arms; “none of us can go to see you, the risk is too great. We must say
good-bye for the whole time that your imprisonment lasts. We will write
to each other; Basine will post your letters, and I will write under
cover to her.”
No sooner did David and Kolb come out of the house than they heard a
sharp whistle, and were followed to the livery stable. Once there, Kolb
took his master up behind him, with a caution to keep tight hold.
“Veestle avay, mind goot vriends! I care not von rap,” cried Kolb. “You
vill not katch an old trooper,” and the old cavalry man clapped both
spurs to his horse, and was out into the country and the darkness
not merely before the spies could follow, but before they had time to
discover the direction that he took.
Eve meanwhile went out on the tolerably ingenious pretext of asking
advise of Postel, sat awhile enduring the insulting pity that spends
itself in words, left the Postel family, and stole away unseen to Basine
Clerget, told her troubles, and asked for help and shelter. Basine, for
greater safety, had brought Eve into her bedroom, and now she opened the
door of a little closet, lighted only by a skylight in such a way that
prying eyes could not see into it. The two friends unstopped the flue
which opened into the chimney of the stove in the workroom, where the
girls heated their irons. Eve and Basine spread ragged coverlets over
the brick floor to deaden any sound that David might make, put in a
truckle bed, a stove for his experiments, and a table and a chair.
Basine promised to bring food in the night; and as no one had occasion
to enter her room, David might defy his enemies one and all, or even
detectives.
“At last!” Eve said, with her arms about her friend, “at last he is in
safety.”
Eve went back to Postel to submit a fresh doubt that had occurred to
her, she said. She would like the opinion of such an experienced member
of the Chamber of Commerce; she so managed that he escorted her home,
and listened patiently to his commiseration.
“Would this have happened if you had married me?”--all the little
druggist’s remarks were pitched in this key.
Then he went home again to find Mme. Postel jealous of Mme. Séchard,
and furious with her spouse for his polite attention to that beautiful
woman. The apothecary advanced the opinion that little red-haired women
were preferable to tall, dark women, who, like fine horses, were always
in the stable, he said. He gave proofs of his sincerity, no doubt, for
Mme. Postel was very sweet to him next day.
“We may be easy,” Eve said to her mother and Marion, whom she found
still “in a taking,” in the latter’s phrase.
“Oh! they are gone,” said Marion, when Eve looked unthinkingly round the
room.
One league out of Angoulême on the main road to Paris, Kolb stopped.
“Vere shall we go?”
“To Marsac,” said David; “since we are on the way already, I will try
once more to soften my father’s heart.”
“I would rader mount to der assault of a pattery,” said Kolb, “your
resbected fader haf no heart whatefer.”
The ex-pressman had no belief in his son; he judged him from the outside
point of view, and waited for results. He had no idea, to begin with,
that he had plundered David, nor did he make allowance for the very
different circumstances under which they had begun life; he said to
himself, “I set him up with a printing-house, just as I found it myself;
and he, knowing a thousand times more than I did, cannot keep it going.”
He was mentally incapable of understanding his son; he laid the blame of
failure upon him, and even prided himself, as it were, on his superiority
to a far greater intellect than his own, with the thought, “I am
securing his bread for him.”
Moralists will never succeed in making us comprehend the full extent of
the influence of sentiment upon self-interest, an influence every whit
as strong as the action of interest upon our sentiments; for every law
of our nature works in two ways, and acts and reacts upon us.
David, on his side, understood his father, and in his sublime charity
forgave him. Kolb and David reached Marsac at eight o’clock, and
suddenly came in upon the old man as he was finishing his dinner, which,
by force of circumstances, came very near bedtime.
“I see you because there is no help for it,” said old Séchard with a
sour smile.
“Und how should you and mein master meet? He soars in der shkies, and
you are always mit your vines! You bay for him, that’s vot you are a
fader for----”
“Come, Kolb, off with you. Put up the horse at Mme. Courtois’ so as
to save inconvenience here; fathers are always in the right, remember
that.”
Kolb went off, growling like a chidden dog, obedient but protesting; and
David proposed to give his father indisputable proof of his discovery,
while reserving his secret. He offered to give him an interest in the
affair in return for money paid down; a sufficient sum to release him
from his present difficulties, with or without a further amount of
capital to be employed in developing the invention.
“And how are you going to prove to me that you can make good paper that
costs nothing out of nothing, eh?” asked the ex-printer, giving his son
a glance, vinous, it may be, but keen, inquisitive, and covetous; a
look like a flash of lightning from a sodden cloud; for the old “bear,”
faithful to his traditions, never went to bed without a nightcap,
consisting of a couple of bottles of excellent old wine, which he
“tippled down” of an evening, to use his own expression.
“Nothing simpler,” said David; “I have none of the paper about me, for I
came here to be out of Doublon’s way; and having come so far, I thought
I might as well come to you at Marsac as borrow of a money-lender. I
have nothing on me but my clothes. Shut me up somewhere on the premises,
so that nobody can come in and see me at work, and----”
“What? you will not let me see you at your work then?” asked the old
man, with an ugly look at his son.
“You have given me to understand plainly, father, that in matters of
business there is no question of father and son----”
“Ah! you distrust the father that gave you life!”
“No; the other father who took away the means of earning a livelihood.”
“Each for himself, you are right!” said the old man. “Very good, I will
put you in the cellar.”
“I will go down there with Kolb. You must let me have a large pot for
my pulp,” said David; then he continued, without noticing the quick look
his father gave him,--“and you must find artichoke and asparagus stalks
for me, and nettles, and the reeds that you cut by the stream side,
and to-morrow morning I will come out of your cellar with some splendid
paper.”
“If you can do that,” hiccoughed the “bear,” “I will let you have,
perhaps--I will see, that is, if I can let you have--pshaw! twenty-five
thousand francs. On condition, mind, that you make as much for me every
year.”
“Put me to the proof, I am quite willing,” cried David. “Kolb! take
the horse and go to Mansle, quick, buy a large hair sieve for me of a
cooper, and some glue of the grocer, and come back again as soon as you
can.”
“There! drink,” said old Séchard, putting down a bottle of wine, a loaf,
and the cold remains of the dinner. “You will need your strength. I will
go and look for your bits of green stuff; green rags you use for your
pulp, and a trifle too green, I am afraid.”
Two hours later, towards eleven o’clock that night, David and Kolb took
up their quarters in a little out-house against the cellar wall; they
found the floor paved with runnel tiles, and all the apparatus used in
Angoumois for the manufacture of Cognac brandy.
“Pans and firewood! Why, it is as good as a factory made on purpose!”
cried David.
“Very well, good-night,” said old Séchard; “I shall lock you in, and
let both the dogs loose; nobody will bring you any paper, I am sure. You
show me those sheets to-morrow, and I give you my word I will be your
partner and the business will be straightforward and properly managed.”
David and Kolb, locked into the distillery, spent nearly two hours
in macerating the stems, using a couple of logs for mallets. The fire
blazed up, the water boiled. About two o’clock in the morning, Kolb
heard a sound which David was too busy to notice, a kind of deep breath
like a suppressed hiccough. Snatching up one of the two lighted dips, he
looked round the walls, and beheld old Séchard’s empurpled countenance
filling up a square opening above a door hitherto hidden by a pile of
empty casks in the cellar itself. The cunning old man had brought David
and Kolb into his underground distillery by the outer door, through
which the casks were rolled when full. The inner door had been made
so that he could roll his puncheons straight from the cellar into the
distillery, instead of taking them round through the yard.
“Aha! thees eies not fair blay, you vant to shvindle your son!” cried
the Alsacien. “Do you kow vot you do ven you trink ein pottle of vine?
You gif goot trink to ein bad scountrel.”
“Oh, father!” cried David.
“I came to see if you wanted anything,” said old Séchard, half sobered
by this time.
“Und it was for de inderest vot you take in us dot you brought der
liddle ladder!” commented Kolb, as he pushed the casks aside and flung
open the door; and there, in fact, on a short step-ladder, the old man
stood in his shirt.
