CHAPTER VII. SUICIDE
In the month of May Vandenesse took his wife, as usual, to their country-seat, where she was consoled by the passionate letters she received from Raoul, to whom she wrote every day.
Marie’s absence might have saved Raoul from the gulf into which he was falling, if Florine had been near him; but, unfortunately, he was alone in the midst of friends who had become his enemies from the moment that he showed his intention of ruling them. His staff of writers hated him “pro tem.,” ready to hold out a hand to him and console him in case of a fall, ready to adore him in case of success. So goes the world of literature. No one is really liked but an inferior. Every man’s hand is against him who is likely to rise. This wide-spread envy doubles the chances of common minds who excite neither envy nor suspicion, who make their way like moles, and, fools though they be, find themselves gazetted in the “Moniteur,” for three or four places, while men of talent are still struggling at the door to keep each other out.
The underhand enmity of these pretended friends, which Florine would have scented with the innate faculty of a courtesan to get at truth amid a thousand misleading circumstances, was by no means Raoul’s greatest danger. His partners, Massol the lawyer, and du Tillet the banker, had intended from the first to harness his ardor to the chariot of their own importance and get rid of him as soon as he was out of condition to feed the paper, or else to deprive him of his power, arbitrarily, whenever it suited their purpose to take it. To them Nathan represented a certain amount of talent to use up, a literary force of the motive power of ten pens to employ. Massol, one of those lawyers who mistake the faculty of endless speech for eloquence, who possess the art of boring by diffusiveness, the torment of all meetings and assemblies where they belittle everything, and who desire to become personages at any cost,—Massol no longer wanted the place as Keeper of the Seals; he had seen some five or six different men go through that office in four years, and the robes disgusted him. In exchange, his mind was now set on obtaining a chair on the Board of Education and a place in the Council of State; the whole adorned with the cross of the Legion of honor. Du Tillet and Nucingen had guaranteed the cross to him, and the office of Master of Petitions provided he obeyed them blindly.
The better to deceive Raoul, these men allowed him to manage the paper without control. Du Tillet used it only for his stock-gambling, about which Nathan understood next to nothing; but he had given, through Nucingen, an assurance to Rastignac that the paper would be tacitly obliging to the government on the sole condition of supporting his candidacy for Monsieur de Nucingen’s place as soon as he was nominated peer of France. Raoul was thus being undermined by the banker and the lawyer, who saw him with much satisfaction lording it in the newspaper, profiting by all advantages, and harvesting the fruits of self-love, while Nathan, enchanted, believed them to be, as on the occasion of his equestrian wants, the best fellows in the world. He thought he managed them! Men of imagination, to whom hope is the basis of existence, never allow themselves to know that the most perilous moment in their affairs is that when all seems going well according to their wishes.
This was a period of triumph by which Nathan profited. He appeared as a personage in the world, political and financial. Du Tillet presented him to the Nucingens. Madame de Nucingen received him cordially, less for himself than for Madame de Vandenesse; but when she ventured a few words about the countess he thought himself marvellously clever in using Florine as a shield; he alluded to his relations with the actress in a tone of generous self-conceit. How could he desert a great devotion, for the coquetries of the faubourg Saint-Germain?
Nathan, manipulated by Nucingen and Rastignac, by du Tillet and Blondet, gave his support ostentatiously to the “doctrinaires” of their new and ephemeral cabinet. But in order to show himself pure of all bribery he refused to take advantage of certain profitable enterprises which were started by means of his paper,—he! who had no reluctance in compromising friends or in behaving with little decency to mechanics under certain circumstances. Such meannesses, the result of vanity and of ambition, are found in many lives like his. The mantle must be splendid before the eyes of the world, and we steal our friend’s or a poor man’s cloth to patch it.
Nevertheless, two months after the departure of the countess, Raoul had a certain Rabelaisian “quart d’heure” which caused him some anxiety in the midst of these triumphs. Du Tillet had advanced a hundred thousand francs, Florine’s money had gone in the costs of the first establishment of the paper, which were enormous. It was necessary to provide for the future. The banker agreed to let the editor have fifty thousand francs on notes for four months. Du Tillet thus held Raoul by the halter of an IOU. By means of this relief the funds of the paper were secured for six months. In the eyes of some writers six months is an eternity. Besides, by dint of advertising and by offering illusory advantages to subscribers two thousand had been secured; an influx of travellers added to this semi-success, which was enough, perhaps, to excuse the throwing of more bank-bills after the rest. A little more display of talent, a timely political trial or crisis, an apparent persecution, and Raoul felt certain of becoming one of those modern “condottieri” whose ink is worth more than powder and shot of the olden time.
This loan from du Tillet was already made when Florine returned with fifty thousand francs. Instead of creating a savings fund with that sum, Raoul, certain of success (simply because he felt it was necessary), and already humiliated at having accepted the actress’s money, deceived Florine as to his actual position, and persuaded her to employ the money in refurnishing her house. The actress, who did not need persuasion, not only spent the sum in hand, but she burdened herself with a debt of thirty thousand francs, with which she obtained a charming little house all to herself in the rue Pigale, whither her old society resorted. Raoul had reserved the production of his great piece, in which was a part especially suited to Florine, until her return. This comedy-vaudeville was to be Raoul’s farewell to the stage. The newspapers, with that good nature which costs nothing, prepared the way for such an ovation to Florine that even the Theatre-Francais talked of engaging her. The feuilletons proclaimed her the heiress of Mars.
