depraved taste by a sentence of death, you do not know the grip that a
man’s failings have upon him; let a man discover some satisfaction for
himself, and the headsman will not keep him from it.--How is it that the
vice has this power? Is it inherent strength in the vice, or inherent
weakness in human nature? Are there certain tastes that should be
regarded as verging on insanity? For myself, I cannot help laughing at
the moralists who try to expel such diseases by fine phrases.--Well, it
so fell out that the steward refused a demand for money; and the Duke
taking fright at this, called for an audit. Sheer imbecility! Nothing
easier than to make out a balance-sheet; the difficulty never lies
there. The steward gave his secretary all the necessary documents
for compiling a schedule of the civil list of Courland. He had nearly
finished it when, in the dead of night, the unhappy paper-eater
discovered that he was chewing up one of the Duke’s discharges for a
considerable sum. He had eaten half the signature! Horror seized upon
him; he fled to the Duchess, flung himself at her feet, told her of his
craze, and implored the aid of his sovereign lady, implored her in the
middle of the night. The handsome young face made such an impression on
the Duchess that she married him as soon as she was left a widow. And
so in the mid-eighteenth century, in a land where the king-at-arms is
king, the goldsmith’s son became a prince, and something more. On the
death of Catherine I. he was regent; he ruled the Empress Anne, and
tried to be the Richelieu of Russia. Very well, young man; now know
this--if you are handsomer than Biron, I, simple canon that I am, am
worth more than a Baron Goërtz. So get in; we will find a duchy of
Courland for you in Paris, or failing the duchy, we shall certainly find
the duchess.”
The Spanish priest laid a hand on Lucien’s arm, and literally forced him
into the traveling carriage. The postilion shut the door.
“Now speak; I am listening,” said the canon of Toledo, to Lucien’s
bewilderment. “I am an old priest; you can tell me everything, there
is nothing to fear. So far we have only run through our patrimony or
squandered mamma’s money. We have made a flitting from our creditors,
and we are honor personified down to the tips of our elegant little
boots. . . . Come, confess, boldly; it will be just as if you were
talking to yourself.”
Lucien felt like that hero of an Eastern tale, the fisher who tried
to drown himself in mid-ocean, and sank down to find himself a king
of countries under the sea. The Spanish priest seemed so really
affectionate, that the poet hesitated no longer; between Angoulême
and Ruffec he told the story of his whole life, omitting none of his
misdeeds, and ended with the final catastrophe which he had brought
about. The tale only gained in poetic charm because this was the third
time he had told it in the past fortnight. Just as he made an end they
passed the house of the Rastignac family.
“Young Rastignac left that place for Paris,” said Lucien; “he is
certainly not my equal, but he has had better luck.”
The Spaniard started at the name. “Oh!” he said.
“Yes. That shy little place belongs to his father. As I was telling
you just now, he was the lover of Mme. de Nucingen, the famous banker’s
wife. I drifted into poetry; he was cleverer, he took the practical
side.”
The priest stopped the calèche; and was so far curious as to walk down
the little avenue that led to the house, showing more interest in the
place than Lucien expected from a Spanish ecclesiastic.
“Then, do you know the Rastignacs?” asked Lucien.
“I know every one in Paris,” said the Spaniard, taking his place again
in the carriage. “And so for want of ten or twelve thousand francs, you
were about to take your life; you are a child, you know neither men nor
things. A man’s future is worth the value that he chooses to set upon
it, and you value yours at twelve thousand francs! Well, I will
give more than that for you any time. As for your brother-in-law’s
imprisonment, it is the merest trifle. If this dear M. Séchard has made
a discovery, he will be a rich man some day, and a rich man has never
been imprisoned for debt. You do not seem to me to be strong in history.
History is of two kinds--there is the official history taught in
schools, a lying compilation _ad usum delphini_; and there is the
secret history which deals with the real causes of events--a scandalous
chronicle. Let me tell you briefly a little story which you have not
heard. There was, once upon a time, a man, young and ambitious, and a
priest to boot. He wanted to enter upon a political career, so he fawned
on the Queen’s favorite; the favorite took an interest in him, gave
him the rank of minister, and a seat at the council board. One evening
somebody wrote to the young aspirant, thinking to do him a service
(never do a service, by the by, unless you are asked), and told him
that his benefactor’s life was in danger. The King’s wrath was kindled
against his rival; to-morrow, if the favorite went to the palace, he
would certainly be stabbed; so said the letter. Well, now, young man,
what would you have done?”
“I should have gone at once to warn my benefactor,” Lucien exclaimed
quickly.
“You are indeed the child which your story reveals!” said the priest.
“Our man said to himself, ‘If the King is resolved to go to such
lengths, it is all over with my benefactor; I must receive this letter
too late;’ so he slept on till the favorite was stabbed----”
“He was a monster!” said Lucien, suspecting that the priest meant to
sound him.
