Through the door of a third chamber, which the old man had left open, Godefroid beheld two cots of painted wood, like those of the cheapest boarding-schools, each with a straw bed and a thin mattress, on which there was but one blanket. A small iron stove like those that porters cook by, near which lay a few squares of peat, would alone have shown the poverty of the household without the help of other details.
Advancing a step or two, Godefroid saw utensils such as the poorest persons use,—earthenware jugs, and pans in which potatoes floated in dirty water. Two tables of blackened wood, covered with books and papers, stood before the windows that looked out upon the rue Notre-Dame des Champs, and indicated the nocturnal occupations of father and son. On each of the tables was a flat iron candlestick, such as are used by the very poor, and in them Godefroid noticed tallow-candles of the kind that are sold at eight to the pound.
On a third table glittered two forks and spoons and another little spoon of silver-gilt, together with plates, bowls, and cups of Sevres china, and a silver-gilt knife and fork in an open case, all evidently for the service of the sick woman.
The stove was lighted; the water in the copper was steaming slightly. A painted wooden closet or wardrobe contained, no doubt, the linen and clothing of Monsieur Bernard’s daughter. On the old man’s bed Godefroid noticed that the habiliments he had worn the night before lay spread as a covering. The floor, evidently seldom swept, looked like that of a boy’s class-room. A six-pound loaf of bread, from which some slices had been cut, was on a shelf above the table. Here was poverty in its last stages, poverty resolutely accepted with stern endurance, making shift with the lowest and poorest means. A strong and sickening odor came from this room, which was rarely cleaned.
The antechamber, in which Godefroid stood, was at any rate decent, and he suspected that it served to conceal the horrors of the room in which the grandfather and the grandson lived. This antechamber, hung with a checked paper of Scotch pattern, held four walnut chairs, a small table, a colored engraving of the Emperor after Horace Vernet, also portraits of Louis XVIII., Charles X., and Prince Poniatowski, no doubt the friend of Monsieur Bernard’s father-in-law. The window was draped with white calico curtains edged with red bands and fringe.
Godefroid watched for Nepomucene, and when the latter made his next trip with wood signed to him to stack it very gently in Monsieur Bernard’s antechamber; then (a perception which proved some progress in our initiate) he closed the door of the inner lair that Madame Vauthier’s slave might not see the old man’s squalor.
The antechamber was just then encumbered with three plant-stands filled with plants; two were oblong, one round, all three were of a species of ebony and of great elegance; even Nepomucene took notice of them and said as he deposited the wood:—
“Hey! ain’t they pretty? They must have cost a good bit!”
“Jean! don’t make so much noise!” called Monsieur Bernard from his daughter’s room.
“Did you hear that?” whispered Nepomucene to Godefroid. “He’s cracked, for sure, that old fellow.”
“You don’t know what you may be at his age.”
“Yes, I do know,” responded Nepomucene, “I shall be in the sugar-bowl.”
“The sugar-bowl?”
“Yes, they’ll have made my bones into charcoal by that time; I often see the carts of the refineries coming to Montsouris for charcoal; they tell me they make sugar of it.” And he departed after another load of wood, satisfied with this philosophical reflection.
Godefroid discreetly withdrew to his own rooms, closing Monsieur Bernard’s door behind him. Madame Vauthier, who during this time had been preparing her new lodger’s breakfast, now came up to serve it, attended by Felicite. Godefroid, lost in reflection, stared into his fire. He was absorbed in meditation on this great misery which contained so many different miseries, and yet within which he could see the ineffable joys of the many triumphs of paternal and filial love; they were gems shining in the blackness of the pit.
“What romances, even those that are most famous, can equal such realities?” he thought. “What a life it will be to relieve the burden of such existences, to seek out causes and effects and remedy them, calming sorrows, helping good; to incarnate one’s own being in misery; to familiarize one’s self with homes like that; to act out constantly in life those dramas which move us so in fiction! I never imagined that good could be more interesting, more piquant than vice.”
“Is monsieur satisfied with his breakfast?” asked Madame Vauthier, who now, with Felicite’s assistance, brought the table close to Godefroid.
Godefroid then saw a cup of excellent cafe au lait with a smoking omelet, fresh butter, and little red radishes.
“Where the devil did you get those radishes?” he asked.
“They were given me by Monsieur Cartier,” answered Madame Vauthier; “and I make a present of them to monsieur.”
“And what are you going to ask me for such a breakfast daily?”
“Well now, monsieur, be fair,—I couldn’t do it for less than thirty sous.”
“Very good, thirty sous then;” said Godefroid; “but how is it that they ask me only forty-five francs a month for dinner, close by here at Machillot’s? That is the same price you ask me for breakfast.”
“But what a difference, monsieur, between preparing a dinner for fifteen or twenty persons and going out to get you just what you want for breakfast! See here! there’s a roll, eggs, butter, the cost of lighting a fire, sugar, milk, coffee!—just think! they ask you sixteen sous for a cup of coffee alone on the place de l’Odeon, and then you have to give a sou or two to the waiter. Here you have no trouble; you can breakfast in slippers.”
“Very well, very well,” said Godefroid.
“Without Madame Cartier who supplies me with milk and eggs and herbs I couldn’t manage it. You ought to go and see their establishment, monsieur. Ha! it’s fine! They employ five journeymen gardeners, and Nepomucene goes there in summer to draw water for them; they hire him of me as a waterer. They make lots of money out of melons and strawberries. It seems monsieur takes quite an interest in Monsieur Bernard,” continued the widow in dulcet tones; “or he wouldn’t be responsible for his debts. Perhaps he doesn’t know all that family owes. There’s the lady who keeps the circulating library on the place Saint-Michel; she is always coming here after thirty francs they owe her,—and she needs it, God knows! That sick woman in there, she reads, reads, reads! Two sous a volume makes thirty francs in three months.”
“That means a hundred volumes a month,” said Godefroid.
