of us to think over that affair; it is not so easy to
manage as Cerizet seems to imagine."
"Why not?" asked Dutocq, bringing his slice of tongue to eat in the
salon.
"Don't you know the law?"
"I know enough of it to be aware of the dangers of the affair. If that
notary wants the house and we filch it from him, there are means by
which he can recover it; he can put himself into the skin of a
registered creditor. By the present legal system relating to
mortgages, when a house is sold at the request of creditors, if the
price obtained for it at auction is not enough to pay all debts, the
owners have the right to bid it in and hold it for a higher sum; now
the notary, seeing himself caught, may back out of the sale in that
way."
"Well," said la Peyrade, "it needs attention."
"Very good," replied Dutocq, "we'll go and see Cerizet."
These words, "go and see Cerizet," were overheard by Minard, who was
following the two associates; but they offered no meaning to his mind.
The two men were so outside of his own course and projects that he
heard them without listening to them.
"This has been one of the finest days in our lives," said Brigitte to
her brother, when she found herself alone with him in the deserted
salon, at half-past two in the morning. "What a distinction! to be
thus selected by your fellow-citizens!"
"Don't be mistaken about it, Brigitte; we owe it all, my child, to one
man."
"What man?"
"To our friend, la Peyrade."
CHAPTER IX
THE BANKER OF THE POOR
It was not on the next day, Monday, but on the following day, Tuesday,
that Dutocq and Theodose went to see Cerizet, the former having called
la Peyrade's attention to the fact that Cerizet always absented
himself on Sundays and Mondays, taking advantage of the total absence
of clients on those days, which are devoted by the populace to
debauch. The house toward which they directed their steps is one of
the striking features in the faubourg Saint-Jacques, and it is quite
as important to study it here as it was to study those of Phellion and
Thuillier. It is not known (true, no commission has yet been appointed
to examine this phenomenon), no one knows why certain quarters become
degraded and vulgarized, morally as well as materially; why, for
instance, the ancient residence of the court and the church, the
Luxembourg and the Latin quarter, have become what they are to-day, in
spite of the presence of the finest palaces in the world, in spite of
the bold cupola of Sainte-Genevieve, that of Mansard on the
Val-de-Grace, and the charms of the Jardin des Plantes. One asks one's
self why the elegance of life has left that region; why the Vauquer
houses, the Phellion and the Thuillier houses now swarm with tenants
and boarders, on the site of so many noble and religious buildings, and
why such mud and dirty trades and poverty should have fastened on a
hilly piece of ground, instead of spreading out upon the flat land
beyond the confines of the ancient city.
The angel whose beneficence once hovered above this quarter being
dead, usury, on the lowest scale, rushed in and took his place. To the
old judge, Popinot, succeeded Cerizet; and strange to say,--a fact
which it is well to study,--the effect produced, socially speaking,
was much the same. Popinot loaned money without interest, and was
willing to lose; Cerizet lost nothing, and compelled the poor to work
hard and stay virtuous. The poor adored Popinot, but they did not hate
Cerizet. Here, in this region, revolves the lowest wheel of Parisian
financiering. At the top, Nucingen & Co., the Kellers, du Tillet, and
the Mongenods; a little lower down, the Palmas, Gigonnets, and
Gobsecks; lower still, the Samonons, Chaboisseaus, and Barbets; and
lastly (after the pawn-shops) comes this king of usury, who spreads
his nets at the corners of the streets to entangle all miseries and
miss none,--Cerizet, "money lender by the little week."
The frogged frock-coat will have prepared you for the den in which
this convicted stock-broker carried on his present business.
The house was humid with saltpetre; the walls, sweating moisture, were
enamelled all over with large slabs of mould. Standing at the corner
of the rue des Postes and rue des Poules, it presented first a
ground-floor, occupied partly by a shop for the sale of the commonest
kind of wine, painted a coarse bright red, decorated with curtains of
red calico, furnished with a leaden counter, and guarded by formidable
iron bars. Above the gate of an odious alley hung a frightful lantern,
on which were the words "Night lodgings here." The outer walls were
covered with iron crossbars, showing, apparently, the insecurity of
the building, which was owned by the wine-merchant, who also inhabited
the entresol. The widow Poiret (nee Michonneau) kept furnished
lodgings on the first, second, and third floors, consisting of single
rooms for workmen and for the poorest class of students.
Cerizet occupied one room on the ground-floor and another in the
entresol, to which he mounted by an interior staircase; this entresol
looked out upon a horrible paved court, from which arose mephitic
odors. Cerizet paid forty francs a month to the widow Poiret for his
breakfast and dinner; he thus conciliated her by becoming her boarder;
he also made himself acceptable to the wine-merchant by procuring him
an immense sale of wine and liquors among his clients--profits
realized before sunrise; the wine-shop beginning operations about
three in the morning in summer, and five in winter.
The hour of the great Market, which so many of his clients, male and
female, attended, was the determining cause of Cerizet's early hours.
The Sieur Cadenet, the wine-merchant, in view of the custom which he
owed to the usurer, had let him the two rooms for the low price of
eighty francs a year, and had given him a lease for twelve years,
which Cerizet alone had a right to break, without paying indemnity, at
three months' notice. Cadenet always carried in a bottle of excellent
wine for the dinner of this useful tenant; and when Cerizet was short
of money he had only to say to his friend, "Cadenet, lend me a few
hundred francs,"--loans which he faithfully repaid.
Cadenet, it was said, had proof of the widow Poiret having deposited
in Cerizet's hands some two thousand francs for investment, which may
explain the progress of the latter's affairs since the day when he
first took up his abode in the quarter, supplied with a last note of a
thousand francs and Dutocq's protection. Cadenet, prompted by a
cupidity which success increased, had proposed, early in the year, to
put twenty thousand francs into the hands of his friend Cerizet. But
Cerizet had positively declined them, on the ground that he ran risks
of a nature to become a possible cause of dispute with associates.
"I could only," he said to Cadenet, "take them at six per cent
interest, and you can do better than that in your own business. We
will go into partnership later, if you like, in some serious
enterprise, some good opportunity which may require, say, fifty
thousand francs. When you have got that sum to invest, let me know,
and we'll talk about it."
Cerizet had only suggested the affair of the house to Theodose after
making sure that among the three, Madame Poiret, Cadenet, and himself,
it was impossible to raise the full sum of one hundred thousand
francs.
The "lender by the little week" was thus in perfect safety in his den,
where he could even, if necessity came, appeal to the law. On certain
mornings there might be seen as many as sixty or eighty persons, men
as often as women, either in the wine-shop, or the alley, or sitting
on the staircase, for the distrustful Cerizet would only admit six
persons at a time into his office. The first comers were first served,
and each had to go by his number, which the wine-merchant, or his
shop-boy, affixed to the hats of the man and the backs of the women.
Sometimes the clients would sell to each other (as hackney-coachmen do
on the cabstands), head numbers for tail numbers. On certain days,
when the market business was pressing, a head number was often sold
for a glass of brandy and a sou. The numbers, as they issued from
Cerizet's office, called up the succeeding numbers; and if any
disputes arose Cadenet put a stop to the fray at once my remarking:--
"If you get the police here you won't gain anything; _he_'ll shut up
shop."
HE was Cerizet's name. When, in the course of the day, some hapless
woman, without an atom of food in her room, and seeing her children
pale with hunger, would come to borrow ten or twenty sous, she would
say to the wine-merchant anxiously:--
"Is _he_ there?"
Cadenet, a short, stout man, dressed in blue, with outer sleeves of
black stuff and a wine-merchant's apron, and always wearing a cap,
seemed an angel to these mothers when he replied to them:--
"_He_ told me that you were an honest woman and I might give you forty
sous. You know what you must do about it--"
And, strange to say, _he_ was blessed by these poor people, even as they
had lately blessed Popinot.
But Cerizet was cursed on Sunday mornings when accounts were settled;
and they cursed him even more on Saturdays, when it was necessary to
work in order to repay the sum borrowed with interest. But, after all,
he was Providence, he was God from Tuesday to Friday of every week.
The room which he made his office, formerly the kitchen of the next
floor, was bare; the beams of the ceiling had been whitewashed, but
still bore marks of smoke. The walls, along which he had put benches,
and the stone floor, retained and gave out dampness. The fireplace,
where the crane remained, was partly filled by an iron stove in which
Cerizet burned sea-coal when the weather was severe. A platform about
half a foot high and eight feet square extended from the edge of the
fireplace; on it was fastened a common table and an armchair with a
round cushion covered with green leather. Behind him, Cerizet had
sheathed the walls with planks; also protecting himself with a little
wooden screen, painted white, from the draught between the window and
door; but this screen, made of two leaves, was so placed that the
warmth from the stove reached him. The window had enormous inside
shutters of cast-iron, held, when closed, by a bar. The door commanded
respect by an armor of the same character.
At the farther end of this room, in a corner, was a spiral-staircase,
coming, evidently, from some pulled-down shop, and bought in the rue
Chapon by Cadenet, who had fitted it through the ceiling into the room
in the entresol occupied by Cerizet. In order to prevent all
communication with the upper floors, Cerizet had exacted that the door
of that room which opened on the common landing should be walled up.
The place had thus become a fortress. The bedroom above had a cheap
carpet bought for twenty francs, an iron bedstead, a bureau, three
chairs, and an iron safe, made by a good workman, which Cerizet had
bought at a bargain. He shaved before a glass on the chimney-piece; he
owned two pairs of cotton sheets and six cotton shirts; the rest of
his visible wardrobe was of the same character. Cadenet had once seen
Cerizet dressed like a dandy of the period; he must, therefore, have
kept hidden, in some drawer of his bureau, a complete disguise with
which he could go to the opera, see the world, and not be recognized,
for, had it not been that Cadenet heard his voice, he would certainly
have asked him who he was.
What pleased the clients of this man most was his joviality and his
repartees; he talked their language. Cadenet, his two shop-men, and
Cerizet, living in the midst of dreadful misery, behaved with the
calmness of undertakers in presence of afflicted heirs, of old
sergeants of the Guard among heaps of dead. They no more shuddered on
hearing cries of hunger and despair than surgeons shudder at the cries
of their patients in hospital; they said, as the soldiers and the
dressers said, the perfunctory words, "Have patience! a little
courage! What's the good of grieving? Suppose you kill yourself, what
then? One gets accustomed to everything; be reasonable!"
Though Cerizet took the precaution to hide the money necessary for his
morning operations in the hollow seat of the chair in which he sat,
taking out no more than a hundred francs at a time, which he put in
the pockets of his trousers, never dipping into the funds of the chair
except between the entrance of two batches of clients (keeping his
door locked and not opening it till all was safely stowed in his
pockets), he had really nothing to fear from the various despairs
which found their way from all sides to this rendezvous of misery.
Certainly, there are many different ways of being honest and virtuous;
and the "Monograph of Virtue" has no other basis than this social
axiom.[*] A man is false to his conscience; he fails, apparently, in
delicacy; he forfeits that bloom of honor which, though lost, does
not, as yet, mean general disrepute; at last, however, he fails
decidedly in honor; if he falls into the hands of the correctional
police, he is not, as yet, guilty of crime before the court of
assizes; but after he is branded with infamy by the verdict of a jury
he may still be honored at the galleys for the species of honor and
integrity practised by criminals among themselves, which consists in
not betraying each other, in sharing booty loyally, and in running all
dangers. Well, this last form of honor--which is perhaps a
calculation, a necessity, the practice of which offers certain
opportunities for grandeur to the guilty man and the possibility of a
return to good--reigned absolutely between Cerizet and his clients.
Never did Cerizet make an error, nor his poor people either; neither
side ever denied what was due, either capital or interests. Many a
time Cerizet, who was born among the people, corrected from one week
to another some accidental error, to the benefit of a poor man who had
never discovered it. He was called a Jew, but an honest one, and his
word in that city of sorrows was sacred. A woman died, causing a loss
to him of thirty francs:
[*] A book on which the author has been at work since 1833, the year
in which it was first announced.--Author's note.
"See my profits! there they go!" he said to his assemblage, "and you
howl upon me! You know I'll never trouble the brats; in fact, Cadenet
has already taken them bread and heel-taps."
After that it was said of him in both faubourgs:--
"He is not a bad fellow!"
The "loan by the little week," as interpreted by Cerizet, is not,
considering all things, so cruel a thing as the pawn-shop. Cerizet
loaned ten francs Tuesday on condition of receiving twelve francs
Sunday morning. In five weeks he doubled his capital; but he had to
make many compromises. His kindness consisted in accepting, from time
to time, eleven francs and fifty centimes; sometimes the whole
interest was still owing. When he gave fifty francs for sixty to a
fruit-stall man, or a hundred francs for one hundred and twenty to a
seller of peat-fuel, he ran great risks.
On reaching the rue des Poules through the rue des Postes, Theodose
and Dutocq saw a great assemblage of men and women, and by the light
which the wine-merchant's little oil-lamps cast upon these groups,
they were horrified at beholding that mass of red, seamed, haggard
faces; solemn with suffering, withered, distorted, swollen with wine,
pallid from liquor; some threatening, others resigned, some sarcastic
or jeering, others besotted; all rising from the midst of those
terrible rags, which no designer can surpass in his most extravagant
caricatures.
"I shall be recognized," said Theodose, pulling Dutocq away; "we have
done a foolish thing to come here at this hour and take him in the
midst of his business."
"All the more that Claparon may be sleeping in his lair, the interior
of which we know nothing about. Yes, there are dangers for you, but
none for me; I shall be thought to have business with my
copying-clerk, and I'll go and tell him to come and dine with us; this
is court day, so we can't have him to breakfast. I'll tell him to meet
us at the 'Chaumiere' in one of the garden dining-rooms."
"Bad; anybody could listen to us there without being seen," said la
Peyrade. "I prefer the 'Petit Rocher de Cancale'; we can go into a
private room and speak low."
"But suppose you are seen with Cerizet?"
"Well, then, let's go to the 'Cheval Rouge,' quai de la Tournelle."
"That's best; seven o'clock; nobody will be there then."
Dutocq advanced alone into the midst of that congress of beggars, and
he heard his own name repeated from mouth to mouth, for he could
hardly fail to encounter among them some jail-bird familiar with the
judge's office, just as Theodose was certain to have met a client.
In these quarters the justice-of-peace is the supreme authority; all
legal contests stop short at his office, especially since the law was
passed giving to those judges sovereign power in all cases of
litigation involving not over one hundred and forty francs. A way was
made for the judge's clerk, who was not less feared than the judge
himself. He saw women seated on the staircase; a horrible display of
pallor and suffering of many kinds. Dutocq was almost asphyxiated when
he opened the door of the room in which already sixty persons had left
their odors.
"Your number? your number?" cried several voices.
"Hold your jaw!" cried a gruff voice from the street, "that's the pen
of the judge."
Profound silence followed. Dutocq found his copying clerk clothed in a
jacket of yellow leather like that of the gloves of the gendarmerie,
beneath which he wore an ignoble waistcoat of knitted wool. The reader
must imagine the man's diseased head issuing from this species of
scabbard and covered with a miserable Madras handkerchief, which,
leaving to view the forehead and neck, gave to that head, by the gleam
of a tallow candle of twelve to the pound, its naturally hideous and
threatening character.
"It can't be done that way, papa Lantimeche," Cerizet was saying to a
tall old man, seeming to be about seventy years of age, who was
standing before him with a red woollen cap in his hand, exhibiting a
bald head, and a breast covered with white hairs visible through his
miserable linen jacket. "Tell me exactly what you want to undertake.
One hundred francs, even on condition of getting back one hundred and
twenty, can't be let loose that way, like a dog in a church--"
The five other applicants, among whom were two women, both with
infants, one knitting, the other suckling her child, burst out
laughing.
When Cerizet saw Dutocq, he rose respectfully and went rather hastily
to meet him, adding to his client:--
"Take time to reflect; for, don't you see? it makes me doubtful to
have such a sum as that, one hundred francs! asked for by an old
journeyman locksmith!"
"But I tell you it concerns an invention," cried the old workman.
"An invention and one hundred francs!" said Dutocq. "You don't know
the laws; you must take out a patent, and that costs two thousand
francs, and you want influence."
"All that is true," said Cerizet, who, however, reckoned a good deal
on such chances. "Come to-morrow morning, papa Lantimeche, at six
o'clock, and we'll talk it over; you can't talk inventions in public."
Cerizet then turned to Dutocq whose first words were:--
"If the thing turns out well, half profits!"
"Why did you get up at this time in the morning to come here and say
that to me?" demanded the distrustful Cerizet, already displeased with
the mention of "half profits." "You could have seen me as usual at the
office."
And he looked askance at Dutocq; the latter, while telling him his
errand and speaking of Claparon and the necessity of pushing forward
in the Theodose affair, seemed confused.
"All the same you could have seen me this morning at the office,"
repeated Cerizet, conducting his visitor to the door.
"There's a man," thought he, as he returned to his seat, "who seems to
me to have breathed on his lantern so that I may not see clear. Well,
well, I'll give up that place of copying clerk. Ha! your turn, little
mother!" he cried; "you invent children! That's amusing enough, though
the trick is well known."
It is all the more useless to relate the conversation which took place
between the three confederates at the "Cheval Rouge," because the
arrangements there concluded were the basis of certain confidences
made, as we shall see, by Theodose to Mademoiselle Thuillier; but it
is necessary to remark that the cleverness displayed by la Peyrade
seemed almost alarming to Cerizet and Dutocq. After this conference,
the banker of the poor, finding himself in company with such powerful
players, had it in mind to make sure of his own stake at the first
chance. To win the game at any price over the heads of the ablest
gamblers, by cheating if necessary, is the inspiration of a special
sort of vanity peculiar to friends of the green cloth. Hence came the
terrible blow which la Peyrade was about to receive.
He knew his two associates well; and therefore, in spite of the
perpetual activity of his intellectual forces, in spite of the
perpetual watchfulness his personality of ten faces required, nothing
fatigued him as much as the part he had to play with his two
accomplices. Dutocq was a great knave, and Cerizet had once been a
comic actor; they were both experts in humbug. A motionless face like
Talleyrand's would have made then break at once with the Provencal,
who was now in their clutches; it was necessary, therefore, that he
should make a show of ease and confidence and of playing above board
--the very height of art in such affairs. To delude the pit is an
every-day triumph, but to deceive Mademoiselle Mars, Frederic
Lemaitre, Potier, Talma, Monrose, is the acme of art.
This conference at the "Cheval Rouge" had therefore the result of
giving to la Peyrade, who was fully as sagacious as Cerizet, a secret
fear, which, during the latter period of this daring game, so fired
his blood and heated his brain that there came moments when he fell
into the morbid condition of the gambler, who follows with his eye the
roll of the ball on which he has staked his last penny. The senses
then have a lucidity in their action and the mind takes a range, which
human knowledge has no means of measuring.
CHAPTER X
HOW BRIGITTE WAS WON
The day after this conference at the "Cheval Rouge," la Peyrade went
to dine with the Thuilliers, and on the commonplace pretext of a visit
to pay, Thuillier carried off his wife, leaving Theodose alone with
Brigitte. Neither Thuillier, nor his sister, nor Theodose, were the
dupes of this comedy; but the old beau of the Empire considered the
manoeuvre a piece of diplomacy.
"Young man, do not take advantage of my sister's innocence; respect
it," said Thuillier solemnly, as he departed.
"Mademoiselle," said Theodose, drawing his chair closer to the sofa
where Brigitte sat knitting, "have you thought of inducing the
business men of the arrondissement to support Thuillier's interests?"
"How can I?" she asked.
"Why! you are in close relations with Barbet and Metivier."
"Ah! you are right! Faith! you are no blunderer!" she said after a
pause.
"When we love our friends, we serve them," he replied, sententiously.
To capture Brigitte would be like carrying the redoubt of the Moskowa,
the culminating strategic point. But it was necessary to possess that
old maid as the devil was supposed in the middle ages to possess men,
and in a way to make any awakening impossible for her. For the last
three days la Peyrade had been measuring himself for the task; he had
carefully reconnoitred the ground to see all difficulty. Flattery,
that almost infallible means in able hands, would certainly miscarry
with a woman who for years had known she had no beauty. But a man of
strong will finds nothing impregnable; the Lamarques could never have
failed to take Capri. Therefore, nothing must be omitted from the
memorable scene which was now to take place; all things about it had
their own importance,--inflections of the voice, pauses, glances,
lowered eyes.
"But," rejoined Brigitte, "you have already proved to us your
affection."
"Your brother has told you--?"
"No, he merely told me that you had something to tell me."
"Yes, mademoiselle, I have; for you are the man of the family. In
reflecting on this matter, I find many dangers for myself, such as a
man only risks for his nearest and dearest. It involves a fortune;
thirty to forty thousand francs a year, and not the slightest
speculation--a piece of landed property. The hope of helping Thuillier
to win such a fortune enticed me from the first. 'It fascinates me,' I
said to him--for, unless a man is an absolute fool, he can't help
asking himself: 'Why should he care to do us all this good?' So I told
him frankly that in working for his interests, I flattered myself I
was working for my own, as I'll explain to you later. If he wishes to
be deputy, two things are absolutely necessary: to comply with the law
as to property, and to win for his name some sort of public celebrity.
If I myself push my devotion to the point of helping him to write a
book on public financiering--or anything else, no matter what--which
would give him that celebrity, I ought also to think of the other
matter, his property--it would be absurd to expect you to give him
this house--"
"For my brother? Why, I'd put it in his name to-morrow," cried
Brigitte. "You don't know me."
"I don't know you thoroughly," said la Peyrade, "but I do know things
about you which now make me regret that I did not tell you the whole
affair from its origin; I mean from the moment when I conceived the
plan to which Thuillier will owe his nomination. He will be hunted
down by envy and jealousy, and the task of upholding him will be a
hard one; we must, however, get the better of his rivals and take the
wind out of their sails."
"But this affair," said Brigitte, "what are the difficulties?"
"Mademoiselle, the difficulties lie within my own conscience.
Assuredly, I could not serve you in this matter without first
consulting my confessor. From a worldly point of view--oh! the affair
is perfectly legal, and I am--you'll understand me?--a barrister
inscribed on the panel, that is, member of a bar controlled by the
strictest rules. I am therefore incapable of proposing an enterprise
which might give occasion for blame. In the first place, I myself
don't make a penny by it."
Brigitte was on thorns; her face was flaming; she broke her wool,
mended it, broke it again, and did not know which way to look.
"One can't get," she said, "in these days, forty thousand francs a
year from landed property unless it is worth one million eight hundred
thousand."
"Well, I will undertake that you shall see a piece of property and
estimate yourself its probable revenue, which I can make Thuillier the
owner of for fifty thousand francs down."
"Oh! if you can make us obtain that!" cried Brigitte, worked up to the
highest excitement by the spur of her natural cupidity. "Go on, my
dear Monsieur Theodose, and--"
She stopped short.
"Well, mademoiselle?"
"You will, perhaps, have done yourself a service."
"Ah! if Thuillier has told you my secret, I must leave this house."
Brigitte looked up.
"Did he tell you that I love Celeste?"
"No, on my word of honor!" cried Brigitte, "but I myself was just
about to speak of her."
"And offer her to me? Oh! may God forgive us! I can only win her of
herself, her parents, by a free choice--No, no, all I ask of you is
your good-will, your protection. Promise me, as Thuillier has, in
return for my services your influence, your friendship; tell me that
you will treat me as a son. If you will do that, I will abide by your
decision in this matter; I can trust it; I need not speak to my
confessor. For the last two years, ever since I have seen much of this
family, to whom I would fain give my powers and devote my utmost
energy--for, I shall succeed! surely I shall!--I have observed that
your integrity, your honor is that of the olden time, your judgment
righteous and inflexible. Also, you have a knowledge of business; and
these qualities combined are precious helps to a man. With a
mother-in-law, as I may say, of your powers, I should find my home life
relieved of a crowd of cares and details as to property, which hinder
a man's advance in a political career if he is forced to attend to
them. I admired you deeply on Sunday evening. Ah! you were fine! How
you did manage matters! In ten minutes that dining-room was cleared!
And, without going outside of your own apartment, you had everything
at hand for the refreshments, for the supper! 'There,' I said to
myself, as I watched you, 'is a true "maitresse-femme"--a masterly
woman!'"
Brigitte's nostrils dilated; she breathed in the words of the young
lawyer. He gave her a side-long glance to enjoy his triumph; he had
touched the right chord in her breast.
At this moment he was standing, but he now resumed his seat beside
her, and said:--
"Now here is our affair, dear aunt--for you will be a sort of aunt--"
"Hush! you naughty fellow!" said Brigitte, "and go on."
"I'll tell you the matter roughly--and remark, if you please, that I
compromise myself in telling it to you; for these secrets are
entrusted to me as a lawyer. Therefore understand that you and I are
both committing a crime, so to speak, of leze-confidence! A notary of
Paris was in partnership with an architect; they bought land and built
upon it; at the present moment, property has come down with a rush;
they find themselves embarrassed--but all that doesn't concern us.
Among the houses built by this illegal partnership--for notaries, you
know, are sworn to have nothing to do with enterprises--is a very good
one which, not being finished, must be sold at a great sacrifice; so
great that they now ask only one hundred thousand francs for it,
although the cost of the land and the building was at least four
hundred thousand. As the whole interior is still unfinished, the value
of what is still to do is easily appraised; it will probably not be
more than fifty thousand francs. Now, owing to its excellent position,
this house, when finished, will certainly bring in a rental, over and
above the taxes, of forty thousand francs a year. It is built of
freestone, the corners and copings of cut granite; the facade is
covered with handsome carvings, on which they spent more than twenty
thousand francs; the windows are plate glass with a new style of
fastening called 'cremona.'"
"Well, where is the difficulty?"
"Just here: the notary wants to reserve to himself this bit of the
cake he is forced to surrender; he is, under the name of a friend, the
creditor who requests the sale of the property by the assignee of the
bankruptcy. The case has not been brought into court; for legal
proceedings cost so much money. The sale is to be made by voluntary
agreement. Now, this notary has applied to one of my clients to lend
him his name for this purchase. My client, a poor devil, says to me:
'There's a fortune to made out of that house by fooling the notary.'"
"And they do that sort of thing in business!" said Brigitte, quickly.
"If that were the only difficulty," continued Theodose, "it would be,
as a friend of mine said to his pupil, who was complaining of the
length of time it took to produce masterpieces in painting: 'My dear
young fellow, if it were not so, our valets would be painting
pictures.' But, mademoiselle, if we now get the better of this notary,
who certainly deserves it, for he has compromised a number of private
fortunes, yet, as he is a very shrewd man (though a notary), it might
perhaps be very difficult to do it a second time, and here's the rub:
When a piece of landed property is bought at a forced sale, if those
who have lent money on that property see that is likely to be sold so
low as not to cover the sum loaned upon it, they have the right, until
the expiration of a certain time, to bid it in; that is, to offer more
and keep the property in their own hands. If this trickster can't be
hoodwinked as to the sale being a bona fide one until the time when
his right to buy it expires, some other scheme must be resorted to.
Now, is this business strictly legal? Am I justified in doing it for
the benefit of a family I seek to enter? That is the question I have
been revolving in my mind for the last three days."
Brigitte, we must acknowledge, hesitated, and Theodose then brought
forward his last card:--
"Take the night to think of it," he said, "to-morrow we will talk it
over."
"My young friend," said Brigitte, looking at the lawyer with an almost
loving air, "the first thing to be done is to see the house. Where is
it?"
"Near the Madeleine. That will be the heart of Paris in ten years. All
that property has been desirable since 1819; the banker Du Tillet's
fortune was derived from property about there. The famous failure of
Maitre Roquin, which carried terror to all Paris, and did such harm to
the confidence given to the notariat, was also caused by it; they went
into heavy speculations on that land too soon; they should have waited
until now."
"I remember about that," said Brigitte.
"The house might be finished by the end of the year," continued
Theodose, "and the rentals could begin next spring."
"Could we go there to-morrow?"
"Dear aunt, I am at your orders."
"Ah ca!" she cried, "don't call me that before people. As to this
affair," she continued, "I can't have any opinion until I have seen
the house."
"It has six storeys; nine windows on the front; a fine courtyard, four
shops, and it stands on a corner. Ah! that notary knows what he is
about in wishing to hold on to such pieces of property! But let
political events interfere, and down go the Funds! If I were you, I
should sell out all that you and Madame Thuillier have on the Grand
Livre and buy this fine piece of real estate for Thuillier, and I'd
recover the fortune of that poor, pious creature by savings from its
proceeds. Can the Funds go higher than they are to-day? One hundred
and twenty-two! it is fabulous; I should make haste to sell."
Brigitte licked her lips; she perceived the means of keeping her own
property intact, and of enriching her brother by this use of Madame
Thuillier's fortune.
"My brother is right," she said to Theodose; "you certainly are a rare
man; you'll get on in the world."
"And he'll walk before me," responded Theodose with a naivete that
touched the old maid.
"You will live in the family," she said.
"There may be obstacles to that," he remarked. "Madame Thuillier is
very queer at times; she doesn't like me."
"Ha! I'll settle that," cried Brigitte. "Do you attend to that affair
and carry it through if it is feasible, and leave your interests in my
hands."
"Thuillier, member of the municipal council, owner of an estate with a
rental of forty thousand francs a year, with the cross of the Legion
of honor and the author of a political work, grave, serious,
important, will be deputy at the forthcoming general election. But,
between ourselves, little aunt, one couldn't devote one's self so
utterly except for a father-in-law."
"You are right."
"Though I have no fortune I shall have doubled yours; and if this
affair goes through discreetly, others will turn up."
"Until I have seen the house," said Mademoiselle Thuillier again, "I
can decide on nothing."
"Well then, send for a carriage to-morrow and let us go there. I will
get a ticket early in the morning to view the premises."
"To-morrow, then, about mid-day," responded Brigitte, holding out her
hand to Theodose that he might shake it, but instead of that he laid
upon it the most respectful and the most tender kiss that Brigitte had
ever in her life received.
"Adieu, my child," she said, as he reached the door.
She rang the bell hurriedly and when the servant came:--
"Josephine," she cried, "go at once to Madame Colleville, and ask her
to come over and speak to me."
Fifteen minutes later Flavie entered the salon, where Brigitte was
walking up and down, in a state of extreme agitation.
"My dear," she cried on seeing Flavie, "you can do me a great service,
which concerns our dear Celeste. You know Tullia, don't you?--a
danseuse at the opera; my brother was always dinning her into my ears
at one time."
"Yes, I know her; but she is no longer a danseuse; she is Madame la
Comtesse du Bruel. Her husband is peer of France!"
"Does she still like you?"
"We never see each other now."
"Well, I know that Chaffaroux, the rich contractor, is her uncle,"
said Brigitte. "He is old and wealthy. Go and see your former friend,
and get her to give you a line of introduction to him, saying he would
do her an eminent favor if he would give a piece of friendly advice to
the bearer of the note, and then you and I will take it to him
to-morrow about one o'clock. But tell Tullia she must request her
uncle to keep secret about it. Go, my dear. Celeste, our dear child,
will be a millionaire! I can't say more; but she'll have, from me, a
husband who will put her on a pinnacle."
"Do you want me to tell you the first letters of his name?"
"Yes."
"T. P.,--Theodose de la Peyrade. You are right. That's a man who may,
if supported by a woman like you, become a minister."
"It is God himself who has placed him in our house!" cried the old
maid.
At this moment Monsieur and Madame Thuillier returned home.
Five days later, in the month of April, the ordinance which convoked
the electors to appoint a member of the municipal council on the 20th
of the same month was inserted in the "Moniteur," and placarded about
Paris. For several weeks the ministry, called that of March 1st, had
been in power. Brigitte was in a charming humor. She had been
convinced of the truth of all la Peyrade's assertions. The house,
visited from garret to cellar by old Chaffaroux, was admitted by him
to be an admirable construction; poor Grindot, the architect, who was
interested with the notary and Claparon in the affair, thought the old
man was employed in the interests of the contractor; the old fellow
himself thought he was acting in the interests of his niece, and he
gave it as his opinion that thirty thousand francs would finish the
house. Thus, in the course of one week la Peyrade became Brigitte's
god; and she proved to him by the most naively nefarious arguments
that fortune should be seized when it offered itself.
"Well, if there _is_ any sin in the business," she said to him in the
middle of the garden, "you can confess it."
"The devil!" cried Thuillier, "a man owes himself to his relatives,
and you are one of us now."
"Then I decide to do it," replied la Peyrade, in a voice of emotion;
"but on conditions that I must now distinctly state. I will not, in
marrying Celeste, be accused of greed and mercenary motives. If you
lay remorse upon me, at least you must consent that I shall remain as
I am for the present. Do not settle upon Celeste, my old Thuillier,
the future possession of the property I am about to obtain for you--"
"You are right."
"Don't rob yourself; and let my dear little aunt here act in the same
way in relation to the marriage contract. Put the remainder of the
capital in Madame Thuillier's name, on the Grand Livre, and she can do
what she likes with it. We shall all live together as one family, and
I'll undertake to make my own fortune, now that I am free from anxiety
about the future."
"That suits me," said Thuillier; "that's the talk of an honest man."
"Let me kiss you on the forehead, my son," said the old maid; "but,
inasmuch as Celeste cannot be allowed to go without a 'dot,' we shall
give her sixty thousand francs."
"For her dress," said la Peyrade.
"We are all three persons of honor," cried Thuillier. "It is now
settled, isn't it? You are to manage the purchase of the house; we are
to write together, you and I, my political work; and you'll bestir
yourself to get me the decoration?"
"You will have that as soon as you are made a municipal councillor on
the 1st of May. Only, my good friend, I must beg you, and you, too,
dear aunt, to keep the most profound secrecy about me in this affair;
and do not listen to the calumnies which all the men I am about to
trick will spread about me. I shall become, you'll see, a vagabond, a
swindler, a dangerous man, a Jesuit, an ambitious fortune-hunter. Can
you hear those accusations against me with composure?"
"Fear nothing," replied Brigitte.
CHAPTER XI
THE REIGN OF THEODOSE
From that day forth Thuillier became a dear, good friend. "My dear,
good friend," was the name given to him by Theodose, with voice
inflections of varieties of tenderness which astonished Flavie. But
"little aunt," a name that flattered Brigitte deeply, was only given
in family secrecy, and occasionally before Flavie. The activity of
Theodose and Dutocq, Cerizet, Barbet, Metivier, Minard, Phellion,
Colleville, and others of the Thuillier circle was extreme. Great and
small, they all put their hands to the work. Cadenet procured thirty
votes in his section. On the 30th of April Thuillier was proclaimed
member of the Council-general of the department of the Seine by an
imposing majority; in fact, he only needed sixty more votes to make
his election unanimous. May 1st Thuillier joined the municipal body
and went to the Tuileries to congratulate the King on his fete-day,
and returned home radiant. He had gone where Minard went!
Ten days later a yellow poster announced the sale of the house, after
due publication; the price named being seventy-five thousand francs;
the final purchase to take place about the last of July. On this point
Cerizet and Claparon had an agreement by which Cerizet pledged the sum
of fifteen thousand francs (in words only, be it understood) to
Claparon in case the latter could deceive the notary and keep him
quiet until the time expired during which he might withdraw the
property by bidding it in. Mademoiselle Thuillier, notified by
Theodose, agreed entirely to this secret clause, understanding
perfectly the necessity of paying the culprits guilty of the
treachery. The money was to pass through la Peyrade's hands. Claparon
met his accomplice, the notary, on the Place de l'Observatoire by
midnight. This young man, the successor of Leopold Hannequin, was one
of those who run after fortune instead of following it leisurely. He
now saw another future before him, and he managed his present affairs
in order to be free to take hold of it. In this midnight interview, he
offered Claparon ten thousand francs to secure himself in this dirty
business,--a sum which was only to be paid on receipt, through
Claparon, of a counter-deed from the nominal purchaser of the
property. The notary was aware that that sum was all-important to
Claparon to extricate him from present difficulties, and he felt
secure of him.
"Who but you, in all Paris, would give me such a fee for such an
affair?" Claparon said to him, with a false show of naivete. "You can
sleep in peace; my ostensible purchaser is one of those men of honor
who are too stupid to have ideas of your kind; he is a retired
government employee; give him the money to make the purchase and he'll
sign the counter-deed at once."
When the notary had made Claparon clearly understand that he could not
get more than the ten thousand francs from him, Cerizet offered the
latter twelve thousand down, and asked Theodose for fifteen thousand,
intending to keep the balance for himself. All these scenes between
the four men were seasoned with the finest speeches about feelings,
integrity, and the honor that men owed to one another in doing
business. While these submarine performances were going on, apparently
in the interests of Thuillier, to whom Theodose related them with the
deepest manifestations of disgust at being implicated therein, the
pair were meditating the great political work which "my dear good
friend" was to publish. Thus the new municipal councillor naturally
acquired a conviction that he could never do or be anything without
the help of this man of genius; whose mind so amazed him, and whose
ability was now so important to him, that every day he became more and
more convinced of the necessity of marrying him to Celeste, and of
taking the young couple to live with him. In fact, after May the 1st,
Theodose had already dined four times a week with "my dear, good
friend."
This was the period when Theodose reigned without a dissenting voice
in the bosom of that household, and all the friends of the family
approved of him--for the following reason: The Phellions, hearing his
praises sung by Brigitte and Thuillier, feared to displease the two
powers and chorussed their words, even when such perpetual laudation
seemed to them exaggerated. The same may be said of the Minards.
Moreover la Peyrade's behavior, as "friend of the family" was perfect.
He disarmed distrust by the manner in which he effaced himself; he was
there like a new piece of furniture; and he contrived to make both the
Phellions and Minards believe that Brigitte and Thuillier had weighed
him, and found him too light in the scales to be anything more in the
family than a young man whose services were useful to them.
"He may think," said Thuillier one day to Minard, "that my sister will
put him in her will; he doesn't know her."
This speech, inspired by Theodose himself, calmed the uneasiness of
Minard "pere."
"He is devoted to us," said Brigitte to Madame Phellion; "but he
certainly owes us a great deal of gratitude. We have given him his
lodging rent-free, and he dines with us almost every day."
This speech of the old maid, also instigated by Theodose, went from
ear to ear among the families who frequented the Thuillier salon, and
dissipated all fears. The young man called attention to the remarks of
Thuillier and his sister with the servility of a parasite; when he
played whist he justified the blunders of his dear, good friend, and
he kept upon his countenance a smile, fixed and benign, like that of
Madame Thuillier, ready to bestow upon all the bourgeois sillinesses
of the brother and sister.
He obtained, what he wanted above all, the contempt of his true
antagonists; and he used it as a cloak to hide his real power. For
four consecutive months his face wore a torpid expression, like that
of a snake as it gulps and digests its prey. But at times he would
rush into the garden with Colleville or Flavie, to laugh and lay off
his mask, and rest himself; or get fresh strength by giving way before
his future mother-in-law to fits of nervous passion which either
terrified or deeply touched her.
"Don't you pity me?" he cried to her the evening before the
preparatory sale of the house, when Thuillier was to make the purchase
at seventy-five thousand francs. "Think of a man like me, forced to
creep like a cat, to choke down every pointed word, to swallow my own
gall, and submit to your rebuffs!"
"My friend! my child!" Flavie replied, undecided in mind how to take
him.
These words are a thermometer which will show the temperature at which
this clever manipulator maintained his intrigue with Flavie. He kept
her floating between her heart and her moral sense, between religious
sentiments and this mysterious passion.
During this time Felix Phellion was giving, with a devotion and
constancy worthy of all praise, regular lessons to young Colleville.
He spent much of his time upon these lessons, feeling that he was thus
working for his future family. To acknowledge this service, he was
invited, by advice of Theodose to Flavie, to dine at the Collevilles'
every Thursday, where la Peyrade always met him. Flavie was usually
making either a purse or slippers or a cigar-case for the happy young
man, who would say, deprecatingly:--
"I am only too well rewarded, madame, by the happiness I feel in being
useful to you."
"We are not rich, monsieur," replied Colleville, "but, God bless me!
we are not ungrateful."
Old Phellion would rub his hands as he listened to his son's account
of these evenings, beholding his dear and noble Felix already wedded
to Celeste.
But Celeste, the more she loved Felix, the more grave and serious she
became with him; partly because her mother sharply lectured her,
saying to her one evening:--
"Don't give any hope whatever to that young Phellion. Neither your
father nor I can arrange your marriage. You have expectations to be
consulted. It is much less important to please a professor without a
penny than to make sure of the affection and good-will of Mademoiselle
Brigitte and your godfather. If you don't want to kill your mother
--yes, my dear, kill her--you must obey me in this affair blindly; and
remember that what we want to secure, above all, is your good."
As the date of the final sale was set for the last of July, Theodose
advised Brigitte by the end of June to arrange her affairs in time to
be ready for the payment. Accordingly, she now sold out her own and
her sister-in-law's property in the Funds. The catastrophe of the
treaty of the four powers, an insult to France, is now an established
historical fact; but it is necessary to remind the reader that from
July to the last of August the French funds, alarmed by the prospect
of war, a fear which Monsieur Thiers did much to promote, fell twenty
francs, and the Three-per-cents went down to sixty. That was not all:
this financial fiasco had a most unfortunate influence on the value of
real estate in Paris; and all those who had such property then for
sale suffered loss. These events made Theodose a prophet in the eyes
of Brigitte and Thuillier, to whom the house was now about to be
definitely sold for seventy-five thousand francs. The notary, involved
in the political disaster, and whose practice was already sold,
concealed himself for a time in the country; but he took with him the
ten thousand francs for Claparon. Advised by Theodose, Thuillier made
a contract with Grindot, who supposed he was really working for the
notary in finishing the house; and as, during this period of financial
depression, suspended work left many workmen with their arms folded,
the architect was able to finish off the building in a splendid manner
at a low cost. Theodose insisted that the agreement should be in
writing.
This purchase increased Thuillier's importance ten-fold. As for the
notary, he had temporarily lost his head in presence of political
events which came upon him like a waterspout out of cloudless skies.
Theodose, certain now of his supremacy, holding Thuillier fast by his
past services and by the literary work in which they were both
engaged, admired by Brigitte for his modesty and discretion,--for
never had he made the slightest allusion to his own poverty or uttered
one word about money,--Theodose began to assume an air that was rather
less servile than it had been. Brigitte and Thuillier said to him one
day:--
"Nothing can deprive you of our esteem; you are here in this house as
if in your own home; the opinion of Minard and Phellion, which you
seem to fear, has no more value for us than a stanza of Victor Hugo.
Therefore, let them talk! Carry your head high!"
"But we shall still need them for Thuillier's election to the
Chamber," said Theodose. "Follow my advice; you have found it good so
far, haven't you? When the house is actually yours, you will have got
it for almost nothing; for you can now buy into the Three-per-cents at
sixty in Madame Thuillier's name, and thus replace nearly the whole of
her fortune. Wait only for the expiration of the time allowed to the
nominal creditor to buy it in, and have the fifteen thousand francs
ready for our scoundrels."
Brigitte did not wait; she took her whole capital with the exception
of a sum of one hundred and twenty thousand francs, and bought into
the Three-per-cents in Madame Thuillier's name to the amount of twelve
thousand francs a year, and in her own for ten thousand a year,
resolving in her own mind to choose no other kind of investment in
future. She saw her brother secure of forty thousand francs a year
besides his pension, twelve thousand a year for Madame Thuillier and
eighteen thousand a year for herself, besides the house they lived in,
the rental of which she valued at eight thousand.
"We are worth quite as much as the Minards," she remarked.
"Don't chant victory before you win it," said Theodose. "The right of
redemption doesn't expire for another week. I have attended to your
affairs, but mine have gone terribly to pieces."
"My dear child, you have friends," cried Brigitte; "if you should
happen to want five hundred francs or so, you will always find them
here."
Theodose exchanged a smile with Thuillier, who hastened to carry him
off, saying:--
"Excuse my poor sister; she sees the world through a small hole. But
if you should want twenty-five thousand francs I'll lend them to you
--out of my first rents," he added.
"Thuillier," exclaimed Theodose, "the rope is round my neck. Ever
since I have been a barrister I have had notes of hand running. But
say nothing about it," added Theodose, frightened himself at having
let out the secret of his situation. "I'm in the claws of scoundrels,
but I hope to crush them yet."
In telling this secret Theodose, though alarmed as he did so, had a
two-fold purpose: first, to test Thuillier; and next, to avert the
consequences of a fatal blow which might be dealt to him any day in a
secret and sinister struggle he had long foreseen. Two words will
explain his horrible position.
CHAPTER XII
DEVILS AGAINST DEVILS
During the extreme poverty of la Peyrade's first years in Paris, none
but Cerizet had ever gone to see him in the wretched garret where, in
severely cold weather, he stayed in bed for want of clothes. Only one
shirt remained to him. For three days he lived on one loaf of bread,
cutting it into measured morsels, and asking himself, "What am I to
do?" At this moment it was that his former partner came to him, having
just left prison, pardoned. The projects which the two men then formed
before a fire of laths, one wrapped in his landlady's counterpane, the
other in his infamy, it is useless to relate. The next day Cerizet,
who had talked with Dutocq in the course of the morning, returned,
bringing trousers, waistcoat, coat, hat, and boots, bought in the
Temple, and he carried off Theodose to dine with himself and Dutocq.
The hungry Provencal ate at Pinson's, rue de l'Ancienne Comedie, half
of a dinner costing forty-seven francs. At dessert, after Theodose had
drunk freely, Cerizet said to him:--
"Will you sign me bills of exchange for fifty thousand francs in your
capacity as a barrister?"
"You couldn't get five thousand on them."
"That's not your affair, but ours; I mean monsieur's here, who is
giving us this dinner, and mine, in a matter where you risk nothing,
but in which you'll get your title as barrister, a fine practice, and
the hand in marriage of a girl about the age of an old dog, and rich
by twenty or thirty thousand francs a year. Neither Dutocq nor I can
marry her; but we'll equip you, give you the look of a decent man,
feed and lodge you, and set you up generally. Consequently, we want
security. I don't say that on my own account, for I know you, but for
monsieur here, whose proxy I am. We'll equip you as a pirate, hey! to
do the white-slave trade! If we can't capture that 'dot,' we'll try
other plans. Between ourselves, none of us need be particular what we
touch--that's plain enough. We'll give you careful instructions; for
the matter is certain to take time, and there'll probably be some
bother about it. Here, see, I have brought stamped paper."
"Waiter, pens and ink!" cried Theodose.
"Ha! I like fellows of that kind!" exclaimed Dutocq.
"Sign: 'Theodose de la Peyrade,' and after your name put 'Barrister,
rue Saint-Dominique d'Enfer,' under the words 'Accepted for ten
thousand.' We'll date the notes and sue you,--all secretly, of course,
but in order to have a hold upon you; the owners of a privateer ought
to have security when the brig and the captain are at sea."
The day after this interview the bailiff of the justice-of-peace did
Cerizet the service of suing la Peyrade secretly. He went to see the
barrister that evening, and the whole affair was done without any
publicity. The Court of commerce has a hundred such cases in the
course of one term. The strict regulations of the council of
barristers of the bar of Paris are well known. This body, and also the
council of attorneys, exercise severe discipline over their members. A
barrister liable to go to Clichy would be disbarred. Consequently,
Cerizet, under Dutocq's advice, had taken against their puppet
measures which were certain to secure to each of them twenty-five
thousand francs out of Celeste's "dot." In signing the notes, Theodose
saw but one thing,--his means of living secured; but as time had gone
on, and the horizon grew clearer, and he mounted, step by step, to a
better position on the social ladder, he began to dream of getting rid
of his associates. And now, on obtaining twenty-five thousand francs
from Thuillier, he hoped to treat on the basis of fifty per cent for
the return of his fatal notes by Cerizet.
Unfortunately, this sort of infamous speculation is not an exceptional
fact; it takes place in Paris under various forms too little disguised
for the historian of manners and morals to pass them over unnoticed in
a complete and accurate picture of society in the nineteenth century.
Dutocq, an arrant scoundrel, still owed fifteen thousand francs on his
practice, and lived in hopes of something turning up to keep his head,
as the saying is, above water until the close of 1840. Up to the
present time none of the three confederates had flinched or groaned.
Each felt his strength and knew his danger. Equals they were in
distrust, in watchfulness; equals, too, in apparent confidence; and
equally stolid in silence and look when mutual suspicions rose to the
surface of face or speech. For the last two months the position of
Theodose was acquiring the strength of a detached fort. But Cerizet
and Dutocq held it undermined by a mass of powder, with the match ever
lighted; but the wind might extinguish the match or the devil might
flood the mine.
The moment when wild beasts seize their food is always the most
critical, and that moment had now arrived for these three hungry
tigers. Cerizet would sometimes say to Theodose, with that
revolutionary glance which twice in this century sovereigns have had
to meet:--
"I have made you king, and here am I still nothing! for it is nothing
not to be all."
A reaction of envy was rushing its avalanche through Cerizet. Dutocq
was at the mercy of his copying clerk. Theodose would gladly have
burned his copartners could he have burned their papers in the same
conflagration. All three studied each other too carefully, in order to
conceal their own thoughts, not to be in turn divined. Theodose lived
a life of three hells as he thought of what lay below the cards, then
of his own game, and then of his future. His speech to Thuillier was a
cry of despair; he threw his lead into the waters of the old bourgeois
and found there nothing more than twenty-five thousand francs.
"And," he said to himself as he went to his own room, "possibly
nothing at all a month hence."
He new felt the deepest hatred to the Thuilliers. But Thuillier
himself he held by a harpoon stuck into the depths of the man's
vanity; namely, by the projected work, entitled "Taxation and the
Sinking Fund," for which he intended to rearrange the ideas of the
Saint-Simonian "Globe," giving them a systematic form, and coloring
them with his fervid Southern diction. Thuillier's bureaucratic
knowledge of the subject would be of use to him here. Theodose
therefore clung to this rope, resolving to do battle, on so poor a
base of operations, with the vanity of a fool, which, according to
individual character, is either granite or sand. On reflection,
Theodose was inclined to be content with the prospect.
On the evening before the right of redemption expired, Claparon and
Cerizet proceeded to manipulate the notary in the following manner.
Cerizet, to whom Claparon had revealed the password and the notary's
retreat, went out to this hiding-place to say to the latter:--
"One of my friends, Claparon, whom you know, has asked me to come and
see you; he will expect you to-morrow, in the evening, you know where.
He has the paper you expect from him, which he will exchange with you
for the ten thousand agreed upon; but I must be present, for five
thousand of that sum belong to me; and I warn you, my dear monsieur,
that the name in the counter-deed is in blank."
"I shall be there," replied the ex-notary.
The poor devil waited the whole night in agonies of mind that can well
be imagined, for safety or inevitable ruin were in the balance. At
sunrise he saw approaching him, instead of Claparon, a bailiff of the
Court of commerce, who produced a judgment against him in regular
form, and informed him that he must go with him to Clichy.
Cerizet had made an arrangement with one of the creditors of the
luckless notary, pledging himself to deliver up the debtor on payment
to himself of half the debt. Out of the ten thousand francs promised
to Claparon, the victim of this trap was obliged, in order to obtain
his liberty, to pay six thousand down, the amount of his debt.
On receiving his share of this extortion Cerizet said to himself:
"There's three thousand to make Cerizet clear out."
Cerizet then returned to the notary and said: "Claparon is a
scoundrel, monsieur; he has received fifteen thousand francs from the
proposed purchaser of your house, who will now, of course, become the
owner. Threaten to reveal his hiding-place to his creditors, and to
have him sued for fraudulent bankruptcy, and he'll give you half."
In his wrath the notary wrote a fulminating letter to Claparon.
Claparon, alarmed, feared an arrest, and Cerizet offered to get him a
passport.
"You have played me many a trick, Claparon," he said, "but listen to
me now, and you can judge of my kindness. I possess, as my whole
means, three thousand francs; I'll give them to you; start for
America, and make your fortune there, as I'm trying to make mine
here."
That evening Claparon, carefully disguised by Cerizet, left for Havre
by the diligence. Cerizet remained master of the fifteen thousand
francs to be paid to Claparon, and he awaited Theodose with the
payment thereof tranquilly.
"The limit for bidding-in is passed," thought Theodose, as he went to
find Dutocq and ask him to bring Cerizet to his office. "Suppose I
were now to make an effort to get rid of my leech?"
"You can't settle this affair anywhere but at Cerizet's, because
Claparon must be present, and he is hiding there," said Dutocq.
Accordingly, Theodose went, between seven and eight o'clock, to the
den of the "banker of the poor," whom Dutocq had notified of his
coming. Cerizet received him in the horrible kitchen where miseries
and sorrows were chopped and cooked, as we have seen already. The pair
then walked up and down, precisely like two animals in a cage, while
mutually playing the following scene:--
"Have you brought the fifteen thousand francs?"
"No, but I have them at home."
"Why not have them in your pocket?" asked Cerizet, sharply.
"I'll tell you," replied Theodose, who, as he walked from the rue
Saint-Dominique to the Estrapade, had decided on his course of action.
The Provencal, writhing upon the gridiron on which his partners held
him, became suddenly possessed with a good idea, which flashed from
the body of the live coal under him. Peril has gleams of light. He
resolved to rely on the power of frankness, which affects all men,
even swindlers. Every one is grateful to an adversary who bares
himself to the waist in a duel.
"Well!" said Cerizet, "now the humbug begins."
The words seemed to come wholly through the hole in his nose with
horrible intonations.
"You have put me in a magnificent position, and I shall never forget
the service you have done me, my friend," began Theodose, with
emotion.
"Oh, that's how you take it, is it?" said Cerizet.
"Listen to me; you don't understand my intentions."
"Yes, I do!" replied the lender by "the little week."
"No, you don't."
"You intend not to give up those fifteen thousand francs."
Theodose shrugged his shoulders and looked fixedly at Cerizet, who,
struck by the two motions, kept silence.
"Would you live in my position, knowing yourself within range of a
cannon loaded with grape-shot, without feeling a strong desire to get
out of it? Now listen to me carefully. You are doing a dangerous
business, and you would be glad enough to have some solid protection
in the very heart of the magistracy of Paris. If I can continue my
present course, I shall be substitute attorney-general, possibly
attorney-general, in three years. I offer you to-day the offices of a
devoted friendship, which will serve you hereafter most assuredly, if
only to replace you in a honorable position. Here are my conditions--"
"Conditions!" exclaimed Cerizet.
"In ten minutes I will bring you twenty-five thousand francs if you
return to me all the notes which you have against me."
"But Dutocq? and Claparon?" said Cerizet.
"Leave them in the lurch!" replied Theodose, with his lips at
Cerizet's ear.
"That's a pretty thing to say!" cried Cerizet. "And so you have
invented this little game of hocus-pocus because you hold in your
fingers fifteen thousand francs that don't belong to you!"
"But I've added ten thousand francs to them. Besides, you and I know
each other."
"If you are able to get ten thousand francs out of your bourgeois you
can surely get fifteen," said Cerizet. "For thirty thousand I'm your
man. Frankness for frankness, you know."
"You ask the impossible," replied Theodose. "At this very moment, if
you had to do with Claparon instead of with me, your fifteen thousand
would be lost, for Thuillier is to-day the owner of that house."
"I'll speak to Claparon," said Cerizet, pretending to go and consult
him, and mounting the stairs to the bedroom, from which Claparon had
only just departed on his road to Havre.
The two adversaries had been speaking, we should here remark, in a
manner not to be overheard; and every time that Theodose raised his
voice Cerizet would make a gesture, intimating that Claparon, from
above, might be listening. The five minutes during which Theodose
heard what seemed to be the murmuring of two voices were torture to
him, for he had staked his very life upon the issue. Cerizet at last
came down, with a smile upon his lips, his eyes sparkling with
infernal mischief, his whole frame quivering in his joy, a Lucifer of
gaiety!
"I know nothing, so it seems!" he cried, shaking his shoulders, "but
Claparon knows a great deal; he has worked with the big-wig bankers,
and when I told what you wanted he began to laugh, and said, 'I
thought as much!' You will have to bring me the twenty-five thousand
you offer me to-morrow morning, my lad; and as much more before you
can recover your notes."
"Why?" asked Theodose, feeling his spinal column liquidizing as if the
discharge of some inward electric fluid had melted it.
"The house is ours."
"How?"
"Claparon has bit it in under the name of one of his creditors, a
little toad named Sauvaignou. Desroches, the lawyer, has taken the
case, and you'll get a notice to-morrow. This affair will oblige
Claparon, Dutocq, and me to raise funds. What would become of me
without Claparon! So I forgive him--yes, I forgave him, and though you
may not believe it, my dear friend, I actually kissed him! Change your
terms."
The last three words were horrible to hear, especially when
illustrated by the face of the speaker, who amused himself by playing
a scene from the "Legataire," all the while studying attentively the
Provencal's character.
"Oh, Cerizet!" cried Theodose; "I, who wished to do you so much good!"
"Don't you see, my dear fellow," returned Cerizet, "that between you
and me there ought to be _this_,--" and he struck his heart,--"of which
you have none. As soon as you thought you had a lever on us, you have
tried to knock us over. I saved you from the horrors of starvation and
vermin! You'll die like the idiot you are. We put you on the high-road
to fortune; we gave you a fine social skin and a position in which you
could grasp the future--and look what you do! _Now_ I know you! and from
this time forth, we shall go armed."
"Then it is war between us!" exclaimed Theodose.
"You fired first," returned Cerizet.
"If you pull me down, farewell to your hopes and plans; if you don't
pull me down, you have in me an enemy."
"That's just what I said yesterday to Dutocq; but, how can we help it?
We are forced to choose between two alternatives--we must go according
to circumstances. I'm a good-natured fellow myself," he added, after a
pause; "bring me your twenty-five thousand francs to-morrow morning
and Thuillier shall keep the house. We'll continue to help you at both
ends, but you'll have to pay up, my boy. After what has just happened
that's pretty kind, isn't it?"
And Cerizet patted Theodose on the shoulder, with a cynicism that
seemed to brand him more than the iron of the galleys.
"Well, give me till to-morrow at mid-day," replied the Provencal, "for
there'll be, as you said, some manipulation to do."
"I'll try to keep Claparon quiet; he's in such a hurry, that man!"
"To-morrow then," said Theodose, in the tone of a man who decides his
course.
"Good-night, friend," said Cerizet, in his nasal tone, which degraded
the finest word in the language. "There's one who has got a mouthful
to suck!" thought Cerizet, as he watched Theodose going down the
street with the step of a dazed man.
When la Peyrade reached the rue des Postes he went with rapid strides
to Madame Colleville's house, exciting himself as he walked along, and
talking aloud. The fire of his roused passions and the sort of inward
conflagration of which many Parisians are conscious (for such
situations abound in Paris) brought him finally to a pitch of frenzy
and eloquence which found expression, as he turned into the rue des
Deux-Eglises, in the words:--
"I will kill him!"
"There's a fellow who is not content!" said a passing workman, and the
jesting words calmed the incandescent madness to which Theodose was a
prey.
As he left Cerizet's the idea came to him to go to Flavie and tell her
all. Southern natures are born thus--strong until certain passions
arise, and then collapsed. He entered Flavie's room; she was alone,
and when she saw Theodose she fancied her last hour had come.
"What is the matter?" she cried.
"I--I--" he said. "Do you love me, Flavie?"
"Oh! how can you doubt it?"
"Do you love me absolutely?--if I were criminal, even?"
"Has he murdered some one?" she thought, replying to his question by a
nod.
Theodose, thankful to seize even this branch of willow, drew a chair
beside Flavie's sofa, and there gave way to sobs that might have
touched the oldest judge, while torrents of tears began to flow from
his eyes.
Flavie rose and left the room to say to her maid: "I am not at home to
any one." Then she closed all doors and returned to Theodose, moved to
the utmost pitch of maternal solicitude. She found him stretched out,
his head thrown back, and weeping. He had taken out his handkerchief,
and when Flavie tried to move it from his face it was heavy with
tears.
"But what is the matter?" she asked; "what ails you?"
Nature, more impressive than art, served Theodose well; no longer was
he playing a part; he was himself; this nervous crisis and these tears
were the winding up of his preceding scenes of acted comedy.
"You are a child," she said, in a gentle voice, stroking his hair
softly.
"I have but you, you only, in all the world!" he replied, kissing her
hands with a sort of passion; "and if you are true to me, if you are
mine, as the body belongs to the soul and the soul to the body,
then--" he added, recovering himself with infinite grace, "_Then_ I
can have courage."
He rose, and walked about the room.
"Yes, I will struggle; I will recover my strength, like Antaeus, from
a fall; I will strangle with my own hands the serpents that entwine
me, that kiss with serpent kisses, that slaver my cheeks, that suck my
blood, my honor! Oh, misery! oh, poverty! Oh, how great are they who
can stand erect and carry high their heads! I had better have let
myself die of hunger, there, on my wretched pallet, three and a half
years ago! A coffin is a softer bed to lie in than the life I lead! It
is eighteen months that I have _fed on bourgeois_! and now, at the
moment of attaining an honest, fortunate life, a magnificent future,
at the moment when I was about to sit down to the social banquet, the
executioner strikes me on the shoulder! Yes, the monster! he struck me
there, on my shoulder, and said to me: 'Pay thy dues to the devil, or
die!' And shall I not crush them? Shall I not force my arm down their
throats to their very entrails? Yes, yes, I will, I will! See, Flavie,
my eyes are dry now. Ha, ha! now I laugh; I feel my strength come back
to me; power is mine! Oh! say that you love me; say it again! At this
moment it sounds like the word 'Pardon' to the man condemned to
death!"
"You are terrible, my friend!" cried Flavie. "Oh! you are killing me."
She understood nothing of all this, but she fell upon the sofa,
exhausted by the spectacle. Theodose flung himself at her feet.
"Forgive me! forgive me!" he said.
"But what is the matter? what is it?" she asked again.
"They are trying to destroy me. Oh! promise to give me Celeste, and
you shall see what a glorious life I will make you share. If you
hesitate--very good; that is saying you will be wholly mine, and I
will have you!"
He made so rapid a movement that Flavie, terrified, rose and moved
away.
"Oh! my saint!" he cried, "at thy feet I fall--a miracle! God is for
me, surely! A flash of light has come to me--an idea--suddenly! Oh,
thanks, my good angel, my grand Saint-Theodose! thou hast saved me!"
Flavie could not help admiring that chameleon being; one knee on the
floor, his hands crossed on his breast, and his eyes raised to heaven
in religious ecstasy, he recited a prayer; he was a fervent Catholic;
he reverently crossed himself. It was fine; like the vision of
Saint-Jerome.
"Adieu!" he said, with a melancholy look and a moving tone of voice.
"Oh!" cried Flavie, "leave me this handkerchief."
Theodose rushed away like one possessed, sprang into the street, and
darted towards the Thuilliers', but turned, saw Flavie at her window,
and made her a little sign of triumph.
"What a man!" she thought to herself.
"Dear, good friend," he said to Thuillier, in a calm and gentle,
almost caressing voice, "we have fallen into the hands of atrocious
scoundrels. But I mean to read them a lesson."
"What has happened?" asked Brigitte.
"They want twenty-five thousand francs, and, in order to get the
better of us, the notary, or his accomplices, have determined to bid
in the property. Thuillier, put five thousand francs in your pocket
and come with me; I will secure that house to you. I am making myself
implacable enemies!" he cried; "they are seeking to destroy me
morally. But all I ask is that you will disregard their infamous
calumnies and feel no change of heart to me. After all, what is it? If
I succeed, you will only have paid one hundred and twenty-five
thousand francs for the house instead of one hundred and twenty."
"Provided the same thing doesn't happen again," said Brigitte,
uneasily, her eyes dilating under the effect of a violent suspicion.
"Preferred creditors have alone the right to bid in property, and as,
in this case, there is but one, and he has used that right, we are
safe. The amount of his claim is really only two thousand francs, but
there are lawyers, attorneys, and so forth, to pay in such matters,
and we shall have to drop a note of a thousand francs to make the
creditor happy."
"Go, Thuillier," said Brigitte, "get your hat and gloves, and take the
money--from you know where."
"As I paid those fifteen thousand francs without success, I don't wish
to have any more money pass through my hands. Thuillier must pay it
himself," said Theodose, when he found himself alone with Brigitte.
"You have, however, gained twenty thousand on the contract I enabled
you to make with Grindot, who thought he was serving the notary, and
you own a piece of property which in five years will be worth nearly a
million. It is what is called a 'boulevard corner.'"
Brigitte listened uneasily, precisely like a cat which hears a mouse
within the wall. She looked Theodose straight in the eye, and, in
spite of the truth of his remarks, doubts possessed her.
"What troubles you, little aunt?"
"Oh! I shall be in mortal terror until that property is securely
ours."
"You would be willing to give twenty thousand francs, wouldn't you,"
said Theodose, "to make sure that Thuillier was what we call, in law,
'owner not dispossessable' of that property? Well, then, remember that
I have saved you twice that amount."
"Where are we going?" asked Thuillier, returning.
"To Maitre Godeschal! We must employ him as our attorney."
"But we refused him for Celeste."
"Well, that's one reason for going to him," replied Theodose. "I have
taken his measure; he's a man of honor, and he'll think it a fine
thing to do you a service."
Godeschal, now Derville's successor, had formerly been, for more than
two years, head-clerk with Desroches. Theodose, to whom that
circumstance was known, seemed to hear the name flung into his ear in
the midst of his despair by an inward voice, and he foresaw a
possibility of wrenching from the hands of Claparon the weapon with
which Cerizet had threatened him. He must, however, in the first
instance, gain an entrance to Desroches, and get some light on the
actual situation of his enemies. Godeschal, by reason of the intimacy
still existing between the former clerk and his old master, could be
his go-between. When the attorneys of Paris have ties like those which
bound Godeschal and Desroches together, they live in true fraternity,
and the result is a facility in arranging any matters which are, as
one may say, arrangeable. They obtain from one another, on the ground
of reciprocity, all possible concessions by the application of the
proverb, "Pass me the rhubarb, and I'll pass you the senna," which is
put in practice in all professions, between ministers, soldiers,
judges, business men; wherever, in short, enmity has not raised
barriers too strong and high between the parties.
"I gain a pretty good fee out of this compromise," is a reason that
needs no expression in words: it is visible in the gesture, the tone,
the glance; and as attorneys and solicitors meet constantly on this
ground, the matter, whatever it is, is arranged. The counterpoise of
this fraternal system is found in what we may call professional
conscience. The public must believe the physician who says, giving
medical testimony, "This body contains arsenic"; nothing is supposed
to exceed the integrity of the legislator, the independence of the
cabinet minister. In like manner, the attorney of Paris says to his
brother lawyer, good-humoredly, "You can't obtain that; my client is
furious," and the other answers, "Very good; I must do without it."
Now, la Peyrade, a shrewd man, had worn his legal gown about the
Palais long enough to know how these judicial morals might be made to
serve his purpose.
"Sit in the carriage," he said to Thuillier, when they reached the rue
Vivienne, where Godeschal was now master of the practice he had
formerly served as clerk. "You needn't show yourself until he
undertakes the affair."
It was eleven o'clock at night; la Peyrade was not mistaken in
supposing that he should find a newly fledged master of a practice in
his office at that hour.
"To what do I owe this visit, monsieur?" said Godeschal, coming
forward to meet the barrister.
Foreigners, provincials, and persons in high society may not be aware
that barristers are to attorneys what generals are to marshals. There
exists a line of demarcation, strictly maintained, between the order
of barristers and the guild of attorneys and solicitors in Paris.
However venerable an attorney may be, however capable and strong in
his profession, he must go to the barrister. The attorney is the
administrator, who maps out the plan of the campaign, collects the
munitions of war, and puts the force in motion; the barrister gives
battle. It is not known why the law gives a man two men to defend him
any more than it is known why an author is forced to have both printer
and publisher. The rules of the bar forbid its members to do any act
belonging to the guild of attorneys. It is very rare that a barrister
puts his foot in an attorney's office; the two classes meet in the
law-courts. In society, there is no barrier between them, and some
barristers, those in la Peyrade's situation particularly, demean
themselves by calling occasionally on attorneys, though even these
cases are rare, and are usually excused by some special urgency.
"I have come on important business," replied la Peyrade; "it concerns,
especially, a question of delicacy which you and I ought to solve
together. Thuillier is below, in a carriage, and I have come up to see
you, not as a barrister, but as his friend. You are in a position to
do him an immense service; and I have told him that you have too noble
a soul (as a worthy successor of our great Derville must have) not to
put your utmost capacity at his orders. Here's the affair."
After explaining, wholly to his own advantage, the swindling trick
which must, he said, be met with caution and ability, the barrister
developed his plan of campaign.
"You ought, my dear maitre, to go this very evening to Desroches,
explain the whole plot and persuade him to send to-morrow for his
client, this Sauvaignou. We'll confess the fellow between us, and if
he wants a note for a thousand francs over and above the amount of his
claim, we'll let him have it; not counting the five hundred for you
and as much more for Desroches, provided Thuillier receives the
relinquishment of his claim by ten o'clock to-morrow morning. What
does this Sauvaignou want? Nothing but money. Well, a haggler like
that won't resist the attraction of an extra thousand francs,
especially if he is only the instrument of a cupidity behind him. It
is no matter to us how he fights it out with those who prompt him.
Now, then, do you think you can get the Thuillier family out of this?"
"I'll go and see Desroches at once," said Godeschal.
"Not before Thuillier gives you a power of attorney and five hundred
francs. The money should be on the table in a case like this."
After the interview with Thuillier was over, la Peyrade took Godeschal
in the carriage to the rue du Bethizy, where Desroches lived,
explaining that it was on their way back to the rue Saint-Dominique
d'Enfer. When they stopped at Desroches's door la Peyrade made an
appointment with Godeschal to meet him there the next morning at seven
o'clock.
La Peyrade's whole future and fortune lay in the outcome of this
conference. It is therefore not astonishing that he disregarded the
customs of the bar and went to Desroches's office, to study Sauvaignou
and take part in the struggle, in spite of the danger he ran in thus
placing himself visibly before the eyes of one of the most dreaded
attorneys in Paris.
As he entered the office and made his salutations, he took note of
Sauvaignou. The man was, as the name had already told him, from
Marseilles,--the foreman of a master-carpenter, entrusted with the
giving out of sub-contracts. The profits of this work consisted of
what he could make between the price he paid for the work and that
paid to him by the master-carpenter; this agreement being exclusive of
material, his contract being only for labor. The master-carpenter had
failed. Sauvaignou had thereupon appealed to the court of commerce for
recognition as creditor with a lien on the property. He was a stocky
little man, dressed in a gray linen blouse, with a cap on his head,
and was seated in an armchair. Three banknotes, of a thousand francs
each, lying visibly before him on Desroches's desk, informed la
Peyrade that the negotiation had already taken place, and that the
lawyers were worsted. Godeschal's eyes told the rest, and the glance
which Desroches cast at the "poor man's advocate" was like the blow of
a pick-axe into the earth of a grave. Stimulated by his danger, the
Provencal became magnificent. He coolly took up the bank-notes and
folded them, as if to put them in his pocket, saying to Desroches:--
"Thuillier has changed his mind."
"Very good; then we are all agreed," said the terrible attorney.
"Yes; your client must now hand over to us the fifty thousand francs
we have spent on finishing the house, according to the contract
between Thuillier and Grindot. I did not tell you that yesterday," he
added, turning to Godeschal.
"Do you hear that?" said Desroches to Sauvaignou. "That's a case I
shall not touch without proper guarantees."
"But, messieurs," said Sauvaignou, "I can't negotiate this matter
until I have seen the worthy man who paid me five hundred francs on
account for having signed him that bit of a proxy."
"Are you from Marseilles?" said la Peyrade, in patois.
"Oh! if he tackles him with patois the fellow is beaten," said
Godeschal to Desroches in a low tone.
"Yes, monsieur," replied the Marseillais.
"Well, you poor devil," continued Theodose, "don't you see that they
want to ruin you? Shall I tell you what you ought to do? Pocket these
three thousand francs, and when your worthy man comes after you, take
your rule and hit him a rap over the knuckles; tell him he's a rascal
who wants you to do his dirty work, and instead of that you revoke
your proxy and will pay him his five hundred francs in the week with
three Thursdays. Then be off with you to Marseilles with these three
thousand francs and your savings in your pocket. If anything happens
to you there, let me know through these gentlemen, and I'll get you
out of the scrape; for, don't you see? I'm not only a Provencal, but
I'm also one of the leading lawyers in Paris, and the friend of the
poor."
When the workman found a compatriot sanctioning in a tone of authority
the reasons by which he could betray Cerizet, he capitulated, asking,
however, for three thousand five hundred francs. That demand having
been granted he remarked:--
"It is none too much for a rap over the knuckles; he might put me in
prison for assault."
"Well, you needn't strike unless he insults you," replied la Peyrade,
"and that's self-defence."
When Desroches had assured him that la Peyrade was really a barrister
in good standing, Sauvaignou signed the relinquishment, which
contained a receipt for the amount, principal and interest, of his
claim, made in duplicate between himself and Thuillier, and witnessed
by the two attorneys; so that the paper was a final settlement of the
whole matter.
"We'll leave the remaining fifteen hundred between you," whispered la
Peyrade to Desroches and Godeschal, "on condition that you give me the
relinquishment, which I will have Thuillier accept and sign before his
notary, Cardot. Poor man! he never closed his eyes all night!"
"Very well," replied Desroches. "You may congratulate yourself," he
added, making Sauvaignou sign the paper, "that you've earned that
money pretty easily."
"It is really mine, isn't it, monsieur?" said the Marseillais, already
uneasy.
"Yes, and legally, too," replied Desroches, "only you must let your
man know this morning that you have revoked your proxy under date of
yesterday. Go out through my clerk's office, here, this way."
Desroches told his head-clerk what the man was to do, and he sent a
pupil-clerk with him to see that a sheriff's officer carried the
notice to Cerizet before ten o'clock.
"I thank you, Desroches," said la Peyrade, pressing the attorney's
hand; "you think of everything; I shall never forget this service."
"Don't deposit the deed with Cardot till after twelve o'clock,"
returned Desroches.
"Hay! comrade," cried the barrister, in Provencal, following
Sauvaignou into the next room, "take your Margot to walk about
Belleville, and be sure you don't go home."
"I hear," said Sauvaignou. "I'm off to-morrow; adieu!"
"Adieu," returned la Peyrade, with a Provencal cry.
"There is something behind all this," said Desroches in an undertone
to Godeschal, as la Peyrade followed Sauvaignou into the clerk's
office.
"The Thuilliers get a splendid piece of property for next to nothing,"
replied Godeschal; "that's all."
"La Peyrade and Cerizet look to me like two divers who are fighting
under water," replied Desroches. "What am I to say to Cerizet, who put
the matter into my hands?" he added, as the barrister returned to
them.
"Tell him that Sauvaignou forced your hand," replied la Peyrade.
"And you fear nothing?" said Desroches, in a sudden manner.
"I? oh no! I want to give Cerizet a lesson."
"To-morrow, I shall know the truth," said Desroches, in a low tone, to
Godeschal; "no one chatters like a beaten man."
La Peyrade departed, carrying with him the deed of relinquishment. At
eleven o'clock he was in the courtroom of the justice-of-peace,
perfectly calm, and firm. When he saw Cerizet come in, pale with rage,
his eyes full of venom, he said in his ear:--
"My dear friend, I'm a pretty good fellow myself, and I hold that
twenty-five thousand francs in good bank-bills at your disposal,
whenever you will return to me those notes of mine which you hold."
Cerizet looked at the advocate of the poor, without being able to say
one word in reply; he was green; the bile had struck in.
CHAPTER XIII
THE PERVERSITY OF DOVES
"I am a non-dispossessable property-owner!" cried Thuillier, coming
home after visiting his notary. "No human power can get that house
away from me. Cardot says so."
The bourgeoisie think much more of what their notary tells them than
of what their attorney says. The notary is nearer to them than any
other ministerial officer. The Parisian bourgeois never pays a visit
to his attorney without a sense of fear; whereas he mounts the stairs
with ever-renewed pleasure to see his notary; he admires that
official's virtue and his sound good sense.
"Cardot, who is looking for an apartment for one of his clients, wants
to know about our second floor," continued Thuillier. "If I choose
he'll introduce to me on Sunday a tenant who is ready to sign a lease
for eighteen years at forty thousand francs and taxes! What do you say
to that, Brigitte?"
"Better wait," she replied. "Ah! that dear Theodose, what a fright he
gave me!"
"Hey! my dearest girl, I must tell you that when Cardot asked who put
me in the way of this affair he said I owed him a present of at least
ten thousand francs. The fact is, I owe it all to him."
"But he is the son of the house," responded Brigitte.
"Poor lad! I'll do him the justice to say that he asks for nothing."
"Well, dear, good friend," said la Peyrade, coming in about three
o'clock, "here you are, richissime!"
"And through you, Theodose."
"And you, little aunt, have you come to life again? Ah! you were not
half as frightened as I was. I put your interests before my own; I
haven't breathed freely till this morning at eleven o'clock; and yet I
am sure now of having two mortal enemies at my heels in the two men I
have tricked for your sake. As I walked home, just now, I asked myself
what could be your influence over me to make me commit such a crime,
and whether the happiness of belonging to your family and becoming
your son could ever efface the stain I have put upon my conscience."
"Bah! you can confess it," said Thuillier, the free-thinker.
"And now," said Theodose to Brigitte, "you can pay, in all security,
the cost of the house,--eighty thousand francs, and thirty thousand to
Grindot; in all, with what you have paid in costs, one hundred and
twenty thousand; and this last twenty thousand added make one hundred
and forty thousand. If you let the house outright to a single tenant
ask him for the last year's rent in advance, and reserve for my wife
and me the whole of the first floor above the entresol. Make those
conditions and you'll still get your forty thousand francs a year. If
you should want to leave this quarter so as to be nearer the Chamber,
you can always take up your abode with us on that vast first floor,
which has stables and coach-house belonging to it; in fact, everything
that is needful for a splendid life. And now, Thuillier, I am going to
get the cross of the Legion of honor for you."