“So are all great men; this one was the Cardinal de Richelieu, and his
benefactor was the Maréchal d’Ancre. You really do not know your history
of France, you see. Was I not right when I told you that history as
taught in schools is simply a collection of facts and dates, more than
doubtful in the first place, and with no bearing whatever on the gist of
the matter. You are told that such a person as Jeanne Darc once existed;
where is the use of that? Have you never drawn your own conclusions from
that fact? never seen that if France had accepted the Angevin dynasty
of the Plantagenets, the two peoples thus reunited would be ruling the
world to-day, and the islands that now brew political storms for the
continent would be French provinces? . . . Why, have you so much as
studied the means by which simple merchants like the Medicis became
Grand Dukes of Tuscany?”
“A poet in France is not bound to be ‘as learned as a Benedictine,’”
said Lucien.
“Well, they became Grand-Dukes as Richelieu became a minister. If you
had looked into history for the causes of events instead of getting the
headings by heart, you would have found precepts for your guidance in
this life. These real facts taken at random from among so many supply
you with the axiom--‘Look upon men, and on women most of all, as your
instruments; but never let them see this.’ If some one higher in place
can be useful to you, worship him as your god; and never leave him until
he has paid the price of your servility to the last farthing. In your
intercourse with men, in short, be grasping and mean as a Jew; all that
the Jew does for money, you must do for power. And besides all this,
when a man has fallen from power, care no more for him than if he had
ceased to exist. And do you ask why you must do these things? You mean
to rule the world, do you not? You must begin by obeying and studying
it. Scholars study books; politicians study men, and their interests and
the springs of action. Society and mankind in masses are fatalists; they
bow down and worship the accomplished fact. Do you know why I am giving
you this little history lesson? It seems to me that your ambition is
boundless----”
“Yes, father.”
“I saw that myself,” said the priest. “But at this moment you are
thinking, ‘Here is this Spanish canon inventing anecdotes and straining
history to prove to me that I have too much virtue----’”
Lucien began to smile; his thoughts had been read so clearly.
“Very well, let us take facts that every schoolboy knows. One day France
is almost entirely overrun by the English; the King has only a single
province left. Two figures arise from among the people--a poor herd
girl, that very Jeanne Darc of whom we were speaking, and a burgher
named Jacques Coeur. The girl brings the power of virginity, the
strength of her arm; the burgher gives his gold, and the kingdom is
saved. The maid is taken prisoner, and the King, who could have ransomed
her, leaves her to be burned alive. The King allows his courtier to
accuse the great burgher of capital crime, and they rob him and divide
all his wealth among themselves. The spoils of an innocent man, hunted
down, brought to bay, and driven into exile by the Law, went to enrich
five noble houses; and the father of the Archbishop of Bourges left the
kingdom for ever without one sou of all his possessions in France, and
no resource but moneys remitted to Arabs and Saracens in Egypt. It
is open to you to say that these examples are out of date, that three
centuries of public education have since elapsed, and that the outlines
of those ages are more or less dim figures. Well, young man, do you
believe in the last demi-god of France, in Napoleon? One of his generals
was in disgrace all through his career; Napoleon made him a marshal
grudgingly, and never sent him on service if he could help it. That
marshal was Kellermann. Do you know the reason of the grudge? . . .
Kellermann saved France and the First Consul at Marengo by a brilliant
charge; the ranks applauded under fire and in the thick of the carnage.
That heroic charge was not even mentioned in the bulletin. Napoleon’s
coolness toward Kellermann, Fouché’s fall, and Talleyrand’s disgrace
were all attributable to the same cause; it is the ingratitude of a
Charles VII., or a Richelieu, or ----”
“But, father,” said Lucien, “suppose that you should save my life and
make my fortune, you are making the ties of gratitude somewhat slight.”
“Little rogue,” said the Abbé, smiling as he pinched Lucien’s ear with
an almost royal familiarity. “If you are ungrateful to me, it will be
because you are a strong man, and I shall bend before you. But you are
not that just yet; as a simple ‘prentice you have tried to be master
too soon, the common fault of Frenchmen of your generation. Napoleon’s
example has spoiled them all. You send in your resignation because you
have not the pair of epaulettes that you fancied. But have you attempted
to bring the full force of your will and every action of your life to
bear upon your one idea?”
“Alas! no.”
“You have been inconsistent, as the English say,” smiled the canon.
“What I have been matters nothing now,” said Lucien, “if I can be
nothing in the future.”
“If at the back of all your good qualities there is power _semper
virens_,” continued the priest, not averse to show that he had a little
Latin, “nothing in this world can resist you. I have taken enough of a
liking for you already----”
Lucien smiled incredulously.
