I need not say that in this transaction, Croisilles had kept no money in
hand. His house was sold; and there remained to him, for his sole fortune,
the clothes he had on his back;--no home, and not a son. With the best
will possible, Jean could not suppose that his master was reduced to such
an extremity; Croisilles was not too proud, but too thoughtless to tell
him of it. So he determined to sleep under the starry vault, and as for
his meals, he made the following calculation; he presumed that the vessel
which bore his fortune would be six months before coming back to Havre;
Croisilles, therefore, not without regret, sold a gold watch his father
had given him, and which he had fortunately kept; he got thirty-six livres
for it. That was sufficient to live on for about six months, at the rate
of four sous a day. He did not doubt that it would be enough, and,
reassured for the present, he wrote to Mademoiselle Godeau to inform her
of what he had done. He was very careful in his letter not to speak of his
distress; he announced to her, on the contrary, that he had undertaken a
magnificent commercial enterprise, of the speedy and fortunate issue of
which there could be no doubt; he explained to her that La Fleurette, a
merchant-vessel of one hundred and fifty tons, was carrying to the Baltic
his cloths and his silks, and implored her to remain faithful to him for a
year, reserving to himself the right of asking, later on, for a further
delay, while, for his part, he swore eternal love to her.
When Mademoiselle Godeau received this letter she was sitting before the
fire, and had in her hand, using it as a screen, one of those bulletins
which are printed in seaports, announcing the arrival and departure of
vessels, and which also report disasters at sea. It had never occurred to
her, as one can well imagine, to take an interest in this sort of thing;
she had in fact never glanced at any of these sheets.
The perusal of Croisilles' letter prompted her to read the bulletin she
had been holding in her hand; the first word that caught her eye was no
other than the name of La Fleurette.
The vessel had been wrecked on the coast of France, on the very night
following its departure. The crew had barely escaped, but all the cargo
was lost.
Mademoiselle Godeau, at this news, no longer remembered that Croisilles
had made to her an avowal of his poverty; she was as heartbroken as though
a million had been at stake.
In an instant, the horrors of the tempest, the fury of the winds, the
cries of the drowning, the ruin of the man who loved her, presented
themselves to her mind like a scene in a romance. The bulletin and the
letter fell from her hands. She rose in great agitation, and, with heaving
breast and eyes brimming with tears, paced up and down, determined to act,
and asking herself how she should act.
There is one thing that must be said in justice to love; it is that the
stronger, the clearer, the simpler the considerations opposed to it, in a
word, the less common sense there is in the matter, the wilder does the
passion become and the more does the lover love. It is one of the most
beautiful things under heaven, this irrationality of the heart. We should
not be worth much without it. After having walked about the room (without
forgetting either her dear fan or the passing glance at the mirror), Julie
allowed herself to sink once more upon her lounge. Whoever had seen her at
this moment would have looked upon a lovely sight; her eyes sparkled, her
cheeks were on fire; she sighed deeply, and murmured in a delicious
transport of joy and pain:
"Poor fellow! He has ruined himself for me!"
Independently of the fortune which she could expect from her father,
Mademoiselle Godeau had in her own right the property her mother had left
her. She had never thought of it.
At this moment, for the first time in her life, she remembered that she
could dispose of five hundred thousand francs. This thought brought a
smile to her lips; a project, strange, bold, wholly feminine, almost as
mad as Croisilles himself, entered her head;--she weighed the idea in her
mind for some time, then decided to act upon it at once.
She began by inquiring whether Croisilles had any relatives or friends;
the maid was sent out in all directions to find out.
Having made minute inquiries in all quarters, she discovered, on the
fourth floor of an old rickety house, a half-crippled aunt, who never
stirred from her arm-chair, and had not been out for four or five years.
