In 1816, Joseph obtained his mother’s permission to convert the garret
which adjoined his attic room into an atelier, and Madame Descoings gave
him a little money for the indispensable requirements of the painter’s
trade;--in the minds of the two widows, the art of painting was nothing
but a trade. With the feeling and ardor of his vocation, the lad himself
arranged his humble atelier. Madame Descoings persuaded the owner of the
house to put a skylight in the roof. The garret was turned into a vast
hall painted in chocolate-color by Joseph himself. On the walls he hung
a few sketches. Agathe contributed, not without reluctance, an iron
stove; so that her son might be able to work at home, without, however,
abandoning the studio of Gros, nor that of Schinner.
The constitutional party, supported chiefly by officers on half-pay
and the Bonapartists, were at this time inciting “emeutes” around the
Chamber of Deputies, on behalf of the Charter, though no one actually
wanted it. Several conspiracies were brewing. Philippe, who dabbled
in them, was arrested, and then released for want of proof; but the
minister of war cut short his half-pay by putting him on the active
list,--a step which might be called a form of discipline. France was no
longer safe; Philippe was liable to fall into some trap laid for him by
spies,--provocative agents, as they were called, being much talked of in
those days.
While Philippe played billiards in disaffected cafes, losing his time
and acquiring the habit of wetting his whistle with “little glasses” of
all sorts of liquors. Agathe lived in mortal terror for the safety of
the great man of the family. The Grecian sages were too much accustomed
to wend their nightly way up Madame Bridau’s staircase, finding the two
widows ready and waiting, and hearing from them all the news of their
day, ever to break up the habit of coming to the green salon for their
game of cards. The ministry of the interior, though purged of its former
_employes_ in 1816, had retained Claparon, one of those cautious men,
who whisper the news of the “Moniteur,” adding invariably, “Don’t quote
me.” Desroches, who had retired from active service some time after old
Du Bruel, was still battling for his pension. The three friends, who
were witnesses of Agathe’s distress, advised her to send the colonel to
travel in foreign countries.
“They talk about conspiracies, and your son, with his disposition,
will be certain to fall a victim in some of them; there is plenty of
treachery in these days.”
“Philippe is cut from the wood the Emperor made into marshals,” said
Du Bruel, in a low voice, looking cautiously about him; “and he mustn’t
give up his profession. Let him serve in the East, in India--”
“Think of his health,” said Agathe.
“Why doesn’t he get some place, or business?” said old Desroches; “there
are plenty of private offices to be had. I am going as head of a bureau
in an insurance company, as soon as I have got my pension.”
“Philippe is a soldier; he would not like to be any thing else,” said
the warlike Agathe.
“Then he ought to have the sense to ask for employment--”
“And serve _these others_!” cried the widow. “Oh! I will never give him
that advice.”
“You are wrong,” said Du Bruel. “My son has just got an appointment
through the Duc de Navarreins. The Bourbons are very good to those
who are sincere in rallying to them. Your son could be appointed
lieutenant-colonel to a regiment.”
“They only appoint nobles in the cavalry. Philippe would never rise to
be a colonel,” said Madame Descoings.
Agathe, much alarmed, entreated Philippe to travel abroad, and put
himself at the service of some foreign power who, she thought, would
gladly welcome a staff officer of the Emperor.
“Serve a foreign nation!” cried Philippe, with horror.
Agathe kissed her son with enthusiasm.
“His father all over!” she exclaimed.
“He is right,” said Joseph. “France is too proud of her heroes to let
them be heroic elsewhere. Napoleon may return once more.”
However, to satisfy his mother, Philippe took up the dazzling idea of
joining General Lallemand in the United States, and helping him to found
what was called the Champ d’Asile, one of the most disastrous swindles
that ever appeared under the name of national subscription. Agathe gave
ten thousand francs to start her son, and she went to Havre to see him
off. By the end of 1817, she had accustomed herself to live on the six
hundred francs a year which remained to her from her property in the
Funds; then, by a lucky chance, she made a good investment of the ten
thousand francs she still kept of her savings, from which she obtained
an interest of seven per cent. Joseph wished to emulate his mother’s
devotion. He dressed like a bailiff; wore the commonest shoes and blue
stockings; denied himself gloves, and burned charcoal; he lived on bread
and milk and Brie cheese. The poor lad got no sympathy, except from
Madame Descoings, and from Bixiou, his student-friend and comrade, who
was then making those admirable caricatures of his, and filling a small
office in the ministry.