“Yes,” said the priest, in answer to the smile, “you interest me as much
as if you had been my son; and I am strong enough to afford to talk to
you as openly as you have just done to me. Do you know what it is that
I like about you?--This: you have made a sort of _tabula rasa_ within
yourself, and are ready to hear a sermon on morality that you will
hear nowhere else; for mankind in the mass are even more consummate
hypocrites than any one individual can be when his interests demand a
piece of acting. Most of us spend a good part of our lives in clearing
our minds of the notions that sprang up unchecked during our nonage.
This is called ‘getting our experience.’”
Lucien, listening, thought within himself, “Here is some old intriguer
delighted with a chance of amusing himself on a journey. He is pleased
with the idea of bringing about a change of opinion in a poor wretch
on the brink of suicide; and when he is tired of his amusement, he will
drop me. Still he understands paradox, and seems to be quite a match for
Blondet or Lousteau.”
But in spite of these sage reflections, the diplomate’s poison had sunk
deeply into Lucien’s soul; the ground was ready to receive it, and the
havoc wrought was the greater because such famous examples were cited.
Lucien fell under the charm of his companion’s cynical talk, and clung
the more willingly to life because he felt that this arm which drew him
up from the depths was a strong one.
In this respect the ecclesiastic had evidently won the day; and, indeed,
from time to time a malicious smile bore his cynical anecdotes company.
“If your system of morality at all resembles your manner of regarding
history,” said Lucien, “I should dearly like to know the motive of your
present act of charity, for such it seems to be.”
“There, young man, I have come to the last head of my sermon; you will
permit me to reserve it, for in that case we shall not part company
to-day,” said the canon, with the tact of the priest who sees that his
guile has succeeded.
“Very well, talk morality,” said Lucien. To himself he said, “I will
draw him out.”
“Morality begins with the law,” said the priest. “If it were simply a
question of religion, laws would be superfluous; religious peoples have
few laws. The laws of statecraft are above civil law. Well, do you care
to know the inscription which a politician can read, written at large
over your nineteenth century? In 1793 the French invented the idea of
the sovereignty of the people--and the sovereignty of the people came to
an end under the absolute ruler in the Emperor. So much for your
history as a nation. Now for your private manners. Mme. Tallien and Mme.
Beauharnais both acted alike. Napoleon married the one, and made her
your Empress; the other he would never receive at court, princess though
she was. The sans-culotte of 1793 takes the Iron Crown in 1804. The
fanatical lovers of Equality or Death conspire fourteen years afterwards
with a Legitimist aristocracy to bring back Louis XVIII. And that same
aristocracy, lording it to-day in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, has done
worse--has been merchant, usurer, pastry-cook, farmer, and shepherd. So
in France systems political and moral have started from one point and
reached another diametrically opposed; and men have expressed one
kind of opinion and acted on another. There has been no consistency in
national policy, nor in the conduct of individuals. You cannot be said
to have any morality left. Success is the supreme justification of all
actions whatsoever. The fact in itself is nothing; the impression that
it makes upon others is everything. Hence, please observe a second
precept: Present a fair exterior to the world, keep the seamy side
of life to yourself, and turn a resplendent countenance upon others.
Discretion, the motto of every ambitious man, is the watchword of our
Order; take it for your own. Great men are guilty of almost as many
base deeds as poor outcasts; but they are careful to do these things in
shadow and to parade their virtues in the light, or they would not be
great men. Your insignificant man leaves his virtues in the shade; he
publicly displays his pitiable side, and is despised accordingly. You,
for instance, have hidden your titles to greatness and made a display of
your worst failings. You openly took an actress for your mistress, lived
with her and upon her; you were by no means to blame for this; everybody
admitted that both of you were perfectly free to do as you liked; but
you ran full tilt against the ideas of the world, and the world has not
shown you the consideration that is shown to those who obey the rules of
the game. If you had left Coralie to this M. Camusot, if you had hidden
your relations with her, you might have married Mme. de Bargeton; you
would now be prefect of Angoulême and Marquis de Rubempré.
“Change your tactics, bring your good looks, your charm, your wit, your
poetry to the front. If you indulge in small discreditable courses, let
it be within four walls, and you will never again be guilty of a blot on
the decorations of this great theatrical scene called society. Napoleon
called this ‘washing dirty linen at home.’ The corollary follows
naturally on this second precept--Form is everything. Be careful to
grasp the meaning of that word ‘form.’ There are people who, for want
of knowing better, will help themselves to money under pressure of want,
and take it by force. These people are called criminals; and, perforce,
they square accounts with Justice. A poor man of genius discovers
some secret, some invention as good as a treasure; you lend him three
thousand francs (for that, practically, the Cointets have done; they
hold your bills, and they are about to rob your brother-in-law); you
torment him until he reveals or partly reveals his secret; you settle
your accounts with your own conscience, and your conscience does not
drag you into the assize court.