This poor woman, very old, seemed to have been left in the world expressly
as a specimen of hungry misery. Blind, gouty, almost deaf, she lived alone
in a garret; but a gayety, stronger than misfortune and illness, sustained
her at eighty years of age, and made her still love life. Her neighbors
never passed her door without going in to see her, and the antiquated
tunes she hummed enlivened all the girls of the neighborhood. She
possessed a little annuity which sufficed to maintain her; as long as day
lasted, she knitted. She did not know what had happened since the death of
Louis XIV.
It was to this worthy person that Julie had herself privately conducted.
She donned for the occasion all her finery; feathers, laces, ribbons,
diamonds, nothing was spared. She wanted to be fascinating; but the real
secret of her beauty, in this case, was the whim that was carrying her
away. She went up the steep, dark staircase which led to the good lady's
chamber, and, after the most graceful bow, spoke somewhat as follows:
"You have, madame, a nephew, called Croisilles, who loves me and has asked
for my hand; I love him too and wish to marry him; but my father, Monsieur
Godeau, fermier-général of this town, refuses his consent, because your
nephew is not rich. I would not, for the world, give occasion to scandal,
nor cause trouble to anybody; I would therefore never think of disposing
of myself without the consent of my family. I come to ask you a favor,
which I beseech you to grant me. You must come yourself and propose this
marriage to my father. I have, thank God, a little fortune which is quite
at your disposal; you may take possession, whenever you see fit, of five
hundred thousand francs at my notary's. You will say that this sum belongs
to your nephew, which in fact it does. It is not a present that I am
making him, it is a debt which I am paying, for I am the cause of the ruin
of Croisilles, and it is but just that I should repair it. My father will
not easily give in; you will be obliged to insist and you must have a
little courage; I, for my part, will not fail. As nobody on earth
excepting myself has any right to the sum of which I am speaking to you,
nobody will ever know in what way this amount will have passed into your
hands. You are not very rich yourself, I know, and you may fear that
people will be astonished to see you thus endowing your nephew; but
remember that my father does not know you, that you show yourself very
little in town, and that, consequently it will be easy for you to pretend
that you have just arrived from some journey. This step will doubtless be
some exertion to you; you will have to leave your arm-chair and take a
little trouble; but you will make two people happy, madame, and if you
have ever known love, I hope you will not refuse me."
The old lady, during this discourse, had been in turn surprised, anxious,
touched, and delighted. The last words persuaded her.
"Yes, my child," she repeated several times, "I know what it is,--I know
what it is."
As she said this she made an effort to rise; her feeble limbs could barely
support her; Julie quickly advanced and put out her hand to help her; by
an almost involuntary movement they found themselves, in an instant, in
each other's arms.
A treaty was at once concluded; a warm kiss sealed it in advance, and the
necessary and confidential consultation followed without further trouble.
All the explanations having been made, the good lady drew from her
wardrobe a venerable gown of taffeta, which had been her wedding-dress.
This antique piece of property was not less than fifty years old; but not
a spot, not a grain of dust had disfigured it; Julie was in ecstasies over
it. A coach was sent for, the handsomest in the town. The good lady
prepared the speech she was going to make to Monsieur Godeau; Julie tried
to teach her how she was to touch the heart of her father, and did not
hesitate to confess that love of rank was his vulnerable point.
"If you could imagine," said she, "a means of flattering this weakness,
you will have won our cause."
The good lady pondered deeply, finished her toilet without Another word,
clasped the hands of her future niece, and entered the carriage.
She soon arrived at the Godeau mansion; there, she braced herself up so
gallantly for her entrance that she seemed ten years younger. She
majestically crossed the drawing-room where Julie's bouquet had fallen,
and when the door of the boudoir opened, said in a firm voice to the
lackey who preceded her:
"Announce the dowager Baroness de Croisilles."
These words settled the happiness of the two lovers. Monsieur Godeau was
bewildered by them. Although five hundred thousand francs seemed little to
him, he consented to everything, in order to make his daughter a baroness,
and such she became;--who would dare contest her title? For my part, I
think she had thoroughly earned it.