“With what joy I welcomed the summer of 1818!” said Joseph Bridau
in after-years, relating his troubles; “the sun saved me the cost of
charcoal.”
As good a colorist by this time as Gros himself, Joseph now went to his
master for consultation only. He was already meditating a tilt against
classical traditions, and Grecian conventionalities, in short, against
the leading-strings which held down an art to which Nature _as she is_
belongs, in the omnipotence of her creations and her imagery. Joseph
made ready for a struggle which, from the day when he first exhibited in
the Salon, has never ceased. It was a terrible year. Roguin, the notary
of Madame Descoings and Madame Bridau, absconded with the moneys held
back for seven years from Madame Descoings’s annuity, which by that
time were producing two thousand francs a year. Three days after this
disaster, a bill of exchange for a thousand francs, drawn by Philippe
upon his mother, arrived from New York. The poor fellow, misled like
so many others, had lost his all in the Champ d’Asile. A letter, which
accompanied the bill, drove Agathe, Joseph, and the Descoings to
tears, and told of debts contracted in New York, where his comrades in
misfortunes had indorsed for him.
“It was I who made him go!” cried the poor mother, eager to divert the
blame from Philippe.
“I advise you not to send him on many such journeys,” said the old
Descoings to her niece.
Madame Descoings was heroic. She continued to give the three thousand
francs a year to Madame Bridau, but she still paid the dues on her trey
which had never turned up since the year 1799. About this time, she
began to doubt the honesty of the government, and declared it was
capable of keeping the three numbers in the urn, so as to excite the
shareholders to put in enormous stakes. After a rapid survey of all
their resources, it seemed to the two women impossible to raise the
thousand francs without selling out the little that remained in the
Funds. They talked of pawning their silver and part of the linen,
and even the needless pieces of furniture. Joseph, alarmed at these
suggestions, went to see Gerard and told him their circumstances. The
great painter obtained an order from the household of the king for
two copies of a portrait of Louis XVIII., at five hundred francs
each. Though not naturally generous, Gros took his pupil to an
artist-furnishing house and fitted him out with the necessary materials.
But the thousand francs could not be had till the copies were delivered,
so Joseph painted four panels in ten days, sold them to the dealers and
brought his mother the thousand francs with which to meet the bill of
exchange when it fell due. Eight days later, came a letter from the
colonel, informing his mother that he was about to return to France
on board a packet from New York, whose captain had trusted him for
the passage-money. Philippe announced that he should need at least a
thousand francs on his arrival at Havre.
“Good,” said Joseph to his mother, “I shall have finished my copies by
that time, and you can carry him the money.”
“Dear Joseph!” cried Agathe in tears, kissing her son, “God will bless
you. You do love him, then, poor persecuted fellow? He is indeed our
glory and our hope for the future. So young, so brave, so unfortunate!
everything is against him; we three must always stand by him.”
“You see now that painting is good for something,” cried Joseph,
overjoyed to have won his mother’s permission to be a great artist.
Madame Bridau rushed to meet her beloved son, Colonel Philippe, at
Havre. Once there, she walked every day beyond the round tower built by
Francois I., to look out for the American packet, enduring the keenest
anxieties. Mothers alone know how such sufferings quicken maternal love.