“Risking your health!” said David.
“I think I must be walking in my sleep,” said old Séchard, coming down
in confusion. “Your want of confidence in your father set me dreaming; I
dreamed you were making a pact with the Devil to do impossible things.”
“Der teufel,” said Kolb; “dot is your own bassion for de liddle
goldfinches.”
“Go back to bed again, father,” said David; “lock us in if you will, but
you may save yourself the trouble of coming down again. Kolb will mount
guard.”
At four o’clock in the morning David came out of the distillery; he
had been careful to leave no sign of his occupation behind him; but he
brought out some thirty sheets of paper that left nothing to be desired
in fineness, whiteness, toughness, and strength, all of them bearing by
way of water-mark the impress of the uneven hairs of the sieve. The old
man took up the samples and put his tongue to them, the lifelong habit
of the pressman, who tests papers in this way. He felt it between his
thumb and finger, crumpled and creased it, put it through all the trials
by which a printer assays the quality of a sample submitted to him, and
when it was found wanting in no respect, he still would not allow that
he was beaten.
“We have yet to know how it takes an impression,” he said, to avoid
praising his son.
“Funny man!” exclaimed Kolb.
The old man was cool enough now. He cloaked his feigned hesitation with
paternal dignity.
“I wish to tell you in fairness, father, that even now it seems to me
that paper costs more than it ought to do; I want to solve the problem
of sizing it in the pulping-trough. I have just that one improvement to
make.”
“Oho! so you are trying to trick me!”
“Well, shall I tell you? I can size the pulp as it is, but so far I
cannot do it evenly, and the surface is as rough as a burr!”
“Very good, size your pulp in the trough, and you shall have my money.”
“Mein master will nefer see de golor of your money,” declared Kolb.
Plainly, the old man meant to punish David for last night’s
humiliation, for he treated him more than coldly. David sent away Kolb.
“Father,” he began, “I have never borne you any grudge for making over
the business to me at such an exorbitant valuation; I have seen the
father through it all. I have said to myself--‘The old man has worked
very hard, and he certainly gave me a better bringing up than I had a
right to expect; let him enjoy the fruits of his toil in peace, and
in his own way.--I even gave up my mother’s money to you. I began
encumbered with debt, and bore all the burdens that you put upon me
without a murmur. Well, harassed for debts that were not of my making,
with no bread in the house, and my feet held to the flames, I have
found out the secret. I have struggled on patiently till my strength is
exhausted. It is perhaps your duty to help me, but do not give _me_ a
thought; think of a woman and a little one” (David could not keep
back the tears at this); “think of them, and give them help and
protection.--Kolb and Marion have given me their savings; will you
do less?” he cried at last, seeing that his father was as cold as the
impression-stone.
“And that was not enough for you,” said the old man, without the
slightest sense of shame; “why, you would waste the wealth of the
Indies! Good-night! I am too ignorant to lend a hand in schemes got
up on purpose to exploit me. A monkey will never gobble down a bear”
(alluding to the workshop nicknames); “I am a vinegrower, I am not a
banker. And what is more, look you, business between father and son
never turns out well. Stay and eat your dinner here; you shan’t say that
you came for nothing.”
There are some deep-hearted natures that can force their own pain down
into inner depths unsuspected by those dearest to them; and with them,
when anguish forces its way to the surface and is visible, it is only
after a mighty upheaval. David’s nature was one of these. Eve had
thoroughly understood the noble character of the man. But now that the
depths had been stirred, David’s father took the wave of anguish that
passed over his son’s features for a child’s trick, an attempt to “get
round” his father, and his bitter grief for mortification over the
failure of the attempt. Father and son parted in anger.
David and Kolb reached Angoulême on the stroke of midnight. They came
back on foot, and steathily, like burglars. Before one o’clock in the
morning David was installed in the impenetrable hiding-place prepared
by his wife in Basine Clerget’s house. No one saw him enter it, and the
pity that henceforth should shelter David was the most resourceful pity
of all--the pity of a work-girl.
Kolb bragged that day that he had saved his master on horseback,
and only left him in a carrier’s van well on the way to Limoges. A
sufficient provision of raw material had been laid up in Basine’s
cellar, and Kolb, Marion, Mme. Séchard, and her mother had no
communication with the house.
Two days after the scene at Marsac, old Séchard came hurrying to
Angoulême and his daughter-in-law. Covetousness had brought him. There
were three clear weeks ahead before the vintage began, and he thought he
would be on the look-out for squalls, to use his own expression. To this
end he took up his quarters in one of the attics which he had reserved
by the terms of the lease, wilfully shutting his eyes to the bareness
and want that made his son’s home desolate. If they owed him rent, they
could well afford to keep him. He ate his food from a tinned iron
plate, and made no marvel at it. “I began in the same way,” he told his
daughter-in-law, when she apologized for the absence of silver spoons.
Marion was obliged to run into debt for necessaries for them all. Kolb
was earning a franc for daily wage as a brick-layer’s laborer; and
at last poor Eve, who, for the sake of her husband and child, had
sacrificed her last resources to entertain David’s father, saw that she
had only ten francs left. She had hoped to the last to soften the old
miser’s heart by her affectionate respect, and patience, and pretty
attentions; but old Séchard was obdurate as ever. When she saw him turn
the same cold eyes on her, the same look that the Cointets had given
her, and Petit-Claud and Cérizet, she tried to watch and guess old
Séchard’s intentions. Trouble thrown away! Old Séchard, never sober,
never drunk, was inscrutable; intoxication is a double veil. If the old
man’s tipsiness was sometimes real, it was quite often feigned for the
purpose of extracting David’s secret from his wife. Sometimes he coaxed,
sometimes he frightened his daughter-in-law.
“I will drink up my property; _I will buy an annuity_,” he would
threaten when Eve told him that she knew nothing.
The humiliating struggle was wearing her out; she kept silence at last,
lest she should show disrespect to her husband’s father.
“But, father,” she said one day when driven to extremity, “there is a
very simple way of finding out everything. Pay David’s debts; he will
come home, and you can settle it between you.”
“Ha! that is what you want to get out of me, is it?” he cried. “It is as
well to know!”
But if Séchard had no belief in his son, he had plenty of faith in the
Cointets. He went to consult them, and the Cointets dazzled him of set
purpose, telling him that his son’s experiments might mean millions of
francs.
“If David can prove that he has succeeded, I shall not hesitate to
go into partnership with him, and reckon his discovery as half the
capital,” the tall Cointet told him.
The suspicious old man learned a good deal over nips of brandy with the
work-people, and something more by questioning Petit-Claud and feigning
stupidity; and at length he felt convinced that the Cointets were
the real movers behind Métivier; they were plotting to ruin Séchard’s
printing establishment, and to lure him (Séchard) on to pay his son’s
debts by holding out the discovery as a bait. The old man of the people
did not suspect that Petit-Claud was in the plot, nor had he any idea of
the toils woven to ensnare the great secret. A day came at last when he
grew angry and out of patience with the daughter-in-law who would not
so much as tell him where David was hiding; he determined to force the
laboratory door, for he had discovered that David was wont to make his
experiments in the workshop where the rollers were melted down.
He came downstairs very early one morning and set to work upon the lock.
“Hey! Papa Séchard, what are you doing there?” Marion called out. (She
had risen at daybreak to go to her papermill, and now she sprang across
to the workshop.)
“I am in my own house, am I not?” said the old man, in some confusion.
“Oh, indeed, are you turning thief in your old age? You are not drunk
this time either----I shall go straight to the mistress and tell her.”
“Hold your tongue, Marion,” said Séchard, drawing two crowns of six
francs each from his pocket. “There----”
“I will hold my tongue, but don’t you do it again,” said Marion, shaking
her finger at him, “or all Angoulême shall hear of it.”
The old man had scarcely gone out, however, when Marion went up to her
mistress.
“Look, madame,” she said, “I have had twelve francs out of your
father-in-law, and here they are----”
“How did you do it?”