This triumph was sufficiently dazzling to prevent Florine from carefully studying the ground on which Nathan was advancing; she lived, for the time being, in a round of festivities and glory. According to those about her, he was now a great political character; he was justified in his enterprise; he would certainly be a deputy, probably a minister in course of time, like so many others. As for Nathan himself, he firmly believed that in the next session of the Chamber he should find himself in government with two other journalists, one of whom, already a minister, was anxious to associate some of his own craft with himself, and so consolidate his power. After a separation of six months, Nathan met Florine again with pleasure, and returned easily to his old way of life. All his comforts came from the actress, but he embroidered the heavy tissue of his life with the flowers of ideal passion; his letters to Marie were masterpieces of grace and style. Nathan made her the light of his life; he undertook nothing without consulting his “guardian angel.” In despair at being on the popular side, he talked of going over to that of the aristocracy; but, in spite of his habitual agility, even he saw the absolute impossibility of such a jump; it was easier to become a minister. Marie’s precious replies were deposited in one of those portfolios with patent locks made by Huret or Fichet, two mechanics who were then waging war in advertisements and posters all over Paris, as to which could make the safest and most impenetrable locks.
This portfolio was left about in Florine’s new boudoir, where Nathan did much of his work. No one is easier to deceive than a woman to whom a man is in the habit of telling everything; she has no suspicions; she thinks she sees and hears and knows all. Besides, since her return, Nathan had led the most regular of lives under her very nose. Never did she imagine that that portfolio, which she hardly glanced at as it lay there unconcealed, contained the letters of a rival, treasures of admiring love which the countess addressed, at Raoul’s request, to the office of his newspaper.
Nathan’s situation was, therefore, to all appearance, extremely brilliant. He had many friends. The two plays lately produced had succeeded well, and their proceeds supplied his personal wants and relieved him of all care for the future. His debt to du Tillet, “his friend,” did not make him in the least uneasy.
“Why distrust a friend?” he said to Blondet, who from time to time would cast a doubt on his position, led to do so by his general habit of analyzing.
“But we don’t need to distrust our enemies,” remarked Florine.
Nathan defended du Tillet; he was the best, the most upright of men.
This existence, which was really that of a dancer on the tight rope without his balance-pole, would have alarmed any one, even the most indifferent, had it been seen as it really was. Du Tillet watched it with the cool eye and the cynicism of a parvenu. Through the friendly good humor of his intercourse with Raoul there flashed now and then a malignant jeer. One day, after pressing his hand in Florine’s boudoir and watching him as he got into his carriage, du Tillet remarked to Lousteau (envier par excellence):—
“That fellow is off to the Bois in fine style to-day, but he is just as likely, six months hence, to be in a debtor’s prison.”
“He? never!” cried Lousteau. “He has Florine.”
“How do you know that he’ll keep her? As for you, who are worth a dozen of him, I predict that you will be our editor-in-chief within six months.”
In October Nathan’s notes to du Tillet fell due, and the banker graciously renewed them, but for two months only, with the discount added and a fresh loan. Sure of victory, Raoul was not afraid of continuing to put his hand in the bag. Madame Felix de Vandenesse was to return in a few days, a month earlier than usual, brought back, of course, by her unconquerable desire to see Nathan, who felt that he could not be short of money at a time when he renewed that assiduous life.
Correspondence, in which the pen is always bolder than speech, and thought, wreathing itself with flowers, allows itself to be seen without disguise, and brought the countess to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. She believed she saw in Raoul one of the noblest spirits of the epoch, a delicate but misjudged heart without a stain and worthy of adoration; she saw him advancing with a brave hand to grasp the sceptre of power. Soon that speech so beautiful in love would echo from the tribune. Marie now lived only in this life of a world outside her own. Her taste was lost for the tranquil joys of home, and she gave herself up to the agitations of this whirlwind life communicated by a clever and adoring pen. She kissed Raoul’s letters, written in the midst of the ceaseless battles of the press, with time taken from necessary studies; she felt their value; she was certain of being loved, and loved only, with no rival but the fame and ambition he adored. She found enough in her country solitude to fill her soul and employ her faculties,—happy, indeed, to have been so chosen by such a man, who to her was an angel.
During the last days of autumn Marie and Raoul again met and renewed their walks in the Bois, where alone they could see each other until the salons reopened. But when the winter fairly began, Raoul appeared in social life at his apogee. He was almost a personage. Rastignac, now out of power with the ministry, which went to pieces on the death of de Marsay, leaned upon Nathan, and gave him in return the warmest praise. Madame de Vandenesse, feeling this change in public opinion, was desirous of knowing if her husband’s judgment had altered also. She questioned him again; perhaps with the hope of obtaining one of those brilliant revenges which please all women, even the noblest and least worldly,—for may we not believe that even the angels retain some portion of their self-love as they gather in serried ranks before the Holy of Holies?
“Nothing was wanting to Raoul Nathan but to be the dupe he now is to a parcel of intriguing sharpers,” replied the count.
Felix, whose knowledge of the world and politics enabled him to judge clearly, had seen Nathan’s true position. He explained to his wife that Fieschi’s attempt had resulted in attaching to the interests threatened by this attack on Louis-Philippe a large body of hitherto lukewarm persons. The newspapers which were non-committal, and did not show their colors, would lose subscribers; for journalism, like politics, was about to be simplified by falling into regular lines. If Nathan had put his whole fortune into that newspaper he would lose it. This judgment, so apparently just and clear-cut, though brief and given by a man who fathomed a matter in which he had no interest, alarmed Madame de Vandenesse.
“Do you take an interest in him?” asked her husband.
“Only as a man whose mind interests me and whose conversation I like.”
This reply was made so naturally that the count suspected nothing.
The next day at four o’clock, Marie and Raoul had a long conversation together, in a low voice, in Madame d’Espard’s salon. The countess expressed fears which Raoul dissipated, only too happy to destroy by epigrams the conjugal judgment. Nathan had a revenge to take. He characterized the count as narrow-minded, behind the age, a man who judged the revolution of July with the eyes of the Restoration, who would never be willing to admit the triumph of the middle-classes—the new force of all societies, whether temporary or lasting, but a real force. Instead of turning his mind to the study of an opinion given impartially and incidentally by a man well-versed in politics, Raoul mounted his stilts and stalked about in the purple of his own glory. Where is the woman who would not have believed his glowing talk sooner than the cold logic of her husband? Madame de Vandenesse, completely reassured, returned to her life of little enjoyments, clandestine pressures of the hand, occasional quarrels,—in short, to her nourishment of the year before, harmless in itself, but likely to drag a woman over the border if the man she favors is resolute and impatient of obstacles. Happily for her, Nathan was not dangerous. Besides, he was too full of his immediate self-interests to think at this time of profiting by his love.