“Ah! there’s the old man going now to fetch a roll and cream for his daughter’s tea,—yes, tea! she lives on tea, that lady. She drinks it twice a day. And twice a week she has to have sweet things. Oh! she’s dainty! The old man buys cakes and pates from the pastry cook in the rue de Buci. He don’t care what he spends, if it’s for her. He calls her his daughter! It ain’t often that men of his age do for a daughter what he does for her! He just kills himself, he and Auguste too, for that woman. Monsieur is just like me; I’d give anything to see her. Monsieur Berton says she’s a monster,—something like those they show for money. That’s the reason they’ve come to live here, in this lonely quarter. Well, so monsieur thinks of dining at Madame Machillot’s, does he?”
“Yes, I think of making an arrangement there.”
“Monsieur, it isn’t that I want to interfere, but I must say, comparing food with food, you’d do much better to dine in the rue de Tournon; you needn’t engage by the month, and you’ll find a better table.”
“Whereabouts in the rue de Tournon?”
“At the successors to Madame Giraud. That’s where the gentlemen upstairs go; they are satisfied, and more than satisfied.”
“Well, I’ll take your advice and dine there to-day.”
“My dear monsieur,” said the woman, emboldened by the good-nature which Godefroid intentionally assumed, “tell me seriously, you are not going to be such a muff as to pay Monsieur Bernard’s debts? It would really trouble me if you did; for just reflect, my kind monsieur Godefroid, he’s nearly seventy, and after him, what then? not a penny of pension! How’ll you get paid? Young men are so imprudent! Do you know that he owes three thousand francs?”
“To whom?” inquired Godefroid.
“Oh! to whom? that’s not my affair,” said the widow, mysteriously; “it is enough that he does owe them. Between ourselves I’ll tell you this: somebody will soon be down on him for that money, and he can’t get a penny of credit now in the quarter just on that account.”
“Three thousand francs!” repeated Godefroid; “oh, you needn’t be afraid I’ll lend him that. If I had three thousand francs to dispose of I shouldn’t be your lodger. But I can’t bear to see others suffer, and just for a hundred or so of francs I sha’n’t let my neighbor, a man with white hair too, lack for bread or wood; why, one often loses as much as that at cards. But three thousand francs! good heavens! what are you thinking of?”
Madame Vauthier, deceived by Godefroid’s apparent frankness, let a smile of satisfaction appear on her specious face, which confirmed all her lodger’s suspicions. Godefroid was convinced that the old woman was an accomplice in some plot that was brewing against the unfortunate old man.
“It is strange, monsieur,” she went on, “what fancies one takes into one’s head! You’ll think me very curious, but yesterday, when I saw you talking with Monsieur Bernard I said to myself that you were the clerk of some publisher; for this, you know, is a publisher’s quarter. I once lodged the foreman of a printing-house in the rue de Vaugirard, and his name was the same as yours—”
“What does my business signify to you?” interrupted Godefroid.
“Oh, pooh! you can tell me, or you needn’t tell me; I shall know it all the same,” retorted Vauthier. “There’s Monsieur Bernard, for instance, for eighteen months he concealed everything from me, but on the nineteenth I discovered that he had been a magistrate, a judge somewhere or other, I forget where, and was writing a book on law matters. What did he gain by concealing it, I ask you. If he had told me I’d have said nothing about it—so there!”
“I am not yet a publisher’s clerk, but I expect to be,” said Godefroid.
“I thought so!” exclaimed Madame Vauthier, turning round from the bed she had been making as a pretext for staying in the room. “You have come here to cut the ground from under the feet of—Good! a man warned is a man armed.”
“Stop!” cried Godefroid, placing himself between the Vauthier and the door. “Look here, what interest have you in the matter?”
“Gracious!” said the old woman, eyeing Godefroid cautiously, “you’re a bold one, anyhow.”
She went to the door of the outer room and bolted it; then she came back and sat down on a chair beside the fire.
“On my word of honor, and as sure as my name is Vauthier, I took you for a student until I saw you giving your wood to that old Bernard. Ha! you’re a sly one; and what a play-actor! I was so certain you were a ninny! Look here, will you guarantee me a thousand francs? As sure as the sun shines, my old Barbet and Monsieur Metivier have promised me five hundred to keep my eyes open for them.”
“They! five hundred francs! nonsense!” cried Godefroid. “I know their ways; two hundred is the very most, my good woman, and even that is only promised; you can’t assign it. But I will say this: if you will put me in the way to do the business they want to do with Monsieur Bernard I will pay you four hundred francs. Now, then, how does the matter stand?”
“They have advanced fifteen hundred francs upon the work,” said Madame Vauthier, making no further effort at deception, “and the old man has signed an acknowledgment for three thousand. They wouldn’t do it under a hundred per cent. He thought he could easily pay them out of his book, but they have arranged to get the better of him there. It was they who sent Cartier here, and the other creditors.”
Here Godefroid gave the old woman a glance of ironical intelligence, which showed her that he saw through the role she was playing in the interest of her proprietor. Her words were, in fact, a double illumination to Godefroid; the curious scene between himself and the gardener was now explained.
“Well,” she resumed, “they have got him now. Where is he to find three thousand francs? They intend to offer him five hundred the day he puts the first volume of his book into their hands, and five hundred for each succeeding volume. The affair isn’t in their names; they have put it into the hands of a publisher whom Barbet set up on the quai des Augustins.”
“What, that little fellow?”
“Yes, that little Morand, who was formerly Barbet’s clerk. It seems they expect a good bit of money out of the affair.”
“There’s a good bit to spend,” said Godefroid, with a significant grimace.
Just then a gentle rap was heard at the door of the outer room. Godefroid, glad of the interruption, having got all he wanted to know out of Madame Vauthier, went to open it.
“What is said, is said, Madame Vauthier,” he remarked as he did so. The visitor was Monsieur Bernard.