The vessel arrived on a fine morning in October, 1819, without delay,
and having met with no mishap. The sight of a mother and the air of
one’s native land produces a certain affect on the coarsest nature,
especially after the miseries of a sea-voyage. Philippe gave way to a
rush of feeling, which made Agathe think to herself, “Ah! how he loves
me!” Alas, the hero loved but one person in the world, and that person
was Colonel Philippe. His misfortunes in Texas, his stay in New York,--a
place where speculation and individualism are carried to the highest
pitch, where the brutality of self-interest attains to cynicism, where
man, essentially isolated, is compelled to push his way for himself and
by himself, where politeness does not exist,--in fact, even the minor
events of Philippe’s journey had developed in him the worst traits of an
old campaigner: he had grown brutal, selfish, rude; he drank and smoked
to excess; physical hardships and poverty had depraved him. Moreover,
he considered himself persecuted; and the effect of that idea is to
make persons who are unintelligent persecutors and bigots themselves. To
Philippe’s conception of life, the universe began at his head and ended
at his feet, and the sun shone for him alone. The things he had seen
in New York, interpreted by his practical nature, carried away his last
scruples on the score of morality. For such beings, there are but two
ways of existence. Either they believe, or they do not believe; they
have the virtues of honest men, or they give themselves up to the
demands of necessity; in which case they proceed to turn their slightest
interests and each passing impulse of their passions into necessities.
Such a system of life carries a man a long way. It was only in
appearance that Colonel Philippe retained the frankness, plain-dealing,
and easy-going freedom of a soldier. This made him, in reality, very
dangerous; he seemed as guileless as a child, but, thinking only of
himself, he never did anything without reflecting what he had better
do,--like a wily lawyer planning some trick “a la Maitre Gonin”; words
cost him nothing, and he said as many as he could to get people to
believe. If, unfortunately, some one refused to accept the explanations
with which he justified the contradictions between his conduct and his
professions, the colonel, who was a good shot and could defy the most
adroit fencing-master, and possessed the coolness of one to whom life is
indifferent, was quite ready to demand satisfaction for the first sharp
word; and when a man shows himself prepared for violence there is little
more to be said. His imposing stature had taken on a certain rotundity,
his face was bronzed from exposure in Texas, he was still succinct in
speech, and had acquired the decisive tone of a man obliged to make
himself feared among the populations of a new world. Thus developed,
plainly dressed, his body trained to endurance by his recent hardships,
Philippe in the eyes of his mother was a hero; in point of fact, he had
simply become what people (not to mince matters) call a blackguard.
Shocked at the destitution of her cherished son, Madame Bridau bought
him a complete outfit of clothes at Havre. After listening to the tale
of his woes, she had not the heart to stop his drinking and eating and
amusing himself as a man just returned from the Champ d’Asile was
likely to eat and drink and divert himself. It was certainly a fine
conception,--that of conquering Texas with the remains of the imperial
army. The failure was less in the idea than in the men who conceived
it; for Texas is to-day a republic, with a future full of promise. This
scheme of Liberalism under the Restoration distinctly proves that the
interests of the party were purely selfish and not national, seeking
power and nothing else. Neither men, nor occasion, nor cause,
nor devotion were lacking; only the money and the support of the
hypocritical party at home who dispensed enormous sums, but gave nothing
when it came to recovering empire. Household managers like Agathe have
a plain common-sense which enables them to perceive such political
chicane: the poor woman saw the truth through the lines of her son’s
tale; for she had read, in the exile’s interests, all the pompous
editorials of the constitutional journals, and watched the management
of the famous subscription, which produced barely one hundred and fifty
thousand francs when it ought to have yielded five or six millions. The
Liberal leaders soon found out that they were playing into the hands of
Louis XVIII. by exporting the glorious remnants of our grand army, and
they promptly abandoned to their fate the most devoted, the most ardent,
the most enthusiastic of its heroes,--those, in short, who had gone in
the advance. Agathe was never able, however, to make her son see that
he was more duped than persecuted. With blind belief in her idol, she
supposed herself ignorant, and deplored, as Philippe did, the evil times
which had done him such wrong. Up to this time he was, to her mind,
throughout his misfortunes, less faulty than victimized by his noble
nature, his energy, the fall of the Emperor, the duplicity of the
Liberals, and the rancor of the Bourbons against the Bonapartists.