But toward the end of December, when the second notes fell due, du Tillet demanded payment. The rich banker, who said he was embarrassed, advised Raoul to borrow the money for a short time from a usurer, from Gigonnet, the providence of all young men who were pressed for money. In January, he remarked, the renewal of subscriptions to the paper would be coming in, there would be plenty of money in hand, and they could then see what had best be done. Besides, couldn’t Nathan write a play? As a matter of pride Raoul determined to pay off the notes at once. Du Tillet gave Raoul a letter to Gigonnet, who counted out the money on a note of Nathan’s at twenty days’ sight. Instead of asking himself the reason of such unusual facility, Raoul felt vexed at his folly in not having asked for more. That is how men who are truly remarkable for the power of thought are apt to behave in practical business; they seem to reserve the power of their mind for their writings, and are fearful of lessening it by putting it to use in the daily affairs of life.
Raoul related his morning to Florine and Blondet. He gave them an inimitable sketch of Gigonnet, his fireplace without fire, his shabby wall-paper, his stairway, his asthmatic bell, his aged straw mattress, his den without warmth, like his eye. He made them laugh about this new uncle; they neither troubled themselves about du Tillet and his pretended want of money, nor about an old usurer so ready to disburse. What was there to worry about in that?
“He has only asked you fifteen per cent,” said Blondet; “you ought to be grateful to him. At twenty-five per cent you don’t bow to those old fellows. This is money-lending; usury doesn’t begin till fifty per cent; and then you despise the usurer.”
“Despise him!” cried Florine; “if any of your friends lent you money at that price they’d pose as your benefactors.”
“She is right; and I am glad I don’t owe anything now to du Tillet,” said Raoul.
Why this lack of penetration as to their personal affairs in men whose business it is to penetrate all things? Perhaps the mind cannot be complete at all points; perhaps artists of every kind live too much in the present moment to study the future; perhaps they are too observant of the ridiculous to notice snares, or they may believe that none would dare to lay a snare for such as they. However this may be, the future arrived in due time. Twenty days later Raoul’s notes were protested, but Florine obtained from the Court of commerce an extension of twenty-five days in which to meet them. Thus pressed, Raoul looked into his affairs and asked for the accounts, and it then appeared that the receipts of the newspaper covered only two-thirds of the expenses, while the subscriptions were rapidly dwindling. The great man now grew anxious and gloomy, but to Florine only, in whom he confided. She advised him to borrow money on unwritten plays, and write them at once, giving a lien on his work. Nathan followed this advice and obtained thereby twenty thousand francs, which reduced his debt to forty thousand.
On the 10th of February the twenty-five days expired. Du Tillet, who did not want Nathan as a rival before the electoral college, where he meant to appear himself, instigated Gigonnet to sue Nathan without compromise. A man locked up for debt could not present himself as a candidate for election. Florine was herself in communication with the sheriff on the subject of her personal debts, and no resource was left to her but the “I” of Medea, for her new furniture and belongings were now attached. The ambitious Raoul heard the cracking in all directions of his prosperous edifice, built, alas! without foundations. His nerve failed him; too weak already to sustain so vast an enterprise, he felt himself incapable of attempting to build it up again; he was fated to perish in its ashes. Love for the countess gave him still a few thrills of life; his mask brightened for a moment, but behind it hope was dead. He did not suspect the hand of du Tillet, and laid the blame of his misfortune on the usurer. Rastignac, Blondet, Lousteau, Vernou, Finot, and Massol took care not to enlighten him. Rastignac, who wanted to return to power, made common cause with Nucingen and du Tillet. The others felt a satisfaction in the catastrophe of an equal who had attempted to make himself their master. None of them, however, would have said a word to Florine; on the contrary, they praised Raoul to her.
“Nathan,” they said, “has the shoulders of an Atlas; he’ll pull himself through; all will come right.”
“There were two new subscribers yesterday,” said Blondet, gravely. “Raoul will certainly be elected deputy. As soon as the budget is voted the dissolution is sure to take place.”
But Nathan, sued, could no longer obtain even usury; Florine, with all her personal property attached, could count on nothing but inspiring a passion in some fool who might not appear at the right moment. Nathan’s friends were all men without money and without credit. An arrest for debt would destroy his hopes of a political career; and besides all this, he had bound himself to do an immense amount of dramatic work for which he had already received payment. He could see no bottom to the gulf of misery that lay before him, into which he was about to roll. In presence of such threatened evil his boldness deserted him. Would the Comtesse de Vandenesse stand by him? Would she fly with him? Women are never led into a gulf of that kind except by an absolute love, and the love of Raoul and Marie had not bound them together by the mysterious and inalienable ties of happiness. But supposing that the countess did follow him to some foreign country; she would come without fortune, despoiled of everything, and then, alas! she would merely be one more embarrassment to him. A mind of a second order, and a proud mind like that of Nathan, would be likely to see, under these circumstances, and did see, in suicide the sword to cut the Gordian knots. The idea of failure in the face of the world and that society he had so lately entered and meant to rule, of leaving the chariot of the countess and becoming once more a muddied pedestrian, was more than he could bear. Madness began to dance and whirl and shake her bells at the gates of the fantastic palace in which the poet had been dreaming. In this extremity, Nathan waited for some lucky accident, determined not to kill himself until the final moment.