“Ah! Monsieur Bernard,” cried the widow when she saw him, “I’ve got a letter downstairs for you.”
The old man followed her down a few steps. When they were out of hearing from Godefroid’s room she stopped.
“No,” she said, “I haven’t any letter; I only wanted to tell you to beware of that young man; he belongs to a publishing house.”
“That explains everything,” thought the old man.
He went back to his neighbor with a very different expression of countenance.
The look of calm coldness with which Monsieur Bernard now entered the room contrasted so strongly with the frank and cordial air he had worn not an instant earlier that Godefroid was forcibly struck by it.
“Pardon me, monsieur,” said the old man, stiffly, “but you have shown me many favors, and a benefactor creates certain rights in those he benefits.”
Godefroid bowed.
“I, who for the last five years have endured a passion like that of our Lord, I, who for thirty-six years represented social welfare, government, public vengeance, have, as you may well believe, no illusions—no, I have nothing left but anguish. Well, monsieur, I was about to say that your little act in closing the door of my wretched lair, that simple little thing, was to me the glass of water Bossuet tells of. Yes, I did find in my heart, that exhausted heart which cannot weep, just as my withered body cannot sweat, I did find a last drop of the elixir which makes us fancy in our youth that all human beings are noble, and I came to offer you my hand; I came to bring you that celestial flower of belief in good—”
“Monsieur Bernard,” said Godefroid, remembering the kind old Alain’s lessons. “I have done nothing to obtain your gratitude. You are quite mistaken.”
“Ah, that is frankness indeed!” said the former magistrate. “Well, it pleases me. I was about to reproach you; pardon me, I now esteem you. So you are a publisher, and you have come here to get my work away from Barbet, Metivier, and Morand? All is now explained. You are making me advances in money as they did, only you do it with some grace.”
“Did Madame Vauthier just tell you that I was employed by a publisher?” asked Godefroid.
“Yes.”
“Well, then, Monsieur Bernard, before I can say how much I can give over what those other gentlemen offer, I must know the terms on which you stand with them.”
“That is fair,” said Monsieur Bernard, who seemed rather pleased to find himself the object of a competition by which he might profit. “Do you know what my work is?”
“No; I only know it is a good enterprise from a business point of view.”
“It is only half-past nine, my daughter has breakfasted, and Cartier will not bring the flowers for an hour or more; we have time to talk, Monsieur—Monsieur who?”
“Godefroid.”
“Monsieur Godefroid, the work in question was projected by me in 1825, at the time when the ministry, being alarmed by the persistent destruction of landed estates, proposed that law of primogeniture which was, you will remember, defeated. I had remarked certain imperfections in our codes and in the fundamental institutions of France. Our codes have often been the subject of important works, but those works were all from the point of view of jurisprudence. No one had even ventured to consider the work of the Revolution, or (if you prefer it) of Napoleon, as a whole; no one had studied the spirit of those laws, and judged them in their application. That is the main purpose of my work; it is entitled, provisionally, ‘The Spirit of the New Laws;’ it includes organic laws as well as codes, all codes; for we have many more than five codes. Consequently, my work is in several volumes; six in all, the last being a volume of citations, notes, and references. It will take me now about three months to finish it. The proprietor of this house, a former publisher, of whom I made a few inquiries, perceived, scented I may say, the chance of a speculation. I, in the first instance, thought only of doing a service to my country, and not of my own profit. Well, this Barbet has circumvented me. You will ask me how it was possible for a publisher to get the better of a magistrate, a man who knows the laws. Well, it was in this way: You know my history; Barbet is an usurer; he has the keen glance and the shrewd action of that breed of men. His money was always at my heels to help me over my worst needs. Strange to say, on the days I was most defenceless against despair he happened to appear.”
“No, no, my dear Monsieur Bernard,” said Godefroid, “he had a spy in Madame Vauthier; she told him when you needed money. But the terms, the conditions? Tell them to me briefly.”
“He has lent me from time to time fifteen hundred francs, for which I have signed three notes of a thousand francs each, and those notes are secured by a sort of mortgage on the copyright of my book, so that I cannot sell my book unless I pay off those notes, and the notes are now protested,—he has taken the matter into court and obtained a judgment against me. Such are the complications of poverty! At the lowest valuation, the first edition of my great work, a work representing ten years’ toil and thirty-six years’ experience, is fully worth ten thousand francs. Well, ten days ago Morand proposed to give me three thousand francs and my notes cancelled for the entire rights in perpetuity. Now as it is not possible for me to refund the amount of my notes and interest, namely, three thousand two hundred and forty francs, I must,—unless you intend to step between those usurers and me,—I must yield to them. They are not content with my word of honor; they first obtained the notes, then they had them protested, and now I am threatened with arrest for debt. If I could manage to pay them back, those scoundrels would have doubled their money. If I accept their terms they will make a fortune out of my book and I shall get almost nothing; one of them is a paper-maker, and God knows how they may keep down the costs of publication. They will have my name, and that alone will sell ten thousand copies for them.”
“But, monsieur, how could you, a former magistrate!—”
“How could I help it? Not a friend, not a claim that I could make! And yet I saved many heads, if I made some fall! And, then, my daughter, my daughter! whose nurse I am, whose companion I must be; so that I can work but a few hours snatched from sleep. Ah, young man! none but the wretched can judge the wretched! Sometimes I think I used to be too stern to misery.”
“Monsieur, I do not ask your name. I cannot provide three thousand francs, especially if I pay Halpersohn and your lesser debts; but I will save you if you will promise me not to part with your book without letting me know. It is impossible for me to arrange a matter as important as this without consulting others. My backers are powerful, and I can promise you success if you, in return, will promise me absolute secrecy, even to your children, and keep your promise.”
“The only success I care for is the recovery of my poor Vanda; for such sufferings as hers extinguish every other feeling in a father’s heart. As for fame, what is that to one who sees an open grave before him?”