Hearing this last promise, Brigitte cried out in her enthusiasm:--
"Faith! my dear boy, you've done our business so well that I'll leave
you to manage that of letting the house."
"Don't abdicate, dear aunt," replied Theodose. "God keep me from ever
taking a step without you! You are the good genius of this family; I
think only of the day when Thuillier will take his seat in the
Chamber. If you let the house you will come into possession of your
forty thousand francs for the last year of the lease in two months
from now; and that will not prevent Thuillier from drawing his
quarterly ten thousand of the rental."
After casting this hope into the mind of the old maid, who was
jubilant, Theodose drew Thuillier into the garden and said to him,
without beating round the bush:--
"Dear, good friend, find means to get ten thousand francs from your
sister, and be sure not to let her suspect that you pay them to me;
tell her that sum is required in the government office to facilitate
your appointment as chevalier of the Legion of honor; tell her, too,
that you know the persons among whom that sum should be distributed."
"That's a good idea," said Thuillier; "besides, I'll pay it back to
her when I get my rents."
"Have the money ready this evening, dear friend. Now I am going out on
business about your cross; to-morrow we shall know something
definitely about it."
"What a man you are!" cried Thuillier.
"The ministry of the 1st of March is going to fall, and we must get it
out of them beforehand," said Theodose, shrewdly.
He now hurried to Madame Colleville, crying out as he entered her
room:--
"I've conquered! We shall have a piece of landed property for Celeste
worth a million, a life-interest in which will be given to her by her
marriage-contract; but keep the secret, or your daughter will be
hunted down by peers of France. Besides, this settlement will only be
made in my favor. Now dress yourself, and let us go and call on Madame
du Bruel; she can get the cross for Thuillier. While you are getting
under arms I'll do a little courting to Celeste; you and I can talk as
we drive along."
La Peyrade had seen, as he passed the door of the salon, Celeste and
Felix Phellion in close conversation. Flavie had such confidence in
her daughter that she did not fear to leave them together. Now that
the great success of the morning was secured, Theodose felt the
necessity of beginning his courtship of Celeste. It was high time, he
thought, to bring about a quarrel between the lovers. He did not,
therefore, hesitate to apply his ear to the door of the salon before
entering it, in order to discover what letters of the alphabet of love
they were spelling; he was even invited to commit this domestic
treachery by sounds from within, which seemed to say that they were
disputing. Love, according to one of our poets, is a privilege which
two persons mutually take advantage of to cause each other,
reciprocally, a great deal of sorrow about nothing at all.
When Celeste knew that Felix was elected by her heart to be the
companion of her life, she felt a desire, not so much to study him as
to unite herself closely with him by that communion of souls which is
the basis of all affections, and leads, in youthful minds, to
involuntary examination. The dispute to which Theodose was now to
listen took its rise in a disagreement which had sprung up within the
last few days between the mathematician and Celeste. The young girl's
piety was real; she belonged to the flock of the truly faithful, and
to her, Catholicism, tempered by that mysticism which attracts young
souls, was an inward poem, a life within her life. From this point
young girls are apt to develop into either extremely high-minded women
or saints. But, during this beautiful period of their youth they have
in their heart, in their ideas, a sort of absolutism: before their
eyes is the image of perfection, and all must be celestial, angelic,
or divine to satisfy them. Outside of their ideal, nothing of good can
exist; all is stained and soiled. This idea causes the rejection of
many a diamond with a flaw by girls who, as women, fall in love with
paste.
Now, Celeste had seen in Felix, not irreligion, but indifference to
matters of religion. Like most geometricians, chemists,
mathematicians, and great naturalists, he had subjected religion to
reason; he recognized a problem in it as insoluble as the squaring of
the circle. Deist "in petto," he lived in the religion of most
Frenchmen, not attaching more importance to it than he did to the new
laws promulgated in July. It was necessary to have a God in heaven,
just as they set up a bust of the king at the mayor's office. Felix
Phellion, a worthy son of his father, had never drawn the slightest
veil over his opinions or his conscience; he allowed Celeste to read
into them with the candor and the inattention of a student of
problems. The young girl, on her side, professed a horror for atheism,
and her conscience assured her that a deist was cousin-germain to an
atheist.
"Have you thought, Felix, of doing what you promised me?" asked
Celeste, as soon as Madame Colleville had left them alone.
"No, my dear Celeste," replied Felix.
"Oh! to have broken his word!" she cried, softly.
"But to have kept it would have been a profanation," said Felix. "I
love you so deeply, with a tenderness so little proof against your
wishes, that I promised a thing contrary to my conscience. Conscience,
Celeste, is our treasure, our strength, our mainstay. How can you ask
me to go into a church and kneel at the feet of a priest, in whom I
can see only a man? You would despise me if I obeyed you."
"And so, my dear Felix, you refuse to go to church," said Celeste,
casting a tearful glance at the man she loved. "If I were your wife
you would let me go alone? You do not love me as I love you! for,
alas! I have a feeling in my heart for an atheist contrary to that
which God commands."
"An atheist!" cried Felix. "Oh, no! Listen to me, Celeste. There is
certainly a God; I believe in that; but I have higher ideas of Him
than those of your priests; I do not wish to bring Him down to my
level; I want to rise to Him. I listen to the voice He has put within
me,--a voice which honest men call conscience, and I strive not to
darken that divine ray as it comes to me. For instance, I will never
harm others; I will do nothing against the commandments of universal
morality, which was that of Confucius, Moses, Pythagoras, Socrates, as
well as of Jesus Christ. I will stand in the presence of God; my
actions shall be my prayers; I will never be false in word or deed;
never will I do a base or shameful thing. Those are the precepts I
have learned from my virtuous father, and which I desire to bequeath
to my children. All the good that I can do I shall try to accomplish,
even if I have to suffer for it. What can you ask more of a man than
that?"
This profession of the Phellion faith caused Celeste to sadly shake
her head.
"Read attentively," she replied, "'The Imitation of Jesus Christ.'
Strive to convert yourself to the holy Catholic, apostolic, and Roman
Church, and you will see how empty your words are. Hear me, Felix;
marriage is not, the Church says, the affair of a day, the mere
satisfaction of our own desires; it is made for eternity. What! shall
we be united day and night, shall we form one flesh, one word, and yet
have two languages, two faiths in our heart, and a cause of perpetual
dissension? Would you condemn me to weep tears over the state of your
soul,--tears that I must ever conceal from you? Could I address myself
in peace to God when I see his arm stretched out in wrath against you?
Must my children inherit the blood of a deist and his convictions? Oh!
God, what misery for a wife! No, no, these ideas are intolerable.
Felix! be of my faith, for I cannot share yours. Do not put a gulf
between us. If you loved me, you would already have read 'The
Imitation of Jesus Christ.'"
The Phellion class, sons of the "Constitutionnel," dislike the
priestly mind. Felix had the imprudence to reply to this sort of
prayer from the depths of an ardent heart:--
"You are repeating, Celeste, the lessons your confessor teaches you;
nothing, believe me, is more fatal to happiness than the interference
of priests in a home."
"Oh!" cried Celeste, wounded to the quick, for love alone inspired
her, "you do not love! The voice of my heart is not in unison with
yours! You have not understood me, because you have not listened to
me; but I forgive you, for you know not what you say."
She wrapped herself in solemn silence, and Felix went to the window
and drummed upon the panes,--music familiar to those who have indulged
in poignant reflections. Felix was, in fact, presenting the following
delicate and curious questions to the Phellion conscience.
"Celeste is a rich heiress, and, in yielding against the voice of
natural religion, to her ideas, I should have in view the making of
what is certainly an advantageous marriage,--an infamous act. I ought
not, as father of a family, to allow the priesthood to have an
influence in my home. If I yield to-day, I do a weak act, which will
be followed by many others equally pernicious to the authority of a
husband and father. All this is unworthy of a philosopher."
Then he returned to his beloved.
"Celeste, I entreat you on my knees," he said, "not to mingle that
which the law, in its wisdom, has separated. We live in two worlds,
--society and heaven. Each has its own way of salvation; but as to
society, is it not obeying God to obey the laws? Christ said: 'Render
unto Caesar that which is Caesar's.' Caesar is the body politic. Dear,
let us forget our little quarrel."
"Little quarrel!" cried the young enthusiast; "I want you to have my
whole heart as I want to have the whole of yours; and you make it into
two parts! Is not that an evil? You forget that marriage is a
sacrament."
"Your priesthood have turned your head," exclaimed the mathematician,
impatiently.
"Monsieur Phellion," said Celeste, interrupting him hastily, "enough
of this!"
It was at this point of the quarrel that Theodose considered it
judicious to enter the room. He found Celeste pale, and the young
professor as anxious as a lover should be who has just irritated his
mistress.
"I heard the word 'enough'; then something is too much?" he said,
inquiringly, looking in turn from Celeste to Felix.
"We were talking religion," replied Felix, "and I was saying to
mademoiselle how dangerous ecclesiastical influence is in the bosom of
families."
"That was not the point, monsieur," said Celeste, sharply; "it was to
know if husband and wife could be of one heart when the one is an
atheist and the other Catholic."
"Can there be such a thing as atheists?" cried Theodose, with all the
signs of extreme wonderment. "Could a true Catholic marry a
Protestant? There is no safety possible for a married pair unless they
have perfect conformity in the matter of religious opinions. I, who
come from the Comtat, of a family which counts a pope among its
ancestors--for our arms are: gules, a key argent, with supporters, a
monk holding a church, and a pilgrim with a staff, or, and the motto,
'I open, I shut'--I am, of course, intensely dogmatic on such points.
But in these days, thanks to our modern system of education, it does
not seem to me strange that religion should be called into question. I
myself would never marry a Protestant, had she millions, even if I
loved her distractedly. Faith is a thing that cannot be tampered with.
'Una fides, unus Dominus,' that is my device in life."
"You hear that!" cried Celeste, triumphantly, looking at Felix
Phellion.
"I am not openly devout," continued la Peyrade. "I go to mass at six
every morning, that I may not be observed; I fast on Fridays; I am, in
short, a son of the Church, and I would not undertake any serious
enterprise without prayer, after the ancient fashion of our ancestors;
but no one is able to notice my religion. A singular thing happened to
our family during the Revolution of 1789, which attached us more
closely than ever to our holy mother the Church. A poor young lady of
the elder branch of the Peyrades, who owned the little estate of la
Peyrade,--for we ourselves are Peyrades of Canquoelle, but the two
branches inherit from one another,--well, this young lady married, six
years before the Revolution, a barrister who, after the fashion of the
times, was Voltairean, that is to say, an unbeliever, or, if you
choose, a deist. He took up all the revolutionary ideas, and practised
the charming rites that you know of in the worship of the goddess
Reason. He came into our part of the country imbued with the ideas of
the Convention, and fanatical about them. His wife was very handsome;
he compelled her to play the part of Liberty; and the poor unfortunate
creature went mad. She died insane! Well, as things are going now it
looks as if we might have another 1793."
This history, invented on the spot, made such an impression on
Celeste's fresh and youthful imagination that she rose, bowed to the
young men and hastened to her chamber.
"Ah! monsieur, why did you tell her that?" cried Felix, struck to the
heart by the cold look the young girl, affecting profound
indifference, cast upon him. She fancied herself transformed into a
goddess of Reason.
"Why not? What were you talking about?" asked Theodose.
"About my indifference to religion."
"The great sore of this century," replied Theodose, gravely.
"I am ready," said Madame Colleville, appearing in a toilet of much
taste. "But what is the matter with my poor daughter? She is crying!"
"Crying? madame," exclaimed Felix; "please tell her that I will study
'The Imitation of Christ' at once."
Felix left the house with Theodose and Flavie, whose arm the barrister
pressed to let her know he would explain in the carriage the apparent
dementia of the young professor.
An hour later, Madame Colleville and Celeste, Colleville and Theodose
were entering the Thuilliers' apartment to dine there. Theodose and
Flavie took Thuillier into the garden, where the former said to him:--
"Dear, good friend! you will have the cross within a week. Our
charming friend here will tell you about our visit to the Comtesse du
Bruel."
And Theodose left Thuillier, having caught sight of Desroches in the
act of being brought by Mademoiselle Thuillier into the garden; he
went, driven by a terrible and glacial presentiment, to meet him.
"My good friend," said Desroches in his ear, "I have come to see if
you can procure at once twenty-five thousand francs plus two thousand
six hundred and eighty for costs."
"Are you acting for Cerizet?" asked the barrister.
"Cerizet has put all the papers into the hands of Louchard, and you
know what you have to expect if arrested. Is Cerizet wrong in thinking
you have twenty-five thousand francs in your desk? He says you offered
them to him and he thinks it only natural not to leave them in your
hands."
"Thank you for taking the step, my good friend," replied Theodose. "I
have been expecting this attack."
"Between ourselves," replied Desroches, "you have made an utter fool
of him, and he is furious. The scamp will stop at nothing to get his
revenge upon you--for he'll lose everything if he forces you to fling
your barrister's gown, as they say, to the nettles and go to prison."
"I?" said Theodose. "I'm going to pay him. But even so, there will
still be five notes of mine in his hands, for five thousand francs
each; what does he mean to do with them?"
"Oh! after the affair of this morning, I can't tell you; my client is
a crafty, mangy cur, and he is sure to have his little plans."
"Look here, Desroches," said Theodose, taking the hard, unyielding
attorney round the waist, "those papers are in your hands, are not
they?"
"Will you pay them?"
"Yes, in three hours."
"Very good, then. Be at my office at nine o'clock; I'll receive the
money and give you your notes; _but_, at half-past nine o'clock, they
will be in the sheriff's hands."
"To-night, then, at nine o'clock," said Theodose.
"Nine o'clock," repeated Desroches, whose glance had taken in the
whole family, then assembled in the garden.
Celeste, with red eyes, was talking to her godmother; Colleville and
Brigitte, Flavie and Thuillier were on the steps of the broad portico
leading to the entrance-hall. Desroches remarked to Theodose, who
followed him to the door:--
"You can pay off those notes."
At a single glance the shrewd attorney had comprehended the whole
scheme of the barrister.
CHAPTER XIV
ONE OF CERIZET'S FEMALE CLIENTS
The next morning, at daybreak, Theodose went to the office of the
banker of the poor, to see the effect produced upon his enemy by the
punctual payment of the night before, and to make another effort to
get rid of his hornet.
He found Cerizet standing up, in conference with a woman, and he
received an imperative sign to keep at a distance and not to interrupt
the interview. The barrister was therefore reduced to conjectures as
to the importance of this woman, an importance revealed by the eager
look on the face of the lender "by the little week." Theodose had a
presentiment, though a very vague one, that the upshot of this
conference would have some influence on Cerizet's own arrangements,
for he suddenly beheld on that crafty countenance the change produced
by a dawning hope.
"But, my dear mamma Cardinal--"
"Yes, my good monsieur--"
"What is it you want--?"
"It must be decided--"
These beginnings, or these ends of sentences were the only gleams of
light that the animated conversation, carried on in the lowest tones
with lip to ear and ear to lip, conveyed to the motionless witness,
whose attention was fixed on Madame Cardinal.
Madame Cardinal was one of Cerizet's earliest clients; she peddled
fish. If Parisians know these creations peculiar to their soil,
foreigners have no suspicion of their existence; and Mere Cardinal
--technologically speaking, of course, deserved all the interest she
excited in Theodose. So many women of her species may be met with in
the streets that the passers-by give them no more attention than they
give to the three thousand pictures of the Salon. But as she stood in
Cerizet's office the Cardinal had all the value of an isolated
masterpiece; she was a complete and perfect type of her species.
The woman was mounted on muddy sabots; but her feet, carefully wrapped
in gaiters, were still further protected by stout and thick-ribbed
stockings. Her cotton gown, adorned with a glounce of mud, bore the
imprint of the strap which supported the fish-basket. Her principal
garment was a shawl of what was called "rabbit's-hair cashmere," the
two ends of which were knotted behind, above her bustle--for we must
needs employ a fashionable word to express the effect produced by the
transversal pressure of the basket upon her petticoats, which
projected below it, in shape like a cabbage. A printed cotton
neckerchief, of the coarsest description, gave to view a red neck,
ribbed and lined like the surface of a pond where people have skated.
Her head was covered in a yellow silk foulard, twined in a manner that
was rather picturesque. Short and stout, and ruddy of skin, Mere
Cardinal probably drank her little drop of brandy in the morning. She
had once been handsome. The Halle had formerly reproached her, in the
boldness of its figurative speech, for doing "a double day's-work in
the twenty-four." Her voice, in order to reduce itself to the diapason
of ordinary conversation, was obliged to stifle its sound as other
voices do in a sick-room; but at such times it came thick and muffled,
from a throat accustomed to send to the farthest recesses of the
highest garret the names of the fish in their season. Her nose, a la
Roxelane, her well-cut lips, her blue eyes, and all that formerly made
up her beauty, was now buried in folds of vigorous flesh which told of
the habits and occupations of an outdoor life. The stomach and bosom
were distinguished for an amplitude worthy of Rubens.
"Do you want to make me lie in the straw?" she said to Cerizet. "What
do I care for the Toupilliers? Ain't I a Toupillier myself? What do
you want to do with them, those Toupilliers?"
This savage outburst was hastily repressed by Cerizet, who uttered a
prolonged "Hush-sh!" such as all conspirators obey.
"Well, go and find out all you can about it, and come back to me,"
said Cerizet, pushing the woman toward the door, and whispering, as he
did so, a few words in her ear.
"Well, my dear friend," said Theodose to Cerizet, "you have got your
money?"
"Yes," returned Cerizet "we have measured our claws, they are the same
length, the same strength, and the same sharpness. What next?"
"Am I to tell Dutocq that you received, last night, twenty-five
thousand francs?"
"Oh! my dear friend, not a word, if you love me!" cried Cerizet.
"Listen," said Theodose. "I must know, once for all, what you want. I
am positively determined not to remain twenty-four hours longer on the
gridiron where you have got me. Cheat Dutocq if you will; I am utterly
indifferent to that; but I intend that you and I shall come to an
understanding. It is a fortune that I have paid you, twenty-five
thousand francs, and you must have earned ten thousand more in your
business; it is enough to make you an honest man. Cerizet, if you will
leave me in peace, if you won't prevent my marriage with Mademoiselle
Colleville, I shall certainly be king's attorney-general, or something
of that kind in Paris. You can't do better than make sure of an
influence in that sphere."
"Here are my conditions; and they won't allow of discussion; you can
take them or leave them. You will obtain for me the lease of
Thuillier's new house for eighteen years, and I'll hand you back one
of your five notes cancelled, and you shall not find me any longer in
your way. But you will have to settle with Dutocq for the remaining
four notes. You got the better of _me_, and I know Dutocq hasn't the
force to stand against you."
"I'll agree to that, provided you'll pay a rent of forty-eight
thousand francs for the house, the last year in advance, and begin the
lease in October."
"Yes; but I shall not give for the last year's rent more than
forty-three thousand francs; your note will pay the remainder. I have
seen the house, and examined it. It suits me very well."
"One last condition," said Theodose; "you'll help me against Dutocq?"
"No," said Cerizet, "you'll cook him brown yourself; he doesn't need
any basting from me; he'll give out his gravy fast enough. But you
ought to be reasonable. The poor fellow can't pay off the last fifteen
thousand francs due on his practice, and you should reflect that
fifteen thousand francs would certainly buy back your notes."
"Well; give me two weeks to get your lease--"
"No, not a day later than Monday next! Tuesday your notes will be in
Louchard's hands; unless you pay them Monday, or Thuillier signs the
lease."
"Well, Monday, so be it!" said Theodose; "are we friends?"
"We shall be Monday," responded Cerizet.
"Well, then, Monday you'll pay for my dinner," said Theodose,
laughing.
"Yes, at the Rocher de Cancale, if I have the lease. Dutocq shall be
there--we'll all be there--ah! it is long since I've had a good
laugh."
Theodose and Cerizet shook hands, saying, reciprocally:--
"We'll meet soon."
Cerizet had not calmed down so suddenly without reasons. In the first
place, as Desroches once said, "Bile does not facilitate business,"
and the usurer had too well seen the justice of that remark not to
coolly resolve to get something out of his position, and to squeeze
the jugular vein of the crafty Provencal until he strangled him.
"It is a fair revenge," Desroches said to him; "mind you extract its
quintessence. You hold that fellow."
For ten years past Cerizet had seen men growing rich by practising the
trade of principal tenant. The principal tenant is, in Paris, to the
owners of houses what farmers are to country landlords. All Paris has
seen one of its great tailors, building at his own cost, on the famous
site of Frascati, one of the most sumptuous of houses, and paying, as
principal tenant, fifty thousand francs a year for the ground rent of
the house, which, at the end of nineteen years' lease, was to become
the property of the owner of the land. In spite of the costs of
construction, which were something like seven hundred thousand francs,
the profits of those nineteen years proved, in the end, very large.
Cerizet, always on the watch for business, had examined the chances
for gain offered by the situation of the house which Thuillier had
_stolen_,--as he said to Desroches,--and he had seen the possibility of
letting it for sixty thousand at the end of six years. There were four
shops, two on each side, for it stood on a boulevard corner. Cerizet
expected, therefore, to get clear ten thousand a year for a dozen
years, allowing for eventualities and sundries attendant on renewal of
leases. He therefore proposed to himself to sell his money-lending
business to the widow Poiret and Cadenet for ten thousand francs; he
already possessed thirty thousand; and the two together would enable
him to pay the last year's rent in advance, which house-owners in
Paris usually demand as a guarantee from a principal tenant on a long
lease. Cerizet had spent a happy night; he fell asleep in a glorious
dream; he saw himself in a fair way to do an honest business, and to
become a bourgeois like Thuillier, like Minard, and so many others.
But he had a waking of which he did not dream. He found Fortune
standing before him, and emptying her gilded horns of plenty at his
feet in the person of Madame Cardinal. He had always had a liking for
the woman, and had promised her for a year past the necessary sum to
buy a donkey and a little cart, so that she could carry on her
business on a large scale, and go from Paris to the suburbs. Madame
Cardinal, widow of a porter in the corn-market, had an only daughter,
whose beauty Cerizet had heard of from some of the mother's cronies.
Olympe Cardinal was about thirteen years of age at the time, 1837,
when Cerizet began his system of loans in the quarter; and with a view
to an infamous libertinism, he had paid great attention to the mother,
whom he rescued from utter misery, hoping to make Olympe his mistress.
But suddenly, in 1838, the girl left her mother, and "made her life,"
to use an expression by which the lower classes in Paris describe the
abuse of the most precious gifts of nature and youth.
To look for a girl in Paris is to look for a smelt in the Seine;
nothing but chance can throw her into the net. The chance came. Mere
Cardinal, who to entertain a neighbor had taken her to the Bobino
theatre, recognized in the leading lady her own daughter, whom the
first comedian had held under his control for three years. The mother,
gratified at first at beholding her daughter in a fine gown of gold
brocade, her hair dressed like that of a duchess, and wearing
open-worked stockings, satin shoes, and receiving the plaudits of the
audience, ended by screaming out from her seat in the gallery:--
"You shall soon hear of me, murderer of your own mother! I'll know
whether miserable strolling-players have the right to come and debauch
young girls of sixteen!"
She waited at the stage-door to capture her daughter, but the first
comedian and the leading lady had no doubt jumped across the
footlights and left the theatre with the audience, instead of issuing
by the stage-door, where Madame Cardinal and her crony, Mere
Mahoudeau, made an infernal rumpus, which two municipal guards were
called upon to pacify. Those august personages, before whom the two
women lowered the diapason of their voices, called the mother's
attention to the fact that the girl was of legitimate theatrical age,
and that instead of screaming at the door after the director, she
could summon him before the justice-of-peace, or the police-court,
whichever she pleased.
The next day Madame Cardinal intended to consult Cerizet, in view of
the fact that he was a clerk in the office of the justice-of-peace;
but, before reaching his lair in the rue des Poules, she was met by
the porter of a house in which an uncle of hers, a certain Toupillier,
was living, who told her that the old man hadn't probably two days to
live, being then in the last extremity.
"Well, how do you expect me to help it?" replied the widow Cardinal.
"We count on you, my dear Madame Cardinal; we know you won't forget
the good advice we'll give you. Here's the thing. Lately, your poor
uncle, not being able to stir round, has trusted me to go and collect
the rents of his house, rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth, and the arrears of
his dividends at the Treasury, which come to eighteen hundred francs."
By this time the widow Cardinal's eyes were becoming fixed instead of
wandering.
"Yes, my dear," continued Perrache, a hump-backed little concierge;
"and, seeing that you are the only person who ever thinks about him,
and that you come and see him sometimes, and bring him fish, perhaps
he may make a bequest in your favor. My wife, who has been nursing him
for the last few days since he has been so ill, spoke to him of you,
but he wouldn't have you told about his illness. But now, don't you
see, it is high time you should show yourself there. It is pretty nigh
two months since he has been able to attend to business."
"You may well think, you old thief," replied Madame Cardinal, hurrying
at top speed toward the rue Honore-Chevalier, where her uncle lived in
a wretched garret, "that the hair would grow on my hand before I could
ever imagine that. What! my uncle Toupillier rich! the old pauper of
the church of Saint-Sulpice!"
"Ah!" returned the porter, "but he fed well. He went to bed every
night with his best friend, a big bottle of Roussillon. My wife has
tasted it, though he told us it was common stuff. The wine-merchant in
the rue des Canettes supplies it to him."
"Don't say a word about all this," said the widow, when she parted
from the man who had given her the information. "I'll take care and
remember you--if anything comes of it."
Toupillier, former drum-major in the French Guards, had been for the
two years preceding 1789 in the service of the Church as beadle of
Saint-Sulpice. The Revolution deprived him of that post, and he then
dropped down into a state of abject misery. He was even obliged to
take to the profession of model, for he _enjoyed_, as they say, a fine
physique. When public worship was restored, he took up his beadle's
staff once more; but in 1816 he was dismissed, as much on account of
his immorality as for his political opinions. Nevertheless, he was
allowed to stay about the door of the church and distribute the holy
water. Later, an unfortunate affair, which we shall presently mention,
made him lose even that position; but, still finding means to keep to
the sanctuary, he obtained permission to be allowed as a pauper in the
porch. At this period of life, being then seventy-two years of age, he
made himself ninety-six, and began the profession of centenarian.
In all Paris it was impossible to find another such beard and head of
hair as Toupillier's. As he walked he appeared bent double; he held a
stick in his shaking hand,--a hand that was covered with lichen, like
a granite rock, and with the other he held out the classic hat with a
broad brim, filthy and battered, into which, however, there fell
abundant alms. His legs were swathed in rags and bandages, and his
feet shuffled along in miserable overshoes of woven mat-weed, inside
of which he had fastened excellent cork soles. He washed his face with
certain compounds, which gave it an appearance of forms of illness,
and he played the senility of a centenarian to the life. He reckoned
himself a hundred years old in 1830, at which time his actual age was
eighty; he was the head of the paupers of Saint-Sulpice, the master of
the place, and all those who came to beg under the arcades of the
church, safe from the persecutions of the police and beneath the
protection of the beadle and the giver of holy water, were forced to
pay him a sort of tithe.
When a new heir, a bridegroom, or some godfather left the church,
saying, "Here, this is for all of you; don't torment any of my party,"
Toupillier, appointed by the beadle to receive these alms, pocketed
three-fourths, and distributed only the remaining quarter among his
henchmen, whose tribute amounted to a sou a day. Money and wine were
his last two passions; but he regulated the latter and gave himself up
to the former, with neglecting his personal comfort. He drank at night
only, after his dinner, and for twenty years he slept in the arms of
drunkenness, his last mistress.
In the early morning he was at his post with all his faculties. From
then until his dinner, which he took at Pere Lathuile's (made famous
by Charlet), he gnawed crusts of bread by way of nourishment; and he
gnawed them artistically, with an air of resignation which earned him
abundant alms. The beadle and the giver of holy water, with whom he
may have had some private understanding, would say of him:--
"He is one of the worthy poor of the church; he used to know the
rector Languet, who built Saint-Sulpice; he was for twenty years
beadle of the church before the Revolution, and he is now over a
hundred years old."
This little biography, well known to all the pious attendants of the
church, was, of course, the best of his advertisements, and no hat was
so well lined as his. He bought his house in 1826, and began to invest
his money in the Funds in 1830. From the value of the two investments
he must have made something like six thousand francs a year, and
probably turned them over by usury, after Cerizet's own fashion; for
the sum he paid for the house was forty thousand francs, while his
investment in 1830 was forty-eight thousand more. His niece, deceived
by the old man as much as he deceived the functionaries and the pious
souls of the church, believed him the most miserable of paupers, and
when she had any fish that were spoiling she sometimes took them to
the aged beggar.
Consequently, she now felt it her right to get what she could in
return for her pity and her liberality to an uncle who was likely to
have a crowd of collateral heirs; she herself being the third and last
Toupillier daughter. She had four brothers, and her father, a porter
with a hand-cart, had told her, in her childhood, of three aunts and
four uncles, who all led an existence of the baser sort.
After inspecting the sick man, she went, at full speed, to consult
Cerizet, telling him, in the first place, how she had found her
daughter, and then the reasons and indications which made her think
that her uncle Toupillier was hoarding a pile of gold in his mattress.
Mere Cardinal did not feel herself strong enough to seize upon the
property, legally or illegally, and she therefore came to confide in
Cerizet and get his advice.
So, then, the banker of the poor, like other scavengers, had, at last,
found diamonds in the slime in which he had paddled for the last four
years, being always on the watch for some such chance,--a chance, they
say, occasionally met with in the purlieus, which give birth to
heiresses in sabots. This was the secret of his unexpected gentleness
to la Peyrade, the man whose ruin he had vowed. It is easy to imagine
the anxiety with which he awaited the return of Madame Cardinal, to
whom this wily schemer of nefarious plots had given means to verify
her suspicions as to the existence of the hoarded treasure, promising
her complete success if she would trust him to obtain for her so rich
a harvest. He was not the man to shrink from a crime, above all, when
he saw that others could commit it, while he obtained the benefits.
"Well, monsieur," cried the fishwife, entering Cerizet's den with a
face as much inflamed by cupidity as by the haste of her movements,
"my uncle sleeps on more than a hundred thousand francs in gold, and I
am certain that those Perraches, by dint of nursing him, have smelt
the rat."
"Shared among forty heirs that won't be much to each," said Cerizet.
"Listen to me, Mere Cardinal: I'll marry your daughter; give her your
uncle's gold, and I'll guarantee to you a life-interest in the house
and the dividends from the money in the Funds."
"We sha'n't run any risk?"
"None, whatever."
"Agreed, then," said the widow Cardinal, holding out her hand to her
future son-in-law. "Six thousand francs a year; hey! what a fine life
I'll have."
"With a son-in-law like me!" added Cerizet.
"I shall be a bourgeoisie of Paris!"
"Now," resumed Cerizet, after a pause, "I must study the ground. Don't
leave your uncle alone a minute; tell the Perraches that you expect a
doctor. I'll be the doctor, and when I get there you must seem not to
know me."
"Aren't you sly, you old rogue," said Madame Cardinal, with a punch on
Cerizet's stomach by way of farewell.
An hour later, Cerizet, dressed in black, disguised by a rusty wig and
an artificially painted physiognomy, arrived at the house in the rue
Honore-Chevalier in the regulation cabriolet. He asked the porter to
tell him how to find the lodging of an old beggar named Toupillier.
"Is monsieur the doctor whom Madame Cardinal expects?" asked Perrache.
Cerizet had no doubt reflected on the gravity of the affair he was
undertaking, for he avoided giving an answer to that question.
"Is this the way?" he said, turning at random to one side of the
courtyard.
"No, monsieur," replied Perrache, who then took him to the back stairs
of the house, which led up to the wretched attic occupied by the
pauper.
Nothing remained for the inquisitive porter to do but to question the
driver of the cabriolet; to which employment we will leave him, while
we pursue our own inquiries elsewhere.
CHAPTER XV
THE DIFFICULTIES THAT CROP UP IN THE EASIEST OF THEFTS
The house in which Toupillier lived is one of those which have lost
half their depth, owing to the straightening of the line of the
street, the rue Honore-Chevalier being one of the narrowest in the
Saint-Sulpice quarter. The owner, forbidden by the law to repair it,
or to add new storeys, was compelled to let the wretched building in
the condition in which he bought it. It consisted of a first storey
above the ground-floor, surmounted by garrets, with two small wings
running back on either side. The courtyard thus formed ended in a
garden planted with trees, which was always rented to the occupant of
the first floor. This garden, separated by an iron railing from the
courtyard, would have allowed a rich owner to sell the front buildings
to the city, and to build a new house upon the courtyard; but the
whole of the first floor was let on an eighteen years' lease to a
mysterious personage, about whom neither the official policing of the
concierge nor the curiosity of the other tenants could find anything
to censure.
This tenant, now seventy years of age, had built, in 1829, an outer
stairway, leading from the right wing of the first floor to the
garden, so that he could get there without going through the
courtyard. Half the ground-floor was occupied by a book-stitcher, who
for the last ten years had used the stable and coach-house for
workshops. A book-binder occupied the other half. The binder and the
stitcher lived, each of them, in half the garret rooms over the front
building on the street. The garrets above the rear wings were
occupied, the one on the right by the mysterious tenant, the one on
the left by Toupillier, who paid a hundred francs a year for it, and
reached it by a dark staircase, lighted by small round windows. The
porte-cochere was made in the circular form indispensable in a street
so narrow that two carriages cannot pass in it.
Cerizet laid hold of the rope which served as a baluster, to climb the
species of ladder leading to the room where the so-called beggar was
dying,--a room in which the odious spectacle of pretended pauperism
was being played. In Paris, everything that is done for a purpose is
thoroughly done. Would-be paupers are as clever at mounting their
disguise as shopkeepers in preparing their show-windows, or sham rich
men in obtaining credit.
The floor had never been swept; the bricks had disappeared beneath
layers of dirt, dust, dried mud, and any and every thing thrown down
by Toupillier. A miserable stove of cast-iron, the pipe of which
entered a crumbling chimney, was the most apparent piece of furniture
in this hovel. In an alcove stood a bed, with tester and valence of
green serge, which the moths had transformed into lace. The window,
almost useless, had a heavy coating of grease upon its panes, which
dispensed with the necessity of curtains. The whitewashed walls
presented to the eye fuliginous tones, due to the wood and peat burned
by the pauper in his stove. On the fireplace were a broken
water-pitcher, two bottles, and a cracked plate. A worm-eaten chest of
drawers contained his linen and decent clothes. The rest of the
furniture consisted of a night-table of the commonest description,
another table, worth about forty sous, and two kitchen chairs with the
straw seats almost gone. The extremely picturesque costume of the
centenarian pauper was hanging from a nail, and below it, on the
floor, were the shapeless mat-weed coverings that served him for
shoes, the whole forming, with his amorphous old hat and knotty stick,
a sort of panoply of misery.
As he entered, Cerizet gave a rapid glance at the old man, whose head
lay on a pillow brown with grease and without a pillow-case; his
angular profile, like those which engravers of the last century were
fond of making out of rocks in the landscapes they engraved, was
strongly defined in black against the green serge hangings of the
tester. Toupillier, a man nearly six feet tall, was looking fixedly at
some object at the foot of his bed; he did not move on hearing the
groaning of the heavy door, which, being armed with iron bolts and a
strong lock, closed his domicile securely.
"Is he conscious?" said Cerizet, before whom Madame Cardinal started
back, not having recognized him till he spoke.
"Pretty nearly," she replied.
"Come out on the staircase, so that he doesn't hear us," whispered
Cerizet. "This is how we'll manage it," he continued, in the ear of
his future mother-in-law. "He is weak, but he isn't so very low; we
have fully a week before us. I'll send you a doctor who'll suit us,
--you understand? and later in the evening I'll bring you six
poppy-heads. In the state he's in, you see, a decoction of poppy-heads
will send him into a sound sleep. I'll send you a cot-bed on pretence of
your sleeping in the room with him. We'll move him from one bed to the
other, and when we've found the money there won't be any difficulty in
carrying it off. But we ought to know who the people are who live in
this old barrack. If Perrache suspects, as you think, about the money,
he might give an alarm, and so many tenants, so many spies, you
know--"
"Oh! as for that," said Madame Cardinal, "I've found out already that
Monsieur du Portail, the old man who occupies the first floor, has
charge of an insane woman; I heard their Dutch servant-woman, Katte,
calling her Lydie this morning. The only other servant is an old valet
named Bruneau; he does everything, except cook."
"But the binder and the stitcher down below," returned Cerizet, "they
begin work very early in the morning--Well, anyhow, we must study the
matter," he added, in the tone of a man whose plans are not yet
decided. "I'll go to the mayor's office of your arrondissement, and
get Olympe's register of birth, and put up the banns. The marriage
must take place a week from Saturday."
"How he goes it, the rascal!" cried the admiring Madame Cardinal,
pushing her formidable son-in-law by the shoulder.
As he went downstairs Cerizet was surprised to see, through one of the
small round windows, an old man, evidently du Portail, walking in the
garden with a very important member of the government, Comte Martial
de la Roche-Hugon. He stopped in the courtyard when he reached it, as
if to examine the old house, built in the reign of Louis XIV., the
yellow walls of which, though of freestone, were bent like the elderly
beggar they contained. Then he looked at the workshops, and counted
the workmen. The house was otherwise as silent as a cloister. Being
observed himself, Cerizet departed, thinking over in his mind the
various difficulties that might arise in extracting the sum hidden
beneath the dying man.
"Carry off all that gold at night?" he said to himself; "why, those
porters will be on the watch, and twenty persons might see us! It is
hard work to carry even twenty-five thousand francs of gold on one's
person."
Societies have two goals of perfection; the first is a state of
civilization in which morality equally infused and pervasive does not
admit even the idea of crime; the Jesuits reached that point, formerly
presented by the primitive Church. The second is the state of another
civilization in which the supervision of citizens over one another
makes crime impossible. The end which modern society has placed before
itself is the latter; namely, that in which a crime presents such
difficulties that a man must abandon all reasoning in order to commit
it. In fact, iniquities which the law cannot reach are not left
actually unpunished, for social judgment is even more severe than that
of courts. If a man like Minoret, the post-master at Nemours [see
"Ursule Mirouet"] suppresses a will and no one witnesses the act, the
crime is traced home to him by the watchfulness of virtue as surely as
a robbery is followed up by the detective police. No wrong-doing
passes actually unperceived; and wherever a lesion in rectitude takes
place the scar remains. Things can be no more made to disappear than
men; so carefully, in Paris especially, are articles and objects
ticketed and numbered, houses watched, streets observed, places spied
upon. To live at ease, crime must have a sanction like that of the
Bourse; like that conceded by Cerizet's clients; who never complained
of his usury, and, indeed, would have been troubled in mind if their
flayer were not in his den of a Tuesday.
"Well, my dear monsieur," said Madame Perrache, the porter's wife, as
he passed her lodge, "how do you find him, that friend of God, that
poor man?"
"I am not the doctor," replied Cerizet, who now decidedly declined
that role. "I am Madame Cardinal's business man. I have just advised
her to have a cot-bed put up, so as to nurse her uncle night and day;
though, perhaps, she will have to get a regular nurse."
"I can help her," said Madame Perrache. "I nurse women in childbed."
"Well, we'll see about it," said Cerizet; "I'll arrange all that. Who
is the tenant on your first floor?"
"Monsieur du Portail. He has lodged here these thirty years. He is a
man with a good income, monsieur; highly respectable, and elderly. You
know people who invest in the Funds live on their incomes. He used to
be in business. But it is more than eleven years now since he has been
trying to restore the reason of a daughter of one of his friends,
Mademoiselle Lydie de la Peyrade. She has the best advice, I can tell
you; the very first doctors in Paris; only this morning they had a
consultation. But so far nothing has cured her; and they have to watch
her pretty close; for sometimes she gets up and walks at night--"
"Mademoiselle Lydie de la Peyrade!" exclaimed Cerizet; "are you sure
of the name?"
"I've heard Madame Katte, her nurse, who also does the cooking, call
her so a thousand times, monsieur; though, generally, neither Monsieur
Bruneau, the valet, nor Madame Katte say much. It's like talking to
the wall to try and get any information out of them. We have been
porters here these twenty years and we've never found out anything
about Monsieur du Portail yet. More than that, monsieur, he owns the
little house alongside; you see the double door from here. Well, he
can go out that way and receive his company too, and we know nothing
about it. Our owner doesn't know anything more than we do; when people
ring at that door, Monsieur Bruneau goes and opens it."
"Then you didn't see the gentleman who is talking with him in the
garden go by this way?"
"Bless me! no, that I didn't!"
"Ah!" thought Cerizet as he got into the cabriolet, "she must be the
daughter of that uncle of Theodose. I wonder if du Portail can be the
secret benefactor who sent money from time to time to that rascal?
Suppose I send an anonymous letter to the old fellow, warning him of
the danger the barrister runs from those notes for twenty-five
thousand francs?"
An hour later the cot-bed had arrived for Madame Cardinal, to whom the
inquisitive portress offered her services to bring her something to
eat.
"Do you want to see the rector?" Madame Cardinal inquired of her
uncle.
She had noticed that the arrival of the bed seemed to draw him from
his somnolence.
"I want wine!" replied the pauper.
"How do you feel now, Pere Toupillier?" asked Madame Perrache, in a
coaxing voice.
"I tell you I want wine," repeated the old man, with an energetic
insistence scarcely to be expected of his feebleness.
"We must first find out if it is good for you, uncle," said Madame
Cardinal, soothingly. "Wait till the doctor comes."
"Doctor! I won't have a doctor!" cried Toupillier; "and you, what are
you doing here? I don't want anybody."
"My good uncle, I came to know if you'd like something tasty. I've got
some nice fresh soles--hey! a bit of fried sole, with a squeeze of
lemon on it?"
"Your fish, indeed!" cried Toupillier; "all rotten! That last you
brought me, more than six weeks ago, it is there in the cupboard; you
can take it away with you."
"Heavens! how ungrateful sick men are!" whispered the widow Cardinal
to Perrache.
Nevertheless, to exhibit solicitude, she arranged the pillow under the
patient's head, saying:--
"There! uncle, don't you feel better like that?"
"Let me alone!" shouted Toupillier, angrily; "I want no one here; I
want wine; leave me in peace."
"Don't get angry, little uncle; we'll fetch you some wine."
"Number six wine, rue des Canettes," cried the pauper.
"Yes, I know," replied Madame Cardinal; "but let me count out my
coppers. I want to get something better for you than that kind of
wine; for, don't you see, an uncle, he's a kind of father, and one
shouldn't mind what one does for him."
So saying, she sat down, with her legs apart, on one of the
dilapidated chairs, and poured into her apron the contents of her
pockets, namely: a knife, her snuff-box, two pawn-tickets, some crusts
of bread, and a handful of copper, from which she extracted a few
silver bits.
This exhibition, intended to prove her generous and eager devotion,
had no result. Toupillier seemed not to notice it. Exhausted by the
feverish energy with which he had demanded his favorite remedy, he
made an effort to change his position, and, with his back turned to
his two nurses, he again muttered: "Wine! wine!" after which nothing
more was heard of him but a stentorous breathing, that plainly showed
the state of his lungs, which were beginning to congest.
"I suppose I must go and fetch his wine!" said the Cardinal, restoring
to her pockets, with some ill-humor, the cargo she had just pulled out
of them.
"If you don't want to go--" began Madame Perrache, always ready to
offer her services.
The fishwife hesitated for a moment; then, reflecting that something
might be got out of a conversation with the wine-merchant, and sure,
moreover, that as long as Toupillier lay on his gold she could safely
leave him alone with the portress, she said:--
"Thank you, Madame Perrache, but I'd better make acquaintance with his
trades-folk."
Then, having spied behind the night-table a dirty bottle which might
hold about two quarts,--
"Did he say the rue des Canelles?" she inquired of the portress.
"Corner of the rue Guisarde," replied Madame Perrache. "Monsieur
Legrelu, a tall, fine man with big whiskers and no hair." Then,
lowering her voice, she added: "His number-six wine, you know, is
Roussillon, and the best, too. However, the wine-merchant knows; it is
enough if you tell him you have come from his customer, the pauper of
Saint-Sulpice."
"No need to tell me anything twice," said the Cardinal, opening the
door and making, as they say, a false exit. "Ah ca!" she said, coming
back; "what does he burn in his stove, supposing I want to heat some
remedy for him?"
"Goodness!" said the portress, "he doesn't make much provision for
winter, and here we are in the middle of summer!"
"And not a saucepan! not a pot, even! Gracious! what a way to live.
I'll have to fetch him some provisions; I hope nobody will see the
things I bring back; I'd be ashamed they should--"
"I'll lend you a hand-bag," said the portress, always ready and
officious.
"No, I'll buy a basket," replied the fishwife, more anxious about what
she expected to carry away than what she was about to bring home to
the pauper. "There must be some Auvergnat in the neighborhood who
sells wood," she added.
"Corner of the rue Ferou; you'll find one there. A fine establishment,
with logs of wood painted in a kind of an arcade all round the shop
--so like, you'd think they were going to speak to you."
Before going finally off, Madame Cardinal went through a piece of very
deep hypocrisy. We have seen how she hesitated about leaving the
portress alone with the sick man:--
"Madame Perrache," she said to her, "you won't leave him, the poor
darling, will you, till I get back?"
It may have been noticed that Cerizet had not decided on any definite
course of action in the new affair he was now undertaking. The part of
doctor, which for a moment he thought of assuming, frightened him, and
he gave himself out, as we have seen, to Madame Perrache as the
business agent of his accomplice. Once alone, he began to see that his
original idea complicated with a doctor, a nurse, and a notary,
presented the most serious difficulties. A regular will drawn in favor
of Madame Cardinal was not a thing to be improvised in a moment. It
would take some time to acclimatize the idea in the surly and
suspicious mind of the old pauper, and death, which was close at hand,
might play them a trick at any moment, and balk the most careful
preparations.
It was true that unless a will were made the income of eight thousand
francs on the Grand Livre and the house in the rue Notre-Dame de
Nazareth would go to the heirs-at-law, and Madame Cardinal would get
only her share of the property; but the abandonment of this visible
portion of the inheritance was the surest means of laying hands on the
invisible part of it. Besides, if the latter were secured, what
hindered their returning to the idea of a will?
Resolving, therefore, to confine the _operation_ to the simplest terms
at first, Cerizet summed them up in the manoeuvre of the poppy-heads,
already mentioned, and he was making his way back to Toupillier's
abode, armed with that single weapon of war, intending to give Madame
Cardinal further instructions, when he met her, bearing on her arm the
basket she had just bought; and in that basket was the sick man's
panacea.
"Upon my word!" cried the usurer, "is this the way you keep your
watch?"
"I had to go out and buy him wine," replied the Cardinal; "he is
howling like a soul in hell that he wants to be at peace, and to be
let alone, and get his wine! It is his one idea that Roussillon is
good for his disease. Well, when he has drunk it, I dare say he will
be quieter."
"You are right," said Cerizet, sententiously; "never contradict a sick
man. But this wine, you know, ought to be improved; by infusing these"
(and lifting one of the covers of the basket he slipped in the
poppies) "you'll procure the poor man a good, long sleep,--five or six
hours at least. This evening I'll come and see you, and nothing, I
think, need prevent us from examining a little closer those matters of
inheritance."
"I see," said Madame Cardinal, winking.
"To-night, then," said Cerizet, not wishing to prolong the
conversation.
He had a strong sense of the difficulty and danger of the affair, and
was very reluctant to be seen in the street conversing with his
accomplice.
Returning to her uncle's garret, Madame Cardinal found him still in a
state of semi-torpor; she relieved Madame Perrache, and bade her
good-bye, going to the door to receive a supply of wood, all sawed,
which she had ordered from the Auvergnat in the rue Ferou.
Into an earthen pot, which she had bought of the right size to fit
upon the hole in the stoves of the poor where they put their
soup-kettles, she now threw the poppies, pouring over them two-thirds
of the wine she had brought back with her. Then she lighted a fire
beneath the pot, intending to obtain the decoction agreed upon as
quickly as possible. The crackling of the wood and the heat, which
soon spread about the room, brought Toupillier out of his stupor.
Seeing the stove lighted he called out:--
"Who is making a fire here? Do you want to burn the house down?"
"Why, uncle," said the Cardinal, "it is wood I bought with my own
money, to warm your wine. The doctor doesn't want you to drink it
cold."
"Where is it, that wine?" demanded Toupillier, calming down a little
at the thought that the fire was not burning at his expense.
"It must come to a boil," said his nurse; "the doctor insisted upon
that. Still, if you'll be good I'll give you half a glass of it cold,
just to wet your whistle. I'll take that upon myself, but don't you
tell the doctor."
"Doctor! I won't have a doctor; they are all scoundrels, invented to
kill people," cried Toupillier, whom the idea of drink had revived.
"Come, give me the wine!" he said, in the tone of a man whose patience
had come to an end.
Convinced that though this compliance would do no harm it could do no
good, Madame Cardinal poured out half a glass, and while she gave it
with one hand to the sick man, with the other she raised him to a
sitting posture that he might drink it.
With his fleshless, eager fingers Toupillier clutched the glass,
emptied it at a gulp, and exclaimed:--
"Ah! that's a fine drop, that is! though you've watered it."
"You mustn't say that, uncle; I went and bought it myself of Pere
Legrelu, and I've given it you quite pure. But you let me simmer the
rest; the doctor said I might then give you all you wanted."
Toupillier resigned himself with a shrug of the shoulders. At the end
of fifteen minutes, the infusion being in condition to serve, Madame
Cardinal brought him, without further appeal, a full cup of it.
The avidity with which the old pauper drank it down prevented him from
noticing at first that the wine was drugged; but as he swallowed the
last drops he tasted the sickly and nauseating flavor, and flinging
the cup on the bed he cried out that some one was trying to poison
him.
"Poison! nonsense!" said the fishwife, pouring into her own mouth a
few drops of that which remained in the bottle, declaring to the old
man that if the wine did not seem to him the same as usual, it was
because his mouth had a "bad taste to it."
Before the end of the dispute, which lasted some time, the narcotic
began to take effect, and at the end of an hour the sick man was sound
asleep.
While idly waiting for Cerizet, an idea took possession of the
Cardinal's mind. She thought that in view of their comings and goings
with the treasure, it would be well if the vigilance of the Perrache
husband and wife could be dulled in some manner. Consequently, after
carefully flinging the refuse poppy-heads into the privy, she called
to the portress:--
"Madame Perrache, come up and taste his wine. Wouldn't you have
thought to hear him talk he was ready to drink a cask of it? Well, a
cupful satisfied him."
"Your health!" said the portress, touching glasses with the Cardinal,
who was careful to have hers filled with the unboiled wine. Less
accomplished as a gourmet than the old beggar, Madame Perrache
perceived nothing in the insidious liquid (cold by the time she drank
it) to make her suspect its narcotic character; on the contrary, she
declared it was "velvet," and wished that her husband were there to
have a share in the treat. After a rather long gossip, the two women
separated. Then, with the cooked meat she had provided for herself,
and the remains of the Roussillon, Madame Cardinal made a repast which
she finished off with a siesta. Without mentioning the emotions of the
day, the influence of one of the most heady wines of the country would
have sufficed to explain the soundness of her sleep; when she woke
darkness was coming on.
Her first care was to give a glance at her patient; his sleep was
restless, and he was dreaming aloud.
"Diamonds," he said; "those diamonds? At my death, but not before."
"Gracious!" thought Madame Cardinal, "that was the one thing lacking,
--diamonds! that he should have diamonds!"
Then, as Toupillier seemed to be in the grasp of a violent nightmare,
she leaned over him so as not to lose a word of his speech, hoping to
gather from it some important revelation. At this moment a slight rap
given to the door, from which the careful nurse had removed the key,
announced the arrival of Cerizet.
"Well?" he said, on entering.
"He has taken the drug. He's been sound asleep these two hours; just
now, in dreaming, he was talking of diamonds."
"Well," said Cerizet, "it wouldn't be surprising if we found some.
These paupers when they set out to be rich, like to pile up
everything."
"Ah ca!" cried the Cardinal, suddenly, "what made you go and tell Mere
Perrache that you were my man of business, and that you weren't a
doctor? I thought we agreed this morning that you were coming as a
doctor?"
Cerizet did not choose to admit that the usurpation of that title had
seemed to him dangerous; he feared to discourage his accomplice.
"I saw that the woman was going to propose a consultation," he
replied, "and I got out of it that way."
"Goodness!" exclaimed Madame Cardinal, "they say fine minds come
together; that was my dodge, too. Calling you my man of business
seemed to give that old pilferer a few ideas. Did they see you come
in, those porters?"
"I thought, as I went by," replied Cerizet, "that the woman was asleep
in her chair."
"And well she might be," said the Cardinal, significantly.
"What, really?" said Cerizet.
"Parbleu!" replied the fishwife; "what's enough for one is enough for
two; the rest of the stuff went that way."
"As for the husband, he was there," said Cerizet; "for he gave me a
gracious sign of recognition, which I could have done without."
"Wait till it is quite dark, and we'll play him a comedy that shall
fool him finely."
Accordingly, ten minutes later, the fishwife, with a vim that
delighted the usurer, organized for the innocent porter the comedy of
a _monsieur_ who would not, out of politeness, let her accompany him to
the door; she herself with equal politeness insisting. Appearing to
conduct the sham physician into the street gate she pretended that the
wind had blown out of her lamp, and under pretext of relighting it she
put out that of Perrache. All this racket, accompanied by exclamations
and a bewildering loquacity, was so briskly carried out that the
porter, if summoned before the police-court, would not have hesitated
to swear that the doctor, whose arrival he had witnessed, left the
house between nine and ten o'clock.
When the two accomplices were thus in tranquil possession of the field
of operations Madame Cardinal hung up her rabbit's-hair shawl before
the window to exclude all possible indiscretion on the part of a
neighbor. In the Luxembourg quarter life quiets down early. By ten
o'clock all the sounds in the house as well as those out of doors were
stilled, and Cerizet declared that the moment had come to go to work;
by beginning at once they were certain that the sleeper would remain
under the influence of the drug; besides, if the booty were found at
once, Madame Cardinal could, under pretence of a sudden attack on her
patient, which required her to fetch a remedy from the apothecary, get
the porter to open the street gate for her without suspicion. As all
porters pull the gate-cord from their beds, Cerizet would be able to
get away at the same time without notice.
Powerful in advice, Cerizet was a very incapable hand in action; and,
without the robust assistance of Mere Cardinal he could never have
lifted what might almost be called the corpse of the former
drum-major. Completely insensible, Toupillier was now an inert mass,
a dead-weight, which could, fortunately, be handled without much
precaution, and the athletic Madame Cardinal, gathering strength from
her cupidity, contrived, notwithstanding Cerizet's insufficient
assistance, to effect the transfer of her uncle from one bed to the
other.
On rummaging the bed from which the body was moved, nothing was found,
and Madame Cardinal, pressed by Cerizet to explain why she had
confidently asserted that her uncle "was lying on one hundred thousand
francs in gold," was forced to admit that a talk with Madame Perrache,
and her own fervid imagination were the sole grounds of her certainty.
Cerizet was furious; having for one whole day dallied with the idea
and hope of fortune, having, moreover, entered upon a dangerous and
compromising course of action, only to find himself, at the supreme
moment, face to face with--nothing! The disappointment was so bitter
that if he had not been afraid of the muscular strength of his future
mother-in-law, he would have rushed upon her with some frantic
intention.
His anger, however, spent itself in words. Harshly abused, Madame
Cardinal contented herself by remarking that all hope was not lost,
and then, with a faith that ought to have moved mountains, she set to
work to empty the straw from the mattress she had already vainly
explored in all directions. But Cerizet would not allow that extreme
measure; he remarked that after the autopsy of a straw mattress such
detritus would remain upon the floor as must infallibly give rise to
suspicion. But the Cardinal, who thought this caution ridiculous, was
determined to, at least, take apart the flock bedstead. The passion of
the search gave extraordinary vigilance to her senses, and as she
raised the wooden side-frame she heard the fall of some tiny object on
the floor. Seizing the light she began to search in the mound of filth
of all kinds that was under the bed, and finally laid her hand on a
bit of polished steel about half an inch long, the use of which was to
her inexplicable.
"That's a key!" cried Cerizet, who was standing beside her with some
indifference, but whose imagination now set off at a gallop.
"Ha! ha! you see I was right," cried the Cardinal. "But what can it
open?" she added, on reflection; "nothing bigger than a doll's house."
"No," said Cerizet, "it is a modern invention, and very strong locks
can be opened with that little instrument."
With a rapid glance he took in all the pieces of furniture in the
room; went to the bureau and pulled out the drawers; looked in the
stove, in the table; but nowhere did he find a lock to which the
little key could be adapted.
Suddenly the Cardinal had a flash of illumination.
"See here!" she said. "I remarked that the old thief, as he lay on his
bed, never took his eyes off the wall just opposite to him."
"A cupboard hidden in the wall!" cried Cerizet, seizing the light
eagerly; "it is not impossible!"
Examining attentively the door of the alcove, which was opposite the
bed's head, he could see nothing there but a vast accumulation of dust
and spiders' webs. He next employed the sense of touch, and began to
rap and sound the wall in all directions. At the spot to which
Toupillier's constant gaze was directed he thought he perceived in a
very narrow space a slight sonority, and he presently perceived that
he was rapping on wood. He then rubbed the spot vigorously with his
handkerchief, and beneath the thick layer of dust and dirt which he
thus removed he found a piece of oak plank carefully inserted in the
wall. On one side of this plank was a small round hole; it was that of
the lock which the key fitted!
While Cerizet was turning the key, which worked with great difficulty,
Madame Cardinal, holding the light, was pale and breathless; but, oh!
cruel deception! the cupboard, at last unlocked and open, showed only
an empty space, into which the light in her hand fell uselessly.
Allowing this bacchante to give vent to her despair by saluting her
much-beloved uncle with the harshest epithets, Cerizet quietly
inserted his arm into the cupboard, and after feeling it over at the
back, he cried out, "An iron safe!" adding, impatiently, "Give me more
light, Madame Cardinal."
Then, as the light did not penetrate to the depths of the cupboard, he
snatched the candle from the bottle, where, in default of a
candlestick, the Cardinal had stuck it, and, taking it in his hand,
moved it carefully over all parts of the iron safe, the existence of
which was now a certainty.
"There is no visible lock," he said. "There must be a secret opening."
"Isn't he sly, that old villain!" exclaimed Madame Cardinal, while
Cerizet's bony fingers felt the side of the safe over minutely.
"Ha!" he exclaimed, after groping for ten minutes, "I have it!"
During this time Madame Cardinal's life seemed actually suspended.
Under the pressure which Cerizet now applied, the iron side rose
quickly into the thickness of the wall above, and in the midst of a
mass of gold thrown pell-mell into a large excavation that was now
exposed to view, lay a case of red morocco, which, from its size and
appearance, gave promise of magnificent booty.
"I take the diamonds for myself," said Cerizet, when he had opened the
case and seen the splendid jewels it contained; "you won't know how to
get rid of them. I'll leave you the gold for your share. As for the
house and the money in the Funds, they are not worth the trouble it
would be to get the old fellow to make a will."
"Not so fast, my little man!" replied the Cardinal, who thought this
decision rather summary; "we will first count the money--"
"Hush!" exclaimed Cerizet, apparently listening to a sound.
"What is it?" asked the Cardinal.
"Don't you hear some one moving below?"
"No, I hear nothing."
Cerizet, making her a sign to be silent, listened attentively.
"I hear a step on the stairs," he said, a moment later.
Then he hastily replaced the morocco case, and made desperate but
unavailing efforts to lower the panel.
"Yes!" cried Madame Cardinal, terrified; "some one is really coming."
Then, fastening to a hope of safety, she added, "I dare say it is that
insane girl; they say she walks at night."
At any rate, the insane girl (if it were she) had a key to the room,
for a moment later, this key was inserted in the lock. With a rapid
glance Madame Cardinal measured the distance to the door; should she
have time to push the bolt? No; certain that it was then too late, so
she blew out the candle to give herself at least some chances in the
darkness.
Useless effort! the intruder who now appeared had brought a candle
with him.
When Madame Cerizet saw that she had to do with a small, old man of
puny appearance, she flung herself before him with flaming eyes, like
a lioness from whom the hunter is seeking to take her cubs.
"Be calm, my good woman," said the little man, in a jeering tone; "the
police are sent for; they will be here in a moment."
At the word "police" the Cardinal's legs gave way.
"But, monsieur," she said, "why the police? we are not robbers."
"No matter for that; if I were in your place I shouldn't wait for
them," said the little old man; "they make unfortunate mistakes
sometimes."
"Can I clear out?" asked the woman, incredulously.
"Yes, if you empty your pockets of anything which has, _by accident_,
got into them."
"Oh! my good monsieur, I haven't a thing in my hands or my pockets; I
wasn't here to harm any one,--only to nurse my poor dear uncle; you
can search me."
"Come, be off with you! that will do," said the old man.
Madame Cardinal did not oblige him to repeat the order, and she
rapidly disappeared down the staircase.
Cerizet made as though he would take the same road.
"You, monsieur, are quite another thing," said the little old man.
"You and I must talk together; but if you are tractable, the affair
between us can be settled amicably."
Whether it was that the narcotic had ceased to operate, or that the
noise going on about Toupillier put an end to his sleep, he now opened
his eyes and cast around him the glance of a man who endeavors to
remember where he is; then, seeing his precious cupboard open, he
found in the emotion that sight produced the strength to cry out two
or three times, "Help! help! robbers!" in a voice that was loud enough
to rouse the house.
"No, Toupillier," said the little old man; "you have not been robbed;
I came here in time to prevent it; nothing has been taken."
"Why don't you arrest that villain?" shouted the old pauper, pointing
to Cerizet.
"Monsieur is not a thief," replied the old man. "On the contrary, he
came up with me to lend assistance." Then, turning to Cerizet, he
added, in a low voice: "I think, my good friend, that we had better
postpone the interview I desire to have with you until to-morrow. Come
at ten o'clock to the adjoining house, and ask for Monsieur du
Portail. After what has passed this evening, there will, I ought to
warn you, be some danger to you in not accepting this conference. I
shall find you elsewhere, infallibly; for I have the honor to know who
you are; you are the man whom the Opposition journals were accustomed
to call 'the courageous Cerizet.'"
In spite of the profound sarcasm of this remark, Cerizet, perceiving
that he was not to be treated more rigorously than Madame Cardinal,
felt so pleased with this conclusion that he promised, very readily,
to keep the appointment, and then slipped away with all the haste he
could.
CHAPTER XVI
DU PORTAIL
The next day Cerizet did not fail to appear at the rendezvous given to
him. Examined, at first, through the wicket of the door, he was
admitted, after giving his name, into the house, and was ushered
immediately to the study of Monsieur du Portail, whom he found at his
desk.
Without rising, and merely making a sign to his guest to take a chair,
the little old man continued the letter he was then writing. After
sealing it with wax, with a care and precision that denoted a nature
extremely fastidious and particular, or else a man accustomed to
discharge diplomatic functions, du Portail rang for Bruneau, his
valet, and said, as he gave him the letter:--
"For the justice-of-peace of the arrondissement."
Then he carefully wiped the steel pen he had just used, restored to
their places, symmetrically, all the displaced articles on his desk,
and it was only when these little arrangements were completed that he
turned to Cerizet, and said:--
"You know, of course, that we lost that poor Monsieur Toupillier last
night?"
"No, really?" said Cerizet, putting on the most sympathetic air he
could manage. "This is my first knowledge of it."
"But you probably expected it. When one gives a dying man an immense
bowl of hot wine, which has also been narcotized,--for the Perrache
woman slept all night in a sort of lethargy after drinking a small
glass of it,--it is evident that the catastrophe has been hastened."
"I am ignorant, monsieur," said Cerizet, with dignity, "of what Madame
Cardinal may have given to her uncle. I have no doubt committed a
great piece of thoughtlessness in assisting this woman to obtain an
inheritance to which she assured me she had legal rights; but as to
attempting the life of that old pauper, I am quite incapable of such a
thing; nothing of the kind ever entered my mind."
"You wrote me this letter, I think," said du Portail, abruptly, taking
from beneath a bohemian glass bowl a paper which he offered to
Cerizet.
"A letter?" replied Cerizet, with the hesitation of a man who doesn't
know whether to lie or speak the truth.
"I am quite sure of what I say," continued du Portail. "I have a mania
for autographs, and I possess one of yours, obtained at the period
when the Opposition exalted you to the glorious rank of martyr. I have
compared the two writings, and I find that you certainly wrote me,
yesterday, the letter which you hold in your hand, informing me of the
money embarrassments of young la Peyrade at the present moment."
"Well," said Cerizet, "knowing that you had given a home to
Mademoiselle de la Peyrade, who is probably cousin of Theodose, I
thought I recognized in you the mysterious protector from whom, on
more than one occasion, my friend has received the most generous
assistance. Now, as I have a sincere affection for that poor fellow,
it was in his interests that I permitted myself--"
"You did quite right," interrupted du Portail. "I am delighted to have
fallen in with a friend of la Peyrade. I ought not to conceal from you
that it was this particular fact which protected you last night. But
tell me, what is this about notes for twenty-five thousand francs? Is
our friend so badly off in his affairs? Is he leading a dissipated
life?"
"On the contrary," replied Cerizet, "he's a puritan. Given to the
deepest piety, he did not choose to take, as a barrister, any other
cases but those of the poor. He is now on the point of making a rich
marriage."
"Ah! is he going to be married? and to whom?"
"To a Demoiselle Colleville, daughter of the secretary of the mayor of
the 12th arrondissement. In herself, the girl has no fortune, but a
certain Monsieur Thuillier, her godfather, member of the
Council-general of the Seine, has promised her a suitable 'dot.'"
"Who has handled this affair?"
"La Peyrade has been devoted to the Thuillier family, into which he
was introduced by Monsieur Dutocq, clerk of the justice-of-peace of
their arrondissement."
"But you wrote me that these notes were signed in favor of Monsieur
Dutocq. The affair is a bit of matrimonial brokerage, in short?"
"Well, something of that kind," replied Cerizet. "You know, monsieur,
that in Paris such transactions are very common. Even the clergy won't
disdain to have a finger in them."
"Is the marriage a settled thing?"
"Yes, and within the last few days especially."
"Well, my good sir, I rely on you to put an end to it. I have other
views for Theodose,--another marriage to propose to him."
"Excuse me!" said Cerizet, "to break up this marriage would make it
impossible for him to pay his notes; and I have the honor to call your
attention to the fact that these particular bills of exchange are
serious matters. Monsieur Dutocq is in the office of the
justice-of-peace; in other words, he couldn't be easily defeated in
such a matter."
"The debt to Monsieur Dutocq you shall buy off yourself," replied du
Portail. "Make arrangements with him to that effect. Should Theodose
prove reluctant to carry out my plans, those notes may become a useful
weapon in our hands. You will take upon yourself to sue him for them,
and you shall have no money responsibility in the matter. I will pay
you the amount of the notes for Dutocq, and your costs in suing
Theodose."
"You are square in business, monsieur," said Cerizet. "There's some
pleasure in being your agent. Now, if you think the right moment has
come, I should be glad if you would give me some better light on the
mission you are doing me the honor to place in my hands."
"You spoke just now," replied du Portail, "of the cousin of Theodose,
Mademoiselle Lydie de la Peyrade. This young woman, who is not in her
first youth, for she is nearly thirty, is the natural daughter of the
celebrated Mademoiselle Beaumesnil of the Theatre Francais and
Peyrade, the commissary-general of police under the Empire, and the
uncle of our friend. Until his death, which occurred suddenly, leaving
his daughter, whom he loved tenderly, without means of support, I was
bound to that excellent man with the warmest friendship."
Glad to show that he had some knowledge of du Portail's interior life,
Cerizet hastened to remark:--
"And you have secretly fulfilled the duties of that friendship,
monsieur; for, in taking into your home that interesting orphan you
assumed a difficult guardianship. Mademoiselle de la Peyrade's state
of health requires, I am told, a care not only affectionate, but
persevering."
"Yes," replied du Portail, "the poor girl, after the death of her
father, was so cruelly tried that her mind has been somewhat affected;
but a fortunate change has lately occurred in her condition, and only
yesterday I called in consultation Doctor Bianchon and the two
physicians-in-charge of Bicetre and the Salpetriere. These gentlemen
unanimously declare that marriage and the birth of a first child would
undoubtedly restore her to perfect health. You can readily understand
that the remedy is too easy and agreeable not to be attempted."
"Then," said Cerizet, "it is to Mademoiselle Lydie de la Peyrade, his
cousin, that you wish to marry Theodose."
"You have said it," returned du Portail, "and you must not think that
our young friend, if he accepts the marriage, will be called upon to
show a gratuitous devotion. Lydie is very agreeable in person; she has
talents, a charming disposition, and she can bring to bear, in her
husband's interest, a strong influence in public life. She has,
moreover, a pretty fortune, consisting of what her mother left her,
and of my entire property, which, having no heirs myself, I intend to
secure to her in the marriage contract. Besides all this, she has this
very night acquired a not inconsiderable legacy."
"What!" exclaimed Cerizet, "do you mean that old Toupillier--"
"By a will in his own handwriting, which I have here, that old pauper
constitutes her his sole legatee. You see, therefore, that I showed
some kindness in not proceeding against you and Madame Cardinal for
your little attempt last night; it was simply our property that you
were trying to pillage."
"Heavens!" cried Cerizet, "I won't pretend to excuse Madame Cardinal's
misconduct; and yet, as one of the legal heirs, dispossessed by a
stranger, she had, it seems to me, some right to the indulgence which
you certainly showed to her."
"In that you are mistaken," said du Portail; "the apparent liberality
of the old beggar to Mademoiselle de la Peyrade happens to be only a
restitution."
"A restitution!" exclaimed Cerizet, in a tone of curiosity.
"A restitution," repeated du Portail, "and nothing is easier than to
prove it. Do you remember the robbery of some diamonds from one of our
dramatic celebrities about ten years ago?"
"Yes," replied Cerizet. "I was manager of one of my newspapers at the
time, and I used to write the 'Paris items.' But stay, I remember, the
actress who lost them was Mademoiselle Beaumesnil."
"Precisely; the mother of Mademoiselle de la Peyrade."
"Consequently, this miserable old Toupillier--no, I remember that the
thief was convicted; his name was Charles Crochard. It was said, under
the rose, that he was the natural son of a great personage, the Comte
de Granville, attorney-general under the Restoration." [See "A Double
Life."]
"Well," said du Portail, "this is how it happened. The robbery was
committed in a house in the rue de Tournon, occupied by Mademoiselle
Beaumesnil. Charles Crochard, who was a handsome fellow, was said to
have the run of it--"
"Yes, yes," cried Cerizet, "I remember Mademoiselle Beaumesnil's
embarrassment when she gave her testimony--and also the total
extinction of voice that attacked her when the judge asked her age."
"The robbery," continued du Portail, "was audaciously committed in the
daytime; and no sooner did Charles Crochard get possession of the
casket than he went to the church of Saint-Sulpice, where he had an
appointment with an accomplice, who, being supplied with a passport,
was to start immediately with the diamonds for foreign parts. It so
chanced that on entering the church, instead of meeting the man he
expected, who was a trifle late, Charles Crochard came face to face
with a celebrated agent of the detective force, who was well known to
him, inasmuch as the young rascal was not at his first scrimmage with
the police. The absence of his accomplice, this encounter with the
detective, and, lastly, a rapid movement made by the latter, by the
merest chance, toward the door, induced the robber to fancy he was
being watched. Losing his head under this idea, he wanted, at any
cost, to put the casket out of his possession, knowing that if
arrested, as he expected, at the door of the church, it would be a
damning proof against him. Catching sight at that moment of
Toupillier, who was then the giver of holy water, 'My man,' said he,
making sure that no one overheard their colloquy, 'will you take care
of this little package for me? It is a box of lace. I am going near by
to a countess who is slow to pay her bill; and if I have the lace with
me she'll want to see it, for it is a new style, and she'll ask me to
leave it with her on credit, instead of paying the bill; therefore I
don't want to take it. But,' he added, 'be sure not to touch the paper
that wraps the box, for there's nothing harder than to do up a package
in the same folds--'"
"The booby!" cried Cerizet, naively; "why, that very caution would
make the man want to open it."
"You are an able casuist," said du Portail. "Well, an hour later,
Charles Crochard, finding that nothing happened to him, returned to
the church to obtain his deposit, but Toupillier was no longer there.
You can imagine the anxiety with which Charles Crochard attended early
mass the next day, and approached the giver of holy water, who was
there, sure enough, attending to his functions. But night, they say,
brings counsel; the worthy beggar audaciously declared that he had
received no package, and did not know what his interlocutor meant."
"And there was no possibility of arguing with him, for that would be
exposure," remarked Cerizet, who was not far from sympathizing in a
trick so boldly played.
"No doubt," resumed du Portail; "the robbery was already noised about,
and Toupillier, who was a very able fellow, had calculated that
Charles Crochard would not dare to publicly accuse him, for that would
reveal the theft. In fact, on his trial Charles Crochard never said a
word of his mishap, and during the six years he spent at the galleys
(he was condemned to ten, but four were remitted) he did not open his
lips to a single soul about the treachery of which he had been a
victim."
"That was pretty plucky," said Cerizet; the tale excited him, and he
showed openly that he saw the matter as an artist and a connoisseur.
"In that interval," continued du Portail, "Madame Beaumesnil died,
leaving her daughter a few fragments of a once great fortune, and the
diamonds which the will expressly stated Lydie was to receive 'in case
they were recovered.'"
"Ha! ha!" exclaimed Cerizet, "bad for Toupillier, because, having to
do with a man of your calibre--"
"Charles Crochard's first object on being liberated was vengeance on
Toupillier, and his first step was to denounce him to the police as
receiver of the stolen property. Taken in hand by the law, Toupillier
defended himself with such singular good-humor, being able to show
that no proof whatever existed against him, that the examining judge
let him off. He lost his place, however, as giver of holy water,
obtaining, with great difficulty, permission to beg at the door of the
church. For my part, I was certain of his guilt; and I managed to have
the closest watch kept upon him; though I relied far more upon myself.
Being a man of means and leisure, I stuck, as you may say, to the skin
of my thief, and did, in order to unmask him, one of the cleverest
things of my career. He was living at that time in the rue du
Coeur-Volant. I succeeded in becoming the tenant of the room adjoining
his; and one night, through a gimlet hole I had drilled in the partition,
I saw my man take the case of diamonds from a very cleverly contrived
hiding-place. He sat for an hour gazing at them and fondling them; he
made them sparkle in the light, he pressed them passionately to his
lips. The man actually loved those diamonds for themselves, and had
never thought of turning them to money."
"I understand," said Cerizet,--"a mania like that of Cardillac, the
jeweller, which has now been dramatized."
"That is just it," returned du Portail; "the poor wretch was in love
with that casket; so that when, shortly after, I entered his room and
told him I knew all, he proposed to me to leave him the life use of
what he called the consolation of his old age, pledging himself to
make Mademoiselle de la Peyrade his sole heir, revealing to me at the
same time the existence of a hoard of gold (to which he was adding
every day), and also the possession of a house and an investment in
the Funds."
"If he made that proposal in good faith," said Cerizet, "it was a
desirable one. The interest of the capital sunk in the diamonds was
more than returned by that from the other property."
"You now see, my dear sir," said du Portail, "that I was not mistaken
in trusting him. All my precautions were well taken; I exacted that he
should occupy a room in the house I lived in, where I could keep a
close eye upon him. I assisted him in making that hiding-place, the
secret of which you discovered so cleverly; but what you did not find
out was that in touching the spring that opened the iron safe you rang
a bell in my apartment, which warned me of any attempt that was made
to remove our treasure."
"Poor Madame Cardinal!" cried Cerizet, good-humoredly, "how far she
was from suspecting it!"
"Now here's the situation," resumed du Portail. "On account of the
interest I feel in the nephew of my old friend, and also, on account
of the relationship, this marriage seems to me extremely desirable; in
short, I unite Theodose to his cousin and her 'dot.' As it is possible
that, considering the mental state of his future wife, Theodose may
object to sharing my views, I have not thought it wise to make this
proposal directly to himself. You have suddenly turned up upon my
path; I know already that you are clever and wily, and that knowledge
induces me to put this little matrimonial negotiation into your hands.
Now, I think, you understand the matter thoroughly; speak to him of a
fine girl, with one little drawback, but, on the other hand, a
comfortable fortune. Do not name her to him; and come here and let me
know how the proposal has been taken."
"Your confidence delights me as much as it honors me," replied
Cerizet, "and I will justify it the best I can."
"We must not expect too much," said du Portail. "Refusal will be the
first impulse of a man who has an affair on hand elsewhere; but we
need not consider ourselves beaten. I shall not easily give up a plan
which I know to be just, even if I push my zeal so far as to put la
Peyrade under lock and key in Clichy. I am resolved not to take no for
his answer to a proposal of which, in the end, he cannot fail to see
the propriety. Therefore, in any case, buy up those notes from
Monsieur Dutocq."
"At par?" asked Cerizet.
"Yes, at par, if you cannot do better; we are not going to haggle over
a few thousand francs; only, when this transaction is arranged,
Monsieur Dutocq must pledge us either his assistance, or, at the very
least, his neutrality. After what you have said of the other marriage,
it is unnecessary for me to warn you that there is not a moment to
lose in putting our irons into the fire."
"Two days hence I have an appointment with la Peyrade," said Cerizet.
"We have a little matter of business of our own to settle. Don't you
think it would be best to wait till then, when I can introduce the
proposal incidentally? In case of resistance, I think that arrangement
would best conduce to OUR dignity."