“What was he wanting to do but to take a look at the master’s pots and
pans and stuff, to find out the secret, forsooth. I knew quite well that
there was nothing in the little place, but I frightened him and talked
as if he were setting about robbing his son, and he gave me twelve
francs to say nothing about it.”
Just at that moment Basine came in radiant, and with a letter for her
friend, a letter from David written on magnificent paper, which she
handed over when they were alone.
“MY ADORED EVE,--I am writing to you the first letter on my first
sheet of paper made by the new process. I have solved the problem
of sizing the pulp in the trough at last. A pound of pulp costs
five sous, even supposing that the raw material is grown on good
soil with special culture; three francs’ worth of sized pulp will
make a ream of paper, at twelve pounds to the ream. I am quite
sure that I can lessen the weight of books by one-half. The
envelope, the letter, and samples enclosed are all manufactured in
different ways. I kiss you; you shall have wealth now to add to
our happiness, everything else we had before.”
“There!” said Eve, handing the samples to her father-in-law, “when the
vintage is over let your son have the money, give him a chance to make
his fortune, and you shall be repaid ten times over; he has succeeded at
last!”
Old Séchard hurried at once to the Cointets. Every sample was tested and
minutely examined; the prices, from three to ten francs per ream, were
noted on each separate slip; some were sized, others unsized; some were
of almost metallic purity, others soft as Japanese paper; in color there
was every possible shade of white. If old Séchard and the two Cointets
had been Jews examining diamonds, their eyes could not have glistened
more eagerly.
“Your son is on the right track,” the fat Cointet said at length.
“Very well, pay his debts,” returned old Séchard.
“By all means, if he will take us into partnership,” said the tall
Cointet.
“You are extortioners!” cried old Séchard. “You have been suing him
under Métivier’s name, and you mean me to buy you off; that is the long
and the short of it. Not such a fool, gentlemen----”
The brothers looked at one another, but they contrived to hide their
surprise at the old miser’s shrewdness.
“We are not millionaires,” said fat Cointet; “we do not discount bills
for amusement. We should think ourselves well off if we could pay ready
money for our bits of accounts for rags, and we still give bills to our
dealer.”
“The experiment ought to be tried first on a much larger scale,” the
tall Cointet said coldly; “sometimes you try a thing with a saucepan and
succeed, and fail utterly when you experiment with bulk. You should help
your son out of difficulties.”
“Yes; but when my son is at liberty, would he take me as his partner?”
“That is no business of ours,” said the fat Cointet. “My good man, do
you suppose that when you have paid some ten thousand francs for your
son, that there is an end of it? It will cost two thousand francs to
take out a patent; there will be journeys to Paris; and before going to
any expense, it would be prudent to do as my brother suggests, and make
a thousand reams or so; to try several whole batches to make sure. You
see, there is nothing you must be so much on your guard against as an
inventor.”
“I have a liking for bread ready buttered myself,” added the tall
Cointet.
All through that night the old man ruminated over this dilemma--“If I
pay David’s debts, he will be set at liberty, and once set at liberty,
he need not share his fortune with me unless he chooses. He knows very
well that I cheated him over the first partnership, and he will not
care to try a second; so it is to my interest to keep him shut up, the
wretched boy.”
The Cointets knew enough of Séchard senior to see that they should hunt
in couples. All three said to themselves--“Experiments must be tried
before the discovery can take any practical shape. David Séchard must be
set at liberty before those experiments can be made; and David Séchard,
set at liberty, will slip through our fingers.”
Everybody involved, moreover, had his own little afterthought.
Petit-Claud, for instance, said, “As soon as I am married, I will slip
my neck out of the Cointets’ yoke; but till then I shall hold on.”
The tall Cointet thought, “I would rather have David under lock and key,
and then I should be master of the situation.”
Old Séchard, too, thought, “If I pay my son’s debts, he will repay me
with a ‘Thank you!’”
Eve, hard pressed (for the old man threatened now to turn her out of the
house), would neither reveal her husband’s hiding-place, nor even send
proposals of a safe-conduct. She could not feel sure of finding so safe
a refuge a second time.
“Set your son at liberty,” she told her father-in-law, “and then you
shall know everything.”
The four interested persons sat, as it were, with a banquet spread
before them, none of them daring to begin, each one suspicious and
watchful of his neighbor. A few days after David went into hiding,
Petit-Claud went to the mill to see the tall Cointet.
“I have done my best,” he said; “David has gone into prison of his own
accord somewhere or other; he is working out some improvement there in
peace. It is no fault of mine if you have not gained your end; are you
going to keep your promise?”
“Yes, if we succeed,” said the tall Cointet. “Old Séchard was here only
a day or two ago; he came to ask us some questions as to paper-making.
The old miser has got wind of his son’s invention; he wants to turn it
to his own account, so there is some hope of a partnership. You are with
the father and the son----”
“Be the third person in the trinity and give them up,” smiled
Petit-Claud.
“Yes,” said Cointet. “When you have David in prison, or bound to us by a
deed of partnership, you shall marry Mlle. de la Haye.”
“Is that your _ultimatum_?”
“My _sine qua non_,” said Cointet, “since we are speaking in foreign
languages.”
“Then here is mine in plain language,” Petit-Claud said drily.
“Ah! let us have it,” answered Cointet, with some curiosity.
“You will present me to-morrow to Mme. de Sononches, and do something
definite for me; you will keep your word, in short; or I will clear off
Séchard’s debts myself, sell my practice, and go into partnership with
him. I will not be duped. You have spoken out, and I am doing the same.
I have given proof, give me proof of your sincerity. You have all, and
I have nothing. If you won’t do fairly by me, I know your cards, and I
shall play for my own hand.”
The tall Cointet took his hat and umbrella, his face at the same time
taking its Jesuitical expression, and out he went, bidding Petit-Claud
come with him.
“You shall see, my friend, whether I have prepared your way for you,”
said he.
The shrewd paper-manufacturer saw his danger at a glance; and saw, too,
that with a man like Petit-Claud it was better to play above board.
Partly to be prepared for contingencies, partly to satisfy his
conscience, he had dropped a word or two to the point in the ear of
the ex-consul-general, under the pretext of putting Mlle. de la Haye’s
financial position before that gentleman.
“I have the man for Françoise,” he had said; “for with thirty thousand
francs of _dot_, a girl must not expect too much nowadays.”
“We will talk it over later on,” answered Francis du Hautoy,
ex-consul-general. “Mme. de Senonches’ positon has altered very much
since Mme. de Bargeton went away; we very likely might marry Françoise
to some elderly country gentleman.”
“She would disgrace herself if you did,” Cointet returned in his dry
way. “Better marry her to some capable, ambitious young man; you could
help him with your influence, and he would make a good position for his
wife.”
“We shall see,” said Francis du Hautoy; “her godmother ought to be
consulted first, in any case.”
When M. de Bargeton died, his wife sold the great house in the Rue du
Minage. Mme. de Senonches, finding her own house scarcely large enough,
persuaded M. de Senonches to buy the Hôtel de Bargeton, the cradle of
Lucien Chardon’s ambitions, the scene of the earliest events in his
career. Zéphirine de Senonches had it in mind to succeed to Mme. de
Bargeton; she, too, would be a kind of queen in Angoulême; she would
have “a salon,” and be a great lady, in short. There was a schism in
Angoulême, a strife dating from the late M. de Bargeton’s duel with M.
de Chandour. Some maintained that Louise de Nègrepelisse was blameless,
others believed in Stanislas de Chandour’s scandals. Mme. de Senonches
declared for the Bargetons, and began by winning over that faction. Many
frequenters of the Hôtel de Bargeton had been so accustomed for years to
their nightly game of cards in the house that they could not leave it,
and Mme. de Senonches turned this fact to account. She received every
evening, and certainly gained all the ground lost by Amélie de Chandour,
who set up for a rival.