“I will come and see you this evening; they expect Halpersohn at any time, and I shall go there day after day until I find him.”
“Ah, monsieur! if you should be the cause of my daughter’s recovery, I would like,—yes, I would like to give you my work!”
“Monsieur,” said Godefroid, “I am not a publisher.”
The old man started with surprise.
“I let that old Vauthier think so in order to discover the traps they were laying for you.”
“Then who are you?”
“Godefroid,” replied the initiate; “and since you allow me to offer you enough to make the pot boil, you can call me, if you like, Godefroid de Bouillon.”
The old man was far too moved to laugh at a joke. He held out his hand to Godefroid, and pressed that which the young man gave him in return.
“You wish to keep your incognito?” he said, looking at Godefroid sadly, with some uneasiness.
“If you will allow it.”
“Well, as you will. Come to-night, and you shall see my daughter if her condition permits.”
This was evidently a great concession in the eyes of the poor father, and he had the satisfaction of seeing, by the look on Godefroid’s face, that it was understood.
An hour later, Cartier returned with a number of beautiful flowering plants, which he placed himself in the jardinieres, covering them with fresh moss. Godefroid paid his bill; also that of the circulating library, which was brought soon after. Books and flowers!—these were the daily bread of this poor invalid, this tortured creature, who was satisfied with so little.
As he thought of this family, coiled by misfortunes like that of the Laocoon (sublime image of so many lives), Godefroid, who was now on his way on foot to the rue Marbeuf, was conscious in his heart of more curiosity than benevolence. This sick woman, surrounded by luxury in the midst of such direful poverty, made him forget the horrible details of the strangest of all nervous disorders, which is happily rare, though recorded by a few historians. One of our most gossiping chroniclers, Tallemant des Reaux, cites an instance of it. The mind instinctively pictures a woman as being elegant in the midst of her worst sufferings; and Godefroid let himself dwell on the pleasure of entering that chamber where none but the father, son, and doctor had been admitted for six years. Nevertheless, he ended by blaming himself for his curiosity. He even felt that the sentiment, natural as it was, would cease as he went on exercising his beneficent ministry, from the mere fact of seeing more distressed homes and many sorrows.
Such agents do reach in time a divine serenity which nothing surprises or confounds; just as in love we come to the divine quietude of that emotion, sure of its strength, sure of its lastingness, through our constant experience of its pains and sweetnesses.
Godefroid was told that Halpersohn had returned during the night, but had been obliged to go out at once to visit patients who were awaiting him. The porter told Godefroid to come the next day before nine o’clock in the morning.
Remembering Monsieur Alain’s injunction to parsimony in his personal expenses, Godefroid dined for twenty-five sous in the rue de Tournon, and was rewarded for his abnegation by finding himself in the midst of compositors and pressmen. He heard a discussion on costs of manufacturing, and learned that an edition of one thousand copies of an octavo volume of forty sheets did not cost more than thirty sous a copy, in the best style of printing. He resolved to ascertain the price at which publishers of law books sold their volumes, so as to be prepared for a discussion with the men who held Monsieur Bernard in their clutches if he should have to meet them.
Towards seven in the evening he returned to the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, by way of the rue de Vaugiraud and the rue de l’Ouest, and he saw then how deserted the quarter was, for he met no one. It is true that the cold was rigorous, and the snow fell in great flakes, the wheels of the carriages making no noise upon the pavements.
“Ah, here you are, monsieur!” said Madame Vauthier. “If I had known you were coming home so early I would have made your fire.”
“I don’t want one,” said Godefroid, seeing that the widow followed him. “I shall spend the evening in Monsieur Bernard’s apartment.”
“Well, well! you must be his cousin, if you are hand and glove like that! Perhaps monsieur will finish now the little conversation we began.”
“Ah, yes!—about that four hundred francs. Look here, my good Madame Vauthier, you are trying to see which way the cat jumps, and you’ll tumble yourself between two stools. As for me, you have betrayed me, and made me miss the whole affair.”
“Now, don’t think that, my dear monsieur. To-morrow, while you breakfast—”
“To-morrow I shall not breakfast here. I am going out, like your authors, at cock-crow.”
Godefroid’s antecedents, his life as a man of the world and a journalist, served him in this, that he felt quite sure, unless he took this tone, that Barbet’s spy would warn the old publisher of danger, and probably lead to active measures under which Monsieur Bernard would before long be arrested; whereas, if he left the trio of harpies to suppose that their scheme ran no risk of defeat, they would keep quiet.
But Godefroid did not yet know Parisian human nature when embodied in a Vauthier. That woman resolved to have Godefroid’s money and Barbet’s too. She instantly ran off to her proprietor, while Godefroid changed his clothes in order to present himself properly before the daughter of Monsieur Bernard.
Eight o’clock was striking from the convent of the Visitation, the clock of the quarter, when the inquisitive Godefroid tapped gently at his neighbor’s door. Auguste opened it. As it happened to be a Saturday, the young lad had his evening to himself. Godefroid beheld him in a little sack-coat of black velvet, a blue silk cravat, and black trousers. But his surprise at the youth’s appearance, so different from that of this outside life, ceased as soon as he had entered the invalid’s chamber. He then understood the reason why both father and son were well dressed.
For a moment the contrast between the squalor of the other rooms, as he had seen them that morning, and the luxury of this chamber, was so great that Godefroid was dazzled, though habituated for years to the luxury and elegance procured by wealth.
The walls of the room were hung with yellow silk, relieved by twisted fringes of a bright green, giving a gay and cheerful aspect to the chamber, the cold tiled floor of which was hidden by a moquette carpet with a white ground strewn with flowers. The windows, draped by handsome curtains lined with white silk, were like conservatories, so full were they of plants in flower. The blinds were lowered, which prevented this luxury, so rare in that quarter of the town, from being seen from the street. The woodwork was painted in white enamel, touched up, here and there, by a few gold lines.