During the last days employed by the legal formalities required before proceeding to arrest for debt, Raoul went about, in spite of himself, with that coldly sullen and morose expression of face which may be noticed in persons who are either fated to commit suicide or are meditating it. The funereal ideas they are turning over in their minds appear upon their foreheads in gray and cloudy tints, their smile has something fatalistic in it, their motions are solemn. These unhappy beings seem to want to suck the last juices of the life they mean to leave; their eyes see things invisible, their ears are listening to a death-knell, they pay no attention to the minor things about them. These alarming symptoms Marie perceived one evening at Lady Dudley’s. Raoul was sitting apart on a sofa in the boudoir, while the rest of the company were conversing in the salon. The countess went to the door, but he did not raise his head; he heard neither Marie’s breathing nor the rustle of her silk dress; he was gazing at a flower in the carpet, with fixed eyes, stupid with grief; he felt he had rather die than abdicate. All the world can’t have the rock of Saint Helena for a pedestal. Moreover, suicide was then the fashion in Paris. Is it not, in fact, the last resource of all atheistical societies? Raoul, as he sat there, had decided that the moment had come to die. Despair is in proportion to our hopes; that of Raoul had no other issue than the grave.
“What is the matter?” cried Marie, flying to him.
“Nothing,” he answered.
There is one way of saying that word “nothing” between lovers which signifies its exact contrary. Marie shrugged her shoulders.
“You are a child,” she said. “Some misfortune has happened to you.”
“No, not to me,” he replied. “But you will know all soon enough, Marie,” he added, affectionately.
“What were you thinking of when I came in?” she asked, in a tone of authority.
“Do you want to know the truth?” She nodded. “I was thinking of you; I was saying to myself that most men in my place would have wanted to be loved without reserve. I am loved, am I not?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“And yet,” he said, taking her round the waist and kissing her forehead at the risk of being seen, “I leave you pure and without remorse. I could have dragged you into an abyss, but you remain in all your glory on its brink without a stain. Yet one thought troubles me—”
“What is it?” she asked.
“You will despise me.” She smiled superbly. “Yes, you will never believe that I have sacredly loved you; I shall be disgraced, I know that. Women never imagine that from the depths of our mire we raise our eyes to heaven and truly adore a Marie. They assail that sacred love with miserable doubts; they cannot believe that men of intellect and poesy can so detach their soul from earthly enjoyment as to lay it pure upon some cherished altar. And yet, Marie, the worship of the ideal is more fervent in men then in women; we find it in women, who do not even look for it in us.”
“Why are you making me that article?” she said, jestingly.
“I am leaving France; and you will hear to-morrow, how and why, from a letter my valet will bring you. Adieu, Marie.”
Raoul left the house after again straining the countess to his heart with dreadful pressure, leaving her stupefied and distressed.
“What is the matter, my dear?” said Madame d’Espard, coming to look for her. “What has Monsieur Nathan been saying to you? He has just left us in a most melodramatic way. Perhaps you are too reasonable or too unreasonable with him.”
The countess got into a hackney-coach and was driven rapidly to the newspaper office. At that hour the huge apartments which they occupied in an old mansion in the rue Feydeau were deserted; not a soul was there but the watchman, who was greatly surprised to see a young and pretty woman hurrying through the rooms in evident distress. She asked him to tell her where was Monsieur Nathan.
“At Mademoiselle Florine’s, probably,” replied the man, taking Marie for a rival who intended to make a scene.
“Where does he work?”
“In his office, the key of which he carries in his pocket.”
“I wish to go there.”
The man took her to a dark little room looking out on a rear court-yard. The office was at right angles. Opening the window of the room she was in, the countess could look through into the window of the office, and she saw Nathan sitting there in the editorial arm-chair.
“Break in the door, and be silent about all this; I’ll pay you well,” she said. “Don’t you see that Monsieur Nathan is dying?”
The man got an iron bar from the press-room, with which he burst in the door. Raoul had actually smothered himself, like any poor work-girl, with a pan of charcoal. He had written a letter to Blondet, which lay on the table, in which he asked him to ascribe his death to apoplexy. The countess, however, had arrived in time; she had Raoul carried to her coach, and then, not knowing where else to care for him, she took him to a hotel, engaged a room, and sent for a doctor. In a few hours Raoul was out of danger; but the countess did not leave him until she had obtained a general confession of the causes of his act. When he had poured into her heart the dreadful elegy of his woes, she said, in order to make him willing to live:—
“I can arrange all that.”
But, nevertheless, she returned home with a heart oppressed with the same anxieties and ideas that had darkened Nathan’s brow the night before.
“Well, what was the matter with your sister?” said Felix, when his wife returned. “You look distressed.”
“It is a dreadful history about which I am bound to secrecy,” she said, summoning all her nerve to appear calm before him.
In order to be alone and to think at her ease, she went to the Opera in the evening, after which she resolved to go (as we have seen) and discharge her heart into that of her sister, Madame du Tillet; relating to her the horrible scene of the morning, and begging her advice and assistance. Neither the one nor the other could then know that du Tillet himself had lighted the charcoal of the vulgar brazier, the sight of which had so justly terrified the countess.
“He has but me in all the world,” said Marie to her sister, “and I will not fail him.”
That speech contains the secret motive of most women; they can be heroic when they are certain of being all in all to a grand and irreproachable being.
CHAPTER VIII. A LOVER SAVED AND LOST
Du Tillet had heard some talk even in financial circles of the more or less possible adoration of his sister-in-law for Nathan; but he was one of those who denied it, thinking it incompatible with Raoul’s known relations with Florine. The actress would certainly drive off the countess, or vice versa. But when, on coming home that evening, he found his sister-in-law with a perturbed face, in consultation with his wife about money, it occurred to him that Raoul had, in all probability, confided to her his situation. The countess must therefore love him; she had doubtless come to obtain from her sister the sum due to old Gigonnet. Madame du Tillet, unaware, of course, of the reasons for her husband’s apparently supernatural penetration, had shown such stupefaction when he told her the sum wanted, that du Tillet’s suspicions became certainties. He was sure now that he held the thread of all Nathan’s possible manoeuvres.