“The enemies of social order, beholding this contrast, take occasion
to yap at justice, and wax wroth in the name of the people, because,
forsooth, burglars and fowl-stealers are sent to the hulks, while a man
who brings whole families to ruin by a fraudulent bankruptcy is let off
with a few months’ imprisonment. But these hypocrites know quite well
that the judge who passes sentence on the thief is maintaining the
barrier set between the poor and the rich, and that if that barrier
were overturned, social chaos would ensue; while, in the case of the
bankrupt, the man who steals an inheritance cleverly, and the banker who
slaughters a business for his own benefit, money merely changes hands,
that is all.
“Society, my son, is bound to draw those distinctions which I have
pointed out for your benefit. The one great point is this--you must be a
match for society. Napoleon, Richelieu, and the Medicis were a match for
their generations. And as for you, you value yourself at twelve thousand
francs! You of this generation in France worship the golden calf; what
else is the religion of your Charter that will not recognize a man
politically unless he owns property? What is this but the command,
‘Strive to be rich?’ Some day, when you shall have made a fortune
without breaking the law, you will be rich; you will be the Marquis de
Rubempré, and you can indulge in the luxury of honor. You will be so
extremely sensitive on the point of honor that no one will dare to
accuse you of past shortcomings if in the process of making your way you
should happen to smirch it now and again, which I myself should never
advise,” he added, patting Lucien’s hand.
“So what must you put in that comely head of yours? Simply this and
nothing more--propose to yourself a brilliant and conspicuous goal, and
go towards it secretly; let no one see your methods or your progress.
You have behaved like a child; be a man, be a hunter, lie in wait for
your quarry in the world of Paris, wait for your chance and your game;
you need not be particular nor mindful of your dignity, as it is called;
we are all of us slaves to something, to some failing of our own or to
necessity; but keep that law of laws--secrecy.”
“Father, you frighten me,” said Lucien; “this seems to me to be a
highwayman’s theory.”
“And you are right,” said the canon, “but it is no invention of mine.
All _parvenus_ reason in this way--the house of Austria and the house
of France alike. You have nothing, you say? The Medicis, Richelieu, and
Napoleon started from precisely your standpoint; but _they_, my child,
considered that their prospects were worth ingratitude, treachery, and
the most glaring inconsistencies. You must dare all things to gain
all things. Let us discuss it. Suppose that you sit down to a game of
_bouillotte_, do you begin to argue over the rules of the game? There
they are, you accept them.”
“Come, now,” thought Lucien, “he can play _bouillotte_.”
“And what do you do?” continued the priest; “do you practise openness,
that fairest of virtues? Not merely do you hide your tactics, but you
do your best to make others believe that you are on the brink of ruin
as soon as you are sure of winning the game. In short, you dissemble, do
you not? You lie to win four or five louis d’or. What would you think of
a player so generous as to proclaim that he held a hand full of trumps?
Very well; the ambitious man who carries virtue’s precepts into the
arena when his antagonists have left them behind is behaving like a
child. Old men of the world might say to him, as card-players would say
to the man who declines to take advantage of his trumps, ‘Monsieur, you
ought not to play at _bouillotte_.’
“Did you make the rules of the game of ambition? Why did I tell you to
be a match for society?--Because, in these days, society by degrees
has usurped so many rights over the individual, that the individual
is compelled to act in self-defence. There is no question of laws now,
their place has been taken by custom, which is to say grimacings, and
forms must always be observed.”
Lucien started with surprise.
“Ah, my child!” said the priest, afraid that he had shocked Lucien’s
innocence; “did you expect to find the Angel Gabriel in an Abbé loaded
with all the iniquities of the diplomacy and counter-diplomacy of two
kings? I am an agent between Ferdinand VII. and Louis XVIII., two--kings
who owe their crowns to profound--er--combinations, let us say. I
believe in God, but I have a still greater belief in our Order, and our
Order has no belief save in temporal power. In order to strengthen and
consolidate the temporal power, our Order upholds the Catholic Apostolic
and Roman Church, which is to say, the doctrines which dispose the world
at large to obedience. We are the Templars of modern times; we have a
doctrine of our own. Like the Templars, we have been dispersed, and
for the same reasons; we are almost a match for the world. If you will
enlist as a soldier, I will be your captain. Obey me as a wife obeys
her husband, as a child obeys his mother, and I will guarantee that you
shall be Marquis de Rubempré in less than six months; you shall marry
into one of the proudest houses in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and some
day you shall sit on a bench with peers of France. What would you have
been at this moment if I had not amused you by my conversation?--An
undiscovered corpse in a deep bed of mud. Well and good, now for an
effort of imagination----”
Lucien looked curiously at his protector.