At the door was a heavy portiere, embroidered by hand with fantastic foliage on a yellow ground, so thick that all sounds from without were stifled. This magnificent curtain was made by the sick woman herself, who could work, when she had the use of her hands, like a fairy.
At the farther end of the room, and opposite to the door, was the fireplace, with a green velvet mantel-shelf, on which a few extremely elegant ornaments, the last relics of the opulence of two families, were arranged. These consisted of a curious clock, in the shape of an elephant supporting on its back a porcelain tower which was filled with the choicest flowers; two candelabra in the same style, and several precious Chinese treasures. The fender, andirons, tongs, and shovel were all of the handsomest description.
The largest of the flower-stands was placed in the middle of the room, and above it hung a porcelain chandelier designed with wreaths of flowers.
The bed on which the old man’s daughter lay was one of those beautiful white and gold carved bedsteads such as were made in the Louis XV. period. By the sick woman’s pillow was a very pretty marquetry table, on which were the various articles necessary to this bedridden life. Against the wall was a bracket lamp with two branches, either of which could be moved forward or back by a mere touch of the hand. A small table, adapted to the use of the invalid, extended in front of her. The bed, covered with a beautiful counterpane, and draped with curtains held back by cords, was heaped with books, a work-basket, and articles of embroidery, beneath which Godefroid would scarcely have distinguished the sick woman herself had it not been for the light of the bracket lamps.
There was nothing of her to be seen but a face of extreme whiteness, browned around the eyes by suffering, in which shone eyes of fire, its principal adornment being a magnificent mass of black hair, the numerous heavy curls of which, carefully arranged, showed that the dressing of those beautiful locks occupied a good part of the invalid’s morning. This supposition was further strengthened by the portable mirror which lay on the bed.
No modern arrangement for comfort was lacking. Even a few knick-knacks, which amused poor Vanda, proved that the father’s love was almost fanatical.
The old man rose from an elegant Louis XV. sofa in white and cold, covered with tapestry, and advanced to Godefroid, who would certainly not have recognized him elsewhere; for that cold, stern face now wore the gay expression peculiar to old men of the world, who retain the manners and apparent frivolity of the nobility about a court. His wadded violet gown was in keeping with this luxury, and he took snuff from a gold box studded with diamonds.
“Here, my dear daughter,” said Monsieur Bernard, taking Godefroid by the hand, “is the neighbor of whom I told you.”
He signed to his grandson to draw up one of two armchairs, similar in style to the sofa, which stood beside the fireplace.
“Monsieur’s name is Godefroid, and he is full of friendly kindness for us.”
Vanda made a motion with her head in answer to Godefroid’s low bow; by the very way in which her neck bent and then recovered itself, Godefroid saw that the whole physical life of the invalid was in her head. The thin arms and flaccid hands lay on the fine, white linen of the sheets, like things not connected with the body, which, indeed, seemed to fill no place at all in the bed. The articles necessary for a sick person were on shelves standing behind the bedstead, and were concealed by a drawn curtain.
“You are the first person, monsieur,—except my doctors, who are not men to me,—whom I have seen for six years; therefore you cannot doubt the interest you have excited in my mind, since my father told me this morning that you were to pay me a visit—interest! no, it was an unconquerable curiosity, like that of our mother Eve. My father, who is so good to me, and my son, whom I love so much, do certainly suffice to fill the desert of a soul which is almost without a body; but after all, that soul is still a woman’s; I feel it in the childish joy the thought of your visit has brought me. You will do me the pleasure to take a cup of tea with us, I hope?”
“Monsieur has promised to pass the evening here,” said the old man, with the air of a millionnaire receiving a guest.
Auguste, sitting on a tapestried chair at a marquetry table with brass trimmings, was reading a book by the light of the candelabra on the chimney piece.
“Auguste, my dear,” said his mother, “tell Jean to serve tea in an hour. Would you believe it monsieur,” she added, “that for six years I have been waited upon wholly by my father and son, and now, I really think, I could bear no other attendance. If they were to fail me I should die. My father will not even allow Jean, a poor Norman who has served us for thirty years, to come into my room.”
“I should think not!” said the old man, quickly; “monsieur knows him; he chops wood and brings it in, and cooks; he wears dirty aprons, and would soon spoil all this elegance in which you take such pleasure—this room is really the whole of life to my poor daughter, monsieur.”
“Ah! madame, your father is quite right.”
“But why?” she said; “if Jean did any damage to my room my father would restore it.”
“Yes, my child; but remember you could not leave it; you don’t know what Parisian tradesmen are; they would take three months to renovate your room. Let Jean take care of it? no, indeed! how can you think of it? Auguste and I take such precautions that we allow no dust, and so avoid all sweeping.”
“It is a matter of health, not economy,” said Godefroid; “your father is right.”
“I am not complaining,” said Vanda, in a caressing voice.
That voice was a concert of delightful sounds. Soul, motion, life itself were concentrated in the glance and in the voice of this woman; for Vanda had succeeded by study, for which time was certainly not lacking to her, in conquering the difficulty produced by the loss of her teeth.
“I have much to make me happy in the midst of my sufferings, monsieur,” she said; “and certainly ample means are a great help in bearing trouble. If we had been poor I should have died eighteen years ago, but I still live. Oh, yes, I have many enjoyments, and they are all the greater because they are perpetually won from death. I am afraid you will think me quite garrulous,” she added, smiling.
“Madame, I should like to listen to you forever,” replied Godefroid; “I have never heard a voice that was comparable to yours; it is music; Rubini is not more enchanting.”
“Don’t speak of Rubini or the opera,” said the old man, sadly. “That is a pleasure that, rich as I am, I cannot give to my daughter. She was once a great musician, and the opera was her greatest pleasure.”
“Forgive me,” said Godefroid.
“You will soon get accustomed to us,” said the old man.