No one knew that the unhappy man himself was in bed in a small hotel in the rue du Mail, under the name of the office watchman, to whom Marie had promised five hundred francs if he kept silence as to the events of the preceding night and morning. Thus bribed, the man, whose name was Francois Quillet, went back to the office and left word with the portress that Monsieur Nathan had been taken ill in consequence of overwork, and was resting. Du Tillet was therefore not surprised at Raoul’s absence. It was natural for the journalist to hide under any such pretence to avoid arrest. When the sheriff’s spies made inquiries they learned that a lady had carried him away in a public coach early in the morning; but it took three days to ferret out the number of the coach, question the driver, and find the hotel where the debtor was recovering his strength. Thus Marie’s prompt action had really gained for Nathan a truce of four days.
Both sisters passed a cruel night. Such a catastrophe casts the lurid gleams of its charcoal over the whole of life, showing reefs, pools, depths, where the eye has hitherto seen only summits and grandeurs. Struck by the horrible picture of a young man lying back in his chair to die, with the last proofs of his paper before him, containing in type his last thoughts, poor Madame du Tillet could think of nothing else than how to save him and restore a life so precious to her sister. It is the nature of our mind to see effects before we analyze their causes. Eugenie recurred to her first idea of consulting Madame Delphine de Nucingen, with whom she was to dine, and she resolved to make the attempt, not doubting of success. Generous, like all persons who are not bound in the polished steel armor of modern society, Madame du Tillet resolved to take the whole matter upon herself.
The countess, on the other hand, happy in the thought that she had saved Raoul’s life, spent the night in devising means to obtain the forty thousand francs. In emergencies like these women are sublime; they find contrivances which would astonish thieves, business men, and usurers, if those three classes of industrials were capable of being astonished. First, the countess sold her diamonds and decided on wearing paste; then she resolved to ask the money from Vandenesse on her sister’s account; but these were dishonorable means, and her soul was too noble not to recoil at them; she merely conceived them, and cast them from her. Ask money of Vandenesse to give to Nathan! She bounded in her bed with horror at such baseness. Wear false diamonds to deceive her husband! Next she thought of borrowing the money from the Rothschilds, who had so much, or from the archbishop of Paris, whose mission it was to help persons in distress; darting thus from thought to thought, seeking help in all. She deplored belonging to a class opposed to the government. Formerly, she could easily have borrowed the money on the steps of the throne. She thought of appealing to her father, the Comte de Granville. But that great magistrate had a horror of illegalities; his children knew how little he sympathized with the trials of love; he was now a misanthrope and held all affairs of the heart in horror. As for the Comtesse de Granville, she was living a retired life on one of her estates in Normandy, economizing and praying, ending her days between priests and money-bags, cold as ever to her dying moment. Even supposing that Marie had time to go to Bayeux and implore her, would her mother give her such a sum unless she explained why she wanted it? Could she say she had debts? Yes, perhaps her mother would be softened by the wants of her favorite child. Well, then! in case all other means failed, she would go to Normandy. The dreadful sight of the morning, the effects she had made to revive Nathan, the hours passed beside his pillow, his broken confession, the agony of a great soul, a vast genius stopped in its upward flight by a sordid vulgar obstacle,—all these things rushed into her memory and stimulated her love. She went over and over her emotions, and felt her love to be deeper in these days of misery than in those of Nathan’s fame and grandeur. She felt the nobility of his last words said to her in Lady Dudley’s boudoir. What sacredness in that farewell! What grandeur in the immolation of a selfish happiness which would have been her torture! The countess had longed for emotions, and now she had them,—terrible, cruel, and yet most precious. She lived a deeper life in pain than in pleasure. With what delight she said to herself: “I have saved him once, and I will save him again.” She heard him cry out when he felt her lips upon his forehead, “Many a poor wretch does not know what love is!”
“Are you ill?” said her husband, coming into her room to take her to breakfast.
“I am dreadfully worried about a matter that is happening at my sister’s,” she replied, without actually telling a lie.
“Your sister has fallen into bad hands,” replied Felix. “It is a shame for any family to have a du Tillet in it,—a man without honor of any kind. If disaster happened to her she would get no pity from him.”
“What woman wants pity?” said the countess, with a convulsive motion. “A man’s sternness is to us our only pardon.”
“This is not the first time that I read your noble heart,” said the count. “A woman who thinks as you do needs no watching.”
“Watching!” she said; “another shame that recoils on you.”
Felix smiled, but Marie blushed. When women are secretly to blame they often show ostensibly the utmost womanly pride. It is a dissimulation of mind for which we ought to be obliged to them. The deception is full of dignity, if not of grandeur. Marie wrote two lines to Nathan under the name of Monsieur Quillet, to tell him that all went well, and sent them by a street porter to the hotel du Mail. That night, at the Opera, Felix thought it very natural that she should wish to leave her box and go to that of her sister, and he waited till du Tillet had left his wife to give Marie his arm and take her there. Who can tell what emotions agitated her as she went through the corridors and entered her sister’s box with a face that was outwardly serene and calm!
“Well?” she said, as soon as they were alone.
Eugenie’s face was an answer; it was bright with a joy which some persons might have attributed to the satisfaction of vanity.
“He can be saved, dear; but for three months only; during which time we must plan some other means of doing it permanently. Madame de Nucingen wants four notes of hand, each for ten thousand francs, endorsed by any one, no matter who, so as not to compromise you. She explained to me how they were made, but I couldn’t understand her. Monsieur Nathan, however, can make them for us. I thought of Schmucke, our old master. I am sure he could be very useful in this emergency; he will endorse the notes. You must add to the four notes a letter in which you guarantee their payment to Madame de Nucingen, and she will give you the money to-morrow. Do the whole thing yourself; don’t trust it to any one. I feel sure that Schmucke will make no objection. To divert all suspicion I told Madame de Nucingen you wanted to oblige our old music-master who was in distress, and I asked her to keep the matter secret.”