“Here, in this calèche beside the Abbé Carlos Herrera, canon of Toledo,
secret envoy from His Majesty Ferdinand VII. to his Majesty the King
of France, bearer of a despatch thus worded it may be--‘When you
have delivered me, hang all those whom I favor at this moment, more
especially the bearer of this despatch, for then he can tell no
tales’--well, beside this envoy sits a young man who has nothing in
common with that poet recently deceased. I have fished you out of
the water, I have brought you to life again, you belong to me as the
creature belongs to the creator, as the efrits of fairytales belong to
the genii, as the janissary to the Sultan, as the soul to the body. I
will sustain you in the way to power with a strong hand; and at the same
time I promise that your life shall be a continual course of pleasure,
honors, and enjoyment. You shall never want for money. You shall shine,
you shall go bravely in the eyes of the world; while I, crouching in
the mud, will lay a firm foundation for the brilliant edifice of your
fortunes. For I love power for its own sake. I shall always rejoice in
your enjoyment, forbidden to me. In short, my self shall become your
self! Well, if a day should come when this pact between man and the
tempter, this agreement between the child and the diplomatist should no
longer suit your ideas, you can still look about for some quiet spot,
like that pool of which you were speaking, and drown yourself; you will
only be as you are now, or a little more or a little less wretched and
dishonored.”
“This is not like the Archbishop of Granada’s homily,” said Lucien as
they stopped to change horses.
“Call this concentrated education by what name you will, my son, for you
are my son, I adopt you henceforth, and shall make you my heir; it is
the Code of ambition. God’s elect are few and far between. There is no
choice, you must bury yourself in the cloister (and there you very often
find the world again in miniature) or accept the Code.”
“Perhaps it would be better not to be so wise,” said Lucien, trying to
fathom this terrible priest.
“What!” rejoined the canon. “You begin to play before you know the rules
of the game, and now you throw it up just as your chances are best, and
you have a substantial godfather to back you! And you do not even care
to play a return match? You do not mean to say that you have no mind to
be even with those who drove you from Paris?”
Lucien quivered; the sounds that rang through every nerve seemed to come
from some bronze instrument, some Chinese gong.
“I am only a poor priest,” returned his mentor, and a grim expression,
dreadful to behold, appeared for a moment on a face burned to a
copper-red by the sun of Spain, “I am only a poor priest; but if I had
been humiliated, vexed, tormented, betrayed, and sold as you have been
by the scoundrels of whom you have told me, I should do like an Arab of
the desert--I would devote myself body and soul to vengeance. I might
end by dangling from a gibbet, garroted, impaled, guillotined in your
French fashion, I should not care a rap; but they should not have my
head until I had crushed my enemies under my heel.”
Lucien was silent; he had no wish to draw the priest out any further.
“Some are descended from Cain and some from Abel,” the canon concluded;
“I myself am of mixed blood--Cain for my enemies, Abel for my friends.
Woe to him that shall awaken Cain! After all, you are a Frenchman; I am
a Spaniard, and, what is more, a canon.”
“What a Tartar!” thought Lucien, scanning the protector thus sent to him
by Heaven.
There was no sign of the Jesuit, nor even of the ecclesiastic, about
the Abbé Carlos Herrera. His hands were large, he was thick-set and
broad-chested, evidently he possessed the strength of a Hercules; his
terrific expression was softened by benignity assumed at will; but a
complexion of impenetrable bronze inspired feelings of repulsion rather
than attachment for the man.
The strange diplomatist looked somewhat like a bishop, for he wore
powder on his long, thick hair, after the fashion of the Prince de
Talleyrand; a gold cross, hanging from a strip of blue ribbon with
a white border, indicated an ecclesiastical dignitary. The outlines
beneath the black silk stockings would not have disgraced an athlete.
The exquisite neatness of his clothes and person revealed an amount of
care which a simple priest, and, above all, a Spanish priest, does not
always take with his appearance. A three-cornered hat lay on the front
seat of the carriage, which bore the arms of Spain.
In spite of the sense of repulsion, the effect made by the man’s
appearance was weakened by his manner, fierce and yet winning as it was;
he evidently laid himself out to please Lucien, and the winning manner
became almost coaxing. Yet Lucien noticed the smallest trifles uneasily.
He felt that the moment of decision had come; they had reached the
second stage beyond Ruffec, and the decision meant life or death.
The Spaniard’s last words vibrated through many chords in his heart,
and, to the shame of both, it must be said that all that was worst in
Lucien responded to an appeal deliberately made to his evil impulses,
and the eyes that studied the poet’s beautiful face had read him very
clearly. Lucien beheld Paris once more; in imagination he caught again
at the reins of power let fall from his unskilled hands, and he avenged
himself! The comparisons which he himself had drawn so lately between
the life of Paris and life in the provinces faded from his mind with the
more painful motives for suicide; he was about to return to his
natural sphere, and this time with a protector, a political intriguer
unscrupulous as Cromwell.