During the week at Havre, a week which was horribly costly, she dared
not ask him to make terms with the royal government and apply to the
minister of war. She had hard work to get him away from Havre, where
living is very expensive, and to bring him back to Paris before her
money gave out. Madame Descoings and Joseph, who were awaiting their
arrival in the courtyard of the coach-office of the Messageries Royales,
were struck with the change in Agathe’s face.
“Your mother has aged ten years in two months,” whispered the Descoings
to Joseph, as they all embraced, and the two trunks were being handed
down.
“How do you do, mere Descoings?” was the cool greeting the colonel
bestowed on the old woman whom Joseph was in the habit of calling “maman
Descoings.”
“I have no money to pay for a hackney-coach,” said Agathe, in a sad
voice.
“I have,” replied the young painter. “What a splendid color Philippe has
turned!” he cried, looking at his brother.
“Yes, I’ve browned like a pipe,” said Philippe. “But as for you, you’re
not a bit changed, little man.”
Joseph, who was now twenty-one, and much thought of by the friends who
had stood by him in his days of trial, felt his own strength and was
aware of his talent; he represented the art of painting in a circle of
young men whose lives were devoted to science, letters, politics, and
philosophy. Consequently, he was wounded by his brother’s contempt,
which Philippe still further emphasized with a gesture, pulling his ears
as if he were still a child. Agathe noticed the coolness which succeeded
the first glow of tenderness on the part of Joseph and Madame Descoings;
but she hastened to tell them of Philippe’s sufferings in exile, and so
lessened it. Madame Descoings, wishing to make a festival of the return
of the prodigal, as she called him under her breath, had prepared one
of her good dinners, to which old Claparon and the elder Desroches
were invited. All the family friends were to come, and did come, in the
evening. Joseph had invited Leon Giraud, d’Arthez, Michel Chrestien,
Fulgence Ridal, and Horace Bianchon, his friends of the fraternity.
Madame Descoings had promised Bixiou, her so-called step-son, that the
young people should play at ecarte. Desroches the younger, who had now
taken, under his father’s stern rule, his degree at law, was also of
the party. Du Bruel, Claparon, Desroches, and the Abbe Loraux carefully
observed the returned exile, whose manners and coarse features, and
voice roughened by the abuse of liquors, together with his vulgar glance
and phraseology, alarmed them not a little. While Joseph was placing the
card-tables, the more intimate of the family friends surrounded Agathe
and asked,--
“What do you intend to make of Philippe?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, “but he is determined not to serve the
Bourbons.”
“Then it will be very difficult for you to find him a place in France.
If he won’t re-enter the army, he can’t be readily got into government
employ,” said old Du Bruel. “And you have only to listen to him to see
he could never, like my son, make his fortune by writing plays.”
The motion of Agathe’s eyes, with which alone she replied to this
speech, showed how anxious Philippe’s future made her; they all kept
silence. The exile himself, Bixiou, and the younger Desroches were
playing at ecarte, a game which was then the rage.
“Maman Descoings, my brother has no money to play with,” whispered
Joseph in the good woman’s ear.
The devotee of the Royal Lottery fetched twenty francs and gave them to
the artist, who slipped them secretly into his brother’s hand. All the
company were now assembled. There were two tables of boston; and the
party grew lively. Philippe proved a bad player: after winning for
awhile, he began to lose; and by eleven o’clock he owed fifty francs to
young Desroches and to Bixiou. The racket and the disputes at the ecarte
table resounded more than once in the ears of the more peaceful boston
players, who were watching Philippe surreptitiously. The exile showed
such signs of bad temper that in his final dispute with the younger
Desroches, who was none too amiable himself, the elder Desroches joined
in, and though his son was decidedly in the right, he declared he was
in the wrong, and forbade him to play any more. Madame Descoings did the
same with her grandson, who was beginning to let fly certain witticisms;
and although Philippe, so far, had not understood him, there was always
a chance that one of the barbed arrows might piece the colonel’s thick
skull and put the sharp jester in peril.
“You must be tired,” whispered Agathe in Philippe’s ear; “come to bed.”
“Travel educates youth,” said Bixiou, grinning, when Madame Bridau and
the colonel had disappeared.