“Yes, and this is the process,” said the sick woman, laughing; “when they’ve cried ‘puss, puss, puss,’ often enough you’ll learn the puss-in-the-corner of our conversations.”
Godefroid gave a rapid glance at Monsieur Bernard, who, seeing the tears in the eyes of his new neighbor, seemed to be making him a sign not to undo the results of the self-command he and his grandson had practised for so many years.
This sublime and perpetual imposture, proved by the complete illusion of the sick woman, produced on Godefroid’s mind the impression of an Alpine precipice down which two chamois hunters picked their way. The magnificent gold snuff-box enriched with diamonds with which the old man carelessly toyed as he sat by his daughter’s bedside was like the stroke of genius which in the work of a great man elicits a cry of admiration. Godefroid looked at that snuff-box, wondering it had not been sold or found its way to the mont-de-piete.
“This evening, Monsieur Godefroid, my daughter received the announcement of your visit with such excitement that all the curious symptoms of her malady which have troubled us very much for the last twelve days have entirely disappeared. You can fancy how grateful I am to you.”
“And I, too,” said the invalid in her caressing tones, drooping her head with a motion full of coquetry. “Monsieur is to me a deputy from the world. Since I was twenty years old, monsieur, I have not seen a salon, or a party, or a ball. And I must tell you that I love dancing, and adore the theatre, especially the opera. I imagine everything by thought! I read a great deal; and then my father, who goes into society, tells me about social events.”
Godefroid made an involuntary movement as if to kneel at the old man’s feet.
“Yes, when he goes to the opera, and he often goes, he describes to me the singing and tells me about the dresses of the ladies. Oh! I would I were cured for the sake of my father, who lives solely for me as I live by him and for him, and then for my son, to whom I would fain be a real mother. Ah! monsieur, what blessed beings my old father and my good son are! I should also like to recover so as to hear Lablache, Rubini, Tamburini, Grisi, and ‘I Puritani.’ But—”
“Come, come, my child, be calm! If we talk music we are lost!” said the old man, smiling.
That smile, which rejuvenated his face, was evidently a perpetual deception to the sick woman.
“Yes, yes, I’ll be good,” said Vanda, with a petulant little air; “but when will you give me an accordion?”
The portable instrument then called by that name had just been invented. It could, if desired, be placed at the edge of a bedstead, and only needed the pressure of a foot to give out the sounds of an organ. This instrument, in its highest development, was equal to a piano; but the cost of it was three hundred francs. Vanda, who read the newspapers and reviews, knew of the existence of the instrument, and had wished for one for the last two months.
“Yes, madame, you shall have one,” said Godefroid, after exchanging a look with the old man. “A friend of mine who is just starting for Algiers has a fine instrument and I will borrow it of him. Before buying, you had better try one. It is possible that the powerful, vibrating tones may be too much for you.”
“Can I have it to-morrow?” she said, with the wilfulness of a creole.
“To-morrow?” said Monsieur Bernard, “that is soon; besides, to-morrow is Sunday.”
“Ah—” she exclaimed, looking at Godefroid, who fancied he could see a soul hovering in the air as he admired the ubiquity of Vanda’s glances.
Until then, Godefroid had never known the power of voice and eyes when the whole of life is put into them. The glance was no longer a glance, a look, it was a flame, or rather, a divine incandescence, a radiance, communicating life and mind,—it was thought made visible. The voice, with its thousand intonations, took the place of motions, gestures, attitudes. The variations of the complexion, changing color like the famous chameleon, made the illusion, perhaps we should say the mirage, complete. That suffering head lying on the white pillow edged with laces was a whole person in itself.
Never in his life had Godefroid seen so wonderful a sight; he could scarcely control his emotions. Another wonder, for all was wondrous in this scene, so full of horror and yet of poesy, was that in those who saw it soul alone existed. This atmosphere, filled with mental emotions only, had a celestial influence. Those present felt their bodies as little as the sick woman felt hers. They were all mind. As Godefroid contemplated that frail fragment of woman he forgot the surrounding elegancies of the room, and fancied himself beneath the open heavens. It was not until half an hour had passed that he came back to his sense of things about him; he then noticed a fine picture, which the invalid asked him to examine, saying it was by Gericault.
“Gericault,” she told him, “came from Rouen; his family were under certain obligations to my father, who was president of the court, and he showed his gratitude by painting that portrait of me when I was a girl of sixteen.”
“It is a beautiful picture,” said Godefroid; “and quite unknown to those who are in search of the rare works of that master.”
“To me it is merely an object of affection,” replied Vanda; “I live in my heart only,—and it is a beautiful life,” she added, casting a look at her father in which she seemed to put her very soul. “Ah! monsieur, if you only knew what my father really is! Who would believe that the stern and lofty magistrate to whom the Emperor was under such obligations that he gave him that snuff-box, and on whom Charles X. bestowed as a reward that Sevres tea-set which you see behind you, who would suppose that that rigid supporter of power and law, that learned jurist, should have within his heart of rock the heart of a mother, too? Oh! papa, papa! kiss me, kiss me! come!”
The old man rose, leaned over the bed and kissed the broad poetic forehead of his daughter, whose passionate excitements did not always take the turn of this tempest of affection. Then he walked about the room; his slippers, embroidered by his daughter, making no noise.
“What are your occupations?” said Vanda to Godefroid, after a pause.
“Madame, I am employed by pious persons to help the unfortunate.”
“Ah! what a noble mission, monsieur!” she said. “Do you know the thought of devoting myself to that very work has often come to me? but ah! what ideas do not come to me?” she added, with a motion of her head. “Suffering is like a torch which lights up life. If I were ever to recover health—”
“You should amuse yourself, my child,” said her father.
