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Title: The Lesser Bourgeoisie

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley

Release Date: February, 1999  [Etext #1641]
Posting Date: February 27, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LESSER BOURGEOISIE ***




Produced by John Bickers, Dagny, and Bonnie Sala





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,
e