Joseph, who got up at dawn and went to bed early, did not see the end of
the party. The next morning Agathe and Madame Descoings, while preparing
breakfast, could not help remarking that soires would be terribly
expensive if Philippe were to go on playing that sort of game, as the
Descoings phrased it. The worthy old woman, then seventy-six years of
age, proposed to sell her furniture, give up her _appartement_ on the
second floor (which the owner was only too glad to occupy), and take
Agathe’s parlor for her chamber, making the other room a sitting-room
and dining-room for the family. In this way they could save seven
hundred francs a year; which would enable them to give Philippe fifty
francs a month until he could find something to do. Agathe accepted the
sacrifice. When the colonel came down and his mother had asked how he
liked his little bedroom, the two widows explained to him the situation
of the family. Madame Descoings and Agathe possessed, by putting all
their resources together, an income of five thousand three hundred
francs, four thousand of which belonged to Madame Descoings and were
merely a life annuity. The Descoings made an allowance of six hundred
a year to Bixiou, whom she had acknowledged as her grandson during the
last few months, also six hundred to Joseph; the rest of her income,
together with that of Agathe, was spent for the household wants. All
their savings were by this time eaten up.
“Make yourselves easy,” said the lieutenant-colonel. “I’ll find a
situation and put you to no expense; all I need for the present is board
and lodging.”
Agathe kissed her son, and Madame Descoings slipped a hundred francs
into his hand to pay for his losses of the night before. In ten days
the furniture was sold, the _appartement_ given up, and the change in
Agathe’s domestic arrangements accomplished with a celerity seldom seen
outside of Paris. During those ten days, Philippe regularly decamped
after breakfast, came back for dinner, was off again for the evening,
and only got home about midnight to go to bed. He contracted certain
habits half mechanically, and they soon became rooted in him; he got his
boots blacked on the Pont Neuf for the two sous it would have cost
him to go by the Pont des Arts to the Palais-Royal, where he consumed
regularly two glasses of brandy while reading the newspapers,--an
occupation which employed him till midday; after that he sauntered along
the rue Vivienne to the cafe Minerve, where the Liberals congregated,
and where he played at billiards with a number of old comrades. While
winning and losing, Philippe swallowed four or five more glasses of
divers liquors, and smoked ten or a dozen cigars in going and coming,
and idling along the streets. In the evening, after consuming a
few pipes at the Hollandais smoking-rooms, he would go to some
gambling-place towards ten o’clock at night. The waiter handed him a
card and a pin; he always inquired of certain well-seasoned players
about the chances of the red or the black, and staked ten francs when
the lucky moment seemed to come; never playing more than three times,
win or lose. If he won, which usually happened, he drank a tumbler
of punch and went home to his garret; but by that time he talked of
smashing the ultras and the Bourbon body-guard, and trolled out, as he
mounted the staircase, “We watch to save the Empire!” His poor mother,
hearing him, used to think “How gay Philippe is to-night!” and then she
would creep up and kiss him, without complaining of the fetid odors of
the punch, and the brandy, and the pipes.
“You ought to be satisfied with me, my dear mother,” he said, towards
the end of January; “I lead the most regular of lives.”
The colonel had dined five times at a restaurant with some of his army
comrades. These old soldiers were quite frank with each other on the
state of their own affairs, all the while talking of certain hopes which
they based on the building of a submarine vessel, expected to bring
about the deliverance of the Emperor. Among these former comrades,
Philippe particularly liked an old captain of the dragoons of the Guard,
named Giroudeau, in whose company he had seen his first service. This
friendship with the late dragoon led Philippe into completing what
Rabelais called “the devil’s equipage”; and he added to his drams, and
his tobacco, and his play, a “fourth wheel.”