Francis du Hautoy, living in the inmost circle of nobility in Angoulême,
went so far as to think of marrying Françoise to old M. de Séverac,
Mme. du Brossard having totally failed to capture that gentleman for her
daughter; and when Mme. de Bargeton reappeared as the prefect’s wife,
Zéphirine’s hopes for her dear goddaughter waxed high, indeed. The
Comtesse du Châtelet, so she argued, would be sure to use her influence
for her champion.
Boniface Cointet had Angoulême at his fingers’ ends; he saw all the
difficulties at a glance, and resolved to sweep them out of the way by
a bold stroke that only a Tartuffe’s brain could invent. The puny lawyer
was not a little amazed to find his fellow-conspirator keeping his word
with him; not a word did Petit-Claud utter; he respected the musings of
his companion, and they walked the whole way from the paper-mill to the
Rue du Minage in silence.
“Monsieur and madame are at breakfast”--this announcement met the
ill-timed visitors on the steps.
“Take in our names, all the same,” said the tall Cointet; and feeling
sure of his position, he followed immediately behind the servant and
introduced his companion to the elaborately-affected Zéphirine, who was
breakfasting in company with M. Francis du Hautoy and Mlle. de la Haye.
M. de Senonches had gone, as usual, for a day’s shooting over M. de
Pimentel’s land.
“M. Petit-Claud is the young lawyer of whom I spoke to you, madame; he
will go through the trust accounts when your fair ward comes of age.”
The ex-diplomatist made a quick scrutiny of Petit-Claud, who, for his
part, was looking furtively at the “fair ward.” As for Zéphirine, who
heard of the matter for the first time, her surprise was so great that
she dropped her fork.
Mlle. de la Haye, a shrewish young woman with an ill-tempered face,
a waist that could scarcely be called slender, a thin figure, and
colorless, fair hair, in spite of a certain little air that she had,
was by no means easy to marry. The “parentage unknown” on her birth
certificate was the real bar to her entrance into the sphere where her
godmother’s affection stove to establish her. Mlle. de la Haye, ignorant
of her real position, was very hard to please; the richest merchant in
L’Houmeau had found no favor in her sight. Cointet saw the sufficiently
significant expression of the young lady’s face at the sight of the
little lawyer, and turning, beheld a precisely similar grimace on
Petit-Claud’s countenance. Mme. de Senonches and Francis looked at each
other, as if in search of an excuse for getting rid of the visitors. All
this Cointet saw. He asked M. du Hautoy for the favor of a few minutes’
speech with him, and the pair went together into the drawing-room.
“Fatherly affection is blinding you, sir,” he said bluntly. “You will
not find it an easy thing to marry your daughter; and, acting in your
interest throughout, I have put you in a position from which you cannot
draw back; for I am fond of Françoise, she is my ward. Now--Petit-Claud
knows _everything_! His overweening ambition is a guarantee for our dear
child’s happiness; for, in the first place, Françoise will do as she
likes with her husband; and, in the second, he wants your influence. You
can ask the new prefect for the post of crown attorney for him in the
court here. M. Milaud is definitely appointed to Nevers, Petit-Claud
will sell his practice, you will have no difficulty in obtaining a
deputy public prosecutor’s place for him; and it will not be long before
he becomes attorney for the crown, president of the court, deputy, what
you will.”
Francis went back to the dining-room and behaved charmingly to his
daughter’s suitor. He gave Mme. de Senonches a look, and brought the
scene to a close with an invitation to dine with them on the morrow;
Petit-Claud must come and discuss the business in hand. He even
went downstairs and as far as the corner with the visitors, telling
Petit-Claud that after Cointet’s recommendation, both he and Mme. de
Senonches were disposed to approve all that Mlle. de la Haye’s trustee
had arranged for the welfare of that little angel.
“Oh!” cried Petit-Claud, as they came away, “what a plain girl! I have
been taken in----”
“She looks a lady-like girl,” returned Cointet, “and besides, if she
were a beauty, would they give her to you? Eh! my dear fellow, thirty
thousand francs and the influence of Mme. de Senonches and the Comtesse
du Châtelet! Many a small landowner would be wonderfully glad of the
chance, and all the more so since M. Francis du Hautoy is never likely
to marry, and all that he has will go to the girl. Your marriage is as
good as settled.”
“How?”
“That is what I am just going to tell you,” returned Cointet, and he
gave his companion an account of his recent bold stroke. “M. Milaud is
just about to be appointed attorney for the crown at Nevers, my dear
fellow,” he continued; “sell your practice, and in ten years’ time you
will be Keeper of the Seals. You are not the kind of a man to draw back
from any service required of you by the Court.”
“Very well,” said Petit-Claud, his zeal stirred by the prospect of such
a career, “very well, be in the Place du Mûrier to-morrow at half-past
four; I will see old Séchard in the meantime; we will have a deed of
partnership drawn up, and the father and the son shall be bound thereby,
and delivered to the third person of the trinity--Cointet, to wit.”
To return to Lucien in Paris. On the morrow of the loss announced in
his letter, he obtained a _visa_ for his passport, bought a stout holly
stick, and went to the Rue d’Enfer to take a place in the little market
van, which took him as far as Longjumeau for half a franc. He was going
home to Angoulême. At the end of the first day’s tramp he slept in a
cowshed, two leagues from Arpajon. He had come no farther than Orléans
before he was very weary, and almost ready to break down, but there he
found a boatman willing to bring him as far as Tours for three francs,
and food during the journey cost him but forty sous. Five days of
walking brought him from Tours to Poitiers, and left him with but five
francs in his pockets, but he summoned up all his remaining strength for
the journey before him.
He was overtaken by night in the open country, and had made up his
mind to sleep out of doors, when a traveling carriage passed by, slowly
climbing the hillside, and, all unknown to the postilion, the occupants,
and the servant, he managed to slip in among the luggage, crouching in
between two trunks lest he should be shaken off by the jolting of the
carriage--and so he slept.
He awoke with the sun shining into his eyes, and the sound of voices in
his ears. The carriage had come to a standstill. Looking about him, he
knew that he was at Mansle, the little town where he had waited for Mme.
de Bargeton eighteen months before, when his heart was full of hope and
love and joy. A group of post-boys eyed him curiously and suspiciously,
covered with dust as he was, wedged in among the luggage. Lucien
jumped down, but before he could speak two travelers stepped out of the
calèche, and the words died away on his lips; for there stood the new
Prefect of the Charente, Sixte du Châtelet, and his wife, Louise de
Nègrepelisse.
“Chance gave us a traveling-companion, if we had but known!” said the
Countess. “Come in with us, monsieur.”
Lucien gave the couple a distant bow and a half-humbled half-defiant
glance; then he turned away into a cross-country road in search of some
farmhouse, where he might make a breakfast on milk and bread, and rest
awhile, and think quietly over the future. He still had three francs
left. On and on he walked with the hurrying pace of fever, noticing
as he went, down by the riverside, that the country grew more and more
picturesque. It was near mid-day when he came upon a sheet of water with
willows growing about the margin, and stopped for awhile to rest his
eyes on the cool, thick-growing leaves; and something of the grace of
the fields entered into his soul.
In among the crests of the willows, he caught a glimpse of a mill
near-by on a branch stream, and of the thatched roof of the mill-house
where the house-leeks were growing. For all ornament, the quaint cottage
was covered with jessamine and honeysuckle and climbing hops, and the
garden about it was gay with phloxes and tall, juicy-leaved plants. Nets
lay drying in the sun along a paved causeway raised above the highest
flood level, and secured by massive piles. Ducks were swimming in the
clear mill-pond below the currents of water roaring over the wheel.
As the poet came nearer he heard the clack of the mill, and saw the
good-natured, homely woman of the house knitting on a garden bench, and
keeping an eye upon a little one who was chasing the hens about.
Lucien came forward. “My good woman,” he said, “I am tired out; I have a
fever on me, and I have only three francs; will you undertake to give me
brown bread and milk, and let me sleep in the barn for a week? I shall
have time to write to my people, and they will either come to fetch me
or send me money.”