“You have the sense of angels! I only hope Madame de Nucingen won’t tell of it until after she gives me the money,” said the countess.
“Schmucke lives in the rue de Nevers on the quai Conti; don’t forget the address, and go yourself.”
“Thanks!” said the countess, pressing her sister’s hand. “Ah! I’d give ten years of life—”
“Out of your old age—”
“If I could put an end to these anxieties,” said the countess, smiling at the interruption.
The persons who were at that moment levelling their opera-glasses at the two sisters might well have supposed them engaged in some light-hearted talk; but any observer who had come to the Opera more for the pleasure of watching faces than for mere idle amusement might have guessed them in trouble, from the anxious look which followed the momentary smiles on their charming faces. Raoul, who did not fear the bailiffs at night, appeared, pale and ashy, with anxious eye and gloomy brow, on the step of the staircase where he regularly took his stand. He looked for the Countess in her box and, finding it empty, buried his face in his hands, leaning his elbows on the balustrade.
“Can she be here!” he thought.
“Look up, unhappy hero,” whispered Mme. du Tillet.
As for Marie, at all risks she fixed on him that steady magnetic gaze, in which the will flashes from the eye, as rays of light from the sun. Such a look, mesmerizers say, penetrates to the person on whom it is directed, and certainly Raoul seemed as though struck by a magic wand. Raising his head, his eyes met those of the sisters. With that charming feminine readiness which is never at fault, Mme. de Vandenesse seized a cross, sparkling on her neck, and directed his attention to it by a swift smile, full of meaning. The brilliance of the gem radiated even upon Raoul’s forehead, and he replied with a look of joy; he had understood.
“Is it nothing then, Eugenie,” said the Countess, “thus to restore life to the dead?”
“You have a chance yet with the Royal Humane Society,” replied Eugenie, with a smile.
“How wretched and depressed he looked when he came, and how happy he will go away!”
At this moment du Tillet, coming up to Raoul with every mark of friendliness, pressed his hand, and said:
“Well, old fellow, how are you?”
“As well as a man is likely to be who has just got the best possible news of the election. I shall be successful,” replied Raoul, radiant.
“Delighted,” said du Tillet. “We shall want money for the paper.”
“The money will be found,” said Raoul.
“The devil is with these women!” exclaimed du Tillet, still unconvinced by the words of Raoul, whom he had nicknamed Charnathan.
“What are you talking about?” said Raoul.
“My sister-in-law is there with my wife, and they are hatching something together. You seem in high favor with the Countess; she is bowing to you right across the house.”
“Look,” said Mme. du Tillet to her sister, “they told us wrong. See how my husband fawns on M. Nathan, and it is he who they declared was trying to get him put in prison!”
“And men call us slanderers!” cried the Countess. “I will give him a warning.”
She rose, took the arm of Vandenesse, who was waiting in the passage, and returned jubilant to her box; by and by she left the Opera and ordered her carriage for the next morning before eight o’clock.
The next morning, by half-past eight, Marie had driven to the quai Conti, stopping at the hotel du Mail on her way. The carriage could not enter the narrow rue de Nevers; but as Schmucke lived in a house at the corner of the quai she was not obliged to walk up its muddy pavement, but could jump from the step of her carriage to the broken step of the dismal old house, mended like porter’s crockery, with iron rivets, and bulging out over the street in a way that was quite alarming to pedestrians. The old chapel-master lived on the fourth floor, and enjoyed a fine view of the Seine from the pont Neuf to the heights of Chaillot.
The good soul was so surprised when the countess’s footman announced the visit of his former scholar that in his stupefaction he let her enter without going down to receive her. Never did the countess suspect or imagine such an existence as that which suddenly revealed itself to her eyes, though she had long known Schmucke’s contempt for dress, and the little interest he held in the affairs of this world. But who could have believed in such complete indifference, in the utter laisser-aller of such a life? Schmucke was a musical Diogenes, and he felt no shame whatever in his untidiness; in fact, he was so accustomed to it that he would probably have denied its existence. The incessant smoking of a stout German pipe had spread upon the ceiling and over a wretched wall-paper, scratched and defaced by the cat, a yellowish tinge. The cat, a magnificently long-furred, fluffy animal, the envy of all portresses, presided there like the mistress of the house, grave and sedate, and without anxieties. On the top of an excellent Viennese piano he sat majestically, and cast upon the countess, as she entered, that coldly gracious look which a woman, surprised by the beauty of another woman, might have given. He did not move, and merely waved the two silver threads of his right whisker as he turned his golden eyes on Schmucke.
The piano, decrepit on its legs, though made of good wood painted black and gilded, was dirty, defaced, and scratched; and its keys, worn like the teeth of old horses, were yellowed with the fuliginous colors of the pipe. On the desk, a little heap of ashes showed that the night before Schmucke had bestrode the old instrument to some musical Walhalla. The floor, covered with dried mud, torn papers, tobacco-dust, fragments indescribable, was like that of a boy’s school-room, unswept for a week, on which a mound of things accumulate, half rags, half filth.