One evening at the beginning of February, Giroudeau took Philippe after
dinner to the Gaite, occupying a free box sent to a theatrical journal
belonging to his nephew Finot, in whose office Giroudeau was cashier
and secretary. Both were dressed after the fashion of the Bonapartist
officers who now belonged to the Constitutional Opposition; they wore
ample overcoats with square collars, buttoned to the chin and coming
down to their heels, and decorated with the rosette of the Legion of
honor; and they carried malacca canes with loaded knobs, which they held
by strings of braided leather. The late troopers had just (to use one of
their own expressions) “made a bout of it,” and were mutually unbosoming
their hearts as they entered the box. Through the fumes of a certain
number of bottles and various glasses of various liquors, Giroudeau
pointed out to Philippe a plump and agile little ballet-girl whom he
called Florentine, whose good graces and affection, together with the
box, belonged to him as the representative of an all-powerful journal.
“But,” said Philippe, “I should like to know how far her good graces go
for such an iron-gray old trooper as you.”
“Thank God,” replied Giroudeau, “I’ve stuck to the traditions of our
glorious uniform. I have never wasted a farthing upon a woman in my
life.”
“What’s that?” said Philippe, putting a finger on his left eye.
“That is so,” answered Giroudeau. “But, between ourselves, the newspaper
counts for a good deal. To-morrow, in a couple of lines, we shall advise
the managers to let Mademoiselle Florentine dance a particular step, and
so forth. Faith, my dear boy, I’m uncommonly lucky!”
“Well!” thought Philippe; “if this worthy Giroudeau, with a skull as
polished as my knee, forty-eight years, a big stomach, a face like a
ploughman, and a nose like a potato, can get a ballet-girl, I ought to
be the lover of the first actress in Paris. Where does one find such
luck?” he said aloud.
“I’ll show you Florentine’s place to-night. My Dulcinea only earns
fifty francs a month at the theatre,” added Giroudeau, “but she is very
prettily set up, thanks to an old silk dealer named Cardot, who gives
her five hundred francs a month.”
“Well, but--?” exclaimed the jealous Philippe.
“Bah!” said Giroudeau; “true love is blind.”
When the play was over Giroudeau took Philippe to Mademoiselle
Florentine’s _appartement_, which was close to the theatre, in the rue
de Crussol.
“We must behave ourselves,” said Giroudeau. “Florentine’s mother is
here. You see, I haven’t the means to pay for one, so the worthy woman
is really her own mother. She used to be a concierge, but she’s not
without intelligence. Call her Madame; she makes a point of it.”
Florentine happened that night to have a friend with her,--a certain
Marie Godeschal, beautiful as an angel, cold as a danseuse, and a
pupil of Vestris, who foretold for her a great choregraphic destiny.
Mademoiselle Godeschal, anxious to make her first appearance at the
Panorama-Dramatique under the name of Mariette, based her hopes on the
protection and influence of a first gentleman of the bedchamber, to whom
Vestris had promised to introduce her. Vestris, still green himself at
this period, did not think his pupil sufficiently trained to risk the
introduction. The ambitious girl did, in the end, make her pseudonym of
Mariette famous; and the motive of her ambition, it must be said, was
praiseworthy. She had a brother, a clerk in Derville’s law office. Left
orphans and very poor, and devoted to each other, the brother and sister
had seen life such as it is in Paris. The one wished to be a lawyer that
he might support his sister, and he lived on ten sous a day; the other
had coldly resolved to be a dancer, and to profit by her beauty as much
as by her legs that she might buy a practice for her brother. Outside
of their feeling for each other, and of their mutual life and interests,
everything was to them, as it once was to the Romans and the Hebrews,
barbaric, outlandish, and hostile. This generous affection, which
nothing ever lessened, explained Mariette to those who knew her
intimately.
The brother and sister were living at this time on the eighth floor of a
house in the Vieille rue du Temple. Mariette had begun her studies
when she was ten years old; she was now just sixteen. Alas! for want of
becoming clothes, her beauty, hidden under a coarse shawl, dressed
in calico, and ill-kept, could only be guessed by those Parisians
who devote themselves to hunting grisettes and the quest of beauty in
misfortune, as she trotted past them with mincing step, mounted on iron
pattens. Philippe fell in love with Mariette. To Mariette, Philippe was
commander of the dragoons of the Guard, a staff-officer of the Emperor,
a young man of twenty-seven, and above all, the means of proving herself
superior to Florentine by the evident superiority of Philippe over
Giroudeau. Florentine and Giroudeau, the one to promote his comrade’s
happiness, the other to get a protector for her friend, pushed Philippe
and Mariette into a “mariage en detrempe,”--a Parisian term which is
equivalent to “morganatic marriage,” as applied to royal personages.