“I am quite willing, always supposing that my husband has no
objection.--Hey! little man!”
The miller came up, gave Lucien a look over, and took his pipe out of
his mouth to remark, “Three francs for a week’s board? You might as well
pay nothing at all.”
“Perhaps I shall end as a miller’s man,” thought the poet, as his eyes
wandered over the lovely country. Then the miller’s wife made a bed
ready for him, and Lucien lay down and slept so long that his hostess
was frightened.
“Courtois,” she said, next day at noon, “just go in and see whether
that young man is dead or alive; he has been lying there these fourteen
hours.”
The miller was busy spreading out his fishing-nets and lines. “It is
my belief,” he said, “that the pretty fellow yonder is some starveling
play-actor without a brass farthing to bless himself with.”
“What makes you think that, little man?” asked the mistress of the mill.
“Lord, he is not a prince, nor a lord, nor a member of parliament, nor a
bishop; why are his hands as white as if he did nothing?”
“Then it is very strange that he does not feel hungry and wake up,”
retorted the miller’s wife; she had just prepared breakfast for
yesterday’s chance guest. “A play-actor, is he?” she continued. “Where
will he be going? It is too early yet for the fair at Angoulême.”
But neither the miller nor his wife suspected that (actors, princes, and
bishops apart) there is a kind of being who is both prince and actor,
and invested besides with a magnificent order of priesthood--that the
Poet seems to do nothing, yet reigns over all humanity when he can paint
humanity.
“What can he be?” Courtois asked of his wife.
“Suppose it should be dangerous to take him in?” queried she.
“Pooh! thieves look more alive than that; we should have been robbed by
this time,” returned her spouse.
“I am neither a prince nor a thief, nor a bishop nor an actor,” Lucien
said wearily; he must have overheard the colloquy through the window,
and now he suddenly appeared. “I am poor, I am tired out, I have come
on foot from Paris. My name is Lucien de Rubempré, and my father was
M. Chardon, who used to have Postel’s business in L’Houmeau. My sister
married David Séchard, the printer in the Place du Mûrier at Angoulême.”
“Stop a bit,” said the miller, “that printer is the son of the old
skinflint who farms his own land at Marsac, isn’t he?”
“The very same,” said Lucien.
“He is a queer kind of father, he is!” Courtois continued. “He is worth
two hundred thousand francs and more, without counting his money-box,
and he has sold his son up, they say.”
When body and soul have been broken by a prolonged painful struggle,
there comes a crisis when a strong nature braces itself for greater
effort; but those who give way under the strain either die or sink into
unconsciousness like death. That hour of crisis had struck for Lucien;
at the vague rumor of the catastrophe that had befallen David he seemed
almost ready to succumb. “Oh! my sister!” he cried. “Oh, God! what have
I done? Base wretch that I am!”
He dropped down on the wooden bench, looking white and powerless as a
dying man; the miller’s wife brought out a bowl of milk and made him
drink, but he begged the miller to help him back to his bed, and asked
to be forgiven for bringing a dying man into their house. He thought
his last hour had come. With the shadow of death, thoughts of religion
crossed a brain so quick to conceive picturesque fancies; he would see
the curé, he would confess and receive the last sacraments. The moan,
uttered in the faint voice by a young man with such a comely face and
figure, went to Mme. Courtois’ heart.
“I say, little man, just take the horse and go to Marsac and ask Dr.
Marron to come and see this young man; he is in a very bad way, it seems
to me, and you might bring the curé as well. Perhaps they may know
more about that printer in the Place du Mûrier than you do, for Postel
married M. Marron’s daughter.”
Courtois departed. The miller’s wife tried to make Lucien take food;
like all country-bred folk, she was full of the idea that sick folk
must be made to eat. He took no notice of her, but gave way to a
violent storm of remorseful grief, a kind of mental process of
counter-irritation, which relieved him.
The Courtois’ mill lies a league away from Marsac, the town of the
district, and the half-way halt between Mansle and Angoulême; so it was not
long before the good miller came back with the doctor and the curé. Both
functionaries had heard rumors coupling Lucien’s name with the name of
Mme. de Bargeton; and now when the whole department was talking of the
lady’s marriage to the new Prefect and her return to Angoulême as the
Comtesse du Châtelet, both curé and doctor were consumed with a violent
curiosity to know why M. de Bargeton’s widow had not married the young
poet with whom she had left Angoulême. And when they heard, furthermore,
that Lucien was at the mill, they were eager to know whether the poet
had come to the rescue of his brother-in-law. Curiosity and humanity
alike prompted them to go at once to the dying man. Two hours after
Courtois set out, Lucien heard the rattle of old iron over the stony
causeway, the country doctor’s ramshackle chaise came up to the door,
and out stepped MM. Marron, for the curé was the doctor’s uncle.
Lucien’s bedside visitors were as intimate with David’s father as
country neighbors usually are in a small vine-growing township. The
doctor looked at the dying man, felt his pulse, and examined his tongue;
then he looked at the miller’s wife, and smiled reassuringly.
“Mme. Courtois,” said he, “if, as I do not doubt, you have a bottle of
good wine somewhere in the cellar, and a fat eel in your fish-pond, put
them before your patient, it is only exhaustion; there is nothing the
matter with him. Our great man will be on his feet again directly.”
“Ah! monsieur,” said Lucien, “it is not the body, it is the mind that
ails. These good people have told me tidings that nearly killed me; I
have just heard the bad news of my sister, Mme. Séchard. Mme. Courtois
says that your daughter is married to Postel, monsieur, so you must know
something of David Séchard’s affairs; oh, for heaven’s sake, monsieur,
tell me what you know!”
“Why, he must be in prison,” began the doctor; “his father would not
help him----”
“_In prison_!” repeated Lucien, “and why?”
“Because some bills came from Paris; he had overlooked them, no doubt,
for he does not pay much attention to his business, they say,” said Dr.
Marron.
“Pray leave me with M. le Curé,” said the poet, with a visible change
of countenance. The doctor and the miller and his wife went out of the
room, and Lucien was left alone with the old priest.
“Sir,” he said, “I feel that death is near, and I deserve to die. I am a
very miserable wretch; I can only cast myself into the arms of religion.
I, sir, _I_ have brought all these troubles on my sister and brother,
for David Séchard has been a brother to me. I drew those bills that
David could not meet! . . . I have ruined him. In my terrible misery,
I forgot the crime. A millionaire put an end to the proceedings, and I
quite believed that he had met the bills; but nothing of the kind has
been done, it seems.” And Lucien told the tale of his sorrows. The
story, as he told it in his feverish excitement, was worthy of the poet.
He besought the curé to go to Angoulême and to ask for news of Eve and
his mother, Mme. Chardon, and to let him know the truth, and whether it
was still possible to repair the evil.
“I shall live till you come back, sir,” he added, as the hot tears fell.
“If my mother, and sister, and David do not cast me off, I shall not
die.”
Lucien’s remorse was terrible to see, the tears, the eloquence, the
young white face with the heartbroken, despairing look, the tales of
sorrow upon sorrow till human strength could no more endure, all these
things aroused the curé’s pity and interest.
“In the provinces, as in Paris,” he said, “you must believe only half
of all that you hear. Do not alarm yourself; a piece of hearsay, three
leagues away from Angoulême, is sure to be far from the truth. Old
Séchard, our neighbor, left Marsac some days ago; very likely he is busy
settling his son’s difficulties. I am going to Angoulême; I will come
back and tell you whether you can return home; your confessions and
repentance will help to plead your cause.”
The curé did not know that Lucien had repented so many times during the
last eighteen months, that penitence, however impassioned, had come to
be a kind of drama with him, played to perfection, played so far in all
good faith, but none the less a drama. To the curé succeeded the doctor.
He saw that the patient was passing through a nervous crisis, and the
danger was beginning to subside. The doctor-nephew spoke as comfortably
as the curé-uncle, and at length the patient was persuaded to take
nourishment.