"So be it," said du Portail; "it isn't much of a delay. Remember,
monsieur, that if you succeed you have, in place of a man able to
bring you to a stern account for your _imprudent assistance_ to Madame
Cardinal, a greatly obliged person, who will be ready at all times to
serve you, and whose influence is greater than is generally supposed."
After these friendly words, the pair separated with a thoroughly good
understanding, and well satisfied with each other.
CHAPTER XVII
IN WHICH THE LAMB DEVOURS THE WOLF
The evening before the day already agreed upon, Theodose received from
Cerizet the following note:--
"To-morrow, lease or no lease, Rocher de Cancale, half-past six
o'clock."
As for Dutocq, Cerizet saw him every day, for he was still his copying
clerk; he therefore gave him his invitation by word of mouth; but the
attentive reader must remark a difference in the hour named:
"Quarter-past-six, Rocher de Cancale," said Cerizet. It was evident,
therefore, that he wanted that fifteen minutes with Dutocq before the
arrival of la Peyrade.
These minutes the usurer proposed to employ in jockeying Dutocq in the
purchase of the notes; he fancied that if the proposition to buy them
were suddenly put before him without the slightest preparation it
might be more readily received. By not leaving the seller time to
bethink himself, perhaps he might lead him to loosen his grasp, and
the notes once bought below par, he could consider at his leisure
whether to pocket the difference or curry favor with du Portail for
the discount he had obtained. Let us say, moreover, that apart from
self-interest, Cerizet would still have endeavored to scrape a little
profit out of his friend; 'twas an instinct and a need of his nature.
He had as great a horror for straight courses as the lovers of English
gardens show in the lines of their paths.
Dutocq, having still a portion of the cost of his practice to pay off,
was forced to live very sparingly, so that a dinner at the Rocher de
Cancale was something of an event in the economy of his straitened
existence. He arrived, therefore, with that punctuality which
testifies to an interest in the occasion, and precisely at a quarter
past six he entered the private room of the restaurant where Cerizet
awaited him.
"It is queer," he said; "here we are returned to precisely the
situation in which we began our business relationship with la Peyrade,
--except, to be sure, that this present place of meeting of the three
emperors is more comfortable; I prefer the Tilsit of the rue
Montgorgeuil to the Tilsit of the Cheval Rouge."
"Faith!" said Cerizet, "I don't know that the results justify the
change, for, to be frank, where are the profits to _us_ in the scheme
of our triumvirate?"
"But," said Dutocq, "it was a bargain with a long time limit. It can't
be said that la Peyrade has lost much time in getting installed
--forgive the pun--at the Thuilleries. The scamp has made his way
pretty fast, you must own that."
"Not so fast but what his marriage," said Cerizet, "is at the present
moment a very doubtful thing."
"Doubtful!" cried Dutocq; "why doubtful?"
"Well, I am commissioned to propose to him another wife, and I'm not
sure that any choice is left to him."
"What the devil are you about, my dear fellow, lending your hand in
this way to another marriage when you know we have a mortgage on the
first?"
"One isn't always master of circumstances, my friend; I saw at once
when the new affair was laid before me that the one we had settled on
must infallibly go by the board. Consequently, I've tried to work it
round in our interests, yours and mine."
"Ah ca! do you mean they are pulling caps for this Theodose? Who is
the new match? Has she money?"
"The 'dot' is pretty good; quite as much as Mademoiselle
Colleville's."
"Then I wouldn't give a fig for it. La Peyrade has signed those notes
and he will pay them."
"Will he pay them? that's the question. You are not a business man,
neither is Theodose; it may come into his head to dispute the validity
of those notes. What security have we that if the facts about their
origin should come out, and the Thuillier marriage shouldn't come off,
the court of commerce mightn't annul them as 'obligations without
cause.' For my part, I should laugh at such a decision; I can stand
it; and, moreover, my precautions are taken; but you, as clerk to a
justice-of-peace, don't you see that such an affair would give the
chancellor a bone to pick with you?"
"But, my good fellow," said Dutocq, with the ill-humor of a man who
sees himself face to face with an argument he can't refute, "you seem
to have a mania for stirring up matters and meddling with--"
"I tell you again," said Cerizet, "this came to me; I didn't seek it;
but I saw at once that there was no use struggling against the
influence that is opposing us; so I chose the course of saving
ourselves by a sacrifice."
"A sacrifice! what sort of sacrifice?"
"Parbleu! I've sold my share of those notes, leaving those who bought
them to fight it out with Master barrister."
"Who is the purchaser?"
"Who do you suppose would step into my shoes unless it were the
persons who have an interest in this other marriage, and who want to
hold a power over Theodose, and control him by force if necessary."
"Then my share of the notes is equally important to them?"
"No doubt; but I couldn't speak for you until I had consulted you."
"What do they offer?"
"Hang it! my dear fellow, the same that I accepted. Knowing better
than you the danger of their competition I sold out to them on very
bad terms."
"Well, but what are they, those terms?"
"I gave up my shares for fifteen thousand francs."
"Come, come!" said Dutocq, shrugging his shoulders, "what you are
after is to recover a loss (if you made it) by a commission on my
share--and perhaps, after all, the whole thing is only a plot between
you and la Peyrade--"
"At any rate, my good friend, you don't mince your words; an infamous
thought comes into your head and you state it with charming frankness.
Luckily you shall presently hear me make the proposal to Theodose, and
you are clever enough to know by his manner if there has been any
connivance between us."
"So be it!" said Dutocq. "I withdraw the insinuation; but I must say
your employers are pirates; I call their proposal throttling people. I
have not, like you, something to fall back upon."
"Well, you poor fellow, this is how I reasoned: I said to myself, That
good Dutocq is terribly pressed for the last payment on his practice;
this will give him enough to pay it off at one stroke; events have
proved that there are great uncertainties about our
Theodose-and-Thuillier scheme; here's money down, live money, and
therefore it won't be so bad a bargain after all."
"It is a loss of two-fifths!"
"Come," said Cerizet, "you were talking just now of commissions. I see
a means of getting one for you if you'll engage to batter down this
Colleville marriage. If you will cry it down as you have lately cried
it up I shouldn't despair of getting you a round twenty thousand out
of the affair."
"Then you think that this new proposal will not be agreeable to la
Peyrade,--that he'll reject it? Is it some heiress on whom he has
already taken a mortgage?"
"All that I can tell you is that these people expect some difficulty
in bringing the matter to a conclusion."
"Well, I don't desire better than to follow your lead and do what is
disagreeable to la Peyrade; but five thousand francs--think of it!--it
is too much to lose."
At this moment the door opened, and a waiter ushered in the expected
guest.
"You can serve dinner," said Cerizet to the waiter; "we are all here."
It was plain that Theodose was beginning to take wing toward higher
social spheres; elegance was becoming a constant thought in his mind.
He appeared in a dress suit and varnished shoes, whereas his two
associates received him in frock-coats and muddy boots.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I think I am a little late, but that devil of a
Thuillier is the most intolerable of human beings about a pamphlet I
am concocting for him. I was unlucky enough to agree to correct the
proofs with him, and over every paragraph there's a fight. 'What I
can't understand,' he says, 'the public can't, either. I'm not a man
of letters, but I'm a practical man'; and that's the way we battle it,
page after page. I thought the sitting this afternoon would never
end."
"How unreasonable you are, my dear fellow," said Dutocq; "when a man
wants to succeed he must have the courage to make sacrifices. Once
married, you can lift your head."
"Ah, yes!" said la Peyrade with a sigh, "I'll lift it; for since the
day you made me eat this bread of anguish I've become terribly sick of
it."
"Cerizet," said Dutocq, "has a plan that will feed you more
succulently."
Nothing more was said at the moment, for justice had to be done to the
excellent fare ordered by Cerizet in honor of his coming lease. As
usually happens at dinners where affairs are likely to be discussed,
each man, with his mind full of them, took pains not to approach those
topics, fearing to compromise his advantages by seeming eager; the
conversation, therefore, continued for a long time on general
subjects, and it was not until the dessert was served that Cerizet
brought himself to ask la Peyrade what had been settled about the
terms of his lease.
"Nothing, my friend," replied Theodose.
"What! nothing? I certainly allowed you time enough to decide the
matter."
"Well, as to that, something is decided. There will not be any
principal tenant at all; Mademoiselle Brigitte is going to let the
house herself."
"That's a singular thing," said Cerizet, stiffly. "After your
agreement with me, I certainly did not expect such a result as this."
"How can I help it, my dear fellow? I agreed with you, barring
amendments on the other side; I wasn't able to give another turn to
the affair. In her natural character as a managing woman and a sample
of perpetual motion, Brigitte has reflected that she might as well
manage that house herself and put into her own pocket the profits you
proposed to make. I said all I could about the cares and annoyances
which she would certainly saddle upon herself. 'Oh! nonsense!' she
said; 'they'll stir my blood and do my health good!'"
"It is pitiable!" said Cerizet. "That poor old maid will never know
which end to take hold of; she doesn't imagine what it is to have an
empty house, and which must be filled with tenants from garret to
cellar."
"I plied her with all those arguments," replied la Peyrade; "but I
couldn't move her resolution. Don't you see, my dear democrats, you
stirred up the revolution of '89; you thought to make a fine
speculation in dethroning the noble by the bourgeois, and the end of
it is you are shoved out yourselves. This looks like paradox; but
you've found out now that the peasant and clodhopper isn't malleable;
he can't be forced down and kept under like the noble. The
aristocracy, on behalf of its dignity, would not condescend to common
cares, and was therefore dependent on a crowd of plebeian servitors to
whom it had to trust for three-fourths of the actions of its own life.
That was the reign of stewards and bailiffs, wily fellows, into whose
hands the interests of the great families passed, and who fed and grew
fat on the parings of the great fortunes they managed. But now-a-days,
utilitarian theories, as they call them, have come to the fore,--'We
are never so well served as by ourselves,' 'There's no shame in
attending to one's own business,' and many other bourgeois maxims
which have suppressed the role of intermediaries. Why shouldn't
Mademoiselle Brigitte Thuillier manage her own house when dukes and
peers go in person to the Bourse, where such men sign their own leases
and read the deeds before they sign them, and go themselves to the
notary, whom, in former days, they considered a servant."
During this time Cerizet had time to recover from the blow he had just
received squarely in the face, and to think of the transition he had
to make from one set of interests to the other, of which he was now
the agent.
"What you are declaiming there is all very clever," he said,
carelessly, "but the thing that proves to me our defeat is the fact
that you are not on the terms with Mademoiselle Thuillier you would
have us believe you are. She is slipping through your fingers; and I
don't think that marriage is anything like as certain as Dutocq and I
have been fancying it was."
"Well, no doubt," said la Peyrade, "there are still some touches to be
given to our sketch, but I believe it is well under way."
"And I think, on the contrary, that you have lost ground; and the
reason is simple: you have done those people an immense service; and
that's a thing never forgiven."
"Well, we shall see," said la Peyrade. "I have more than one hold upon
them."
"No, you are mistaken. You thought you did a brilliant thing in
putting them on a pinnacle, but the fact is you emancipated them;
they'll keep you now at heel. The human heart, particularly the
bourgeois heart, is made that way. If I were in your place I shouldn't
feel so sure of being on solid ground, and if something else turned up
that offered me a good chance--"
"What! just because I couldn't get you the lease of that house do you
want to knock everything to pieces?"
"No," said Cerizet, "I am not looking at the matter in the light of my
own interests; I don't doubt that as a trustworthy friend you have
done every imaginable thing to promote them; but I think the manner in
which you have been shoved aside a very disturbing symptom. It even
decides me to tell you something I did not intend to speak of;
because, in my opinion, when persons start a course they ought to keep
on steadily, looking neither forward nor back, and not allowing
themselves to be diverted to other aspirations."
"Ah ca!" cried la Peyrade, "what does all this verbiage mean? Have you
anything to propose to me? What's the price of it?"
"My dear Theodose," said Cerizet, paying no attention to the
impertinence, "you yourself can judge of the value of discovering a
young girl, well brought-up, adorned with beauty and talents and a
'dot' equal to that of Celeste, which she has in her own right, _plus_
fifty thousand francs' worth of diamonds (as Mademoiselle Georges says
on her posters in the provinces), and, moreover,--a fact which ought
to strike the mind of an ambitious man,--a strong political influence,
which she can use for a husband."
"And this treasure you hold in your hand?" said la Peyrade, in a tone
of incredulity.
"Better still, I am authorized to offer it to you; in fact, I might
say that I am charged to do so."
"My friend, you are poking fun at me; unless, indeed, this phoenix has
some hideous or prohibitory defect."
"Well, I'll admit," said Cerizet, "that there is a slight objection,
not on the score of family, for, to tell the truth, the young woman
has none--"
"Ah!" said la Peyrade, "a natural child--Well, what next?"
"Next, she is not so very young,--something like twenty-nine or so;
but there's nothing easier than to turn an elderly girl into a young
widow if you have imagination."
"Is that all the venom in it?"
"Yes, all that is irreparable."
"What do you mean by that? Is it a case of rhinoplasty?"
Addressed to Cerizet the word had an aggressive air, which, in fact,
was noticeable since the beginning of the dinner in the whole manner
and conversation of the barrister. But it did not suit the purpose of
the negotiator to resent it.
"No," he replied, "our nose is as well made as our foot and our waist;
but we may, perhaps, have a slight touch of hysteria."
"Oh! very good," said la Peyrade; "and as from hysteria to insanity
there is but a step--"
"Well, yes," interrupted Cerizet, hastily, "sorrows have affected our
brain slightly; but the doctors are unanimous in their diagnosis; they
all say that after the birth of the first child not a trace will
remain of this little trouble."
"I am willing to admit that doctors are infallible," replied la
Peyrade; "but, in spite of your discouragement, you must allow me, my
friend, to persist in my suit to Mademoiselle Colleville. Perhaps it
is ridiculous to confess it, but the truth is I am gradually falling
in love with that little girl. It isn't that her beauty is
resplendent, or that the glitter of her 'dot' has dazzled me, but I
find in that child a great fund of sound sense joined to simplicity;
and, what to mind is of greater consequence, her sincere and solid
piety attracts me; I think a husband ought to be very happy with her."
"Yes," said Cerizet, who, having been on the stage, may very well have
known his Moliere, "this marriage will crown your wishes with all
good; it will be filled with sweetness and with pleasures."
The allusion to Tartuffe was keenly felt by la Peyrade, who took it up
and said, hotly:--
"The contact with innocence will disinfect me of the vile atmosphere
in which I have lived too long."
"And you will pay your notes of hand," added Cerizet, "which I advise
you to do with the least possible delay; for Dutocq here was saying to
me just now that he would like to see the color of your money."
"I? not at all," interposed Dutocq. "I think, on the contrary, that
our friend has a right to the delay."
"Well," said la Peyrade, "I agree with Cerizet. I hold that the less a
debt is due, and therefore the more insecure and open to contention it
is, the sooner one ought to free one's self by paying it."
"But, my dear la Peyrade," said Dutocq, "why take this bitter tone?"
Pulling from his pocket a portfolio, la Peyrade said:--
"Have you those notes with you, Dutocq?"
"Faith! no, my dear fellow," replied Dutocq, "I don't carry them about
with me; besides, they are in Cerizet's hands."
"Well," said the barrister, rising, "whenever you come to my house
I'll pay you on the nail, as Cerizet can tell you."
"What! are you going to leave us without your coffee?" said Cerizet,
amazed to the last degree.
"Yes; I have an arbitration case at eight o'clock. Besides, we have
said all we had to say. You haven't your lease, but you've got your
twenty five thousand francs in full, and those of Dutocq are ready for
him whenever he chooses to come to my office. I see nothing now to
prevent me from going where my private business calls me, and I
therefore very cordially bid you good-bye."
"Ah ca! Dutocq," cried Cerizet, as la Peyrade disappeared, "this means
a rupture."
"Prepared with the utmost care," added Dutocq. "Did you notice the air
with which he pulled out that pocket-book?"
"But where the devil," said the usurer, "could he have got the money?"
"Probably," replied Dutocq, sarcastically, "where he got that with
which he paid you in full for those notes you sold at a sacrifice."
"My dear Dutocq," said Cerizet, "I'll explain to you the circumstances
under which that insolent fellow freed himself, and you'll see if he
didn't rob me of fifteen thousand francs."
"Possibly, but you, my worthy clerk, were trying to get ten thousand
away from me."
"No, no; I was positively ordered to buy up your claim; and you ought
to remember that my offer had risen to twenty thousand when Theodose
came in."
"Well," said Dutocq, "when we leave here we'll go to your house, where
you will give me those notes; for, you'll understand that to-morrow
morning, at the earliest decent hour, I shall go to la Peyrade's
office; I don't mean to let his paying humor cool."
"And right you are; for I can tell you now that before long there'll
be a fine upset in his life."
"Then the thing is really serious--this tale of a crazy woman you want
him to marry? I must say that in his place, with these money-matters
evidently on the rise, I should have backed out of your proposals just
as he did. Ninas and Ophelias are all very well on the stage, but in a
home--"
"In a home, when they bring a 'dot,' we can be their guardian,"
replied Cerizet, sententiously. "In point of fact, we get a fortune
and not a wife."
"Well," said Dutocq, "that's one way to look at it."
"If you are willing," said Cerizet, "let us go and take our coffee
somewhere else. This dinner has turned out so foolishly that I want to
get out of this room, where there's no air." He rang for the waiter.
"Garcon!" he said, "the bill."
"Monsieur, it is paid."
"Paid! by whom?"
"By the gentleman who just went out."
"But this is outrageous," cried Cerizet. "I ordered the dinner, and
you allow some one else to pay for it!"
"It wasn't I, monsieur," said the waiter; "the gentleman went and paid
the 'dame du comptoir'; she must have thought it was arranged between
you. Besides, it is not so uncommon for gentlemen to have friendly
disputes about paying."
"That's enough," said Cerizet, dismissing the waiter.
"Won't these gentlemen take their coffee?--it is paid for," said the
man before he left the room.
"A good reason for not taking it," replied Cerizet, angrily. "It is
really inconceivable that in a house of this kind such an egregious
blunder should be committed. What do you think of such insolence?" he
added, when the waiter had left the room.
"Bah!" exclaimed Dutocq, taking his hat, "it is a schoolboy
proceeding; he wanted to show he had money; it is easy to see he never
had any before."
"No, no! that's not it," said Cerizet; "he meant to mark the rupture.
'I will not owe you even a dinner,' is what he says to me."
"But, after all," said Dutocq, "this banquet was given to celebrate
your enthronement as principal tenant of the grand house. Well, he has
failed to get you the lease, and I can understand that his conscience
was uneasy at letting you pay for a dinner which, like those notes of
mine, were an 'obligation without cause.'"
Cerizet made no reply to this malicious observation. They had reached
the counter where reigned the dame who had permitted the improper
payment, and, for the sake of his dignity, the usurer thought it
proper to make a fuss. After which the two men departed, and the
copying-clerk took his employer to a low coffee-house in the Passage
du Saumon. There Cerizet recovered his good-humor; he was like a fish
out of water suddenly returned to his native element; for he had
reached that state of degradation when he felt ill at ease in places
frequented by good society; and it was with a sort of sensuous
pleasure that he felt himself back in the vulgar place where they were
noisily playing pool for the benefit of a "former conqueror of the
Bastille."
In this establishment Cerizet enjoyed the fame of being a skilful
billiard-player, and he was now entreated to take part in a game
already begun. In technical language, he "bought his ball"; that is,
one of the players sold him his turn and his chances. Dutocq profited
by this arrangement to slip away, on pretence of inquiring for a sick
friend.
Presently, in his shirt-sleeves, with a pipe between his lips, Cerizet
made one of those masterly strokes which bring down the house with
frantic applause. As he waited a moment, looking about him
triumphantly, his eye lighted on a terrible kill-joy. Standing among
the spectators with his chin on his cane, du Portail was steadily
watching him.
A tinge of red showed itself in Cerizet's cheeks. He hesitated to bow
or to recognize the old gentleman, a most unlikely person to meet in
such a place. Not knowing how to take the unpleasant encounter, he
went on playing; but his hand betrayed his uneasiness, and presently
an unlucky stroke threw him out of the game. While he was putting on
his coat in a tolerably ill-humor, du Portail passed, almost brushing
him, on his way to the door.
"Rue Montmartre, at the farther end of the Passage," said the old man,
in a low tone.
When they met, Cerizet had the bad taste to try to explain the
disreputable position in which he had just been detected.
"But," said du Portail, "in order to see you there, I had to be there
myself."
"True," returned Cerizet. "I was rather surprised to see a quiet
inhabitant of the Saint-Sulpice quarter in such a place."
"It merely proves to you," said the little old man, in a tone which
cut short all explanation, and all curiosity, "that I am in the habit
of going pretty nearly everywhere, and that my star leads me into the
path of those persons whom I wish to meet. I was thinking of you at
the very moment you came in. Well, what have you done?"
"Nothing good," replied Cerizet. "After playing me a devilish trick
which deprived me of a magnificent bit of business, our man rejected
your overture with scorn. There is no hope whatever in that claim of
Dutocq's; for la Peyrade is chock-full of money; he wanted to pay the
notes just now, and to-morrow morning he will certainly do so."
"Does he regard his marriage to this Demoiselle Colleville as a
settled thing?"
"He not only considers it settled, but he is trying now to make people
believe it is a love-match. He rattled off a perfect tirade to
convince me that he is really in love."
"Very well," said du Portail, wishing, perhaps, to show that he could,
on occasion, use the slang of a low billiard-room, "'stop the charge'"
(meaning: Do nothing more); "I will undertake to bring monsieur to
reason. But come and see me to-morrow, and tell me all about the
family he intends to enter. You have failed in this affair; but don't
mind that; I shall have others for you."
So saying, he signed to the driver of an empty citadine, which was
passing, got into it, and, with a nod to Cerizet, told the man to
drive to the rue Honore-Chevalier.
As Cerizet walked down the rue Montmartre to regain the Estrapade
quarter, he puzzled his brains to divine who that little old man with
the curt speech, the imperious manner, and a tone that seemed to cast
upon all those with whom he spoke a boarding-grapnel, could be; a man,
too, who came from such a distance to spend his evening in a place
where, judging by his clothes alone, he had no business to be.
Cerizet had reached the Market without finding any solution to that
problem, when he was roughly shaken out of it by a heavy blow in the
back. Turning hastily, he found himself in presence of Madame
Cardinal, an encounter with whom, at a spot where she came every
morning to get fish to peddle, was certainly not surprising.
Since that evening in Toupillier's garret, the worthy woman, in spite
of the clemency so promptly shown to her, had judged it imprudent to
make other than very short apparitions in her own domicile, and for
the last two days she had been drowning among the liquor-dealers
(called "retailers of comfort") the pangs of her defeat. With flaming
face and thickened voice she now addressed her late accomplice:--
"Well, papa," she said, "what happened after I left you with that
little old fellow?"
"I made him understand in a very few words," replied the banker of the
poor, "that it was all a mistake as to me. In this affair, my dear
Madame Cardinal, you behaved with a really unpardonable heedlessness.
How came you to ask my assistance in obtaining your inheritance from
your uncle, when with proper inquiry you might have known there was a
natural daughter, in whose favor he had long declared he should make a
will? That little old man, who interrupted you in your foolish attempt
to anticipate your legacy, was no other than the guardian of the
daughter to whom everything is left."
"Ha! guardian, indeed! a fine thing, guardian!" cried the Cardinal.
"To talk of a woman of my age, just because I wanted to see if my
uncle owned anything at all, to talk to _me_ of the police! It's
hateful! it's _disgusting_!"
"Come, come!" said Cerizet, "you needn't complain; you got off
cheaply."
"Well, and you, who broke the locks and said you were going to take
the diamonds, under color of marrying my daughter! Just as if she
would have you,--a legitimate daughter like her! 'Never, mother,' said
she; 'never will I give my heart to a man with such a nose.'"
"So you've found her, have you?" said Cerizet.
"Not until last night. She has left her blackguard of a player, and
she is now, I flatter myself, in a fine position, eating money; has
her citadine by the month, and is much respected by a barrister who
would marry her at once, but he has got to wait till his parents die,
for the father happens to be mayor, and the government wouldn't like
it."
"What mayor?"
"11th arrondissement,--Minard, powerfully rich, used to do a business
in cocoa."
"Ah! very good! very good! I know all about him. You say Olympe is
living with his son?"
"Well, not to say living together, for that would make talk, though he
only sees her with good motives. He lives at home with his father, but
he has bought their furniture, and has put it, and my daughter, too,
into a lodging in the Chausee d'Antin; stylish quarter, isn't it?"
"It seems to me pretty well arranged," said Cerizet; "and as Heaven,
it appears, didn't destine us for each other--"
"No, yes, well, that's how it was; and I think that girl is going to
give me great satisfaction; and there's something I want to consult
you about."
"What?" demanded Cerizet.
"Well, my daughter being in luck, I don't think I ought to continue to
cry fish in the streets; and now that my uncle has disinherited me, I
have, it seems to me, a right to an 'elementary allowance.'"
"You are dreaming, my poor woman; your daughter is a minor; it is you
who ought to be feeding her; the law doesn't require her to give you
aliment."
"Then do you mean," said Madame Cardinal, "that those who have nothing
are to give to those who have much? A fine thing such a law as that!
It's as bad as guardians who, for nothing at all, talk about calling
the police. Yes! I'd like to see 'em calling the police to me! Let 'em
guillotine me! It won't prevent my saying that the rich are swindlers;
yes, swindlers! and the people ought to make another revolution to get
their rights; and _then_, my lad, you, and my daughter, and barrister
Minard, and that little old guardian, you'll all come down under it--"
Perceiving that his ex-mother-in-law was reaching stage of exaltation
that was not unalarming, Cerizet hastened to get away, her epithets
pursuing him for more than a hundred feet; but he comforted himself by
thinking that he would make her pay for them the next time she came to
his back to ask for a "convenience."
CHAPTER XVIII
SET A SAINT TO CATCH A SAINT
As he approached his own abode, Cerizet, who was nothing so little as
courageous, felt an emotion of fear. He perceived a form ambushed near
the door, which, as he came nearer, detached itself as if to meet him.
Happily, it was only Dutocq. He came for his notes. Cerizet returned
them in some ill-humor, complaining of the distrust implied in a visit
at such an hour. Dutocq paid no attention to this sensitiveness, and
the next morning, very early, he presented himself at la Peyrade's.
La Peyrade paid, as he had promised, on the nail, and to a few
sentinel remarks uttered by Dutocq as soon as the money was in his
pocket, he answered with marked coldness. His whole external
appearance and behavior was that of a slave who has burst his chain
and has promised himself not to make a gospel use of his liberty.
As he conducted his visitor to the door, the latter came face to face
with a woman in servant's dress, who was just about to ring the bell.
This woman was, apparently, known to Dutocq, for he said to her:--
"Ha ha! little woman; so we feel the necessity of consulting a
barrister? You are right; at the family council very serious matters
were brought up against you."
"Thank God, I fear no one. I can walk with my head up," said the
person thus addressed.
"So much the better for you," replied the clerk of the
justice-of-peace; "but you will probably be summoned before the judge
who examines the affair. At any rate, you are in good hands here; and
my friend la Peyrade will advise you for the best."
"Monsieur is mistaken," said the woman; "it is not for what he thinks
that I have come to consult a lawyer."
"Well, be careful what you say and do, my dear woman, for I warn you
you are going to be finely picked to pieces. The relations are furious
against you, and you can't get the idea out of their heads that you
have got a great deal of money."
While speaking thus, Dutocq kept his eye on Theodose, who bore the
look uneasily, and requested his client to enter.
Here follows a scene which had taken place the previous afternoon
between this woman and la Peyrade.
La Peyrade, we may remember, was in the habit of going to early mass
at his parish church. For some little time he had felt himself the
object of a singular attention which he could not explain on the part
of the woman whom we have just seen entering his office, who daily
attended the church at, as Dorine says, his "special hour." Could it
be for love? That explanation was scarcely compatible with the
maturity and the saintly, beatific air of this person, who, beneath a
plain cap, called "a la Janseniste," by which fervent female souls of
that sect were recognized, affected, like a nun, to hide her hair. On
the other hand, the rest of her clothing was of a neatness that was
almost dainty, and the gold cross at her throat, suspended by a black
velvet ribbon, excluded the idea of humble and hesitating mendicity.
The morning of the day on which the dinner at the Rocher de Cancale
was to take place, la Peyrade, weary of a performance which had ended
by preoccupying his mind, went up to the woman and asked her
pointblank if she had any request to make of him.
"Monsieur," she answered, in a tone of solemnity, "is, I think, the
celebrated Monsieur de la Peyrade, the advocate of the poor?"
"I am la Peyrade; and I have had, it is true, an opportunity to render
services to the indigent persons of this quarter."
"Would it, then, be asking too much of monsieur's goodness that he
should suffer me to consult him?"
"This place," replied la Peyrade, "is not well chosen for such
consultation. What you have to say to me seems important, to judge by
the length of time you have been hesitating to speak to me. I live
near here, rue Saint-Dominique d'Enfer, and if you will take the
trouble to come to my office--"
"It will not annoy monsieur?"
"Not in the least; my business is to hear clients."
"At what hour--lest I disturb monsieur--?"
"When you choose; I shall be at home all the morning."
"Then I will hear another mass, at which I can take the communion. I
did not dare to do so at this mass, for the thought of speaking to
monsieur so distracted my mind. I will be at monsieur's house by eight
o'clock, when I have ended my meditation, if that hour does not
inconvenience him."
"No; but there is no necessity for all this ceremony," replied la
Peyrade, with some impatience.
Perhaps a little professional jealousy inspired his ill-humor, for it
was evident that he had to do with an antagonist who was capable of
giving him points.
At the hour appointed, not a minute before nor a minute after, the
pious woman rang the bell, and the barrister having, not without some
difficulty, induced her to sit down, he requested her to state her
case. She was then seized with that delaying little cough with which
we obtain a respite when brought face to face with a difficult
subject. At last, however, she compelled herself to approach the
object of her visit.
"It is to ask monsieur," she said, "if he would be so very good as to
inform me whether it is true that a charitable gentleman, now
deceased, has bequeathed a fund to reward domestic servants who are
faithful to their masters."
"Yes," replied la Peyrade; "that is to say, Monsieur de Montyon
founded 'prizes for virtue,' which are frequently given to zealous and
exemplary domestic servants. But ordinary good conduct is not
sufficient; there must be some act or acts of great devotion, and
truly Christian self-abnegation."
"Religion enjoins humility upon us," replied the pious woman, "and
therefore I dare not praise myself; but inasmuch as for the last
twenty years I have lived in the service of an old man of the dullest
description, a savant, who has wasted his substance on inventions, so
that I myself have had to feed and clothe him, persons have thought
that I am not altogether undeserving of that prize."
"It is certainly under such conditions that the Academy selects its
candidates," said la Peyrade. "What is your master's name?"
"Pere Picot; he is never called otherwise in our quarter; sometimes he
goes out into the streets as if dressed for the carnival, and all the
little children crowd about him, calling out: 'How d'ye do, Pere
Picot! Good-morning, Pere Picot!' But that's how it is; he takes no
care of his dignity; he goes about full of his own ideas; and though I
kill myself trying to give him appetizing food, if you ask him what he
has had for his dinner he can't tell you. Yet he's a man full of
ability, and he has taught good pupils. Perhaps monsieur knows young
Phellion, a professor in the College of Saint-Louis; he was one of his
scholars, and he comes to see him very often."
"Then," said la Peyrade, "your master is a mathematician?"
"Yes, monsieur; mathematics have been his bane; they have flung him
into a set of ideas which don't seem to have any common-sense in them
ever since he has been employed at the Observatory, near here."
"Well," said la Peyrade, "you must bring testimony proving your long
devotion to this old man, and I will then draw up a memorial to the
Academy and take the necessary steps to present it."
"How good monsieur is!" said the pious woman, clasping her hands; "and
if he would also let me tell him of a little difficulty--"
"What is it?"
"They tell me, monsieur, that to get this prize persons must be really
very poor."
"Not exactly; still, the Academy does endeavor to choose whose who are
in straitened circumstances, and who have made sacrifices too heavy
for their means."
"Sacrifices! I think I may indeed say I have made sacrifices, for the
little property I inherited from my parents has all been spent in
keeping the old man, and for fifteen years I have had no wages, which,
at three hundred francs a year and compound interest, amount now to a
pretty little sum; as monsieur, I am sure, will agree."
At the words "compound interest," which evidenced a certain amount of
financial culture, la Peyrade looked at this Antigone with increased
attention.
"In short," he said, "your difficulty is--"
"Monsieur will not think it strange," replied the saintly person, "that
a very rich uncle dying in England, who had never done anything for
his family in his lifetime, should have left me twenty-five thousand
francs."
"Certainly," said the barrister, "there's nothing in that but what is
perfectly natural and proper."
"But, monsieur, I have been told that the possession of this money
will prevent the judges from considering my claims to the prize."
"Possibly; because seeing you in possession of a little competence,
the sacrifices which you apparently intend to continue in favor of
your master will be less meritorious."
"I shall never abandon him, poor, dear man, in spite of his faults,
though I know that this poor little legacy which Heaven has given me
is in the greatest danger from him."
"How so?" asked la Peyrade, with some curiosity.
"Eh! monsieur, let him only get wind of that money, and he'd snap it
up at a mouthful; it would all go into his inventions of perpetual
motion and other machines of various kinds which have already ruined
him, and me, too."
"Then," said la Peyrade, "your desire is that this legacy should
remain completely unknown, not only to your master but to the judges
of the Academy?"
"How clever monsieur is, and how well he understands things!" she
replied, smiling.
"And also," continued the barrister, "you don't want to keep that
money openly in your possession?"
"For fear my master should find it out and get it away from me?
Exactly. Besides, as monsieur will understand, I shouldn't be sorry,
in order to supply the poor dear man with extra comforts, that the sum
should bear interest."
"And the highest possible interest," said the barrister.
"Oh! as for that, monsieur, five or six per cent."
"Very good; then it is not only about the memorial to the Academy for
the prize of virtue, but also about an investment of your legacy that
you have so long been desirous of consulting me?"
"Monsieur is so kind, so charitable, so encouraging!"
"The memorial, after I have made a few inquiries, will be easy enough;
but an investment, offering good security, the secret of which you
desire to keep, is much less readily obtained."
"Ah! if I dared to--" said the pious woman, humbly.
"What?" asked la Peyrade.
"Monsieur understands me?"
"I? not the least in the world."
"And yet I prayed earnestly just now that monsieur might be willing to
keep this money for me. I should feel such confidence if it were in
his hands; I know he would return it to me, and never speak of it."
La Peyrade gathered, at this instant, the fruit of his comedy of legal
devotion to the necessitous classes. The choir of porters chanting his
praises to the skies could alone have inspired this servant-woman with
the boundless confidence of which he found himself the object. His
thoughts reverted instantly to Dutocq and his notes, and he was not
far from thinking that this woman had been sent to him by Providence.
But the more he was inclined to profit by this chance to win his
independence, the more he felt the necessity of seeming to yield only
to her importunity; consequently his objections were many.
Moreover, he had no great belief in the character of his client, and
did not care, as the common saying is, to uncover Saint Peter to cover
Saint Paul; in other words, to substitute for a creditor who, after
all, was his accomplice, a woman who might at any time become exacting
and insist in repayment in some public manner that would injure his
reputation. He decided, therefore, to play the game with a high hand.
"My good woman," he said, "I am not in want of money, and I am not
rich enough to pay interest on twenty-five thousand francs for which I
have no use. All that I can do for you is to place that sum, in my
name, with the notary Dupuis. He is a religious man; you can see him
every Sunday in the warden's pew in our church. Notaries, you know,
never give receipts, therefore I could not give you one myself; I can
only promise to leave among my papers, in case of death, a memorandum
which will secure the restitution of the money into your hands. The
affair, you see, is one of blind confidence, and I am very unwilling
to make it. If I do so, it is only to oblige a person whose piety and
the charitable use she intends to make of the proceeds of her little
fortune entitle her to my good-will."
"If monsieur thinks that the matter cannot be otherwise arranged--"
"This appears to me the only possible way," said la Peyrade. "I shall
hope to get you six per cent interest, and you may rely that it will
be paid with the utmost regularity. But remember, six months, or even
a year, may elapse before the notary will be in a position to repay
this money, because notaries invest such trust funds chiefly in
mortgages which require a certain time to mature. Now, when you have
obtained the prize for virtue, which, according to all appearance, I
can readily do for you, there will be no reason to hide your little
property any longer,--a reason which I fully understand; but you will
not be able to withdraw it from the notary's hands immediately; and in
case of any difficulty arising, I should be forced to explain the
situation, the manner in which you have concealed your prosperity from
your master, to whom you have been supposed to be wholly devoted.
This, as you will see, would put you in the position of falsely
professing virtue, and would do great harm to your reputation for
piety."
"Oh! monsieur," said the saintly woman, "can it be that any one would
think me a person who did not speak the truth?"
"Bless you! my good creature, in business it is necessary to foresee
everything. Money embroils the best friends, and leads to actions they
never foresaw. Therefore reflect; you can come and see me again in a
few days. It is possible that between now and then you will find some
better investment; and I myself, who am doing at this moment a thing I
don't altogether like, may have found other difficulties which I do
not now expect."
This threat, adroitly thrown out as an afterthought, was intended to
immediately clinch the matter.
"I have reflected carefully," said the pious woman, "and I feel sure
that in the hands of so religious a man as monsieur I run no risks."
Taking from her bosom a little pocket-book, she pulled out twenty-five
bank notes. The rapid manner in which she counted them was a
revelation to la Peyrade. The woman was evidently accustomed to handle
money, and a singular idea darted through his mind.
"Can it be that she is making me a receiver of stolen property? No,"
he said aloud, "in order to draw up the memorial for the Academy, I
must, as I told you, make a few inquiries; and that will give me
occasion to call upon you. At what hour can I see you alone?"
"At four o'clock, when monsieur goes to take his walk in the
Luxembourg."
"And where do you live?"
"Rue du Val-de-Grace, No. 9."
"Very good; at four o'clock; and if, as I doubt not, the result of my
inquiry is favorable, I will take your money then. Otherwise, if there
are not good grounds for your application for the prize of virtue
there will be no reason why you should make a mystery of your legacy.
You could then invest it in some more normal manner than that I have
suggested to you."
"Oh! how cautious monsieur is!" she said, with evident disappointment,
having thought the affair settled. "This money, God be thanked! I have
not stolen, and monsieur can make what inquiries he likes about me in
the quarter."
"It is quite indispensable that I should do so," said la Peyrade,
dryly, for he did not at all like, under this mask of simplicity, the
quick intelligence that penetrated his thoughts. "Without being a
thief, a woman may very well not be a Sister of Charity; there's a
wide margin between the two extremes."
"As monsieur chooses," she replied; "he is doing me so great a service
that I ought to let him take all precautions."
Then, with a piously humble bow, she went away, taking her money with
her.
"The devil!" thought la Peyrade; "that woman is stronger than I; she
swallows insults with gratitude and without the sign of a grimace! I
have never yet been able to master myself like that."
He began now to fear that he had been too timid, and to think that his
would-be creditor might change her mind before he could pay her the
visit he had promised. But the harm was done, and, although consumed
with anxiety lest he had lost a rare chance, he would have cut off a
leg sooner than yield to his impulse to go to her one minute before
the hour he had fixed. The information he obtained about her in the
quarter was rather contradictory. Some said his client was a saint;
otherwise declared her to be a sly creature; but, on the whole,
nothing was said against her morality that deterred la Peyrade from
taking the piece of luck she had offered him.
When he met her at four o'clock he found her in the same mind.
With the money in his pocket he went to dine with Cerizet and Dutocq
at the Rocher de Cancale; and it is to the various emotions he had
passed through during the day that we must attribute the sharp and
ill-considered manner in which he conducted his rupture with his two
associates. This behavior was neither that of his natural disposition
nor of his acquired temperament; but the money that was burning in his
pockets had slightly intoxicated him; its very touch had conveyed to
him an excitement and an impatience for emancipation of which he was
not wholly master. He flung Cerizet over in the matter of the lease
without so much as consulting Brigitte; and yet, he had not had the
full courage of his duplicity; for he had laid to the charge of the
old woman a refusal which was merely the act of his own will, prompted
by bitter recollections of his fruitless struggles with the man who
had so long oppressed him.
In short, during the whole day, la Peyrade had not shown himself the
able and infallible man that we have hitherto seen him. Once before,
when he carried the fifteen thousand francs entrusted to him by
Thuillier, he had been led by Cerizet into an insurrectionary
proceeding which necessitated the affair of Sauvaignou. Perhaps, on
the whole, it is more difficult to be strong under good than under
evil fortune. The Farnese Hercules, calm and in still repose,
expresses more energetically the plenitude of muscular power than a
violent and agitated Hercules represented in the over-excited energy
of his labors.
PART II
THE PARVENUS
CHAPTER I
PHELLION, UNDER A NEW ASPECT
Between the first and second parts of this history an immense event
had taken place in the life of Phellion.
There is no one who has not heard of the misfortunes of the Odeon,
that fatal theatre which, for years, ruined all its directors. Right
or wrong, the quarter in which this dramatic impossibility stands is
convinced that its prosperity depends upon it; so that more than once
the mayor and other authorities of the arrondissement have, with a
courage that honors them, taken part in the most desperate efforts to
galvanize the corpse.
Now to meddle with theatrical matters is one of the eternally
perennial ambitions of the lesser bourgeoisie. Always, therefore, the
successive saviours of the Odeon feel themselves magnificently
rewarded if they are given ever so small a share in the administration
of that enterprise. It was at some crisis in its affairs that Minard,
in his capacity as mayor of the 11th arrondissement, had been called
to the chairmanship of the committee for reading plays, with the power
to join unto himself as assistants a certain number of the notables of
the Latin quarter,--the selection being left to him.
We shall soon know exactly how near was the realization of la
Peyrade's projects for the possession of Celeste's "dot"; let us
merely say now that these projects in approaching maturity had
inevitably become noised abroad; and as this condition of things
pointed, of course, to the exclusion of Minard junior and also of
Felix the professor, the prejudice hitherto manifested by Minard pere
against old Phellion was transformed into an unequivocal disposition
towards friendly cordiality; there is nothing that binds and soothes
like the feeling of a checkmate shared in common. Judged without the
evil eye of paternal rivalry, Phellion became to Minard a Roman of
incorruptible integrity and a man whose little treatises had been
adopted by the University,--in other words, a man of sound and tested
intellect.
So that when it became the duty of the mayor to select the members of
the dramatic custom-house, of which he was now the head, he
immediately thought of Phellion. As for the great citizen, he felt, on
the day when a post was offered to him in that august tribunal, that a
crown of gold had been placed upon his brow.
It will be well understood that it was not lightly, nor without having
deeply meditated, that a man of Phellion's solemnity had accepted the
high and sacred mission which was offered to him. He said within
himself that he was called upon to exercise the functions of a
magistracy, a priestly office.
"To judge of men," he replied to Minard, who was much surprised at his
hesitation, "is an alarming task, but to judge of minds!--who can
believe himself equal to such a mission?"
Once more the family--that rock on which the firmest resolutions split
--had threatened to infringe on the domain of his conscience. The
thought of boxes and tickets of which the future member of the
committee could dispose in favor of his own kin had excited in the
household so eager a ferment that his freedom of decision seemed for a
moment in danger. But, happily, Brutus was able to decide himself in
the same direction along which a positive uprising of the whole
Phellionian tribe intended to push him. From the observations of
Barniol, his son-in-law, and also by his own personal inspiration, he
became persuaded that by his vote, always given to works of
irreproachable morality, and by his firm determination to bar the way
to all plays that mothers of families could not take their daughters
to witness, he was called upon to render the most signal services to
morals and public order. Phellion, to use his own expression, had
therefore become a member of the areopagus presided over by Minard,
and--still speaking as he spoke--he was issuing from the exercise of
his functions, which were both delicate and interesting, when the
conversation we are about to report took place. A knowledge of this
conversation is necessary to an understanding of the ulterior events
of this history, and it will also serve to put into relief the envious
insight which is one of the most marked traits of the bourgeois
character.
The session of the committee had been extremely stormy. On the subject
of a tragedy entitled, "The Death of Hercules," the classic party and
the romantic party, whom the mayor had carefully balanced in the
composition of his committee, had nearly approached the point of
tearing each other's hair out. Twice Phellion had risen to speak, and
his hearers were astonished at the quantity of metaphors the speech of
a major of the National Guard could contain when his literary
convictions were imperilled. As the result of a vote, victory remained
with the opinions of which Phellion was the eloquent organ. It was
while descending the stairway of the theatre with Minard that he
remarked:--
"We have done a good work this day. 'The Death of Hercules' reminded
me of 'The Death of Hector,' by the late Luce de Lancival; the work we
have just accepted sparkles with sublime verses."
"Yes," said Minard, "the versification has taste; there are some
really fine lines in it, and I admit to you that I think this sort of
literature rather above the anagrams of Master Colleville."
"Oh!" replied Minard, "Colleville's anagrams are mere witticisms,
which have nothing in common with the sterner accents of Melpomene."
"And yet," said Minard, "I can assure you he attaches the greatest
importance to that rubbish, and apropos to his anagrams, as, indeed,
about many other things, he is not a little puffed up. Since their
emigration to the Madeleine quarter it seems to me that not only the
Sieur Colleville, but his wife and daughter, and the Thuilliers and
the whole coterie have assumed an air of importance which is rather
difficult to justify."
"No wonder!" said Phellion; "one must have a pretty strong head to
stand the fumes of opulence. Our friends have become so very rich by
the purchase of that property where they have gone to live that we
ought to forgive them for a little intoxication; and I must say the
dinner they gave us yesterday for a house-warming was really as well
arranged as it was succulent."
"I myself," said Minard, "have given a few remarkable dinners to which
men in high government positions have not disdained to come, yet I am
not puffed up with pride on that account; such as my friends have
always known me, that I have remained."
"You, Monsieur le maire, have long been habituated to the splendid
existence you have made for yourself by your high commercial talents;
our friends, on the contrary, so lately embarked on the smiling ship
of Fortune, have not yet found, as the vulgar saying is, their
sea-legs."
And then to cut short a conversation in which Phellion began to think
the mayor rather "caustic," he made as if he intended to take leave of
him. In order to reach their respective homes they did not always take
the same way.
"Are you going through the Luxembourg?" asked Minard, not allowing
Phellion to give him the slip.
"I shall cross it, but I have an appointment to meet Madame Phellion
and the little Barniols at the end of the grand alley."
"Then," said Minard, "I'll go with you and have the pleasure of making
my bow to Madame Phellion; and I shall get the fresh air at the same
time, for, in spite of hearing fine things, one's head gets tired at
the business we have just been about."
Minard had felt that Phellion gave rather reluctant assent to his
sharp remarks about the new establishment of the Thuilliers, and he
did not attempt to renew the subject; but when he had Madame Phellion
for a listener, he was very sure that his spite would find an echo.
"Well, fair lady," he began, "what did you think of yesterday's
dinner?"
"It was very fine," replied Madame Phellion; "as I tasted that soup 'a
la bisque' I knew that some caterer, like Chevet, had supplanted the
cook. But the whole affair was dull; it hadn't the gaiety of our old
meetings in the Latin quarter. And then, didn't it strike you, as it
did me, that Madame and Mademoiselle Thuillier no longer seemed
mistresses of their own house? I really felt as if I were the guest of
Madame--what _is_ her name? I never can remember it."
"Torna, Comtesse de Godollo," said Phellion, intervening. "The name is
euphonious enough to remember."
"Euphonious if you like, my dear; but to me it never seems a name at
all."
"It is a Magyar, or to speak more commonly, a Hungarian name. Our own
name, if we wanted to discuss it, might be said to be a loan from the
Greek language."
"Very likely; at any rate we have the advantage of being known, not
only in our own quarter, but throughout the tuition world, where we
have earned an honorable position; while this Hungarian countess, who
makes, as they say, the good and the bad weather in the Thuilliers'
home, where does she come from, I'd like to know? How did such a fine
lady,--for she has good manners and a very distinguished air, no one
denies her that,--how came she to fall in love with Brigitte; who,
between ourselves, keeps a sickening odor of the porter's lodge about
her. For my part, I think this devoted friend is an intriguing
creature, who scents money, and is scheming for some future gain."
"Ah ca!" said Minard, "then you don't know the original cause of the
intimacy between Madame la Comtesse de Godollo and the Thuilliers?"
"She is a tenant in their house; she occupies the entresol beneath
their apartment."
"True, but there's something more than that in it. Zelie, my wife,
heard it from Josephine, who wanted, lately, to enter our service; the
matter came to nothing, for Francoise, our woman, who thought of
marrying, changed her mind. You must know, fair lady, that it was
solely Madame de Godollo who brought about the emigration of the
Thuilliers, whose upholsterer, as one might say, she is."
"What! their upholsterer?" cried Phellion,--"that distinguished woman,
of whom one may truly say, 'Incessu patuit dea'; which in French we
very inadequately render by the expression, 'bearing of a queen'?"
"Excuse me," said Minard. "I did not mean that Madame de Godollo is
actually in the furniture business; but, at the time when Mademoiselle
Thuillier decided, by la Peyrade's advice, to manage the new house
herself, that little fellow, who hasn't all the ascendancy over her
mind he thinks he has, couldn't persuade her to move the family into
the splendid apartment where they received us yesterday. Mademoiselle
Brigitte objected that she should have to change her habits, and that
her friends and relations wouldn't follow her to such a distant
quarter--"
"It is quite certain," interrupted Madame Phellion, "that to make up
one's mind to hire a carriage every Sunday, one wants a prospect of
greater pleasure than can be found in that salon. When one thinks
that, except on the day of the famous dance of the candidacy, they
never once opened the piano in the rue Saint-Dominique!"
"It would have been, I am sure, most agreeable to the company to have
a talent like yours put in requisition," remarked Minard; "but those
are not ideas that could ever come into the mind of that good
Brigitte. She'd have seen two more candles to light. Five-franc pieces
are her music. So, when la Peyrade and Thuillier insisted that she
should move into the apartment in the Place de la Madeleine, she
thought of nothing but the extra costs entailed by the removal. She
judged, rightly enough, that beneath those gilded ceilings her old
'penates' might have a singular effect."
"See how all things link together," remarked Phellion, "and how, from
the summits of society, luxury infiltrates itself, sooner or later,
through the lower classes, leading to the ruin of empires."
"You are broaching there, my dear commander," said Minard, "one of the
most knotty questions of political economy. Many good minds think, on
the contrary, that luxury is absolutely demanded in the interests of
commerce, which is certainly the life of States. In any case, this
view, which isn't yours, appears to have been that of Madame de
Godollo, for, they tell me, her apartment is very coquettishly
furnished; and to coax Mademoiselle Brigitte into the same path of
elegance she made a proposal to her as follows: 'A friend of mine,'
she said, 'a Russian princess for whom one of the first upholsterers
has just made splendid furniture, is suddenly recalled to Russia by
the czar, a gentleman with whom no one dares to trifle. The poor woman
is therefore obliged to turn everything she owns here into money as
fast as possible; and I feel sure she would sell this furniture for
ready money at a quarter of the price it cost her. All of it is nearly
new, and some things have never been used at all.'"
"So," cried Madame Phellion, "all that magnificence displayed before
our eyes last night was a magnificent economical bargain?"
"Just so," replied Minard; "and the thing that decided Mademoiselle
Brigitte to take that splendid chance was not so much the desire to
renew her shabby furniture as the idea of doing an excellent stroke of
business. In that old maid there's always something of Madame la
Ressource in Moliere's 'Miser.'"
"I think, Monsieur le maire, that you are mistaken," said Phellion.
"Madame la Ressource is a character in 'Turcaret,' a very immoral play
by the late Le Sage."
"Do you think so?" said Minard. "Well, very likely. But what is
certain is that, though the barrister ingratiated himself with
Brigitte in helping her to buy the house, it was by this clever
jockeying about the furniture that the foreign countess got upon the
footing with Brigitte that you now see. You may have remarked,
perhaps, that a struggle is going on between those two influences;
which we may designate as the house, and its furniture."
"Yes, certainly," said Madame Phellion, with a beaming expression that
bore witness to the interest she took in the conversation, "it did
seem to me that the great lady allowed herself to contradict the
barrister, and did it, too, with a certain sharpness."
"Very marked sharpness," resumed Minard, "and that intriguing fellow
perceives it. It strikes me that the lady's hostility makes him
uneasy. The Thuilliers he got cheaply; for, between ourselves you
know, there's not much in Thuillier himself; but he feels now that he
has met a tough adversary, and he is looking anxiously for a weak spot
on which to attack her."
"Well, that's justice," said Madame Phellion. "For some time past that
man, who used to make himself so small and humble, has been taking
airs of authority in the house which are quite intolerable; he behaves
openly as the son-in-law; and you know very well, in that affair of
Thuillier's election he jockeyed us all, and made us the
stepping-stone for his matrimonial ambition."
"Yes; but I can assure you," said Minard, "that at the present time
his influence is waning. In the first place, he won't find every day
for his dear, good friend, as he calls him, a fine property worth a
million to be bought for a bit of bread."
"Then they did get that house very cheap?" said Madame Phellion,
interrogatively.
"They got it for nothing, as the result of a dirty intrigue which the
lawyer Desroches related to me the other day. If it ever became known
to the council of the bar, that little barrister would be badly
compromised. The next thing is the coming election to the Chamber.
Eating gives appetite, as they say, and our good Thuillier is hungry;
but he begins to perceive that Monsieur de la Peyrade, when it becomes
a question of getting him that mouthful, hasn't his former opportunity
to make dupes of us. That is why the family is turning more and more
to Madame de Godollo, who seems to have some very high acquaintances
in the political world. Besides all this, in fact, without dwelling on
the election business, which is still a distant matter, this Hungarian
countess is becoming, every day, more and more a necessity to
Brigitte; for it must be owned that without the help of the great
lady, the poor soul would look in the midst of her gilded salon like a
ragged gown in a bride's trousseau."
"Oh, Monsieur le maire, you are cruel," said Madame Phellion,
affecting compunction.
"No, but say," returned Minard, "with your hand on your conscience,
whether Brigitte, whether Madame Thuillier could preside in such a
salon? No, it is the Hungarian countess who does it all. She furnished
the rooms; she selected the male domestic, whose excellent training
and intelligence you must have observed; it was she who arranged the
menu of that dinner; in short, she is the providence of the parvenu
colony, which, without her intervention, would have made the whole
quarter laugh at it. And--now this is a very noticeable thing--instead
of being a parasite like la Peyrade, this Hungarian lady, who seems to
have a fortune of her own, proves to be not only disinterested, but
generous. The two gowns that you saw Brigitte and Madame Thuillier
wear last night were a present from her, and it was because she came
herself to superintend the toilet of our two 'amphitryonesses' that
you were so surprised last night not to find them rigged in their
usual dowdy fashion."
"But what can be the motive," asked Madame Phellion, "of this maternal
and devoted guardianship?"
"My dear wife," said Phellion, solemnly, "the motives of human actions
are not always, thank God! selfishness and the consideration of vile
interests. There are hearts in this world that find pleasure in doing
good for its own sake. This lady may have seen in our good friends a
set of people about to enter blindly into a sphere they knew nothing
about, and having encouraged their first steps by the purchase of this
furniture, she may, like a nurse attached to her nursling, find
pleasure in giving them the milk of her social knowledge and her
counsels."
"He seems to keep aloof from our strictures, the dear husband!" cried
Minard; "but just see how he goes beyond them!"
"I!" said Phellion; "it is neither my intention nor my habit to do
so."
"All the same it would be difficult to say more neatly that the
Thuilliers are geese, and that Madame de Godollo is bringing them up
by hand."
"I do not accept for these friends of ours," said Phellion, "a
characterization so derogatory to their repute. I meant to say that
they were lacking, perhaps, in that form of experience, and that this
noble lady has placed at their service her knowledge of the world and
its usages. I protest against any interpretation of my language which
goes beyond my thought thus limited."
"Well, anyhow, you will agree, my dear commander, that in the idea of
giving Celeste to this la Peyrade, there is something more than want
of experience; there is, it must be said, blundering folly and
immorality; for really the goings on of that barrister with Madame
Colleville--"
"Monsieur le maire," interrupted Phellion, with redoubled solemnity,
"Solon, the law-giver, decreed no punishment for parricide, declaring
it to be an impossible crime. I think the same thing may be said of
the offence to which you seem to make allusion. Madame Colleville
granting favors to Monsieur de la Peyrade, and all the while intending
to give him her daughter? No, monsieur, no! that passes imagination.
Questioned on this subject, like Marie Antoinette, by a human
tribunal, Madame Colleville would answer with the queen, 'I appeal to
all mothers.'"
"Nevertheless, my friend," said Madame Phellion, "allow me to remind
you that Madame Colleville is excessively light-minded, and has given,
as we al know, pretty good proofs of it."
"Enough, my dear," said Phellion. "The dinner hour summons us; I think
that, little by little, we have allowed this conversation to drift
toward the miry slough of backbiting."
"You are full of illusions, my dear commander," said Minard, taking
Phellion by the hand and shaking it; "but they are honorable
illusions, and I envy them. Madame, I have the honor--" added the
mayor, with a respectful bow to Madame Phellion.
And each party took its way.
CHAPTER II
THE PROVENCAL'S PRESENT POSITION
The information acquired by the mayor of the 11th arrondissement was
by no means incorrect. In the Thuillier salon, since the emigration to
the Madeleine quarter, might be seen daily, between the tart Brigitte
and the plaintive Madame Thuillier, the graceful and attractive figure
of a woman who conveyed to this salon an appearance of the most
unexpected elegance. It was quite true that through the good offices
of this lady, who had become her tenant in the new house, Brigitte had
made a speculation in furniture not less advantageous in its way, but
more avowable, than the very shady purchase of the house itself. For
six thousand francs in ready money she had obtained furniture lately
from workshops representing a value of at least thirty thousand.
It was still further true that in consequence of a service which went
deep into her heart, Brigitte was showing to the beautiful foreign
countess the respectful deference which the bourgeoisie, in spite of
its sulky jealousy, is much less indisposed to give to titles of
nobility and high positions in the social hierarchy than people think.
As this Hungarian countess was a woman of great tact and accomplished
training, in taking the direction which she had thought it wise to
assume over the affairs of her proteges, she had been careful to guard
her influence from all appearance of meddlesome and imperious
dictation. On the contrary, she flattered Brigitte's claim to be a
model housekeeper; in her own household expenses she affected to ask
the spinster's advice; so that by reserving to herself the department
of luxurious expenses, she had more the air of giving information than
of exercising supervision.
La Peyrade could not disguise from himself that a change was taking
place. His influence was evidently waning before that of this
stranger; but the antagonism of the countess was not confined to a
simple struggle for influence. She made no secret of being opposed to
his suit for Celeste; she gave her unequivocal approval to the love of
Felix Phellion, the professor. Minard, by whom this fact was not
unobserved, took very good care, in the midst of his other
information, not to mention it to those whom it most concerned.
La Peyrade was all the more anxious at being thus undermined by a
hostility the cause of which was inexplicable to him, because he knew
he had himself to blame for bringing this disquieting adversary into
the very heart of his citadel. His first mistake was in yielding to
the barren pleasure of disappointing Cerizet in the lease of the
house. If Brigitte by his advice and urging had not taken the
administration of the property into her own hands there was every
probability that she would never have made the acquaintance of Madame
de Godollo. Another imprudence had been to urge the Thuilliers to
leave their old home in the Latin quarter.
At this period, when his power and credit had reached their apogee,
Theodose considered his marriage a settled thing; and he now felt an
almost childish haste to spring into the sphere of elegance which
seemed henceforth to be his future. He had therefore furthered the
inducements of the countess, feeling that he thus sent the Thuilliers
before him to make his bed in the splendid apartment he intended to
share with them. By thus removing them from their old home he saw
another advantage,--that of withdrawing Celeste from daily intercourse
with a rival who seemed to him dangerous. Deprived of the advantage of
propinquity, Felix would be forced to make his visits farther apart;
and therefore there would be greater facilities to ruin him in the
girl's heart, where he was installed on condition of giving religious
satisfaction,--a requirement to which he showed himself refractory.
But in all these plans and schemes various drawbacks confronted him.
To enlarge the horizon of the Thuilliers was for la Peyrade to run the
chance of creating competition for the confidence and admiration of
which he had been till then the exclusive object. In the sort of
provincial life they had hitherto lived, Brigitte and his dear, good
friend placed him, for want of comparison, at a height from which the
juxtaposition of other superiorities and elegances must bring him
down. So, then, apart from the blows covertly dealt him by Madame de
Godollo, the idea of the transpontine emigration had proved to be, on
the whole, a bad one.
The Collevilles had followed their friends the Thuilliers, to the new
house near the Madeleine, where an entresol at the back had been
conceded to them at a price conformable to their budget. But
Colleville declared it lacked light and air, and being obliged to
go daily from the boulevard of the Madeleine to the faubourg
Saint-Jacques, where his office was, he fumed against the arrangement
of which he was the victim, and felt at times that la Peyrade was a
tyrant. Madame Colleville, on the other hand, had flung herself into
an alarming orgy of bonnets, mantles, and new gowns, requiring the
presentation of a mass of bills, which led not infrequently to scenes
in the household which were more or less stormy. As for Celeste, she
had undoubtedly fewer opportunities to see young Phellion, but she had
also fewer chances to rush into religious controversy; and absence,
which is dangerous to none but inferior attachments, made her think
more tenderly and less theologically of the man of her dreams.
But all these false calculations of Theodose were as nothing in the
balance with another cause for his diminishing influence which was now
to weigh heavily on his situation.
He had assured Thuillier that, after a short delay and the payment of
ten thousand francs, to which his dear, good friend submitted with
tolerable grace, the cross of the Legion of honor would arrive to
realize the secret desire of all his life. Two months had now passed
without a sign of that glorious rattle; and the former sub-director,
who would have felt such joy in parading his red ribbon on the
boulevard of the Madeleine, of which he was now one of the most
assiduous promenaders, had nothing to adorn his buttonhole but the
flowers of the earth, the privilege of everybody,--of which he was far
less proud than Beranger.
La Peyrade had, to be sure, mentioned an unforeseen and inexplicable
difficulty by which all the efforts of the Comtesse du Bruel had been
paralyzed; but Thuillier did not take comfort in the explanation; and
on certain days, when the disappointment became acute, he was very
near saying with Chicaneau in Les Plaideurs, "Return my money."
However, no outbreak happened, for la Peyrade held him in leash by the
famous pamphlet on "Taxation and the Sliding-Scale"; the conclusion of
which had been suspended during the excitement of the moving; for
during that agitating period Thuillier had been unable to give proper
care to the correction of proofs, about which, we may remember, he had
reserved the right of punctilious examination. La Peyrade had now
reached a point when he was forced to see that, in order to restore
his influence, which was daily evaporating, he must strike some grand
blow; and it was precisely this nagging and vexatious fancy about the
proofs that the barrister decided to take as the starting-point of a
scheme, both deep and adventurous, which came into his mind.
One day, when the pair were engaged on the sheets of the pamphlet, a
discussion arose upon the word "nepotism," which Thuillier wished to
eliminate from one of la Peyrade's sentences, declaring that never had
he met with it anywhere; it was pure neologism--which, to the literary
notions of the bourgeoisie, is equivalent to the idea of 1793 and the
Terror.
Generally la Peyrade took the ridiculous remarks of his dear, good
friend pretty patiently; but on this occasion he made himself
exceedingly excited, and signified to Thuillier that he might
terminate himself a work to which he applied such luminous and
intelligent criticism; after which remark he departed and was not seen
again for several days.
At first Thuillier supposed this outbreak to be a mere passing effect
of ill-humor; but when la Peyrade's absence grew prolonged he felt the
necessity of taking some conciliatory step, and accordingly he went to
see the barrister, intending to make honorable amends and so put an
end to his sulkiness. Wishing, however, to give this advance an air
which allowed an honest issue to his own self-love, he entered la
Peyrade's room with an easy manner, and said, cheerfully:--
"Well, my dear fellow, it turns out that we were both right:
'nepotism' means the authority that the nephews of popes take in
public affairs. I have searched the dictionary and it gives no other
explanation; but, from what Phellion tells me, I find that in the
political vocabulary the meaning of the word has been extended to
cover the influence which corrupt ministers permit certain persons to
exercise illegally. I think, therefore, that we may retain the
expression, though it is certainly not taken in that sense by Napoleon
Landais."
La Peyrade, who, in receiving his visitor, had affected to be
extremely busy in sorting his papers, contented himself by shrugging
his shoulders and saying nothing.
"Well," said Thuillier, "have you got the last proofs? We ought to be
getting on."
"If you have sent nothing to the printing-office," replied la Peyrade,
"of course there are no proofs. I myself haven't touched the
manuscript."
"But, my dear Theodose," said Thuillier, "it isn't possible that for
such a trifle you are affronted. I don't pretend to be a writer, only
as my name is on the book I have, I think, the right to my opinion
about a word."
"But 'Mossie' Phellion," replied Theodose, "is a writer; and inasmuch
as you have consulted him, I don't see why you can't engage him to
finish the work in which, for my part, I have resolved not to
co-operate any longer."
"Heavens! what temper!" cried Thuillier; "here you are furious just
because I seemed to question a word and then consulted some one. You
know very well that I have read passages to Phellion, Colleville,
Minard, and Barniol as if the work were mine, in order to see the
effect it would produce upon the public; but that's no reason why I
should be willing to give my name to the things they are capable of
writing. Do you wish me to give you a proof of the confidence I have
in you? Madame la Comtesse de Godollo, to whom I read a few pages last
night, told me that the pamphlet was likely to get me into trouble
with the authorities; but I wouldn't allow what she said to have any
influence upon me."
"Well," said la Peyrade, "I think that the oracle of the family sees
the matter clearly; and I've no desire to bring your head to the
scaffold."
"All that is nonsense," said Thuillier. "Have you, or have you not, an
intention to leave me in the lurch?"
"Literary questions make more quarrels among friends than political
questions," replied Theodose. "I wish to put an end to these
discussions between us."
"But, my dear Theodose, never have I assumed to be a literary man. I
think I have sound common-sense, and I say out my ideas; you can't be
angry at that; and if you play me this trick, and refuse to
collaborate any longer, it is because you have some other grudge
against me that I know nothing about."
"I don't see why you call it a trick. There's nothing easier for you
than not to write a pamphlet; you'll simply be Jerome Thuillier, as
before."
"And yet it was you yourself who declared that this publication would
help my election; besides, I repeat, I have read passages to all our
friends, I have announced the matter in the municipal council, and if
the work were not to appear I should be dishonored; people would be
sure to say the government had bought me up."
"You have only to say that you are the friend of Phellion, the
incorruptible; that will clear you. You might even give Celeste to his
booby of a son; that alliance would certainly protect you from all
suspicion."
"Theodose," said Thuillier, "there is something in your mind that you
don't tell me. It is not natural that for a simple quarrel about a
word you should wish to lose a friend like me."
"Well, yes, there is," replied la Peyrade, with the air of a man who
makes up his mind to speak out. "I don't like ingratitude."
"Nor I either; I don't like it," said Thuillier, hotly; "and if you
accuse me of so base an action, I summon you to explain yourself. We
must get out of these hints and innuendoes. What do you complain of?
What have you against a man whom only a few days ago you called your
friend?"
"Nothing and everything," replied la Peyrade. "You and your sister are
much too clever to break openly with a man who, at the risk of his
reputation, has put a million in your hands. But I am not so simple
that I don't know how to detect changes. There are people about you
who have set themselves, in an underhand way, to destroy me; and
Brigitte has only one thought, and that is, how to find a decent way
of not keeping her promises. Men like me don't wait till their claims
are openly protested, and I certainly do not intend to impose myself
on any family; still, I was far, I acknowledge, from expecting such
treatment."
"Come, come," said Thuillier, kindly, seeing in the barrister's eye
the glint of a tear of which he was completely the dupe, "I don't know
what Brigitte may have been doing to you, but one thing is very
certain: I have never ceased to be your most devoted friend."
"No," said la Peyrade, "since that mishap about the cross I am only
good, as the saying is, to throw to the dogs. How could I have
struggled against secret influences? Possibly it is that pamphlet,
about which you have talked a great deal too much, that has hindered
your appointment. The ministers are so stupid! They would rather wait
and have their hand forced by the fame of the publication than do the
thing with a good grace as the reward of your services. But these are
political mysteries which would never enter your sister's mind."
"The devil!" cried Thuillier. "I think I've got a pretty observing
eye, and yet I can't see the slightest change in Brigitte toward you."
"Oh, yes!" said la Peyrade, "your eyesight is so good that you have
never seen perpetually beside her that Madame de Godollo, whom she now
thinks she can't live without."
"Ha, ha!" said Thuillier, slyly, "so it is a little jealousy, is it,
in our mind?"
"Jealousy!" retorted la Peyrade. "I don't know if that's the right
word, but certainly your sister--whose mind is nothing above the
ordinary, and to whom I am surprised that a man of your intellectual
superiority allows a supremacy in your household which she uses and
abuses--"
"How can I help it, my dear fellow," interrupted Thuillier, sucking in
the compliment; "she is so absolutely devoted to me."
"I admit the weakness, but, I repeat, your sister doesn't fit into
your groove. Well, I say that when a man of the value which you are
good enough to recognize in me, does her the honor to consult her and
devote himself to her as I have done, it can hardly be agreeable to
him to find himself supplanted by a woman who comes from nobody knows
where--and all because of a few trumpery chairs and tables she has
helped her to buy!"
"With women, as you know very well," replied Thuillier, "household
affairs have the first place."
"And Brigitte, who wants a finger in everything, also assumes to carry
matters with a high hand in affairs of the heart. As you are so
extraordinarily clear-sighted you ought to have seen that in
Brigitte's mind nothing is less certain than my marriage with
Mademoiselle Colleville; and yet my love has been solemnly authorized
by you."
"Good gracious!" cried Thuillier, "I'd like to see any one attempt to
meddle with my arrangements!"
"Well, without speaking of Brigitte, I can tell you of another
person," said Theodose, "who is doing that very thing; and that person
is Mademoiselle Celeste herself. In spite of their quarrels about
religion, her mind is none the less full of that little Phellion."
"But why don't you tell Flavie to put a stop to it?"
"No one knows Flavie, my dear Thuillier, better than you. She is a
woman rather than a mother. I have found it necessary to do a little
bit of courting to her myself, and, you understand, while she is
willing for this marriage she doesn't desire it very much."
"Well," said Thuillier, "I'll undertake to speak to Celeste myself. It
shall never be said that a slip of a girl lays down the law to me."
"That's exactly what I don't want you to do," cried la Peyrade. "Don't
meddle in all this. Outside of your relations to your sister you have
an iron will, and I will never have it said that you exerted your
authority to put Celeste in my arms; on the contrary, I desire that
the child may have complete control over her own heart. The only thing
I request is that she shall decide positively between Felix Phellion
and myself; because I do not choose to remain any longer in this
doubtful position. It is true we agreed that the marriage should only
take place after you became a deputy; but I feel now that it is
impossible to allow the greatest event of my life to remain at the
mercy of doubtful circumstances. And, besides, such an arrangement,
though at first agreed upon, seems to me now to have a flavor of a
bargain which is unbecoming to both of us. I think I had better make
you a confidence, to which I am led by the unpleasant state of things
now between us. Dutocq may have told you, before you left the
apartment in the rue Saint-Dominique, that an heiress had been offered
to me whose immediate fortune is larger than that which Mademoiselle
Colleville will eventually inherit. I refused, because I have had the
folly to let my heart be won, and because an alliance with a family as
honorable as yours seemed to me more desirable; but, after all, it is
as well to let Brigitte know that if Celeste refuses me, I am not
absolutely turned out into the cold."
"I can easily believe that," said Thuillier; "but as for putting the
whole decision into the hands of that little girl, especially if she
has, as you tell me, a fancy for Felix--"
"I can't help it," said the barrister. "I must, at any price, get out
of this position; it is no longer tenable. You talk about your
pamphlet; I am not in a fit condition to finish it. You, who have been
a man of gallantry, you must know the dominion that women, fatal
creatures! exercise over our whole being."
"Bah!" said Thuillier, conceitedly, "they cared for me, but I did not
often care for them; I took them, and left them, you know."
"Yes, but I, with my Southern nature, love passionately; and Celeste
has other attractions besides fortune. Brought up in your household,
under your own eye, you have made her adorable. Only, I must say, you
have shown great weakness in letting that young fellow, who does not
suit her in any respect, get such hold upon her fancy."
"You are quite right; but the thing began in a childish friendship;
she and Felix played together. You came much later; and it is a proof
of the great esteem in which we hold you, that when you made your
offer we renounced our earlier projects."
"_You_ did, yes," said la Peyrade, "and with some literary manias
--which, after all, are frequently full of sense and wit--you have a
heart of gold; with you friendship is a sure thing, and you know what
you mean. But Brigitte is another matter; you'll see, when you propose
to her to hasten the marriage, what a resistance she will make."
"I don't agree with you. I think that Brigitte has always wanted you
and still wants you for son-in-law--if I may so express myself. But
whether she does or not, I beg you to believe that in all important
matters I know how to have my will obeyed. Only, let us come now to a
distinct understanding of what you wish; then we can start with the
right foot foremost, and you'll see that all will go well."
"I wish," replied la Peyrade, "to put the last touches to your
pamphlet; for, above all things, I think of you."
"Certainly," said Thuillier, "we ought not to sink in port."
"Well, in consequence of the feeling that I am oppressed, stultified
by the prospect of a marriage still so doubtful, I am certain that not
a page of manuscript could be got out of me in any form, until the
question is settled."
"Very good," said Thuillier; "then how do you present that question?"
"Naturally, if Celeste's decision be against me, I should wish an
immediate solution. If I am condemned to make a marriage of
convenience I ought to lose no time in taking the opportunity I
mentioned to you."
"So be it; but what time do you intend to allow us?"
"I should think that in fifteen days a girl might be able to make up
her mind."
"Undoubtedly," replied Thuillier; "but it is very repugnant to me to
let Celeste decide without appeal."
"For my part, I will take that risk; in any case, I shall be rid of
uncertainty; and that is really my first object. Between ourselves, I
am not risking as much as you think. It will take more than fifteen
days for a son of Phellion, in other words, obstinacy incarnate in
silliness, to have done with philosophical hesitations; and it is very
certain that Celeste will not accept him for a husband unless he gives
her some proofs of conversion."
"That's probable. But suppose Celeste tries to dawdle; suppose she
refuses to accept the alternative?"
"That's your affair," said the Provencal. "I don't know how you regard
the family in Paris; I only know that in my part of the country it is
an unheard-of thing that a girl should have such liberty. If you, your
sister (supposing she plays fair in the matter), and the father and
mother can't succeed in making a girl whom you dower agree to so
simple a thing as to make a perfectly free choice between two suitors,
then good-bye to you! You'll have to write upon your gate-post that
Celeste is queen and sovereign of the house."
"Well, we haven't got to that point yet," said Thuillier, with a
capable air.
"As for you, my old fellow," resumed la Peyrade, "I must postpone our
business until after Celeste's decision. Be that in my favor or not, I
will then go to work, and in three days the pamphlet can be finished."
"Now," said Thuillier, "I know what you have had on your mind. I'll
talk about it with Brigitte."
"That's a sad conclusion," said la Peyrade; "but, unhappily, so it
is."
"What do you mean by that?"
"I would rather, as you can easily imagine, hear you say of yourself
that the thing shall be done; but old habits can't be broken up."
"Ah ca! do you think I'm a man without any will, any initiative of my
own?"
"No! but I'd like to be hidden in a corner and hear how you will open
the subject with your sister."
"Parbleu! I shall open it frankly. I WILL, very firmly said, shall
meet every one of her objections."
"Ah, my poor fellow!" said la Peyrade, clapping him on the shoulder,
"from Chrysale down how often have we seen brave warriors lowering
their penants before the wills of women accustomed to master them!"
"We'll see about _that_," replied Thuillier, making a theatrical exit.
The eager desire to publish his pamphlet, and the clever doubt thrown
upon the strength of his will had made him furious,--an actual tiger;
and he went away resolved, in case of opposition, to reduce his
household, as the saying is, by fire and sword.
When he reached home Thuillier instantly laid the question before
Brigitte. She, with her crude good sense and egotism, pointed out to
him that by thus hastening the period formerly agreed upon for the
marriage, they committed the blunder of disarming themselves; they
could not be sure that when the election took place la Peyrade would
put the same zeal into preparing for it. "It might be," said the old
maid, "just as it has been about the cross."
"There's this difference," said Thuillier; "the cross doesn't depend
directly upon la Peyrade, whereas the influence he exerts in the 12th
arrondissement he can employ as he will."
"And suppose he willed, after we have feathered his nest," said
Brigitte, "to work his influence for his own election? He is very
ambitious, you know."
This danger did not fail to strike the mind of the future legislator,
who thought, however, that he might feel some security in the honor
and morality of la Peyrade.
"A man's honor can't be very delicate," returned Brigitte, "when he
tries to get out of a bargain; and this fashion of dangling a bit of
sugar before us about getting your pamphlet finished, doesn't please
me at all. Can't you get Phellion to help you, and do without
Theodose? Or, I dare say, Madame de Godollo, who knows everybody in
politics, could find you a journalist--they say there are plenty of
them out at elbows; a couple of hundred francs would do the thing."
"But the secret would get into the papers," said Thuillier. "No, I
must absolutely have Theodose; he knows that, and he makes these
conditions. After all, we did promise him Celeste, and it is only
fulfilling the promise a year earlier--what am I saying?--a few
months, a few weeks, possibly; for the king may dissolve the Chamber
before any one expects it."