“I was alone, now there will be two of us,” he told himself. And then
this priest had been more and more interested as he told of his sins
one after another. The man’s charity had grown with the extent of his
misdoings; nothing had astonished this confessor. And yet, what could
be the motive of a mover in the intrigues of kings? Lucien at first was
fain to be content with the banal answer--the Spanish are a generous
race. The Spaniard is generous! even so the Italian is jealous and a
poisoner, the Frenchman fickle, the German frank, the Jew ignoble, and
the Englishman noble. Reverse these verdicts and you shall arrive within
a reasonable distance of the truth! The Jews have monopolized the
gold of the world; they compose _Robert the Devil_, act _Phèdre_, sing
_William Tell_, give commissions for pictures and build palaces, write
_Reisebilder_ and wonderful verse; they are more powerful than ever,
their religion is accepted, they have lent money to the Holy Father
himself! As for Germany, a foreigner is often asked whether he has a
contract in writing, and this is in the smallest matters, so tricky are
they in their dealings. In France the spectacle of national blunders has
never lacked national applause for the past fifty years; we continue to
wear hats which no mortal can explain, and every change of government is
made on the express condition that things shall remain exactly as they
were before. England flaunts her perfidy in the face of the world, and
her abominable treachery is only equaled by her greed. All the gold of
two Indies passed through the hands of Spain, and now she has nothing
left. There is no country in the world where poison is so little in
request as in Italy, no country where manners are easier or more gentle.
As for the Spaniard, he has traded largely on the reputation of the
Moor.
As the Canon of Toledo returned to the calèche, he had spoken a word
to the post-boy. “Drive post-haste,” he said, “and there will be three
francs for drink-money for you.” Then, seeing that Lucien hesitated,
“Come! come!” he exclaimed, and Lucien took his place again, telling
himself that he meant to try the effect of the _argumentum ad hominem_.
“Father,” he began, “after pouring out, with all the coolness in the
world, a series of maxims which the vulgar would consider profoundly
immoral----”
“And so they are,” said the priest; “that is why Jesus Christ said that
it must needs be that offences come, my son; and that is why the world
displays such horror of offences.”
“A man of your stamp will not be surprised by the question which I am
about to ask?”
“Indeed, my son, you do not know me,” said Carlos Herrera. “Do you
suppose that I should engage a secretary unless I knew that I could
depend upon his principles sufficiently to be sure that he would not rob
me? I like you. You are as innocent in every way as a twenty-year-old
suicide. Your question?”
“Why do you take an interest in me? What price do you set on my
obedience? Why should you give me everything? What is your share?”
The Spaniard looked at Lucien, and a smile came over his face.
“Let us wait till we come to the next hill; we can walk up and talk out
in the open. The back seat of a traveling carriage is not the place for
confidences.”
They traveled in silence for sometime; the rapidity of the movement
seemed to increase Lucien’s moral intoxication.
“Here is a hill, father,” he said at last awakening from a kind of
dream.
“Very well, we will walk.” The Abbé called to the postilion to stop, and
the two sprang out upon the road.
“You child,” said the Spaniard, taking Lucien by the arm, “have you ever
thought over Otway’s _Venice Preserved_? Did you understand the profound
friendship between man and man which binds Pierre and Jaffier each to
each so closely that a woman is as nothing in comparison, and all social
conditions are changed?--Well, so much for the poet.”
“So the canon knows something of the drama,” thought Lucien. “Have you
read Voltaire?” he asked.
“I have done better,” said the other; “I put his doctrine in practice.”
“You do not believe in God?”
“Come! it is I who am the atheist, is it?” the Abbé said, smiling. “Let
us come to practical matters, my child,” he added, putting an arm round
Lucien’s waist. “I am forty-six years old, I am the natural son of a
great lord; consequently, I have no family, and I have a heart. But,
learn this, carve it on that still so soft brain of yours--man dreads
to be alone. And of all kinds of isolation, inward isolation is the most
appalling. The early anchorite lived with God; he dwelt in the spirit
world, the most populous world of all. The miser lives in a world of
imagination and fruition; his whole life and all that he is, even his
sex, lies in his brain. A man’s first thought, be he leper or convict,
hopelessly sick or degraded, is to find another with a like fate to
share it with him. He will exert the utmost that is in him, every power,
all his vital energy, to satisfy that craving; it is his very life. But
for that tyrannous longing, would Satan have found companions? There
is a whole poem yet to be written, a first part of _Paradise Lost_;
Milton’s poem is only the apology for the revolt.”
“It would be the Iliad of Corruption,” said Lucien.