Meanwhile the curé, knowing the manners and customs of the countryside,
had gone to Mansle; the coach from Ruffec to Angoulême was due to pass
about that time, and he found a vacant place in it. He would go to
his grand-nephew Postel in L’Houmeau (David’s former rival) and make
inquiries of him. From the assiduity with which the little druggist
assisted his venerable relative to alight from the abominable cage which
did duty as a coach between Ruffec and Angoulême, it was apparent to
the meanest understanding that M. and Mme. Postel founded their hopes of
future ease upon the old curé’s will.
“Have you breakfasted? Will you take something? We did not in the least
expect you! This is a pleasant surprise!” Out came questions innumerable
in a breath.
Mme. Postel might have been born to be the wife of an apothecary in
L’Houmeau. She was a common-looking woman, about the same height as
little Postel himself, such good looks as she possessed being entirely
due to youth and health. Her florid auburn hair grew very low upon
her forehead. Her demeanor and language were in keeping with homely
features, a round countenance, the red cheeks of a country damsel, and
eyes that might almost be described as yellow. Everything about her
said plainly enough that she had been married for expectations of
money. After a year of married life, therefore, she ruled the house; and
Postel, only too happy to have discovered the heiress, meekly submitted
to his wife. Mme. Léonie Postel, _née_ Marron, was nursing her first
child, the darling of the old curé, the doctor, and Postel, a repulsive
infant, with a strong likeness to both parents.
“Well, uncle,” said Léonie, “what has brought you to Angoulême, since
you will not take anything, and no sooner come in than you talk of
going?”
But when the venerable ecclesiastic brought out the names of David
Séchard and Eve, little Postel grew very red, and Léonie, his wife, felt
it incumbent upon her to give him a jealous glance--the glance that a
wife never fails to give when she is perfectly sure of her husband, and
gives a look into the past by way of a caution for the future.
“What have yonder folk done to you, uncle, that you should mix yourself
up in their affairs?” inquired Léonie, with very perceptible tartness.
“They are in trouble, my girl,” said the curé, and he told the Postels
about Lucien at the Courtois’ mill.
“Oh! so that is the way he came back from Paris, is it?” exclaimed
Postel. “Yet he had some brains, poor fellow, and he was ambitious, too.
He went out to look for wool, and comes home shorn. But what does he
want here? His sister is frightfully poor; for all these geniuses, David
and Lucien alike, know very little about business. There was some talk
of him at the Tribunal, and, as judge, I was obliged to sign the warrant
of execution. It was a painful duty. I do not know whether the sister’s
circumstances are such that Lucien can go to her; but in any case the
little room that he used to occupy here is at liberty, and I shall be
pleased to offer it to him.”
“That is right, Postel,” said the priest; he bestowed a kiss on the
infant slumbering in Léonie’s arms, and, adjusting his cocked hat,
prepared to walk out of the shop.
“You will dine with us, uncle, of course,” said Mme. Postel; “if once
you meddle in these people’s affairs, it will be some time before
you have done. My husband will drive you back again in his little
pony-cart.”
Husband and wife stood watching their valued, aged relative on his way
into Angoulême. “He carries himself well for his age, all the same,”
remarked the druggist.
By this time David had been in hiding for eleven days in a house only
two doors away from the druggist’s shop, which the worthy ecclesiastic
had just quitted to climb the steep path into Angoulême with the news of
Lucien’s present condition.
When the Abbé Marron debouched upon the Place du Mûrier he found three
men, each one remarkable in his own way, and all of them bearing with
their whole weight upon the present and future of the hapless
voluntary prisoner. There stood old Séchard, the tall Cointet, and his
confederate, the puny limb of the law, three men representing three
phases of greed as widely different as the outward forms of the
speakers. The first had it in his mind to sell his own son; the
second, to betray his client; and the third, while bargaining for both
iniquities, was inwardly resolved to pay for neither. It was nearly five
o’clock. Passers-by on their way home to dinner stopped a moment to look
at the group.
“What the devil can old Séchard and the tall Cointet have to say to each
other?” asked the more curious.
“There was something on foot concerning that miserable wretch that
leaves his wife and child and mother-in-law to starve,” suggested some.
“Talk of sending a boy to Paris to learn his trade!” said a provincial
oracle.
“M. le Curé, what brings you here, eh?” exclaimed old Séchard, catching
sight of the Abbé as soon as he appeared.
“I have come on account of your family,” answered the old man.
“Here is another of my son’s notions!” exclaimed old Séchard.
“It would not cost you much to make everybody happy all round,” said
the priest, looking at the windows of the printing-house. Mme. Séchard’s
beautiful face appeared at that moment between the curtains; she was
hushing her child’s cries by tossing him in her arms and singing to him.
“Are you bringing news of my son?” asked old Séchard, “or what is more
to the purpose--money?”
“No,” answered M. Marron, “I am bringing the sister news of her
brother.”
“Of Lucien?” cried Petit-Claud.
“Yes. He walked all the way from Paris, poor young man. I found him at
the Courtois’ house; he was worn out with misery and fatigue. Oh! he is
very much to be pitied.”
Petit-Claud took the tall Cointet by the arm, saying aloud, “If we are
going to dine with Mme. de Senonches, it is time to dress.” When they
had come away a few paces, he added, for his companion’s benefit, “Catch
the cub, and you will soon have the dam; we have David now----”
“I have found you a wife, find me a partner,” said the tall Cointet with
a treacherous smile.
“Lucien is an old school-fellow of mine; we used to be chums. I shall be
sure to hear something from him in a week’s time. Have the banns put
up, and I will engage to put David in prison. When he is on the jailer’s
register I shall have done my part.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the tall Cointet under his breath, “we might have the
patent taken out in our name; that would be the thing!”
A shiver ran through the meagre little attorney when he heard those
words.
Meanwhile Eve beheld her father-in-law enter with the Abbé Marron, who
had let fall a word which unfolded the whole tragedy.
“Here is our curé, Mme. Séchard,” the old man said, addressing his
daughter-in-law, “and pretty tales about your brother he has to tell us,
no doubt!”
“Oh!” cried poor Eve, cut to the heart; “what can have happened now?”
The cry told so unmistakably of many sorrows, of great dread on so many
grounds, that the Abbé Marron made haste to say, “Reassure yourself,
madame; he is living.”
Eve turned to the vinegrower.
“Father,” she said, “perhaps you will be good enough to go to my mother;
she must hear all that this gentleman has to tell us of Lucien.”
The old man went in search of Mme. Chardon, and addressed her in this
wise:
“Go and have it out with the Abbé Marron; he is a good sort, priest
though he is. Dinner will be late, no doubt. I shall come back again in
an hour,” and the old man went out. Insensible as he was to everything
but the clink of money and the glitter of gold, he left Mme. Chardon
without caring to notice the effect of the shock that he had given her.
Mme. Chardon had changed so greatly during the last eighteen months,
that in that short time she no longer looked like the same woman. The
troubles hanging over both of her children, her abortive hopes for
Lucien, the unexpected deterioration in one in whose powers and honesty
she had for so long believed,--all these things had told heavily upon
her. Mme. Chardon was not only noble by birth, she was noble by nature;
she idolized her children; consequently, during the last six months
she had suffered as never before since her widowhood. Lucien might have
borne the name of Lucien de Rubempré by royal letters patent; he might
have founded the family anew, revived the title, and borne the arms; he
might have made a great name--he had thrown the chance away; nay, he had
fallen into the mire!
For Mme. Chardon the mother was a harder judge than Eve the sister.
When she heard of the bills, she looked upon Lucien as lost. A mother
is often fain to shut her eyes, but she always knows the child that
she held at her breast, the child that has been always with her in the
house; and so when Eve and David discussed Lucien’s chances of success
in Paris, and Lucien’s mother to all appearance shared Eve’s illusions,
in her inmost heart there was a tremor of fear lest David should be
right, for a mother’s consciousness bore a witness to the truth of his
words. So well did she know Eve’s sensitive nature, that she could not
bring herself to speak of her fears; she was obliged to choke them down
and keep such silence as mothers alone can keep when they know how to
love their children.