"But suppose Celeste won't have him?" objected Brigitte.
"Celeste! Celeste, indeed!" ejaculated Thuillier; "she _must_ have
whomsoever we choose. We ought to have thought of that when we made
the engagement with la Peyrade; our word is passed now, you know.
Besides, if the child is allowed to choose between la Peyrade and
Phellion--"
"So you really think," said the sceptical old maid, "that if Celeste
decides for Phellion you can still count on la Peyrade's devotion?"
"What else can I do? Those are his conditions. Besides, the fellow has
calculated the whole thing; he knows very well that Felix will never
bring himself in two weeks to please Celeste by going to confession,
and unless he does, that little monkey will never accept him for a
husband. La Peyrade's game is very clever."
"Too clever," said Brigitte. "Well, settle the matter as you choose; I
shall not meddle; all this manoeuvring is not to my taste."
Thuillier went to see Madame Colleville, and intimated to her that she
must inform Celeste of the designs upon her.
Celeste had never been officially authorized to indulge her sentiment
for Felix Phellion. Flavie, on the contrary, had once expressly
forbidden her to encourage the hopes of the young professor; but as,
on the part of Madame Thuillier, her godmother and her confidant, she
knew she was sustained in her inclination, she had let herself gently
follow it without thinking very seriously of the obstacles her choice
might encounter. When, therefore, she was ordered to choose at once
between Felix and la Peyrade, the simple-hearted girl was at first
only struck by the advantages of one half of the alternative, and she
fancied she did herself a great service by agreeing to an arrangement
which made her the mistress of her own choice and allowed her to
bestow it as her heart desired.
But la Peyrade was not mistaken in his calculation when he reckoned
that the religious intolerance of the young girl on one side, and the
philosophical inflexibility of Phellion's son on the other, would
create an invincible obstacle to their coming together.
CHAPTER III
GOOD BLOOD CANNOT LIE
The evening of the day on which Flavie had communicated to Celeste the
sovereign orders of Thuillier, the Phellions called to spend the
evening with Brigitte, and a very sharp engagement took place between
the two young people. Mademoiselle Colleville did not need to be told
by her mother that it would be extremely unbecoming if she allowed
Felix to know of the conditional approval that was granted to their
sentiments. Celeste had too much delicacy, and too much real religious
feeling to wish to obtain the conversion of the man she loved on any
other ground than that of his conviction. Their evening was therefore
passed in theological debate; but love is so strange a Proteus, and
takes so many and such various forms, that though it appeared on this
occasion in a black gown and a mob cap, it was not at all as
ungraceful and displeasing as might have been imagined. But Phellion
junior was in this encounter, the solemnity of which he little knew,
unlucky and blundering to the last degree. Not only did he concede
nothing, but he took a tone of airy and ironical discussion, and ended
by putting poor Celeste so beside herself that she finally declared an
open rupture and forbade him to appear in her presence again.
It was just the case for a lover more experienced than the young
savant to reappear the very next day, for young hearts are never so
near to understanding each other as when they have just declared the
necessity of eternal separation. But this law is not one of
logarithms, and Felix Phellion, being incapable of guessing it,
thought himself positively and finally banished; so much so, that
during the fifteen days granted to the poor girl to deliberate (as
says the Code in the matter of beneficiary bequests), although he was
expected day by day, and from minute to minute by Celeste, who gave no
more thought to la Peyrade than if he had nothing to do with the
question, the deplorably stupid youth did not have the most distant
idea of breaking his ban.
Luckily for this hopeless lover, a beneficent fairy was watching over
him, and the evening before the day on which the young girl was to
make her decision the following affair took place.
It was Sunday, the day on which the Thuilliers still kept up their
weekly receptions.
Madame Phellion, convinced that the housekeeping leakage, vulgarly
called "the basket dance," was the ruin of the best-regulated
households, was in the habit of going in person to her tradespeople.
From time immemorial in the Phellion establishment, Sunday was the day
of the "pot-au-feu," and the wife of the great citizen, in that
intentionally dowdy costume in which good housekeepers bundle
themselves when they go to market, was prosaically returning from a
visit to the butcher, followed by her cook and the basket, in which
lay a magnificent cut of the loin of beef. Twice had she rung her own
doorbell, and terrible was the storm gathering on the head of the
foot-boy, who by his slowness in opening the door was putting his
mistress in a situation less tolerable than that of Louis XIV., who
had only _almost_ waited. In her feverish impatience Madame Phellion had
just given the bell a third and ferocious reverberation, when, judge
of her confusion, a little coupe drew up with much clatter at the door
of her house, and a lady descended, whom she recognized, at this
untimely hour, as the elegant Comtesse Torna de Godollo!
Turning a purplish scarlet, the unfortunate bourgeoise lost her head,
and, floundering in excuses, she was about to complicate the position
by some signal piece of awkwardness, when, happily for her, Phellion,
attracted by the noise of the bell, and attired in a dressing-gown and
Greek cap, came out of his study to inquire what was the matter. After
a speech, the pompous charm of which did much to compensate for his
dishabille, the great citizen, with the serenity that never abandoned
him, offered his hand very gallantly to the lady, and having installed
her in the salon, said:--
"May I, without indiscretion, ask Madame la comtesse what has procured
for us the unhoped-for advantage of this visit?"
"I have come," said the lady, "to talk with Madame Phellion on a
matter which must deeply interest her. I have no other way of meeting
her without witnesses; and therefore, though I am hardly known to
Madame Phellion, I have taken the liberty to call upon her here."
"Madame, your visit is a great honor to this poor dwelling. But where
is Madame Phellion?" added the worthy man, impatiently, going towards
the door.
"No, I beg of you, don't disturb her," said the countess; "I have
heedlessly come at a moment when she is busy with household cares.
Brigitte has been my educator in such matters, and I know the respect
we ought to pay to good housekeepers. Besides, I have the pleasure of
your presence, which I scarcely expected."
Before Phellion could reply to these obliging words, Madame Phellion
appeared. A cap with ribbons had taken the place of the market bonnet,
and a large shawl covered the other insufficiencies of the morning
toilet. When his wife arrived, the great citizen made as though he
would discreetly retire.
"Monsieur Phellion," said the countess, "you are not one too many in
the conference I desire with madame; on the contrary, your excellent
judgment will be most useful in throwing light upon a matter as
interesting to you as to your wife. I allude to the marriage of your
son."
"The marriage of my son!" cried Madame Phellion, with a look of
astonishment; "but I am not aware that anything of the kind is at
present in prospect."
"The marriage of Monsieur Felix with Mademoiselle Celeste is, I think,
one of your strongest desires--"
"But we have never," said Phellion, "taken any overt steps for that
object."
"I know that only too well," replied the countess; "on the contrary,
every one in your family seems to study how to defeat my efforts in
that direction. However, one thing is clear in spite of the reserve,
and, you must allow me to say so, the clumsiness in which the affair
has been managed, and that is that the young people love each other,
and they will both be unhappy if they do not marry. Now, to prevent
this catastrophe is the object with which I have come here this
morning."
"We cannot, madame, be otherwise than deeply sensible of the interest
you are so good as to show in the happiness of our son," said
Phellion; "but, in truth, this interest--"
"Is something so inexplicable," interrupted the countess, "that you
feel a distrust of it?"
"Oh! madame!" said Phellion, bowing with an air of respectful dissent.
"But," continued the lady, "the explanation of my proceeding is very
simple. I have studied Celeste, and in that dear and artless child I
find a moral weight and value which would make me grieve to see her
sacrificed."
"You are right, madame," said Madame Phellion. "Celeste is, indeed, an
angel of sweetness."
"As for monsieur Felix, I venture to interest myself because, in the
first place, he is the son of so virtuous a father--"
"Oh, madame! I entreat--" said Phellion, bowing again.
"--and he also attracts me by the awkwardness of true love, which
appears in all his actions and all his words. We mature women find an
inexpressible charm in seeing the tender passion under a form which
threatens us with no deceptions and no misunderstandings."
"My son is certainly not brilliant," said Madame Phellion, with a
faint tone of sharpness; "he is not a fashionable young man."
"But he has the qualities that are most essential," replied the
countess, "and a merit which ignores itself,--a thing of the utmost
consequence in all intellectual superiority--"
"Really, madame," said Phellion, "you force us to hear things that--"
"That are not beyond the truth," interrupted the countess. "Another
reason which leads me to take a deep interest in the happiness of
these young people is that I am not so desirous for that of Monsieur
Theodose de la Peyrade, who is false and grasping. On the ruin of
their hopes that man is counting to carry out his swindling purposes."
"It is quite certain," said Phellion, "that there are dark depths in
Monsieur de la Peyrade where light does not penetrate."
"And as I myself had the misfortune to marry a man of his description,
the thought of the wretchedness to which Celeste would be condemned by
so fatal a connection, impels me, in the hope of saving her, to the
charitable effort which now, I trust, has ceased to surprise you."
"Madame," said Phellion, "we do not need the conclusive explanations
by which you illumine your conduct; but as to the faults on our part,
which have thwarted your generous efforts, I must declare that in
order to avoid committing them in future, it seems to me not a little
desirable that you should plainly indicate them."
"How long is it," asked the countess, "since any of your family have
paid a visit to the Thuilliers'?"
"If my memory serves me," said Phellion, "I think we were all there
the Sunday after the dinner for the house-warming."
"Fifteen whole days of absence!" exclaimed the countess; "and you
think that nothing of importance could happen in fifteen days?"
"No, indeed! did not three glorious days in July, 1830, cast down a
perjured dynasty and found the noble order of things under which we
now live?"
"You see it yourself!" said the countess. "Now, tell me, during that
evening, fifteen days ago, did nothing serious take place between your
son and Celeste?"
"Something did occur," replied Phellion,--"a very disagreeable
conversation on the subject of my son's religious opinions; it must be
owned that our good Celeste, who in all other respects has a charming
nature, is a trifle fanatic in the matter of piety."
"I agree to that," said the countess; "but she was brought up by the
mother whom you know; she was never shown the face of true piety; she
saw only the mimicry of it. Repentant Magdalens of the Madame
Colleville species always assume an air of wishing to retire to a
desert with their death's-head and crossed bones. They think they
can't get salvation at a cheaper rate. But after all, what did Celeste
ask of Monsieur Felix? Merely that he would read 'The Imitation of
Christ.'"
"He has read it, madame," said Phellion, "and he thinks it a book
extremely well written; but his convictions--and that is a misfortune
--have not been affected by the perusal."
"And do you think he shows much cleverness in not assuring his
mistress of some little change in his inflexible convictions?"
"My son, madame, has never received from me the slightest lesson in
cleverness; loyalty, uprightness, those are the principles I have
endeavored to inculcate in him."
"It seems to me, monsieur, that there is no want of loyalty when, in
dealing with a troubled mind, we endeavor to avoid wounding it. But
let us agree that Monsieur Felix owed it to himself to be that iron
door against which poor Celeste's applications beat in vain; was that
a reason for keeping away from her and sulking in his tent for fifteen
whole days? Above all, ought he to have capped these sulks by a
proceeding which I can't forgive, and which--only just made known to
us--has struck the girl's heart with despair, and also with a feeling
of extreme irritation?"
"My son capable of any such act! it is quite impossible, madame!"
cried Phellion. "I know nothing of this proceeding; but I do not
hesitate to affirm that you have been ill-informed."
"And yet, nothing is more certain. Young Colleville, who came home
to-day for his half-holiday, has just told us that Monsieur Felix, who
had previously gone with the utmost punctuality to hear him recite has
ceased entirely to have anything to do with him. Unless your son is
ill, I do not hesitate to say that this neglect is the greatest of
blunders, in the situation in which he now stands with the sister he
ought not to have chosen this moment to put an end to these lessons."
The Phellions looked at each other as if consulting how to reply.
"My son," said Madame Phellion, "is not exactly ill; but since you
mention a fact which is, I acknowledge, very strange and quite out of
keeping with his nature and habits, I think it right to tell you that
from the day when Celeste seemed to signify that all was at an end
between them, a very extraordinary change has come over Felix, which
is causing Monsieur Phellion and myself the deepest anxiety."
"Yes, madame," said Phellion, "the young man is certainly not in his
normal condition."
"But what is the matter with him?" asked the countess, anxiously.
"The night of that scene with Celeste," replied Phellion, "after his
return home, he wept a flood of hot tears on his mother's bosom, and
gave us to understand that the happiness of his whole life was at an
end."
"And yet," said Madame de Godollo, "nothing very serious happened; but
lovers always make the worst of things."
"No doubt," said Madame Phellion; "but since that night Felix has not
made the slightest allusion to his misfortune, and the next day he
went back to his work with a sort of frenzy. Does that seem natural to
you?"
"It is capable of explanation; work is said to be a great consoler."
"That is most true," said Phellion; "but in Felix's whole personality
there is something excited, and yet repressed, which is difficult to
describe. You speak to him, and he hardly seems to hear you; he sits
down to table and forgets to eat, or takes his food with an
absent-mindedness which the medical faculty consider most injurious to
the process of digestion; his duties, his regular occupations, we have
to remind him of--him, so extremely regular, so punctual! The other
day, when he was at the Observatory, where he now spends all his
evenings, only coming home in the small hours, I took it upon myself
to enter his room and examine his papers. I was terrified, madame, at
finding a paper covered with algebraic calculations which, by their
vast extent appeared to me to go beyond the limits of the human
intellect."
"Perhaps," said the countess, "he is on the road to some great
discovery."
"Or to madness," said Madame Phellion, in a low voice, and with a
heavy sigh.
"That is not probable," said Madame de Godollo; "with an organization
so calm and a mind so well balanced, he runs but little danger of that
misfortune. I know myself of another danger that threatens him
to-morrow, and unless we can take some steps this evening to avert it,
Celeste is positively lost to him."
"How so?" said the husband and wife together.
"Perhaps you are not aware," replied the countess, "that Thuillier and
his sister have made certain promises to Monsieur de la Peyrade about
Celeste?"
"We suspected as much," replied Madame Phellion.
"The fulfilment of these pledges was postponed to a rather distant
period, and subordinated to certain conditions. Monsieur de la
Peyrade, after enabling them to buy the house near the Madeleine,
pledged himself not only to obtain the cross for Monsieur Thuillier,
but to write in his name a political pamphlet, and assist him in his
election to the Chamber of Deputies. It sounds like the romances of
chivalry, in which the hero, before obtaining the hand of the
princess, is compelled to exterminate a dragon."
"Madame is very witty," said Madame Phellion, looking at her husband,
who made her a sign not to interrupt.
"I have no time now," said the countess; "in fact it would be useless
to tell you the manoeuvres by which Monsieur de la Peyrade has
contrived to hasten the period of this marriage; but it concerns you
to know that, thanks to his duplicity, Celeste is being forced to
choose between him and Monsieur Felix; fifteen days were given her in
which to make her choice; the time expires to-morrow, and, thanks to
the unfortunate state of feeling into which your son's attitude has
thrown her, there is very serious danger of seeing her sacrifice to
her wounded feelings the better sentiments of her love and her
instincts."
"But what can be done to prevent it?" asked Phellion.
"Fight, monsieur; come this evening in force to the Thuilliers';
induce Monsieur Felix to accompany you; lecture him until he promises
to be a little more flexible in his philosophical opinions. Paris,
said Henri IV., is surely worth a mass. But let him avoid all such
questions; he can certainly find in his heart the words and tones to
move a woman who loves him; it requires so little to satisfy her! I
shall be there myself, and I will help him to my utmost ability;
perhaps, under the inspiration of the moment, I may think of some way
to do effectually. One thing is very certain: we have to fight a great
battle to-night, and if we do not ALL do our duty valorously, la
Peyrade may win it."
"My son is not here, madame," said Phellion, "and I regret it, for
perhaps your generous devotion and urgent words would succeed in
shaking off his torpor; but, at any rate, I will lay before him the
gravity of the situation, and, beyond all doubt, he will accompany us
to-night to the Thuilliers'."
"It is needless to say," added the countess, rising, "that we must
carefully avoid the very slightest appearance of collusion; we must
not converse together; in fact, unless it can be done in some casual
way, it would be better not to speak."
"I beg you to rely, madame, upon my prudence," replied Phellion, "and
kindly accept the assurance--"
"Of your most distinguished sentiments," interrupted the countess,
laughing.
"No, madame," replied Phellion, gravely, "I reserve that formula for
the conclusion of my letters; I beg you to accept the assurance of my
warmest and most unalterable gratitude."
"We will talk of that when we are out of danger," said Madame de
Godollo, moving towards the door; "and if Madame Phellion, the
tenderest and most virtuous of mothers, will grant me a little place
in her esteem, I shall count myself more than repaid for my trouble."
Madame Phellion plunged headlong into a responsive compliment; and the
countess, in her carriage, was at some distance from the house before
Phellion had ceased to offer her his most respectful salutations.
As the Latin-quarter element in Brigitte's salon became more rare and
less assiduous, a livelier Paris began to infiltrate it. Among his
colleagues in the municipal council and among the upper employees of
the prefecture of the Seine, the new councillor had made several very
important recruits. The mayor, and the deputy mayors of the
arrondissement, on whom, after his removal to the Madeleine quarter,
Thuillier had called, hastened to return the civility; and the same
thing happened with the superior officers of the first legion. The
house itself had produced a contingent; and several of the new tenants
contributed, by their presence, to change the aspect of the dominical
meetings. Among the number we must mention Rabourdin [see
"Bureaucracy"], the former head of Thuillier's office at the ministry
of finance. Having had the misfortune to lose his wife, whose salon,
at an earlier period, checkmated that of Madame Colleville, Rabourdin
occupied as a bachelor the third floor, above the apartment let to
Cardot, the notary. As the result of an odious slight to his just
claims, Rabourdin had voluntarily resigned his public functions. At
this time, when he again met Thuillier, he was director of one of
those numerous projected railways, the construction of which is always
delayed by either parliamentary rivalry or parliamentary indecision.
Let us say, in passing, that the meeting with this able administrator,
now become an important personage in the financial world, was an
occasion to the worthy and honest Phellion to display once more his
noble character. At the time of the resignation to which Rabourdin had
felt himself driven, Phellion alone, of all the clerks in the office,
had stood by him in his misfortunes. Being now in a position to bestow
a great number of places, Rabourdin, on meeting once more his faithful
subordinate, hastened to offer him a position both easy and lucrative.
"Mossieu," said Phellion, "your benevolence touches me and honors me,
but my frankness owes you an avowal, which I beg you not to take in
ill part: I do not believe in 'railways,' as the English call them."
"That's an opinion to which you have every right," said Rabourdin,
smiling; "but, meanwhile, until the contrary is proved, we pay the
employees in our office well, and I should be glad to have you with me
in that capacity. I know by experience that you are a man on whom I
can count."
"Mossieu," returned the great citizen, "I did my duty at that time,
and nothing more. As for the offer you have been so good as to make to
me, I cannot accept it; satisfied with my humble fortunes, I feel
neither the need nor the desire to re-enter an administrative career;
and, in common with the Latin poet, I may say, 'Claudite jam rivos,
pueri, sat prata biberunt.'"
Thus elevated in the character of its habitues, the salon Thuillier
still needed a new element of life. Thanks to the help of Madame de
Godollo, a born organizer, who successfully put to profit the former
connection of Colleville with the musical world, a few artists came to
make diversion from bouillotte and boston. Old-fashioned and
venerable, those two games were forced to beat a retreat before whist,
the only manner, said the Hungarian countess, in which respectable
people can kill time.
Like Louis XVI., who began by putting his own hand to reforms which
subsequently engulfed his throne, Brigitte had encouraged, at first,
this domestic revolution; the need of sustaining her position suitably
in the new quarter to which she had emigrated had made her docile to
all suggestions of comfort and elegance. But the day on which occurred
the scene we are about to witness, an apparently trivial detail had
revealed to her the danger of the declivity on which she stood. The
greater number of the new guests, recently imported by Thuillier, knew
nothing of his sister's supremacy in his home. On arrival, therefore,
they all asked Thuillier to present them to _Madame_, and, naturally,
Thuillier could not say to them that his wife was a figure-head who
groaned under the iron hand of a Richelieu, to whom the whole
household bent the knee. It was therefore not until the first homage
rendered to the sovereign "de jure" was paid, that the new-comers were
led up to Brigitte, and by reason of the stiffness which displeasure
at this misplacement of power gave to her greeting they were scarcely
encouraged to pay her any further attentions. Quick to perceive this
species of overthrow, Queen Elizabeth said to herself, with that
profound instinct of domination which was her ruling passion:--
"If I don't take care I shall soon be nobody in this house."
Burrowing into that idea, she came to think that if the project of
making a common household with la Peyrade, then Celeste's husband,
were carried out, the situation which was beginning to alarm her would
become even worse. From that moment, and by sudden intuition, Felix
Phellion, that good young man, with his head too full of mathematics
ever to become a formidable rival to her sovereignty, seemed to her a
far better match than the enterprising lawyer, and she was the first,
on seeing the Phellion father and mother arrive without the son, to
express regret at his absence. Brigitte, however, was not the only one
to feel the injury that the luckless professor was doing to his
prospects in thus keeping away from her reception. Madame Thuillier,
with simple candor, and Celeste with feigned reserve, both made
manifest their displeasure. As for Madame de Godollo, who, in spite of
a very remarkable voice, usually required much pressing before she
would sing (the piano having been opened since her reign began), she
now went up to Madame Phellion and asked her to accompany her, and
between two verses of a song she said in her ear:--
"Why isn't your son here?"
"He is coming," said Madame Phellion. "His father talked to him very
decidedly; but to-night there happens to be a conjunction of I don't
know what planets; it is a great night at the Observatory, and he did
not feel willing to dispense with--"
"It is inconceivable that a man should be so foolish!" exclaimed
Madame de Godollo; "wasn't theology bad enough, that he must needs
bring in astronomy too?"
And her vexation gave to her voice so vibrating a tone that her song
ended in the midst of what the English call a thunder of applause. La
Peyrade, who feared her extremely, was not one of the last, when she
returned to her place, to approach her, and express his admiration;
but she received his compliments with a coldness so near to incivility
that their mutual hostility was greatly increased. La Peyrade turned
away to console himself with Madame Colleville, who had still too many
pretensions to beauty not to be the enemy of a woman made to intercept
all homage.
"So you also, you think that woman sings well?" she said,
contemptuously, to Theodose.
"At any rate, I have been to tell her so," replied la Peyrade,
"because without her, in regard to Brigitte, there's no security. But
do just look at your Celeste; her eyes never leave that door, and
every time a tray is brought in, though it is an hour at least since
the last guest came, her face expresses disappointment."
We must remark, in passing, that since the reign of Madame de Godollo
trays were passed round on the Sunday reception days, and that without
scrimping; on the contrary, they were laden with ices, cakes, and
syrups, from Taurade's, then the best confectioner.
"Don't harass me!" cried Flavie. "I know very well what that foolish
girl has in her mind; and your marriage will take place only too
soon."
"But you know it is not for myself I make it," said la Peyrade; "it is
a necessity for the future of all of us. Come, come, there are tears
in your eyes! I shall leave you; you are not reasonable. The devil! as
that Prudhomme of a Phellion says, 'Whoso wants the end wants the
means.'"
And he went toward the group composed of Celeste, Madame Thuillier,
Madame de Godollo, Colleville, and Phellion. Madame Colleville
followed him; and, under the influence of the feeling of jealousy she
had just shown, she became a savage mother.
"Celeste," she said, "why don't you sing? These gentlemen wish to hear
you."
"Oh, mamma!" cried the girl, "how can I sing after Madame de Godollo,
with my poor thread of a voice? Besides, you know I have a cold."
"That is to say that, as usual, you make yourself pretentious and
disagreeable; people sing as they can sing; all voices have their own
merits."
"My dear," said Colleville, who, having just lost twenty francs at the
card-tables, found courage in his ill-humor to oppose his wife, "that
saying, 'People sing as they can sing' is a bourgeois maxim. People
sing with a voice, if they have one; but they don't sing after hearing
such a magnificent opera voice as that of Madame la comtesse. For my
part, I readily excuse Celeste for not warbling to us one of her
sentimental little ditties."
"Then it is well worth while," said Flavie, leaving the group, "to
spend so much money on expensive masters who are good for nothing."
"So," said Colleville, resuming the conversation which the invasion of
Flavie had interrupted, "Felix no longer inhabits this earth; he lives
among the stars?"
"My dear and former colleague," said Phellion, "I am, as you are,
annoyed with my son for neglecting, as he does, the oldest friends of
his family; and though the contemplation of those great luminous
bodies suspended in space by the hand of the Creator presents, in my
opinion, higher interest than it appears to have to your more eager
brain, I think that Felix, by not coming here to-night, as he promised
me he would, shows a want of propriety, about which, I can assure you
I shall speak my mind."
"Science," said la Peyrade, "is a fine thing, but it has,
unfortunately, the attribute of making bears and monomaniacs."
"Not to mention," said Celeste, "that it destroys all religious
sentiments."
"You are mistaken there, my dear child," said Madame de Godollo.
"Pascal, who was himself a great example of the falseness of your
point of view, says, if I am not mistaken, that a little science draws
us from religion, but a great deal draws us back to it."
"And yet, madame," said Celeste, "every one admits that Monsieur Felix
is really very learned; when he helped my brother with his studies
nothing could be, so Francois told me, clearer or more comprehensible
than his explanations; and you see, yourself, he is not the more
religious for that."
"I tell you, my dear child, that Monsieur Felix is not irreligious,
and with a little gentleness and patience nothing would be easier than
to bring him back."
"Bring back a savant to the duties of religion!" exclaimed la Peyrade.
"Really, madame, that seems to me very difficult. These gentlemen put
the object of their studies before everything else. Tell a
geometrician or a geologist, for example, that the Church demands,
imperatively, the sanctification of the Sabbath by the suspension of
all species of work, and they will shrug their shoulders, though God
Himself did not disdain to rest from His labors."
"So that in not coming here this evening," said Celeste, naively,
"Monsieur Felix commits not only a fault against good manners, but a
sin."
"But, my dearest," said Madame de Godollo, "do you think that our
meeting here this evening to sing ballads and eat ices and say evil of
our neighbor--which is the customary habit of salons--is more pleasing
to God than to see a man of science in his observatory busied in
studying the magnificent secrets of His creation?"
"There's a time for all things," said Celeste; "and, as Monsieur de la
Peyrade says, God Himself did not disdain to rest."
"But, my love," said Madame de Godollo, "God has time to do so; He is
eternal."
"That," said la Peyrade, "is one of the wittiest impieties ever
uttered; those are the reasons that the world's people put forth. They
interpret and explain away the commands of God, even those that are
most explicit and imperative; they take them, leave them, or choose
among them; the free-thinker subjects them to his lordly revision, and
from free-thinking the distance is short to free actions."
During this harangue of the barrister Madame de Godollo had looked at
the clock; it then said half-past eleven. The salon began to empty.
Only one card-table was still going on, Minard, Thuillier, and two of
the new acquaintances being the players. Phellion had just quitted the
group with which he had so far been sitting, to join his wife, who was
talking with Brigitte in a corner; by the vehemence of his pantomimic
action it was easy to see that he was filled with some virtuous
indignation. Everything seemed to show that all hope of seeing the
arrival of the tardy lover was decidedly over.
"Monsieur," said the countess to la Peyrade, "do you consider the
gentlemen attached to Saint-Jacques du Haut Pas in the rue des Postes
good Catholics?"
"Undoubtedly," replied the barrister, "religion has no more loyal
supporters."
"This morning," continued the countess, "I had the happiness to be
received by Pere Anselme. He is thought the model of all Christian
virtues, and yet the good father is a very learned mathematician."
"I have not said, madame, that the two qualities were absolutely
incompatible."
"But you did say that a true Christian could not attend to any species
of work on Sunday. If so, Pere Anselme must be an unbeliever; for when
I was admitted to his room I found him standing before a blackboard
with a bit of chalk in his hand, busy with a problem which was, no
doubt, knotty, for the board was three-parts covered with algebraic
signs; and I must add that he did not seem to care for the scandal
this ought to cause, for he had with him an individual whom I am not
allowed to name, a younger man of science, of great promise, who was
sharing his profane occupation."
Celeste and Madame Thuillier looked at each other, and both saw a
gleam of hope in the other's eyes.
"Why can't you tell us the name of that young man of science?" Madame
Thuillier ventured to say, for she never put any diplomacy into the
expression of her thoughts.
"Because he has not, like Pere Anselme, the saintliness which would
absolve him in the eyes of monsieur here for this flagrant violation
of the Sabbath. Besides," added Madame de Godollo, in a significant
manner, "he asked me not to mention that I had met him there."
"Then you know a good many scientific young men?" said Celeste,
interrogatively; "this one and Monsieur Felix--that makes two."
"My dear love," said the countess, "you are an inquisitive little
girl, and you will not make me say what I do not choose to say,
especially after a confidence that Pere Anselme made to me; for if I
did, your imagination would at once set off at a gallop."
The gallop had already started, and every word the countess said only
added to the anxious eagerness of the young girl.
"As for me," said la Peyrade, sarcastically, "I shouldn't be at all
surprised if Pere Anselme's young collaborator was that very Felix
Phellion. Voltaire always kept very close relations with the Jesuits
who brought him up; but he never talked religion with them."
"Well, my young savant does talk of it to his venerable brother in
science; he submits his doubts to him; in fact, that was the beginning
of their scientific intimacy."
"And does Pere Anselme," asked Celeste, "hope to convert him?"
"He is sure of it," replied the countess. "His young collaborator,
apart from a religious education which he certainly never had, has
been brought up to the highest principles; he knows, moreover, that
his conversion to religion would make the happiness of a charming girl
whom he loves, and who loves him. Now, my dear, you will not get
another word out of me, and you may think what you like."
"Oh! godmother!" whispered Celeste, yielding to the freshness of her
feelings, "suppose it were he!"
And the tears filled her eyes as she pressed Madame Thuillier's hand.
At this moment the servant threw open the door of the salon, and,
singular complication! announced Monsieur Felix Phellion.
The young professor entered the room, bathed in perspiration, his
cravat in disorder, and himself out of breath.
"A pretty hour," said Phellion, sternly, "to present yourself."
"Father," said Felix, moving to the side of the room where Madame
Thuillier and Celeste were seated, "I could not leave before the end
of the phenomenon; and then I couldn't find a carriage, and I have run
the whole way."
"Your ears ought to have burned as you came," said la Peyrade, "for
you have been for the last half-hour in the minds of these ladies, and
a great problem has been started about you."
Felix did not answer. He saw Brigitte entering the salon from the
dining-room where she had gone to tell the man-servant not to bring in
more trays, and he hurried to greet her.
After listening to a few reproaches for the rarity of his visits and
receiving forgiveness in a very cordial "Better late than never," he
turned towards his pole, and was much astonished to hear himself
addressed by Madame de Godollo as follows:--
"Monsieur," she said, "I hope you will pardon the indiscretion I have,
in the heat of conversation, committed about you. I have told these
ladies where I met you this morning."
"Met me?" said Felix; "if I had the honor to meet you, madame, I did
not see you."
An almost imperceptible smile flickered on la Peyrade's lips.
"You saw me well enough to ask me to keep silence as to where I had
met you; but, at any rate, I did not go beyond a simple statement; I
said you saw Pere Anselme sometimes, and had certain scientific
relations with him; also that you defended your religious doubts to
him as you do to Celeste."
"Pere Anselme!" said Felix, stupidly.
"Yes, Pere Anselme," said la Peyrade, "a great mathematician who does
not despair of converting you. Mademoiselle Celeste wept for joy."
Felix looked around him with a bewildered air. Madame de Godollo fixed
upon him a pair of eyes the language of which a poodle could have
understood.
"I wish," he said finally, "I could have given that joy to
Mademoiselle Celeste, but I think, madame, you are mistaken."
"Ah! monsieur, then I must be more precise," said the countess, "and
if your modesty still induces you to hide a step that can only honor
you, you can contradict me; I will bear the mortification of having
divulged a secret which, I acknowledge, you trusted implicitly to my
discretion."
Madame Thuillier and Celeste were truly a whole drama to behold; never
were doubt and eager expectation more plainly depicted on the human
face. Measuring her words deliberately, Madame de Godollo thus
continued:--
"I said to these ladies, because I know how deep an interest they take
in your salvation, and because you are accused of boldly defying the
commandments of God by working on Sundays, that I had met you this
morning at the house of Pere Anselme, a mathematician like yourself,
with whom you were busy in solving a problem; I said that your
scientific intercourse with that saintly and enlightened man had led
to other explanations between you; that you had submitted to him your
religious doubts, and he did not despair of removing them. In the
confirmation you can give of my words there is nothing, I am sure, to
wound your self-esteem. The matter was simply a surprise you intended
for Celeste, and I have had the stupidity to divulge it. But when she
hears you admit the truth of my words you will have given her such
happiness that I shall hope to be forgiven."
"Come, monsieur," said la Peyrade, "there's nothing absurd or
mortifying in having sought for light; you, so honorable and so truly
an enemy to falsehood, you cannot deny what madame affirms with such
decision."
"Well," said Felix, after a moment's hesitation, "will you,
Mademoiselle Celeste, allow me to say a few words to you in private,
without witnesses?"
Celeste rose, after receiving an approving sign from Madame Thuillier.
Felix took her hand and led her to the recess of the nearest window.
"Celeste," he said, "I entreat you: wait! See," he added, pointing to
the constellation of Ursa Minor, "beyond those visible stars a future
lies before us; I will place you there. As for Pere Anselme, I cannot
admit what has been said, for it is not true. It is an invented tale.
But be patient with me; you shall soon know all."
"He is mad!" said the young girl, in tones of despair, as she resumed
her place beside Madame Thuillier.
Felix confirmed this judgment by rushing frantically from the salon,
without perceiving the emotion in which his father and his mother
started after him. After this sudden departure, which stupefied
everybody, la Peyrade approached Madame de Godollo very respectfully,
and said to her:--
"You must admit, madame, that it is difficult to drag a man from the
water when he persists in being drowned."
"I had no idea until this moment of such utter simplicity," replied
the countess; "it is too silly. I pass over to the enemy; and with
that enemy I am ready and desirous to have, whenever he pleases, a
frank and honest explanation."
CHAPTER IV
HUNGARY VERSUS PROVENCE
The next day Theodose felt himself possessed by two curiosities: How
would Celeste behave as to the option she had accepted? and this
Comtesse Torna de Godollo, what did she mean by what she had said; and
what did she want with him?
The first of these questions seemed, undoubtedly, to have the right of
way, and yet, by some secret instinct, la Peyrade felt more keenly
drawn toward the conclusion of the second problem. He decided,
therefore, to take his first step in that direction, fully
understanding that he could not too carefully arm himself for the
interview to which the countess had invited him.
The morning had been rainy, and this great calculator was, of course,
not ignorant how much a spot of mud, tarnishing the brilliancy of
varnished boots, could lower a man in the opinion of some. He
therefore sent his porter for a cabriolet, and about three o'clock in
the afternoon he drove from the rue Saint-Dominique d'Enfer toward the
elegant latitudes of the Madeleine. It may well be believed that
certain cares had been bestowed upon his toilet, which ought to
present a happy medium between the negligent ease of a morning costume
and the ceremonious character of an evening suit. Condemned by his
profession to a white cravat, which he rarely laid aside, and not
venturing to present himself in anything but a dress-coat, he felt
himself being drawn, of necessity, to one of the extremes he desired
to avoid. However by buttoning up his coat and wearing tan instead of
straw-colored gloves, he managed to _unsolemnize_ himself, and to
avoid that provincial air which a man in full dress walking the streets
of Paris while the sun is above the horizon never fails to convey.
The wary diplomatist was careful not to drive to the house where he
was going. He was unwilling to be seen from the countess' entresol
issuing from a hired cab, and from the first floor he feared to be
discovered stopping short on his way up at the lower floor,--a
proceeding which could not fail to give rise to countless conjectures.
He therefore ordered the driver to pull up at the corner of the rue
Royale, whence, along a pavement that was now nearly dry, he picked
his way on tiptoe to the house. It so chanced that he was not seen by
either the porter or his wife; the former being beadle of the church
of the Madeleine, was absent at a service, and the wife had just gone
up to show a vacant apartment to a lodger. Theodose was therefore able
to glide unobserved to the door of the sanctuary he desired to
penetrate. A soft touch of his hand to the silken bell-rope caused a
sound which echoed from the interior of the apartment. A few seconds
elapsed, and then another and more imperious bell of less volume
seemed to him a notification to the maid that her delay in opening the
door was displeasing to her mistress. A moment later, a waiting-woman,
of middle age, and too well trained to dress like a "soubrette" of
comedy, opened the door to him.
The lawyer gave his name, and the woman ushered him into a
dining-room, severely luxurious, where she asked him to wait. A moment
later, however, she returned, and admitted him into the most
coquettish and splendid salon it was possible to insert beneath the
low ceilings of an entresol. The divinity of the place was seated
before a writing-table covered with a Venetian cloth, in which gold
glittered in little spots among the dazzling colors of the tapestry.
"Will you allow me, monsieur, to finish a letter of some importance?"
she said.
The barrister bowed in sign of assent. The handsome Hungarian then
concluded a note on blue English paper, which she placed in an
envelope; after sealing it carefully, she rang the bell. The maid
appeared immediately and lighted a little spirit lamp; above the lamp
was suspended a sort of tiny crucible, in which was a drop of
sealing-wax; as soon as this had melted, the maid poured it on the
envelope, presenting to her mistress a seal with armorial bearings.
This the countess imprinted on the wax with her own beautiful hands,
and then said:--
"Take the letter at once to that address."
The woman made a movement to take the letter, but, either from haste
or inadvertence, the paper fell from her hand close to la Peyrade's
feet. He stooped hastily to pick it up, and read the direction
involuntarily. It bore the words, "His Excellency the Minister of
Foreign Affairs"; the significant words, "For him only," written
higher up, seemed to give this missive a character of intimacy.
"Pardon, monsieur," said the countess, receiving the paper, which he
had the good taste to return to her own hands in order to show his
eagerness to serve her. "Be so good, mademoiselle, as to carry that in
a way not to lose it," she added in a dry tone to the unlucky maid.
The countess then left her writing-table and took her seat on a sofa
covered with pearl-gray satin.
During these proceedings la Peyrade had the satisfaction of making an
inventory of all the choice things by which he was surrounded.
Paintings by good masters detached themselves from walls of even tone;
on a pier-table stood a very tall Japanese vase; before the windows
the jardinieres were filled with lilium rubrum, showing its handsome
reversely curling petals surmounted by white and red camellias and a
dwarf magnolia from China, with flowers of sulphur white with scarlet
edges. In a corner was a stand of arms, of curious shapes and rich
construction, explained, perhaps, by the lady's Hungarian nationality
--always that of the hussar. A few bronzes and statuettes of exquisite
selection, chairs rolling softly on Persian carpets, and a perfect
anarchy of stuffs of all kinds completed the arrangement of this
salon, which the lawyer had once before visited with Brigitte and
Thuillier before the countess moved into it. It was so transformed
that it seemed to him unrecognizable. With a little more knowledge of
the world la Peyrade would have been less surprised at the marvellous
care given by the countess to the decoration of the room. A woman's
salon is her kingdom, and her absolute domain; there, in the fullest
sense of the word, she reigns, she governs; there she offers battle,
and nearly always comes off victorious.
Coquettishly lying back in a corner of the sofa, her head carelessly
supported by an arm the form and whiteness of which could be seen
nearly to the elbow through the wide, open sleeve of a black velvet
dressing-gown, her Cinderella foot in its dainty slipper of Russia
leather resting on a cushion of orange satin, the handsome Hungarian
had the look of a portrait by Laurence or Winterhalter, plus the
naivete of the pose.
"Monsieur," she said, with the slightly foreign accent which lent an
added charm to her words, "I cannot help thinking it rather droll that
a man of your mind and rare penetration should have thought you had an
enemy in me."
"But, Madame la comtesse," replied la Peyrade, allowing her to read in
his eyes an astonishment mingled with distrust, "all the appearances,
you must admit, were of that nature. A suitor interposes to break off
a marriage which has been offered to me with every inducement; this
rival does me the service of showing himself so miraculously stupid
and awkward that I could easily have set him aside, when suddenly a
most unlooked-for and able auxiliary devotes herself to protecting him
on the very ground where he shows himself most vulnerable."
"You must admit," said the countess, laughing, "that the protege
showed himself a most intelligent man, and that he seconded my efforts
valiantly."
"His clumsiness could not have been, I think, very unexpected to you,"
replied la Peyrade; "therefore the protection you have deigned to give
him is the more cruel to me."
"What a misfortune it would be," said the countess, with charmingly
affected satire, "if your marriage with Mademoiselle Celeste were
prevented! Do you really care so much, monsieur, for that little
school-girl?"
In that last word, especially the intonation with which it was
uttered, there was more than contempt, there was hatred. This
expression did not escape an observer of la Peyrade's strength, but
not being a man to advance very far on a single remark he merely
replied:--
"Madame, the vulgar expression, to 'settle down,' explains this
situation, in which a man, after many struggles and being at an end of
his efforts and his illusions, makes a compromise with the future.
When this compromise takes the form of a young girl with, I admit,
more virtue than beauty, but one who brings to a husband the fortune
which is indispensable to the comfort of married life, what is there
so astonishing in the fact that his heart yields to gratitude and that
he welcomes the prospect of a placid happiness?"
"I have always thought," replied the countess, "that the power of a
man's intellect ought to be the measure of his ambition; and I
imagined that one so wise as to make himself, at first, the poor man's
lawyer, would have in his heart less humble and less pastoral
aspirations."
"Ah! madame," returned la Peyrade, "the iron hand of necessity compels
us to strange resignations. The question of daily bread is one of
those before which all things bend the knee. Apollo was forced to 'get
a living,' as the shepherd of Admetus."
"The sheepfold of Admetus," said Madame de Godollo, "was at least a
royal fold; I don't think Apollo would have resigned himself to be the
shepherd of a--bourgeois."
The hesitation that preceded that last word seemed to convey in place
of it a proper name; and la Peyrade understood that Madame de Godollo,
out of pure clemency, had suppressed that of Thuillier, had turned her
remark upon the species and not the individual.
"I agree, madame, that your distinction is a just one," he replied,
"but in this case Apollo has no choice."
"I don't like persons who charge too much," said the countess, "but
still less do I like those who sell their merchandise below the market
price; I always suspect such persons of trying to dupe me by some
clever and complicated trick. You know very well, monsieur, your own
value, and your hypocritical humility displeases me immensely. It
proves to me that my kindly overtures have not produced even a
beginning of confidence between us."
"I assure you, madame, that up to the present time life has never
justified the belief in any dazzling superiority in me."
"Well, really," said the Hungarian, "perhaps I ought to believe in the
humility of a man who is willing to accept the pitiable finale of his
life which I threw myself into the breach to prevent."
"Just as I, perhaps," said la Peyrade, with a touch of sarcasm, "ought
to believe in the reality of a kindness which, in order to save me,
has handled me so roughly."
The countess cast a reproachful look upon her visitor; her fingers
crumpled the ribbons of her gown; she lowered her eyes, and gave a
sigh, so nearly imperceptible, so slight, that it might have passed
for an accident in the most regular breathing.
"You are rancorous," she said, "and you judge people by one aspect
only. After all," she added, as if on reflection, "you are perhaps
right in reminding me that I have taken the longest way round by
meddling, rather ridiculously, in interests that do not concern me. Go
on, my dear monsieur, in the path of this glorious marriage which
offers you so many combined inducements; only, let me hope that you
may not repent a course with which I shall no longer interfere."
The Provencal had not been spoilt by an experience of "bonnes
fortunes." The poverty against which he had struggled so long never
leads to affairs of gallantry, and since he had thrown off its harsh
restraint, his mind being wholly given up to the anxious work of
creating his future, the things of the heart had entered but slightly
into his life; unless we must except the comedy he had played on
Flavie. We can therefore imagine the perplexity of this novice in the
matter of adventures when he saw himself placed between the danger of
losing what seemed to be a delightful opportunity, and the fear of
finding a serpent amid the beautiful flowers that were offered to his
grasp. Too marked a reserve, too lukewarm an eagerness, might wound
the self-love of that beautiful foreigner, and quench the spring from
which he seemed invited to draw. On the other hand, suppose that
appearance of interest were only a snare? Suppose this kindness
(ill-explained, as it seemed to him), of which he was so suddenly the
object, had no other purpose than to entice him into a step which
might be used to compromise him with the Thuilliers? What a blow to
his reputation for shrewdness, and what a role to play!--that of the
dog letting go the meat for the shadow!
We know that la Peyrade was trained in the school of Tartuffe, and the
frankness with which that great master declares to Elmire that without
receiving a few of the favors to which he aspired he could not trust
in her tender advances, seemed to the barrister a suitable method to
apply to the present case, adding, however, a trifle more softness to
the form.
"Madame la comtesse," he said, "you have turned me into a man who is
much to be pitied. I was cheerfully advancing to this marriage, and
you take all faith in it away from me. Suppose I break it off, what
use can I--with that great capacity you see in me--make of the liberty
I thus recover?"
"La Bruyere, if I am not mistaken, said that nothing freshens the
blood so much as to avoid committing a folly."
"That may be; but it is, you must admit, a negative benefit; and I am
of an age and in a position to desire more serious results. The
interest that you deign to show to me cannot, I think, stop short at
the idea of merely putting an end to my present prospects. I love
Mademoiselle Colleville with a love, it is true, which has nothing
imperative about it; but I certainly love her, her hand is promised to
me, and before renouncing it--"
"So," said the countess, hastily, "in a given case you would not be
averse to a rupture? And," she added, in a more decided tone, "there
would be some chance of making you see that in taking your first
opportunity you cut yourself off from a better future, in which a more
suitable marriage may present itself?"
"But, at least, madame, I must be enabled to foresee it definitely."
This persistence in demanding pledges seemed to irritate the countess.
"Faith," she said, "is only a virtue when it believes without seeing.
You doubt yourself, and that is another form of stupidity. I am not
happy, it seems, in my selection of those I desire to benefit."
"But, madame, it cannot be indiscreet to ask to know in some remote
way at least, what future your kind good-will has imagined for me."
"It is very indiscreet," replied the countess, coldly, "and it shows
plainly that you offer me only a conditional confidence. Let us say no
more. You are certainly far advanced with Mademoiselle Colleville; she
suits you, you say, in many ways; therefore marry her. I say again,
you will no longer find me in your way."
"But does Mademoiselle Colleville really suit me?" resumed la Peyrade;
"that is the very point on which you have lately raised my doubts. Do
you not think there is something cruel in casting me first in one
direction and then in the other without affording me any ground to go
upon?"
"Ah!" said the countess, in a tone of impatience, "you want my opinion
on the premises! Well, monsieur, there is one very conclusive fact to
which I can bring proof: Celeste does not love you."
"So I have thought," said la Peyrade, humbly. "I felt that I was
making a marriage of mere convenience."
"And she cannot love you, because," continued Madame de Godollo, with
animation, "she cannot comprehend you. Her proper husband is that
blond little man, insipid as herself; from the union of those two
natures without life or heat will result in that lukewarm existence
which, in the opinion of the world where she was born and where she
has lived, is the ne plus ultra of conjugal felicity. Try to make that
little simpleton understand that when she had a chance to unite
herself with true talent she ought to have felt highly honored! But,
above all, try to make her miserable, odious family and surroundings
understand it! Enriched bourgeois, parvenus! there's the roof beneath
which you think to rest from your cruel labor and your many trials!
And do you believe that you will not be made to feel, twenty times a
day, that your share in the partnership is distressingly light in the
scale against their money? On one side, the Iliad, the Cid, Der
Freyschutz, and the frescos of the Vatican; on the other, three
hundred thousand francs in good, ringing coin! Tell me which side they
will trust and admire! The artist, the man of imagination who falls
into the bourgeois atmosphere--shall I tell you to what I compare him?
To Daniel cast into the lion's den, less the miracle of Holy Writ."
This invective against the bourgeoisie was uttered in a tone of heated
conviction which could scarcely fail to be communicated.
"Ah! madame," cried la Peyrade, "how eloquently you say things which
again and again have entered my troubled and anxious mind! But I have
felt myself lashed to that most cruel fate, the necessity of gaining a
position--"
"Necessity! position!" interrupted the countess, again raising the
temperature of her speech,--"words void of meaning! which have not
even sound to able men, though they drive back fools as though they
were formidable barriers. Necessity! does that exist for noble
natures, for those who know how to will? A Gascon minister uttered a
saying which ought to be engraved on the doors of all careers: 'All
things come to him who knows how to wait.' Are you ignorant that
marriage, to men of a high stamp, is either a chain which binds them
to the lowest vulgarities of existence, or a wing on which to rise to
the highest summits of the social world? The wife you need, monsieur,
--and she would not be long wanting to your career if you had not,
with such incredible haste, accepted the first 'dot' that was offered
you,--the wife you should have chosen is a woman capable of
understanding you, able to divine your intellect; one who could be to
you a fellow-worker, an intellectual confidant, and not a mere
embodiment of the 'pot-au-feu'; a woman capable of being now your
secretary, but soon the wife of a deputy, a minister, an ambassador;
one, in short, who could offer you her heart as a mainspring, her
salon for a stage, her connections for a ladder, and who, in return
for all she would give you of ardor and strength, asks only to shine
beside your throne in the rays of the glory she predicts for you!"
Intoxicated, as it were, with the flow of her own words, the countess
was really magnificent; her eyes sparkled, her nostrils dilated; the
prospect her vivid eloquence thus unrolled she seemed to see, and
touch with her quivering fingers. For a moment, la Peyrade was dazzled
by this sunrise which suddenly burst upon his life.
However, as he was a man most eminently prudent, who had made it his
rule of life never to lend except on sound and solvent security, he
was still impelled to weigh the situation.
"Madame la comtesse," he said, "you reproached me just now for
speaking like a bourgeois, and I, in return, am afraid that you are
talking like a goddess. I admire you, I listen to you, but I am not
convinced. Such devotions, such sublime abnegations may be met with in
heaven, but in this low world who can hope to be the object of them?"
"You are mistaken, monsieur," replied the countess, with solemnity;
"such devotions are rare, but they are neither impossible nor
incredible; only, it is necessary to have the heart to find them, and,
above all, the hand to take them when they are offered to you."
So saying, the countess rose majestically.
La Peyrade saw that he had ended by displeasing her, and he felt that
she dismissed him. He rose himself, bowed respectfully, and asked to
be received again.
"Monsieur," said Madame de Godollo, "we Hungarians, primitive people
and almost savages that we are, have a saying that when our door is
open both sides of it are opened wide; when we close it it is
double-locked and bolted."
That dignified and ambiguous speech was accompanied by a slight
inclination of the head. Bewildered, confounded by this behavior, to
him so new, which bore but little resemblance to that of Flavie,
Brigitte, and Madame Minard, la Peyrade left the house, asking himself
again and again whether he had played his game properly.
CHAPTER V
SHOWING HOW NEAR THE TARPEIAN ROCK IS TO THE CAPITOL
On leaving Madame de Godollo, la Peyrade felt the necessity of
gathering himself together. Beneath the conversation he had just
maintained with this strange woman, what could he see,--a trap, or a
rich and distinguished marriage offered to him. Under such a doubt as
this, to press Celeste for an immediate answer was neither clever nor
prudent; it was simply to bind himself, and close the door to the
changes, still very ill-defined, which seemed offered to him. The
result of the consultation which Theodose held with himself as he
walked along the boulevard was that he ought, for the moment, to think
only of gaining time. Consequently, instead of going to the
Thuilliers' to learn Celeste's decision, he went home, and wrote the
following little note to Thuillier:--
My dear Thuillier,--You will certainly not think it extraordinary
that I should not present myself at your house to-day,--partly
because I fear the sentence which will be pronounced upon me, and
partly because I do not wish to seem an impatient and unmannerly
creditor. A few days, more or less, will matter little under such
circumstances, and yet Mademoiselle Colleville may find them
desirable for the absolute freedom of her choice. I shall,
therefore, not go to see you until you write for me.
I am now more calm, and I have added a few more pages to our
manuscript; it will take but little time to hand in the whole to
the printer.
Ever yours,
Theodose de la Peyrade.
Two hours later a servant, dressed in what was evidently the first
step towards a livery, which the Thuilliers did not as yet venture to
risk, the "male domestic," whom Minard had mentioned to the Phellions,
arrived at la Peyrade's lodgings with the following note:--
Come to-night, without fail. We will talk over the whole affair
with Brigitte.
Your most affectionately devoted
Jerome Thuillier.
"Good!" said la Peyrade; "evidently there is some hindrance on the
other side; I shall have time to turn myself round."
That evening, when the servant announced him in the Thuillier salon,
the Comtesse de Godollo, who was sitting with Brigitte, hastened to
rise and leave the room. As she passed la Peyrade she made him a very
ceremonious bow. There was nothing conclusive to be deduced from this
abrupt departure, which might signify anything, either much or
nothing.
After talking of the weather and so forth for a time, as persons do
who have met to discuss a delicate subject about which they are not
sure of coming to an understanding, the matter was opened by Brigitte,
who had sent her brother to take a walk on the boulevard, telling him
to leave her to manage the affair.
"My dear boy," she said to Theodose, "it was very nice of you not to
come here to-day like a _grasp-all_, to put your pistol at our throats,
for we were not, as it happened, quite ready to answer you. I think,"
she added, "that our little Celeste needs a trifle more time."
"Then," said la Peyrade, quickly, "she has not decided in favor of
Monsieur Felix Phellion?"
"Joker!" replied the old maid, "you know very well you settled that
business last night; but you also know, of course, that her own
inclinations incline her that way."
"Short of being blind, I must have seen that," replied la Peyrade.
"It is not an obstacle to my projects," continued Mademoiselle
Thuillier; "but it serves to explain why I ask for Celeste a little
more time; and also why I have wished all along to postpone the
marriage to a later date. I wanted to give you time to insinuate
yourself into the heart of my dear little girl--but you and Thuillier
upset my plans."
"Nothing, I think, has been done without your sanction," said la
Peyrade, "and if, during these fifteen days, I have not talked with
you on the subject, it was out of pure delicacy. Thuillier told me
that everything was agreed upon with you."
"On the contrary, Thuillier knows very well that I refused to mix
myself up on your new arrangements. If you had not made yourself so
scarce lately, I might have been the first to tell you that I did not
approve of them. However, I can truly say I did nothing to hinder
their success."
"But that was too little," said la Peyrade; "your active help was
absolutely necessary."
"Possibly; but I, who know women better than you, being one of them,
--I felt very sure that if Celeste was told to choose between two
suitors she would consider that a permission to think at her ease of
the one she liked best. I myself had always left her in the vague as
to Felix, knowing as I did the proper moment to settle her mind about
him."
"So," said la Peyrade, "you mean that she refuses me."
"It is much worse than that," returned Brigitte; "she accepts you, and
is willing to pledge her word; but it is so easy to see she regards
herself as a victim, that if I were in your place I should feel
neither flattered nor secure in such a position."
In any other condition of mind la Peyrade would probably have answered
that he accepted the sacrifice, and would make it his business to win
the heart which at first was reluctantly given; but delay now suited
him, and he replied to Brigitte with a question:--
"Then what do you advise? What course had I better take?"
"Finish Thuillier's pamphlet, in the first place, or he'll go crazy;
and leave me to work the other affair in your interests," replied
Brigitte.
"But am I in friendly hands? For, to tell you the truth, little aunt,
I have not been able to conceal from myself that you have, for some
time past, changed very much to me."
"Changed to you! What change do you see in me, addled-pate that you
are?"
"Oh! nothing very tangible," said la Peyrade; "but ever since that
Countess Torna has had a footing in your house--"
"My poor boy, the countess has done me many services, and I am very
grateful to her; but is that any reason why I should be false to you,
who have done us still greater services?"
"But you must admit," said la Peyrade, craftily, "that she has told
you a great deal of harm of me."
"Naturally she has; these fine ladies are all that way; they expect
the whole world to adore them, and she sees that you are thinking only
of Celeste; but all she has said to me against you runs off my mind
like water from varnished cloth."
"So, then, little aunt, I may continue to count on you?" persisted la
Peyrade.
"Yes; provided you are not tormenting, and will let me manage this
affair."
"Tell me how you are going to do it?" asked la Peyrade, with an air of
great good-humor.
"In the first place, I shall signify to Felix that he is not to set
foot in this house again."
"Is that possible?" said the barrister; "I mean can it be done
civilly?"
"Very possible; I shall make Phellion himself tell him. He's a man who
is always astride of principles, and he'll be the first to see that if
his son will not do what is necessary to obtain Celeste's hand he
ought to deprive us of his presence."
"What next?" asked la Peyrade.
"Next, I shall signify to Celeste that she was left at liberty to
choose one husband or the other, and as she did not choose Felix she
must make up her mind to take you, a pious fellow, such as she wants.
You needn't be uneasy; I'll sing your praises, especially your
generosity in not profiting by the arrangement she agreed to make
to-day. But all that will take a week at least, and if Thuillier's
pamphlet isn't out before then, I don't know but what we shall have to
put him in a lunatic asylum."
"The pamphlet can be out in two days. But is it very certain, little
aunt, that we are playing above-board? Mountains, as they say, never
meet, but men do; and certainly, when the time comes to promote the
election, I can do Thuillier either good or bad service. Do you know,
the other day I was terribly frightened. I had a letter from him in my
pocket, in which he spoke of the pamphlet as being written by me. I
fancied for a moment that I had dropped it in the Luxembourg. If I
had, what a scandal it would have caused in the quarter."
"Who would dare to play tricks with such a wily one as you?" said
Brigitte, fully comprehending the comminatory nature of la Peyrade's
last words, interpolated into the conversation without rhyme or
reason. "But really," she added, "why should you complain of us? It is
you who are behindhand in your promises. That cross which was to have
been granted within a week, and that pamphlet, which ought to have
appeared a long time ago--"
"The pamphlet and the cross will both appear in good time; the one
will bring the other," said la Peyrade, rising. "Tell Thuillier to
come and see me to-morrow evening, and I think we can then correct the
last sheet. But, above all, don't listen to the spitefulness of Madame
de Godollo; I have an idea that in order to make herself completely
mistress of this house she wants to alienate all your old friends, and
also that she is casting her net for Thuillier."
"Well, in point of fact," said the old maid, whom the parting shot of
the infernal barrister had touched on the ever-sensitive point of her
authority, "I must look into that matter you speak of there; she is
rather coquettish, that little woman."
La Peyrade gained a second benefit out of that speech so adroitly
flung out; he saw by Brigitte's answer to it that the countess had not
mentioned to her the visit he had paid her during the day. This
reticence might have a serious meaning.
Four days later, the printer, the stitcher, the paper glazier having
fulfilled their offices, Thuillier had the inexpressible happiness of
beginning on the boulevards a promenade, which he continued through
the Passages, and even to the Palais-Royal, pausing before all the
book-shops where he saw, shining in black letters on a yellow poster,
the famous title:--
TAXATION AND THE SLIDING-SCALE
by J. Thuillier,
Member of the Council-General of the Seine.
Having reached the point of persuading himself that the care he had
bestowed upon the correction of proofs made the merit of the work his
own, his paternal heart, like that of Maitre Corbeau, could not
contain itself for joy. We ought to add that he held in very low
esteem those booksellers who did not announce the sale of the new
work, destined to become, as he believed, a European event. Without
actually deciding the manner in which he would punish their
indifference, he nevertheless made a list of these rebellious persons,
and wished them as much evil as if they had offered him a personal
affront.
The next day he spent a delightful morning in writing a certain number
of letters, sending the publication to friends, and putting into paper
covers some fifty copies, to which the sacramental phrase, "From the
author," imparted to his eyes an inestimable value.
But the third day of the sale brought a slight diminution of his
happiness. He had chosen for his editor a young man, doing business at
a breakneck pace, who had lately established himself in the Passage
des Panoramas, where he was paying a ruinous rent. He was the nephew
of Barbet the publisher, whom Brigitte had had as a tenant in the rue
Saint-Dominique d'Enfer. This Barbet junior was a youth who flinched
at nothing; and when he was presented to Thuillier by his uncle, he
pledged himself, provided he was not shackled in his advertising, to
sell off the first edition and print a second within a week.
Now, Thuillier had spent about fifteen hundred francs himself on costs
of publication, such, for instance, as copies sent in great profusion
to the newspapers; but at the close of the third day _seven_ copies only
had been sold, and three of those on credit. It might be believed that
in revealing to the horror-stricken Thuillier this paltry result the
young publisher would have lost at least something of his assurance.
On the contrary, this Guzman of the book-trade hastened to say:--
"I am delighted at what has happened. If we had sold a hundred copies
it would trouble me far more than the fifteen hundred now on our
hands; that's what I call hanging fire; whereas this insignificant
sale only proves that the edition will go off like a rocket."
"But when?" asked Thuillier, who thought this view paradoxical.
"Parbleu!" said Barbet, "when we get notices in the newspapers.
Newspaper notices are only useful to arouse attention. 'Dear me!' says
the public, 'there's a publication that must be interesting.' The
title is good,--'Taxation and the Sliding-Scale,'--but I find that the
more piquant a title is, the more buyers distrust it, they have been
taken in so often; they wait for the notices. On the other hand, for
books that are destined to have only a limited sale, a hundred
ready-made purchasers will come in at once, but after that, good-bye
to them; we don't place another copy."
"Then you don't think," said Thuillier, "that the sale is hopeless?"
"On the contrary, I think it is on the best track. When the 'Debats,'
the 'Constitutionnel,' the 'Siecle,' and the 'Presse' have reviewed
it, especially if the 'Debats' mauls it (they are ministerial, you
know), it won't be a week before the whole edition is snapped up."
"You say that easily enough," replied Thuillier; "but how are we to
get hold of those gentlemen of the press?"
"Ah! I'll take care of that," said Barbet. "I am on the best of terms
with the managing editors; they say the devil is in me, and that I
remind them of Ladvocat in his best days."
"But then, my dear fellow, you ought to have seen to this earlier."
"Ah! excuse me, papa Thuillier; there's only one way of seeing to the
journalists; but as you grumbled about the fifteen hundred francs for
the advertisements, I did not venture to propose to you another extra
expense."
"What expense?" asked Thuillier, anxiously.
"When you were nominated to the municipal council, where was the plan
mooted?" asked the publisher.
"Parbleu! in my own house," replied Thuillier.
"Yes, of course, in your own house, but at a dinner, followed by a
ball, and the ball itself crowned by a supper. Well, my dear master,
there are no two ways to do this business; Boileau says:--
"'All is done through the palate, and not through the mind;
And it is by our dinners we govern mankind.'"
"Then you think I ought to give a dinner to those journalists?"
"Yes; but not at your own house; for these journalists, you see, if
women are present, get stupid; they have to behave themselves. And,
besides, it isn't dinner they want, but a breakfast--that suits them
best. In the evening these gentlemen have to go to first
representations, and make up their papers, not to speak of their own
little private doings; whereas in the mornings they have nothing to
think about. As for me, it is always breakfasts that I give."
"But that costs money, breakfasts like that," said Thuillier;
"journalists are gourmands."
"Bah! twenty francs a head, without wine. Say you have ten of them;
three hundred francs will see you handsomely through the whole thing.
In fact, as a matter of economy, breakfasts are preferable; for a
dinner you wouldn't get off under five hundred francs."
"How you talk, young man!" said Thuillier.
"Oh, hang it! everybody knows it costs dear to get elected to the
Chamber; and all this favors your nomination."
"But how can I invite those gentlemen? Must I go and see them myself?"
"Certainly not; send them your pamphlet and appoint them to meet you
at Philippe's or Vefour's--they'll understand perfectly."
"Ten guests," said Thuillier, beginning to enter into the idea. "I did
not know there were so many leading journals."
"There are not," said the publisher; "but we must have the little dogs
as well, for they bark loudest. This breakfast is certain to make a
noise, and if you don't ask them they'll think you pick and choose,
and everyone excluded will be your enemy."
"Then you think it is enough merely to send the invitations?"
"Yes; I'll make the list, and you can write the notes and send them to
me. I'll see that they are delivered; some of them I shall take in
person."
"If I were sure," said Thuillier, undecidedly, "that this expense
would have the desired effect--"
"_If I were sure_,--that's a queer thing to say," said Barbet. "My dear
master, this is money placed on mortgage; for it, I will guarantee the
sale of fifteen hundred copies,--say at forty sous apiece; allowing
the discounts, that makes three thousand francs. You see that your
costs and extra costs are covered, and more than covered."
"Well," said Thuillier, turning to go, "I'll talk to la Peyrade about
it."
"As you please, my dear master; but decide soon, for nothing gets
mouldy so fast as a book; write hot, serve hot, and buy hot,--that's
the rule for authors, publishers, and public; all is bosh outside of
it, and no good to touch."
When la Peyrade was consulted, he did not think in his heart that the
remedy was heroic, but he had now come to feel the bitterest animosity
against Thuillier, so that he was well pleased to see this new tax
levied on his self-important inexperience and pompous silliness.
As for Thuillier, the mania for posing as a publicist and getting
himself talked about so possessed him that although he moaned over
this fresh bleeding of his purse, he had decided on the sacrifice
before he even spoke to la Peyrade. The reserved and conditional
approval of the latter was, therefore, more than enough to settle his
determination, and the same evening he returned to Barbet junior and
asked for the list of guests whom he ought to invite.
Barbet gaily produced his little catalogue. Instead of the ten guests
originally mentioned, there proved to be fifteen, not counting himself
or la Peyrade, whom Thuillier wanted to second him in this encounter
with a set of men among whom he himself felt he should be a little out
of place. Casting his eyes over the list, he exclaimed, vehemently:--
"Heavens! my dear fellow, here are names of papers nobody ever heard
of. Where's the 'Moralisateur,' the 'Lanterne de Diogene,' the
'Pelican,' the 'Echo de la Bievre'?"
"You'd better be careful how you scorn the 'Echo de la Bievre,'" said
Barbet; "why, that's the paper of the 12th arrondissement, from which
you expect to be elected; its patrons are those big tanners of the
Mouffetard quarter!"
"Well, let that go--but the 'Pelican'?"
"The 'Pelican'? that's a paper you'll find in every dentist's
waiting-room; dentists are the first _puffists_ in the world! How
many teeth do you suppose are daily pulled in Paris?"
"Come, come, nonsense," said Thuillier, who proceeded to mark out
certain names, reducing the whole number present to fourteen.
"If one falls off we shall be thirteen," remarked Barbet.
"Pooh!" said Thuillier, the free-thinker, "do you suppose I give in to
that superstition?"
The list being finally closed and settled at fourteen, Thuillier
seated himself at the publisher's desk and wrote the invitations,
naming, in view of the urgency of the purpose, the next day but one
for the meeting, Barbet having assured him that no journalist would
object to the shortness of the invitation. The meeting was appointed
at Vefour's, the restaurant par excellence of the bourgeoisie and all
provincials.
Barbet arrived on the day named before Thuillier, who appeared in a
cravat which alone was enough to create a stir in the satirical circle
in which he was about to produce himself. The publisher, on his own
authority, had changed various articles on the bill of fare as
selected by his patron, more especially directing that the champagne,
ordered in true bourgeois fashion to be served with the dessert,
should be placed on the table at the beginning of breakfast, with
several dishes of shrimps, a necessity which had not occurred to the
amphitryon.
Thuillier, who gave a lip-approval to these amendments, was followed
by la Peyrade; and then came a long delay in the arrival of the
guests. Breakfast was ordered at eleven o'clock; at a quarter to
twelve not a journalist had appeared. Barbet, who was never at a loss,
made the consoling remark that breakfasts at restaurants were like
funerals, where, as every one knew, eleven o'clock meant mid-day.
Sure enough, shortly before that hour, two gentlemen, with pointed
beards, exhaling a strong odor of tobacco, made their appearance.
Thuillier thanked them effusively for the "honor" they had done him;
after which came another long period of waiting, of which we shall not
relate the tortures. At one o'clock the assembled contingent comprised
five of the invited guests, Barbet and la Peyrade not included. It is
scarcely necessary to say that none of the self-respecting journalists
of the better papers had taken any notice of the absurd invitation.
Breakfast now had to be served to this reduced number. A few polite
phrases that reached Thuillier's ears about the "immense" interest of
his publication, failed to blind him to the bitterness of his
discomfiture; and without the gaiety of the publisher, who had taken
in hand the reins his patron, gloomy as Hippolytus on the road to
Mycenae, let fall, nothing could have surpassed the glum and glacial
coldness of the meeting.
After the oysters were removed, the champagne and chablis which had
washed them down had begun, nevertheless, to raise the thermometer,
when, rushing into the room where the banquet was taking place, a
young man in a cap conveyed to Thuillier a most unexpected and
crushing blow.
"Master," said the new-comer to Barbet (he was a clerk in the
bookseller's shop), "we are done for! The police have made a raid upon
us; a commissary and two men have come to seize monsieur's pamphlet.
Here's a paper they have given me for you."
"Look at that," said Barbet, handing the document to la Peyrade, his
customary assurance beginning to forsake him.
"A summons to appear at once before the court of assizes," said la
Peyrade, after reading a few lines of the sheriff's scrawl.
Thuillier had turned as pale as death.
"Didn't you fulfil all the necessary formalities?" he said to Barbet,
in a choking voice.
"This is not a matter of formalities," said la Peyrade, "it is a
seizure for what is called press misdemeanor, exciting contempt and
hatred of the government; you probably have the same sort of
compliment awaiting you at home, my poor Thuillier."
"Then it is treachery!" cried Thuillier, losing his head completely.
"Hang it, my dear fellow! you know very well what you put in your
pamphlet; for my part, I don't see anything worth whipping a cat for."
"There's some misunderstanding," said Barbet, recovering courage; "it
will all be explained, and the result will be a fine cause of
complaint--won't it, messieurs?"
"Waiter, pens and ink!" cried one of the journalists thus appealed to.
"Nonsense! you'll have time to write your article later," said another
of the brotherhood; "what has a bombshell to do with this 'filet
saute'?"
That, of course, was a parody on the famous speech of Charles XII.,
King of Sweden, when a shot interrupted him while dictating to a
secretary.
"Messieurs," said Thuillier, rising, "I am sure you will excuse me for
leaving you. If, as Monsieur Barbet thinks, there is some
misunderstanding, it ought to be explained at once; I must therefore,
with your permission, go to the police court. La Peyrade," he added in
a significant tone, "you will not refuse, I presume, to accompany me.
And you, my dear publisher, you would do well to come too."
"No, faith!" said Barbet, "when I breakfast, I breakfast; if the
police have committed a blunder, so much the worse for them."
"But suppose the matter is serious?" cried Thuillier, in great
agitation.
"Well, I should say, what is perfectly true, that I had never read a
line of your pamphlet. One thing is very annoying; those damned juries
hate beards, and I must cut off mine if I'm compelled to appear in
court."
"Come, my dear amphitryon, sit down again," said the editor of the
"Echo de la Bievre," "we'll stand by you; I've already written an
article in my head which will stir up all the tanners in Paris; and,
let me tell you, that honorable corporation is a power."
"No, monsieur," replied Thuillier, "no; a man like me cannot rest an
hour under such an accusation as this. Continue your breakfast without
us; I hope soon to see you again. La Peyrade, are you coming?"
"He's charming, isn't he?" said Barbet, when Thuillier and his counsel
had left the room. "To ask me to leave a breakfast after the oysters,
and go and talk with the police! Come, messieurs, close up the ranks,"
he added, gaily.
"Tiens!" said one of the hungry journalists, who had cast his eyes
into the garden of the Palais-Royal, on which the dining-room of the
restaurant opened, "there's Barbanchu going by; suppose I call him
in?"
"Yes, certainly," said Barbet junior, "have him up."
"Barbanchu! Barbanchu!" called out the journalist.
Barbanchu, his hat being over his eyes, was some time in discovering
the cloud above him whence the voice proceeded.
"Here, up here!" called the voice, which seemed to Barbanchu celestial
when he saw himself hailed by a man with a glass of champagne in his
hand. Then, as he seemed to hesitate, the party above called out in
chorus:--
"Come up! come up! _There's fat to be had_!"
When Thuillier left the office of the public prosecutor he could no
longer have any illusions. The case against him was serious, and the
stern manner in which he had been received made him see that when the
trial came up he would be treated without mercy. Then, as always
happens among accomplices after the non-success of an affair they have
done in common, he turned upon la Peyrade in the sharpest manner: La
Peyrade had paid no attention to what he wrote; he had given full
swing to his stupid Saint-Simonian ideas; _he_ didn't care for the
consequences; it was not _he_ who would have to pay the fine and go to
prison! Then, when la Peyrade answered that the matter did not look to
him serious, and he expected to get a verdict of acquittal without
difficulty, Thuillier burst forth upon him, vehemently:--
"Parbleu! the thing is plain enough; monsieur sees nothing in it?
Well, I shall not put my honor and my fortune into the hands of a
little upstart like yourself; I shall take some great lawyer if the
case comes to trial. I've had enough of your collaboration by this
time."
Under the injustice of these remarks la Peyrade felt his anger rising.
However, he saw himself disarmed, and not wishing to come to an open
rupture, he parted from Thuillier, saying that he forgave a man
excited by fear, and would go to see him later in the afternoon, when
he would probably be calmer; they could then decide on what steps they
had better take.
Accordingly, about four o'clock, the Provencal arrived at the house in
the Place de la Madeleine. Thuillier's irritation was quieted, but
frightful consternation had taken its place. If the executioner were
coming in half an hour to lead him to the scaffold he could not have
been more utterly unstrung and woe-begone. When la Peyrade entered
Madame Thuillier was trying to make him take an infusion of
linden-leaves. The poor woman had come out of her usual apathy, and
proved herself, beside the present Sabinus, another Eponina.
As for Brigitte, who presently appeared, bearing a foot-bath, she had
no mercy or restraint towards Theodose; her sharp and bitter
reproaches, which were out of all proportion to the fault, even
supposing him to have committed one would have driven a man of the
most placid temperament beside himself. La Peyrade felt that all was
lost to him in the Thuillier household, where they now seemed to seize
with joy the occasion to break their word to him and to give free rein
to revolting ingratitude. On an ironical allusion by Brigitte to the
manner in which he decorated his friends, la Peyrade rose and took
leave, without any effort being made to retain him.
After walking about the streets for awhile, la Peyrade, in the midst
of his indignation, turned to thoughts of Madame de Godollo, whose
image, to tell the truth, had been much in his mind since their former
interview.
CHAPTER VI
'TWAS THUS THEY BADE ADIEU
Not only once when the countess met the barrister at the Thuilliers
had she left the room; but the same performance took place at each of
their encounters; and la Peyrade had convinced himself, without
knowing exactly why, that in each case, this affectation of avoiding
him, signified something that was not indifference. To have paid her
another visit immediately would certainly have been very unskilful;
but now a sufficient time had elapsed to prove him to be a man who was
master of himself. Accordingly, he returned upon his steps to the
Boulevard de la Madeleine, and without asking the porter if the
countess was at home, he passed the lodge as if returning to the
Thuilliers', and rang the bell of the entresol.
The maid who opened the door asked him, as before, to wait until she
notified her mistress; but, on this occasion, instead of showing him
into the dining-room, she ushered him into a little room arranged as a
library.
He waited long, and knew not what to think of the delay. Still, he
reassured himself with the thought that if she meant to dismiss him he
would not have been asked to wait at all. Finally the maid reappeared,
but even then it was not to introduce him.
"Madame la comtesse," said the woman, "was engaged on a matter of
business, but she begged monsieur be so kind as to wait, and to amuse
himself with the books in the library, because she might be detained
longer than she expected."
The excuse, both in form and substance, was certainly not
discouraging, and la Peyrade looked about him to fulfil the behest to
amuse himself. Without opening any of the carved rosewood bookcases,
which enclosed a collection of the most elegantly bound volumes he had
ever laid his eyes upon, he saw on an oblong table with claw feet a
pell-mell of books sufficient for the amusement of a man whose
attention was keenly alive elsewhere.
But, as he opened one after another of the various volumes, he began
to fancy that a feast of Tantalus had been provided for him: one book
was English, another German, a third Russian; there was even one in
cabalistic letters that seemed Turkish. Was this a polyglottic joke
the countess had arranged for him?
One volume, however, claimed particular attention. The binding, unlike
those of the other books, was less rich than dainty. Lying by itself
at a corner of the table, it was open, with the back turned up, the
edges of the leaves resting on the green table-cloth in the shape of a
tent. La Peyrade took it up, being careful not to lose the page which
it seemed to have been some one's intention to mark. It proved to be a
volume of the illustrated edition of Monsieur Scribe's works. The
engraving which presented itself on the open page to la Peyrade's
eyes, was entitled "The Hatred of a Woman"; the principal personage of
which is a young widow, desperately pursuing a poor young man who
cannot help himself. There is hatred all round. Through her devilries
she almost makes him lose his reputation, and does make him miss a
rich marriage; but the end is that she gives him more than she took
away from him, and makes a husband of the man who was thought her
victim.
If chance had put this volume apart from the rest, and had left it
open at the precise page where la Peyrade found it marked, it must be
owned that, after what had passed between himself and the countess,
chance can sometimes seem clever and adroit. As he stood there,
thinking over the significance which this more or less accidental
combination might have, la Peyrade read through a number of scenes to
see whether in the details as well as the general whole they applied
to the present situation. While thus employed, the sound of an opening
door was heard, and he recognized the silvery and slightly drawling
voice of the countess, who was evidently accompanying some visitor to
the door.
"Then I may promise the ambassadress," said a man's voice, "that you
will honor her ball with your presence?"
"Yes, commander, if my headache, which is just beginning to get a
little better, is kind enough to go away."
"Au revoir, then, fairest lady," said the gentleman. After which the
doors were closed, and silence reigned once more.
