“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.”
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:
“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.
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.