A more practised eye than that of the countess would have seen certain other revelations of Schmucke’s mode of life,—chestnut-peels, apple-parings, egg-shells dyed red in broken dishes smeared with sauer-kraut. This German detritus formed a carpet of dusty filth which crackled under foot, joining company near the hearth with a mass of cinders and ashes descending majestically from the fireplace, where lay a block of coal, before which two slender twigs made a show of burning. On the chimney-piece was a mirror in a painted frame, adorned with figures dancing a saraband; on one side hung the glorious pipe, on the other was a Chinese jar in which the musician kept his tobacco. Two arm-chairs bought at auction, a thin and rickety cot, a worm-eaten bureau without a top, a maimed table on which lay the remains of a frugal breakfast, made up a set of household belongings as plain as those of an Indian wigwam. A shaving-glass, suspended to the fastening of a curtainless window, and surmounted by a rag striped by many wipings of a razor, indicated the only sacrifices paid by Schmucke to the Graces and society. The cat, being the feebler and protected partner, had rather the best of the establishment; he enjoyed the comforts of an old sofa-cushion, near which could be seen a white china cup and plate. But what no pen can describe was the state into which Schmucke, the cat, and the pipe, that existing trinity, had reduced these articles. The pipe had burned the table. The cat and Schmucke’s head had greased the green Utrecht velvet of the two arm-chairs and reduced it to a slimy texture. If it had not been for the cat’s magnificent tail, which played a useful part in the household, the uncovered places on the bureau and the piano would never have been dusted. In one corner of the room were a pile of shoes which need an epic to describe them. The top of the bureau and that of the piano were encumbered by music-books with ragged backs and whitened corners, through which the pasteboard showed its many layers. Along the walls the names and addresses of pupils written on scraps of paper were stuck on by wafers,—the number of wafers without paper indicating the number of pupils no longer taught. On the wall-papers were many calculations written with chalk. The bureau was decorated with beer-mugs used the night before, their newness appearing very brilliant in the midst of this rubbish of dirt and age. Hygiene was represented by a jug of water with a towel laid upon it, and a bit of common soap. Two ancient hats hung to their respective nails, near which also hung the self-same blue box-coat with three capes, in which the countess had always seen Schmucke when he came to give his lessons. On the window-sill were three pots of flowers, German flowers, no doubt, and near them a stout holly-wood stick.
Though Marie’s sight and smell were disagreeably affected, Schmucke’s smile and glance disguised these abject miseries by rays of celestial light which actually illuminated their smoky tones and vivified the chaos. The soul of this dear man, which saw and revealed so many things divine, shone like the sun. His laugh, so frank, so guileless at seeing one of his Saint-Cecilias, shed sparkles of youth and gaiety and innocence about him. The treasures he poured from the inner to the outer were like a mantle with which he covered his squalid life. The most supercilious parvenu would have felt it ignoble to care for the frame in which this glorious old apostle of the musical religion lived and moved and had his being.
“Hey! by what good luck do I see you here, dear Madame la comtesse?” he said. “Must I sing the canticle of Simeon at my age?” (This idea so tickled him that he laughed immoderately.) “Truly I’m ‘en bonne fortune.’” (And again he laughed like a merry child.) “But, ah!” he said, changing to melancholy, “you come for the music, and not for a poor old man like me. Yes, I know that; but come for what you will, I am yours, you know, body and soul and all I have!”
This was said in his unspeakable German accent, a rendition of which we spare the reader.
He took the countess’s hand, kissed it and left a tear there, for the worthy soul was always on the morrow of her benefit. Then he seized a bit of chalk, jumped on a chair in front of the piano, and wrote upon the wall in big letters, with the rapidity of a young man, “February 17th, 1835.” This pretty, artless action, done in such a passion of gratitude, touched the countess to tears.
“My sister will come too,” she said.
“The other, too! When? when? God grant it be before I die!”
“She will come to thank you for a great service I am now here to ask of you.”
“Quick! quick! tell me what it is,” cried Schmucke. “What must I do? go to the devil?”
“Nothing more than write the words ‘Accepted for ten thousand francs,’ and sign your name on each of these papers,” she said, taking from her muff four notes prepared for her by Nathan.
“Hey! that’s soon done,” replied the German, with the docility of a lamb; “only I’m sure I don’t know where my pens and ink are—Get away from there, Meinherr Mirr!” he cried to the cat, which looked composedly at him. “That’s my cat,” he said, showing him to the countess. “That’s the poor animal that lives with poor Schmucke. Hasn’t he fine fur?”
“Yes,” said the countess.
“Will you have him?” he cried.
“How can you think of such a thing?” she answered. “Why, he’s your friend!”
The cat, who hid the inkstand behind him, divined that Schmucke wanted it, and jumped to the bed.
“He’s as mischievous as a monkey,” said Schmucke. “I call him Mirr in honor of our great Hoffman of Berlin, whom I knew well.”
The good man signed the papers with the innocence of a child who does what his mother orders without question, so sure is he that all is right. He was thinking much more of presenting the cat to the countess than of the papers by which his liberty might be, according to the laws relating to foreigners, forever sacrificed.
“You assure me that these little papers with the stamps on them—”
“Don’t be in the least uneasy,” said the countess.
“I am not uneasy,” he said, hastily. “I only meant to ask if these little papers will give pleasure to Madame du Tillet.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, “you are doing her a service, as if you were her father.”
“I am happy, indeed, to be of any good to her—Come and listen to my music!” and leaving the papers on the table, he jumped to his piano.
The hands of this angel ran along the yellowing keys, his glance was rising to heaven, regardless of the roof; already the air of some blessed climate permeated the room and the soul of the old musician; but the countess did not allow the artless interpreter of things celestial to make the strings and the worn wood speak, like Raffaelle’s Saint Cecilia, to the listening angels. She quickly slipped the notes into her muff and recalled her radiant master from the ethereal spheres to which he soared, by laying her hand upon his shoulder.
“My good Schmucke—” she said.
“Going already?” he cried. “Ah! why did you come?”
He did not murmur, but he sat up like a faithful dog who listens to his mistress.
“My good Schmucke,” she repeated, “this is a matter of life and death; minutes can save tears, perhaps blood.”
“Always the same!” he said. “Go, angel! dry the tears of others. Your poor Schmucke thinks more of your visit than of your gifts.”