The title of commander reassured la Peyrade somewhat, for it was not
the rank of a young dandy. He was nevertheless curious to know who
this personage was with whom the countess had been shut up so long.
Hearing no one approach the room he was in, he went to the window and
opened the curtain cautiously, prepared to let it drop back at the
slightest noise, and to make a quick right-about-face to avoid being
caught, "flagrante delicto," in curiosity. An elegant coupe, standing
at a little distance, was now driven up to the house, a footman in
showy livery hastened to open the door, and a little old man, with a
light and jaunty movement, though it was evident he was one of those
relics of the past who have not yet abandoned powder, stepped quickly
into the carriage, which was then driven rapidly away. La Peyrade had
time to observe on his breast a perfect string of decorations. This,
combined with the powdered hair, was certain evidence of a diplomatic
individual.
La Peyrade had picked up his book once more, when a bell from the
inner room sounded, quickly followed by the appearance of the maid,
who invited him to follow her. The Provencal took care _not_ to
replace the volume where he found it, and an instant later he
entered the presence of the countess.
A pained expression was visible on the handsome face of the foreign
countess, who, however, lost nothing of her charm in the languor that
seemed to overcome her. On the sofa beside her was a manuscript
written on gilt-edged paper, in that large and opulent handwriting
which indicates an official communication from some ministerial office
or chancery. She held in her hand a crystal bottle with a gold
stopper, from which she frequently inhaled the contents, and a strong
odor of English vinegar pervaded the salon.
"I fear you are ill, madame," said la Peyrade, with interest.
"Oh! it is nothing," replied the countess; "only a headache, to which
I am very subject. But you, monsieur, what has become of you? I was
beginning to lose all hope of ever seeing you again. Have you come to
announce to me some great news? The period of your marriage with
Mademoiselle Colleville is probably so near that I think you can speak
of it."
This opening disconcerted la Peyrade.
"But, madame," he answered, in a tone that was almost tart, "you, it
seems to me, must know too well everything that goes on in the
Thuillier household not to be aware that the event you speak of is not
approaching, and, I may add, not probable."
"No, I assure you, I know nothing; I have strictly forbidden myself
from taking any further interest in an affair which I felt I had
meddled with very foolishly. Mademoiselle Brigitte and I talk of
everything except Celeste's marriage."
"And it is no doubt the desire to allow me perfect freedom in the
matter that induces you to take flight whenever I have the honor to
meet you in the Thuillier salon?"
"Yes," said the countess, "that ought to be the reason that makes me
leave the room; else, why should I be so distant?"
"Ah! madame, there are other reasons that might make a woman avoid a
man's presence. For instance, if he has displeased her; if the advice,
given to him with rare wisdom and kindness, was not received with
proper eagerness and gratitude."
"Oh, my dear monsieur," she replied, "I have no such ardor in
proselytizing that I am angry with those who are not docile to my
advice. I am, like others, very apt to make mistakes."
"On the contrary, madame, in the matter of my marriage your judgment
was perfectly correct."
"How so?" said the countess, eagerly. "Has the seizure of the
pamphlet, coming directly after the failure to obtain the cross, led
to a rupture?"
"No," said la Peyrade, "my influence in the Thuillier household rests
on a solid basis; the services I have rendered Mademoiselle Brigitte
and her brother outweigh these checks, which, after all, are not
irreparable."
"Do you really think so?" said the countess.
"Certainly," replied la Peyrade; "when the Comtesse du Bruel takes it
into her head to seriously obtain that bit of red ribbon, she can do
so, in spite of all obstacles that are put in her way."
The countess received this assertion with a smile, and shook her head.
"But, madame, only a day or two ago Madame du Bruel told Madame
Colleville that the unexpected opposition she had met with piqued her,
and that she meant to go in person to the minister."
"But you forget that since then this seizure has been made by the
police; it is not usual to decorate a man who is summoned before the
court of assizes. You seem not to notice that the seizure argues a
strong ill-will against Monsieur Thuillier, and, I may add, against
yourself, monsieur, for you are known to be the culprit. You have not,
I think, taken all this into account. The authorities appear to have
acted not wholly from legal causes."
La Peyrade looked at the countess.
"I must own," he said, after that rapid glance, "that I have tried in
vain to find any passage in that pamphlet which could be made a legal
pretext for the seizure."
"In my opinion," said the countess, "the king's servants must have a
vivid imagination to persuade themselves they were dealing with a
seditious publication. But that only proves the strength of the
underground power which is thwarting all your good intentions in favor
of Monsieur Thuillier."
"Madame," said la Peyrade, "do you know our secret enemies?"
"Perhaps I do," replied the countess, with another smile.
"May I dare to utter a suspicion, madame?" said la Peyrade, with some
agitation.
"Yes, say what you think," replied Madame de Godollo. "I shall not
blame you if you guess right."
"Well, madame, our enemies, Thuillier's and mine, are--a woman."
"Supposing that is so," said the countess; "do you know how many lines
Richelieu required from a man's hand in order to hang him?"
"Four," replied la Peyrade.
"You can imagine, then, that a pamphlet of two hundred pages might
afford a--slightly intriguing woman sufficient ground for
persecution."
"I see it all, madame, I understand it!" cried la Peyrade, with
animation. "I believe that woman to be one of the elite of her sex,
with as much mind and malice as Richelieu! Adorable magician! it is
she who has set in motion the police and the gendarmes; but, more than
that, it is she who withholds that cross the ministers were about to
give."
"If that be so," said the countess, "why struggle against her?"
"Ah! I struggle no longer," said la Peyrade. Then, with an assumed air
of contrition, he added, "You must, indeed, _hate_ me, madame."
"Not quite as much as you may think," replied the countess; "but,
after all, suppose that I do hate you?"
"Ah! madame," cried la Peyrade, ardently, "I should then be the
happiest of unhappy men; for that hatred would seem to me sweeter and
more precious than your indifference. But you do not hate me; why
should you feel to me that most blessed feminine sentiment which
Scribe has depicted with such delicacy and wit?"
Madame de Godollo did not answer immediately. She lowered her eyelids,
and the deeper breathing of her bosom gave to her voice when she did
speak a tremulous tone:--
"The hatred of a woman!" she said. "Is a man of your stoicism able to
perceive it?"
"Ah! yes, madame," replied la Peyrade, "I do indeed perceive it, but
not to revolt against it; on the contrary, I bless the harshness that
deigns to hurt me. Now that I know my beautiful and avowed enemy, I
shall not despair of touching her heart; for never again will I follow
any road but the one that she points out to me, never will I march
under any banner but hers. I shall wait--for her inspiration, to
think; for her will, to will; for her commands, to act. In all things
I will be her auxiliary,--more than that, her slave; and if she still
repulses me with that dainty foot, that snowy hand, I will bear it
resignedly, asking, in return for such obedience one only favor,--that
of kissing the foot that spurns me, of bathing with tears the hand
that threatens me."
During this long cry of the excited heart, which the joy of triumph
wrung from a nature so nervous and impressionable as that of the
Provencal, he had slidden from his chair, and now knelt with one knee
on the ground beside the countess, in the conventional attitude of the
stage, which is, however, much more common in real life than people
suppose.
"Rise, monsieur," said the countess, "and be so good as to answer me."
Then, giving him a questioning look from beneath her beautiful
frowning brows, she continued: "Have you well-weighed the outcome of
the words you have just uttered? Have you measured the full extent of
your pledge, and its depth? With your hand on your heart and on your
conscience, are you a man to fulfil those words? Or are you one of the
falsely humble and perfidious men who throw themselves at our feet
only to make us lose the balance of our will and our reason?"
"I!" exclaimed la Peyrade; "never can I react against the fascination
you have wielded over me from the moment of our first interview! Ah!
madame, the more I have resisted, the more I have struggled, the more
you ought to trust in my sincerity and its tardy expression. What I
have said, I think; that which I think aloud to-day I have thought in
my soul since the hour when I first had the honor of admittance to
you; and the many days I have passed in struggling against this
allurement have ended in giving me a firm and deliberate will, which
understands itself, and is not cast down by your severity."
"Severity?" said the countess; "possibly. But you ought to think of
the kindness too. Question yourself carefully. We foreign women do not
understand the careless ease with which a Frenchwoman enters upon a
solemn engagement. To us, our _yes_ is sacred; our word is a bond. We do
and we will nothing by halves. The arms of my family bear a motto
which seems significant under the present circumstances,--'All or
Nothing'; that is saying much, and yet, perhaps, not enough."
"That is how I understand my pledge," replied la Peyrade; "and on
leaving this room my first step will be to break with that ignoble
past which for an instant I seemed to hold in the balance against the
intoxicating future you do not forbid me to expect."
"No," said the countess, "do it calmly and advisedly; I do not like
rash conduct; you will not please me by taking open steps. These
Thuilliers are not really bad at heart; they humiliated you without
knowing that they did so; their world is not yours. Is that their
fault? Loosen the tie between you, but do not violently break it. And,
above all, reflect. Your conversion to my beliefs is of recent date.
What man is certain of what his heart will say to him to-morrow?"
"Madame," said la Peyrade, "I am that man. We men of Southern blood do
not love as you say a Frenchwoman loves."
"But," said the countess, with a charming smile, "I thought it was
hatred we were talking of."
"Ah, madame," cried the barrister, "explained and understood as it has
been, that word is still a thing that hurts me. Tell me rather, not
that you love me, but that the words you deigned to say to me at our
first interview were indeed the expression of your thoughts."
"My friend," said the countess, dwelling on the word; "one of your
moralists has said: 'There are persons who say, _that is_ or _that is
not_.' Do me the favor to count me among such persons."
So saying, she held out her hand to her suitor with a charming gesture
of modesty and grace. La Peyrade, quite beside himself, darted upon
that beautiful hand and devoured it with kisses.
"Enough, child!" said the countess, gently freeing her imprisoned
fingers; "adieu now, soon to meet again! Adieu! My headache, I think,
has disappeared."
La Peyrade picked up his hat, and seemed about to rush from the
apartment; but at the door he turned and cast upon the handsome
creature a look of tenderness. The countess made him, with her head, a
graceful gesture of adieu; then, seeing that la Peyrade was inclined
to return to her, she raised her forefinger as a warning to control
himself and go.
La Peyrade turned and left the apartment.
CHAPTER VII
HOW TO SHUT THE DOOR IN PEOPLE'S FACES
On the staircase la Peyrade stopped to exhale, if we may so express
it, the happiness of which his heart was full. The words of the
countess, the ingenious preparation she had made to put him on the
track of her sentiments, seemed to him the guarantee of her sincerity,
and he left her full of faith.
Possessed by that intoxication of happy persons which shows itself in
their gestures, their looks, their very gait, and sometimes in actions
not authorized by their common-sense, after pausing a moment, as we
have said, on the staircase, he ran up a few steps till he could see
the door of the Thuilliers' apartment.
"At last!" he cried, "fame, fortune, happiness have come to me; but,
above all, I can now give myself the joy of vengeance. After Dutocq
and Cerizet, I will crush _you_, vile bourgeois brood!"
So saying, he shook his fist at the innocent door. Then he turned and
ran out; the popular saying that the earth could not hold him, was
true at that moment of his being.
The next day, for he could not restrain any longer the tempest that
was swelling within him, la Peyrade went to see Thuillier in the
bitterest and most hostile of moods. What was therefore his amazement
when, before he had time to put himself on guard and stop the
demonstration of union and oblivion, Thuillier flung himself into his
arms.
"My friend," cried the municipal councillor, as he loosened his clasp,
"my political fortune is made; this morning all the newspapers,
without exception, have spoken of the seizure of my pamphlet; and you
ought to see how the opposition sheets have mauled the government."
"Simple enough," said la Peyrade, not moved by this enthusiasm; "you
are a topic for them, that's all. But this does not alter the
situation; the prosecution will be only the more determined to have
you condemned."
"Well, then," said Thuillier, proudly raising his head, "I will go to
prison, like Beranger, like Lamennais, like Armand Carrel."
"My good fellow, persecution is charming at a distance; but when you
hear the big bolts run upon you, you may be sure you won't like it as
well."
"But," objected Thuillier, "prisoners condemned for political offences
are always allowed to do their time in hospital if they like. Besides,
I'm not yet convicted. You said yourself you expected to get me
acquitted."
"Yes, but since then I have heard things which make that result very
doubtful; the same hand that withheld your cross has seized your
pamphlet; you are being murdered with premeditation."
"If you know who that dangerous enemy is," said Thuillier, "you can't
refuse to point him out to me."
"I don't know him," replied la Peyrade; "I only suspect him. This is
what you get by playing too shrewd a game."
"Playing a shrewd game!" said Thuillier, with the curiosity of a man
who is perfectly aware that he has nothing of that kind on his
conscience.
"Yes," said la Peyrade, "you made a sort of decoy of Celeste to
attract young bloods to your salon. All the world has not the
forbearance of Monsieur Godeschal, who forgave his rejection and
generously managed that affair about the house."
"Explain yourself better," said Thuillier, "for I don't see what you
mean."
"Nothing is easier to understand. Without counting me, how many
suitors have you had for Mademoiselle Colleville? Godeschal, Minard
junior, Phellion junior, Olivier Vinet, the substitute judge,--all men
who have been sent about their business, as I am."
"Olivier Vinet, the substitute judge!" cried Thuillier, struck with a
flash of light. "Of course; the blow must have come from him. His
father, they say, has a long arm. But it can't be truly said that we
sent him about his business,--to use your expression, which strikes me
as indecorous,--for he never came to the house but once, and made no
offer; neither did Minard junior or Phellion junior, for that matter.
Godeschal is the only one who risked a direct proposal, and he was
refused at once, before he dipped his beak in the water."
"It is always so!" said la Peyrade, still looking for a ground of
quarrel. "Straightforward and outspoken persons are always those that
sly men boast of fooling."
"Ah ca! what's all this?" said Thuillier; "what are you insinuating?
Didn't you settle everything with Brigitte the other day? You take a
pretty time to come and talk to me about your love-affairs, when the
sword of justice is hanging over my head."
"Oh!" said la Peyrade, ironically; "so now you are going to make the
most of your interesting position of accused person! I knew very well
how it would be; I was certain that as soon as your pamphlet appeared
the old cry of not getting what you expected out of me would come up."
"Parbleu! your pamphlet!" cried Thuillier. "I think you are a fine
fellow to boast of that when, on the contrary, it has caused the most
deplorable complications."
"Deplorable? how so? you have just said your political fortune was
made."
"Well, truly, my dear Theodose," said Thuillier, with feeling, "I
should never have thought that you would choose the hour of adversity
to come and put your pistol at our throats and make me the object of
your sneers and innuendoes."
"Well done!" said la Peyrade; "now it is the hour of adversity! A
minute ago you were flinging yourself into my arms as a man to whom
some signal piece of luck had happened. You ought really to choose
decidedly between being a man who needs pity and a glorious victor."
"It is all very well to be witty," returned Thuillier; "but you can't
controvert what I say. I am logical, if I am not brilliant. It is very
natural that I should console myself by seeing that public opinion
decides in my favor, and by reading in its organs the most honorable
assurances of sympathy; but do you suppose I wouldn't rather that
things had taken their natural course? Besides, when I see myself the
object of unworthy vengeance on the part of persons as influential as
the Vinets, how can I help measuring the extent of the dangers to
which I am exposed?"
"Well," said la Peyrade, with pitiless persistency, "I see that you
prefer to play the part of Jeremiah."
"Yes," said Thuillier, in a solemn tone. "Jeremiah laments over a
friendship I did think true and devoted, but which I find has only
sarcasms to give me when I looked for services."
"What services?" asked la Peyrade. "Did you not tell me positively, no
later than yesterday, that you would not accept my help under any form
whatever? I offered to plead your case, and you answered that you
would take a better lawyer."
"Yes; in the first shock of surprise at such an unexpected blow, I did
say that foolish thing; but, on reflection, who can explain as well as
you can the intention of the words you wrote with your own pen?
Yesterday I was almost out of my mind; but you, with your wounded
self-love, which can't forgive a momentary impatience, you are very
caustic and cruel."
"So," said la Peyrade, "you formally request me to defend you before
the jury?"
"Yes, my dear fellow; and I don't know any other hands in which I
could better place my case. I should have to pay a monstrous sum to
some great legal luminary, and he wouldn't defend me as ably as you."
"Well, I refuse. Roles have changed, as you see, diametrically.
Yesterday, I thought, as you do, that I was the man to defend you.
To-day, I see that you had better take the legal luminary, because,
with Vinet's antagonism against you the affair is taking such
proportions that whoever defends it assumes a fearful responsibility."
"I understand," said Thuillier, sarcastically. "Monsieur has his eye
on the magistracy, and he doesn't want to quarrel with a man who is
already talked of for Keeper of the Seals. It is prudent, but I don't
know that it is going to help on your marriage."
"You mean," said la Peyrade, seizing the ball in its bound, "that to
get you out of the claws of that jury is a thirteenth labor of
Hercules, imposed upon me to earn the hand of Mademoiselle Colleville?
I expected that demands would multiply in proportion to the proofs of
my devotion. But that is the very thing that has worn me out, and I
have come here to-day to put an end to this slave labor by giving back
to you your pledges. You may dispose of Celeste's hand; for my part, I
am no longer a suitor for it."
The unexpectedness and squareness of this declaration left Thuillier
without words or voice, all the more because at this moment entered
Brigitte. The temper of the old maid had also greatly moderated since
the previous evening, and her greeting was full of the most amicable
familiarity.
"Ah! so here you are, you good old barrister," she said.
"Mademoiselle, your servant," he replied, gravely.
"Well," she continued, paying no attention to the stiffness of his
manner, "the government has got itself into a pretty mess by seizing
your pamphlet. You ought to see how the morning papers lash it! Here,"
she added, giving Thuillier a small sheet printed on sugar-paper, in
coarse type, and almost illegible,--"here's another, you didn't read;
the porter has just brought it up. It is a paper from our old quarter,
'L'Echo de la Bievre.' I don't know, gentlemen, if you'll be of my
opinion, but I think nothing could be better written. It is droll,
though, how inattentive these journalists are! most of them write your
name without the H; I think you ought to complain of it."
Thuillier took the paper, and read the article inspired to the
reviewer of the tanner's organ by stomach gratitude. Never in her life
had Brigitte paid the slightest attention to a newspaper, except to
know if it was the right size for the packages she wrapped up in it;
but now, suddenly, converted to a worship of the press by the ardor of
her sisterly love, she stood behind Thuillier and re-read, over his
shoulder, the more striking passages of the page she thought so
eloquent, pointing her finger to them.
"Yes," said Thuillier, folding up the paper, "that's warm, and very
flattering to me. But here's another matter! Monsieur has come to tell
me that he refuses to plead for me, and renounces all claim to
Celeste's hand."
"That is to say," said Brigitte, "he renounces her if, after having
pleaded, the marriage does not take place 'subito.' Well, poor fellow,
I think that's a reasonable demand. When he has done that for us there
ought to be no further delay; and whether Mademoiselle Celeste likes
it or not, she must accept him, because, you know, there's an end to
all things."
"Do you hear that, my good fellow?" said la Peyrade, seizing upon
Brigitte's speech. "When I have pleaded, the marriage is to take
place. Your sister is frankness itself; she, at least, doesn't
practise diplomacy."
"Diplomacy!" echoed Brigitte. "I'd like to see myself creeping
underground in matters. I say things as I think them. The workman has
worked, and he ought to have his pay."
"Do be silent," cried Thuillier, stamping his foot; "you don't say a
word that doesn't turn the knife in the wound."
"The knife in the wound?" said Brigitte, inquiringly. "Ah ca! are you
two quarrelling?"
"I told you," said Thuillier, "that la Peyrade had returned our
promises; and the reason he gives is that we are asking him another
service for Celeste's hand. He thinks he has done us enough without
it."
"He has done us some services, no doubt," said Brigitte; "but it seems
to me that we have not been ungrateful to him. Besides, it was he who
made the blunder, and I think it rather odd he should now wish to
leave us in the lurch."
"Your reasoning, mademoiselle," said la Peyrade, "might have some
appearance of justice if I were the only barrister in Paris; but as
the streets are black with them, and as, only yesterday, Thuillier
himself spoke of engaging some more important lawyer than myself, I
have not the slightest scruple in refusing to defend him. Now, as to
the marriage, in order that it may not be made the object of another
brutal and forcible demand upon me, I here renounce it in the most
formal manner, and nothing now prevents Mademoiselle Colleville from
accepting Monsieur Felix Phellion and all his advantages."
"As you please, my dear monsieur," said Brigitte, "if that's your last
word. We shall not be at a loss to find a husband for Celeste,--Felix
Phellion or another. But you must permit me to tell you that the
reason you give is not the true one. We can't go faster than the
fiddles. If the marriage were settled to-day, there are the banns to
publish; you have sense enough to know that Monsieur le maire can't
marry you before the formalities are complied with, and before then
Thuillier's case will have been tried."
"Yes," said la Peyrade, "and if I lose the case it will be I who have
sent him to prison,--just as yesterday it was I who brought about the
seizure."
"As for that, it seems to me that if you had written nothing the
police would have found nothing to bite."
"My dear Brigitte," said Thuillier, seeing la Peyrade shrug his
shoulders, "your argument is vicious in the sense that the writing was
not incriminating on any side. It is not la Peyrade's fault if persons
of high station have organized a persecution against me. You remember
that little substitute, Monsieur Olivier Vinet, whom Cardot brought to
one of our receptions. It seems that he and his father are furious
that we didn't want him for Celeste, and they've sworn my
destruction."
"Well, why did we refuse him," said Brigitte, "if it wasn't for the
fine eyes of monsieur here? For, after all, a substitute in Paris is a
very suitable match."
"No doubt," said la Peyrade, nonchalantly. "Only, he did not happen to
bring you a million."
"Ah!" cried Brigitte, firing up. "If you are going to talk any more
about that house you helped us to buy, I shall tell you plainly that
if you had had the money to trick the notary you never would have come
after us. You needn't think I have been altogether your dupe. You
spoke just now of a bargain, but you proposed that bargain yourself.
'Give me Celeste and I'll get you that house,'--that's what you said
to us in so many words. Besides which, we had to pay large sums on
which we never counted."
"Come, come, Brigitte," said Thuillier, "you are making a great deal
out of nothing."
"Nothing! nothing!" exclaimed Brigitte. "Did we, or did we not, have
to pay much more than we expected?"
"My dear Thuillier," said la Peyrade, "I think, with you, that the
matter is now settled, and it can only be embittered by discussing it
further. My course was decided on before I came here; all that I have
now heard can only confirm it. I shall not be the husband of Celeste,
but you and I can remain good friends."
He rose to leave the room.
"One moment, monsieur," said Brigitte, barring his way; "there is one
matter which I do not consider settled; and now that we are no longer
to have interests in common, I should not be sorry if you would be so
good as to tell me what has become of a sum of ten thousand francs
which Thuillier gave you to bribe those rascally government offices in
order to get the cross we have never got."
"Brigitte!" cried Thuillier, in anguish, "you have a devil of a
tongue! You ought to be silent about that; I told it to you in a
moment of ill-temper, and you promised me faithfully never to open
your lips about it to any one, no matter who."
"So I did; but," replied the implacable Brigitte, "we are parting.
When people part they settle up; they pay their debts. Ten thousand
francs! For my part, I thought the cross itself dear at that; but for
a cross that has melted away, monsieur himself will allow the price is
too high."
"Come, la Peyrade, my friend, don't listen to her," said Thuillier,
going up to the barrister, who was pale with anger. "The affection she
has for me blinds her; I know very well what government offices are,
and I shouldn't be surprised if you had had to pay out money of your
own."
"Monsieur," said la Peyrade, "I am, unfortunately, not in a position
to return to you, instantly, that money, an accounting for which is so
insolently demanded. Grant me a short delay; and have the goodness to
accept my note, which I am ready to sign, if that will give you
patience."
"To the devil with your note!" cried Thuillier; "you owe me nothing;
on the contrary, it is we who owe you; for Cardot told me I ought to
give you at least ten thousand francs for enabling us to buy this
magnificent property."
"Cardot! Cardot!" said Brigitte; "he is very generous with other
people's money. We were giving monsieur Celeste, and that's a good
deal more than ten thousand francs."
La Peyrade was too great a comedian not to turn the humiliation he had
just endured into a scene finale. With tears in his voice, which
presently fell from his eyes, he turned to Brigitte.
"Mademoiselle," he said, "when I had the honor to be received by you I
was poor; you long saw me suffering and ill at ease, knowing, alas!
too well, the indignities that poverty must bear. From the day that I
was able to give you a fortune which I never thought of for myself I
have felt, it is true, more assurance; and your own kindness
encouraged me to rise out of my timidity and depression. To-day, when
I, by frank and loyal conduct, release you from anxiety,--for, if you
chose to be honest, you would acknowledge that you have been thinking
of another husband for Celeste,--we might still remain friends, even
though I renounce a marriage which my delicacy forbids me to pursue.
But you have not chosen to restrain yourself with the limits of social
politeness, of which you have a model beside you in Madame de Godollo,
who, I am persuaded, although she is not at all friendly to me, would
never have approved of your odious behavior. Thank Heaven! I have in
my heart some religious sentiment at least; the Gospel is not to me a
mere dead-letter, and--understand me well, mademoiselle--_I forgive
you_. It is not to Thuillier, who would refuse them, but to you that I
shall, before long, pay the ten thousand francs which you insinuate I
have applied to my own purposes. If, by the time they are returned to
you, you feel regret for your unjust suspicions, and are unwilling to
accept the money, I request that you will turn it over to the bureau
of Benevolence to the poor--"
"To the bureau of Benevolence!" cried Brigitte, interrupting him. "No,
I thank you! the idea of all that money being distributed among a
crowd of do-nothings and devotes, who'll spend it in junketing! I've
been poor too, my lad; I made bags for the money of others long before
I had any money of my own; I have some now, and I take care of it. So,
whenever you will, I am ready to receive that ten thousand francs and
keep it. If you didn't know how to do what you undertook to do, and
spent that money in trying to put salt on a sparrow's tail, so much
the worse for you."
Seeing that he had missed his effect, and had made not the slightest
impression on Brigitte's granite, la Peyrade cast a disdainful look
upon her and left the room majestically. As he did so he noticed a
movement made by Thuillier to follow him, and also the imperious
gesture of Brigitte, always queen and mistress, which nailed her
brother to his chair.
CHAPTER VIII
At the moment when la Peyrade was preparing to lay at the feet of the
countess the liberty he had recovered in so brutal a manner, he
received a perfumed note, which made his heart beat, for on the seal
was that momentous "All or Nothing" which she had given him as the
rule of the relation now to be inaugurated between them. The contents
of the note were as follows:--
Dear Monsieur,--I have heard of the step you have taken; thank
you! But I must now prepare to take my own. I cannot, as you may
well think, continue to live in this house, and among these people
who are so little of our own class and with whom we have nothing
in common. To arrange this transaction, and to avoid explanations
of the fact that the entresol welcomes the voluntary exile from
the first-floor, I need to-day and to-morrow to myself. Do not
therefore come to see me until the day after. By that time I shall
have executed Brigitte, as they say at the Bourse, and have much
to tell you.
Tua tota,
Torna de Godollo.
That "Wholly thine" in Latin seemed charming to la Peyrade, who was
not, however, astonished, for Latin is a second national language to
the Hungarians. The two days' waiting to which he was thus condemned
only fanned the flame of the ardent passion which possessed him, and
on the third day when reached the house by the Madeleine his love had
risen to a degree of incandescence of which only a few days earlier he
would scarcely have supposed himself capable.
This time the porter's wife perceived him; but he was now quite
indifferent as to whether or not the object of his visit should be
known. The ice was broken, his happiness was soon to be official, and
he was more disposed to cry it aloud in the streets than to make a
mystery of it.
Running lightly up the stairs, he prepared to ring the bell, when, on
putting out his hand to reach the silken bell-cord he perceived that
the bell-cord had disappeared. La Peyrade's first thought was that one
of those serious illnesses which make all noises intolerable to a
patient would explain its absence; but with the thought came other
observations that weakened it, and which, moreover, were not in
themselves comforting.
From the vestibule to the countess's door a stair carpet, held at each
step by a brass rod, made a soft ascent to the feet of visitors; this,
too, had been removed. A screen-door covered with green velvet and
studded with brass nails had hitherto protected the entrance to the
apartment; of that no sign, except the injury to the wall done by the
workmen in taking it away. For a moment the barrister thought, in his
agitation, that he must have mistaken the floor, but, casting his eye
over the baluster he saw that he had not passed the entresol. Madame
de Godollo must, therefore, be in the act of moving away.
He then resigned himself to make known his presence at the great
lady's door as he would have done at that of a grisette. He rapped
with his knuckles, but a hollow sonority revealing the void,
"intonuere cavernae," echoed beyond the door which he vainly appealed
to with his fist. He also perceived from beneath that door a ray of
vivid light, the sure sign of an uninhabited apartment where curtains
and carpets and furniture no longer dim the light or deaden sound.
Compelled to believe in a total removal, la Peyrade now supposed that
in the rupture with Brigitte, mentioned as probable by Madame de
Godollo, some brutal insolence of the old maid had necessitated this
abrupt departure. But why had he not been told of it? And what an
idea, to expose him to this ridiculous meeting with what the common
people call, in their picturesque language, "the wooden face"!
Before leaving the door finally, and as if some doubt still remained
in his mind, la Peyrade made a last and most thundering assault upon
it.
"Who's knocking like that, as if they'd bring the house down?" said
the porter, attracted by the noise to the foot of the staircase.
"Doesn't Madame de Godollo still live here?" asked la Peyrade.
"Of course she doesn't live here now; she has moved away. If monsieur
had told me he was going to her apartment I would have spared him the
trouble of battering down the door."
"I knew that she was going to leave the apartment," said la Peyrade,
not wishing to seem ignorant of the project of departure, "but I had
no idea she was going so soon."
"I suppose it was something sudden," said the porter, "for she went
off early this morning with post-horses."
"Post-horses!" echoed la Peyrade, stupefied. "Then she has left
Paris?"
"That's to be supposed," said the porter; "people don't usually take
post-horses and a postilion to change from one quarter of Paris to
another."
"And she did not tell you where she was going?"
"Ah! monsieur, what an idea! Do people account to us porters for what
they do?"
"No, but her letters--those that come after her departure?"
"Her letters? I am ordered to deliver them to Monsieur le commandeur,
the little old gentlemen who came to see her so often; monsieur must
have met him."
"Yes, yes, certainly," said la Peyrade, keeping his presence of mind
in the midst of the successive shocks which came upon him,--"the
powered little man who was here every day."
"I couldn't say every day; but he came often. Well, I am told to give
the countess's letters to him."
"And for other persons of her acquaintance," said la Peyrade,
carelessly, "did she leave no message?"
"None, monsieur."
"Very well," said la Peyrade, "good-morning." And he turned to go out.
"But I think," said the porter, "that Mademoiselle Thuillier knows
more about it than I do. Won't monsieur go up? She is at home; and so
is Monsieur Thuillier."
"No, never mind," said la Peyrade, "I only came to tell Madame de
Godollo about a commission she asked me to execute; I haven't time to
stop now."
"Well, as I told you, she left with post-horses this morning. Two
hours earlier monsieur might still have found her; but now, with
post-horses, she must by this time have gone a good distance."
La Peyrade departed, with a sense of despair in his heart. Added to
the anxiety caused by this hasty departure, jealousy entered his soul,
and in this agonizing moment of disappointment the most distressing
explanations crowded on his mind.
Then, after further reflection, he said to himself:--
"These clever diplomatic women are often sent on secret missions which
require the most absolute silence, and extreme rapidity of movement."
But here a sudden revulsion of thought overcame him:--
"Suppose she were one of those intriguing adventurers whom foreign
governments employ as agents? Suppose the tale, more or less probable,
of that Russian princess forced to sell her furniture to Brigitte were
also that of this Hungarian countess? And yet," he continued, as his
brain made a third evolution in this frightful anarchy of ideas and
feelings, "her education, her manners, her language, all bespoke a
woman of the best position. Besides, if she were only a bird of
passage, why have given herself so much trouble to win me over?"
La Peyrade might have continued to plead thus for and against for a
long time had he not been suddenly grasped round the shoulders by a
strong arm and addressed in a well-known voice.
"Take care! my dear barrister; a frightful danger threatens you; you
are running right into it."
La Peyrade, thus arrested, looked round and found himself in the arms
of Phellion.
The scene took place in front of a house which was being pulled down
at the corner of the rues Duphot and Saint-Honore. Posted on the
pavement of the other side of the street, Phellion, whose taste for
watching the process of building our readers may remember, had been
witnessing for the last fifteen minutes the drama of a wall about to
fall beneath the united efforts of a squadron of workmen. Watch in
hand, the great citizen was estimating the length of the resistance
which that mass of freestone would present to the destructive labor of
which it was the object. Precisely at the crucial moment of the
impending catastrophe la Peyrade, lost in the tumult of his thoughts,
was entering, heedless of the shouts addressed to him on all sides,
the radius within which the stones would fall. Seen by Phellion (who,
it must be said, would have done the same for a total stranger) la
Peyrade undoubtedly owed his life to him; for, at the moment when he
was violently flung back by the vigorous grasp of the worthy citizen,
the wall fell with the noise of a cannon-shot, and the stones rolled
in clouds of dust almost to his very feet.
"Are you blind and deaf?" said the workman whose business it was to
warn the passers, in a tone of amenity it is easy to imagine.
"Thank you, my dear friend," said la Peyrade, recalled to earth. "I
should certainly have been crushed like an idiot if it hadn't been for
you."
And he pressed Phellion's hand.
"My reward," replied the latter, "lies in the satisfaction of knowing
that you are saved from an imminent peril. And I may say that that
satisfaction is mingled, for me, with a certain pride; for I was not
mistaken by a single second in the calculation which enabled me to
foresee the exact moment when that formidable mass would be displaced
from its centre of gravity. But what were you thinking of, my dear
monsieur? Probably of the plea you are about to make in the Thuillier
affair. The public prints have informed me of the danger of
prosecution by the authorities which hangs above the head of our
estimable friend. You have a noble cause to defend, monsieur.
Habituated as I am, through my labors as a member of the reading
committee of the Odeon, to judge of works of intellect, and with my
hand upon my conscience, I declare that after reading the incriminated
passages, I can find nothing in the tone of that pamphlet which
justifies the severe measures of which it is the object. Between
ourselves," added the great citizen, lowering his voice, "I think the
government has shown itself petty."
"So I think," said la Peyrade, "but I am not employed for the defence.
I have advised Thuillier to engage some noted lawyer."
"It may be good advice," said Phellion; "at any rate, it speaks well
for your modesty. Poor man! I went to him at once when the blow fell,
but I did not see him; I saw only Brigitte, who was having a
discussion with Madame de Godollo. There is a woman with strong
political views; it seems she predicted that the seizure would be
made."
"Did you know that the countess had left Paris?" said la Peyrade,
rushing at the chance of speaking on the subject of his present
monomania.
"Ah! left Paris, has she?" said Phellion. "Well, monsieur, I must tell
you that, although there was not much sympathy between us, I regard
her departure as a misfortune. She will leave a serious void in the
salon of our friends. I say this, because it is my belief, and I am
not in the habit of disguising my convictions."
"Yes," said la Peyrade, "she is certainly a very distinguished woman,
with whom in spite of her prejudice against me, I think I should have
come to an understanding. But this morning, without leaving any word
as to where she was going, she started suddenly with post-horses."
"Post-horses!" said Phellion. "I don't know whether you will agree
with me, monsieur, but I think that travelling by post is a most
agreeable method of conveyance. Certainly Louis XI., to whom we owe
the institution, had a fortunate inspiration in the matter; although,
on the other hand, his sanguinary and despotic government was not, to
my humble thinking, entirely devoid of reproach. Once only in my life
have I used that method of locomotion, and I can truly say I found it
far superior, in spite of its inferior relative rapidity, to the
headlong course of what in England are called _railways_; where speed
is attained only at the price of safety."
La Peyrade paid but little attention to Phellion's phraseology. "Where
can she have gone?"--round that idea he dug and delved in every
direction, an occupation that would have made him indifferent to a far
more interesting topic. However, once started, like the locomotive he
objected to, the great citizen went on:--
"I made that journey at the period of Madame Phellion's last
confinement. She was in Perche, with her mother, when I learned that
serious complications were feared from the milk-fever. Overcome with
terror at the danger which threatened my wife, I went instantly to the
post-office to obtain a seat in the mail-coach, but all were taken; I
found they had been engaged for more than a week. Upon that, I came to
a decision; I went to the rue Pigalle, and, for a very large sum in
gold a post-chaise and three horses were placed at my disposal, when
unfortunately the formality of a passport, with which I had neglected
to supply myself, and without which, in virtue of the decrees of the
consulate of 17 Nivose, year VII., the post agents were not permitted
to deliver horses to travellers--"
The last few words were like a flash of light to la Peyrade, and
without waiting for the end of the postal odyssey of the great
citizen, he darted away in the direction of the rue Pigalle, before
Phellion, in the middle of his sentence, perceived his departure.
Reaching the Royal postal establishment, la Peyrade was puzzled as to
whom to address himself in order to obtain the information he wanted.
He began by explaining to the porter that he had a letter to send to a
lady of his acquaintance that morning by post, neglecting, very
thoughtlessly, to send him her address, and that he thought he might
discover it by means of the passport which she must have presented in
order to obtain horses.
"Was it a lady accompanied by a maid whom I took up on the boulevard
de la Madeleine?" asked a postilion sitting in the corner of the room
where la Peyrade was making his preliminary inquiry.
"Exactly," said la Peyrade, going eagerly up to the providential
being, and slipping a five-franc piece into his hand.
"Ah! well, she's a queer traveller!" said the man, "she told me to
take her to the Bois de Boulogne, and there she made me drive round
and round for an hour. After that, we came back to the Barriere de
l'Etoile, where she gave me a good 'pourboire' and got into a hackney
coach, telling me to take the travelling carriage back to the man who
lets such carriages in the Cour des Coches, Faubourg Saint-Honore."
"Give me the name of that man?" said la Peyrade, eagerly.
"Simonin," replied the postilion.
Furnished with that information la Peyrade resumed his course, and
fifteen minutes later he was questioning the livery-stable keeper; but
that individual knew only that a lady residing on the Boulevard de la
Madeleine had hired, without horses, a travelling-carriage for half a
day; that he had sent out the said carriage at nine that morning, and
it was brought back at twelve by a postilion of the Royal Post house.
"Never mind," thought la Peyrade, "I am certain now she has not left
Paris, and is not avoiding me. Most probably, she wants to break
utterly with the Thuilliers, and so has invented this journey. Fool
that I am! no doubt there's a letter waiting for me at home,
explaining the whole thing."
Worn out with emotion and fatigue, and in order to verify as quickly
as possible this new supposition, la Peyrade flung himself into a
street cab, and in less than a quarter of an hour, having promised the
driver a good pourboire, he was deposited at the house in the rue
Saint-Dominique d'Enfer. There he was compelled to endure still longer
the tortures of waiting. Since Brigitte's departure, the duty of the
porter, Coffinet, had been very negligently performed, and when la
Peyrade rushed to the lodge to inquire for his letter, which he
thought he saw in the case that belonged to him, the porter and his
wife were both absent and their door was locked. The wife was doing
some household work in the building, and Coffinet himself, taking
advantage of that circumstance, had allowed a friend to entice him
into a neighboring wine-shop, where, between two glasses, he was
supporting, against a republican who was talking disrespectfully
against it, the cause of the owners of property.
It was twenty minutes before the worthy porter, remembering the
"property" entrusted to his charge, decided to return to his post. It
is easy to imagine the reproaches with which la Peyrade overwhelmed
him. He excused himself by saying that he had gone to do a commission
for Mademoiselle, and that he couldn't be at the door and where his
masters chose to send him at the same time. At last, however, he gave
the lawyer a letter bearing the Paris postmark.
With his heart rather than his eyes la Peyrade recognized the
handwriting, and, turning over the missive, the arms and motto
confirmed the hope that he had reached the end of the cruellest
emotion he had ever in his life experienced. To read that letter
before that odious porter seemed to him a profanation. With a
refinement of feeling which all lovers will understand, he gave
himself the pleasure of pausing before his happiness; he would not
even unseal that blissful note until the moment when, with closed
doors and no interruptions to distract him, he could enjoy at his ease
the delicious sensation of which his heart had a foretaste.
Rushing up the staircase two steps at a time, the now joyous lover
committed the childish absurdity of locking himself in; then, having
settled himself at his ease before his desk, and having broken the
seal with religious care, he was forced to press his hand on his
heart, which seemed to burst from his bosom, before he could summon
calmness to read the following letter:--
Dear Monsieur,--I disappear forever, because my play is played
out. I thank you for having made it both attractive and easy. By
setting against you the Thuilliers and Collevilles (who are fully
informed of your sentiments towards them), and by relating in a
manner most mortifying to their bourgeois self-love the true
reason of your sudden and pitiless rupture with them, I am proud
and happy to believe that I have done you a signal service. The
girl does not love you, and you love nothing but the eyes of her
"dot"; I have therefore saved you both from a species of hell.
But, in exchange for the bride you have so curtly rejected,
another charming girl is proposed to you; she is richer and more
beautiful than Mademoiselle Colleville, and--to speak of myself
--more at liberty than
Your unworthy servant,
Torna "Comtesse de Godollo."
P.S. For further information apply, without delay, to Monsieur du
Portail, householder, rue Honore-Chevalier, near the rue de la
Cassette, quartier Saint-Sulpice, by whom you are expected.
When he had read this letter the advocate of the poor took his head in
his hands; he saw nothing, heard nothing, thought nothing; he was
annihilated.
Several days were necessary to la Peyrade before he could even begin
to recover from the crushing blow which had struck him down. The shock
was terrible. Coming out of that golden dream which had shown him a
perspective of the future in so smiling an aspect, he found himself
fooled under conditions most cruel to his self-love, and to his
pretensions to depth and cleverness; irrevocably parted from the
Thuilliers; saddled with a hopeless debt of twenty-five thousand
francs to Madame Lambert, together with another of ten thousand to
Brigitte, which his dignity required him to pay with the least delay
possible; and, worst of all,--to complete his humiliation and his
sense of failure,--he felt that he was not cured of the passionate
emotion he had felt for this woman, the author of his great disaster,
and the instrument of his ruin.
Either this Delilah was a very great lady, sufficiently high in
station to allow herself such compromising caprices,--but even so, she
would scarcely have cared to play the role of a coquette in a
vaudeville where he himself played the part of ninny,--_or_ she was some
noted adventuress who was in the pay of this du Portail and the agent
of his singular matrimonial designs. Evil life or evil heart, these
were the only two verdicts to be pronounced on this dangerous siren,
and in either case, it would seem, she was not very deserving of the
regrets of her victim; nevertheless, he was conscious of feeling them.
We must put ourselves in the place of this son of Provence, this
region of hot blood and ardent heads, who, for the first time in his
life finding himself face to face with jewelled love in laces,
believed he was to drink that passion from a wrought-gold cup. Just as
our minds on waking keep the impression of a vivid dream and continue
in love with what we know was but a shadow, la Peyrade had need of all
his mental energy to drive away the memory of that treacherous
countess. We might go further and say that he never ceased to long for
her, though he was careful to drape with an honest pretext the intense
desire that he had to find her. That desire he called curiosity, ardor
for revenge; and here follow the ingenious deductions which he drew
for himself:--
"Cerizet talked to me about a rich heiress; the countess, in her
letter, intimates that the whole intrigue she wound about me was to
lead to a rich marriage; rich marriages flung at a man's head are not
so plentiful that two such chances should come to me within a few
weeks; therefore the match offered by Cerizet and that proposed by the
countess must be the crazy girl they are so frantic to make me marry;
therefore Cerizet, being in the plot, must know the countess;
therefore, through him I shall get upon her traces. In any case, I am
sure of information about this extraordinary choice that has fallen
upon me; evidently, these people, whoever they are, who can pull the
wires of such puppets to reach their ends must be persons of
considerable position; therefore, I'll go and see Cerizet."
And he went to see Cerizet.
Since the dinner at the Rocher de Cancale, the pair had not met. Once
or twice la Peyrade had asked Dutocq at the Thuilliers' (where the
latter seldom went now, on account of the distance to their new abode)
what had become of his copying clerk.
"He never speaks of you," Dutocq had answered.
Hence it might be inferred that resentment, the "manet alta mente
repostum" was still living in the breast of the vindictive usurer. La
Peyrade, however, was not stopped by that consideration. After all, he
was not going to ask for anything; he went under the pretext of
renewing an affair in which Cerizet had taken part, and Cerizet never
took part in anything unless he had a personal interest in it. The
chances were, therefore, that he would be received with affectionate
eagerness rather than unpleasant acerbity. Moreover, he decided to go
and see the copying clerk at Dutocq's office; it would look, he
thought, less like a visit than if he went to his den in the rue des
Poules. It was nearly two o'clock when la Peyrade made his entrance
into the precincts of the justice-of-peace of the 12th arrondissement.
He crossed the first room, in which were a crowd of persons whom civil
suits of one kind or another summoned before the magistrate. Without
pausing in that waiting-room, la Peyrade pushed on to the office
adjoining that of Dutocq. There he found Cerizet at a shabby desk of
blackened wood, at which another clerk, then absent, occupied the
opposite seat.
Seeing his visitor, Cerizet cast a savage look at him and said,
without rising, or suspending the copy of the judgment he was then
engrossing:--
"You here, Sieur la Peyrade? You have been doing fine things for your
friend Thuillier!"
"How are you?" asked la Peyrade, in a tone both resolute and friendly.
"I?" replied Cerizet. "As you see, still rowing my galley; and, to
follow out the nautical metaphor, allow me to ask what wind has blown
you hither; is it, perchance, the wind of adversity?"
La Peyrade, without replying, took a chair beside his questioner,
after which he said in a grave tone:--
"My dear fellow, we have something to say to each other."
"I suppose," said Cerizet, spitefully, "the Thuilliers have grown cold
since the seizure of the pamphlet."
"The Thuilliers are ungrateful people; I have broken with them,"
replied la Peyrade.
"Rupture or dismissal," said Cerizet, "their door is shut against you;
and from what Dutocq tells me, I judge that Brigitte is handling you
without gloves. You see, my friend, what it is to try and manage
affairs alone; complications come, and there's no one to smooth the
angles. If you had got me that lease, I should have had a footing at
the Thuilliers', Dutocq would not have abandoned you, and together we
could have brought you gently into port."
"But suppose I don't want to re-enter that port?" said la Peyrade,
with some sharpness. "I tell you I've had enough of those Thuilliers,
and I broke with them myself; I warned them to get out of my sun; and
if Dutocq told you anything else you may tell him from me that he
lies. Is that clear enough? It seems to me I've made it plain."
"Well, exactly, my good fellow, if you are so savage against your
Thuilliers you ought to have put me among them, and then you'd have
seen me avenge you."
"There you are right," said la Peyrade; "I wish I could have set you
at their legs--but as for that matter of the lease I tell you again, I
was not master of it."
"Of course," said Cerizet, "it was your conscience which obliged you
to tell Brigitte that the twelve thousand francs a year I expected to
make out of it were better in her pocket than in mine."
"It seems that Dutocq continues the honorable profession of spy which
he formerly practised at the ministry of finance," said la Peyrade,
"and, like others who do that dirty business, he makes his reports
more witty than truthful--"
"Take care!" said Cerizet; "you are talking of my patron in his own
lair."
"Look here!" said la Peyrade. "I have come to talk to you on serious
matters. Will you do me the favor to drop the Thuilliers and all their
belongings, and give me your attention?"
"Say on, my friend," said Cerizet, laying down his pen, which had
never ceased to run, up to this moment, "I am listening."
"You talked to me some time ago," said la Peyrade, "about marrying a
girl who was rich, fully of age, and slightly hysterical, as you were
pleased to put it euphemistically."
"Well done!" cried Cerizet. "I expected this; but you've been some
time coming to it."
"In offering me this heiress, what did you have in your mind?" asked
la Peyrade.
"Parbleu! to help you to a splendid stroke of business. You had only
to stoop and take it. I was formally charged to propose it to you;
and, as there wasn't any brokerage, I should have relied wholly on
your generosity."
"But you are not the only person who was commissioned to make me that
offer. A woman had the same order."
"A woman!" cried Cerizet in a perfectly natural tone of surprise. "Not
that I know of."
"Yes, a foreigner, young and pretty, whom you must have met in the
family of the bride, to whom she seems to be ardently devoted."
"Never," said Cerizet, "never has there been the slightest question of
a woman in this negotiation. I have every reason to believe that I am
exclusively charged with it."
"What!" said la Peyrade, fixing upon Cerizet a scrutinizing eye, "did
you never hear of the Comtesse Torna de Godollo?"
"Never, in all my life; this is the first time I ever heard that
name."
"Then," said la Peyrade, "it must really have been another match; for
that woman, after many singular preliminaries, too long to explain to
you, made me a formal offer of the hand of a young woman much richer
than Mademoiselle Colleville--"
"And hysterical?" asked Cerizet.
"No, she did not embellish the proposal with that accessory; but
there's another detail which may put you on the track of her. Madame
de Godollo exhorted me, if I wished to push the matter, to go and see
a certain Monsieur du Portail--"
"Rue Honore-Chevalier?" exclaimed Cerizet, quickly.
"Precisely."
"Then it is the same marriage which is offered to you through two
different mediums. It is strange I was not informed of this
collaboration!"
"In short," said la Peyrade, "you not only didn't have wind of the
countess's intervention, but you don't know her, and you can't give me
any information about her--is that so?"
"At present I can't," replied Cerizet, "but I'll find out about her;
for the whole proceeding is rather cavalier towards me; but this
employment of two agents only shows you how desirable you are to the
family."
At this moment the door of the room was opened cautiously, a woman's
head appeared, and a voice, which was instantly recognized by la
Peyrade, said, addressing the copying-clerk:--
"Ah! excuse me! I see monsieur is busy. Could I say a word to monsieur
when he is alone?"
Cerizet, who had an eye as nimble as a hand, instantly noticed a
certain fact. La Peyrade, who was so placed as to be plainly seen by
the new-comer, no sooner heard that drawling, honeyed voice, than he
turned his head in a manner to conceal his features. Instead therefore
of being roughly sent away, as usually happened to petitioners who
addressed the most surly of official clerks, the modest visitor heard
herself greeted in a very surprising manner.
"Come in, come in, Madame Lambert," said Cerizet; "you won't be kept
waiting long; come in."
The visitor advanced, and then came face to face with la Peyrade.
"Ah! monsieur!" cried his creditor, whom the reader has no doubt
recognized, "how fortunate I am to meet monsieur! I have been several
times to his office to ask if he had had time to attend to my little
affair."
"I have had many engagements which have kept me away from my office
lately; but I attended to that matter; everything has been done right,
and is now in the hands of the secretary."
"Oh! how good monsieur is! I pray God to bless him," said the pious
woman, clasping her hands.
"Bless me! do you have business with Madame Lambert?" said Cerizet;
"you never told me that. Are you Pere Picot's counsel?"
"No, unfortunately," said Madame Lambert, "my master won't take any
counsel; he is so self-willed, so obstinate! But, my good monsieur,
what I came to ask is whether the family council is to meet."
"Of course," said Cerizet, "and not later than to-morrow."
"But monsieur, I hear those gentlemen of the Royal court said the
family had no rights--"
"Yes, that's so," said the clerk; "the lower court and the Royal court
have both, on the petition of the relatives, rejected their demand for
a commission."
"I should hope so!" said the woman; "to think of making him out a
lunatic! him so full of wisdom and learning!"
"But the relations don't mean to give up; they are going to try the
matter again under a new form, and ask for the appointment of a
judicial counsel. That's what the family council meets for to-morrow;
and I think, this time, my dear Madame Lambert, your old Picot will
find himself restrained. There are serious allegations, I can tell
you. It was all very well to take the eggs, but to pluck the hen was
another thing."
"Is it possible that monsieur can suppose--" began the devote,
clasping her hands under her chin.
"I suppose nothing," said Cerizet; "I am not the judge of this affair.
But the relations declare that you have pocketed considerable sums,
and made investments about which they demand inquiry."
"Oh! heavens!" said the woman, casting up her eyes; "they can inquire;
I am poor; I have not a deed, nor a note, nor a share; not the
slightest security of any kind in my possession."
"I dare say not," said Cerizet, glancing at la Peyrade out of the
corner of his eye; "but there are always friends to take care of such
things. However, that is none of my business; every one must settle
his own affairs in his own way. Now, then, say what you have to say,
distinctly."
"I came, monsieur," she replied, "to implore you, monsieur, to implore
Monsieur the judge's clerk, to speak in our favor to Monsieur the
justice-of-peace. Monsieur the vicar of Saint-Jacques is also to speak
to him. That poor Monsieur Picot!" she went on, weeping, "they'll kill
him if they continue to worry him in this way."
"I sha'n't conceal from you," said Cerizet, "that the justice-of-peace
is very ill-disposed to your cause. You must have seen that the other
day, when he refused to receive you. As for Monsieur Dutocq and
myself, our assistance won't help you much; and besides, my good
woman, you are too close-mouthed."
"Monsieur asked me if I had laid by a few little savings; and I
couldn't tell him that I had, be--because they have gone to keep the
h--house of that poor Monsieur Pi--i--cot; and now they accuse me of
r--robbing him!"
Madame Lambert sobbed.
"My opinion is," said Cerizet, "that you are making yourself out much
poorer than you are; and if friend Peyrade here, who seems to be more
in your confidence, hadn't his tongue tied by the rules of his
profession--"
"I!" said la Peyrade, hastily, "I don't know anything of madame's
affairs. She asked me to draw up a petition on a matter in which there
was nothing judicial or financial."
"Ah! that's it, is it?" said Cerizet. "Madame had doubtless gone to
see you about this petition the day Dutocq met her at your office, the
morning after our dinner at the Rocher de Cancale--when you were such
a Roman, you know."
Then, without seeming to attach any importance to the reminiscence, he
added:--
"Well, my good Madame Lambert, I'll ask my patron to speak to the
justice-of-peace, and, if I get a chance, I'll speak to him myself;
but, I repeat it, he is very much prejudiced against you."
Madame Lambert retired with many curtseys and protestations of
gratitude. When she was fairly gone la Peyrade remarked:--
"You don't seem to believe that that woman came to me about a
petition; and yet nothing was ever truer. She is thought a saint in
the street she lives in, and that old man they accuse her of robbing
is actually kept alive by her devotion, so I'm told. Consequently, the
neighbors have put it into the good woman's head to apply for the
Montyon prize; and it was for the purpose of putting her claims in
legal shape that she applied to me."
"Dear! dear! the Montyon prize!" cried Cerizet; "well, that's an idea!
My good fellow, we ought to have cultivated it before,--I, especially,
as banker of the poor, and you, their advocate. As for this client of
yours, it is lucky for her Monsieur Picot's relatives are not members
of the French academy; it is in the correctional police-court, sixth
chamber, where they mean to give her the reward of virtue. However, to
come back to what we were talking about. I tell you that after all
your tergiversations you had better settle down peaceably; and I
advise you, as your countess did, to go and see du Portail."
"Who and what is he?" asked la Peyrade.
"He is a little old man," replied Cerizet, "as shrewd as a weasel. He
gives me the idea of having dealings with the devil. Go and see him!
Sight, as they say, costs nothing."
"Yes," said la Peyrade, "perhaps I will; but, first of all, I want you
to find out for me about this Comtesse de Godollo."
"What do you care about her? She is nothing but a supernumerary, that
countess."
"I have my reasons," said la Peyrade; "you can certainly get some
information about her in three days; I'll come and see you then."
"My good fellow," said Cerizet, "you seem to me to be amusing yourself
with things that don't pay; you haven't fallen in love with that
go-between, have you?"
"Plague take him!" thought la Peyrade; "he spies everything; there's
no hiding anything from him! No," he said, aloud, "I am not in love;
on the contrary, I am very cautious. I must admit that this marriage
with a crazy girl doesn't attract me, and before I go a step into it I
want to know where I put my feet. These crooked proceedings are not
reassuring, and as so many influences are being brought to bear, I
choose to control one by another. Therefore don't play sly, but give
me all the information you get into your pouch about Madame la
Comtesse Torna de Godollo. I warn you I know enough to test the
veracity of your report; and if I see you are trying to overreach me
I'll break off short with your du Portail."
"Trying to overreach you, monseigneur!" replied Cerizet, in the tone
and manner of Frederic Lemaitre. "Who would dare attempt it?"
As he pronounced those words in a slightly mocking tone, Dutocq
appeared, accompanied by his little clerk.
"Bless me!" he exclaimed, seeing la Peyrade and Cerizet together;
"here's the trinity reconstituted! but the object of the alliance, the
'casus foederis,' has floated off. What have you done to that good
Brigitte, la Peyrade? She is after your blood."
"What about Thuillier?" asked la Peyrade.
Moliere was reversed; here was Tartuffe inquiring for Orgon.
"Thuillier began by not being very hostile to you; but it now seems
that the seizure business has taken a good turn, and having less need
of you he is getting drawn into his sister's waters; and if the
tendency continues, I haven't a doubt that he'll soon come to think
you deserving of hanging."
"Well, I'm out of it all," said la Peyrade, "and if anybody ever
catches me in such a mess again!--Well, adieu, my friends," he added.
"And you, Cerizet, as to what we were speaking about, activity,
safety, and discretion!"
When la Peyrade reached the courtyard of the municipal building, he
was accosted by Madame Lambert, who was lying in wait for him.
"Monsieur wouldn't believe, I am sure," she said, in a deprecating
tone, "the villainous things that Monsieur Cerizet said about me;
monsieur knows it was the little property I received from my uncle in
England that I placed in his hands."
"Yes, yes," said la Peyrade, "but you must understand that with all
these rumors set about by your master's relatives the prize of virtue
is desperately endangered."
"If it is God's will that I am not to have it--"
"You ought also to understand how important it is for your interests
to keep secret the other service which I did for you. At the first
appearance of any indiscretion on your part that money, as I told you,
will be peremptorily returned to you."
"Oh! monsieur may be easy about that."
"Very well; then good-bye to you, my dear," said la Peyrade, in a
friendly tone.
As he turned to leave her, a nasal voice was heard from a window on
the staircase.
"Madame Lambert!" cried Cerizet, who, suspecting the colloquy, had
gone to the staircase window to make sure of it. "Madame Lambert!
Monsieur Dutocq has returned; you may come up and see him, if you
like."
Impossible for la Peyrade to prevent the conference, although he knew
the secret of that twenty-five thousand francs ran the greatest
danger.
"Certainly," he said to himself as he walked away, "I'm in a run of
ill-luck; and I don't know where it will end."
In Brigitte's nature there was such an all-devouring instinct of
domination, that it was without regret, and, we may even say, with a
sort of secret joy that she saw the disappearance of Madame de
Godollo. That woman, she felt, had a crushing superiority over her;
and this, while it had given a higher order to the Thuillier
establishment, made her ill at ease. When therefore the separation
took place, which was done, let us here say, on good terms, and under
fair and honorable pretexts, Mademoiselle Thuillier breathed more
freely. She felt like those kings long swayed by imperious and
necessary ministers, who celebrate within their hearts the day when
death delivers them from a master whose services and rival influence
they impatiently endured.
Thuillier was not far from having the same sentiment about la Peyrade.
But Madame de Godollo was only the elegance, whereas la Peyrade was
the utility of the house they had now simultaneously abandoned; and
after the lapse of a few days, a terrible need of Theodose made itself
felt in the literary and political existence of his dear, good friend.
The municipal councillor found himself suddenly appointed to draft an
important report. He was unable to decline the task, saddled as he was
with the reputation, derived from his pamphlet, of being a man of
letters and an able writer; therefore, in presence of the perilous
honor conferred upon him by his colleagues of the general Council, he
sat down terrified by his solitude and his insufficiency.
In vain did he lock himself into his study, gorge himself with black
coffee, mend innumerable pens, and write a score of times at the head
of his paper (which he was careful to cut of the exact dimensions as
that used by la Peyrade) the solemn words: "Report to the Members of
the Municipal Council of the City of Paris," followed, on a line by
itself, by a magnificent _Messieurs_--nothing came of it! He was fain
to issue furious from his study, complaining of the horrible household
racket which "cut the thread of his ideas"; though really no greater
noise than the closing of a door or the opening of a closet or the
moving of a chair had made itself heard. All this, however, did not
help the advancement of the work, which remained, as before--simply
begun.
Most fortunately, it happened that Rabourdin, wanting to make some
change in his apartment, came, as was proper, to submit his plan to
the owner of the house. Thuillier granted cordially the request that
was made to him, and then discoursed to his tenant about the report
with which he was charged,--being desirous, he said, to obtain his
ideas on the subject.
Rabourdin, to whom no administrative question was foreign, very
readily threw upon the subject a number of very clear and lucid ideas.
He was one of those men to whom the quality of the intellect to which
they address themselves is more or less indifferent; a fool, or a man
of talent who will listen to them, serves equally well to think aloud
to, and they are, as a stimulant, about the same thing. After
Rabourdin had said his say, he observed that Thuillier had not
understood him; but he had listened to himself with pleasure, and he
was, moreover, grateful for the attention, obtuse as it was, of his
hearer, and also for the kindliness of the landlord in receiving his
request.
"I must have among my papers," he said as he went away, "something on
this subject; I will look it up and send it to you."
Accordingly, that same evening Thuillier received a voluminous
manuscript; and he spent the entire night in delving into that
precious repository of ideas, from which he extracted enough to make a
really remarkable report, clumsily as the pillage was managed. When
read before the council it obtained a very great success, and
Thuillier returned home radiant and much elated by the congratulations
he had received. From that moment--a moment that was marked in his
life, for even to advanced old age he still talked of the "report he
had had the honor of making to the Council-general of the Seine"--la
Peyrade went down considerably in his estimation; he felt then that he
could do very well without the barrister, and this thought of
emancipation was strengthened by another happiness which came to him
at almost the same time.
A parliamentary crisis was imminent,--a fact that caused the ministry
to think about depriving its adversaries of a theme of opposition
which always has great influence on public opinion. It resolved
therefore to relax its rigor, which of late had been much increased
against the press. Being included in this species of hypocritical
amnesty, Thuillier received one morning a letter from the barrister
whom he had chosen in place of la Peyrade. This letter announced that
the Council of State had dismissed the complaint, and ordered the
release of the pamphlet.
Then Dutocq's prediction was realized. That weight the less within his
bosom, Thuillier took a swing toward insolence; he chorused Brigitte,
and came at last to speak of la Peyrade as a sort of adventurer whom
he had fed and clothed, a tricky fellow who had _extracted_ much money
from him, and had finally behaved with such ingratitude that he was
thankful not to count him any longer among his friends. Orgon, in
short, was in full revolt, and like Dorine, he was ready to cry out:
"A beggar! who, when he came, had neither shoes nor coat worth a brass
farthing."
Cerizet, to whom these indignities were reported by Dutocq, would
gladly have served them up hot to la Peyrade; but the interview in
which the copying clerk was to furnish information about Madame de
Godollo did not take place at the time fixed. La Peyrade made his own
discoveries in this wise:
Pursued by the thought of the beautiful Hungarian, and awaiting, or
rather not awaiting the result of Cerizet's inquiry, he scoured Paris
in every direction, and might have been seen, like the idlest of
loungers, in the most frequented places, his heart telling him that
sooner or later he must meet the object of his ardent search.
One evening--it was towards the middle of October--the autumn, as
frequently happens in Paris, was magnificent, and along the
boulevards, where the Provencal was airing his love and his
melancholy, the out-door life and gaiety were as animated as in
summer. On the boulevard des Italiens, formerly known as the boulevard
de Gand, as he lounged past the long line of chairs before the Cafe de
Paris, where, mingled with a few women of the Chaussee d'Antin
accompanied by their husbands and children, may be seen toward evening
a cordon of nocturnal beauties waiting only a gloved hand to gather
them, la Peyrade's heart received a cruel shock. From afar, he thought
he saw his adored countess.
She was alone, in a dazzling toilet scarcely authorized by the place
and her isolation; before her, mounted on a chair, trembled a tiny
lap-dog, which she stroked from time to time with her beautiful hands.
After convincing himself that he was not mistaken, la Peyrade was
about to dart upon that celestial vision, when he was forestalled by a
dandy of the most triumphant type. Without throwing aside his cigar,
without even touching his hat, this handsome young man began to
converse with the barrister's ideal; but when she saw la Peyrade
making towards her the siren must have felt afraid, for she rose
quickly, and taking the arm of the man who was talking to her, she
said aloud:--
"Is your carriage here, Emile? Mabille closes to-night, and I should
like to go there."
The name of that disreputable place thus thrown in the face of the
unhappy barrister, was a charity, for it saved him from a foolish
action, that of addressing, on the arm of the man who had suddenly
made himself her cavalier, the unworthy creature of whom he was
thinking a few seconds earlier with so much tenderness.
"She is not worth insulting," he said to himself.
But, as lovers are beings who will not allow their foothold to be
taken from them easily, the Provencal was neither convinced nor
resigned as yet. Not far from the place which his countess had left,
sat another woman, also alone; but this one was ripe with years, with
feathers on her head, and beneath the folds of a cashmere shawl she
concealed the plaintive remains of tarnished elegance and long past
luxury. There was nothing imposing about this sight, nor did it
command respect, but the contrary. La Peyrade went up to the woman
without ceremony and addressed her.
"Madame," he said, "do you know that woman who has just gone away on
the arm of a gentleman?"
"Certainly, monsieur; I know nearly all the women who come here."
"And her name is?--"
"Madame Komorn."
"Is she as impregnable as the fortress of that name?"
Our readers will doubtless remember that at the time of the
insurrection in Hungary our ears were battered by the press and by
novelists about the famous citadel of Komorn; and la Peyrade knew that
by assuming a tone of indifference or flippancy he was more likely to
succeed with his inquiries.
"Has monsieur any idea of making her acquaintance?"
"I don't know," replied la Peyrade, "but she is a woman who makes
people think of her."
"And a very dangerous woman, monsieur," added his companion; "a
fearful spendthrift, but with no inclination to return generously what
is done for her. I can speak knowingly of that; when she first arrived
here from Berlin, six months ago, she was very warmly recommended to
me."
"Ah!" exclaimed la Peyrade.
"Yes, at that time I had in the environs of Ville d'Avray a very
beautiful place, with park and coverts and a stream for fishing; but
as I was alone I found it dull, and several of these ladies and
gentlemen said to me, 'Madame Louchard, why don't you organize parties
in the style of picnics?'"
"Madame Louchard!" repeated la Peyrade, "are you any relation to
Monsieur Louchard of the commercial police?"
"His wife, monsieur, but legally separated from him. A horrid man who
wants me to go back to him; but I, though I'm ready to forgive most
things, I can't forgive a want of respect; just imagine that he dared
to raise his hand against me!"
"Well," said la Peyrade, trying to bring her back to the matter in
hand; "you organized those picnics, and Madame de Godo--I mean Madame
Komorn--"
"Was one of my first lodgers. It was there she made acquaintance with
an Italian, a handsome man, and rich, a political refugee, but one of
the lofty kind. You understand it didn't suit my purposes to have
intrigues going on in my house; still the man was so lovable, and so
unhappy because he couldn't make Madame Komorn like him, that at last
I took an interest in this particular love affair; which produced a
pot of money for madame, for she managed to get immense sums out of
that Italian. Well, would you believe that when--being just then in
great need--I asked her to assist me with a trifling little sum, she
refused me point-blank, and left my house, taking her lover with her,
who, poor man, can't be thankful for the acquaintance now."
"Why not? What happened to him?" asked la Peyrade.
"It happened to him that this serpent knows every language in Europe;
she is witty and clever to the tips of her fingers, but more
manoeuvring than either; so, being, as it appears, in close relations
to the police, she gave the government a lot of papers the Italian
left about carelessly, on which they expelled him from France."
"Well, after his departure, Madame Komorn--"
"Since then, she has had a good many adventures and upset several
fortunes, and I thought she had left Paris. For the last two months
she was nowhere to be seen, but three days ago she reappeared, more
brilliant than ever. My advice to monsieur is not to trust himself in
that direction; and yet, monsieur looks to me a Southerner, and
Southerners have passions; perhaps what I have told him will only
serve to spur them up. However, being warned, there's not so much
danger, and she is a most fascinating creature--oh! very fascinating.
She used to love me very much, though we parted such ill-friends; and
just now, seeing me here, she came over and asked my address, and said
she should come and see me."
"Well, madame, I'll think about it," said la Peyrade, rising and
bowing to her.
The bow was returned with extreme coldness; his abrupt departure did
not show him to be a man of _serious_ intentions.
It might be supposed from the lively manner in which la Peyrade made
these inquiries that his cure though sudden was complete; but this
surface of indifference and cool self-possession was only the
stillness of the atmosphere that precedes a storm. On leaving Madame
Louchard, la Peyrade flung himself into a street-cab and there gave
way to a passion of tears like that Madame Colleville had witnessed on
the day he believed that Cerizet had got the better of him in the sale
of the house.
What was his position now? The investment of the Thuilliers, prepared
with so much care, all useless; Flavie well avenged for the odious
comedy he had played with her; his affairs in a worse state than they
were when Cerizet and Dutocq had sent him, like a devouring wolf, into
the sheepfold from which he had allowed the stupid sheep to drive him;
his heart full of revengeful projects against the woman who had so
easily got the better of what he thought his cleverness; and the
memory, still vivid, of the seductions to which he had succumbed,
--such were the thoughts and emotions of his sleepless night,
sleepless except for moments shaken by agitated dreams.
The next day la Peyrade could think no more; he was a prey to fever,
the violence of which became sufficiently alarming for the physician
who attended him to take all precautions against the symptoms now
appearing of brain fever: bleeding, cupping, leeches, and ice to his
head; these were the agreeable finale to his dream of love. We must
hasten to add, however, that this violent crisis in the physical led
to a perfect cure of the mental being. The barrister came out of his
illness with no other sentiment than cold contempt for the treacherous
Hungarian, a sentiment which did not even rise to a desire for
vengeance.
CHAPTER IX
GIVE AND TAKE
Once more afoot, and reckoning with his future, on which he had lost
so much ground, la Peyrade asked himself if he had not better try to
renew his relations with the Thuilliers, or whether he should be
compelled to fall back on the rich crazy woman who had bullion where
others have brains. But everything that reminded him of his disastrous
campaign was repulsive to him; besides, what safety was there in
dealing with this du Portail, a man who could use such instruments for
his means of action?
Great commotions of the soul are like those storms which purify the
atmosphere; they induce reflection, they counsel good and strong
resolutions. La Peyrade, as the result of the cruel disappointment he
had just endured, examined his own soul. He asked himself what sort of
existence was this, of base and ignoble intrigue, which he had led for
the past year? Was there for him no better, no nobler use to make of
the faculties he felt within him? The bar was open to him as to
others; that was a broad, straight path which could lead him to all
the satisfaction of legitimate ambition. Like Figaro, who displayed
more science and calculation in merely getting a living than statesmen
had shown in governing Spain for a hundred years, he, la Peyrade, in
order to install and maintain himself in the Thuillier household and
marry the daughter of a clarionet and a smirched coquette, had spent
more mind, more art, and--it should also be said, because in a corrupt
society it is an element that must be reckoned--more dishonesty than
was needed to advance him in some fine career.
"Enough of such connections as Dutocq and Cerizet," he said to
himself; "enough of the nauseating atmosphere of the Minards and
Phellions and Collevilles and Barniols and all the rest of them. I'll
shake off this province 'intra muros,' a thousand times more absurd
and petty than the true provinces; they at least, side by side with
their pettiness, have habits and customs that are characteristic, a
'sui generis' dignity; they are frankly what they are, the antipodes
of Parisian life; this other is but a parody of it. I will fling
myself upon Paris."
In consequence of these reflections, la Peyrade went to see two or
three barristers who had offered to introduce him at the Palais in
secondary cases. He accepted those that presented themselves at once,
and three weeks after his rupture with the Thuilliers he was no longer
the "advocate of the poor," but a barrister pleading before the Royal
court.
He had already pleaded several cases successfully when he received,
one morning, a letter which greatly disturbed him. The president of
the order of barristers requested him to come to his office at the
Palais in the course of the day, as he had something of importance to
say to him. La Peyrade instantly thought of the transaction relating
to the purchase of the house on the boulevard de la Madeleine; it must
have come, he thought, to the ears of the Council of Discipline; if so
he was accountable to that tribunal and he knew its severity.
Now this du Portail, whom he had never yet been to see, in spite of
his conditional promise to Cerizet, was likely to have heard the whole
story of that transaction from Cerizet himself. Evidently all means
were thought good by that man, judging by the use he had made of the
Hungarian woman. In his savage determination to bring about the
marriage with the crazy girl, had this virulent old man denounced him?
On seeing him courageously and with some appearance of success
entering a career in which he might find fame and independence, had
his persecutor taken a step to make that career impossible? Certainly
there was enough likelihood in this suggestion to make the barrister
wait in cruel anxiety for the hour when he might learn the true nature
of the alarming summons.
While breakfasting rather meagrely, his mind full of these painful
conjectures, Madame Coffinet, who had the honor to take charge of his
housekeeping, came up to ask if he would see Monsieur Etienne
Lousteau. [See "The Great Man of the Provinces in Paris."]
Etienne Lousteau! la Peyrade had an idea that he had heard the name
before.
"Show him into my office," he said to the portress.
A moment later he met his visitor, whose face did not seem utterly
unknown to him.
"Monsieur," said this new-comer, "I had the honor of breakfasting with
you not long ago at Vefour's; I was invited to that meeting,
afterwards rather disturbed, by Monsieur Thuillier."
"Ah, very good!" said the barrister, offering a chair; "you are
attached to the staff of a newspaper?"
"Editor-in-chief of the 'Echo de la Bievre,' and it is on the subject
of that paper that I have now called to see you. You know what has
happened?"
"No," said la Peyrade.
"Is it possible you are not aware that the ministry met with terrible
defeat last night? But instead of resigning, as every one expected,
they have dissolved the Chamber and appeal to the people."
"I knew nothing of all that," said la Peyrade. "I have not read the
morning papers."
"So," continued Lousteau, "all parliamentary ambitions will take the
field, and, if I am well informed, Monsieur Thuillier, already member
of the Council-general, intends to present himself as candidate for
election in the 12th arrondissement."
"Yes," said la Peyrade, "that is likely to be his intention."
"Well, monsieur, I desire to place at his disposition an instrument
the value of which I am confident you will not underestimate. The
'Echo de la Bievre,' a specialist paper, can have a decisive influence
on the election in that quarter."
"And you would be disposed," asked la Peyrade, "to make that paper
support Monsieur Thuillier's candidacy?"
"Better than that," replied Lousteau. "I have come to propose to
Monsieur Thuillier that he purchase the paper itself. Once the
proprietor of it he can use it as he pleases."
"But in the first place," said la Peyrade, "what is the present
condition of the enterprise? In its character as a specialist journal
--as you called it just now--it is a sheet I have seldom met with; in
fact, it would be entirely unknown to me were it not for the
remarkable article you were so good as to devote to Thuillier's
defence at the time his pamphlet was seized."
Etienne Lousteau bowed his thanks, and then said:
"The position of the paper is excellent; we can give it to you on easy
terms, for we were intending shortly to stop the publication."
"That is strange for a prosperous journal."
"On the contrary, it happens to be quite natural. The founders, who
were all representatives of the great leather interest, started this
paper for a special object. That object has been attained. The 'Echo
de la Bievre' has therefore become an effect without a cause. In such
a case, stockholders who don't like the tail end of matters, and are
not eager after small profits, very naturally prefer to sell out."
"But," asked la Peyrade, "does the paper pay its costs?"
"That," replied Lousteau, "is a point we did not consider; we were not
very anxious to have subscribers; the mainspring of the whole affair
was direct and immediate action on the ministry of commerce to obtain
a higher duty on the introduction of foreign leathers. You understand
that outside of the tannery circle, this interest was not very
exciting to the general reader."
"I should have thought, however," persisted la Peyrade, "that a
newspaper, however circumscribed its action, would be a lever which
depended for its force on the number of its subscribers."
"Not for journals which aim for a single definite thing," replied
Lousteau, dogmatically. "In that case, subscribers are, on the
contrary, an embarrassment, for you have to please and amuse them, and
in so doing, the real object has to be neglected. A newspaper which
has a definite and circumscribed object ought to be like the stroke of
that pendulum which, striking steadily on one spot, fires at a given
hour the cannon of the Palais-Royal."
"At any rate," said la Peyrade, "what price do you put upon a
publication which has no subscribers, does not pay its expenses, and
has until now been devoted to a purpose totally different from that
you propose for it?"
"Before answering," returned Lousteau, "I shall ask you another
question. Have you any intention of buying it?"
"That's according to circumstances," replied la Peyrade. "Of course I
must see Thuillier; but I may here remark to you that he knows
absolutely nothing about newspaper business. With his rather bourgeois
ideas, the ownership of a newspaper will seem to him a ruinous
speculation. Therefore, if, in addition to an idea that will scare
him, you suggest an alarming price, it is useless for me to speak to
him. I am certain he would never go into the affair."
"No," replied Lousteau. "I have told you we should be reasonable;
these gentlemen have left the whole matter in my hands. Only, I beg to
remark that we have had propositions from other parties, and in giving
Monsieur Thuillier this option, we intended to pay him a particular
courtesy. When can I have your answer?"
"To-morrow, I think; shall I have the honor of seeing you at your own
house, or at the office of the journal?"
"No," said Lousteau, "to-morrow I will come here, at the same hour, if
that is convenient to you."
"Perfectly," replied la Peyrade, bowing out his visitor, whom he was
inclined to think more consequential than able.