“Well, I am alone, I live alone. If I wear the priest’s habit, I have
not a priest’s heart. I like to devote myself to some one; that is my
weakness. That is my life, that is how I came to be a priest. I am not
afraid of ingratitude, and I am grateful. The Church is nothing to me;
it is an idea. I am devoted to the King of Spain, but you cannot give
affection to a King of Spain; he is my protector, he towers above me. I
want to love my creature, to mould him, fashion him to my use, and love
him as a father loves his child. I shall drive in your tilbury, my
boy, enjoy your success with women, and say to myself, ‘This fine young
fellow, this Marquis de Rubempré, my creation whom I have brought into
this great world, is my very Self; his greatness is my doing, he speaks
or is silent with my voice, he consults me in everything.’ The Abbé de
Vermont felt thus for Marie-Antoinette.”
“He led her to the scaffold.”
“He did not love the Queen,” said the priest. “HE only loved the Abbé de
Vermont.”
“Must I leave desolation behind me?”
“I have money, you shall draw on me.”
“I would do a great deal just now to rescue David Séchard,” said Lucien,
in the tone of one who has given up all idea of suicide.
“Say but one word, my son, and by to-morrow morning he shall have money
enough to set him free.”
“What! Would you give me twelve thousand francs?”
“Ah! child, do you not see that we are traveling on at the rate of four
leagues an hour? We shall dine at Poitiers before long, and there, if
you decide to sign the pact, to give me a single proof of obedience, a
great proof that I shall require, then the Bordeaux coach shall carry
fifteen thousand francs to your sister----”
“Where is the money?”
The Spaniard made no answer, and Lucien said within himself, “There I
had him; he was laughing at me.”
In another moment they took their places. Neither of them said a word.
Silently the Abbé groped in the pocket of the coach, and drew out a
traveler’s leather pouch with three divisions in it; thence he took a
hundred Portuguese moidores, bringing out his large hand filled with
gold three times.
“Father, I am yours,” said Lucien, dazzled by the stream of gold.
“Child!” said the priest, and set a tender kiss on Lucien’s forehead.
“There is twice as much still left in the bag, besides the money for
traveling expenses.”
“And you are traveling alone!” cried Lucien.
“What is that?” asked the Spaniard. “I have more than a hundred thousand
crowns in drafts on Paris. A diplomatist without money is in your
position of this morning--a poet without a will of his own!”
As Lucien took his place in the calèche beside the so-called Spanish
diplomatist, Eve rose to give her child a draught of milk, found the
fatal letter in the cradle, and read it. A sudden cold chilled the damps
of morning slumber, dizziness came over her, she could not see. She
called aloud to Marion and Kolb.
“Has my brother gone out?” she asked, and Kolb answered at once with,
“Yes, Montame, pefore tay.”
“Keep this that I am going to tell you a profound secret,” said Eve. “My
brother has gone no doubt to make away with himself. Hurry, both of you,
make inquiries cautiously, and look along the river.”
Eve was left alone in a dull stupor, dreadful to see. Her trouble was
at its height when Petit-Claud came in at seven o’clock to talk over
the steps to be taken in David’s case. At such a time, any voice in the
world may speak, and we let them speak.
“Our poor, dear David is in prison, madame,” so began Petit-Claud. “I
foresaw all along that it would end in this. I advised him at the time
to go into partnership with his competitors the Cointets; for while
your husband has simply the idea, they have the means of putting it into
practical shape. So as soon as I heard of his arrest yesterday evening,
what did I do but hurry away to find the Cointets and try to obtain such
concessions as might satisfy you. If you try to keep the discovery to
yourselves, you will continue to live a life of shifts and chicanery.
You must give in, or else when you are exhausted and at the last gasp,
you will end by making a bargain with some capitalist or other, and
perhaps to your own detriment, whereas to-day I hope to see you make
a good one with MM. Cointet. In this way you will save yourselves the
hardships and the misery of the inventor’s duel with the greed of the
capitalist and the indifference of the public. Let us see! If the MM.
Cointet should pay your debts--if, over and above your debts, they
should pay you a further sum of money down, whether or no the invention
succeeds; while at the same time it is thoroughly understood that if it
succeeds a certain proportion of the profits of working the patent shall
be yours, would you not be doing very well?--You yourself, madame, would
then be the proprietor of the plant in the printing-office. You would
sell the business, no doubt; it is quite worth twenty thousand francs. I
will undertake to find you a buyer at that price.
“Now if you draw up a deed of partnership with the MM. Cointet, and
receive fifteen thousand francs of capital; and if you invest it in
the funds at the present moment, it will bring you in an income of two
thousand francs. You can live on two thousand francs in the provinces.
Bear in mind, too, madame, that, given certain contingencies, there will
be yet further payments. I say ‘contingencies,’ because we must lay our
accounts with failure.
“Very well,” continued Petit-Claud, “now these things I am sure that I
can obtain for you. First of all, David’s release from prison; secondly,
fifteen thousand francs, a premium paid on his discovery, whether the
experiments fail or succeed; and lastly, a partnership between David and
the MM. Cointet, to be taken out after private experiment made jointly.