“But we must see each other often,” she said. “You must come and dine and play to me every Sunday, or we shall quarrel. Remember, I shall expect you next Sunday.”
“Really and truly?”
“Yes, I entreat you; and my sister will want you, too, for another day.”
“Then my happiness will be complete,” he said; “for I only see you now in the Champs Elysees as you pass in your carriage, and that is very seldom.”
This thought dried the tears in his eyes as he gave his arm to his beautiful pupil, who felt the old man’s heart beat violently.
“You think of us?” she said.
“Always as I eat my food,” he answered,—“as my benefactresses; but chiefly as the first young girls worthy of love whom I ever knew.”
So respectful, faithful, and religious a solemnity was in this speech that the countess dared say no more. That smoky chamber, full of dirt and rubbish, was the temple of the two divinities.
“There we are loved—and truly loved,” she thought.
The emotion with which old Schmucke saw the countess get into her carriage and leave him she fully shared, and she sent him from the tips of her fingers one of those pretty kisses which women give each other from afar. Receiving it, the old man stood planted on his feet for a long time after the carriage had disappeared.
A few moments later the countess entered the court-yard of the hotel de Nucingen. Madame de Nucingen was not yet up; but anxious not to keep a woman of the countess’s position waiting, she hastily threw on a shawl and wrapper.
“My visit concerns a charitable action, madame,” said the countess, “or I would not disturb you at so early an hour.”
“But I am only too happy to be disturbed,” said the banker’s wife, taking the notes and the countess’s guarantee. She rang for her maid.
“Therese,” she said, “tell the cashier to bring me up himself, immediately, forty thousand francs.”
Then she locked into a table drawer the guarantee given by Madame de Vandenesse, after sealing it up.
“You have a delightful room,” said the countess.
“Yes, but Monsieur de Nucingen is going to take it from me. He is building a new house.”
“You will doubtless give this one to your daughter, who, I am told, is to marry Monsieur de Rastignac.”
The cashier appeared at this moment with the money. Madame de Nucingen took the bank-bills and gave him the notes of hand.
“That balances,” she said.
“Except the discount,” replied the cashier. “Ha, Schmucke; that’s the musician of Anspach,” he added, examining the signatures in a suspicious manner that made the countess tremble.
“Who is doing this business?” said Madame de Nucingen, with a haughty glance at the cashier. “This is my affair.”
The cashier looked alternately at the two ladies, but he could discover nothing on their impenetrable faces.
“Go, leave us—Have the kindness to wait a few moments that the people in the bank may not connect you with this negotiation,” said Madame de Nucingen to the countess.
“I must ask you to add to all your other kindness that of keeping this matter secret,” said Madame de Vandenesse.
“Most assuredly, since it is for charity,” replied the baroness, smiling. “I will send your carriage round to the garden gate, so that no one will see you leave the house.”
“You have the thoughtful grace of a person who has suffered,” said the countess.
“I do not know if I have grace,” said the baroness; “but I have suffered much. I hope that your anxieties cost less than mine.”
When a man has laid a plot like that du Tillet was scheming against Nathan, he confides it to no man. Nucingen knew something of it, but his wife knew nothing. The baroness, however, aware that Raoul was embarrassed, was not the dupe of the two sisters; she guessed into whose hands that money was to go, and she was delighted to oblige the countess; moreover, she felt a deep compassion for all such embarrassments. Rastignac, so placed that he was able to fathom the manoeuvres of the two bankers, came to breakfast that morning with Madame de Nucingen.
Delphine and Rastignac had no secrets from each other; and the baroness related to him her scene with the countess. Eugene, who had never supposed that Delphine could be mixed up in the affair, which was only accessory to his eyes,—one means among many others,—opened her eyes to the truth. She had probably, he told her, destroyed du Tillet’s chances of selection, and rendered useless the intrigues and deceptions of the past year. In short, he put her in the secret of the whole affair, advising her to keep absolute silence as to the mistake she had just committed.
“Provided the cashier does not tell Nucingen,” she said.
A few moments after mid-day, while du Tillet was breakfasting, Monsieur Gigonnet was announced.
“Let him come in,” said the banker, though his wife was at table. “Well, my old Shylock, is our man locked up?”
“No.”
“Why not? Didn’t I give you the address, rue du Mail, hotel—”
“He has paid up,” said Gigonnet, drawing from his wallet a pile of bank-bills. Du Tillet looked furious. “You should never frown at money,” said his impassible associate; “it brings ill-luck.”
“Where did you get that money, madame?” said du Tillet, suddenly turning upon his wife with a look which made her color to the roots of her hair.
“I don’t know what your question means,” she said.
“I will fathom this mystery,” he cried, springing furiously up. “You have upset my most cherished plans.”
“You are upsetting your breakfast,” said Gigonnet, arresting the table-clock, which was dragged by the skirt of du Tillet’s dressing-gown.
Madame du Tillet rose to leave the room, for her husband’s words alarmed her. She rang the bell, and a footman entered.
“The carriage,” she said. “And call Virginie; I wish to dress.”
“Where are you going?” exclaimed du Tillet.
“Well-bred husbands do not question their wives,” she answered. “I believe that you lay claim to be a gentleman.”
“I don’t recognize you ever since you have seen more of your impertinent sister.”
“You ordered me to be impertinent, and I am practising on you,” she replied.
“Your servant, madame,” said Gigonnet, taking leave, not anxious to witness this family scene.
Du Tillet looked fixedly at his wife, who returned the look without lowering her eyes.
“What does all this mean?” he said.
“It means that I am no longer a little girl whom you can frighten,” she replied. “I am, and shall be, all my life, a good and loyal wife to you; you may be my master if you choose, my tyrant, never!”
Du Tillet left the room. After this effort Marie-Eugenie broke down.
“If it were not for my sister’s danger,” she said to herself, “I should never have dared to brave him thus; but, as the proverb says, ‘There’s some good in every evil.’”