By the manner in which the barrister had received the proposition to
become an intermediary to Thuillier, the reader must have seen that a
rapid revolution had taken place in his ideas. Even if he had not
received that extremely disquieting letter from the president of the
order of barristers, the new situation in which Thuillier would be
placed if elected to the Chamber gave him enough to think about.
Evidently his dear good friend would have to come back to him, and
Thuillier's eagerness for election would deliver him over, bound hand
and foot. Was it not the right moment to attempt to renew his marriage
with Celeste? Far from being an obstacle to the good resolutions
inspired by his amorous disappointment and his incipient brain fever,
such a finale would ensure their continuance and success. Moreover, if
he received, as he feared, one of those censures which would ruin his
dawning prospects at the bar, it was with the Thuilliers, the
accomplices and beneficiaries of the cause of his fall, that his
instinct led him to claim an asylum.
With these thoughts stirring in his mind la Peyrade obeyed the summons
and went to see the president of the order of barristers.
He was not mistaken; a very circumstantial statement of his whole
proceeding in the matter of the house had been laid before his
brethren of the bar; and the highest dignitary of the order, after
stating that an anonymous denunciation ought always to be received
with great distrust, told him that he was ready to receive and welcome
an explanation. La Peyrade dared not entrench himself in absolute
denial; the hand from which he believed the blow had come seemed to
him too resolute and too able not to hold the proofs as well. But,
while admitting the facts in general, he endeavored to give them an
acceptable coloring. In this, he saw that he had failed, when the
president said to him:--
"After the vacation which is now beginning I shall report to the
Council of the order the charges made against you, and the statements
by which you have defended yourself. The Council alone has the right
to decide on a matter of such importance."
Thus dismissed, la Peyrade felt that his whole future at the bar was
imperilled; but at least he had a respite, and in case of condemnation
a new project on which to rest his head. Accordingly, he put on his
gown, which he had never worn till now, and went to the fifth
court-room, where he was employed upon a case.
As he left the court-room, carrying one of those bundles of legal
papers held together by a strip of cotton which, being too voluminous
to hold under the arm, are carried by the hand and the forearm pressed
against the chest, la Peyrade began to pace about the Salle des Pas
perdus with that harassed look of business which denotes a lawyer
overwhelmed with work. Whether he had really excited himself in
pleading, or whether he was pretending to be exhausted to prove that
his gown was not a dignity for show, as it was with many of his legal
brethren, but an armor buckled on for the fight, it is certain that,
handkerchief in hand, he was mopping his forehead as he walked, when,
in the distance, he spied Thuillier, who had evidently just caught
sight of him, and was beginning on his side to manoeuvre.
La Peyrade was not surprised by the encounter. On leaving home he had
told Madame Coffinet he was going to the Palais, and should be there
till three o'clock, and she might send to him any persons who called
on business. Not wishing to let Thuillier accost him too easily, he
turned abruptly, as if some thought had changed his purpose, and went
and seated himself on one of the benches which surround the walls of
that great antechamber of Justice. There he undid his bundle, took out
a paper, and buried himself in it with the air of a man who had not
had time to examine in his study a case he was about to plead. It is
not necessary to say that while doing this the Provencal was watching
the manoeuvres of Thuillier out of the corner of his eye. Thuillier,
believing that la Peyrade was really occupied in some serious
business, hesitated to approach him.
However, after sundry backings and fillings the municipal councillor
made up his mind, and sailing straight before the wind he headed for
the spot he had been reconnoitring for the last ten minutes.
"Bless me, Theodose!" he cried as soon as he had got within hailing
distance. "Do you come to the Palais now?"
"It seems to me," replied Theodose, "that barristers at the Palais are
like Turks at Constantinople, where a friend of mine affirmed you
could see a good many. It is YOU whom it is rather surprising to see
here."
"Not at all," said Thuillier, carelessly. "I've come about that cursed
pamphlet. Is there ever any end to your legal bothers? I was summoned
here this morning, but I don't regret it, as it gives me the happy
chance of meeting you."
"I, too," said la Peyrade, tying up his bundle. "I am very glad to see
you, but I must leave you now; I have an appointment, and I suppose
you want to do your business at once."
"I have done it," said Thuillier.
"Did you speak to Olivier Vinet, that mortal enemy of yours? he sits
in that court," asked la Peyrade.
"No," said Thuillier, naming another official.
"Well, that's queer!" said the barrister; "that fellow must have the
gift of ubiquity; he has been all the morning in the fifth court-room,
and has just this minute given a judgment on a case I pleaded."
Thuillier colored, and got out of his hobble as best he could. "Oh,
hang it!" he said; "those men in gowns are all alike, I don't know one
from another."
La Peyrade shrugged his shoulders and said aloud, but as if to
himself: "Always the same; crafty, crooked, never straightforward."
"Whom are you talking about?" asked Thuillier, rather nonplussed.
"Why, of you, my dear fellow, who take me for an imbecile, as if I and
the whole world didn't know that your pamphlet business came to an end
two weeks ago. Why, then, summon you to court?"
"Well, I was sent for," said Thuillier, with embarrassment; "something
about registry fees,--it is all Greek to me, I can't comprehend their
scrawls."
"And they chose," said la Peyrade, "precisely the very day when the
Moniteur, announcing the dissolution of the Chamber, made you think
about being a candidate for the 12th arrondissement."
"Why not?" asked Thuillier, "what has my candidacy to do with the fees
I owe to the court?"
"I'll tell you," said la Peyrade, dryly. "The court is a thing
essentially amiable and complaisant. 'Tiens!' it said to itself,
'here's this good Monsieur Thuillier going to be a candidate for the
Chamber; how hampered he'll be by his attitude to his ex-friend
Monsieur de la Peyrade, with whom he wishes now he hadn't quarrelled.
I'll summon him for fees he doesn't owe; that will bring him to the
Palais where la Peyrade comes daily; and in that way he can meet him
by chance, and so avoid taking a step which would hurt his self-love."
"Well, there you are mistaken!" cried Thuillier, breaking the ice. "I
used so little craft, as you call it, that I've just come from your
house, there! and your portress told me where to find you."
"Well done!" said la Peyrade, "I like this frankness; I can get on
with men who play above-board. Well, what do you want of me? Have you
come to talk about your election? I have already begun to work for
it."
"No, really?" said Thuillier, "how?"
"Here," replied la Peyrade, feeling under his gown for his pocket and
bringing out a paper, "here's what I scribbled just now in the
court-room while the lawyer on the other side rambled on like an
expert."
"What is it about?" asked Thuillier.
"Read and you'll see."
The paper read as follows:--
Estimate for a newspaper, small size, at thirty francs a year.
Calculating the editions at 5,000 the costs are:--
Paper, 5 reams at 12 francs . . . . . . . . . . 1,860 francs.
Composition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,400 "
Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 "
One administrator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250 "
One clerk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 "
One editor (also cashier) . . . . . . . . . . . 200 "
One despatcher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 "
Folders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 "
One office boy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 "
Office expenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 "
Rent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 "
License and postage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7,500 "
Reporting and stenographic news . . . . . . . . 1,800 "
---------
Total monthly, 15,110 "
" yearly, 181,320 "
"Do you want to set up a paper?" asked Thuillier, in dread.
"I?" asked la Peyrade, "I want nothing at all; you are the one to be
asked if you want to be a deputy."
"Undoubtedly I do; because, when you urged me to become a municipal
councillor, you put the idea into my head. But reflect, my dear
Theodose, one hundred and eighty one thousand three hundred and twenty
francs to put out! Have I a fortune large enough to meet such a
demand?"
"Yes," said la Peyrade, "you could very well support that expense, for
considering the end you want to obtain there is nothing exorbitant in
it. In England they make much greater sacrifices to get a seat in
Parliament; but in any case, I beg you to observe that the costs are
very high on that estimate, and some could be cut off altogether. For
instance, you would not want an administrator. You, yourself, an old
accountant, and I, an old journalist, can very well manage the affair
between us. Also rent, we needn't count that; you have your old
apartment in the rue Saint-Dominique which is not yet leased; that
will make a fine newspaper office."
"All that costs off two thousand four hundred francs a year," said
Thuillier.
"Well, that's something; but your error consists in calculating on the
yearly cost. When do the elections take place?"
"In two months," said Thuillier.
"Very good; two months will cost you thirty thousand francs, even
supposing the paper had no subscribers."
"True," said Thuillier, "the expense is certainly less than I thought
at first. But does a newspaper really seem to you essential?"
"So essential that without that power in our hands, I won't have
anything to do with the election. You don't seem to see, my poor
fellow, that in going to live in the other quarter you have lost,
electorally speaking, an immense amount of ground. You are no longer
the man of the place, and your election could be balked by the cry of
what the English call 'absenteeism.' This makes your game very hard to
play."
"I admit that," said Thuillier; "but there are so many things wanted
besides money,--a name for one thing, a manager, editorial staff, and
so forth."
"A name, we have one made to hand; editors, they are you and I and a
few young fellows who grow on every bush in Paris. As for the manager,
I have a man in view."
"What name is it?" asked Thuillier.
"L'Echo de la Bievre."
"But there is already a paper of that name."
"Precisely, and that's why I give my approval to the affair. Do you
think I should be fool enough to advise you to start an entirely new
paper? 'Echo de la Bievre!' that title is a treasure to a man who
wants support for his candidacy in the 12th arrondissement. Say the
word only, and I put that treasure into your hands."
"How?" asked Thuillier, with curiosity.
"Parbleu! by buying it; it can be had for a song."
"There now, you see," said Thuillier in a discouraged tone; "you never
counted in the cost of purchase."
"How you dwell on nothings!" said la Peyrade, hunching his shoulders;
"we have other and more important difficulties to solve."
"Other difficulties?" echoed Thuillier.
"Parbleu!" exclaimed la Peyrade; "do you suppose that after all that
has taken place between us I should boldly harness myself to your
election without knowing exactly what benefit I am to get for it?"
"But," said Thuillier, rather astonished, "I thought that friendship
was a good exchange for such services."
"Yes; but when the exchange consists in one side giving all and the
other side nothing, friendship gets tired of that sort of sharing, and
asks for something a little better balanced."
"But, my dear Theodose, what have I to offer you that you have not
already rejected?"
"I rejected it, because it was offered without heartiness, and
seasoned with Mademoiselle Brigitte's vinegar; every self-respecting
man would have acted as I did. Give and keep don't pass, as the old
legal saying is; but that is precisely what you persist in doing."
"I!--I think you took offence very unreasonably; but the engagement
might be renewed."
"So be it," replied la Peyrade; "but I will not put myself at the
mercy of either the success of the election or Mademoiselle Celeste's
caprices. I claim the right to something positive and certain. Give
and take; short accounts make good friends."
"I perfectly agree with you," said Thuillier, "and I have always
treated you with too much good faith to fear any of these precautions
you now want to take. But what guarantees do you want?"
"I want that the husband of Celeste should manage your election, and
not Theodose de la Peyrade."
"By hurrying things as much as possible, so Brigitte said, it would
still take fifteen days; and just think, with the elections only eight
weeks off, to lose two of them doing nothing!"
"Day after to-morrow," replied la Peyrade, "the banns can be published
for the first time at the mayor's office, in the intervals of
publication some things could be done, for though the publishing of
the banns is not a step from which there is no retreat, it is at least
a public pledge and a long step taken; after that we can get your
notary to draw the contract at once. Moreover, if you decide on buying
this newspaper, I shouldn't be afraid that you would go back on me,
for you don't want a useless horse in your stable, and without me I am
certain you can't manage him."
"But, my dear fellow," said Thuillier, going back to his objections,
"suppose that affair proves too onerous?"
"There's no need to say that you are the sole judge of the conditions
of the purchase. I don't wish any more than you do to buy a pig in a
poke. If to-morrow you authorize me, I won't say to buy, but to let
these people know that you may possibly make the purchase, I'll confer
with one of them on your behalf, and you may be certain that I'll
stand up for your interests as if they were my own."
"Very good, my dear fellow," said Thuillier, "go ahead!"
"And as soon as the paper is purchased we are to fix the day for
signing the contract?"
"Yes," replied Thuillier; "but will you bind yourself to use your
utmost influence on the election?"
"As if it were my own," replied la Peyrade, "which, by the bye, is not
altogether an hypothesis. I have already received suggestions about my
own candidacy, and if I were vindictive--"
"Certainly," said Thuillier, with humility, "you would make a better
deputy than I; but you are not of the required age, I think."
"There's a better reason than that," said la Peyrade; "you are my
friend; I find you again what you once were, and I shall keep the
pledges I have given you. As for the election, I prefer that people
say of me, 'He makes deputies, but will be none himself.' Now I must
leave you and keep my appointment. To-morrow in my own rooms, come and
see me; I shall have something to announce."
Whoso has ever been a newspaper man will ever be one; that horoscope
is as sure and certain as that of drunkards. Whoever has tasted that
feverishly busy and relatively lazy and independent life; whoever has
exercised that sovereignty which criticises intellect, art, talent,
fame, virtue, absurdity, and even truth; whoever has occupied that
tribune erected by his own hands, fulfilled the functions of that
magistracy to which he is self-appointed,--in short, whosoever has
been, for however brief a span, that proxy of public opinion, looks
upon himself when remanded to private life as an exile, and the moment
a chance is offered to him puts out an eager hand to snatch back his
crown.
For this reason when Etienne Lousteau went to la Peyrade, a former
journalist, with an offer of the weapon entitled the "Echo de la
Bievre," all the latter's instincts as a newspaper man were aroused,
in spite of the very inferior quality of the blade. The paper had
failed; la Peyrade believed he could revive it. The subscribers, on
the vendor's own showing, were few and far between, but he would
exercise upon them a "compelle intrare" both powerful and
irresistible. In the circumstances under which the affair was
presented to him it might surely be considered provincial. Threatened
with the loss of his position at the bar, he was thus acquiring, as we
said before, a new position and that of a "detached fort"; compelled,
as he might be, to defend himself, he could from that vantage-ground
take the offensive and oblige his enemies to reckon with him.
On the Thuillier side, the newspaper would undoubtedly make him a
personage of considerable importance; he would have more power on the
election; and by involving their capital in an enterprise which,
without him, they would feel a gulf and a snare, he bound them to him
by self-interests so firmly that there was nothing to fear from their
caprice or ingratitude.
This horizon, rapidly taken in during Etienne Lousteau's visit, had
fairly dazzled the Provencal, and we have seen the peremptory manner
in which Thuillier was forced into accepting with some enthusiasm the
discovery of this philosopher's-stone.
The cost of the purchase was ridiculously insignificant. A bank-note
for five hundred francs, for which Etienne Lousteau never clearly
accounted to the share-holders, put Thuillier in possession of the
name, property, furniture, and good-will of the newspaper, which he
and la Peyrade at once busied themselves in reorganizing.
CHAPTER X
IN WHICH CERIZET PRACTISES THE HEALING ART AND
THE ART OF POISONING ON THE SAME DAY
While this regeneration was going on, Cerizet went one morning to see
du Portail, with whom la Peyrade was now more than ever determined to
hold no communication.
"Well," said the little old man to the poor man's banker, "what effect
did the news we gave to the president of the bar produce on our man?
Did the affair get wind at the Palais?"
"Phew!" said Cerizet, whose intercourse, no doubt pretty frequent,
with du Portail had put him on a footing of some familiarity with the
old man, "there's no question of that now. The eel has wriggled out of
our hands; neither softness nor violence has any effect upon that
devil of a man. He has quarrelled with the bar, and is in better odor
than ever with Thuillier. 'Necessity,' says Figaro, 'obliterates
distance.' Thuillier needs him to push his candidacy in the quartier
Saint-Jacques, so they kissed and made up."
"And no doubt," said du Portail, without much appearance of feeling,
"the marriage is fixed for an early day?"
"Yes," replied Cerizet, "but there's another piece of work on hand.
That crazy fellow has persuaded Thuillier to buy a newspaper, and
he'll make him sink forty thousand francs in it. Thuillier, once
involved, will want to get his money back, and in my opinion they are
bound together for the rest of their days."
"What paper is it?"
"Oh, a cabbage-leaf that calls itself the 'Echo de la Bievre'!" replied
Cerizet with great scorn; "a paper which an old hack of a journalist
on his last legs managed to set up in the Mouffetard quarter by the
help of a lot of tanners--that, you know, is the industry of the
quarter. From a political and literary point of view the affair is
nothing at all, but Thuillier has been made to think it a masterly
stroke."
"Well, for local service to the election the instrument isn't so bad,"
remarked du Portail. "La Peyrade has talent, activity, and much
resource of mind; he may make something out of that 'Echo.' Under what
political banner will Thuillier present himself?"
"Thuillier," replied the beggars' banker, "is an oyster; he hasn't any
opinions. Until the publication of his pamphlet he was, like all those
bourgeois, a rabid conservative; but since the seizure he has gone
over to the Opposition. His first stage will probably be the
Left-centre; but if the election wind should blow from another quarter,
he'll go straight before it to the extreme left. Self-interest, for
those bourgeois, that's the measure of their convictions."
"Dear, dear!" said du Portail, "this new combination of la Peyrade's
may assume the importance of a political danger from the point of view
of my opinions, which are extremely conservative and governmental."
Then, after a moment's reflection, he added, "I think you did
newspaper work once upon a time; I remember 'the courageous Cerizet.'"
"Yes," replied the usurer, "I even managed one with la Peyrade,--an
evening paper; and a pretty piece of work we did, for which we were
finely recompensed."
"Well," said du Portail, "why don't you do it again,--journalism, I
mean,--with la Peyrade."
Cerizet looked at du Portail in amazement.
"Ah ca!" he cried, "are you the devil, monsieur? Can nothing ever be
hidden from you?"
"Yes," said du Portail, "I know a good many things. But what has been
settled between you and la Peyrade?"
"Well, remembering my experience in the business, and not knowing whom
else to get, he offered to make me manager of the paper."
"I did not know that," said du Portail, "but it was quite probable.
Did you accept?"
"Conditionally; I asked time for reflection. I wanted to know what you
thought of the offer."
"Parbleu! I think that out of an evil that can't be remedied we should
get, as the proverb says, wing or foot. I had rather see you inside
than outside of that enterprise."
"Very good; but in order to get into it there's a difficulty. La
Peyrade knows I have debts, and he won't help me with the
thirty-three-thousand francs' security which must be paid down in my
name. I haven't got them, and if I had, I wouldn't show them and
expose myself to the insults of creditors."
"You must have a good deal left of that twenty-five thousand francs la
Peyrade paid you not more than two months ago," remarked du Portail.
"Only two thousand two hundred francs and fifty centimes," replied
Cerizet. "I was adding it up last night; the rest has all gone to pay
off pressing debts."
"But if you have paid your debts you haven't any creditors."
"Yes, those I've paid, but those I haven't paid I still owe."
"Do you mean to tell me that your liabilities were more than
twenty-five thousand francs?" said du Portail, in a tone of
incredulity.
"Does a man go into bankruptcy for less?" replied Cerizet, as though
he were enunciating a maxim.
"Well, I see I am expected to pay that sum myself," said du Portail,
crossly; "but the question is whether the utility of your presence in
this enterprise is worth to me the interest on one hundred and
thirty-three thousand, three hundred and thirty-three francs,
thirty-three centimes."
"Hang it!" said Cerizet, "if I were once installed near Thuillier, I
shouldn't despair of soon putting him and la Peyrade at loggerheads.
In the management of a newspaper there are lots of inevitable
disagreements, and by always taking the side of the fool against the
clever man, I can increase the conceit of one and wound the conceit of
the other until life together becomes impossible. Besides, you spoke
just now of political danger; now the manager of a newspaper, as you
ought to know, when he has the intellect to be something better than a
man of straw, can quietly give his sheet a push in the direction
wanted.
"There's a good deal of truth in that," said du Portail, "but defeat
to la Peyrade, that's what I am thinking about."
"Well," said Cerizet, "I think I have another nice little insidious
means of demolishing him with Thuillier."
"Say what it is, then!" exclaimed du Portail, impatiently; "you go
round and round the pot as if I were a man it would do you some good
to finesse with."
"You remember," said Cerizet, coming out with it, "that some time ago
Dutocq and I were much puzzled to know how la Peyrade was, all of a
sudden, able to make that payment of twenty-five thousand francs?"
"Ha!" said the old man quickly, "have you discovered the origin of
that very improbable sum in our friend's hands; and is that origin
shady?"
"You shall judge," said Cerizet.
And he related in all its details the affair of Madame Lambert,
--adding, however, that on questioning the woman closely at the office
of the justice-of-peace, after the meeting with la Peyrade, he had
been unable to extract from her any confession, although by her whole
bearing she had amply confirmed the suspicions of Dutocq and himself.
"Madame Lambert, rue du Val-de-Grace, No. 9; at the house of Monsieur
Picot, professor of mathematics," said du Portail, as he made a note
of the information. "Very good," he added; "come back and see me
to-morrow, my dear Monsieur Cerizet."
"But please remark," said the usurer, "that I must give an answer to
la Peyrade in the course of to-day. He is in a great hurry to start
the business."
"Very well; you must accept, asking a delay of twenty-four hours to
obtain your security. If, after making certain inquiries I see it is
more to my interests not to meddle in the affair, you can get out of
it by merely breaking your word; you can't be sent to the court of
assizes for that."
Independently of a sort of inexplicable fascination which du Portail
exercised over his agent, he never lost an opportunity to remind him
of the very questionable point of departure of their intercourse.
The next day Cerizet returned.
"You guessed right," said du Portail. "That woman Lambert, being
obliged to conceal the existence of her booty, and wanting to draw
interest on her stolen property, must have taken it into her head to
consult la Peyrade; his devout exterior may have recommended him to
her. She probably gave him that money without taking a receipt. In
what kind of money was Dutocq paid?"
"In nineteen thousand-franc notes, and twelve of five-hundred francs."
"That's precisely it," said du Portail. "There can't be the slightest
doubt left. Now, what use do you expect to make of this information
bearing upon Thuillier."
"I expect to put it into his head that la Peyrade, to whom he is going
to give his goddaughter and heiress, is over head and ears in debt;
that he makes enormous secret loans; and that in order to get out of
his difficulties he means to gnaw the newspaper to the bone; and I
shall insinuate that the position of a man so much in debt must be
known to the public before long, and become a fatal blow to the
candidate whose right hand he is."
"That's not bad," said du Portail; "but there's another and even more
conclusive use to be made of the discovery."
"Tell me, master; I'm listening," said Cerizet.
"Thuillier has not yet been able, has he, to explain to himself the
reason of the seizure of the pamphlet?"
"Yes, he has," replied Cerizet. "La Peyrade was telling me only
yesterday, by way of explaining Thuillier's idiotic simplicity, that
he had believed a most ridiculous bit of humbug. The 'honest
bourgeois' is persuaded that the seizure was instigated by Monsieur
Olivier Vinet, substitute to the procureur-general. The young man
aspired for a moment to the hand of Mademoiselle Colleville, and the
worthy Thuillier has been made to imagine that the seizure of his
pamphlet was a revenge for the refusal."
"Good!" said du Portail; "to-morrow, as a preparation for the other
version of which you are to be the organ, Thuillier shall receive from
Monsieur Vinet a very sharp and decided denial of the abuse of power
he foolishly gave ear to."
"Will he?" said Cerizet, with curiosity.
"But another explanation must take its place," continued du Portail;
"you must assure Thuillier that he is the victim of police
machinations. That is all the police is good for, you know,
--machinations."
"I know that very well; I've made that affirmation scores of times
when I was working for the republican newspapers and--"
"When you were 'the courageous Cerizet,'" interrupted du Portail.
"Well, the present machination, here it is. The government was much
displeased at seeing Thuillier elected without its influence to the
Council-general of the Seine; it was angry with an independent and
patriotic citizen who showed by his candidacy that he could do without
it; and it learned, moreover, that this excellent citizen was
preparing a pamphlet on the subject, always a delicate one, of the
finances, as to which this dangerous adversary had great experience.
So, what did this essentially corrupt government do? It suborned a man
in whom, as it learned, Thuillier placed confidence, and for a sum of
twenty-five thousand francs (a mere trifle to the police), this
treacherous friend agreed to insert into the pamphlet three or four
phrases which exposed it to seizure and caused its author to be
summoned before the court of assizes. Now the way to make the
explanation clinch the doubt in Thuillier's mind is to let him know
that the next day la Peyrade, who, as Thuillier knew, hadn't a sou,
paid Dutocq precisely that very sum of twenty-five thousand francs."
"The devil!" cried Cerizet, "it isn't a bad trick. Fellows of the
Thuillier species will believe anything against the police."
"We shall see, then," continued du Portail, "whether Thuillier will
want to keep such a collaborator beside him, and above all, whether he
will be so eager to give him his goddaughter."
"You are a strong man, monsieur," said Cerizet, again expressing his
approbation; "but I must own that I feel some scruples at the part
assigned me. La Peyrade came and offered me the management of the
paper, and, you see, I should be working to evict him."
"And that lease he knocked you out of in spite of his promises, have
you forgotten that?" asked the little old man. "Besides, are we not
aiming for his happiness, though the obstinate fellow persists in
thwarting our benevolent intentions?"
"It is true," said Cerizet, "that the result will absolve me. Yes,
I'll go resolutely along the ingenious path you've traced out for me.
But there's one thing more: I can't fling my revelation at Thuillier's
head at the very first; I must have time to prepare the way for it,
but that security will have to be paid in immediately."
"Listen to me, Monsieur Cerizet," said du Portail, in a tone of
authority; "if the marriage of la Peyrade to my ward takes place it is
my intention to reward your services, and the sum of thirty thousand
francs will be your perquisite. Now, thirty thousand from one side and
twenty-five thousand from the other makes precisely fifty-five
thousand francs that the matrimonial vicissitudes of your friend la
Peyrade will have put into your pocket. But, as country people do at
the shows of a fair, I shall not pay till I come out. If you take that
money out of your own hoard I shall feel no anxiety; you will know how
to keep it from the clutches of your creditors. If, on the contrary,
my money is at stake, you will have neither the same eagerness nor the
same intelligence in keeping it out of danger. Therefore arrange your
affairs so that you can pay down your own thirty-three thousand; in
case of success, that sum will bring you in pretty nearly a hundred
per cent. That's my last word, and I shall not listen to any
objections."
Cerizet had no time to make any, for at that moment the door of du
Portail's study opened abruptly, and a fair, slender woman, whose face
expressed angelic sweetness, entered the room eagerly. On her arm,
wrapped in handsome long clothes, lay what seemed to be the form of an
infant.
"There!" she said, "that naughty Katte insisted that the doctor was
not here. I knew perfectly well that I had seen him enter. Well,
doctor," she continued, addressing Cerizet, "I am not satisfied with
the condition of my little one, not satisfied at all; she is very
pallid, and has grown so thin. I think she must be teething."
Du Portail made Cerizet a sign to accept the role so abruptly thrust
upon him.
"Yes, evidently," he said, "it is the teeth; children always turn pale
at that crisis; but there's nothing in that, my dear lady, that need
make you anxious."
"Do you really think so, doctor," said the poor crazed girl, whom our
readers have recognized as du Portail's ward, Lydie de la Peyrade;
"but see her dear little arms, how thin they are getting."
Then taking out the pins that fastened the swathings, she exhibited to
Cerizet a bundle of linen which to her poor distracted mind
represented a baby.
"Why, no, no," said Cerizet, "she is a trifle thin, it is true, but
the flesh is firm and her color excellent."
"Poor darling!" said Lydie, kissing her dream lovingly. "I do think
she is better since morning. What had I better give her, doctor? Broth
disgusts her, and she won't take soup."
"Well," said Cerizet, "try panada. Does she like sweet things?"
"Oh, yes!" cried the poor girl, her face brightening, "she adores
them. Would chocolate be good for her?"
"Certainly," replied Cerizet, "but without vanilla; vanilla is very
heating."
"Then I'll get what they call health-chocolate," said Lydie, with all
the intonations of a mother, listening to the doctor as to a god who
reassured her. "Uncle," she added, "please ring for Bruneau, and tell
him to go to Marquis at once and get some pounds of that chocolate."
"Bruneau has just gone out," said her guardian; "but there's no hurry,
he shall go in the course of the day."
"There, she is going to sleep," said Cerizet, anxious to put an end to
the scene, which, in spite of his hardened nature, he felt to be
painful.
"True," said the girl, replacing the bandages and rising; "I'll put
her to bed. Adieu, doctor; it is very kind of you to come sometimes
without being sent for. If you knew how anxious we poor mothers are,
and how, with a word or two, you can do us such good. Ah, there she is
crying!"
"She is so sleepy," said Cerizet; "she'll be much better in her
cradle."
"Yes, and I'll play her that sonata of Beethoven that dear papa was so
fond of; it is wonderful how calming it is. Adieu, doctor," she said
again, pausing on the threshold of the door. "Adieu, kind doctor!" And
she sent him a kiss.
Cerizet was quite overcome.
"You see," said du Portail, "that she is an angel,--never the least
ill-humor, never a sharp word; sad sometimes, but always caused by a
feeling of motherly solicitude. That is what first gave the doctors
the idea that if reality could take the place of her constant
hallucination she might recover her reason. Well, this is the girl
that fool of a Peyrade refuses, with the accompaniment of a
magnificent 'dot.' But he must come to it, or I'll forswear my name.
Listen," he added as the sound of a piano came to them; "hear! what
talent! Thousands of sane women can't compare with her; they are not
as reasonable as she is, except on the surface."
When Beethoven's sonata, played from the soul with a perfection of
shades and tones that filled her hardened hearer with admiration, had
ceased to sound, Cerizet said:--
"I agree with you, monsieur; la Peyrade refuses an angel, a treasure,
a pearl, and if I were in his place--But we shall bring him round to
your purpose. Now I shall serve you not only with zeal, but with
enthusiasm, I may say fanaticism."
As Cerizet was concluding this oath of fidelity at the door of the
study, he heard a woman's voice which was not that of Lydie.
"Is he in his study, the dear commander?" said that voice, with a
slightly foreign accent.
"Yes, madame, but please come into the salon. Monsieur is not alone; I
will tell him you are here."
This was the voice of Katte, the old Dutch maid.
"Stop, go this way," said du Portail quickly to Cerizet.
And he opened a hidden door which led through a dark corridor directly
to the staircase, whence Cerizet betook himself to the office of the
"Echo de la Bievre," where a heated discussion was going on.
The article by which the new editors of every newspaper lay before the
public their "profession of faith," as the technical saying is, always
produces a laborious and difficult parturition. In this particular
case it was necessary, if not openly to declare Thuillier's candidacy,
to at least make it felt and foreseen. The terms of the manifesto,
after la Peyrade had made a rough draft of it, were discussed at great
length. This discussion took place in Cerizet's presence, who, acting
on du Portail's advice, accepted the management, but postponed the
payment of the security till the next day, through the latitude
allowed in all administrations for the accomplishment of that
formality.
Cleverly egged on by this master-knave, who, from the start, made
himself Thuillier's flatterer, the discussion became stormy, and
presently bitter; but as, by the deed of partnership the deciding word
was left to la Peyrade in all matters concerning the editorship, he
finally closed it by sending the manifesto, precisely as he had
written it, to the printing office.
Thuillier was incensed at what he called an abuse of power, and
finding himself alone with Cerizet later in the day, he hastened to
pour his griefs and resentments into the bosom of his faithful
manager, thus affording the latter a ready-made and natural
opportunity to insinuate the calumnious revelation agreed upon with du
Portail. Leaving the knife in the wound, Cerizet went out to make
certain arrangements to obtain the money necessary for his bond.
Tortured by the terrible revelation, Thuillier could not keep it to
himself; he felt the need of confiding it, and of talking over the
course he would be compelled to take by this infernal discovery.
Sending for a carriage he drove home, and half an hour later he had
told the whole story to his Egeria.
Brigitte had from the first very vehemently declared against all the
determinations made by Thuillier during the last few days. For no
purpose whatever, not even for the sake of her brother's election,
would she agree to a renewal of the relation to la Peyrade. In the
first place, she had treated him badly, and that was a strong reason
for disliking him; then, in case that adventurer, as she now called
him, married Celeste, the fear of her authority being lessened gave
her a species of second-sight; she had ended by having an intuitive
sense of the dark profundities of the man's nature, and now declared
that under no circumstances and for no possible price would she make
one household with him.
"Ruin yourself if you choose," she said, "you are the master of that,
and you can do as you like; a fool and his money are soon parted."
When, therefore, she listened to her brother's confidences it was not
with reproaches, but, on the contrary, with a crow of triumph,
celebrating the probable return of her power, that she welcomed them.
"So much the better!" she cried; "it is well to know at last that the
man is a spy. I always thought so, the canting bigot! Turn him out of
doors without an explanation. WE don't want him to work that
newspaper. This Monsieur Cerizet seems, from what you tell me, the
right sort of man, and we can get another manager. Besides, when
Madame de Godollo went away she promised to write to me; and she can
easily put us in the way of finding some one. Poor, dear Celeste! what
a fate we were going to give her!"
"How you run on!" said Thuillier. "La Peyrade, my dear, is so far only
accused. He must be heard in his defence. And besides, there's a deed
that binds us."
"Ah, very good!" said Brigitte; "I see how it will be; you'll let that
man twist you round his finger again. A deed with a spy! As if there
could be deeds with such fellows."
"Come, come, be calm, my good Brigitte," returned Thuillier. "We
mustn't do anything hastily. Certainly, if la Peyrade cannot furnish a
justification, clear, categorical, and convincing, I shall decide to
break with him, and I'll prove to you that I am no milksop. But
Cerizet himself is not certain; these are mere inductions, and I only
came to consult you as to whether I ought, or ought not, to demand an
explanation outright."
"Not a doubt about it," replied Brigitte. "You ought to demand an
explanation and go to the bottom of this thing; if you don't, I cast
you off as my brother."
"That suffices," said Thuillier, leaving the room with solemnity; "you
shall see that we will come to an understanding."
CHAPTER XI
EXPLANATIONS AND WHAT CAME OF THEM
On his return to the office after his conference with Brigitte,
Thuillier found la Peyrade at his post as editor-in-chief, and in a
position of much embarrassment, caused by the high hand he had
reserved for himself as the sole selector of articles and
contributors. At this moment, Phellion, instigated by his family, and
deeply conscious of his position on the reading-committee of the
Odeon, had come to offer his services as dramatic critic.
"My dear monsieur," he said, continuing his remarks to la Peyrade,
after inquiring of Thuillier about his health, "I was a great student
of the theatre in my youth; the stage and its scenic effects continue
to have for me peculiar attractions; and the white hairs which crown
my brow to-day seem to me no obstacle to my allowing your interesting
publication to profit by the fruit of my studies and my experience. As
member of the reading-committee of the Odeon theatre, I am conversant
with the modern drama, and--if I may be quite sure of your discretion
--I will even confide to you that among my papers it would not be
impossible for me to find a certain tragedy entitled 'Sapor,' which in
my young days won me some fame when read in salons."
"Ah!" said la Peyrade, endeavoring to gild the refusal he should be
forced to give, "why not try to have it put upon the stage? We might
be able to help you in that direction."
"Certainly," said Thuillier, "the director of any theatre to whom we
should recommend--"
"No," replied Phellion. "In the first place, as member of the
reading-committee of the Odeon, having to sit in judgment upon others,
it would not become me to descend into the arena myself. I am an old
athlete, whose business it is to judge of blows he can no longer give.
In this sense, criticism is altogether within my sphere, and all the
more because I have certain views on the proper method of composing
dramatic feuilletons which I think novel. The 'castigat ridendo mores'
ought to be, according to my humble lights, the great law, I may say
the only law of the stage. I should therefore show myself pitiless for
those works, bred of imagination, in which morality has no part, and
to which mothers of families--"
"Excuse me," said la Peyrade, "for interrupting you; but before
allowing you to take the trouble to develop your poetical ideas, I
ought to tell you that we have already made arrangements for our
dramatic criticism."
"Ah! that's another thing," said Phellion; "an honest man must keep
his word."
"Yes," said Thuillier, "we have our dramatic critic, little thinking
that you would offer us your valuable assistance."
"Well," said Phellion, suddenly becoming crafty,--for there is
something in the newspaper atmosphere, impossible to say what, which
flies to the head, the bourgeois head especially,--"since you are good
enough to consider my pen capable of doing you some service, perhaps a
series of detached thoughts on different subjects, to which I should
venture to give the name of 'Diversities,' might be of a nature to
interest your readers."
"Yes," said la Peyrade, with a maliciousness that was quite lost upon
Phellion, "thoughts, especially in the style of la Rochefoucauld or la
Bruyere, might do. What do you think yourself, Thuillier?"
He reserved to himself the right to leave the responsibility of
refusals, as far as he could, to the proprietor of the paper.
"But I imagine that thoughts, especially if detached, cannot be very
consecutive," said Thuillier.
"Evidently not," replied Phellion; "detached thoughts imply the idea
of a very great number of subjects on which the author lets his pen
stray without the pretension of presenting a whole."
"You will of course sign them?" said la Peyrade.
"Oh, no!" replied Phellion, alarmed. "I could not put myself on
exhibition in that way."
"Your modesty, which by the bye I understand and approve, settles the
matter," said la Peyrade. "Thoughts are a subject altogether
individual, which imperatively require to be personified by a name.
You must be conscious of this yourself. 'Divers Thoughts by Monsieur
Three-Stars' says nothing to the public."
Seeing that Phellion was about to make objections, Thuillier, who was
in a hurry to begin his fight with la Peyrade, cut the matter short
rather sharply.
"My dear Phellion," he said, "I beg your pardon for not being able to
enjoy the pleasure of your conversation any longer, but we have to
talk, la Peyrade and I, over a matter of much importance, and in
newspaper offices this devilish time runs away so fast. If you are
willing, we will postpone the question to another day. Madame Phellion
is well, I trust?"
"Perfectly well," said the great citizen, rising, and not appearing to
resent his dismissal. "When does your first number appear?" he added;
"it is eagerly awaited in the arrondissement."
"To-morrow I think our confession of faith will make its appearance,"
replied Thuillier, accompanying him to the door. "You will receive a
copy, my dear friend. We shall meet again soon, I hope. Come and see
us, and bring that manuscript; la Peyrade's point of view may be a
little arbitrary."
With this balm shed upon his wound, Phellion departed, and Thuillier
rang the bell for the porter.
"Could you recognize the gentlemen who has just gone out the next time
you see him?" asked Thuillier.
"Oh, yes, m'sieu, his round ball of a head is too funny to forget;
besides, it is Monsieur Phellion; haven't I opened the door to him
hundreds of times?"
"Well, whenever he comes again neither I nor Monsieur de la Peyrade
will be here. Remember that's a positive rule. Now leave us."
"The devil!" cried la Peyrade, when the two partners were alone, "how
you manage bores. But take care; among the number there may be
electors. You did right to tell Phellion you would send him a copy of
the paper; he has a certain importance in the quarter."
"Well," said Thuillier, "we can't allow our time to be taken up by all
the dull-heads who come and offer their services. But now you and I
have to talk, and talk very seriously. Be seated and listen."
"Do you know, my dear fellow," said la Peyrade, laughing, "that
journalism is making you into something very solemn? 'Be seated,
Cinna,'--Caesar Augustus couldn't have said it otherwise."
"Cinnas, unfortunately, are more plentiful than people think," replied
Thuillier.
He was still under the goad of the promise he had made to Brigitte,
and he meant to fulfil it with cutting sarcasm. The top continued the
whirling motion imparted to it by the old maid's lash.
La Peyrade took a seat at the round table. As he was puzzled to know
what was coming, he endeavored to seem unconcerned, and picking up the
large scissors used for the loans which all papers make from the
columns of their brethren of the press, he began to snip up a sheet of
paper, on which, in Thuillier's handwriting, was an attempt at a
leading article, never completed.
Though la Peyrade was seated and expectant, Thuillier did not begin
immediately; he rose and went toward the door which stood ajar, with
the intention of closing it. But suddenly it was flung wide open, and
Coffinet appeared.
"Will monsieur," said Coffinet to la Peyrade, "receive two ladies?
They are very well-dressed, and the young one ain't to be despised."
"Shall I let them in?" said la Peyrade to Thuillier.
"Yes, since they are here," growled Thuillier; "but get rid of them as
soon as possible."
Coffinet's judgment on the toilet of the two visitors needs revision.
A woman is well-dressed, not when she wears rich clothes, but when her
clothes present a certain harmony of shapes and colors which form an
appropriate and graceful envelope to her person. Now a bonnet with a
flaring brim, surmounted by nodding plumes, an immense French cashmere
shawl, worn with the awkward inexperience of a young bride, a plaid
silk gown with enormous checks and a triple tier of flounces with far
too many chains and trinkets (though to be just, the boots and gloves
were irreproachable), constituted the apparel of the younger of these
ladies. As for the other, who seemed to be in the tow of her dressy
companion, she was short, squat, and high-colored, and wore a bonnet,
shawl, and gown which a practised eye would at once have recognized as
second hand. Mothers of actresses are always clothed by this very
economical process. Their garments, condemned to the service of two
generations, reverse the order of things, and go from descendants to
ancestors.
Advancing two chairs, la Peyrade inquired, "To whom have I the honor
of speaking?"
"Monsieur," said the younger visitor, "I am a dramatic artist, and as
I am about to make my first appearance in this quarter, I allow myself
to hope that a journal of this locality will favor me."
"At what theatre?" asked la Peyrade.
"The Folies, where I am engaged for the Dejazets."
"The Folies?" echoed la Peyrade, in a tone that demanded an
explanation.
"Folies-Dramatiques," interposed the agreeable Madame Cardinal, whom
the reader has doubtless recognized.
"When do you appear?" asked la Peyrade.
"Next week, monsieur,--a fairy piece in which I play five parts."
"You'll encourage her, monsieur, won't you?" said Madame Cardinal, in
a coaxing voice; "she's so young, and I can certify she works day and
night."
"Mother!" said Olympe, with authority, "the public will judge me; all
I want is that monsieur will kindly promise to notice my debut."
"Very good, mademoiselle," said la Peyrade in a tone of dismissal,
beginning to edge the pair to the door.
Olympe Cardinal went first, leaving her mother to hurry after her as
best she could.
"At home to no one!" cried Thuillier to the office-boy as he closed
the door and slipped the bolt. "Now," he said, addressing la Peyrade,
"we will talk. My dear fellow," he went on, starting with irony, for
he remembered to have heard that nothing was more confusing to an
adversary, "I have heard something that will give you pleasure. I know
now why MY pamphlet was seized."
So saying, he looked fixedly at la Peyrade.
"Parbleu!" said the latter in a natural tone of voice, "it was seized
because they chose to seize it. They wanted to find, and they found,
because they always find the things they want, what the king's
adherents call 'subversive doctrine.'"
"No, you are wrong," said Thuillier; "the seizure was planned,
concocted, and agreed upon before publication."
"Between whom?" asked la Peyrade.
"Between those who wanted to kill the pamphlet, and the wretches who
were paid to betray it."
"Well, in any case, those who paid," said la Peyrade, "got mighty
little for their money; for, persecuted though it was, I don't see
that your pamphlet made much of a stir."
"Those who sold may have done better?" said Thuillier with redoubled
irony.
"Those who sold," returned la Peyrade, "were the cleverer of the two."
"Ah, I know," said Thuillier, "that you think a great deal of
cleverness; but allow me to tell you that the police, whose hand I see
in all this, doesn't usually throw its money away."
And again he looked fixedly at la Peyrade.
"So," said the barrister, without winking, "you have discovered that
the police had plotted in advance the smothering of your pamphlet?"
"Yes, my dear fellow; and what is more, I know the actual sum paid to
the person who agreed to carry out this honorable plot."
"The person," said la Peyrade, thinking a moment,--"perhaps I know the
person; but as for the money, I don't know a word about that."
"Well, I can tell you the amount. It was twenty-five--thousand
--francs," said Thuillier, dwelling on each word; "that was the sum
paid to Judas."
"Oh! excuse me, my dear fellow, but twenty-five thousand francs is a
good deal of money. I don't deny that you have become an important
man; but you are not such a bugbear to the government as to lead it to
make such sacrifices. Twenty-five thousand francs is as much as would
ever be given for the suppression of one of those annoying pamphlets
about the Civil list. But our financial lucubrations didn't annoy in
that way; and such a sum borrowed from the secret-service money for
the mere pleasure of plaguing you, seems to me rather fabulous."
"Apparently," said Thuillier, acrimoniously, "this honest go-between
had some interest in exaggerating my value. One thing is very sure;
this monsieur had a debt of twenty-five thousand francs which harassed
him much; and a short time before the seizure this same monsieur, who
had no means of his own, paid off that debt; and unless you can tell
me where else he got the money, the inference I think is not difficult
to draw."
It was la Peyrade's turn to look fixedly at Thuillier.
"Monsieur Thuillier," he said, raising his voice, "let us get out of
enigmas and generalities; will you do me the favor to name that
person?"
"Well, no," replied Thuillier, striking his hand upon the table, "I
shall not name him, because of the sentiments of esteem and affection
which formerly united us; but you have understood me, Monsieur la
Peyrade."
"I ought to have known," said the Provencal, in a voice changed by
emotion, "that in bringing a serpent to this place I should soon be
soiled by his venom. Poor fool! do you not see that you have made
yourself the echo of Cerizet's calumny?"
"Cerizet has nothing to do with it; on the contrary, he has told me
the highest good of you. How was it, not having a penny the night
before,--and I had reason to know it,--that you were able to pay
Dutocq the round sum of twenty-five thousand francs the next day?"
La Peyrade reflected for a moment.
"No," he said, "it was not Dutocq who told you that. He is not a man
to wrestle with an enemy of my strength without a strong interest in
it. It was Cerizet; he's the infamous calumniator, from whose hands I
wrenched the lease of your house near the Madeleine,--Cerizet, whom in
kindness, I went to seek on his dunghill that I might give him the
chance of honorable employment; that is the wretch, to whom a benefit
is only an encouragement to treachery. Tiens! if I were to tell you
what that man is I should turn you sick with disgust; in the sphere of
infamy he has discovered worlds."
This time Thuillier made an able reply.
"I don't know anything about Cerizet except through you," he said;
"you introduced him to me as a manager, offering every guarantee; but,
allowing him to be blacker than the devil, and supposing that this
communication comes from him, I don't see, my friend, that all that
makes YOU any the whiter."
"No doubt I was to blame," said la Peyrade, "for putting such a man
into relations with you; but we wanted some one who understood
journalism, and that value he really had for us. But who can ever
sound the depths of souls like his? I thought him reformed. A manager,
I said to myself, is only a machine; he can do no harm. I expected to
find him a man of straw; well, I was mistaken, he will never be
anything but a man of mud."
"All that is very fine," said Thuillier, "but those twenty-five
thousand francs found so conveniently in your possession, where did
you get them? That is the point you are forgetting to explain."
"But to reason about it," said la Peyrade; "a man of my character in
the pay of the police and yet so poor that I could not pay the ten
thousand francs your harpy of a sister demanded with an insolence
which you yourself witnessed--"
"But," said Thuillier, "if the origin of this money is honest, as I
sincerely desire it may be, what hinders you from telling me how you
got it?"
"I cannot," said la Peyrade; "the history of that money is a secret
entrusted to me professionally."
"Come, come, you told me yourself that the statutes of your order
forbid all barristers from doing business of any kind."
"Let us suppose," said la Peyrade, "that I have done something not
absolutely regular; it would be strange indeed after what I risked, as
you know, for you, if you should have the face to reproach me with
it."
"My poor friend, you are trying to shake off the hounds; but you can't
make me lose the scent. You wish to keep your secret; then keep it. I
am master of my own confidence and my own esteem; by paying you the
forfeit stipulated in our deed I take the newspaper into my own
hands."
"Do you mean that you dismiss me?" cried la Peyrade. "The money that
you have put into the affair, all your chances of election, sacrificed
to the calumnies of such a being as Cerizet!"
"In the first place," said Thuillier, "another editor-in-chief can be
found; it is a true saying that no man is indispensable. As for
election to the Chamber I would rather never receive it than owe it to
the help of one who--"
"Go on," said la Peyrade, seeing that Thuillier hesitated, "or rather,
no, be silent, for you will presently blush for your suspicions and
ask my pardon humbly."
By this time la Peyrade saw that without a confession to which he must
compel himself, the influence and the future he had just recovered
would be cut from under his feet. Resuming his speech he said,
solemnly:--
"You will remember, my friend, that you were pitiless, and, by
subjecting me to a species of moral torture, you have forced me to
reveal to you a secret that is not mine."
"Go on," said Thuillier, "I take the whole responsibility upon myself.
Make me see the truth clearly in this darkness, and if I have done
wrong I will be the first to say so."
"Well," said la Peyrade, "those twenty-five thousand francs are the
savings of a servant-woman who came to me and asked me to take them
and to pay her interest."
"A servant with twenty-five thousand francs of savings! Nonsense; she
must serve in monstrously rich households."
"On the contrary, she is the one servant of an infirm old savant; and
it was on account of the discrepancy which strikes your mind that she
wanted to put her money in my hands as a sort of trustee."
"Bless me! my friend," said Thuillier, flippantly, "you said we were
in want of a romance-feuilletonist; but really, after this, I sha'n't
be uneasy. Here's imagination for you!"
"What?" said la Peyrade, angrily, "you don't believe me?"
"No, I do not believe you. Twenty-five thousand francs savings in the
service of an old savant! that is about as believable as the officer
of La Dame Blanche buying a chateau with his pay."
"But if I prove to you the truth of my words; if I let you put your
finger upon it?"
"In that case, like Saint Thomas, I shall lower my flag before the
evidence. Meanwhile you must permit me, my noble friend, to wait until
you offer me that proof."
Thuillier felt really superb.
"I'd give a hundred francs," he said to himself, "if Brigitte could
have been here and heard me impeach him."
"Well," said la Peyrade, "suppose that without leaving this office,
and by means of a note which you shall read, I bring into your
presence the person from whom I received the money; if she confirms
what I say will you believe me?"
This proposal and the assurance with which it was made rather
staggered Thuillier.
"I shall know what to do when the time comes," he replied, changing
his tone. "But this must be done at once, now, here."
"I said, without leaving this office. I should think that was clear
enough."
"And who will carry the note you write?" asked Thuillier, believing
that by thus examining every detail he was giving proofs of amazing
perspicacity.
"Carry the note! why, your own porter of course," replied la Peyrade;
"you can send him yourself."
"Then write it," said Thuillier, determined to push him to the wall.
La Peyrade took a sheet of paper with the new heading and wrote as
follows, reading the note aloud:--
Madame Lambert is requested to call at once, on urgent business,
at the office of the "Echo de la Bievre," rue Saint-Dominique
d'Enfer. The bearer of this note will conduct her. She is awaited
impatiently by her devoted servant,
Theodose de la Peyrade.
"There, will that suit you?" said the barrister, passing the paper to
Thuillier.
"Perfectly," replied Thuillier, taking the precaution to fold the
letter himself and seal it. "Put the address," he added.
Then he rang the bell for the porter.
"You will carry this letter to its address," he said to the man, "and
bring back with you the person named. But will she be there?" he
asked, on reflection.
"It is more than probable," replied la Peyrade; "in any case, neither
you nor I will leave this room until she comes. This matter must be
cleared up."
"Then go!" said Thuillier to the porter, in a theatrical tone.
When they were alone, la Peyrade took up a newspaper and appeared to
be absorbed in its perusal.
Thuillier, beginning to get uneasy as to the upshot of the affair,
regretted that he had not done something the idea of which had come to
him just too late.
"Yes, I ought," he said to himself, "to have torn up that letter, and
not driven him to prove his words."
Wishing to do something that might look like retaining la Peyrade in
the position of which he had threatened to deprive him, he remarked
presently:--
"By the bye, I have just come from the printing-office; the new type
has arrived, and I think we might make our first appearance
to-morrow."
La Peyrade did not answer; but he got up and took his paper nearer to
the window.
"He is sulky," thought Thuillier, "and if he is innocent, he may well
be. But, after all, why did he ever bring a man like that Cerizet
here?"
Then to hide his embarrassment and the preoccupation of his mind, he
sat down before the editor's table, took a sheet of the head-lined
paper and made himself write a letter.
Presently la Peyrade returned to the table and sitting down, took
another sheet and with the feverish rapidity of a man stirred by some
emotion he drove his pen over the paper.
From the corner of his eye, Thuillier tried hard to see what la
Peyrade was writing, and noticing that his sentences were separated by
numbers placed between brackets, he said:--
"Tiens! are you drawing up a parliamentary law?"
"Yes," replied la Peyrade, "the law of the vanquished."
Soon after this, the porter opened the door and introduced Madame
Lambert, whom he had found at home, and who arrived looking rather
frightened.
"You are Madame Lambert?" asked Thuillier, magisterially.
"Yes, monsieur," said the woman, in an anxious voice.
After requesting her to be seated and noticing that the porter was
still there as if awaiting further orders he said to the man:--
"That will do; you may go; and don't let any one disturb us."
The gravity and the lordly tone assumed by Thuillier only increased
Madame Lambert's uneasiness. She came expecting to see only la
Peyrade, and she found herself received by an unknown man with a
haughty manner, while the barrister, who had merely bowed to her, said
not a word; moreover, the scene took place in a newspaper office, and
it is a well-known fact that to pious persons especially all that
relates to the press is infernal and diabolical.
"Well," said Thuillier to the barrister, "it seems to me that nothing
hinders you from explaining to madame why you have sent for her."
In order to leave no loophole for suspicion in Thuillier's mind la
Peyrade knew that he must put his question bluntly and without the
slightest preparation; he therefore said to her "ex abrupto":--
"We wish to ask you, madame, if it is not true that about two and a
half months ago you placed in my hands, subject to interest, the sum,
in round numbers, of twenty-five thousand francs."
Though she felt the eyes of Thuillier and those of la Peyrade upon
her, Madame Lambert, under the shock of this question fired at her
point-blank, could not restrain a start.
"Heavens!" she exclaimed, "twenty-five thousand francs! and where
should I get such a sum as that?"
La Peyrade gave no sign on his face of the vexation he might be
supposed to feel. As for Thuillier, who now looked at him with
sorrowful commiseration, he merely said:--
"You see, my friend!"
"So," resumed la Peyrade, "you are very certain that you did not place
in my hands the sum of twenty-five thousand francs; you declare this,
you affirm it?"
"Why, monsieur! did you ever hear of such a sum as that in the pocket
of a poor woman like me? The little that I had, as everybody knows,
has gone to eke out the housekeeping of that poor dear gentleman whose
servant I have been for more than twenty years."
"This," said Thuillier, pompously, "seems to me categorical."
La Peyrade still did not show the slightest sign of annoyance; on the
contrary, he seemed to be playing into Thuillier's hand.
"You hear, my dear Thuillier," he said, "and if necessary I shall call
for your testimony, that madame here declares that she did not possess
twenty-five thousand francs and could not therefore have placed them
in my hands. Now, as the notary Dupuis, in whose hands I fancied I had
placed them, left Paris this morning for Brussels carrying with him
the money of all his clients, I have no account with madame, by her
own showing, and the absconding of the notary--"
"Has the notary Dupuis absconded?" screamed Madame Lambert, driven by
this dreadful news entirely out of her usual tones of dulcet sweetness
and Christian resignation. "Ah, the villain! it was only this morning
that he was taking the sacrament at Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas."
"To pray for a safe journey, probably," said la Peyrade.
"Monsieur talks lightly enough," continued Madame Lambert, "though
that brigand has carried off my savings. But I gave them to monsieur,
and monsieur is answerable to me for them; he is the only one I know
in this transaction."
"Hey?" said la Peyrade to Thuillier, pointing to Madame Lambert, whose
whole demeanor had something of the mother-wolf suddenly bereft of her
cubs; "is that nature? tell me! Do you think now that madame and I are
playing a comedy for your benefit?"
"I am thunderstruck at Cerizet's audacity," said Thuillier. "I am
overwhelmed with my own stupidity; there is nothing for me to do but
to submit myself entirely to your discretion."
"Madame," said la Peyrade, gaily, "excuse me for thus frightening you;
the notary Dupuis is still a very saintly man, and quite incapable of
doing an injury to his clients. As for monsieur here, it was necessary
that I should prove to him that you had really placed that money in my
hands; he is, however, another myself, and your secret, though known
to him, is as safe as it is with me."
"Oh, very good, monsieur!" said Madame Lambert. "I suppose these
gentlemen have no further need of me?"
"No, my dear madame, and I beg you to pardon me for the little terror
I was compelled to occasion you."
Madame Lambert turned to leave the room with all the appearance of
respectful humility, but when she reached the door, she retraced her
steps, and coming close to la Peyrade said, in her smoothest tones:--
"When does monsieur expect to be able to refund me that money?"
"But I told you," said la Peyrade, stiffly, "that notaries never
return on demand the money placed in their hands."
"Does monsieur think that if I went to see Monsieur Dupuis himself and
asked him--"
"I think," said la Peyrade, interrupting her, "that you would do a
most ridiculous thing. He received the money from me in my own name,
as you requested, and he knows only me in the matter."
"Then monsieur will be so kind, will he not, as to get back that money
for me as soon as possible? I am sure I would not wish to press
monsieur, but in two or three months from now I may want it; I have
heard of a little property it would suit me to buy."
"Very good, Madame Lambert," said la Peyrade, with well-concealed
irritation, "it shall be done as you wish; and in less time, perhaps,
than you have stated I shall hope to return your money to you."
"That won't inconvenience monsieur, I trust," said the woman; "he told
me that at the first indiscretion I committed--"
"Yes, yes, that is all understood," said la Peyrade, interrupting her.
"Then I have the honor to be the very humble servant of these
gentlemen," said Madame Lambert, now departing definitively.
"You see, my friend, the trouble you have got me into," said la
Peyrade to Thuillier as soon as they were alone, "and to what I am
exposed by my kindness in satisfying your diseased mind. That debt was
dormant; it was in a chronic state; and you have waked it up and made
it acute. The woman brought me the money and insisted on my keeping
it, at a good rate of interest. I refused at first; then I agreed to
place it in Dupuis's hands, explaining to her that it couldn't be
withdrawn at once; but subsequently, when Dutocq pressed me, I
decided, after all, to keep it myself."
"I am dreadfully sorry, dear friend, for my silly credulity. But don't
be uneasy about the exactions of that woman; we will manage to arrange
all that, even if I have to make you an advance upon Celeste's 'dot.'"
"My excellent friend," said la Peyrade, "it is absolutely necessary
that we should talk over our private arrangements; to tell you the
truth, I have no fancy for being hauled up every morning and
questioned as to my conduct. Just now, while waiting for that woman, I
drew up a little agreement, which you and I will discuss and sign, if
you please, before the first number of the paper is issued."
"But," said Thuillier, "our deed of partnership seems to me to
settle--"
"--that by a paltry forfeit of five thousand francs, as stated in
Article 14," interrupted Theodose, "you can put me, when you choose,
out of doors. No, I thank you! After my experience to-day, I want some
better security than that."
At this moment Cerizet with a lively and all-conquering air, entered
the room.
"My masters!" he exclaimed, "I've brought the money; and we can now
sign the bond."
Then, remarking that his news was received with extreme coldness, he
added:--
"Well? what is it?"
"It is this," replied Thuillier: "I refuse to be associated with
double-face men and calumniators. We have no need of you or your
money; and I request you not to honor these precincts any longer with
your presence."
"Dear! dear! dear!" said Cerizet; "so papa Thuillier has let the wool
be pulled over his eyes again!"
"Leave the room!" said Thuillier; "you have nothing more to do here."
"Hey, my boy!" said Cerizet, turning to la Peyrade, "so you've twisted
the old bourgeois round your finger again? Well, well, no matter! I
think you are making a mistake not to go and see du Portail, and I
shall tell him--"
"Leave this house!" cried Thuillier, in a threatening tone.
"Please remember, my dear monsieur, that I never asked you to employ
me; I was well enough off before you sent for me, and I shall be
after. But I'll give you a piece of advice: don't pay the twenty-five
thousand francs out of your own pocket, for that's hanging to your
nose."
So saying, Cerizet put his thirty-three thousand francs in banknotes
back into his wallet, took his hat from the table, carefully smoothed
the nap with his forearm and departed.
Thuillier had been led by Cerizet into what proved to be a most
disastrous campaign. Now become the humble servant of la Peyrade, he
was forced to accept his conditions, which were as follows: five
hundred francs a month for la Peyrade's services in general; his
editorship of the paper to be paid at the rate of fifty francs a
column,--which was simply enormous, considering the small size of the
sheet; a binding pledge to continue the publication of the paper for
six months, under pain of the forfeiture of fifteen thousand francs;
an absolute omnipotence in the duties of editor-in-chief,--that is to
say, the sovereign right of inserting, controlling, and rejecting all
articles without being called to explain the reasons of his actions,
--such were the stipulations of a treaty in duplicate made openly, "in
good faith," between the contracting parties. _But_, in virtue of
another and secret agreement, Thuillier gave security for the payment
of the twenty-five thousand francs for which la Peyrade was
accountable to Madame Lambert, binding the said Sieur de la Peyrade,
in case the payment were required before his marriage with Celeste
Colleville could take place, to acknowledge the receipt of said sum
advanced upon the dowry.
Matters being thus arranged and accepted by the candidate, who saw no
chance of election if he lost la Peyrade, Thuillier was seized with a
happy thought. He went to the Cirque-Olympique, where he remembered to
have seen in the ticket-office a former employee in his office at the
ministry of Finance,--a man named Fleury; to whom he proposed the post
of manager. Fleury, being an old soldier, a good shot, and a skilful
fencer, would certainly make himself an object of respect in a
newspaper office. The working-staff of the paper being thus
reconstituted, with the exception of a few co-editors or reporters to
be added later, but whom la Peyrade, thanks to the facility of his
pen, was able for the present to do without, the first number of the
new paper was launched upon the world.
Thuillier now recommenced the explorations about Paris which we
saw him make on the publication of his pamphlet. Entering all
reading-rooms and cafes, he asked for the "Echo de la Bievre," and
when informed, alas, very frequently, that the paper was unknown in
this or that establishment, "It is incredible!" he would exclaim,
"that a house which respects itself does not take such a widely
known paper."
On that, he departed disdainfully, not observing that in many places,
where this ancient trick of commercial travellers was well understood,
they were laughing behind his back.
The evening of the day when the inauguration number containing the
"profession of faith" appeared, Brigitte's salon, although the day was
not Sunday, was filled with visitors. Reconciled to la Peyrade, whom
her brother had brought home to dinner, the old maid went so far as to
tell him that, without flattery, she thought his leading article was a
famous HIT. For that matter, all the guests as they arrived, reported
that the public seemed enchanted with the first number of the new
journal.
The public! everybody knows what that is. To every man who launches a
bit of writing into the world, the public consists of five or six
intimates who cannot, without offending the author, avoid knowing
something more or less of his lucubrations.
"As for me!" cried Colleville, "I can truthfully declare that it is
the first political article I ever read that didn't send me to sleep."
"It is certain," said Phellion, "that the leading article seems to me
to be stamped with vigor joined to an atticism which we may seek in
vain in the columns of the other public prints."
"Yes," said Dutocq, "the matter is very well presented; and besides,
there's a turn of phrase, a clever diction, that doesn't belong to
everybody. However, we must wait and see how it keeps on. I fancy that
to-morrow the 'Echo de la Bievre' will be strongly attacked by the
other papers."
"Parbleu!" cried Thuillier, "that's what we are hoping for; and if the
government would only do us the favor to seize us--"
"No, thank you," said Fleury, whom Thuillier had also brought home to
dinner, "I don't want to enter upon those functions at first."
"Seized!" said Dutocq, "oh, you won't be seized; but I think the
ministerial journals will fire a broadside at you."
The next day Thuillier was at the office as early as eight o'clock, in
order to be the first to receive that formidable salvo. After looking
through every morning paper he was forced to admit that there was no
more mention of the "Echo de la Bievre" than if it didn't exist. When
la Peyrade arrived he found his unhappy friend in a state of
consternation.
"Does that surprise you?" said the Provencal, tranquilly. "I let you
enjoy yesterday your hopes of a hot engagement with the press; but I
knew myself that in all probability there wouldn't be the slightest
mention of us in to-day's papers. Against every paper which makes its
debut with some distinction, there's always a two weeks', sometimes a
two months' conspiracy of silence."
"Conspiracy of silence!" echoed Thuillier, with admiration.
He did not know what it meant, but the words had a grandeur and a
_something_ that appealed to his imagination. After la Peyrade had
explained to him that by "conspiracy of silence" was meant the
agreement of existing journals to make no mention of new-comers lest
such notice should serve to advertise them, Thuillier's mind was
hardly better satisfied than it had been by the pompous flow of the
words. The bourgeois is born so; words are coins which he takes and
passes without question. For a word, he will excite himself or calm
down, insult or applaud. With a word, he can be brought to make a
revolution and overturn a government of his own choice.
The paper, however, was only a means; the object was Thuillier's
election. This was insinuated rather than stated in the first numbers.
But one morning, in the columns of the "Echo," appeared a letter from
several electors thanking their delegate to the municipal council for
the firm and frankly liberal attitude in which he had taken on all
questions of local interests. "This firmness," said the letter, "had
brought down upon him the persecution of the government, which, towed
at the heels of foreigners, had sacrificed Poland and sold itself to
England. The arrondissement needed a man of such tried convictions to
represent it in the Chamber,--a man holding high and firm the banner
of dynastic opposition, a man who would be, by the mere signification
of his name, a stern lesson given to the authorities."
Enforced by an able commentary from la Peyrade, this letter was signed
by Barbet and Metivier and all Brigitte's tradesmen (whom, in view of
the election she had continued to employ since her emigration); also
by the family doctor and apothecary, and by Thuillier's builder, and
Barniol, Phellion's son-in-law, who professed to hold rather
"advanced" political opinions. As for Phellion himself, he thought the
wording of the letter not altogether circumspect, and--always without
fear as without reproach--however much he might expect that this
refusal would injure his son in his dearest interests, he bravely
refrained from signing it.
This trial kite had the happiest effect. The ten or a dozen names thus
put forward were considered to express the will of the electors and
were called "the voice of the quarter." Thus Thuillier's candidacy
made from the start such rapid progress that Minard hesitated to put
his own claims in opposition.
Delighted now with the course of events, Brigitte was the first to say
that the time had come to attend to the marriage, and Thuillier was
all the more ready to agree because, from day to day, he feared he
might be called upon to pay the twenty-five thousand francs to Madame
Lambert for which he had pledged himself. A thorough explanation now
took place between la Peyrade and the old maid. She told him honestly
of the fear she felt as to the maintenance of her sovereign authority
when a _son-in-law_ of his mind and character was established in the
household.
"If we," she ended by saying, "are to oppose each other for the rest
of our days, it would be much better, from the beginning, to make two
households; we shouldn't be the less friends for that."
La Peyrade replied that nothing under the sun would induce him to
consent to such a plan; on the contrary, he regarded as amongst his
happiest prospects for the future the security he should feel about
the wise management of the material affairs of the home in such hands
as hers. He should have enough to do in the management of outside
interests, and he could not comprehend, for his part, how she could
suppose he had ever had the thought of interfering in matters that
were absolutely out of his province. In short, he reassured her so
completely that she urged him to take immediate steps for the
publication of the banns and the signature of the marriage contract,
--declaring that she reserved to herself all the preparations relating
to Celeste, whose acceptance of this sudden conclusion she pledged
herself to secure.
"My dear child," she said to Celeste the next morning, "I think you
have given up all idea of being Felix Phellion's wife. In the first
place, he is more of an atheist than ever, and, besides, you must have
noticed yourself that his mind is quite shaky. You have seen at Madame
Minard's that Madame Marmus, who married a savant, officer of the
Legion of honor, and member of the Institute. There's not a more
unhappy woman; her husband has taken her to live behind the
Luxembourg, in the rue Duguay-Trouin, a street that is neither paved
nor lighted. When he goes out, he doesn't know where he is going; he
gets to the Champ de Mars when he wants to go to the Faubourg
Poissoniere; he isn't even capable of giving his address to the driver
of a street cab; and he is so absent-minded he couldn't tell if it
were before dinner or after. You can imagine what sort of time a woman
must have with a man whose nose is always at a telescope snuffing
stars."
"But Felix," said Celeste, "is not as absent-minded as that."
"Of course not, because he is younger; but with years his
absent-mindedness and his atheism will both increase. We have therefore
decided that he is not the husband you want, and we all, your mother,
father, Thuillier and myself, have determined that you shall take la
Peyrade, a man of the world, who will make his way, and one who has
done us great services in the past, and who will, moreover, make your
godfather deputy. We are disposed to give you, in consideration of
him, a much larger 'dot' than we should give to any other husband. So,
my dear, it is settled; the banns are to be published immediately, and
this day week we sign the contract. There's to be a great dinner for
the family and intimates, and after that a reception, at which the
contract will be signed and your trousseau and corbeille exhibited. As
I take all that into my own hands I'll answer for it that everything
shall be of the best kind; especially if you are not babyish, and give
in pleasantly to our ideas."
"But, aunt Brigitte," began Celeste, timidly.
"There's no 'but,' in the matter," said the old maid, imperiously; "it
is all arranged, and will be carried out, unless, mademoiselle, you
pretend to have more wisdom than your elders."
"I will do as you choose, aunt," replied Celeste, feeling as if a
thunder-cloud had burst upon her head, and knowing but too well that
she had no power to struggle against the iron will which had just
pronounced her doom.
She went at once to pour her sorrows into Madame Thuillier's soul; but
when she heard her godmother advising patience and resignation the
poor child felt that from that feeble quarter she could get no help
for even the slightest effort of resistance, and that her sacrifice
was virtually accomplished.
Precipitating herself with a sort of frenzy into the new element of
activity thus introduced into her life, Brigitte took the field in the
making of the trousseau and the purchase of the corbeille. Like many
misers, who on great occasions come out of their habits and their
nature, the old maid now thought nothing too good for her purpose; and
she flung her money about so lavishly that until the day appointed for
the signing of the contract, the jeweller, dressmaker, milliner,
lingere, etc. (all chosen from the best establishments in Paris),
seemed to occupy the house.
"It is like a procession," said Josephine, the cook, admiringly, to
Francoise, the Minards' maid; "the bell never stops ringing from
morning till night."
CHAPTER XII
A STAR
The dinner on the great occasion was ordered from Chabot and Potel,
and not from Chevet, by which act Brigitte intended to prove her
initiative and her emancipation from the late Madame de Godollo. The
invited guests were as follows: three Collevilles, including the
bride, la Peyrade the groom, Dutocq and Fleury, whom he had asked to
be his witnesses, the extremely limited number of his relatives
leaving him no choice, Minard and Rabourdin, chosen as witnesses for
Celeste, Madame and Mademoiselle Minard and Minard junior, two of
Thuillier's colleagues in the Council-general; the notary Dupuis,
charged with the duty of drawing up the contract, and lastly, the Abbe
Gondrin, director of the consciences of Madame Thuillier and Celeste,
who was to give the nuptial blessing.
The latter was the former vicar of Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas, whose
great refinement of manner and gift of preaching had induced the
archbishop to remove him from the humble parish where his career had
begun to the aristocratic church of the Madeleine. Since Madame
Thuillier and Celeste had again become his parishioners, the young
abbe visited them occasionally, and Thuillier, who had gone to him to
explain, after his own fashion, the suitableness of the choice made
for Celeste in the person of la Peyrade (taking pains as he did so to
cast reflections on the religious opinions of Felix Phellion), had
easily led him to contribute by his persuasive words to the
resignation of the victim.
When the time came to sit down to table three guests were missing,
--two Minards, father and son, and the notary Dupuis. The latter had
written a note to Thuillier in the morning, excusing himself from the
dinner, but saying that at nine o'clock precisely he would bring the
contract and place himself at the orders of Mademoiselle Thuillier. As
for Julien Minard, his mother excused him as being confined to his
room with a sore-throat. The absence of Minard senior remained
unexplained, but Madame Minard insisted that they should sit down to
table without him; which was done, Brigitte ordering that the soup be
kept hot for him, because in the bourgeois code of manners and customs
a dinner without soup is no dinner at all.
The repast was far from gay, and though the fare was better, the
vivacity and the warmth of the conversation was far, indeed, from that
of the famous improvised banquet at the time of the election to the
Council-general. The gaps occasioned by the absence of three guests
may have been one reason; then Flavie was glum; she had had an
interview with la Peyrade in the afternoon which ended in tears;
Celeste, even if she had been content with the choice imposed on her,
would scarcely, as a matter of propriety, have seemed joyful; in fact,
she made no effort to brighten a sad face, and dared not look at her
godmother, whose own countenance gave the impression, if we may so
express it, of the long bleating of a sheep. The poor girl seeing this
feared to exchange a look with her lest she might drive her to tears.
Thuillier now felt himself, on all sides, of such importance that he
was pompous and consequential; while Brigitte, uneasy out of her own
world, where she could lord it over every one without competition,
seemed constrained and embarrassed.
Colleville tried by a few jovialities to raise the temperature of the
assemblage; but the coarse salt of his witticisms had an effect, in
the atmosphere in which he produced them, of a loud laugh in a
sick-chamber; and a mute intimation from his wife, Thuillier, and la
Peyrade to _behave himself_ put a stopper on his liveliness and
turbulent expansion. It was somewhat remarkable that the gravest
member of the party, aided by Rabourdin, was the person who finally
warmed up the atmosphere. The Abbe Gondrin, a man of a most refined
and cultivated mind, had, like every pure and well-ordered soul, a
fund of gentle gaiety which he was well able to communicate, and
liveliness was beginning to dawn upon the party when Minard entered
the room.
After making his excuses on the ground of important duties, the mayor
of the eleventh arrondissement, who was in the habit of taking the
lead in the conversation wherever he went, said, having swallowed a
few hasty mouthfuls:--
"Messieurs and mesdames, have you heard the great news?"
"No, what is it?" cried several voices at once.
"The Academy of Sciences received, to-day, at its afternoon session,
the announcement of a vast discovery: the heavens possess a new star!"
"Tiens!" said Colleville; "that will help to replace the one that
Beranger thought was lost when he grieved (to that air of 'Octavie')
over Chateaubriand's departure: 'Chateaubriand, why fly thy land?'"
This quotation, which he sang, exasperated Flavie, and if the custom
had been for wives to sit next to their husbands, the former clarionet
of the Opera-Comique would not have escaped with a mere "Colleville!"
imperiously calling him to order.
"The point which gives this great astronomical event a special
interest on this occasion," continued Minard, "is that the author of
the discovery is a denizen of the twelfth arrondissement, which many
of you still inhabit, or have inhabited. But other points are striking
in this great scientific fact. The Academy, on the reading of the
communication which announced it, was so convinced of the existence of
this star that a deputation was appointed to visit the domicile of the
modern Galileo and compliment him in the name of the whole body. And
yet this star is not visible to either the eye or the telescope! It is
only by the power of calculation and induction that its existence and
the place it occupies in the heavens have been proved in the most
irrefutable manner: 'There _must_ be _there_ a hitherto unknown star; I
cannot see it, but I am sure of it,'--that is what this man of science
said to the Academy, whom he instantly convinced by his deductions.
And do you know, messieurs, who is this Christopher Columbus of a new
celestial world? An old man, two-thirds blind, who has scarcely eyes
enough to walk in the street."
"Wonderful! Marvellous! Admirable!" came from all sides.
"What is the name of this learned man?" asked several voices.
"Monsieur Picot, or, if you prefer it, pere Picot, for that is how
they call him in the rue du Val-de-Grace, where he lives. He is simply
an old professor of mathematics, who has turned out several very fine
pupils,--by the bye, Felix Phellion, whom we all know, studied under
him, and it was he who read, on behalf of his blind old master, the
communication to the Academy this afternoon."
Hearing that name, and remembering the promise Felix had made her to
lift her to the skies, which, as he said it, she had fancied a sign of
madness, Celeste looked at Madame Thuillier, whose face had taken a
sudden glow of animation, and seemed to say to her, "Courage, my
child! all is not lost."
"My dear Theodose," said Thuillier, "Felix is coming here to-night;
you must take him aside and get him to give you a copy of that
communication; it would be a fine stroke of fortune for the 'Echo' to
be the first to publish it."
"Yes," said Minard, assuming the answer, "that would do good service
to the public, for the affair is going to make a great noise. The
committee, not finding Monsieur Picot at home, went straight to the
Minister of Public Instruction; and the minister flew to the Tuileries
and saw the King; and the 'Messager' came out this evening--strange to
say, so early that I could read it in my carriage as I drove along
--with an announcement that Monsieur Picot is named Chevalier of the
Legion of honor, with a pension of eighteen hundred francs from the
fund devoted to the encouragement of science and letters."
"Well," said Thuillier, "there's one cross at least well bestowed."
"But eighteen hundred francs for the pension seems to me rather
paltry," said Dutocq.
"So it does," said Thuillier, "and all the more because that money
comes from the tax-payers; and, when one sees the taxes, as we do,
frittered away on court favorites--"
"Eighteen hundred francs a year," interrupted Minard, "is certainly
something, especially for savants, a class of people who are
accustomed to live on very little."
"I think I have heard," said la Peyrade, "that this very Monsieur
Picot leads a strange life, and that his family, who at first wanted
to shut him up as a lunatic, are now trying to have guardians
appointed over him. They say he allows a servant-woman who keeps his
house to rob him of all he has. Parbleu! Thuillier, you know her; it
is that woman who came to the office the other day about some money in
Dupuis's hands."
"Yes, yes, true," said Thuillier, significantly; "you are right, I do
know her."
"It is queer," said Brigitte, seeing a chance to enforce the argument
she had used to Celeste, "that all these learned men are good for
nothing outside of their science; in their homes they have to be
treated like children."
"That proves," said the Abbe Gondrin, "the great absorption which
their studies give to their minds, and, at the same time, a simplicity
of nature which is very touching."
"When they are not as obstinate as mules," said Brigitte, hastily.