And Eve, on her side, had watched her mother, and saw the ravages of
hidden grief with a feeling of dread; her mother was not growing old,
she was failing from day to day. Mother and daughter lived a live
of generous deception, and neither was deceived. The brutal old
vinegrower’s speech was the last drop that filled the cup of affliction
to overflowing. The words struck a chill to Mme. Chardon’s heart.
“Here is my mother, monsieur,” said Eve, and the Abbé, looking up, saw a
white-haired woman with a face as thin and worn as the features of some
aged nun, and yet grown beautiful with the calm and sweet expression
that devout submission gives to the faces of women who walk by the will
of God, as the saying is. Then the Abbé understood the lives of the
mother and daughter, and had no more sympathy left for Lucien; he
shuddered to think of all that the victims had endured.
“Mother,” said Eve, drying her eyes as she spoke, “poor Lucien is not
very far away, he is at Marsac.”
“And why is he not here?” asked Mme. Chardon.
Then the Abbé told the whole story as Lucien had told it to him--the
misery of the journey, the troubles of the last days in Paris. He
described the poet’s agony of mind when he heard of the havoc wrought
at home by his imprudence, and his apprehension as to the reception
awaiting him at Angoulême.
“He has doubts of us; has it come to this?” said Mme. Chardon.
“The unhappy young man has come back to you on foot, enduring the most
terrible hardships by the way; he is prepared to enter the humblest
walks in life--if so he may make reparation.”
“Monsieur,” Lucien’s sister said, “in spite of the wrong he has done us,
I love my brother still, as we love the dead body when the soul has left
it; and even so, I love him more than many sisters love their brothers.
He has made us poor indeed; but let him come to us, he shall share the
last crust of bread, anything indeed that he has left us. Oh, if he had
never left us, monsieur, we should not have lost our heart’s treasure.”
“And the woman who took him from us brought him back on her carriage!”
exclaimed Mme. Chardon. “He went away sitting by Mme. de Bargeton’s side
in her calèche, and he came back behind it.”
“Can I do anything for you?” asked the good curé, seeking an opportunity
to take leave.
“A wound in the purse is not fatal, they say, monsieur,” said Mme.
Chardon, “but the patient must be his own doctor.”
“If you have sufficient influence with my father-in-law to induce him to
help his son, you would save a whole family,” said Eve.
“He has no belief in you, and he seemed to me to be very much
exasperated against your husband,” answered the old curé. He retained
an impression, from the ex-pressman’s rambling talk, that the Séchards’
affairs were a kind of wasps’ nest with which it was imprudent to
meddle, and his mission being fulfilled, he went to dine with his nephew
Postel. That worthy, like the rest of Angoulême, maintained that the
father was in the right, and soon dissipated any little benevolence that
the old gentleman was disposed to feel towards the son and his family.
“With those that squander money something may be done,” concluded little
Postel, “but those that make experiments are the ruin of you.”
The curé went home; his curiosity was thoroughly satisfied, and this
is the end and object of the exceeding interest taken in other people’s
business in the provinces. In the course of the evening the poet was
duly informed of all that had passed in the Séchard family, and the
journey was represented as a pilgrimage undertaken from motives of the
purest charity.
“You have run your brother-in-law and sister into debt to the amount of
ten or twelve thousand francs,” said the Abbé as he drew to an end, “and
nobody hereabouts has that trifling amount to lend a neighbor, my dear
sir. We are not rich in Angoumois. When you spoke to me of your bills, I
thought that a much smaller amount was involved.”
Lucien thanked the old man for his good offices. “The promise of
forgiveness which you have brought is for me a priceless gift.”
Very early the next morning Lucien set out from Marsac, and
reached Angoulême towards nine o’clock. He carried nothing but his
walking-stick; the short jacket that he wore was considerably the worst
for his journey, his black trousers were whitened with dust, and a pair
of worn boots told sufficiently plainly that their owner belonged to the
hapless tribe of tramps. He knew well enough that the contrast between
his departure and return was bound to strike his fellow-townsmen; he
did not try to hide the fact from himself. But just then, with his heart
swelling beneath the oppression of remorse awakened in him by the old
curé’s story, he accepted his punishment for the moment, and made up his
mind to brave the eyes of his acquaintances. Within himself he said, “I
am behaving heroically.”
Poetic temperaments of this stamp begin as their own dupes. He walked up
through L’Houmeau, shame at the manner of his return struggling with
the charm of old associations as he went. His heart beat quickly as he
passed Postel’s shop; but, very luckily for him, the only persons inside
it were Léonie and her child. And yet, vanity was still so strong in
him, that he could feel glad that his father’s name had been painted out
on the shop-front; for Postel, since his marriage, had redecorated his
abode, and the word “Pharmacy” now alone appeared there, in the Paris
fashion, in big letters.
When Lucien reached the steps by the Palet Gate, he felt the influence
of his native air, his misfortunes no longer weighed upon him. “I shall
see them again!” he said to himself, with a thrill of delight.
He reached the Place du Mûrier, and had not met a soul, a piece of luck
that he scarcely hoped for, he who once had gone about his native place
with a conqueror’s air. Marion and Kolb, on guard at the door, flew out
upon the steps, crying out, “Here he is!”
Lucien saw the familiar workshop and courtyard, and on the staircase
met his mother and sister, and for a moment, while their arms were about
him, all three almost forgot their troubles. In family life we almost
always compound with our misfortunes; we make a sort of bed to rest
upon; and, if it is hard, hope to make it tolerable. If Lucien looked
the picture of despair, poetic charm was not wanting to the picture.
His face had been tanned by the sunlight of the open road, and the deep
sadness visible in his features overshadowed his poet’s brow. The change
in him told so plainly of sufferings endured, his face was so worn by
sharp misery, that no one could help pitying him. Imagination had fared
forth into the world and found sad reality at the home-coming. Eve was
smiling in the midst of her joy, as the saints smile upon martyrdom.
The face of a young and very fair woman grows sublimely beautiful at the
touch of grief; Lucien remembered the innocent girlish face that he saw
last before he went to Paris, and the look of gravity that had come over
it spoke so eloquently that he could not but feel a painful impression.
The first quick, natural outpouring of affection was followed at once
by a reaction on either side; they were afraid to speak; and when Lucien
almost involuntarily looked round for another who should have been
there, Eve burst into tears, and Lucien did the same, but Mme. Chardon’s
haggard face showed no sign of emotion. Eve rose to her feet and went
downstairs, partly to spare her brother a word of reproach, partly to
speak to Marion.
“Lucien is so fond of strawberries, child, we must find some
strawberries for him.”
“Oh, I was sure that you would want to welcome M. Lucien; you shall have
a nice little breakfast and a good dinner, too.”
“Lucien,” said Mme. Chardon when the mother and son were left alone,
“you have a great deal to repair here. You went away that we all
might be proud of you; you have plunged us into want. You have all but
destroyed your brother’s opportunity of making a fortune that he only
cared to win for the sake of his new family. Nor is this all that you
have destroyed----” said the mother.
There was a dreadful pause; Lucien took his mother’s reproaches in
silence.
“Now begin to work,” Mme. Chardon went on more gently. “You tried to
revive the noble family of whom I come; I do not blame you for it. But
the man who undertakes such a task needs money above all things, and
must bear a high heart in him; both were wanting in your case.
We believed in you once, our belief has been shaken. This was a
hard-working, contented household, making its way with difficulty; you
have troubled their peace. The first offence may be forgiven, but it
must be the last. We are in a very difficult position here; you must be
careful, and take your sister’s advice, Lucien. The school of trouble is
a very hard one, but Eve has learned much by her lessons; she has grown
grave and thoughtful, she is a mother. In her devotion to our dear David
she has taken all the family burdens upon herself; indeed, through your
wrongdoing she has come to be my only comfort.”