“Oh yes!” she said; “I have the desire, but should I then have the faculty? My son will be, I hope a magistrate, worthy of his two grandfathers, and he will leave me. What should I do then? If God restores me to life I will dedicate that life to Him—oh! after giving you all you need of it,” she cried, looking tenderly at her father and son. “There are moments, my dear father, when the ideas of Monsieur de Maistre work within me powerfully, and I fancy that I am expiating something.”
“See what it is to read too much!” said the old man, evidently troubled.
“That brave Polish general, my great grandfather, took part, though very innocently, in the partition of Poland.”
“Well, well! now it is Poland!” said Monsieur Bernard.
“How can I help it, papa? my sufferings are infernal; they give me a horror of life, they disgust me with myself. Well, I ask you, have I done anything to deserve them? Such diseases are not a mere derangement of health, they are caused by a perverted organization and—”
“Sing that national air your poor mother used to sing; Monsieur Godefroid wants to hear it; I have told him about your voice,” said the old man, endeavoring to distract her mind from the current of such thoughts.
Vanda began, in a low and tender voice, to sing a Polish song which held Godefroid dumb with admiration and also with sadness. This melody, which greatly resembles the long drawn out melancholy airs of Brittany, is one of those poems which vibrate in the heart long after the ear has heard them. As he listened, Godefroid looked at Vanda, but he could not endure the ecstatic glance of that fragment of a woman, partially insane, and his eyes wandered to two cords which hung one on each side of the canopy of the bed.
“Ah ha!” laughed Vanda, noticing his look, “do you want to know what those cords are for?”
“Vanda!” said her father, hastily, “calm yourself, my daughter. See! here comes tea. That, monsieur,” he continued, turning to Godefroid, “is rather a costly affair. My daughter cannot rise, and therefore it is difficult to change her sheets. Those cords are fastened to pulleys; by slipping a square of leather beneath her and drawing it up by the four corners with these pulleys, we are able to make her bed without fatigue to her or to ourselves.”
“They swing me!” cried Vanda, gaily.
Happily, Auguste now came in with a teapot, which he placed on a table, together with the Sevres tea-set; then he brought cakes and sandwiches and cream. This sight diverted his mother’s mind from the nervous crisis which seemed to threaten her.
“See, Vanda, here is Nathan’s new novel. If you wake in the night you will have something to read.”
“Oh! delightful! ‘La Perle de Dol;’ it must be a love-story,—Auguste, I have something to tell you! I’m to have an accordion!”
Auguste looked up suddenly with a strange glance at his grandfather.
“See how he loves his mother!” cried Vanda. “Come and kiss me, my kitten. No, it is not your grandfather you are to thank, but monsieur, who is good enough to lend me one. I am to have it to-morrow. How are they made, monsieur?”
Godefroid, at a sign from the old man, explained an accordion at length, while sipping the tea which Auguste brought him and which was in truth, exquisite.
About half-past ten o’clock he retired, weary of beholding the desperate struggle of the son and father, admiring their heroism, and the daily, hourly patience with which they played their double parts, each equally exhausting.
“Well,” said Monsieur Bernard, who followed him home, “you now see, monsieur, the life I live. I am like a thief, on the watch all the time. A word, a gesture might kill my daughter; a mere gewgaw less than she is accustomed to seeing about her would reveal all to that mind that can penetrate everything.”
“Monsieur,” replied Godefroid, “on Monday next Halpersohn shall pronounce upon your daughter. He has returned. I myself doubt the possibility of any science being able to revive that body.”
“Oh! I don’t expect that,” cried the father; “all I ask is that her life be made supportable. I felt sure, monsieur, of your sympathy, and I see that you have indeed comprehended everything—Ah! there’s the attack coming on!” he exclaimed, as the sound of a cry came through the partition; “she went beyond her strength.”
Pressing Godefroid’s hand, the old man hurriedly returned to his own rooms.
At eight o’clock the next morning Godefroid knocked at the door of the celebrated Polish doctor. He was shown by a footman to the first floor of a little house Godefroid had been examining while the porter was seeking and informing the footman.
Happily, Godefroid’s early arrival saved him the annoyance of being kept waiting. He was, he supposed, the first comer. From a very plain and simple antechamber he passed into a large study, where he saw an old man in a dressing-gown smoking a long pipe. The dressing-gown, of black bombazine, shiny with use, dated from the period of the Polish emigration.
“What can I do for you?” said the Jewish doctor, “for I see you are not ill.” And he fixed on his visitor a look which had the inquisitive, piercing expression of the eyes of a Polish Jew, eyes which seem to have ears of their own.
Halpersohn was, to Godefroid’s great astonishment, a man of fifty-six years of age, with small bow-legs, and a broad, powerful chest and shoulders. There was something oriental about the man, and his face in its youth must have been very handsome. The nose was Hebraic, long and curved like a Damascus blade. The forehead, truly Polish, broad and noble, but creased like a bit of crumpled paper, resembled that given by the old Italian masters to Saint Joseph. The eyes, of a sea-green, and circled, like those of parrots, with a gray and wrinkled membrane, expressed slyness and avarice in an eminent degree. The mouth, gashed into the face like a wound, added to the already sinister expression of the countenance all the sarcasm of distrust.
That pale, thin face, for Halpersohn’s whole person was remarkably thin, surmounted by ill-kept gray hair, ended in a long and very thick, black beard, slightly touched with white, which hid fully half the face, so that nothing was really seen of it but the forehead, nose, eyes, cheek-bones, and mouth.
This friend of the revolutionist Lelewel wore a black velvet cap which came to a point on the brow, and took a high light worthy of the touch of Rembrandt.
The question of the physician (who has since become so celebrated, as much for his genius as for his avarice) caused some surprise in Godefroid’s mind, and he said to himself:—
“I wonder if he takes me for a thief.”