"For myself, monsieur l'abbe, I must say that if I had had any idea of
marriage, a savant wouldn't have suited me at all. What do they do,
these savants, anyhow? Useless things most of the time. You are all
admiring one who has discovered a star; but as long as we are in this
world what good is that to us? For all the use we make of stars it
seems to me we have got enough of them as it is."
"Bravo, Brigitte!" said Colleville, getting loose again; "you are
right, my girl, and I think, as you do, that the man who discovers a
new dish deserves better of humanity."
"Colleville," said Flavie, "I must say that your style of behavior is
in the worst taste."
"My dear lady," said the Abbe Gondrin, addressing Brigitte, "you might
be right if we were formed of matter only; and if, bound to our body,
there were not a soul with instincts and appetites that must be
satisfied. Well, I think that this sense of the infinite which is
within us, and which we all try to satisfy each in our own way, is
marvellously well helped by the labors of astronomy, that reveal to us
from time to time new worlds which the hand of the Creator has put
into space. The infinite in you has taken another course; this passion
for the comfort of those about you, this warm, devoted, ardent
affection which you feel for your brother, are equally the
manifestation of aspirations which have nothing material about them,
and which, in seeking their end and object, never think of asking,
'What good does that do? what is the use of this?' Besides, I must
assure you that the stars are not as useless as you seem to think.
Without them how would navigators cross the sea? They would be puzzled
to get you the vanilla with which you have flavored the delicious
cream I am now eating. So, as Monsieur Colleville has perceived, there
is more affinity than you think between a dish and a star; no one
should be despised,--neither an astronomer nor a good housekeeper--"
The abbe was here interrupted by the noise of a lively altercation in
the antechamber.
"I tell you that I will go in," said a loud voice.
"No, monsieur, you shall not go in," said another voice, that of the
man-servant. "The company are at table, I tell you, and nobody has the
right to force himself in."
Thuillier turned pale; ever since the seizure of his pamphlet, he
fancied all sudden arrivals meant the coming of the police.
Among the various social rules imparted to Brigitte by Madame de
Godollo, the one that most needed repeating was the injunction never,
as mistress of the house, to rise from the table until she gave the
signal for retiring. But present circumstances appeared to warrant the
infraction of the rule.
"I'll go and see what it is," she said to Thuillier, whose anxiety she
noticed at once. "What _is_ the matter?" she said to the servant as
soon as she reached the scene of action.
"Here's a gentleman who wants to come in, and says that no one is ever
dining at eight o'clock at night."
"But who are you, monsieur?" said Brigitte, addressing an old man very
oddly dressed, whose eyes were protected by a green shade.
"Madame, I am neither a beggar nor a vagabond," replied the old man,
in stentorian tones; "my name is Picot, professor of mathematics."
"Rue du Val-de-Grace?" asked Brigitte.
"Yes, madame,--No. 9, next to the print-shop."
"Come in, monsieur, come in; we shall be only too happy to receive
you," cried Thuillier, who, on hearing the name, had hurried out to
meet the savant.
"Hein! you scamp," said the learned man, turning upon the man-servant,
who had retired, seeing that the matter was being settled amicably, "I
told you I should get in."
Pere Picot was a tall old man, with an angular, stern face, who,
despite the corrective of a blond wig with heavy curls, and that of
the pacific green shade we have already mentioned, expressed on his
large features, upon which the fury of study had produced a surface of
leaden pallor, a snappish and quarrelsome disposition. Of this he had
already given proof before entering the dining-room, where every one
now rose to receive him.
His costume consisted of a huge frock-coat, something between a
paletot and a dressing-gown, between which an immense waistcoat of
iron-gray cloth, fastened from the throat to the pit of the stomach
with two rows of buttons, hussar fashion, formed a sort of buckler.
The trousers, though October was nearing its close, were made of black
lasting, and gave testimony to long service by the projection of a
darn on the otherwise polished surface covering the knees, the polish
being produced by the rubbing of the hands upon those parts. But, in
broad daylight, the feature of the old savant's appearance which
struck the eye most vividly was a pair of Patagonian feet, imprisoned
in slippers of beaver cloth, the which, moulded upon the mountainous
elevations of gigantic bunions, made the spectator think,
involuntarily, of the back of a dromedary or an advanced case of
elephantiasis.
Once installed in a chair which was hastily brought for him, and the
company having returned to their places at table, the old man suddenly
burst out in thundering tones, amid the silence created by
curiosity:--
"Where is he,--that rogue, that scamp? Let him show himself; let him
dare to speak to me!"
"Who is it that offends you, my dear monsieur?" said Thuillier, in
conciliating accents, in which there was a slight tone of patronage.
"A scamp whom I couldn't find in his own home, and they told me he was
here, in this house. I'm in the apartment, I think, of Monsieur
Thuillier of the Council-general, place de la Madeleine, first story
above the entresol?"
"Precisely," said Thuillier; "and allow me to add, monsieur, that you
are surrounded with the respect and sympathy of all."
"And you will doubtless permit me to add," said Minard, "that the
mayor of the arrondissement adjoining that which you inhabit
congratulates himself on being here in presence of Monsieur Picot,
--_the_ Monsieur Picot, no doubt, who has just immortalized his name by
the discovery of a star!"
"Yes, monsieur," replied the professor, elevating to a still higher
pitch the stentorian diapason of his voice, "I am Picot (Nepomucene),
but I have not discovered a star; I don't concern myself with any such
fiddle-faddle; besides, my eyes are very weak; and that insolent young
fellow I have come here to find is making me ridiculous with such
talk. I don't see him here; he is hiding himself, I know; he dares not
look me in the face."
"Who is this person who annoys you?" asked several voices at once.
"An unnatural pupil of mine," replied the old mathematician; "a scamp,
but full of ideas; his name is Felix Phellion."
The name was received, as may well be imagined, with amazement.
Finding the situation amusing, Colleville and la Peyrade went off into
fits of laughter.
"You laugh, fools!" cried the irate old man, rising. "Yes, come and
laugh within reach of my arm."
So saying, he brandished a thick stick with a white china handle,
which he used to guide himself, thereby nearly knocking over a
candelabrum on the dinner-table upon Madame Minard's head.
"You are mistaken, monsieur," cried Brigitte, springing forward and
seizing his arm. "Monsieur Felix is not here. He will probably come
later to a reception we are about to give; but at present he has not
arrived."
"They don't begin early, your receptions," said the old man; "it is
past eight o'clock. Well, as Monsieur Felix is coming later, you must
allow me to wait for him. I believe you were eating your dinners;
don't let me disturb you."
And he went back peaceably to his chair.
"As you permit it, monsieur," said Brigitte, "we will continue, or, I
should say, finish dinner, for we are now at the dessert. May I offer
you anything,--a glass of champagne and a biscuit?"
"I am very willing, madame," replied the intruder. "No one ever
refuses champagne, and I am always ready to eat between my meals; but
you dine very late."
A place was made for him at table between Colleville and Mademoiselle
Minard, and the former made it his business to fill the glass of his
new neighbor, before whom was placed a dish of small cakes.
"Monsieur," said la Peyrade in a cajoling tone, "you saw how surprised
we were to hear you complain of Monsieur Felix Phellion,--so amiable,
so inoffensive a young man. What has he done to you, that you should
feel so angry with him?"
With his mouth full of cakes, which he was engulfing in quantities
that made Brigitte uneasy, the professor made a sign that he would
soon answer; then, having mistaken his glass and swallowed the
contents of Colleville's, he replied:--
"You ask what that insolent young man had done to me? A rascally
thing; and not the first, either. He knows that I cannot abide stars,
having very good reason to hate them, as you shall hear: In 1807,
being attached to the Bureau of Longitudes, I was part of the
scientific expedition sent to Spain, under the direction of my friend
and colleague, Jean-Baptiste Biot, to determine the arc of the
terrestrial meridian from Barcelona to the Balearic isles. I was just
in the act of observing a star (perhaps the very one my rascally pupil
has discovered), when suddenly, war having broken out between France
and Spain, the peasants, seeing me perched with a telescope on Monte
Galazzo, took it into their heads that I was making signals to the
enemy. A mob of savages broke my instruments, and talked of stringing
me up. They were just going to do it, when the captain of a vessel
took me prisoner and thrust me into the citadel of Belver, where I
spent three years in the harshest captivity. Since them, as you may
well believe, I loathe the whole celestial system; though I was,
without knowing it, the first to observe the famous comet of 1811; but
I should have taken care not to say a word about it if it had not been
for Monsieur Flauguergues, who announced it. Like all my pupils,
Phellion knows my aversion to stars, and he knew very well the worst
trick he could play me would be to saddle one on my back; and that
deputation that came to play the farce of congratulating me was mighty
lucky not to find me at home, for if they had, I can assure those
gentlemen of the Academy, they would have had a hot reception."
Everybody present thought the old mathematician's monomania quite
delightful, except la Peyrade, who now, in perceiving Felix Phellion's
part in the affair, regretted deeply having caused the explanation.
"And yet, Monsieur Picot," said Minard, "if Felix Phellion is only
guilty of attributing his discovery to you, it seems to me that his
indiscreet behavior has resulted in a certain compensation to you: the
cross of the Legion of honor, a pension, and the glory attached to
your name are not to be despised."
"The cross and the pension I take," said the old man, emptying his
glass, which, to Brigitte's terror, he set down upon the table with a
force that threatened to smash it. "The government has owed them to me
these twenty years; not for the discovery of stars,--things that I
have always despised,--but for my famous 'Treatise on Differential
Logarithms' (Kepler thought proper to call them monologarithms), which
is a sequel to the tables of Napier; also for my 'Postulatum' of
Euclid, of which I was the first to discover the solution; but above
all, for my 'Theory of Perpetual Motion,'--four volumes in quarto with
plates; Paris, 1825. You see, therefore, monsieur, that to give me
glory is bringing water to the Seine. I had so little need of Monsieur
Felix Phellion to make me a position in the scientific world that I
turned him out of my house long ago."
"Then it isn't the first star," said Colleville, flippantly, "that he
dared to put upon you?"
"He did worse than that," roared the old man; "he ruined my
reputation, he tarnished my name. My 'Theory of Perpetual Motion,' the
printing of which cost me every penny I owned, though it ought to have
been printed gratis at the Royal Printing-office, was calculated to
make my fortune and render me immortal. Well, that miserable Felix
prevented it. From time to time, pretending to bring messages from my
editor, he would say, the young sycophant, 'Papa Picot, your book is
selling finely; here's five hundred francs--two hundred francs--and
once it was two thousand--which your publisher charged me to give
you.' This thing went on for years, and my publisher, who had the
baseness to enter into the plot, would say to me, when I went to the
shop: 'Yes, yes, it doesn't do badly, it _bubbles_, that book; we shall
soon be at the end of this edition.' I, who didn't suggest anything, I
pocketed my money, and thought to myself: 'My book is liked, little by
little its ideas are making their way; I may now expect, from day to
day, that some great capitalist will come to me and propose to apply
my system--'"
"--of 'Absorption of Liquids'?" asked Colleville, who had been
steadily filling the old fellow's glass.
"No, monsieur, my 'Theory of Perpetual Motion,' 4 vols. in quarto with
plates. But no! days, weeks went by and nobody came; so, thinking that
my publisher did not put all the energy he should into the matter, I
tried to sell the second edition to another man. It was that,
monsieur, that enabled me to discover the whole plot, on which, as I
said before, I turned that serpent out of my house. In six years only
nine copies had been sold! Kept quiet in false security I had done
nothing for the propagation of my book, which had been left to take
care of itself; and thus it was that I, victim of black and wicked
jealousy, was shamefully despoiled of the value of my labors."
"But," said Minard, making himself the mouthpiece of the thoughts of
the company, "may we not see in that act a manner as ingenious as it
was delicate to--"
"To give me alms! is that what you mean?" interrupted the old man,
with a roar that made Mademoiselle Minard jump in her chair; "to
humiliate me, dishonor me--me, his old professor! Am I in need of
charity? Has Picot (Nepomucene), to whom his wife brought a dowry of
one hundred thousand francs, ever stretched out his palm to any one?
But in these days nothing is respected. Old fellows, as they call us,
our religion and our good faith is taken advantage of so that these
youths may say to the public: 'Old drivellers, don't you see now they
are good for nothing? It needs _us_, the young generation, _us_, the
moderns, _us_, Young France, to bring them up on a bottle.' Young
greenhorn! let me see _you_ try to feed _me_! Old drivellers know more in
their little finger than you in your whole brain, and you'll never be
worth us, paltry little intriguer that you are! However, I know my day
of vengeance will come; that young Phellion can't help ending badly;
what he did to-day, reading a statement to the Academy, under my name,
was forgery, forgery! and the law will send him to the galleys for
that."
"True," said Colleville, "forgery of a public star."
Brigitte, who quaked for her glasses, and whose nerves were
exacerbated by the monstrous consumption of cakes and wine, now gave
the signal to return to the salon. Besides, she had heard the
door-bell ring several times, announcing the arrival of guests for
the evening. The question then was how to transplant the professor,
and Colleville politely offered him his arm.
"No, monsieur," he said, "you must allow me to stay where I am. I am
not dressed for a party, and besides, a strong light hurts my eyes.
Moreover, I don't choose to give myself as a spectacle; it will be
best that my interview with Felix Phellion should take place between
'four-eyes,' as they say."
"Well, let him alone, then," said Brigitte to Colleville.
No one insisted,--the old man having, unconsciously, pretty nigh
discrowned himself in the opinion of the company. But before leaving,
the careful housewife removed everything that was at all fragile from
his reach; then, by way of a slight attention, she said:--
"Shall I send you some coffee?"
"I'll take it, madame," responded pere Picot, "and some cognac with
it."
"Oh! parbleu! he takes everything," said Brigitte to the male
domestic, and she told the latter to keep an eye on the old madman.
When Brigitte returned to the salon she found that the Abbe Gondrin
had become the centre of a great circle formed by nearly the whole
company, and as she approached, she heard him say:--
"I thank Heaven for bestowing upon me such a pleasure. I have never
felt an emotion like that aroused by the scene we have just witnessed;
even the rather burlesque form of this confidence, which was certainly
very artless, for it was quite involuntary, only adds to the honor of
the surprising generosity it revealed. Placed as I am by my ministry
in the way of knowing of many charities, and often either the witness
or intermediary of good actions, I think I never in my life have met
with a more touching or a more ingenious devotion. To keep the left
hand ignorant of what the right hand does is a great step in
Christianity; but to go so far as to rob one's self of one's own fame
to benefit another under such conditions is the gospel applied in its
highest precepts; it is being more than a Sister of Charity; it is
doing the work of an apostle of beneficence. How I should like to know
that noble young man, and shake him by the hand."
With her arm slipped through that of her godmother, Celeste was
standing very near the priest, her ears intent upon his words, her arm
pressing tighter and tighter that of Madame Thuillier, as the abbe
analyzed the generous action of Felix Phellion, until at last she
whispered under her breath:--
"You hear, godmother, you hear!"
To destroy the inevitable effect which this hearty praise would surely
have on Celeste, Thuillier hastened to say:--
"Unfortunately, Monsieur l'abbe, the young man of whom you speak so
warmly is not altogether unknown to you. I have had occasion to tell
you about him, and to regret that it was not possible to follow out
certain plans which we once entertained for him; I allude to the very
compromising independence he affects in his religious opinions."
"Ah! is that the young man?" said the abbe; "you surprise me much; I
must say such an idea would never have crossed my mind."
"You will see him presently, Monsieur l'abbe," said la Peyrade,
joining in the conversation, "and if you question him on certain
grounds you will have no difficulty in discovering the ravages that a
love of science can commit in the most gifted souls."
"I am afraid I shall not see him," said the abbe, "as my black gown
would be out of place in the midst of the more earthly gaiety that
will soon fill this salon. But I know, Monsieur de la Peyrade, that
you are a man of sincerely pious convictions, and as, without any
doubt, you feel as much interest in the young man's welfare as I do
myself, I shall say to you in parting: Do not be uneasy about him;
sooner or later, such choice souls come back to us, and if the return
of these prodigals should be long delayed I should not fear, on seeing
them go to God, that His infinite mercy would fail them."
So saying, the abbe looked about to find his hat, and proceeded to
slip quietly away.
Suddenly a fearful uproar was heard. Rushing into the dining-room,
whence came a sound of furniture overturned and glasses breaking,
Brigitte found Colleville occupied in adjusting his cravat and looking
himself over to be sure that his coat, cruelly pulled awry, bore no
signs of being actually torn.
"What is the matter?" cried Brigitte.
"It is that old idiot," replied Colleville, "who is in a fury. I came
to take my coffee with him, just to keep him company, and he took a
joke amiss, and collared me, and knocked over two chairs and a tray of
glasses because Josephine didn't get out of his way in time."
"It is all because you've been teasing him," said Brigitte, crossly;
"why couldn't you stay in the salon instead of coming here to play
your jokes, as you call them? You think you are still in the orchestra
of the Opera-Comique."
This sharp rebuke delivered, Brigitte, like the resolute woman that
she was, saw that she absolutely must get rid of the ferocious old man
who threatened her household with flames and blood. Accordingly, she
approached pere Picot, who was tranquilly engaged in burning brandy in
his saucer.
"Monsieur," she said, at the top of her lungs, as if she were speaking
to a deaf person (evidently thinking that a blind one ought to be
treated in the same manner), "I have come to tell you something that
may annoy you. Monsieur and Madame Phellion have just arrived, and
they inform me that their son, Monsieur Felix, is not coming. He has a
cold and a sore-throat."
"Then he got it this afternoon reading that lecture," cried the
professor, joyfully. "That's justice!--Madame, where do you get your
brandy?"
"Why, at my grocer's," replied Brigitte, taken aback by the question.
"Well, madame, I ought to tell you that in a house where one can drink
such excellent champagne, which reminds me of that we used to quaff at
the table of Monsieur de Fontanes, grand-master of the University, it
is shameful to keep such brandy. I tell you, with the frankness I put
into everything, that it is good only to wash your horses' feet, and
if I had not the resource of burning it--"
"He is the devil in person," thought Brigitte; "not a word of excuse
about all that glass, but he must needs fall foul of my brandy too!
--Monsieur," she resumed, in the same raised diapason, "as Monsieur
Felix is not coming, don't you think your family will be uneasy at
your absence?"
"Family? I haven't any, madame, owing to the fact that they want to
make me out a lunatic. But I have a housekeeper, Madame Lambert, and I
dare say she will be surprised not to see me home by this time. I
think I had better go now; if I stay later, the scene might be more
violent. But I must own that in this strange quarter I am not sure if
I can find my way."
"Then take a carriage."
"Carriage here, carriage there, indeed! my spiteful relations wouldn't
lose the chance of calling me a spendthrift."
"I have an important message to send into your quarter," said
Brigitte, seeing she must resolve to make the sacrifice, "and I have
just told my porter to take a cab and attend to it. If you would like
to take advantage of that convenience--"
"I accept it, madame," said the old professor, rising; "and, if it
comes to the worst, I hope you will testify before the judge that I
was niggardly about a cab."
"Henri," said Brigitte to the man-servant, "take monsieur down to the
porter and tell him to do the errand I told him about just now, and to
take monsieur to his own door, and be very careful of him."
"Careful of him!" echoed the old man. "Do you take me for a trunk,
madame, or a bit of cracked china?"
Seeing that she had got her man fairly to the door, Brigitte allowed
herself to turn upon him.
"What I say, monsieur, is for your good. You must allow me to observe
that you have not an agreeable nature."
"Careful of him! careful of him!" repeated the old man. "Don't you
know, madame, that by the use of such words you may get people put
into lunatic asylums? However, I will not reply rudely to the polite
hospitality I have received,--all the more because, I think, I have
put Monsieur Felix, who missed me intentionally, in his right place."
"Go, go, go, you old brute!" cried Brigitte, slamming the door behind
him.
Before returning to the salon she was obliged to drink a whole
glassful of water, the restraint she had been forced to put upon
herself in order to get rid of this troublesome guest having, to use
her own expression, "put her all about."
CHAPTER XIII
THE MAN WHO THINKS THE STAR TOO BRIGHT
The next morning Minard paid a visit to Phellion in his study. The
great citizen and his son Felix were at that moment engaged in a
conversation which seemed to have some unusual interest for them.
"My dear Felix," cried the mayor of the eleventh arrondissement,
offering his hand warmly to the young professor, "it is you who bring
me here this morning; I have come to offer you my congratulations."
"What has occurred?" asked Phellion. "Have the Thuilliers--"
"It has nothing to do with the Thuilliers," interrupted the mayor.
"But," he added, looking hard at Felix, "can that sly fellow have
concealed the thing even from you?"
"I do not think," said Phellion, "that ever, in his life, has my son
concealed a thing from me."
"Then you know about the sublime astronomical discovery which he
communicated to the Academy of Sciences yesterday?"
"Your kindness for me, Monsieur le maire," said Felix, hastily, "has
led you astray; I was only the reader of the communication."
"Oh! let me alone!" said Minard; "reader, indeed! I know all about
it."
"But see," said Felix, offering Minard the "Constitutionnel," "here's
the paper; not only does it announce that Monsieur Picot is the maker
of the discovery, but it mentions the rewards which, without losing a
moment, the government has bestowed upon him."
"Felix is right," said Phellion; "that journal is to be trusted. On
this occasion I think the government has acted very properly."
"But, my dear commander, I repeat to you that the truth of the affair
has got wind, and your son is shown to be a most admirable fellow. To
put his own discovery to the credit of his old professor so as to
obtain for him the recognition and favor of the authorities--upon my
word, in all antiquity I don't know a finer trait!"
"Felix!" said Phellion, beginning to show some emotion, "these immense
labors to which you have devoted so much time of late, these continual
visits to the Observatory--"
"But, father," interrupted Felix, "Monsieur Minard has been
misinformed."
"Misinformed!" cried Minard, "when I know the whole affair from
Monsieur Picot himself!"
At this argument, stated in a way to leave no possible doubt, the
truth began to dawn upon Phellion.
"Felix, my son!" he said, rising to embrace him.
But he was obliged to sit down again; his legs refused to bear his
weight; he turned pale; and that nature, ordinarily so impassible,
seemed about to give way under the shock of this happiness.
"My God!" said Felix, terrified, "he is ill; ring the bell, I entreat
you, Monsieur Minard."
And he ran to the old man, loosened his cravat and unfastened the
collar of his shirt, striking him in the palms of his hands. But the
sudden faintness was but momentary; almost immediately himself again,
Phellion gathered his son to his heart, and holding him long in his
embrace, he said, in a voice broken by the tears that came to put an
end to this shock of joy:--
"Felix, my noble son! so great in heart, so great in mind!"
The bell had been rung by Minard with magisterial force, and with such
an accent that the whole household was alarmed, and came running in.
"It is nothing, it is nothing," said Phellion to the servants, sending
them away. But almost at the same moment, seeing his wife, who now
entered the room, he resumed his habitual solemnity.
"Madame Phellion," he said, pointing to Felix, "how many years is it
since you brought that young man into the world?"
Madame Phellion, bewildered by the question, hesitated a moment, and
then said:--
"Twenty-five years next January."
"Have you not thought, until now, that God had amply granted your
maternal desires by making this child of your womb an honest man, a
pious son, and by gifting him for mathematics, that Science of
sciences, with an aptitude sufficiently remarkable?"
"I have," said Madame Phellion, understanding less and less what her
husband was coming to.
"Well," continued Phellion, "you owe to God an additional
thanksgiving, for He has granted that you be the mother of a man of
genius; his toil, which lately we rebuked, and which made us fear for
the reason of our child, was the way--the rough and jagged way--by
which men come to fame."
"Ah ca!" cried Madame Phellion, "can't you stop coming yourself to an
explanation of what you mean, and get there?"
"Your son," said Minard, cautious this time in measuring the joy he
was about to bestow, fearing another fainting-fit of happiness, "has
just made a very important scientific discovery."
"Is it true?" said Madame Phellion, going up to Felix, and taking him
by both hands as she looked at him lovingly.
"When I say important," continued Minard, "I am only sparing your
maternal emotions; it is, in truth, a sublime, a dazzling discovery.
He is only twenty-five years old, but his name, from henceforth, is
immortal."
"And this is the man," said Madame Phellion, half beside herself, and
kissing Felix with effusion, "to whom that la Peyrade is preferred!"
"No, not preferred, madame," said Minard, "for the Thuilliers are not
the dupes of that adventurer. But he has made himself necessary to
them. Thuillier fancies that without la Peyrade he could not be
elected; the election is still doubtful, and they are sacrificing
everything to it."
"But isn't it odious," cried Madame Phellion, "to consider such
interests before the happiness of their child!"
"Ah!" said Minard, "but Celeste is not their child, only their adopted
daughter."
"Brigitte's, if you like," said Madame Phellion; "but as for
Thuillier--"
"My good wife," said Phellion, "no censoriousness. The good God has
just sent us a great consolation; and, indeed, though certainly far
advanced, this marriage, about which I regret to say Felix does not
behave with all the philosophy I could desire, may still not take
place."
Seeing that Felix shook his head with a look of incredulity, Minard
hastened to say:--
"Yes, yes, the commander is quite right. Last night there was a hitch
about signing the contract, and it was not signed. You were not there,
by the bye, and your absence was much remarked upon."
"We were invited," said Phellion, "and up to the last moment we
hesitated whether to go or not. But, as you will readily see, our
position was a false one; besides, Felix--and I see now it must have
been in consequence of his lecture at the Academy--was completely worn
out with fatigue and emotion. To present ourselves without him would
have seemed very singular; therefore we decided that it would be
wisest and best to absent ourselves."
The presence of the man whom he had just declared immortal did not
deter Minard, when the occasion was thus made for him, from plunging
eagerly into one of the most precious joys of bourgeois existence,
namely, the retailing of gossip.
"Just imagine!" he began; "last night at the Thuilliers' the most
extraordinary things took place, one after another."
First he related the curious episode of pere Picot. Then he told of
the hearty approbation given to Felix's conduct by the Abbe Gondrin,
and the desire the young preacher had expressed to meet him.
"I'll go and see him," said Felix; "do you know where he lives?"
"Rue de la Madeleine, No. 8," replied Minard. "But the great event of
the evening was the spectacle of that fine company assembled to listen
to the marriage-contract, and waiting in expectation a whole hour for
the notary, who--never came!"
"Then the contract is not signed?" said Felix, eagerly.
"Not even read, my friend. Suddenly some one came in and told Brigitte
that the notary had started for Brussels."
"Ah! no doubt," said Phellion, naively; "some very important
business."
"Most important," replied Minard; "a little bankruptcy of five hundred
thousand francs which the gentleman leaves behind him."
"But who is this public officer," demanded Phellion, "so recreant, in
this scandalous manner, to the sacred duties of his calling?"
"Parbleu! your neighbor in the rue Saint-Jacques, the notary Dupuis."
"What!" said Madame Phellion, "that pious man? Why, he is churchwarden
of the parish!"
"Eh! madame, those are the very ones," said Minard, "to run off--there
are many precedents for that."
"But," said Phellion, "such news cast suddenly among the company must
have fallen like a thunderbolt."
"Especially," said Minard, "as it was brought in the most unexpected
and singular manner."
"Tell us all about it," said Madame Phellion, with animation.
"Well, it seems," continued Minard, "that this canting swindler had
charge of the savings of a number of servants, and that Monsieur de la
Peyrade--because, you see, they are all of a clique, these pious
people--was in the habit of recruiting clients for him in that walk of
life--"
"I always said so!" interrupted Madame Phellion. "I knew that
Provencal was no good at all."
"It seems," continued the mayor, "that he had placed in Dupuis's hands
all the savings of an old housekeeper, pious herself, amounting to a
pretty little sum. Faith! I think myself it was worth some trouble.
How much do you suppose it was? Twenty-five thousand francs, if you
please! This housekeeper, whose name is Madame Lambert--"
"Madame Lambert!" cried Felix; "why, that's Monsieur Picot's
housekeeper; close cap, pale, thin face, speaks always with her eyes
lowered, shows no hair?"
"That's she," said Minard,--"a regular hypocrite!"
"Twenty-five thousand francs of savings!" said Felix. "I don't wonder
that poor pere Picot is always out of money."
"And that someone had to meddle with the sale of his book," said
Minard, slyly. "However that may be, you can imagine that the woman
was in a fine state of mind on hearing of the flight of the notary.
Off she went to la Peyrade's lodgings; there she was told he was
dining at the Thuilliers'; to the Thuilliers' she came, after running
about the streets--for they didn't give her quite the right address
--till ten o'clock; but she got there while the company were still
sitting round waiting for the notary, and gaping at each other, no one
knowing what to say and do, for neither Brigitte nor Thuillier have
faculty enough to get out of such a scrape with credit; and we all
missed the voice of Madame de Godollo and the talent of Madame
Phellion."
"Oh! you are too polite, Monsieur le maire," said Madame Phellion,
bridling.
"Well, as I said," continued Minard, "at ten o'clock Madame Lambert
reached the antechamber of Monsieur the general-councillor, and there
she asked, in great excitement, to see la Peyrade."
"That was natural," said Phellion; "he being the intermediary of the
investment, this woman had a right to question him."
"You should just have seen that Tartuffe!" continued Minard. "He had
no sooner gone out than he returned, bringing the news. As everybody
was longing to get away, there followed a general helter-skelter. And
then what does our man do? He goes back to Madame Lambert, who was
crying that she was ruined! she was lost!--which might very well be
true, but it might also be only a scene arranged between them in
presence of the company, whom the woman's outcries detained in the
antechamber. 'Don't be anxious, my good woman,' said la Peyrade; 'the
investment was made at your request, consequently, I owe you nothing;
BUT it is enough that the money passed through my hands to make my
conscience tell me I am responsible. If the notary's assets are not
enough to pay you I will do so.'"
"Yes," said Phellion, "that was my idea as you told it; the
intermediary is or ought to be responsible. I should not have
hesitated to do as Monsieur de la Peyrade did, and I do not think that
after such conduct as that he ought to be taxed with Jesuitism."
"Yes, you would have done so," said Minard, "and so should I, but we
shouldn't have done it with a brass band; we should have paid our
money quietly, like gentlemen. But this electoral manager, how is he
going to pay it? Out of the 'dot'?"
At this moment the little page entered the room and gave a letter to
Felix Phellion. It came from pere Picot, and was written at his
dictation by Madame Lambert, for which reason we will not reproduce
the orthography. The writing of Madame Lambert was of those that can
never be forgotten when once seen. Recognizing it instantly, Felix
hastened to say:--
"A letter from the professor"; then, before breaking the seal, he
added, "Will you permit me, Monsieur le maire."
"He'll rate you finely," said Minard, laughing. "I never saw anything
so comical as his wrath last night."
Felix, as he read the letter, smiled to himself. When he had finished
it, he passed it to his father, saying:--
"Read it aloud if you like."
Whereupon, with his solemn voice and manner, Phellion read as
follows:--
My dear Felix,--I have just received your note; it came in the
nick of time, for I was, as they say, in a fury with you. You tell
me that you were guilty of that abuse of confidence (about which I
intended to write you a piece of my mind) in order to give a
knock-down blow to my relations by proving that a man capable of
making such complicated calculations as your discovery required
was not a man to put in a lunatic asylum or drag before a
judiciary council. That argument pleases me, and it makes such a
good answer to the infamous proceedings of my relations that I
praise you for having had the idea. But you sold it to me, that
argument, pretty dear when you put me in company with a star, for
you know very well _that_ propinquity wouldn't please me at all. It
is not at my age, and after solving the great problem of perpetual
motion, that a man could take up with such rubbish as that,--good
only for boys and greenhorns like you; and that is what I have
taken the liberty this morning to go and tell the minister of
public instruction, by whom I must say I was received with the
most perfect urbanity. I asked him to see whether, as he had made
a mistake and sent them to the wrong address, he could not take
back his cross and his pension,--though to be sure, as I told him,
I deserved them for other things.
"The government," he replied, "is not in the habit of making
mistakes; what it does is always properly done, and it never
annuls an ordinance signed by the hand of his Majesty. Your great
labors have deserved the two favors the King has granted you; it
is a long-standing debt, which I am happy to pay off in his name."
"But Felix?" I said; "because after all for a young man it is not
such a bad discovery."
"Monsieur Felix Phellion," replied the minister, "will receive in
the course of the day his appointment to the rank of Chevalier of
the Legion of honor; I will have it signed this morning by the
king. Moreover, there is a vacant place at the Academy of
Sciences, and if you are not a candidate for it--"
"I, in the Academy!" I interrupted, with the frankness of speech
you know I always use; "I execrate academies; they are stiflers,
extinguishers, assemblages of sloths, idlers, shops with big signs
and nothing to sell inside--"
"Well, then," said the minister, smiling, "I think that at the
next election Monsieur Felix Phellion will have every chance, and
among those chances I count the influence of the government which
is secured to him."
There, my poor boy, is all that I have been able to do to reward
your good intentions and to prove to you that I am no longer
angry. I think the relations are going to pull a long face. Come
and talk about it to-day at four o'clock,--for I don't dine after
bedtime, as I saw some people doing last night in a house where I
had occasion to mention your talents in a manner that was very
advantageous to you. Madame Lambert, who does better with a
saucepan than with pen and ink, shall distinguish herself, though
it is Friday, and she never lets me off a fast day. But she has
promised us a fish dinner worthy of an archbishop, with a fine
half-bottle of champagne (doubled if need be) to wash it down.
Your old professor and friend,
Picot (Nepomucene),
Chevalier of the Legion of honor.
P.S.--Do you think you could obtain from your respectable mother a
little flask of that old and excellent cognac you once gave me?
Not a drop remains, and yesterday I was forced to drink some stuff
only fit to bathe horses' feet, as I did not hesitate to say to
the beautiful Hebe who served it to me.
"Of course he shall have some," said Madame Phellion; "not a flask,
but a gallon."
"And I," said Minard, "who pique myself on mine, which didn't come
from Brigitte's grocer either, I'll send him several bottles; but
don't tell him who sent them, Monsieur le chevalier, for you never can
tell how that singular being will take things."
"Wife," said Phellion, suddenly, "get me my black coat and a white
cravat."
"Where are you going?" asked Madame Phellion. "To the minister, to
thank him?"
"Bring me, I say, those articles of habiliment. I have an important
visit to make; and Monsieur le maire will, I know, excuse me."
"I myself must be off," said Minard. "I, too, have important business,
though it isn't about a star."
Questioned in vain by Felix and his wife, Phellion completed his
attire with a pair of white gloves, sent for a carriage, and, at the
end of half an hour, entered the presence of Brigitte, whom he found
presiding over the careful putting away of the china, glass, and
silver which had performed their several functions the night before.
Leaving these housekeeping details, she received her visitor.
"Well, papa Phellion," she said, when they were both seated in the
salon, "you broke your word yesterday; you were luckier than the rest.
Do you know what a trick that notary played us?"
"I know all," said Phellion; "and it is the check thus unexpectedly
given to the execution of your plans that I shall take for the text of
an important conversation which I desire to have with you. Sometimes
Providence would seem to take pleasure in counteracting our best-laid
schemes; sometimes, also, by means of the obstacles it raises in our
path, it seems to intend to indicate that we are bearing too far to
the right or to the left, and should pause to reflect upon our way."
"Providence!" said Brigitte the strong-minded,--"Providence has
something else to do than to look after us."
"That is one opinion," said Phellion; "but I myself am accustomed to
see its decrees in the little as well as the great things of life; and
certainly, if it had allowed the fulfilment of your engagements with
Monsieur de la Peyrade to be even partially begun yesterday, you would
not have seen me here to-day."
"Then," said Brigitte, "do you think that by default of a notary the
marriage will not take place? They do say that for want of a monk the
abbey won't come to a standstill."
"Dear lady," said the great citizen, "you will do me the justice to
feel that neither I, nor my wife, have ever attempted to influence
your decision; we have allowed our young people to love each other
without much consideration as to where that attachment would lead--"
"It led to upsetting their minds," said Brigitte; "that's what love
is, and that's why I deprived myself of it."
"What you say is, indeed, true of my unfortunate son," resumed
Phellion; "for, notwithstanding the noble distractions he has
endeavored to give to his sorrow, he is to-day so miserably overcome
by it that this morning, in spite of the glorious success he has just
obtained, he was speaking to me of undertaking a voyage of
circumnavigation around the globe,--a rash enterprise which would
detain him from his native land at least three years, if, indeed, he
escaped the dangers of so prolonged a journey."
"Well," said Brigitte, "it isn't a bad idea; he'll return consoled,
having discovered three or four more new stars."
"His present discovery suffices," said Phellion, with double his
ordinary gravity, "and it is under the auspices of that triumph, which
has placed his name at so great a height in the scientific world, that
I have the assurance to say to you, point-blank: Mademoiselle, I have
come to ask you, on behalf of my son, who loves as he is beloved, for
the hand in marriage of Mademoiselle Celeste Colleville."
"But, my dear man," replied Brigitte, "it is too late; remember that
we are _diametrically_ engaged to la Peyrade."
"It is never, they say, too late to do well, and yesterday it would
have been in my judgment too early. My son, having to offer an
equivalent for a fortune, could not say to you until to-day: 'Though
Celeste, by your generosity has a "dot" which mine is far from
equalling, yet I have the honor to be a member of the Royal order of
the Legion of honor, and shortly, according to appearance, I shall be
a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, one of the five branches of
the Institute.'"
"Certainly," said Brigitte; "Felix is getting to be a very pretty
match, but we have passed our word to la Peyrade; the banns are
published at the mayor's office, and unless something extraordinary
happens the contract will be signed. La Peyrade is very busy about
Thuillier's election, which he has now got into good shape; we have
capital engaged with him in the affair of this newspaper; and it would
be impossible to go back on our promise, even if we wished to do so."
"So," said Phellion, "in one of the rare occasions of life when reason
and inclination blend together, you think you must be guided solely by
the question of material interests. Celeste, as we know, has no
inclination for Monsieur de la Peyrade. Brought up with Felix--"
"Brought up with Felix!" interrupted Brigitte. "She was given a period
of time to choose between Monsieur de la Peyrade and your son,--that's
how we coerce her, if you please,--and she would not take Monsieur
Felix, whose atheism is too well known."
"You are mistaken, mademoiselle, my son is not an atheist; for
Voltaire himself doubted if there could be atheists; and no later than
yesterday, in this house, an ecclesiastic, as admirable for his
talents as for his virtues, after making a magnificent eulogy of my
son, expressed the desire to know him."
"Parbleu! yes, to convert him," said Brigitte. "But as for this
marriage, I am sorry to tell you that the mustard is made too late for
the dinner; Thuillier will never renounce his la Peyrade."
"Mademoiselle," said Phellion, rising, "I feel no humiliation for the
useless step I have this day taken; I do not even ask you to keep it
secret, for I shall myself mention it to our friends and
acquaintances."
"Tell it to whom you like, my good man," replied Brigitte,
acrimoniously. "Because your son has discovered a star,--if, indeed,
he did discover it, and not that old fool the government decorated--do
you expect him to marry a daughter of the King of the French?"
"Enough," said Phellion, "we will say no more. I might answer that,
without depreciating the Thuilliers, the Orleans family seems to me
more distinguished; but I do not like to introduce acerbity into the
conversation, and therefore, begging you to receive the assurance of
my humble respects, I retire."
So saying, he made his exit majestically, and left Brigitte with the
arrow of his comparison, discharged after the manner of the Parthian
"in extremis," sticking in her mind, and she herself in a temper all
the more savage because already, the evening before, Madame Thuillier,
after the guests were gone, had the incredible audacity to say
something in favor of Felix. Needless to relate that the poor helot
was roughly put down and told to mind her own business. But this
attempt at a will of her own in her sister-in-law had already put the
old maid in a vile humor, and Phellion, coming to reopen the subject,
exasperated her. Josephine, the cook, and the "male domestic,"
received the after-clap of the scene which had just taken place.
Brigitte found that in her absence everything had been done wrong, and
putting her own hand to the work, she hoisted herself on a chair, at
the risk of her neck, to reach the upper shelves of the closet, where
her choicest china, for gala days, was carefully kept under lock and
key.
This day, which for Brigitte began so ill, was, beyond all gainsaying,
one of the stormiest and most portentous of this narrative.
CHAPTER XIV
A STORMY DAY
As an exact historian, we must go back and begin the day at six in the
morning, when we can see Madame Thuillier going to the Madeleine to
hear the mass that the Abbe Gondrin was in the habit of saying at that
hour, and afterwards approaching the holy table,--a viaticum which
pious souls never fail to give themselves when it is in their minds to
accomplish some great resolution.
About mid-day the abbe received a visit in his own home from Madame
Thuillier and Celeste. The poor child wanted a little development of
the words by which the priest had given security, the evening before,
in Brigitte's salon, for the eternal welfare of Felix Phellion. It
seemed strange to the mind of this girl-theologian that, without
practising religion, a soul could be received into grace by the divine
justice; for surely the anathema is clear: Out of the Church there is
no salvation.
"My dear child," said the Abbe Gondrin, "learn to understand that
saying which seems to you so inexplicable. It is more a saying of
thanksgiving for those who have the happiness to live within the pale
of our holy mother the Church than a malediction upon those who have
the misfortune to live apart from her. God sees to the depths of all
hearts; He knows His elect; and so great is the treasure of His
goodness that to none is it given to limit its riches and its
munificence. Who shall dare to say to God: Thou wilt be generous and
munificent so far and no farther. Jesus Christ forgave the woman in
adultery, and on the cross He promised heaven to a thief, in order to
prove to us that He deals with men, not according to human sentiments,
but according to _his_ wisdom and _his_ mercy. He who thinks himself a
Christian may be in the eyes of God an idolator; and another who is
thought a pagan may, by his feelings and his actions be, without his
own knowledge, a Christian. Our holy religion has this that is divine
about it; all grandeur, all heroism are but the practice of its
precepts. I was saying yesterday to Monsieur de la Peyrade that pure
souls must be, in course of time, its inevitable conquest. It is
all-important to give them their just credit; that is a confidence
which returns great dividends; and, besides, charity commands it."
"Ah! my God!" cried Celeste, "to learn that too late! I, who could
have chosen between Felix and Monsieur de la Peyrade, and did not dare
to follow the ideas of my heart! Oh! Monsieur l'abbe, couldn't you
speak to my mother? Your advice is always listened to."
"Impossible, my dear child," replied the vicar. "If I had the
direction of Madame Colleville's conscience I might perhaps say a
word, but we are so often accused of meddling imprudently in family
matters! Be sure that my intervention here, without authority or
right, would do you more harm than good. It is for you and for those
who love you," he added, giving a look to Madame Thuillier, "to see if
these arrangements, already so far advanced, could be changed in the
direction of your wishes."
It was written that the poor child was to drink to the dregs the cup
she had herself prepared by her intolerance. As the abbe finished
speaking, his housekeeper came in to ask if he would receive Monsieur
Felix Phellion. Thus, like the Charter of 1830, Madame de Godollo's
officious falsehood was turned into truth.
"Go this way," he said hastily, showing his two penitents out by a
private corridor.
Life has such strange encounters that it does sometimes happen that
the same form of proceeding must be used by courtesans and by the men
of God.
"Monsieur l'abbe," said Felix to the young vicar as soon as they met,
"I have heard of the kind manner in which you were so very good as to
speak of me in Monsieur Thuillier's salon last night, and I should
have hastened to express my gratitude if another interest had not
drawn me to you."
The Abbe Gondrin passed hastily over the compliments, eager to know in
what way he could be useful to his fellow-man.
"With an intention that I wish to think kindly," replied Felix, "you
were spoken to yesterday about the state of my soul. Those who read it
so fluently know more than I do about my inner being, for, during the
last few days I have felt strange, inexplicable feelings within me.
Never have I doubted God, but, in contact with that infinitude where
he has permitted my thought to follow the traces of his work I seem to
have gathered a sense of him less vague, more immediate; and this has
led me to ask myself whether an honest and upright life is the only
homage which his omnipotence expects of me. Nevertheless, there are
numberless objections rising in my mind against the worship of which
you are the minister; while sensible of the beauty of its external
form in many of its precepts and practices, I find myself deterred by
my reason. I shall have paid dearly, perhaps by the happiness of my
whole life, for the slowness and want of vigor which I have shown in
seeking the solution of my doubts. I have now decided to search to the
bottom of them. No one so well as you, Monsieur l'abbe, can help me to
solve them. I have come with confidence to lay them before you, to ask
you to listen to me, to answer me, and to tell me by what studies I
can pursue the search for light. It is a cruelly afflicted soul that
appeals to you. Is not that a good ground for the seed of your word?"
The Abbe Gondrin eagerly protested the joy with which, notwithstanding
his own insufficiency, he would undertake to reply to the scruples of
conscience in the young savant. After asking him for a place in his
friendship, and telling him to come at certain hours for conversation,
he asked him to read, as a first step, the "Thoughts" of Pascal. A
natural affinity, on the side of science, would, he believed, be
established between the spirit of Pascal and that of the young
mathematician.
While this scene was passing, a scene to which the greatness of the
interests in question and the moral and intellectual elevation of the
personages concerned in it gave a character of grandeur which, like
all reposeful, tranquil aspects, is easier far to comprehend than to
reproduce, another scene, of sharp and bitter discord, that chronic
malady of bourgeois households, where the pettiness of minds and
passions gives open way to it, was taking place in the Thuillier home.
Mounted upon her chair, her hair in disorder and her face and fingers
dirty, Brigitte, duster in hand, was cleaning the shelves of the
closet, where she was replacing her library of plates, dishes, and
sauce-boats, when Flavie came in and accosted her.
"Brigitte," she said, "when you have finished what you are about you
had better come down to our apartment, or else I'll send Celeste to
you; she seems to me to be inclined to make trouble."
"In what way?" asked Brigitte, continuing to dust.
"I think she and Madame Thuillier went to see the Abbe Gondrin this
morning, and she has been attacking me about Felix Phellion, and talks
of him as if he were a god; from that to refusing to marry la Peyrade
is but a step."
"Those cursed skull-caps!" said Brigitte; "they meddle in everything!
I didn't want to invite him, but you would insist."
"Yes," said Flavie, "it was proper."
"Proper! I despise proprieties!" cried the old maid. "He's a maker of
speeches; he said nothing last night that wasn't objectionable. Send
Celeste to me; I'll settle her."
At this instant a servant announced to Brigitte the arrival of a clerk
from the office of the new notary chosen, in default of Dupuis, to
draw up the contract. Without considering her disorderly appearance,
Brigitte ordered him to be shown in, but she made him the
condescension of descending from her perch instead of talking from the
height of it.
"Monsieur Thuillier," said the clerk, "came to our office this morning
to explain to the master the clauses of the contract he has been so
good as to entrust to us. But before writing down the stipulations, we
are in the habit of obtaining from the lips of each donor a direct
expression of his or her intentions. In accordance with this rule,
Monsieur Thuillier told us that he gives to the bride the reversion,
at his death, of the house he inhabits, which I presume to be this
one?"
"Yes," said Brigitte, "that is the understanding. As for me, I give
three hundred thousand francs a year in the Three-per-cents, capital
and interest; but the bride is married under the dotal system."
"That is so," said the clerk, consulting his notes. "Mademoiselle
Brigitte, three thousand francs a year. Now, there is Madame Celeste
Thuillier, wife of Louis-Jerome Thuillier, who gives six thousand in
the Three-per-cents, capital and interest, and six thousand more at
her death."
"All that is just as if the notary had written it down," said
Brigitte; "but if it is your custom you can see my sister-in-law; they
will show you the way."
So saying, the old maid ordered the "male domestic" to take the clerk
to Madame Thuillier.
A moment later the clerk returned, saying there was certainly some
misunderstanding, and that Madame Thuillier declared she had no
intention of making any agreement in favor of the marriage.
"That's a pretty thing!" cried Brigitte. "Come with me, monsieur."
Then, like a hurricane, she rushed into Madame Thuillier's chamber;
the latter was pale and trembling.
"What's this you have told monsieur?--that you give nothing to
Celeste's 'dot'?"
"Yes," said the slave, declaring insurrection, although in a shaking
voice; "my intention is to do nothing."
"Your intention," said Brigitte, scarlet with anger, "is something
new."
"That is my intention," was all the rebel replied.
"At least you will give your reasons?"
"The marriage does not please me."
"Ha! and since when?"
"It is not necessary that monsieur should listen to our discussion,"
said Madame Thuillier; "it will not appear in the contract."
"No wonder you are ashamed of it," said Brigitte; "the appearance you
are making is not very flattering to you--Monsieur," she continued,
addressing the clerk, "it is easier, is it not, to mark out passages
in a contract than to add them?"
The clerk made an affirmative sign.
"Then put in what you were told to write; later, if madame persists,
the clause can be stricken out."
The clerk bowed and left the room.
When the two sisters-in-law were alone together, Brigitte began.
"Ah ca!" she cried, "have you lost your head? What is this crotchet
you've taken into it?"
"It is not a crotchet; it is a fixed idea."
"Which you got from the Abbe Gondrin; you dare not deny that you went
to see him with Celeste."
"It is true that Celeste and I saw our director this morning, but I
did not open my lips to him about what I intended to do."
"So, then, it is in your own empty head that this notion sprouted?"
"Yes. As I told you yesterday, I think Celeste can be more suitably
married, and my intention is not to rob myself for a marriage of which
I disapprove."
"_You_ disapprove! Upon my word! are we all to take madame's advice?"
"I know well," replied Madame Thuillier, "that I count for nothing in
this house. So far as I am concerned, I have long accepted my
position; but, when the matter concerns the happiness of a child I
regard as my own--"
"Parbleu!" cried Brigitte, "you never knew how to have one; for,
certainly, Thuillier--"
"Sister," said Madame Thuillier, with dignity, "I took the sacrament
this morning, and there are some things I cannot listen to."
"There's a canting hypocrite for you!" cried Brigitte; "playing the
saint, and bringing trouble into families! And you think to succeed,
do you? Wait till Thuillier comes home, and he'll shake this out of
you."
By calling in the marital authority in support of her own, Brigitte
showed weakness before the unexpected resistance thus made to her
inveterate tyranny. Madame Thuillier's calm words, which became every
moment more resolute, baffled her completely, and she found no
resource but insolence.
"A drone!" she cried; "a helpless good-for-nothing! who can't even
pick up her own handkerchief! that thing wants to be mistress of this
house!"
"I wish so little to be its mistress," said Madame Thuillier, "that
last night I allowed you to silence me after the first words I said in
behalf of Celeste. But I am mistress of my own property, and as I
believe that Celeste will be wretched in this marriage, I keep it to
use as may seem best to me."
"Your property, indeed!" said Brigitte, with a sneer.
"Yes, that which I received from my father and my mother, and which I
brought as my 'dot' to Monsieur Thuillier."
"And pray who invested it, this property, and made it give you twelve
thousand francs a year?"
"I have never asked you for any account of it," said Madame Thuillier,
gently. "If it had been lost in the uses you made of it, you would
never have heard a single word from me; but it has prospered, and it
is just that I should have the benefit. It is not for myself that I
reserve it."
"Perhaps not; if this is the course you take, it is not at all sure
that you and I will go out of the same door long."
"Do you mean that Monsieur Thuillier will send me away? He must have
reasons for doing that, and, thank God! I have been a wife above
reproach."
"Viper! hypocrite! heartless creature!" cried Brigitte, coming to an
end of her arguments.
"Sister," said Madame Thuillier, "you are in my apartment--"
"Am I, you imbecile?" cried the old maid, in a paroxysm of anger. "If
I didn't restrain myself--"
And she made a gesture both insulting and threatening.
Madame Thuillier rose to leave the room.
"No! you shall not go out," cried Brigitte, pushing her down into her
chair; "and till Thuillier comes home and decides what he will do with
you you'll stay locked up here."
Just as Brigitte, her face on fire, returned to the room where she had
left Madame Colleville, her brother came in. He was radiant.
"My dear," he said to the Megaera, not observing her fury, "everything
is going on finely; the conspiracy of silence is broken; two papers,
the 'National' and a Carlist journal, have copied articles from us,
and there's a little attack in a ministerial paper."
"Well, all is not going on finely here," said Brigitte, "and if it
continues, I shall leave the barrack."
"Whom are you angry with now?" asked Thuillier.
"With your insolent wife, who has made me a scene; I am trembling all
over."
"Celeste make you a scene!" said Thuillier; "then it is the very first
time in her life."
"There's a beginning to everything, and if you don't bring her to
order--"
"But what was it about--this scene?"
"About madame's not choosing that la Peyrade should marry her
goddaughter; and out of spite, to prevent the marriage, she refused to
give anything in the contract."
"Come, be calm," said Thuillier, not disturbed himself, the admission
of the "Echo" into the polemic making another Pangloss of him. "I'll
settle all that."
"You, Flavie," said Brigitte, when Thuillier had departed to his wife,
"you will do me the pleasure to go down to your own apartment, and
tell Mademoiselle Celeste that I don't choose to see her now, because
if she made me any irritating answer I might box her ears. You'll tell
her that I don't like conspiracies; that she was left at liberty to
choose Monsieur Phellion junior if she wanted him, and she did not
want him; that the matter is now all arranged, and that if she does
not wish to see her 'dot' reduced to what you are able to give her,
which isn't as much as a bank-messenger could carry in his waistcoat
pocket--"
"But, my dear Brigitte," interrupted Flavie, turning upon her at this
impertinence, "you may dispense with reminding us in this harsh way of
our poverty; for, after all, we have never asked you for anything, and
we pay our rent punctually; and as for the 'dot,' Monsieur Felix
Phellion is quite ready to take Celeste with no more than a
bank-messenger could carry in his _bag_."
And she emphasized the last word by her way of pronouncing it.
"Ha! so you too are going to meddle in this, are you?" cried Brigitte.
"Very good; go and fetch him, your Felix. I know, my little woman,
that this marriage has never suited you; it IS disagreeable to be
nothing more than a mother to your son-in-law."
Flavie had recovered the coolness she had lost for an instant, and
without replying to this speech she merely shrugged her shoulders.
At this moment Thuillier returned; his air of beatitude had deserted
him.
"My dear Brigitte," he said to his sister, "you have a most excellent
heart, but at times you are so violent--"
"Ho!" said the old maid, "am I to be arraigned on this side too?"
"I certainly do not blame you for the cause of the trouble, and I have
just rebuked Celeste for her assumption; but there are proper forms
that must be kept."
"Forms! what are you talking about? What forms have I neglected?"
"But, my dear friend, to raise your hand against your sister!"
"I, raise my hand against that imbecile? What nonsense you talk!"
"And besides," continued Thuillier, "a woman of Celeste's age can't be
kept in prison."
"Your wife!--have I put her in prison?"
"You can't deny it, for I found the door of her room double-locked."
"Parbleu! all this because in my anger at the infamous things she was
spitting at me I may have turned the key of the door without intending
it."
"Come, come," said Thuillier, "these are not proper actions for people
of our class."
"Oh! so it is I who am to blame, is it? Well, my lad, some day you'll
remember this, and we shall see how your household will get along when
I have stopped taking care of it."
"You'll always take care of it," said Thuillier. "Housekeeping is your
very life; you will be the first to get over this affair."
"We'll see about that," said Brigitte; "after twenty years of
devotion, to be treated like the lowest of the low!"
And rushing to the door, which she slammed after her with violence,
she went away.
Thuillier was not disturbed by this exit.
"Were you there, Flavie," he asked, "when the scene took place?"
"No, it happened in Celeste's room. What did she do to her?"
"What I said,--raised her hand to her and locked her in like a child.
Celeste may certainly be rather dull-minded, but there are limits that
must not be passed."
"She is not always pleasant, that good Brigitte," said Flavie; "she
and I have just had a little set-to."
"Oh, well," said Thuillier, "it will all pass off. I want to tell you,
my dear Flavie, what fine success we have had this morning. The
'National' quotes two whole paragraphs of an article in which there
were several sentences of mine."
Thuillier was again interrupted in the tale of his great political and
literary success,--this time by the entrance of Josephine the cook.
"Can monsieur tell me where to find the key of the great trunk?" she
said.
"What do you want with it?" asked Thuillier.
"Mademoiselle told me to take it to her room."
"What for?"
"Mademoiselle must be going to make a journey. She is getting her
linen out of the drawers, and her gowns are on the bed."
"Another piece of nonsense!" said Thuillier. "Flavie, go and see what
she has in her head."
"Not I," said Madame Colleville; "go yourself. In her present state of
exasperation she might beat me."
"And my stupid wife, who must needs raise a fuss about the contract!"
cried Thuillier. "She really must have said something pretty sharp to
turn Brigitte off her hinges like this."
"Monsieur has not told me where to find the key," persisted Josephine.
"I don't know anything about it," said Thuillier, crossly; "go and
look for it, or else tell her it is lost."
"Oh, yes!" said Josephine, "it is likely I'd dare to go and tell her
that."
Just then the outer door-bell rang.
"No doubt that's la Peyrade," said Thuillier, in a tone of
satisfaction.
The Provencal appeared a moment later.
"Faith, my dear friend," cried Thuillier, "it is high time you came;
the house is in revolution, all about you, and it needs your silvery
tongue to bring it back to peace and quietness."
Then he related to his assistant editor the circumstances of the civil
war which had broken out.
La Peyrade turned to Madame Colleville.
"I think," he said, "that under the circumstances in which we now
stand there is no impropriety in my asking for an interview of a few
moments with Mademoiselle Colleville."
In this the Provencal showed his usual shrewd ability; he saw that in
the mission of pacification thus given to him Celeste Colleville was
the key of the situation.
"I will send for her, and we will leave you alone together," said
Flavie.
"My dear Thuillier," said la Peyrade, "you must, without any violence,
let Mademoiselle Celeste know that her consent must be given without
further delay; make her think that this was the purpose for which you
have sent for her; then leave us; I will do the rest."
The man-servant was sent down to the entresol with orders to tell
Celeste that her godfather wished to speak to her. As soon as she
appeared, Thuillier said, to carry out the programme which had been
dictated to him:--
"My dear, your mother has told us things that astonish us. Can it be
true that with your contract almost signed, you have not yet decided
to accept the marriage we have arranged for you?"
"Godfather," said Celeste, rather surprised at this abrupt summons, "I
think I did not say that to mamma."
"Did you not just now," said Flavie, "praise Monsieur Felix Phellion
to me in the most extravagant manner?"
"I spoke of Monsieur Phellion as all the world is speaking of him."
"Come, come," said Thuillier, with authority, "let us have no
equivocation; do you refuse, yes or no, to marry Monsieur de la
Peyrade?"
"Dear, good friend," said la Peyrade, intervening, "your way of
putting the question is rather too abrupt, and, in my presence,
especially, it seems to me out of place. In my position as the most
interested person, will you allow me to have an interview with
mademoiselle, which, indeed, has now become necessary? This favor I am
sure will not be refused by Madame Colleville. Under present
circumstances, there can surely be nothing in my request to alarm her
maternal prudence."
"I would certainly yield to it," said Flavie, "if I did not fear that
these discussions might seem to open a question which is irrevocably
decided."
"But, my dear madame, I have the strongest desire that Mademoiselle
Celeste shall remain, until the very last moment, the mistress of her
own choice. I beg you, therefore, to grant my request."
"So be it!" said Madame Colleville; "you think yourself very clever,
but if you let that girl twist you round her finger, so much the worse
for you. Come, Thuillier, since we are 'de trop' here."
As soon as the pair were alone together, la Peyrade drew up a chair
for Celeste, and took one himself, saying:--
"You will, I venture to believe, do me the justice to say that until
to-day I have never annoyed you with the expression of my sentiments.
I was aware of the inclinations of your heart, and also of the
warnings of your conscience. I hoped, after a time, to make myself
acceptable as a refuge from those two currents of feeling; but, at the
point which we have now reached, I think it is not either indiscreet
or impatient to ask you to let me know plainly what course you have
decided upon."
"Monsieur," replied Celeste, "as you speak to me so kindly and
frankly, I will tell you, what indeed you know already, that, brought
up as I was with Monsieur Felix Phellion, knowing him far longer than
I have known you, the idea of marrying alarmed me less in regard to
him than it would in regard to others."
"At one time, I believe," remarked la Peyrade, "you were permitted to
choose him if you wished."
"Yes, but at that time difficulties grew up between us on religious
ideas."
"And to-day those difficulties have disappeared?"
"Nearly," replied Celeste. "I am accustomed to submit to the judgment
of those who are wiser than myself, monsieur, and you heard yesterday
the manner in which the Abbe Gondrin spoke of Monsieur Phellion."
"God forbid," said la Peyrade, "that I should seek to invalidate the
judgment of so excellent a man; but I venture to say to you,
mademoiselle, that there are great differences among the clergy; some
are thought too stern, some far too indulgent; moreover, the Abbe
Gondrin is more of a preacher than a casuist."
"But, Monsieur Felix," said Celeste, eagerly, "seems to wish to fulfil
Monsieur l'abbe's hopes of him, for I know that he went to see him
this morning."
"Ah!" said la Peyrade, with a touch of irony, "so he really decided to
go to Pere Anselme! But, admitting that on the religious side Monsieur
Phellion may now become all that you expect of him, have you
reflected, mademoiselle, on the great event which has just taken place
in his life?"
"Undoubtedly; and that is not a reason to think less of him."
"No, but it is a reason why he should think more of himself. For the
modesty which was once the chief charm of his nature, he is likely to
substitute great assumption, and you must remember, mademoiselle, that
he who has discovered one world will want to discover two; you will
have the whole firmament for rival; in short, could you ever be happy
with a man so entirely devoted to science?"
"You plead your cause with such adroitness," said Celeste, smiling,
"that I think you might be as a lawyer more disquieting than an
astronomer."
"Mademoiselle," said la Peyrade, "let us speak seriously; there is
another and far more serious aspect to the situation. Do you know
that, at this moment, in this house, and without, I am sure, desiring
it, you are the cause of most distressing and regrettable scenes?"
"I, monsieur!" said Celeste, in a tone of surprise that was mingled
with fear.
"Yes, concerning your godmother. Through the extreme affection that
she has for you she seems to have become another woman; for the first
time in her life she has shown a mind of her own. With an energy of
will which comes at times to those who have never expended any, she
declares that she will not make her proposed liberal gift to you in
the contract; and I need not tell you who is the person aimed at in
this unexpected refusal."
"But, monsieur, I entreat you to believe that I knew nothing of this
idea of my godmother."
"I know that," said la Peyrade, "and the matter itself would be of
small importance if Mademoiselle Brigitte had not taken this attitude
of your godmother, whom she has always found supple to her will, as a
personal insult to herself. Very painful explanations, approaching at
last to violence, have taken place. Thuillier, placed between the
hammer and the anvil, has been unable to stop the affair; on the
contrary, he has, without intending it, made matters worse, till they
have now arrived at such a point that Mademoiselle Brigitte is packing
her trunks to leave the house."
"Monsieur! what are you telling me?" cried Celeste, horrified.
"The truth; and the servants will confirm it to you--for I feel that
my revelations are scarcely believable."
"But it is impossible! impossible!" said the poor child, whose
agitation increased with every word of the adroit Provencal. "I cannot
be the cause of such dreadful harm."
"That is, you did not intend to be, for the harm is done; and I pray
Heaven it may not be irremediable."
"But what am I to do, good God!" cried Celeste, wringing her hands.
"I should answer, without hesitation, sacrifice yourself,
mademoiselle, if it were not that I should then be forced to play the
painful part of victimizer."
"Monsieur," said Celeste, "you interpret ill the resistance that I
have made, though, in fact, I have scarcely expressed it. I have
certainly had a preference, but I have never considered myself in the
light of a victim; and whatever it is necessary to do to restore peace
in this house to which I have brought trouble, I shall do it without
repugnance, and even willingly."
"That would be for me," said la Peyrade, humbly, "more than I could
dare ask for myself; but, for the result which we both seek, I must
tell you frankly that something more is needed. Madame Thuillier has
not changed her nature to instantly change back again on the mere
assurance by others of your compliance. It is necessary that she
should hear from your own lips that you accede to my suit, and that
you do so with eagerness,--assumed, indeed, but sufficiently well
assumed to induce her to believe in it."
"So be it," said Celeste. "I shall know how to seem smiling and happy.
My godmother, monsieur, has been a mother to me; and for such a
mother, what is there that I would not endure?"
The position was such, and Celeste betrayed so artlessly the depth
and, at the same time, the absolute determination of her sacrifice,
that with any heart at all la Peyrade would have loathed the part he
was playing; but Celeste, to him, was a means of ascent, and provided
the ladder can hold you and hoist you, who would ever ask if it cared
to or not? It was therefore decided that Celeste should go to her
godmother and convince her of the mistake she had made in supposing an
objection to la Peyrade which Celeste had never intended to make.
Madame Thuillier's opposition overcome, all was once more easy. La
Peyrade took upon himself the duty of making peace between the two
sisters-in-law, and we can well imagine that he was not at a loss for
fine phrases with which to assure the artless girl of the devotion and
love which would take from her all regret for the moral compulsion she
had now undergone.
When Celeste went to her godmother she found her by no means as
difficult to convince as she had expected. To go to the point of
rebellion which Madame Thuillier had actually reached, the poor woman,
who was acting against her instincts and against her nature, had
needed a tension of will that, in her, was almost superhuman. No
sooner had she received the false confidences of her goddaughter than
the reaction set in; the strength failed her to continue in the path
she had taken. She was therefore easily the dupe of the comedy which
Celeste's tender heart was made to play for la Peyrade's benefit.
The tempest calmed on this side, the barrister found no difficulty in
making Brigitte understand that in quelling the rebellion against her
authority she had gone a little farther than was proper. This
authority being no longer in danger, Brigitte ceased to be incensed
with the sister-in-law she had been on the point of beating, and the
quarrel was settled with a few kind words and a kiss, poor Celeste
paying the costs of war.
After dinner, which was only a family meal, the notary, to whose
office they were to go on the following day to sign the contract (it
being impossible to give a second edition of the abortive party), made
his appearance. He came, he said, to submit the contract to the
parties interested before engrossing it. This attention was not
surprising in a man who was just entering into business relations with
so important a person as the municipal councillor, whom it was his
interest to firmly secure for a client.
La Peyrade was far too shrewd to make any objections to the terms of
the contract, which was now read. A few changes requested by Brigitte,
which gave the new notary a high idea of the old maid's business
capacity, showed la Peyrade plainly that more precautions were being
taken against him than were altogether becoming; but he was anxious
not to raise difficulties, and he knew that the meshes of a contract
are never so close that a determined and clever man cannot get through
them. The appointment was then made for the signing of the contract
the next day, at two o'clock, in the notary's office, the family only
being present.
During the rest of the evening, taking advantage of Celeste's pledge
to seem smiling and happy, la Peyrade played, as it were, upon the
poor child, forced her, by a specious exhibition of gratitude and
love, to respond to him on a key that was far, indeed, from the true
state of a heart now wholly filled by Felix. Flavie, seeing the manner
in which la Peyrade put forth his seductions, was reminded of the
pains he had formerly taken to fascinate herself. "The monster!" she
said, beneath her breath. But she was forced to bear the torture with
a good grace; la Peyrade was evidently approved by all, and in the
course of the evening a circumstance came to light, showing a past
service done by him to the house of Thuillier, which brought his
influence and his credit to the highest point.
Minard was announced.
"My dear friends," he said, "I have come to make a little revelation
which will greatly surprise you, and will, I think, prove a lesson to
all of us when a question arises as to receiving foreigners in our
homes."
"What is it?" cried Brigitte, with curiosity.
"That Hungarian woman you were so delighted with, that Madame Torna,
Comtesse de Godollo--"
"Well?" exclaimed the old maid.
"Well," continued Minard, "she was no better than she should be; you
were petting in your house for two months the most impudent of kept
women."
"Who told you that tale?" asked Brigitte, not willing to admit that
she had fallen into such a snare.
"Oh, it isn't a tale," said the mayor, eagerly. "I know the thing
myself, 'de visu.'"
"Dear me! do you frequent such women?" said Brigitte, resuming the
offensive. "That's a pretty thing! what would Zelie say if she knew
it?"
"In the discharge of my duties," said Minard, stiffly, provoked at
this reception of his news, "I have seen _your friend_, Madame de
Godollo, in company with others of her class."
"How do you know it was she if you only saw her?" demanded Brigitte.
The wily Provencal was not the man to lose an occasion that fell to
him ready-made.
"Monsieur le maire is not mistaken," he said, with decision.
"Tiens! so you know her, too," said Brigitte; "and you let us consort
with such vermin?"
"No," said la Peyrade, "on the contrary. Without scandal, without
saying a word to any one, I removed her from your house. You remember
how suddenly the woman left it? It was I who compelled her to do so;
having discovered what she was, I gave her two days to leave the
premises; threatening her, in case she hesitated, to tell you all."
"My dear Theodose," said Thuillier, pressing his hand, "you acted with
as much prudence as decision. This is one more obligation that we owe
to you."
"You see, mademoiselle," said la Peyrade, addressing Celeste, "the
strange protectress whom a friend of yours selected."
"Thank God," said Madame Thuillier. "Felix Phellion is above such vile
things."
"Ah ca! papa Minard, we'll keep quiet about all this; silence is the
word. Will you take a cup of tea?"
"Willingly," replied Minard.
"Celeste," said the old maid, "ring for Henri, and tell him to put the
large kettle on the fire."
Though the visit to the notary was not to be made till two in the
afternoon, Brigitte began early in the morning of the next day what
Thuillier called her _rampage_, a popular term which expresses that
turbulent, nagging, irritating activity which La Fontaine has
described so well in his fable of "The Old Woman and her Servants."
Brigitte declared that if you didn't take time by the forelock no one
would be ready. She prevented Thuillier from going to his office,
insisting that if he once got off she never should see him again; she
plagued Josephine, the cook, about hurrying the breakfast, and in
spite of what had happened the day before she scarcely restrained
herself from nagging at Madame Thuillier, who did not enter, as she
thought she should have done, into her favorite maxim, "Better be
early than late."
Presently down she went to the Collevilles' to make the same
disturbance; and there she put her veto on the costume, far too
elegant, which Flavie meditated wearing, and told Celeste the hat and
gown she wished her to appear in. As for Colleville, who could not, he
declared, stay away all the morning from his official duties, she
compelled him to put on his dress-suit before he went out, made him
set his watch by hers, and warned him that if he was late no one would
wait for him.
The amusing part of it was that Brigitte herself, after driving every
one at the point of the bayonet, came very near being late herself.
Under pretext of aiding others, independently of minding her own
business, which, for worlds, she would never have spared herself, she
had put her fingers and eyes into so many things that they ended by
overwhelming her. However, she ascribed the delay in which she was
almost caught to the hairdresser, whom she had sent for to make, on
this extraordinary occasion, what she called her "part." That artist
having, unadvisedly, dressed her hair in the fashion, he was
compelled, after she had looked at herself in the glass, to do his
work over again, and conform to the usual style of his client, which
consisted chiefly in never being "done" at all, a method that gave her
head a general air of what is vulgarly called "a cross cat."
About half-past one o'clock la Peyrade, Thuillier, Colleville, Madame
Thuillier, and Celeste were assembled in the salon. Flavie joined them
soon after, fastening her bracelets as she came along to avoid a
rebuff, and having the satisfaction of knowing that she was ready
before Brigitte. As for the latter, already furious at finding herself
late, she had another cause for exasperation. The event of the day
seemed to require a corset, a refinement which she usually discarded.
The unfortunate maid, whose duty it was to lace her and to discover
the exact point to which she was willing to be drawn in, alone knew
the terrors and storms of a corset day.
"I'd rather," said the girl, "lace the obelisk; I know it would lend
itself to being laced better than she does; and, anyhow, it couldn't
be bad-tongued."
While the party in the salon were amusing themselves, under their
breaths, at the "flagrante delicto" of unpunctuality in which Queen
Elizabeth was caught, the porter entered, and gave to Thuillier a
sealed package, addressed to "Monsieur Thuillier, director of the
'Echo de la Bievre.' _In haste_."
Thuillier opened the envelope, and found within a copy of a
ministerial journal which had hitherto shown itself discourteous to
the new paper by refusing the _exchange_ which all periodicals usually
make very willingly with one another.
Puzzled by the fact of this missive being sent to his own house and
not to the office of the "Echo," Thuillier hastily opened the sheet,
and read, with what emotion the reader may conceive, the following
article, commended to his notice by a circle in red ink:--
An obscure organ was about to expire in its native shade when an
ambitious person of recent date bethought himself of galvanizing
it. His object was to make it a foothold by which to climb from
municipal functions to the coveted position of deputy. Happily
this object, having come to the surface, will end in failure.
Electors will certainly not be inveigled by so wily a manner of
advancing self-interests; and when the proper time arrives, if
ridicule has not already done justice on this absurd candidacy, we
shall ourselves prove to the pretender that to aspire to the
distinguished honor of representing the nation something more is
required than the money to buy a paper and pay an underling to put
into good French the horrible diction of his articles and
pamphlets. We confine ourselves to-day to this limited notice, but
our readers may be sure that we shall keep them informed about
this electoral comedy, if indeed the parties concerned have the
melancholy courage to go on with it.
Thuillier read twice over this sudden declaration of war, which was
far from leaving him calm and impassible; then, taking la Peyrade
aside, he said to him:--
"Read that; it is serious."
"Well?" said la Peyrade, after reading the article.
"Well? how well?" exclaimed Thuillier.
"I mean, what do you find so serious in that?"
"What do I find so serious?" repeated Thuillier. "I don't think
anything could be more insulting to me."
"You can't doubt," said la Peyrade, "that the virtuous Cerizet is at
the bottom of it; he has thrown this firecracker between your legs by
way of revenge."
"Cerizet, or anybody else who wrote that diatribe is an insolent
fellow," cried Thuillier, getting angry, "and the matter shall not
rest there."
"For my part," said la Peyrade, "I advise you to make no reply. You
are not named; though, of course, the attack is aimed at you. But you
ought to let our adversary commit himself farther; when the right
moment comes, we'll rap him over the knuckles."
"No!" said Thuillier, "I won't stay quiet one minute under such an
insult."
"The devil!" said the barrister; "what a sensitive epidermis! Do
reflect, my dear fellow, that you have made yourself a candidate and a
journalist, and therefore you really must harden yourself better than
that."
"My good friend, it is a principle of mine not to let anybody step on
my toes. Besides, they say themselves they are going on with this
thing. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to cut short such
impertinence."
"But do consider," said la Peyrade. "Certainly in journalism, as in
candidacy, a hot temper has its uses; a man makes himself respected,
and stops attacks--"
"Just so," said Thuillier, "'principiis obsta.' Not to-day, because we
haven't the time, but to-morrow I shall carry that paper into court."
"Into court!" echoed la Peyrade; "you surely wouldn't go to law in
such a matter as this? In the first place, there is nothing to proceed
upon; you are not named nor the paper either, and, besides, it is a
pitiable business, going to law; you'll look like a boy who has been
fighting, and got the worst of it, and runs to complain to his mamma.
Now if you had said that you meant to make Fleury intervene in the
matter, I could understand that--though the affair is rather personal
to you, and it might be difficult to make it seem--"
"Ah ca!" said Thuillier, "do you suppose I am going to commit myself
with a Cerizet or any other newspaper bully? I pique myself, my dear
fellow, on possessing civic courage, which does not give in to
prejudices, and which, instead of taking justice into its own hands,
has recourse to the means of defence that are provided by law.
Besides, with the legal authority the Court of Cassation now has over
duelling, I have no desire to put myself in the way of being
expatriated, or spending two or three years in prison."
"Well," said la Peyrade, "we'll talk it over later; here's your
sister, and she would think everything lost if this little matter
reached her ears."
When Brigitte appeared Colleville shouted "Full!" and proceeded to
sing the chorus of "La Parisienne."
"Heavens! Colleville, how vulgar you are!" cried the tardy one,
hastening to cast a stone in the other's garden to avoid the throwing
of one into hers. "Well, are you all ready?" she added, arranging her
mantle before a mirror. "What o'clock is it? it won't do to get there
before the time, like provincials."
"Ten minutes to two," said Colleville; "I go by the Tuileries."
"Well, then we are just right," said Brigitte; "it will take about
that time to get to the rue Caumartin. Josephine," she cried, going to
the door of the salon, "we'll dine at six, therefore be sure you put
the turkey to roast at the right time, and mind you don't burn it, as
you did the other day. Bless me! who's that?" and with a hasty motion
she shut the door, which she had been holding open. "What a nuisance!
I hope Henri will have the sense to tell him we are out."
Not at all; Henri came in to say that an old gentleman, with a very
genteel air, had asked to be received on urgent business.
"Why didn't you say we were all out?"
"That's what I should have done if mademoiselle had not opened the
door of the salon so that the gentleman could see the whole family
assembled."
"Oh, yes!" said Brigitte, "you are never in the wrong, are you?"
"What am I to say to him?" asked the man.
"Say," replied Thuillier, "that I am very sorry not to be able to
receive him, but I am expected at a notary's office about a marriage
contract; but that if he could return two hours hence--"
"I have told him all that," said Henri, "and he answered that that
contract was precisely what he had come about, and that his business
concerned you more than himself."
"You had better go and see him, Thuillier, and get rid of him in
double-quick," said Brigitte; "that's shorter than talking to Henri,
who is always an orator."
If la Peyrade had been consulted he might not have joined in that
advice, for he had had more than one specimen of the spokes some
occult influence was putting into the wheels of his marriage, and the
present visit seemed to him ominous.
"Show him into my study," said Thuillier, following his sister's
advice; and, opening the door which led from the salon to the study,
he went to receive his importunate visitor.
Brigitte immediately applied her eye to the keyhole.
"Goodness!" she exclaimed, "there's my imbecile of a Thuillier
offering him a chair! and away in a corner, too, where I can't hear a
word they say!"