Philippe when they left the house revealed his poverty to Giroudeau, but
the old roue reassured him.
“I’ll speak to my nephew Finot,” he said. “You see, Philippe, the reign
of phrases and quill-drivers is upon us; we may as well submit. To-day,
scribblers are paramount. Ink has ousted gunpowder, and talk takes the
place of shot. After all, these little toads of editors are pretty good
fellows, and very clever. Come and see me to-morrow at the newspaper
office; by that time I shall have said a word for you to my nephew.
Before long you’ll have a place on some journal or other. Mariette,
who is taking you at this moment (don’t deceive yourself) because she
literally has nothing, no engagement, no chance of appearing on the
stage, and I have told her that you are going on a newspaper like
myself,--Mariette will try to make you believe she is loving you for
yourself; and you will believe her! Do as I do,--keep her as long as you
can. I was so much in love with Florentine that I begged Finot to write
her up and help her to a debut; but my nephew replied, ‘You say she has
talent; well, the day after her first appearance she will turn her back
on you.’ Oh, that’s Finot all over! You’ll find him a knowing one.”
The next day, about four o’clock, Philippe went to the rue de Sentier,
where he found Giroudeau in the entresol,--caged like a wild beast in
a sort of hen-coop with a sliding panel; in which was a little stove,
a little table, two little chairs, and some little logs of wood. This
establishment bore the magic words, SUBSCRIPTION OFFICE, painted on
the door in black letters, and the word “Cashier,” written by hand and
fastened to the grating of the cage. Along the wall that lay opposite
to the cage, was a bench, where, at this moment, a one-armed man was
breakfasting, who was called Coloquinte by Giroudeau, doubtless from the
Egyptian colors of his skin.
“A pretty hole!” exclaimed Philippe, looking round the room. “In the
name of thunder! what are you doing here, you who charged with poor
Colonel Chabert at Eylau? You--a gallant officer!”
“Well, yes! broum! broum!--a gallant officer keeping the accounts of a
little newspaper,” said Giroudeau, settling his black silk skull-cap.
“Moreover, I’m the working editor of all that rubbish,” he added,
pointing to the newspaper itself.
“And I, who went to Egypt, I’m obliged to stamp it,” said the one-armed
man.
“Hold your tongue, Coloquinte,” said Giroudeau. “You are in presence of
a hero who carried the Emperor’s orders at the battle of Montereau.”
Coloquinte saluted. “That’s were I lost my missing arm!” he said.
“Coloquinte, look after the den. I’m going up to see my nephew.”
The two soldiers mounted to the fourth floor, where, in an attic room
at the end of a passage, they found a young man with a cold light eye,
lying on a dirty sofa. The representative of the press did not stir,
though he offered cigars to his uncle and his uncle’s friend.
“My good fellow,” said Giroudeau in a soothing and humble tone, “this
is the gallant cavalry officer of the Imperial Guard of whom I spoke to
you.”
“Eh! well?” said Finot, eyeing Philippe, who, like Giroudeau, lost all
his assurance before the diplomatist of the press.
“My dear boy,” said Giroudeau, trying to pose as an uncle, “the colonel
has just returned from Texas.”
“Ah! you were taken in by that affair of the Champ d’Asile, were you?
Seems to me you were rather young to turn into a Soldier-laborer.”
The bitterness of this jest will only be understood by those who
remember the deluge of engravings, screens, clocks, bronzes, and
plaster-casts produced by the idea of the Soldier-laborer, a splendid
image of Napoleon and his heroes, which afterwards made its appearance
on the stage in vaudevilles. That idea, however, obtained a national
subscription; and we still find, in the depths of the provinces, old
wall-papers which bear the effigy of the Soldier-laborer. If this young
man had not been Giroudeau’s nephew, Philippe would have boxed his ears.