The answer to this mental question was on the doctor’s table and fireplace. Godefroid thought he was the first to arrive; he was really the last. Preceding clients had left large offerings behind them; among them Godefroid noticed piles of twenty and forty-franc gold pieces and two notes of a thousand francs each. Could that be the product of one morning? He doubted it, and suspected the Pole of intentional trickery. Perhaps the grasping but infallible doctor took this method of showing his clients, mostly rich persons, that gold must be dropped into his pouch, and not buttons.
Moses Halpersohn was, undoubtedly, largely paid, for he cured, and he cured precisely those desperate diseases which science declares incurable. It is not known in Europe that the Slav races possess many secrets. They have a collection of sovereign remedies, the fruits of their connection with the Chinese, Persians, Cossacks, Turks, and Tartars. Certain peasant women in Poland, who pass for witches, cure insanity radically with the juice of herbs. A vast body of observation, not codified, exists in Poland on the effects of certain plants, and certain barks of trees reduced to powder, which are transmitted from father to son, and family to family, producing cures that are almost miraculous.
Halpersohn, who for five or six years was called a quack on account of his powders and herb medicines, had the innate science of a great physician. Not only had he studied much and observed much, but he had travelled in every part of Germany, Russia, Persia, and Turkey, whence he had gathered many a traditionary secret; and as he knew chemistry he became a living volume of those wonderful recipes scattered among the wise women, or, as the French call them, the bonnes femmes, of every land to which his feet had gone, following his father, a perambulating trader.
It must not be thought that the scene in “The Talisman” where Saladin cures the King of England is a fiction. Halpersohn possesses a silk purse which he steeps in water till the liquid is slightly colored; certain fevers yield immediately when the patient has drunk the prescribed dose of it. The virtue of plants, according to his man, is infinite, and the cure of the worst diseases possible. Nevertheless, he, like the rest of his professional brethren, stops short at certain incomprehensibilities. Halpersohn approved of the invention of homoeopathy, more on account of its therapeutics than for its medical system; he was corresponding at this time with Hedenius of Dresden, Chelius of Heidelburg, and the celebrated German doctors, all the while holding his hand closed, though it was full of discoveries. He wished for no pupils.
The frame was in keeping with this embodiment of a Rembrandt picture. The study, hung with a paper imitating green velvet, was shabbily furnished with a green divan, the cover of which was threadbare. A worn-out green carpet was on the floor. A large armchair of black leather, intended for clients, stood before the window, which was draped with green curtains. A desk chair of Roman shape, made in mahogany and covered with green morocco, was the doctor’s own seat.
Between the fireplace and the long table at which he wrote, a common iron safe stood against the wall, and on it was a clock of Viennese granite, surmounted by a group in bronze representing Cupid playing with Death, the present of a great German sculptor whom Halpersohn had doubtless cured. On the mantel-shelf was a vase between two candlesticks, and no other ornament. On either side of the divan were corner-buffets of ebony, holding plates and dishes, and Godefroid also noticed upon them two silver bowls, glass decanters, and napkins.
This simplicity, which amounted almost to bareness struck Godefroid, whose quick eye took it all in as he recovered his self-possession.
“Monsieur, I am, as you say, perfectly well myself; I have come on behalf of a woman to whom you were asked to pay a visit some time ago. She lives on the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse.”
“Ah! yes; the lady who has sent her son here several times. Well, monsieur, let her come here to me.”
“Come here!” repeated Godefroid, indignantly. “Monsieur, she cannot even be moved from her bed to a chair; they lift her with pulleys.”
“You are not a physician, I suppose?” said the Jewish doctor, with a singular grimace which made his face appear more wicked than it really was.
“If the Baron de Nucingen sent word that he was ill and wanted you to visit him, would you reply, ‘Let him come here to me’?”
“I should go to him,” said the Jew, coldly, spitting into a Dutch pot made of mahogany and full of sand.
“You would go,” said Godefroid, gently, “because the Baron de Nucingen has two millions a year, and—”
“The rest has nothing to do with the matter; I should go.”
“Well, monsieur, you must go to the lady on the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse for the same reason. Without possessing the fortune of the Baron du Nucingen, I am here to tell you that you may yourself put a price upon this lady’s cure, or upon your attendance if you fail; I am ready to pay it in advance. But perhaps, monsieur, as you are a Polish refugee and, I believe, a communist, the lady’s parentage may induce you to make a sacrifice to Poland. She is the granddaughter of Colonel Tarlowski, the friend of Poniatowski.”
“Monsieur, you came here to ask me to cure that lady, and not to give me advice. In Poland I am a Pole; in Paris I am Parisian. Every man does good in his own way; the greed with which I am credited is not without its motive. The wealth I am amassing has its destination; it is a sacred one. I sell health; the rich can afford to purchase it, and I make them pay. The poor have their doctors. If I had not a purpose in view I would not practise medicine. I live soberly and I spend my time in rushing hither and thither; my natural inclination is to be lazy, and I used to be a gambler. Draw your conclusions, young man. You are too young still to judge old men.”
Godefroid was silent.
“From what you say,” went on the doctor, “the lady in question is the granddaughter of that imbecile who had no courage but that of fighting, and who took part in delivering over his country to Catherine II?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Well, be at her house Monday next at three o’clock,” said Halpersohn, taking out a note-book in which he wrote a few words. “You will give me then two hundred francs; and if I promise to cure the patient you will give me three thousand. I am told,” he added, “that the lady has shrunk to almost nothing.”
“Monsieur, if the most celebrated doctors in Paris are to be believed, it is a neurotic case of so extraordinary a nature that they denied the possibility of its symptoms until they saw them.”
“Ah! yes, I remember now what the young lad told me. To-morrow, monsieur.”
Godefroid withdrew, after bowing to the man who seemed to him as odd as he was extraordinary. Nothing about him indicated a physician, not even the study, in which the most notable object was the iron safe, made by Huret or Fichet.
Godefroid had just time to get to the passage Vivienne before the shops closed for the day, and there he bought a superb accordion, which he ordered sent at once to Monsieur Bernard, giving the address.