“You might be still more severe, my mother,” Lucien said, as he kissed
her. “I accept your forgiveness, for I will not need it a second time.”
Eve came into the room, saw her brother’s humble attitude, and knew that
he had been forgiven. Her kindness brought a smile for him to her lips,
and Lucien answered with tear-filled eyes. A living presence acts like a
charm, changing the most hostile positions of lovers or of families, no
matter how just the resentment. Is it that affection finds out the ways
of the heart, and we love to fall into them again? Does the phenomenon
come within the province of the science of magnetism? Or is it reason
that tells us that we must either forgive or never see each other
again? Whether the cause be referred to mental, physical, or spiritual
conditions, everyone knows the effect; every one has felt that the
looks, the actions or gestures of the beloved awaken some vestige of
tenderness in those most deeply sinned against and grievously wronged.
Though it is hard for the mind to forget, though we still smart under
the injury, the heart returns to its allegiance in spite of all. Poor
Eve listened to her brother’s confidences until breakfast-time; and
whenever she looked at him she was no longer mistress of her eyes;
in that intimate talk she could not control her voice. And with
the comprehension of the conditions of literary life in Paris, she
understood that the struggle had been too much for Lucien’s strength.
The poet’s delight as he caressed his sister’s child, his deep grief
over David’s absence, mingled with joy at seeing his country and his
own folk again, the melancholy words that he let fall,--all these
things combined to make that day a festival. When Marion brought in the
strawberries, he was touched to see that Eve had remembered his taste in
spite of her distress, and she, his sister, must make ready a room for
the prodigal brother and busy herself for Lucien. It was a truce, as
it were, to misery. Old Séchard himself assisted to bring about this
revulsion of feeling in the two women--“You are making as much of him as
if he were bringing you any amount of money!”
“And what has my brother done that we should not make much of him?”
cried Eve, jealously screening Lucien.
Nevertheless, when the first expansion was over, shades of truth came
out. It was not long before Lucien felt the difference between the old
affection and the new. Eve respected David from the depths of her heart;
Lucien was beloved for his own sake, as we love a mistress still in
spite of the disasters she causes. Esteem, the very foundation on which
affection is based, is the solid stuff to which affection owes I know
not what of certainty and security by which we live; and this was
lacking between Mme. Chardon and her son, between the sister and the
brother. Mother and daughter did not put entire confidence in him, as
they would have done if he had not lost his honor; and he felt this.
The opinion expressed in d’Arthez’s letter was Eve’s own estimate of
her brother; unconsciously she revealed it by her manner, tones, and
gestures. Oh! Lucien was pitied, that was true; but as for all that he
had been, the pride of the household, the great man of the family, the
hero of the fireside,--all this, like their fair hopes of him, was gone,
never to return. They were so afraid of his heedlessness that he was not
told where David was hidden. Lucien wanted to see his brother; but
this Eve, insensible to the caresses which accompanied his curious
questionings, was not the Eve of L’Houmeau, for whom a glance from
him had been an order that must be obeyed. When Lucien spoke of making
reparation, and talked as though he could rescue David, Eve only
answered:
“Do not interfere; we have enemies of the most treacherous and dangerous
kind.”
Lucien tossed his head, as one who should say, “I have measured myself
against Parisians,” and the look in his sister’s eyes said unmistakably,
“Yes, but you were defeated.”
“Nobody cares for me now,” Lucien thought. “In the home circle, as in
the world without, success is a necessity.”
The poet tried to explain their lack of confidence in him; he had not
been at home two days before a feeling of vexation rather than of angry
bitterness gained hold on him. He applied Parisian standards to the
quiet, temperate existence of the provinces, quite forgetting that
the narrow, patient life of the household was the result of his own
misdoings.
“They are _bourgeoises_, they cannot understand me,” he said, setting
himself apart from his sister and mother and David, now that they could
no longer be deceived as to his real character and his future.
Many troubles and shocks of fortune had quickened the intuitive sense
in both the women. Eve and Mme. Chardon guessed the thoughts in Lucien’s
inmost soul; they felt that he misjudged them; they saw him mentally
isolating himself.
“Paris has changed him very much,” they said between themselves. They
were indeed reaping the harvest of egoism which they themselves had
fostered.
It was inevitable but that the leaven should work in all three; and this
most of all in Lucien, because he felt that he was so heavily to blame.
As for Eve, she was just the kind of sister to beg an erring brother to
“Forgive me for your trespasses;” but when the union of two souls had
been as perfect since life’s very beginnings, as it had been with Eve
and Lucien, any blow dealt to that fair ideal is fatal. Scoundrels can
draw knives on each other and make it up again afterwards, while a look
or a word is enough to sunder two lovers for ever. In the recollection
of an almost perfect life of heart and heart lies the secret of many an
estrangement that none can explain. Two may live together without full
trust in their hearts if only their past holds no memories of complete
and unclouded love; but for those who once have known that intimate
life, it becomes intolerable to keep perpetual watch over looks and
words. Great poets know this; Paul and Virginie die before youth is
over; can we think of Paul and Virginie estranged? Let us know that, to
the honor of Lucien and Eve, the grave injury done was not the source of
the pain; it was entirely a matter of feeling upon either side, for the
poet in fault, as for the sister who was in no way to blame. Things
had reached the point when the slightest misunderstanding, or little
quarrel, or a fresh disappointment in Lucien would end in final
estrangement. Money difficulties may be arranged, but feelings are
inexorable.
Next day Lucien received a copy of the local paper. He turned pale with
pleasure when he saw his name at the head of one of the first “leaders”
in that highly respectable sheet, which like the provincial academies
that Voltaire compared to a well-bred miss, was never talked about.
“Let Franche-Comté boast of giving the light to Victor Hugo,
to Charles Nodier, and Cuvier,” ran the article, “Brittany of
producing a Chateaubriand and a Lammenais, Normandy of Casimir
Delavigne, and Touraine of the author of _Eloa_; Angoumois that
gave birth, in the days of Louis XIII., to our illustrious
fellow-countryman Guez, better known under the name of Balzac--our
Angoumois need no longer envy Limousin her Dupuytren, nor Auvergne,
the country of Montlosier, nor Bordeaux, birthplace of so many
great men; for we too have our poet!--The writer of the beautiful
sonnets entitled the _Marguerites_ unites his poet’s fame to
the distinction of a prose writer, for to him we also owe the
magnificent romance of _The Archer of Charles IX._ Some day our
nephews will be proud to be the fellow-townsmen of Lucien Chardon,
a rival of Petrarch!!!”
(The country newspapers of those days were sown with notes of
admiration, as reports of English election speeches are studded with
“cheers” in brackets.)
“In spite of his brilliant success in Paris, our young poet has
not forgotten the Hôtel de Bargeton, the cradle of his triumphs;
nor the Antoumoisin aristocracy, who first applauded his poetry;
nor the fact that the wife of M. le Comte du Châtelet, our
Prefect, encouraged his early footsteps in the pathway of the
Muses. He has come back among us once more! All L’Houmeau was
thrown into excitement yesterday by the appearance of our Lucien
de Rubempré. The news of his return produced a profound sensation
throughout the town. Angoulême certainly will not allow L’Houmeau
to be beforehand in doing honor to the poet who in journalism and
literature has so gloriously represented our town in Paris. Lucien
de Rubempré, a religious and Royalist poet, has braved the fury of
parties; he has come home, it is said, for repose after the
fatigue of a struggle which would try the strength of an even
greater intellectual athlete than a poet and a dreamer.
“There is some talk of restoring our great poet to the title of
the illustrious house of de Rubempré, of which his mother, Madame
Chardon, is the last survivor, and it is added that Mme. la
Comtesse du Châtelet was the first to think of this eminently
politic idea. The revival of an ancient and almost extinct family
by young talent and newly won fame is another proof that the
immortal author of the Charter still cherishes the desire
expressed by the words ‘Union and oblivion.’
“Our poet is staying with his sister, Mme. Séchard.”