La Peyrade was walking about the room with an inward agitation covered
by an appearance of great indifference. He even went up to the three
women, and made a few lover-like speeches to Celeste, who received
them with a smiling, happy air in keeping with the role she was
playing. As for Colleville, he was killing the time by composing an
anagram on the six words of "le journal 'l'Echo de la Bievre,'" for
which he had found the following version, little reassuring (as far as
it went) for the prospects of that newspaper: "O d'Echo, jarni! la
bevue reell"--but as the final "e" was lacking to complete the last
word, the work was not altogether as satisfactory as it should have
been.
"He's taking snuff!" said Brigitte, her eye still glued to the
keyhole; "his gold snuff-box beats Minard's--though, perhaps, it is
only silver-gilt," she added, reflectively. "He's doing the talking,
and Thuillier is sitting there listening to him like a buzzard. I
shall go in and tell them they can't keep ladies waiting that way."
But just as she put her hand on the lock she heard Thuillier's visitor
raise his voice, and that made her look through the keyhole again.
"He is standing up; he's going," she said with satisfaction.
But a moment later she saw she had made a mistake; the little old man
had only left his chair to walk up and down the room and continue the
conversation with greater freedom.
"My gracious! I shall certainly go in," she said, "and tell Thuillier
we are going without him, and he can follow us."
So saying, the old maid gave two little sharp and very imperious raps
on the door, after which she resolutely entered the study.
La Peyrade, goaded by anxiety, had the bad taste to look through the
keyhole himself at what was happening. Instantly he thought he
recognized the small old man he had seen under the name of "the
commander" on that memorable morning when he had waited for Madame de
Godollo. Then he saw Thuillier addressing his sister with impatience
and with gestures of authority altogether out of his usual habits of
deference and submission.
"It seems," said Brigitte, re-entering the salon, "that Thuillier
finds some great interest in that creature's talk, for he ordered me
bluntly to leave them, though the little old fellow did say, rather
civilly, that they would soon be through. But Jerome added: '_Mind_,
you are to wait for me.' Really, since he has taken to making
newspapers I don't know him; he has set up an air as if he were
leading the world with his wand."
"I am very much afraid he is being entangled by some adventurer," said
la Peyrade. "I am pretty sure I saw that old man at Madame de
Godollo's the day I went to warn her off the premises; he must be of
the same stripe."
"Why didn't you tell me?" cried Brigitte. "I'd have asked him for news
of the countess, and let him see we knew what we knew of his
Hungarian."
Just then the sound of moving chairs was heard, and Brigitte darted
back to the keyhole.
"Yes," she said, "he is really going, and Thuillier is bowing him out
respectfully!"
As Thuillier did not immediately return, Colleville had time to go to
the window and exclaim at seeing the little old gentleman driving away
in an elegant coupe, of which the reader has already heard.
"The deuce!" cried Colleville; "what an ornate livery! If he is an
adventurer he is a number one."
At last Thuillier re-entered the room, his face full of care, his
manner extremely grave.
"My dear la Peyrade," he said, "you did not tell us that another
proposal of marriage had been seriously considered by you."
"Yes, I did; I told you that a very rich heiress had been offered to
me, but that my inclinations were here, and that I had not given any
encouragement to the affair; consequently, of course, there was no
serious engagement."
"Well, I think you do wrong to treat that proposal so lightly."
"What! do you mean to say, in presence of these ladies, that you blame
me for remaining faithful to my first desires and our old engagement?"
"My friend, the conversation that I have just had has been a most
instructive one to me; and when you know what I know, with other
details personal to yourself, which will be confided to you, I think
that you will enter into my ideas. One thing is certain; we shall not
go to the notary to-day; and as for you, the best thing that you can
do is to go, without delay, to Monsieur du Portail."
"That name again! it pursues me like a remorse," exclaimed la Peyrade.
"Yes; go at once; he is awaiting you. It is an indispensable
preliminary before we can go any farther. When you have seen that
excellent man and heard what he has to say to you--well, _then_ if you
persist in claiming Celeste's hand, we might perhaps carry out our
plans. Until then we shall take no steps in the matter."
"But, my poor Thuillier," said Brigitte, "you have let yourself be
gammoned by a rascal; that man belongs to the Godollo set."
"Madame de Godollo," replied Thuillier, "is not at all what you
suppose her to be, and the best thing this house can do is never to
say one word about her, either good or evil. As for la Peyrade, as
this is not the first time he has been requested to go and see
Monsieur du Portail, I am surprised that he hesitates to do so."
"Ah ca!" said Brigitte, "that little old man has completely befooled
you."
"I tell you that that little old man is all that he appears to be. He
wears seven crosses, he drives in a splendid equipage, and he has told
me things that have overwhelmed me with astonishment."
"Well, perhaps he's a fortune-teller like Madame Fontaine, who managed
once upon a time to upset me when Madame Minard and I, just to amuse
ourselves, went to consult her."
"Well, if he is not a sorcerer he certainly has a very long arm," said
Thuillier, "and I think a man would suffer for it if he didn't respect
his advice. As for you, Brigitte, he saw you only for a minute, but he
told me your whole character; he said you were a masterful woman, born
to command."
"The fact is," said Brigitte, licking her chops at this compliment,
like a cat drinking cream, "he has a very well-bred air, that little
old fellow. You take my advice, my dear," she said, turning to la
Peyrade; "if such a very big-wig as that wants you to do so, go and
see this du Portail, whoever he is. That, it seems to me, won't bind
you to anything."
"You are right, Brigitte," said Colleville; "as for me, I'd follow up
all the Portails, or Port_ers_, or Port_ents_ for the matter of that, if
they asked me to."
The scene was beginning to resemble that in the "Barber of Seville,"
where everybody tells Basil to go to bed, for he certainly has a
fever. La Peyrade, thus prodded, picked up his hat in some ill-humor,
and went where his destiny called him,--"quo sua fata vocabant."
CHAPTER XV
AT DU PORTAIL'S
On reaching the rue Honore-Chevalier la Peyrade felt a doubt; the
dilapidated appearance of the house to which he was summoned made him
think he had mistaken the number. It seemed to him that a person of
Monsieur du Portail's evident importance could not inhabit such a
place. It was therefore with some hesitation that he accosted Sieur
Perrache, the porter. But no sooner had he entered the antechamber of
the apartment pointed out to him than the excellent deportment of
Bruneau, the old valet, and the extremely comfortable appearance of
the furniture and other appointments made him see that he was probably
in the right place. Introduced at once, as soon as he had given his
name, into the study of the master of the house, his surprise was
great when he found himself in presence of the commander, so called,
the friend of Madame de Godollo, and the little old man he had seen
half an hour earlier with Thuillier.
"At last!" said du Portail, rising, and offering la Peyrade a chair,
"at last we meet, my refractory friend; it has taken a good deal to
bring you here."
"May I know, monsieur," said la Peyrade, haughtily, not taking the
chair which was offered to him, "what interest you have in meddling
with my affairs? I do not know you, and I may add that the place where
I once saw you did not create an unconquerable desire in me to make
your acquaintance."
"Where have you seen me?" asked du Portail.
"In the apartment of a strumpet who called herself Madame de Godollo."
"Where monsieur, consequently, went himself," said the little old man,
"and for a purpose much less disinterested than mine."
"I have not come here," said la Peyrade, "to bandy words with any one.
I have the right, monsieur, to a full explanation as to the meaning of
your proceedings towards me. I therefore request you not to delay them
by a facetiousness to which, I assure you, I am not in the humor to
listen."
"Then, my dear fellow," said du Portail, "sit down, for I am not in
the humor to twist my neck by talking up at you."
The words were reasonable, and they were said in a tone that showed
the old gentleman was not likely to be frightened by grand airs. La
Peyrade therefore deferred to the wishes of his host, but he took care
to do so with the worst grace possible.
"Monsieur Cerizet," said du Portail, "a man of excellent standing in
the world, and who has the honor to be one of your friends--"
"I have nothing to do with that man now," said la Peyrade, sharply,
understanding the malicious meaning of the old man's speech.
"Well, the time has been," said du Portail, "when you saw him, at
least, occasionally: for instance, when you paid for his dinner at the
Rocher de Cancale. As I was saying, I charged the virtuous Monsieur
Cerizet to sound you as to a marriage--"
"Which I refused," interrupted la Peyrade, "and which I now refuse
again, more vehemently than ever."
"That's the question," said the old man. "I think, on the contrary,
that you will accept it; and it is to talk over this affair with you
that I have so long desired a meeting."
"But this crazy girl that you are flinging at my head," said la
Peyrade, "what is she to you? She can't be your daughter, or you would
put more decency into your hunt for a husband."
"This young girl," replied du Portail, "is the daughter of one of my
friends who died about ten years ago; at his death I took her to live
with me, and have given her all the care her sad condition needed. Her
fortune, which I have greatly increased, added to my own, which I
intend to leave to her, will make her a very rich heiress. I know that
you are no enemy to handsome 'dots,' for you have sought them in
various places,--Thuillier's house, for instance, or, to use your own
expression, that of a strumpet whom you scarcely knew. I have
therefore supposed you would accept at my hands a very rich young
woman, especially as her infirmity is declared by the best physicians
to be curable; whereas you can never cure Monsieur and Mademoiselle
Thuillier, the one of being a fool, the other of being a fury, any
more than you could cure Madame Komorn of being a woman of very medium
virtue and extremely giddy."
"It may suit me," replied la Peyrade, "to marry the daughter of a fool
and a fury if I choose her, or I might become the husband of a clever
coquette, if passion seized me, but the Queen of Sheba herself, if
imposed upon me, neither you, monsieur, nor the ablest and most
powerful man living could force me to accept."
"Precisely; therefore it is to your own good sense and intelligence
that I now address myself; but we have to come face to face with
people in order to speak to them, you know. Now, then, let us look
into your present situation, and don't get angry if, like a surgeon
who wants to cure his patient, I lay my hand mercilessly on wounds
which have long tormented and harassed you. The first point to state
is that the Celeste Colleville affair is at an end for you."
"Why so?" demanded la Peyrade.
"Because I have just seen Thuillier and terrified him with the history
of the misfortunes he has incurred, and those he will incur if he
persists in the idea of giving you his goddaughter in marriage. He
knows now that it was I who paralyzed Madame du Bruel's kind offices
in the matter of the cross; that I had his pamphlet seized; that I
sent that Hungarian woman into his house to handle you all, as she
did; and that my hand is opening fire in the ministerial journals,
which will only increase from bad to worse,--not to speak of other
machinations which will be directed against his candidacy. Therefore
you see, my good friend, that not only have you no longer the credit
in Thuillier's eyes of being his great helper to that election, but
that you actually block the way to his ambition. That is enough to
prove to you that the side by which you have imposed yourself on that
family--who have never sincerely liked or desired you--is now
completely battered down and dismantled."
"But to have done all that which you claim with such pretension, who
are you?" demanded la Peyrade.
"I shall not say that you are very inquisitive, for I intend to answer
your question later; but for the present let us continue, if you
please, the autopsy of your existence, dead to-day, but which I
propose to resuscitate gloriously. You are twenty-eight years old, and
you have begun a career in which I shall not allow you to make another
step. A few days hence the Council of the order of barristers will
assemble and will censure, more or less severely, your conduct in the
matter of the property you placed with such candor in Thuillier's
hands. Do not deceive yourself; censure from that quarter (and I
mention only your least danger) is as fatal to a barrister as being
actually disbarred."
"And it is to your kind offices, no doubt," said la Peyrade, "that I
shall owe that precious result?"
"Yes, I may boast of it," replied du Portail, "for, in order to tow
you into port it has been necessary to strip you of your rigging;
unless that were done, you would always have tried to navigate under
your own sails the bourgeois shoals that you are now among."
Seeing that he, undoubtedly, had to do with a strong hand, la Peyrade
thought best to modify his tone; and so, with a more circumspect air,
he said:--
"You will allow me, monsieur, to reserve my acknowledgments until I
receive some fuller explanation."
"Here you are, then," continued du Portail, "at twenty-eight years of
age, without a penny, virtually without a profession; with antecedents
that are very--middling; with associates like Monsieur Dutocq and the
courageous Cerizet; owing to Mademoiselle Thuillier ten thousand
francs, and to Madame Lambert twenty-five thousand, which you are no
doubt extremely desirous to return to her; and finally, this marriage,
your last hope, your sheet-anchor, has just become an utter
impossibility. Between ourselves, if I have something reasonable to
propose to you, do you not think that you had much better place
yourself at my disposal?"
"I have time enough to prove that your opinion is mistaken," returned
la Peyrade; "and I shall not form any resolutions so long as the
designs you choose to have upon me are not more fully explained."
"You were spoken to, at my instigation, about a marriage," resumed du
Portail. "This marriage, as I think, is closely connected with a past
existence from which a certain hereditary or family duty has devolved
upon you. Do you know what that uncle of yours, to whom you applied in
1829, was doing in Paris? In your family he was thought to be a
millionaire; and, dying suddenly, you remember, before you got to him,
he did not leave enough for his burial; a pauper's grave was all that
remained to him."
"Did you know him?" asked la Peyrade.
"He was my oldest and dearest friend," replied du Portail.
"If that is so," said la Peyrade, hastily, "a sum of two thousand
francs, which I received on my arrival in Paris from some unknown
source--"
"Came from me," replied du Portail. "Unfortunately, engaged at the
time in a rush of important affairs, which you shall hear of later, I
could not immediately follow up the benevolent interest I felt in you
for your uncle's sake; this explains why I left you in the straw of a
garret, where you came, like a medlar, to that maturity of ruin which
brought you under the hand of a Dutocq and a Cerizet."
"I am none the less grateful to you, monsieur," said la Peyrade; "and
if I had known you were that generous protector, whom I was never able
to discover, I should have been the first to seek occasion to meet you
and to thank you."
"A truce to compliments," said du Portail; "and, to come at once to
the serious side of our present conference, what should you say if I
told you that this uncle, whose protection and assistance you came to
Paris to obtain, was an agent of that occult power which has always
been the theme of feeble ridicule and the object of silly prejudice?"
"I do not seize your meaning," said la Peyrade, with uneasy curiosity;
"may I ask you to be more precise?"
"For example, I will suppose," continued du Portail, "that your uncle,
if still living, were to say to you to-day: 'You are seeking fortune
and influence, my good nephew; you want to rise above the crowd and to
play your part in all the great events of your time; you want
employment for a keen, active mind, full of resources, and slightly
inclined to intrigue; in short, you long to exert in some upper and
elegant sphere that force of will and subtlety which at present you
are wasting in the silly and useless manipulation of the most barren
and tough-skinned animal on earth, to wit: a bourgeois. Well, then,
lower your head, my fine nephew; enter with me through the little door
which I will open to you; it gives admittance to a great house, often
maligned, but better far than its reputation. That threshold once
crossed, you can rise to the height of your natural genius, whatever
its spark may be. Statesmen, kings even, will admit you to their most
secret thoughts; you will be their occult collaborator, and none of
the joys which money and the highest powers can bestow upon a man will
be lacking to you."
"But, monsieur," objected la Peyrade, "without venturing to understand
you, I must remark that my uncle died so poor, you tell me, that
public charity buried him."
"Your uncle," replied du Portail, "was a man of rare talent, but he
had a certain weak side in his nature which compromised his career. He
was eager for pleasure, a spendthrift, thoughtless for the future; he
wanted also to taste those joys that are meant for the common run of
men, but which for great, exceptional vocations are the worst of
snares and impediments: I mean the joys of family. He had a daughter
whom he madly loved, and it was through her that his terrible enemies
opened a breach in his life, and prepared the horrible catastrophe
that ended it."
"Is that an encouragement to enter this shady path, where, you say, he
might have asked me to follow him?"
"But if I myself," said du Portail, "should offer to guide you in it,
what then?"
"You, monsieur!" said la Peyrade, in stupefaction.
"Yes, I--I who was your uncle's pupil at first, and later his
protector and providence; I, whose influence the last half-century has
daily increased; I, who am wealthy; I, to whom all governments, as
they fall one on top of the others like houses of cards, come to ask
for safety and for the power to rebuild their future; I, who am the
manager of a great theatre of puppets (where I have Columbines in the
style of Madame de Godollo); I, who to-morrow, if it were necessary to
the success of one of my vaudevilles or one of my dramas, might
present myself to your eyes as the wearer of the grand cordon of the
Legion of honor, of the Order of the Black Eagle, or that of the
Golden Fleece. Do you wish to know why neither you nor I will die a
violent death like your uncle, and also why, more fortunate than
contemporaneous kings, I can transmit my sceptre to the successor whom
I myself may choose? Because, like you, my young friend, in spite of
your Southern appearance, I was cold, profoundly calculating, never
tempted to lose my time on trifles at the outskirts; because heat,
when I was led by force of circumstances to employ it, never went
below the surface. It is more than probable that you have heard of me;
well, for you I will open a window in my cloud; look at me, observe me
well; have I a cloven hoof, or a tail at the end of my spine? On the
contrary, am I not a model of the most inoffensive of householders in
the Saint-Sulpice quarter? In that quarter, where I have enjoyed, I
may say it, universal esteem for the last twenty-five years, I am
called du Portail; but to you, if you will allow me, I shall now name
myself _Corentin_."
"Corentin!" cried la Peyrade, with terrified astonishment.
"Yes, monsieur; and you see that in telling you that secret I lay my
hand upon you, and enlist you. Corentin! 'the greatest man of the
police in modern times,' as the author of an article in the
'Biographies of Living Men' has said of me--as to whom I ought in
justice to remark that he doesn't know a thing about my life."
"Monsieur," said la Peyrade, "I can assure you that I shall keep that
secret; but the place which you offer me near you--in your employ--"
"That frightens you, or, at least, it makes you uneasy," said
Corentin, quickly. "Before you have even considered the thing the word
scares you, does it? The police! _Police_! you are afraid to encounter
the terrible prejudice that brands it on the brow."
"Certainly," said la Peyrade, "it is a necessary institution; but I do
not think that it is always calumniated. If the business of those who
manage it is honorable why do they conceal themselves so carefully?"
"Because all that threatens society, which it is the mission of the
police to repress," replied Corentin, "is plotted and prepared in
hiding. Do thieves and conspirators put upon their hats, 'I am
Guillot, the shepherd of this flock'? And when we are after them must
we ring a bell to let them know we are coming?"
"Monsieur," said la Peyrade, "when a sentiment is universal it ceases
to be a prejudice, it becomes an opinion; and this opinion ought to be
a law to every man who desires to keep his own esteem and that of
others."
"And when you robbed that notary to enrich the Thuilliers for your own
advantage," said Corentin, "did you keep your own esteem and that of
the Council of barristers? And who knows, monsieur, if in your life
there are not still blacker actions than that? I am a more honorable
man than you, because, outside of my functions, I have not one
doubtful act upon my conscience; and when the opportunity for _good_ has
been presented to me I have done it--always and everywhere. Do you
think that the guardianship of that poor insane girl in my home has
been all roses? But she was the daughter of my old friend, your uncle,
and when, feeling the years creep on me, I propose to you, between
sacks of money, to fit yourself to take my place--"
"What!" cried la Peyrade, "is that girl my uncle's daughter?"
"Yes; the girl I wish you to marry is the daughter of your uncle
Peyrade,--for he democratized his name,--or, if you like it better,
she was the daughter of Pere Canquoelle, a name he took from the
little estate on which your father lived and starved with eleven
children. You see, in spite of the secrecy your uncle always kept
about his family, that I know all about it. Do you suppose that before
selecting you as your cousin's husband I had not obtained every
possible information about you? And what I have learned need not make
you quite so supercilious to the police. Besides, as the vulgar saying
is, the best of your nose is made of it. Your uncle belonged to the
police, and, thanks to that, he became the confidant, I might almost
say the friend, of Louis XVIII., who took the greatest pleasure in his
companionship. And you, by nature and by mind, also by the foolish
position into which you have got yourself, in short, by your whole
being, have gravitated steadily to the conclusion I propose to you,
namely, that of succeeding me,--of succeeding Corentin. That is the
question between us, Monsieur. Do you really believe now that I have
not a grasp or a 'seizin,' as you call it, upon you, and that you can
manage to escape me for any foolish considerations of bourgeois
vanity?"
La Peyrade could not have been at heart so violently opposed to this
proposal as he seemed, for the vigorous language of the great master
of the police and the species of appropriation which he made of his
person brought a smile to the young man's lips.
Corentin had risen, and was walking up and down the room, speaking,
apparently, to himself.
"The police!" he cried; "one may say of it, as Basile said of calumny
to Batholo, 'The police, monsieur! you don't know what you despise!'
And, after all," he continued, after a pause, "who are they who
despise it? Imbeciles, who don't know any better than to insult their
protectors. Suppress the police, and you destroy civilization. Do the
police ask for the respect of such people? No, they want to inspire
them with one sentiment only: fear, that great lever with which to
govern mankind,--an impure race whose odious instincts God, hell, the
executioner, and the gendarmes can scarcely restrain!"
Stopping short before la Peyrade, and looking at him with a disdainful
smile, he continued:--
"So you are one of those ninnies who see in the police nothing more
than a horde of spies and informers? Have you never suspected the
statesmen, the diplomats, the Richelieus it produces? Mercury,
monsieur,--Mercury, the cleverest of the gods of paganism,--what was
he but the police incarnate? It is true that he was also the god of
thieves. We are better than he, for we don't allow that junction of
forces."
"And yet," said la Peyrade, "Vautrin, or, I should say, Jacques
Collin, the famous chief of the detective police--"
"Yes, yes! but that's in the lower ranks," replied Corentin, resuming
his walk; "there's always a muddy place somewhere. Still, don't be
mistaken even in that. Vautrin is a man of genius, but his passions,
like those of your uncle, dragged him down. But go up higher (for
there lies the whole question, namely, the rung of the ladder on which
a man has wits enough to perch). Take the prefect, for instance, that
honored minister, flattered and respected, is he a spy? Well, I,
monsieur, am the prefect of the secret police of diplomacy--of the
highest statesmanship. And you hesitate to mount that throne!--to seem
small and do great things; to live in a cave comfortably arranged like
this, and command the light; to have at your orders an invisible army,
always ready, always devoted, always submissive; to know the _other
side_ of everything; to be duped by no intrigue because you hold the
threads of all within your fingers; to see through all partitions; to
penetrate all secrets, search all hearts, all consciences,--these are
the things you fear! And yet you were not afraid to go and wallow in a
Thuillier bog; you, a thoroughbred, allowed yourself to be harnessed
to a hackney-coach, to the ignoble business of electing that parvenu
bourgeois."
"A man does what he can," said la Peyrade.
"Here's a very remarkable thing," pursued Corentin, replying to his
own thought; "the French language, more just than public opinion, has
given us our right place, for it has made the word police the synonym
of civilization and the antipodes of savage life, when it said and
wrote: 'l'Etat police,' from the Greek words state and city. So, I can
assure you, we care little for the prejudice that tries to brand us;
none know men as we do; and to know them brings contempt for their
contempt as well as for their esteem."
"There is certainly much truth in what you say with such warmth," said
la Peyrade, finally.
"Much truth!" exclaimed Corentin, going back to his chair, "say,
rather, that it is all true, and nothing but the truth; yet it is not
the whole truth. But enough for to-day, monsieur. To succeed me in my
functions, and to marry your cousin with a 'dot' that will not be less
than five hundred thousand francs, that is my offer. I do not ask you
for an answer now. I should have no confidence in a determination not
seriously reflected upon. To-morrow, I shall be at home all the
morning. I trust that my conviction may then have formed yours."
Dismissing his visitor with a curt little bow, he added: "I do not bid
you adieu, but au revoir, Monsieur de la Peyrade."
Whereupon Corentin went to a side-table, where he found all that he
needed to prepare a glass of "eau sucree," which he had certainly
earned, and, without looking at la Peyrade, who left the room rather
stunned, he seemed to have no other interest on his mind than that
prosaic preparation.
Was it, indeed, necessary that the morning after this meeting with
Corentin a visit from Madame Lambert, now become an exacting and
importunate creditor, should come to bear its weight on la Peyrade's
determination? As the great chief had pointed out to him the night
before, was there not in his nature, in his mind, in his aspirations,
in the mistakes and imprudences of his past life, a sort of
irresistible incline which drew him down toward the strange solution
of existence thus suddenly offered to him?
Fatality, if we may so call it, was lavish of the inducements to which
he was destined to succumb. This day was the 31st of October; the
vacation of the Palais was just over. The 2nd of November was the day
on which the courts reopened, and as Madame Lambert left his room he
received a summons to appear on that day before the Council of his
order.
To Madame Lambert, who pressed him sharply to repay her, under
pretence that she was about to leave Monsieur Picot and return to her
native place, he replied: "Come here the day after to-morrow, at the
same hour, and your money will be ready for you."
To the summons to give account of his actions to his peers he replied
that he did not recognize the right of the Council to question him on
the facts of his private life. That was an answer of one sort,
certainly. Inevitably it would result in his being stricken from the
roll of the barristers of the Royal courts; but, at least, it had an
air of dignity and protestation which saved, in a measure, his
self-love.
Finally, he wrote a letter to Thuillier, in which he said that his
visit to du Portail had resulted in his being obliged to accept
another marriage. He therefore returned to Thuillier his promise, and
took back his own. All this was curtly said, without the slightest
expression of regret for the marriage he renounced. In a postscript he
added: "We shall be obliged to discuss my position on the newspaper,"
--indicating that it might enter into his plans not to retain it.
He was careful to make a copy of this letter, and an hour later, when,
in Corentin's study, he was questioned as to the result of his night's
reflections, he gave that great general, for all answer, the
matrimonial resignation he had just despatched.
"That will do," said Corentin. "But as for your position on the
newspaper, you may perhaps have to keep it for a time. The candidacy
of that fool interferes with the plans of the government, and we must
manage in some way to trip up the heels of the municipal councillor.
In your position as editor-in-chief you may find a chance to do it,
and I think your conscience won't kick at the mission."
"No, indeed!" said la Peyrade, "the thought of the humiliations to
which I have been so long subjected will make it a precious joy to
lash that bourgeois brood."
"Take care!" said Corentin; "you are young, and you must watch against
those revengeful emotions. In our austere profession we love nothing
and we hate nothing. Men are to us mere pawns of wood or ivory,
according to their quality--with which we play our game. We are like
the blade that cuts what is given it to cut, but, careful only to be
delicately sharpened, wishes neither harm nor good to any one. Now let
us speak of your cousin, to whom, I suppose, you have some curiosity
to be presented."
La Peyrade was not obliged to pretend to eagerness, that which he felt
was genuine.
"Lydie de la Peyrade," said Corentin, "is nearly thirty, but her
innocence, joined to a gentle form of insanity, has kept her apart
from all those passions, ideas, and impressions which use up life, and
has, if I may say so, embalmed her in a sort of eternal youth. You
would not think her more than twenty. She is fair and slender; her
face, which is very delicate, is especially remarkable for an
expression of angelic sweetness. Deprived of her full reason by a
terrible catastrophe, her monomania has something touching about it.
She always carries in her arms or keeps beside her a bundle of linen
which she nurses and cares for as though it were a sick child; and,
excepting Bruneau and myself, whom she recognizes, she thinks all
other men are doctors, whom she consults about the child, and to whom
she listens as oracles. A crisis which lately happened in her malady
has convinced Horace Bianchon, that prince of science, that if the
reality could be substituted for this long delusion of motherhood, her
reason would assert itself. It is surely a worthy task to bring back
light to a soul in which it is scarcely veiled; and the existing bond
of relationship has seemed to me to point you out as specially
designated to effect this cure, the success of which Bianchon and two
other eminent doctors who have consulted with him declare to be beyond
a doubt. Now, I will take you to Lydie's presence; remember to play
the part of doctor; for the only thing that makes her lose her
customary serenity is not to enter into her notion of medical
consultation."
After crossing several rooms Corentin was on the point of taking la
Peyrade into that usually occupied by Lydie when employed in cradling
or dandling her imaginary child, when suddenly they were stopped by
the sound of two or three chords struck by the hand of a master on a
piano of the finest sonority.
"What is that?" asked la Peyrade.
"That is Lydie," replied Corentin, with what might be called an
expression of paternal pride; "she is an admirable musician, and
though she no longer writes down, as in the days when her mind was
clear, her delightful melodies, she often improvises them in a way
that moves me to the soul--the soul of Corentin!" added the old man,
smiling. "Is not that the finest praise I can bestow upon her? But
suppose we sit down here and listen to her. If we go in, the concert
will cease and the medical consultation begin."
La Peyrade was amazed as he listened to an improvisation in which the
rare union of inspiration and science opened to his impressionable
nature a source of emotions as deep as they were unexpected. Corentin
watched the surprise which from moment to moment the Provencal
expressed by admiring exclamations.
"Hein! how she plays!" said the old man. "Liszt himself hasn't a
firmer touch."
To a very quick "scherzo" the performer now added the first notes of
an "adagio."
"She is going to sing," said Corentin, recognizing the air.
"Does she sing too?" asked la Peyrade.
"Like Pasta, like Malibran; but hush, listen to her!"
After a few opening bars in "arpeggio" a vibrant voice resounded, the
tones of which appeared to stir the Provencal to the depths of his
being.
"How the music moves you!" said Corentin; "you were undoubtedly made
for each other."
"My God! the same air! the same voice!"
"Have you already met Lydie somewhere?" asked the great master of the
police.
"I don't know--I think not," answered la Peyrade, in a stammering
voice; "in any case, it was long ago--But that air--that voice--I
think--"
"Let us go in," said Corentin.
Opening the door abruptly, he entered, pulling the young man after
him.
Sitting with her back to the door, and prevented by the sound of the
piano from hearing what happened behind her, Lydie did not notice
their entrance.
"Now have you any remembrance of her?" said Corentin.
La Peyrade advanced a step, and no sooner had he caught a glimpse of
the girl's profile than he threw up his hands above his head, striking
them together.
"It is she!" he cried.
Hearing his cry, Lydie turned round, and fixing her attention on
Corentin, she said:--
"How naughty and troublesome you are to come and disturb me; you know
very well I don't like to be listened to. Ah! but--" she added,
catching sight of la Peyrade's black coat, "you have brought the
doctor; that is very kind of you; I was just going to ask you to send
for him. The baby has done nothing but cry since morning; I was
singing to put her to sleep, but nothing can do that."
And she ran to fetch what she called her child from a corner of the
room, where with two chairs laid on their backs and the cushions of
the sofa, she had constructed a sort of cradle.
As she went towards la Peyrade, carrying her precious bundle with one
hand, with the other she was arranging the imaginary cap of her
"little darling," having no eyes except for the sad creation of her
disordered brain. Step by step, as she advanced, la Peyrade, pale,
trembling, and with staring eyes, retreated backwards, until he struck
against a seat, into which, losing his equilibrium, he fell.
A man of Corentin's power and experience, and who, moreover, knew to
its slightest detail the horrible drama in which Lydie had lost her
reason, had already, of course, taken in the situation, but it suited
his purpose and his ideas to allow the clear light of evidence to
pierce this darkness.
"Look, doctor," said Lydie, unfastening the bundle, and putting the
pins in her mouth as she did so, "don't you see that she is growing
thinner every day?"
La Peyrade could not answer; he kept his handkerchief over his face,
and his breath came so fast from his chest that he was totally unable
to utter a word.
Then, with one of those gestures of feverish impatience, to which her
mental state predisposed her, she exclaimed, hastily:--
"But look at her doctor, look!" taking his arm violently and forcing
him to show his features. "My God!" she cried, when she had looked him
in the face.
Letting fall the linen bundle in her arms, she threw herself hastily
backwards, and her eyes grew haggard. Passing her white hands rapidly
over her forehead and through her hair, tossing it into disorder, she
seemed to be making an effort to obtain from her memory some dormant
recollection. Then, like a frightened mare, which comes to smell an
object that has given it a momentary terror, she approached la Peyrade
slowly, stooping to look into his face, which he kept lowered, while,
in the midst of a silence inexpressible, she examined him steadily for
several seconds. Suddenly a terrible cry escaped her breast; she ran
for refuge into the arms of Corentin, and pressing herself against him
with all her force, she exclaimed:--
"Save me! save me! It is he! the wretch! It is he who did it!"
And, with her finger pointed at la Peyrade, she seemed to nail the
miserable object of her terror to his place.
After this explosion, she muttered a few disconnected words, and her
eyes closed; Corentin felt the relaxing of all the muscles by which
she had held him as in a vice the moment before, and he took her in
his arms and laid her on the sofa, insensible.
"Do not stay here, monsieur," said Corentin. "Go into my study; I will
come to you presently."
A few minutes later, after giving Lydie into the care of Katte and
Bruneau, and despatching Perrache for Doctor Bianchon, Corentin
rejoined la Peyrade.
"You see now, monsieur," he said with solemnity, "that in pursuing
with a sort of passion the idea of this marriage, I was following, in
a sense, the ways of God."
"Monsieur," said la Peyrade, with compunction, "I will confess to
you--"
"Useless," said Corentin; "you can tell me nothing that I do not know;
I, on the contrary, have much to tell you. Old Peyrade, your uncle, in
the hope of earning a POT for this daughter whom he idolized, entered
into a dangerous private enterprise, the nature of which I need not
explain. In it he made enemies; enemies who stopped at nothing,
--murder, poison, rape. To paralyze your uncle's action by attacking
him in his dearest spot, Lydie was, not abducted, but enticed from her
home and taken to a house apparently respectable, where for ten days
she was kept concealed. She was not much alarmed by this detention,
being told that it was done at her father's wish, and she spent her
time with her music--you remember, monsieur, how she sang?"
"Oh!" exclaimed la Peyrade, covering his face with his hands.
"I told you yesterday that you might perhaps have more upon your
conscience than the Thuillier house. But you were young; you had just
come from your province, with that brutality, that frenzy of Southern
blood in your veins which flings itself upon such an occasion.
Besides, your relationship became known to those who were preparing
the ruin of this new Clarissa Harlowe, and I am willing to believe
than an abler and better man than you might not have escaped the
entanglement into which you fell. Happily, Providence has granted that
there is nothing absolutely irreparable in this horrible history. The
same poison, according to the use that is made of it, may give either
death or health."
"But, monsieur," said la Peyrade, "shall I not always be to her an
object of horror?"
"The doctor, monsieur," said Katte, opening the door.
"How is Mademoiselle Lydie?" asked la Peyrade, eagerly.
"Very calm," replied Katte. "Just now, when we put her to bed,--though
she did not want to go, saying she felt well,--I took her the bundle
of linen, but she told me to take it away, and asked what I meant her
to do with it."
"You see," said Corentin, grasping the Provencal's hand, "you are the
lance of Achilles."
And he left the room with Katte to receive Doctor Bianchon.
Left alone, Theodose was a prey to thoughts which may perhaps be
imagined. After a while the door opened, and Bruneau, the old valet,
ushered in Cerizet. Seeing la Peyrade, the latter exclaimed:--
"Ha! ha! I knew it! I knew you would end by seeing du Portail. And the
marriage,--how does that come on?"
"What are you doing here?" asked la Peyrade.
"Something that concerns you; or rather, something that we must do
together. Du Portail, who is too busy to attend to business just now,
has sent me in here to see you, and consult as to the best means of
putting a spoke in Thuillier's election; it seems that the government
is determined to prevent his winning it. Have you any ideas about it?"
"No," replied la Peyrade; "and I don't feel in the mood just now to be
imaginative."
"Well, here's the situation," said Cerizet. "The government has
another candidate, which it doesn't yet produce, because the
ministerial negotiations with him have been rather difficult. During
this time Thuillier's chances have been making headway. Minard, on
whom they counted to create a diversion, sits, the stupid fool, in his
corner; the seizure of that pamphlet has given your blockhead of a
protege a certain perfume of popularity. In short, the ministry are
afraid he'll be elected, and nothing could be more disagreeable to
them. Pompous imbeciles, like Thuillier, are horribly embarrassing in
the Opposition; they are pitchers without handles; you can't take hold
of them anywhere."
"Monsieur Cerizet," said la Peyrade, beginning to assume a protecting
tone, and wishing to discover his late associate's place in Corentin's
confidence, "you seem to know a good deal about the secret intentions
of the government; have you found your way to a certain desk in the
rue de Grenelle?"
"No. All that I tell you," said Cerizet, "I get from du Portail."
"Ah ca!" said la Peyrade, lowering his voice, "who _is_ du Portail? You
seem to have known him for some time. A man of your force ought to
have discovered the real character of a man who seems to me to be
rather mysterious."
"My friend," replied Cerizet, "du Portail is a pretty strong man. He's
an old slyboots, who has had some post, I fancy, in the administration
of the national domain, or something of that kind, under government;
in which, I think, he must have been employed in the departments
suppressed under the Empire."
"Yes?" said la Peyrade.
"That's where I think he made his money," continued Cerizet; "and
being a shrewd old fellow, and having a natural daughter to marry, he
has concocted this philanthropic tale of her being the daughter of an
old friend named Peyrade; and your name being the same may have given
him the idea of fastening upon you--for, after all, he has to marry
her to somebody."
"Yes, that's all very well; but his close relations with the
government, and the interest he takes in elections, how do you explain
all that?"
"Naturally enough," replied Cerizet. "Du Portail is a man who loves
money, and likes to handle it; he has done Rastignac, that great
manipulator of elections, who is, I think, his compatriot, several
signal services as an amateur; Rastignac, in return, gives him
information, obtained through Nucingen, which enables him to gamble at
the Bourse."
"Did he himself tell you all this?" asked la Peyrade.
"What do you take me for?" returned Cerizet. "With that worthy old
fellow, from whom I have already wormed a promise of thirty thousand
francs, I play the ninny; I flatten myself to nothing. But I've made
Bruneau talk, that old valet of his. You can safely ally yourself to
his family, my dear fellow; du Portail is powerfully rich; he'll get
you made sub-prefect somewhere; and thence to a prefecture and a
fortune is but one step."
"Thanks for the information," said la Peyrade; "at least, I shall know
on which foot to hop. But you yourself, how came you to know him?"
"Oh! that's quite a history; by my help he was able to get back a lot
of diamonds which had been stolen from him."
At this moment Corentin entered the room.
"All is well," he said to la Peyrade. "There are signs of returning
reason. Bianchon, to whom I have told all, wishes to confer with you;
therefore, my dear Monsieur Cerizet, we will postpone until this
evening, if you are willing, our little study over the Thuillier
election."
"Well, so here you have him, at last!" said Cerizet, slapping la
Peyrade's shoulder.
"Yes," said Corentin, "and you know what I promised; you may rely on
that."
Cerizet departed joyful.
CHAPTER XVI
CHECKMATE TO THUILLIER
The day after that evening, when Corentin, la Peyrade, and Cerizet
were to have had their consultation in reference to the attack on
Thuillier's candidacy, the latter was discussing with his sister
Brigitte the letter in which Theodose declined the hand of Celeste,
and his mind seemed particularly to dwell on the postscript where it
was intimated that la Peyrade might not continue the editor of the
"Echo de la Bievre." At this moment Henri, the "male domestic,"
entered the room to ask if his master would receive Monsieur Cerizet.
Thuillier's first impulse was to deny himself to that unwelcome
visitor. Then, thinking better of it, he reflected that if la Peyrade
suddenly left him in the lurch, Cerizet might possibly prove a
precious resource. Consequently, he ordered Henri to show him in. His
manner, however, was extremely cold, and in some sort expectant. As
for Cerizet, he presented himself without the slightest embarrassment
and with the air of a man who had calculated all the consequences of
the step he was taking.
"Well, my dear monsieur," he began, "I suppose by this time you have
been posted as to the Sieur la Peyrade."
"What may you mean by that?" said Thuillier, stiffly.
"Well, the man," replied Cerizet, "who, after intriguing to marry your
goddaughter, breaks off the marriage abruptly--as he will, before
long, break that lion's-share contract he made you sign about his
editorship--can't be, I should suppose, the object of the same blind
confidence you formerly reposed in him."
"Ah!" said Thuillier, hastily, "then do you know anything about la
Peyrade's intention of leaving the newspaper?"
"No," said the other; "on the terms I now am with him, you can readily
believe we don't see each other; still less should I receive his
confidences. But I draw the induction from the well-known character of
the person, and you may be sure that when he finds it for his interest
to leave you, he'll throw you away like an old coat--I've passed that
way, and I speak from experience."
"Then you must have had some difficulties with him before you joined
my paper?" said Thuillier, interrogatively.
"Parbleu!" replied Cerizet; "the affair of this house which he helped
you to buy was mine; I started that hare. He was to put me in relation
with you, and make me the principal tenant of the house. But the
unfortunate affair of that bidding-in gave him a chance to knock me
out of everything and get all the profits for himself."
"Profits!" exclaimed Thuillier. "I don't see that he got anything out
of that transaction, except the marriage which he now refuses--"
"But," interrupted Cerizet, "there's the ten thousand francs he got
out of you on pretence of the cross which you never received, and the
twenty-five thousand he owes to Madame Lambert, for which you went
security, and which you will soon have to pay like a good fellow."
"What's this I hear?" cried Brigitte, up in arms; "twenty-five
thousand francs for which you have given security?"
"Yes, mademoiselle," interposed Cerizet; "behind that sum which this
woman had lent him there was a mystery, and if I had not laid my hand
on the true explanation, there would certainly have been a very dirty
ending to it. La Peyrade was clever enough not only to whitewash
himself in Monsieur Thuillier's eyes, but to get him to secure the
debt."
"But," said Thuillier, "how do you know that I did give security for
that debt, if you have not seen him since then?"
"I know it from the woman herself, who tells the whole story now she
is certain of being paid."
"Well," said Brigitte to her brother, "a pretty business you are
engaged in!"
"Mademoiselle," said Cerizet, "I only meant to warn Monsieur Thuillier
a little. I think myself that you are sure to be paid. Without knowing
the exact particulars of this new marriage, I am certain the family
would never allow him to owe you to such mortifying debts; if
necessary, I should be very glad to intervene."
"Monsieur," said Thuillier, stiffly, "thanking you for your officious
intervention, permit me to say that it surprises me a little, for the
manner in which we parted would not have allowed me to hope it."
"Ah ca!" said Cerizet; "you don't think I was angry with you for that,
do you? I pitied you, that was all. I saw you under the spell, and I
said to myself: 'Leave him to learn la Peyrade by experience.' I knew
very well that the day of justice would dawn for me, and before long,
too. La Peyrade is a man who doesn't make you wait for his
questionable proceedings."
"Allow me to say," remarked Thuillier, "that I do not consider the
rupture of the marriage we had proposed a questionable proceeding. The
matter was arranged, I may say, by mutual consent."
"And the trick he is going to play you by leaving the paper in the
lurch, and the debt he has saddled you with, what are they?"
"Monsieur Cerizet," continued Thuillier, still holding himself on the
reserve, "as I have said more than once to la Peyrade, no man is
indispensable; and if the editorship of my paper becomes vacant, I
feel confident that I shall at once meet with persons very eager to
offer me their services."
"Is it for me you say that?" asked Cerizet. "Well, you haven't hit the
nail; if you did me the honor to want my services it would be
impossible for me to grant them. I have long been disgusted with
journalism. I let la Peyrade, I hardly know why, persuade me to make
this campaign with you; it didn't turn out happily, and I have vowed
to myself to have no more to do with newspapers. It was about another
matter altogether than I came to speak to you."
"Ah!" said Thuillier.
"Yes," continued Cerizet, "remembering the business-like manner in
which you managed the affair of this house in which you do me the
honor to receive me, I thought I could not do better than to call your
attention to a matter of the same kind which I have just now in hand.
But I shall not do as la Peyrade did,--make a bargain for the hand of
your goddaughter, and profess great friendship and devotion to you
personally. This is purely business, and I expect to make my profit
out of it. Now, as I still desire to become the principal tenant of
this house,--the letting of which must be a care and a disappointment
to mademoiselle, for I saw as I came along that the shops were still
unrented,--I think that this lease to me, if you will make it, might
be reckoned in to my share of the profits. You see, monsieur, that the
object of my visit has nothing to do with the newspaper."
"What is this new affair?" said Brigitte; "that's the first thing to
know."
"It relates to a farm in Beauce, which has just been sold for a song,
and it is placed in my hands to resell, at an advance, but a small
one; you could really buy it, as the saying is, for a bit of bread."
And Cerizet went on to explain the whole mechanism of the affair,
which we need not relate here, as no one but Brigitte would take any
interest in it. The statement was clear and precise, and it took close
hold on the old maid's mind. Even Thuillier himself, in spite of his
inward distrust, was obliged to own that the affair had all the
appearance of a good speculation.
"Only," said Brigitte, "we must first see the farm ourselves."
This, the reader will remember, was her answer to la Peyrade when he
first proposed the purchase of the house at the Madeleine.
"Nothing is easier than that," said Cerizet. "I myself want to see it,
and I have been intending to make a little excursion there. If you
like, I'll be at your door this afternoon with a post-chaise, and
to-morrow morning, very early, we can examine the farm, breakfast at
some inn near by, and be back in time for dinner."
"A post-chaise!" said Brigitte, "that's very lordly; why not take the
diligence?"
"Diligences are so uncertain," replied Cerizet; "you never know at
what time they will get to a place. But you need not think about the
expense, for I should otherwise go alone, and I am only too happy to
offer you two seats in my carriage."
To misers, small gains are often determining causes in great matters;
after a little resistance "pro forma," Brigitte ended by accepting the
proposal, and three hours later the trio were on the road to Chartres,
Cerizet having advised Thuillier not to let la Peyrade know of his
absence, lest he might take some unfair advantage of it.
The next day, by five o'clock, the party had returned, and the brother
and sister, who kept their opinions to themselves in presence of
Cerizet, were both agreed that the purchase was a good one. They had
found the soil of the best quality, the buildings in perfect repair,
the cattle looked sound and healthy; in short, this idea of becoming
the mistress of rural property seemed to Brigitte the final
consecration of opulence.
"Minard," she remarked, "has only a town-house and invested capital,
whereas we shall have all that and a country-place besides; one can't
be really rich without it."
Thuillier was not sufficiently under the charm of that dream--the
realization of which was, in any case, quite distant--to forget, even
for a moment, the "Echo de la Bievre" and his candidacy. No sooner had
he reached home than he asked for the morning's paper.
"It has not come," said the "male domestic."
"That's a fine distribution, when even the owner of the paper is not
served!" cried Thuillier, discontentedly.
Although it was nearly dinner-time, and after his journey he would
much rather have taken a bath than rush to the rue Saint-Dominique,
Thuillier ordered a cab and drove at once to the office of the "Echo."
There a fresh disappointment met him. The paper "was made," as they
say, and all the employees had departed, even la Peyrade. As for
Coffinet, who was not to be found at his post of office-boy, nor yet
at his other post of porter, he had gone "of an errand," his wife
said, taking the key of the closet in which the remaining copies of
the paper were locked up. Impossible, therefore, to procure the number
which the unfortunate proprietor had come so far to fetch.
To describe Thuillier's indignation would be impossible. He marched up
and down the room, talking aloud to himself, as people do in moments
of excitement.
"I'll turn them all out!" he cried. And we are forced to omit the rest
of the furious objurgation.
As he ended his anathema a rap was heard on the door.
"Come in!" said Thuillier, in a tone that depicted his wrath and his
frantic impatience.
The door opened, and Minard rushed precipitately into his arms.
"My good, my excellent friend!" cried the mayor of the eleventh
arrondissement, concluding his embrace with a hearty shake of the
hand.
"Why! what is it?" said Thuillier, unable to comprehend the warmth of
this demonstration.
"Ah! my dear friend," continued Minard, "such an admirable proceeding!
really chivalrous! most disinterested! The effect, I assure you, is
quite stupendous in the arrondissement."
"But what, I say?" cried Thuillier, impatiently.
"The article, the whole action," continued Minard, "so noble, so
elevated!"
"But what article? what action?" said the proprietor of the "Echo,"
getting quite beside himself.
"The article of this morning," said Minard.
"The article of this morning?"
"Ah ca! did you write it when you were asleep; or, like Monsieur
Jourdain doing prose, do you do heroism without knowing it?"
"I! I haven't written any article!" cried Thuillier. "I have been away
from Paris for a day, and I don't even know what is in this morning's
paper; and the office-boy is not here to give me a copy."
"I have one," said Minard, pulling the much desired paper from his
pocket. "If the article is not years you have certainly inspired it;
in any case, the deed is done."
Thuillier hurriedly unfolded the sheet Minard had given him, and
devoured rather than read the following article:--
Long enough has the proprietor of this regenerated journal
submitted without complaint and without reply to the cowardly
insinuations with which a venal press insults all citizens who,
strong in their convictions, refuse to pass beneath the Caudine
Forks of power. Long enough has a man, who has already given
proofs of devotion and abnegation in the important functions of
the aedility of Paris, allowed these sheets to call him ambitious
and self-seeking. Monsieur Jerome Thuillier, strong in his
dignity, has suffered such coarse attacks to pass him with
contempt. Encouraged by this disdainful silence, the stipendiaries
of the press have dared to write that this journal, a work of
conviction and of the most disinterested patriotism, was but the
stepping-stone of a man, the speculation of a seeker for election.
Monsieur Jerome Thuillier has held himself impassible before these
shameful imputations because justice and truth are patient, and he
bided his time to scotch the reptile. That time has come.
"That deuce of a Peyrade!" said Thuillier, stopping short; "how he
does touch it off!"
"It is magnificent!" cried Minard.
Reading aloud, Thuillier continued:--
Every one, friends and enemies alike, can bear witness that
Monsieur Jerome Thuillier has done nothing to seek a candidacy
which was offered to him spontaneously.
"That's evident," said Thuillier, interrupting himself. Then he
resumed:--
But, since his sentiments are so odiously misrepresented, and his
intentions so falsely travestied, Monsieur Jerome Thuillier owes
it to himself, and above all to the great national party of which
he is the humblest soldier, to give an example which shall
confound the vile sycophants of power.
"It is fine, the way la Peyrade poses me!" said Thuillier, pausing
once more in his reading. "I see now why he didn't send me the paper;
he wanted to enjoy my surprise--'confound the vile sycophants of
power!' how fine that is!"
After which reflection, he continued:--
Monsieur Thuillier was so far from founding this journal of
dynastic opposition to support and promote his election that, at
the very moment when the prospects of that election seem most
favorable to himself and most disastrous to his rivals, he here
declares publicly, and in the most formal, absolute, and
irrevocable manner that he _renounces his candidacy_.
"What?" cried Thuillier, thinking he had read wrong, or had
misunderstood what he read.
"Go on! go on!" said the mayor of the eleventh.
Then, as Thuillier, with a bewildered air, seemed not disposed to
continue his reading, Minard took the paper from his hands and read
the rest of the article himself, beginning where the other had left
off:--
Renounces his candidacy; and he strongly urges the electors to
transfer to Monsieur Minard, mayor of the eleventh arrondissement
and his friend and colleague in his municipal functions, all the
votes with which they seemed about to honor him.
"But this is infamous!" cried Thuillier, recovering his speech; "you
have bought that Jesuit la Peyrade."
"So," said Minard, stupefied by Thuillier's attitude, "the article was
not agreed upon between you?"
"The wretch has profited by my absence to slip it into the paper; I
understand now why he prevented a copy from reaching me to-day."
"My dear friend," said Minard, "what you tell me will seem incredible
to the public."
"I tell you it is treachery; it is an abominable trap. Renounce my
candidacy!--why should I?"
"You understand, my dear friend," said Minard, "that I am truly sorry
if your confidence has been abused, but I have just issued my circular
manifesto; the die is cast, and luck to the lucky now."
"Leave me," said Thuillier; "it is a comedy for which you have paid."
"Monsieur Thuillier," said Minard, in a threatening voice, "I advise
you not to repeat those words, unless you are ready to give me
satisfaction for them."
Happily for Thuillier, who, we may remember, had made his profession
of faith as to civic courage some time before, he was relieved from
answering by Coffinet, who now opened the door of the editorial
sanctum, and announced:--
"Messieurs the electors of the twelfth arrondissement."
The arrondissement was represented on this occasion by five persons.
An apothecary, chairman of the deputation, proceeded to address
Thuillier in the following terms:--
"We have come, monsieur, after taking cognizance of an article
inserted this morning in the 'Echo de la Bievre,' to inquire of you
what may be precisely the origin and bearing of that article; thinking
it incredible that, having solicited our suffrages, you should, on the
eve of this election, and from a most mistaken puritanism, have cast
disorder and disunion into our ranks, and probably have caused the
triumph of the ministerial candidate. A candidate does not belong to
himself; he belongs to the electors who have promised to honor him
with their votes. But," continued the orator, casting his eye at
Minard, "the presence in these precincts of the candidate whom you
have gone out of your way to recommend to us, indicates that between
you and him there is connivance; and I have no need to ask who is
being here deceived."
"No, messieurs, no," said Thuillier; "I have not renounced my
candidacy. That article was written and printed without my knowledge
or consent. To-morrow you will see the denial of it in the same paper,
and you will also learn that the infamous person who has betrayed my
confidence is no longer the editor of this journal."
"Then," said the orator of the deputation, "in spite of your
declaration to the contrary, you do continue to be the candidate of
the Opposition?"
"Yes, messieurs, until death; and I beg you to use your utmost
influence in the quarter to neutralize the effect of this deliberate
falsehood until I am able to officially present the most formal
disavowal."
"Hear! hear!" said the electors.
"And, as for the presence of Monsieur Minard, my competitor, in these
precincts, I have not invited it; and at the moment when you entered
this room, I was engaged in a very sharp and decided explanation with
him."
"Hear! hear!" said the electors again.
Then, after cordially shaking the hand of the apothecary, Thuillier
conducted the deputation to the outer door of the apartment; after
which, returning to the editorial sanctum, he said:--
"My dear Minard, I withdraw the words which wounded you; but you can
see now what justification I had for my indignation."
Here Coffinet again opened the door and announced:--
"Messieurs the electors of the eleventh arrondissement."
The arrondissement was represented this time by seven persons. A
linen-draper, chairman of the delegation, addressed Thuillier in the
following speech:--
"Monsieur, it is with sincere admiration that we have learned this
morning from the columns of your paper, the great civic act by which
you have touched all hearts. You have shown, in thus retiring, a most
unusual disinterestedness, and the esteem of your fellow-citizens--"
"Excuse me," said Thuillier, interrupting him, "I cannot allow you to
continue; the article about which you are so good as to congratulate
me, was inserted by mistake."
"What!" said the linen-draper; "then do you not retire? Can you
suppose that in opposition to the candidacy of Monsieur Minard (whose
presence in these precincts seems to me rather singular) you have the
slightest chance of success?"
"Monsieur," said Thuillier, "have the goodness to request the electors
of your arrondissement to await the issue of to-morrow's paper, in
which I shall furnish categorical explanations of the most distinct
character. The article to-day is the result of a misunderstanding."
"It will be a sad pity, monsieur," said the linen-draper, "if you lose
this occasion to place yourself in the eyes of your fellow-citizens
beside the Washingtons and other great men of antiquity."
"I say again, _to-morrow_, messieurs," said Thuillier. "I am none the
less sensible to the honor you do me, and I trust that when you know
the whole truth, I shall not suffer in your esteem."
"A pretty queer mess this seems to be," said the voice of an elector.
"Yes," said another; "it looks as if they meant to bamboozle us."
"Messieurs, messieurs!" cried the chairman, putting a stop to the
outbreak; "to-morrow--we will wait until to-morrow for the promised
explanations."
Whereupon, the deputation retired.
It is not likely that Thuillier would have accompanied them beyond the
door of the sanctum, but in any case he was prevented by the sudden
entrance of la Peyrade.
"I have just come from your house, my dear fellow," said the
Provencal; "they told me I should find you here."
"You have come, doubtless, for the purpose of explaining to me the
strange article you allowed yourself to insert in my name."
"Precisely," said la Peyrade. "The remarkable man whom you know, and
whose powerful influence you have already felt, confided to me
yesterday, in your interests, the plans of the government, and I saw
at once that your defeat was inevitable. I wished therefore to secure
to you an honorable and dignified retreat. There was no time to lose;
you were absent from Paris, and therefore--"
"Very good, monsieur," said Thuillier; "but you will take notice that
from the present moment you are no longer the editor of this paper."
"That is what I came to tell you."
"Perhaps you also came to settle the little account we have together."
"Messieurs," said Minard, "I see that this is a business interview; I
shall therefore take leave of you."
As soon as Minard had left the room, la Peyrade pulled out his
pocket-book.
"Here are ten thousand francs," he said, "which I will beg you to
remit to Mademoiselle Brigitte; and here, also, is the bond by which
you secured the payment of twenty-five thousand francs to Madame
Lambert; that sum I have now paid in full, and here is the receipt."
"Very good, monsieur," said Thuillier.
La Peyrade bowed and went away.
"Serpent!" said Thuillier as he watched him go.
"Cerizet said the right thing," thought la Peyrade,--"a pompous
imbecile!"
The blow struck at Thuillier's candidacy was mortal, but Minard did
not profit by it. While the pair were contending for votes, a
government man, an aide-de-camp to the king, arrived with his hands
full of tobacco licenses and other electoral small change, and, like
the third thief, he slipped between the two who were thumping each
other, and carried off the booty.
It is needless to say that Brigitte did not get her farm in Beauce.
That was only a mirage, by help of which Thuillier was enticed out of
Paris long enough for la Peyrade to deal his blow,--a service rendered
to the government on the one hand, but also a precious vengeance for
the many humiliations he had undergone.
Thuillier had certainly some suspicions as to the complicity of
Cerizet, but that worthy managed to justify himself; and by
manoeuvring the sale of the "Echo de la Bievre," now become a
nightmare to the luckless owner, he ended by appearing as white as
snow.
The paper was secretly bought up by Corentin, and the late opposition
sheet became a "canard" sold on Sundays in the wine-shops and
concocted in the dens of the police.
CHAPTER XVII
IN THE EXERCISE OF HIS FUNCTIONS
About two months after the scene in which la Peyrade had been
convinced that through a crime of his past life his future was
irrevocably settled, he (being now married to his victim, who was
beginning to have lucid intervals, though the full return of her
reason would not take place until the occasion indicated by the
doctors) was sitting one morning with the head of the police in the
latter's office. Taking part in the work of the department, the young
man was serving an apprenticeship under that great master in the
difficult and delicate functions to which he was henceforth riveted.
But Corentin found that his pupil did not bring to this initiation all
the ardor and amiability that he desired. It was plain that in la
Peyrade's soul there was a sense of forfeiture and degradation; time
would get the better of that impression, but the callus was not yet
formed.
Opening a number of sealed envelopes enclosing the reports of his
various agents, Corentin glanced over these documents, seldom as
useful as the public suppose, casting them one after another
contemptuously into a basket, whence they issued in a mass for a
burning. But to one of them the great man evidently gave some
particular attention; as he read it a smile flickered on his lips, and
when he had finished, instead of adding it to the pile in the basket,
he gave it to la Peyrade.
"Here," he said, "here's something that concerns you; it shows that in
our profession, which just now seems to you unpleasantly serious, we
do occasionally meet with comedies. Read it aloud; it will cheer me
up."
Before la Peyrade began to read, Corentin added:--
"I ought to tell you that the report is from a man called Henri, whom
Madame Komorn introduced as man-servant at the Thuilliers'; you
probably remember him."
"So!" said la Peyrade, "servants placed in families! is that one of
your methods?"
"Sometimes," replied Corentin; "in order to know all, we must use all
means. But a great many lies are told about us on that subject. It is
not true that the police, making a system of it, has, at certain
periods, by a general enrolment of lacqueys and lady's-maids,
established a vast network in private families. Nothing is fixed and
absolute in our manner of proceeding; we act in accordance with the
time and circumstances. I wanted an ear and an influence in the
Thuillier household; accordingly, I let loose the Godollo upon it, and
she, in turn, partly to assist herself, installed there one of our
men, an intelligent fellow, as you will see for yourself. But for all
that, if, at another time, a servant came and offered to sell me the
secrets of his master, I should have him arrested, and let a warning
reach the ears of the family to distrust the other servants. Now go
on, and read that report."
Monsieur the Director of the Secret Police,
read la Peyrade aloud,--
I did not stay long with the little baron; he is a man wholly
occupied in frivolous pleasures; and there was nothing to be
gathered there that was worthy of a report to you. I have found
another place, where I have already witnessed several thing which
fit into the mission that Madame de Godollo gave me, and
therefore, thinking them likely to interest you, I hasten to bring
them to your knowledge. The household in which I am now employed
is that of an old savant, named Monsieur Picot, who lives on a
first floor, Place de la Madeleine, in the house and apartment
formerly occupied by my late masters, the Thuilliers--
"What!" cried la Peyrade, interrupting his reading, "Pere Picot, that
ruined old lunatic, occupying such an apartment as that?"
"Go on, go on!" said Corentin; "life is full of many strange things.
You'll find the explanation farther along; for our correspondent--it
is the defect of those fellows to waste themselves on details--is only
too fond of dotting his i's."
La Peyrade read on:--
The Thuilliers left this apartment some weeks ago to return to
their Latin quarter. Mademoiselle Brigitte never really liked our
sphere; her total want of education made her ill at ease. Just
because I speak correctly, she was always calling me 'the orator,'
and she could not endure Monsieur Pascal, her porter, because,
being beadle in the church of the Madeleine, he had manners; she
even found something to say against the dealers in the great
market behind the church, where, of course, she bought her
provisions; she complained that they gave themselves _capable_
airs, merely because they are not so coarse-tongued as those of
the Halle, and only laughed at her when she tried to beat them
down. She has leased the whole house to a certain Monsieur Cerizet
(a very ugly man, with a nose all eaten away) for an annual rent of
fifty-five thousand francs. This tenant seems to know what he is
about. He has lately married an actress at one of the minor
theatres, Mademoiselle Olympe Cardinal, and he was just about to
occupy himself the first-floor apartment, where he proposed to
establish his present business, namely, insurance for the "dots"
of children, when Monsieur Picot, arriving from England with his
wife, a very rich Englishwoman, saw the apartment and offered such
a good price that Monsieur Cerizet felt constrained to take it.
That was the time when, by the help of M. Pascal, the porter, with
whom I have been careful to maintain good relations, I entered the
household of Monsieur Picot.
"Monsieur Picot married to a rich Englishwoman!" exclaimed la Peyrade,
interrupting himself again; "but it is incomprehensible."
"Go on, I tell you," said Corentin; "you'll comprehend it presently."
The fortune of my new master,
continued la Peyrade,
is quite a history; and I speak of it to Monsieur le directeur
because another person in whom Madame de Godollo was interested
has his marriage closely mixed up in it. That other person is
Monsieur Felix Phellion, the inventor of a star, who, in despair
at not being able to marry that demoiselle whom they wanted to
give to the Sieur la Peyrade whom Madame de Godollo made such a
fool of--
"Scoundrel!" said the Provencal, in a parenthesis. "Is that how he
speaks of me? He doesn't know who I am."
Corentin laughed heartily and exhorted his pupil to read on.
--who, in despair at not being able to marry that demoiselle . . .
went to England in order to embark for a journey round the world
--a lover's notion! Learning of this departure, Monsieur Picot,
his former professor, who took great interest in his pupil, went
after him to prevent that nonsense, which turned out not to be
difficult. The English are naturally very jealous of discoveries,
and when they saw Monsieur Phellion coming to embark at the heels
of their own savants they asked him for his permit from the
Admiralty; which, not having been provided, he could not produce;
so then they laughed in his face and would not let him embark at
all, fearing that he should prove more learned than they.
"He is a fine hand at the 'entente cordiale,' your Monsieur Henri,"
said la Peyrade, gaily.
"Yes," replied Corentin; "you will be struck, in the reports of nearly
all our agents, with this general and perpetual inclination to
calumniate. But what's to be done? For the trade of spies we can't
have angels."
Left upon the shore, Telemachus and his mentor--
"You see our men are lettered," commented Corentin.
--Telemachus and his mentor thought best to return to France, and
were about to do so when Monsieur Picot received a letter such as
none but an Englishwoman could write. It told him that the writer
had read his "Theory of Perpetual Motion," and had also heard of
his magnificent discovery of a star; that she regarded him as a
genius only second to Newton, and that if the hand of her who
addressed him, joined to eighty thousand pounds sterling--that is,
two millions--of "dot," was agreeable to him it was at his
disposal. The first thought of the good man was to make his pupil
marry her, but finding that impossible, he told her, before
accepting on his own account, that he was old and three-quarters
blind, and had never discovered a star, and did not own a penny.
The Englishwoman replied that Milton was not young either, and was
altogether blind; that Monsieur Picot seemed to her to have
nothing worse than a cataract, for she knew all about it, being
the daughter of a great oculist, and she would have him operated
upon; that as for the star, she did not care so very much about
that; it was the author of the "Theory of Perpetual Motion" who
was the man of her dreams, and to whom she again offered her hand
with eighty thousand pounds sterling (two millions) of "dot."
Monsieur Picot replied that if his sight were restored and she
would consent to live in Paris, for he hated England, he would let
himself be married. The operation was performed and was
successful, and, at the end of three weeks the newly married pair
arrived in the capital. These details I obtained from the lady's
maid, with whom I am on the warmest terms.
"Oh! the puppy!" said Corentin, laughing.
The above is therefore hearsay, but what remains to be told to
Monsieur le directeur are facts of which I can speak "de visu,"
and to which I am, consequently, in a position to certify. As
soon as Monsieur and Madame Picot had installed themselves, which
was done in the most sumptuous and comfortable manner, my master
gave me a number of invitations to dinner to carry to the
Thuillier family, the Colleville family, the Minard family, the
Abbe Gondrin, vicar of the Madeleine, and nearly all the guests
who were present at another dinner a few months earlier, when he
had an encounter with Mademoiselle Thuillier, and behaved, I must
say, in a rather singular manner. All the persons who received
these invitations were so astonished to learn that the old man
Picot had married a rich wife and was living in the Thuilliers'
old apartment that most of them came to inquire of Monsieur
Pascal, the porter, to see if they were hoaxed. The information
they obtained being honest and honorable, the whole society
arrived punctually on time; but Monsieur Picot did not appear.
The guests were received by Madame Picot, who does not speak
French and could only say, "My husband is coming soon"; after
which, not being able to make further conversation, the company
were dull and ill at ease. At last Monsieur Picot arrived, and all
present were stupefied on seeing, instead of an old blind man,
shabbily dressed, a handsome young elderly man, bearing his years
jauntily, like Monsieur Ferville of the Gymnase, who said with a
lively air:
"I beg your pardon, mesdames, for not being here at the moment of
your arrival; but I was at the Academy of Sciences, awaiting the
result of an election,--that of Monsieur Felix Phellion, who has
been elected unanimously less three votes."
This news seemed to have a great effect upon the company. So then
Monsieur Picot resumed:--
"I must also, mesdames, ask your pardon for the rather improper
manner in which I behaved a short time ago in the house where we
are now assembled. My excuse must be my late infirmity, the
annoyances of a family lawsuit, and of an old housekeeper who
robbed me and tormented me in a thousand ways, from whom I am
happily delivered. To-day you see me another man, rejuvenated and
rich with the blessings bestowed upon me by the amiable woman who
has given me her hand; and I should be in the happiest frame of
mind to receive you if the recollection of my young friend, whose
eminence as a man of science has just been consecrated by the
Academy, did not cast upon my mind a veil of sadness. All here
present," continued Monsieur Picot, raising his voice, which is
rather loud, "are guilty towards him: I, for ingratitude when he
gave me the glory of his discovery and the reward of his immortal
labors; that young lady, whom I see over there with tears in her
eyes, for having foolishly accused him of atheism; that other
lady, with the stern face, for having harshly replied to the
proposals of his noble father, whose white hairs she ought rather
to have honored; Monsieur Thuillier, for having sacrificed him to
ambition; Monsieur Colleville, for not performing his part of
father and choosing for his daughter the worthiest and most
honorable man; Monsieur Minard, for having tried to foist his son
into his place. There are but two persons in the room at this
moment who have done him full justice,--Madame Thuillier and
Monsieur l'Abbe Gondrin. Well, I shall now ask that man of God
whether we can help doubting the divine justice when this generous
young man, the victim of all of us, is, at the present hour, at
the mercy of waves and tempests, to which for three long years he
is consigned."
"Providence is very powerful, monsieur," replied the Abbe Gondrin.
"God will protect Monsieur Felix Phellion wherever he may be, and
I have the firmest hope that three years hence he will be among
his friends once more."
"But three years!" said Monsieur Picot. "Will it still be time?
Will Mademoiselle Colleville have waited for him?"
"Yes, I swear it!" cried the young girl, carried away by an
impulse she could not control.
Then she sat down again, quite ashamed, and burst into tears.
"And you, Mademoiselle Thuillier, and you, Madame Colleville, will
you permit this young lady to reserve herself for one who is
worthy of her?"
"Yes! Yes!" cried everybody; for Monsieur Picot's voice, which is
very full and sonorous, seemed to have tears in it and affected
everybody.
"Then it is time," he said, "to forgive Providence."
And rushing suddenly to the door, where my ear was glued to the
keyhole, he very nearly caught me.
"Announce," he said to me, in a very loud tone of voice, "Monsieur
Felix Phellion and his family."
And thereupon the door of a side room opened, and five or six
persons came out, who were led by Monsieur Picot into the salon.
At the sight of her _lover_, Mademoiselle Colleville was taken ill,
but the faint lasted only a minute; seeing Monsieur Felix at her
feet she threw herself into Madame Thuillier's arms, crying out:--
"Godmother! you always told me to hope."
Mademoiselle Thuillier, who, in spite of her harsh nature and want
of education, I have always myself thought a remarkable woman, now
had a fine impulse. As the company were about to go into the
dining-room,--
"One moment!" she said.
Then going up to Monsieur Phellion, senior, she said to him:
"Monsieur and old friend! I ask you for the hand of Monsieur Felix
Phellion for our adopted daughter, Mademoiselle Colleville."
"Bravo! bravo!" they call cried in chorus.
"My God!" said Monsieur Phellion, with tears in his eyes; "what
have I done to deserve such happiness?"
"You have been an honest man and a Christian without knowing it,"
replied the Abbe Gondrin.
Here la Peyrade flung down the manuscript.
"You did not finish it," said Corentin, taking back the paper.
"However, there's not much more. Monsieur Henri confesses to me that
the scene had _moved him_; he also says that, knowing the interest I
had formerly taken in the marriage, he thought he ought to inform me
of its conclusion; ending with a slightly veiled suggestion of a fee.
No, stay," resumed Corentin, "here is a detail of some importance:--"
The English woman seems to have made it known during dinner that,
having no heirs, her fortune, after the lives of herself and her
husband, will go to Felix. That will make him powerfully rich one
of these days.
La Peyrade had risen and was striding about the room with rapid steps.
"Well," said Corentin, "what is the matter with you?"
"Nothing."
"That is not true," said the great detective. "I think you envy the
happiness of that young man. My dear fellow, permit me to tell you
that if such a conclusion were to your taste, you should have acted as
he has done. When I sent you two thousand francs on which to study
law, I did not intend you to succeed me; I expected you to row your
galley laboriously, to have the needful courage for obscure and
painful toil; your day would infallibly have come. But you chose to
violate fortune--"
"Monsieur!"
"I mean hasten it, reap it before it ripened. You flung yourself into
journalism; then into business, questionable business; you made
acquaintance with Messieurs Dutocq and Cerizet. Frankly, I think you
fortunate to have entered the port which harbors you to-day. In any
case, you are not sufficiently simple of heart to have really valued
the joys reserved for Felix Phellion. These bourgeois--"
"These bourgeois," said la Peyrade, quickly,--"I know them now. They
have great absurdities, great vices even, but they have virtues, or,
at the least, estimable qualities; in them lies the vital force of our
corrupt society."
"_Your_ society!" said Corentin, smiling; "you speak as if you were
still in the ranks. You have another sphere, my dear fellow; and you
must learn to be more content with your lot. Governments pass,
societies perish or dwindle; but we--_we_ dominate all things; the
police is eternal."
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
Note.--This volume ("Les Petits Bourgeois") was not published
until 1854, more than three years after Balzac's death; although
he says of it in March, 1844: "I must tell you that my work
entitled 'Les Petits Bourgeois,' owing to difficulties of
execution, requires still a month's labor, although the book is
entirely written." And again, in October, 1846, he says: "It is to
such scruples" (care in perfecting his work) "that delays which
have injured several of my works are due; for instance, 'Les
Paysans,' which has long been nearly finished, and 'Les Petits
Bourgeois,' which has been in type at the printing office for the
last eighteen months."
ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Barbet
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Man of Business
The Seamy Side of History
The Middle Classes
Baudoyer, Isidore
The Government Clerks
The Middle Classes
Cousin Pons
Beaumesnil, Mademoiselle
The Middle Classes
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
A Second Home
Bianchon, Horace
Father Goriot
The Atheist's Mass
Cesar Birotteau
The Commission in Lunacy
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Bachelor's Establishment
The Secrets of a Princess
The Government Clerks
Pierrette
A Study of Woman
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Honorine
The Seamy Side of History
The Magic Skin
A Second Home
A Prince of Bohemia
Letters of Two Brides
The Muse of the Department
The Imaginary Mistress
The Middle Classes
Cousin Betty
The Country Parson
In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following:
Another Study of Woman
La Grande Breteche
Bousquier, Du (or Du Croisier or Du Bourguier)
Jealousies of a Country Town
The Middle Classes
Brisetout, Heloise
Cousin Betty
Cousin Pons
The Middle Classes
Bruel, Jean Francois du
A Bachelor's Establishment
The Government Clerks
A Start in Life
A Prince of Bohemia
The Middle Classes
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Daughter of Eve
Bruel, Claudine Chaffaroux, Madame du
A Bachelor's Establishment
A Prince of Bohemia
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Letters of Two Brides
The Middle Classes
Bruno
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Middle Classes
Cardot (Parisian notary)
The Muse of the Department
A Man of Business
Jealousies of a Country Town
Pierre Grassou
The Middle Classes
Cousin Pons
Cerizet
Lost Illusions
A Man of Business
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Middle Classes
Chaffaroux
Cesar Birotteau
A Prince of Bohemia
The Middle Classes
Claparon, Charles
A Bachelor's Establishment
Cesar Birotteau
Melmoth Reconciled
The Firm of Nucingen
A Man of Business
The Middle Classes
Cochin, Emile-Louis-Lucien-Emmanuel
Cesar Birotteau
The Government Clerks
The Firm of Nucingen
The Middle Classes
Colleville
The Government Clerks
The Middle Classes
Colleville, Flavie Minoret, Madame
The Government Clerks
Cousin Betty
The Middle Classes
Corentin
The Chouans
The Gondreville Mystery
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Middle Classes
Couture
Beatrix
The Firm of Nucingen
The Middle Classes
Crochard, Charles
A Second Home
The Middle Classes
Desroches (son)
A Bachelor's Establishment
Colonel Chabert
A Start in Life
A Woman of Thirty
The Commission in Lunacy
The Government Clerks
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Firm of Nucingen
A Man of Business
The Middle Classes
Dutocq
The Government Clerks
The Middle Classes
Fleury
The Government Clerks
The Middle Classes
Galathionne, Prince and Princess (both not in each story)
The Secrets of a Princess
The Middle Classes
Father Goriot
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Daughter of Eve
Beatrix
Godard, Joseph
The Government Clerks
The Middle Classes
Godeschal, Francois-Claude-Marie
Colonel Chabert
A Bachelor's Establishment
A Start in Life
The Commission in Lunacy
The Middle Classes
Cousin Pons
Grassou, Pierre
Pierre Grassou
A Bachelor's Establishment
Cousin Betty
The Middle Classes
Cousin Pons
Grindot
Cesar Birotteau
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Start in Life
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Beatrix
The Middle Classes
Cousin Betty
Katt
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Middle Classes
Keller, Adolphe
The Middle Classes
Pierrette
Cesar Birotteau
La Peyrade, Charles-Marie-Theodose de
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Middle Classes
La Peyrade, Madame de
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Middle Classes
La Roche-Hugon, Martial de
Domestic Peace
The Peasantry
A Daughter of Eve
The Member for Arcis
The Middle Classes
Cousin Betty
Laudigeois
The Government Clerks
The Middle Classes
Lousteau, Etienne
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Bachelor's Establishment
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
A Daughter of Eve
Beatrix
The Muse of the Department
Cousin Betty
A Prince of Bohemia
A Man of Business
The Middle Classes
The Unconscious Humorists
Metivier
Lost Illusions
The Government Clerks
The Middle Classes
Metivier (nephew)
The Seamy Side of History
The Middle Classes
Minard, Auguste-Jean-Francois
The Government Clerks
The Firm of Nucingen
The Middle Classes
Minard, Madame
The Government Clerks
The Middle Classes
Phellion
The Government Clerks
The Middle Classes
Poiret, the elder
The Government Clerks
Father Goriot
A Start in Life
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Middle Classes
Poiret, Madame (nee Christine-Michelle Michonneau)
Father Goriot
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Middle Classes
Popinot, Jean-Jules
Cesar Birotteau
Honorine
The Commission in Lunacy
The Seamy Side of History
The Middle Classes
Rabourdin, Xavier
The Government Clerks
At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
Cesar Birotteau
The Middle Classes
Saillard
The Government Clerks
The Middle Classes
Thuillier
The Government Clerks
The Middle Classes
Thuillier, Marie-Jeanne-Brigitte
The Government Clerks
The Middle Classes
Thuillier, Louis-Jerome
The Government Clerks
The Middle Classes
Tillet, Ferdinand du
Cesar Birotteau
The Firm of Nucingen
The Middle Classes
A Bachelor's Establishment
Pierrette
Melmoth Reconciled
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
The Secrets of a Princess
A Daughter of Eve
The Member for Arcis
Cousin Betty
The Unconscious Humorists
Vinet
Pierrette
The Member for Arcis
The Middle Classes
Cousin Pons
Vinet, Olivier
The Member for Arcis
Cousin Pons
The Middle Classes
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Lesser Bourgeoisie" ***
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