“Yes, I was taken in by it; I lost my time, and twelve thousand francs
to boot,” answered Philippe, trying to force a grin.
“You are still fond of the Emperor?” asked Finot.
“He is my god,” answered Philippe Bridau.
“You are a Liberal?”
“I shall always belong to the Constitutional Opposition. Oh Foy!
oh Manuel! oh Laffitte! what men they are! They’ll rid us of these
others,--these wretches, who came back to France at the heels of the
enemy.”
“Well,” said Finot coldly, “you ought to make something out of your
misfortunes; for you are the victim of the Liberals, my good fellow.
Stay a Liberal, if you really value your opinions, but threaten the
party with the follies in Texas which you are ready to show up. You
never got a farthing of the national subscription, did you? Well, then
you hold a fine position: demand an account of that subscription. I’ll
tell you how you can do it. A new Opposition journal is just starting,
under the auspices of the deputies of the Left; you shall be the
cashier, with a salary of three thousand francs. A permanent place. All
you want is some one to go security for you in twenty thousand francs;
find that, and you shall be installed within a week. I’ll advise
the Liberals to silence you by giving you the place. Meantime, talk,
threaten,--threaten loudly.”
Giroudeau let Philippe, who was profuse in his thanks, go down a few
steps before him, and then he turned back to say to his nephew, “Well,
you are a queer fellow! you keep me here on twelve hundred francs--”
“That journal won’t live a year,” said Finot. “I’ve got something better
for you.”
“Thunder!” cried Philippe to Giroudeau. “He’s no fool, that nephew of
yours. I never once thought of making something, as he calls it, out of
my position.”
That night at the cafe Lemblin and the cafe Minerve Colonel Philippe
fulminated against the Liberal party, which had raised subscriptions,
sent heroes to Texas, talked hypocritically of Soldier-laborers, and
left them to starve, after taking the money they had put into it, and
keeping them in exile for two years.
“I am going to demand an account of the moneys collected by the
subscription for the Champ d’Asile,” he said to one of the frequenters
of the cafe, who repeated it to the journalists of the Left.
Philippe did not go back to the rue Mazarin; he went to Mariette and
told her of his forthcoming appointment on a newspaper with ten thousand
subscribers, in which her choregraphic claims should be warmly advanced.
Agathe and Madame Descoings waited up for Philippe in fear and
trembling, for the Duc de Berry had just been assassinated. The colonel
came home a few minutes after breakfast; and when his mother showed her
uneasiness at his absence, he grew angry and asked if he were not of
age.
“In the name of thunder, what’s all this! here have I brought you some
good news, and you both look like tombstones. The Duc de Berry is dead,
is he?--well, so much the better! that’s one the less, at any rate.
As for me, I am to be cashier of a newspaper, with a salary of three
thousand francs, and there you are, out of all your anxieties on my
account.”
“Is it possible?” cried Agathe.
“Yes; provided you can go security for me in twenty thousand francs; you
need only deposit your shares in the Funds, you will draw the interest
all the same.”
The two widows, who for nearly two months had been desperately anxious
to find out what Philippe was about, and how he could be provided for,
were so overjoyed at this prospect that they gave no thought to their
other catastrophes. That evening, the Grecian sages, old Du Bruel,
Claparon, whose health was failing, and the inflexible Desroches were
unanimous; they all advised Madame Bridau to go security for her son.
The new journal, which fortunately was started before the assassination
of the Duc de Berry, just escaped the blow which Monsieur Decazes then
launched at the press. Madame Bridau’s shares in the Funds, representing
thirteen hundred francs’ interest, were transferred as security for
Philippe, who was then appointed cashier. That good son at once promised
to pay one hundred francs every month to the two widows, for his board
and lodging, and was declared by both to be the best of sons. Those who
had thought ill of him now congratulated Agathe.
“We were unjust to him,” they said.
Poor Joseph, not to be behind his brother in generosity, resolved to pay
for his own support, and succeeded.