The deed of partnership for the working of the patent should be drawn
up on the following basis: The MM. Cointet to bear all the expenses, the
capital invested by David to be confined to the expenses of procuring
the patent, and his share of the profits to be fixed at twenty-five per
cent. You are a clear-headed and very sensible woman, qualities which
are not often found combined with great beauty; think over these
proposals, and you will see that they are very favorable.”
Poor Eve in her despair burst into tears. “Ah, sir! why did you not come
yesterday evening to tell me this? We should have been spared disgrace
and--and something far worse----”
“I was talking with the Cointets until midnight. They are behind
Métivier, as you must have suspected. But how has something worse than
our poor David’s arrest happened since yesterday evening?”
“Here is the awful news that I found when I awoke this morning,” she
said, holding out Lucien’s letter. “You have just given me proof of your
interest in us; you are David’s friend and Lucien’s; I need not ask you
to keep the secret----”
“You need not feel the least anxiety,” said Petit-Claud, as he returned
the letter. “Lucien will not take his life. Your husband’s arrest was
his doing; he was obliged to find some excuse for leaving you, and this
exit of his looks to me like a piece of stage business.”
The Cointets had gained their ends. They had tormented the inventor and
his family, until, worn out by the torture, the victims longed for a
respite, and then seized their opportunity and made the offer. Not every
inventor has the tenacity of the bull-dog that will perish with his
teeth fast set in his capture; the Cointets had shrewdly estimated
David’s character. The tall Cointet looked upon David’s imprisonment
as the first scene of the first act of the drama. The second act opened
with the proposal which Petit-Claud had just made. As arch-schemer,
the attorney looked upon Lucien’s frantic folly as a bit of unhoped-for
luck, a chance that would finally decide the issues of the day.
Eve was completely prostrated by this event; Petit-Claud saw this, and
meant to profit by her despair to win her confidence, for he saw at last
how much she influenced her husband. So far from discouraging Eve, he
tried to reassure her, and very cleverly diverted her thoughts to the
prison. She should persuade David to take the Cointets into partnership.
“David told me, madame, that he only wished for a fortune for your sake
and your brother’s; but it should be clear to you by now that to try
to make a rich man of Lucien would be madness. The youngster would run
through three fortunes.”
Eve’s attitude told plainly enough that she had no more illusions left
with regard to her brother. The lawyer waited a little so that her
silence should have the weight of consent.
“Things being so, it is now a question of you and your child,” he said.
“It rests with you to decide whether an income of two thousand francs
will be enough for your welfare, to say nothing of old Séchard’s
property. Your father-in-law’s income has amounted to seven or eight
thousand francs for a long time past, to say nothing of capital lying
out at interest. So, after all, you have a good prospect before you. Why
torment yourself?”
Petit-Claud left Eve Séchard to reflect upon this prospect. The whole
scheme had been drawn up with no little skill by the tall Cointet the
evening before.
“Give them the glimpse of a possibility of money in hand,” the lynx had
said, when Petit-Claud brought the news of the arrest; “once let
them grow accustomed to that idea, and they are ours; we will drive a
bargain, and little by little we shall bring them down to our price for
the secret.”
The argument of the second act of the commercial drama was in a manner
summed up in that speech.
Mme. Séchard, heartbroken and full of dread for her brother’s fate,
dressed and came downstairs. An agony of terror seized her when she
thought that she must cross Angoulême alone on the way to the prison.
Petit-Claud gave little thought to his fair client’s distress. When
he came back to offer his arm, it was from a tolerably Machiavellian
motive; but Eve gave him credit for delicate consideration, and he
allowed her to thank him for it. The little attention, at such a
moment, from so hard a man, modified Mme. Séchard’s previous opinion of
Petit-Claud.
“I am taking you round by the longest way,” he said, “and we shall meet
nobody.”
“For the first time in my life, monsieur, I feel that I have no right
to hold up my head before other people; I had a sharp lesson given to me
last night----”
“It will be the first and the last.”
“Oh! I certainly shall not stay in the town now----”
“Let me know if your husband consents to the proposals that are all but
definitely offered by the Cointets,” said Petit-Claud at the gate of
the prison; “I will come at once with an order for David’s release from
Cachan, and in all likelihood he will not go back again to prison.”
This suggestion, made on the very threshold of the jail, was a piece of
cunning strategy--a _combinazione_, as the Italians call an indefinable
mixture of treachery and truth, a cunningly planned fraud which does not
break the letter of the law, or a piece of deft trickery for which there
is no legal remedy. St. Bartholomew’s for instance, was a political
combination.
Imprisonment for debt, for reasons previously explained, is such a rare
occurrence in the provinces, that there is no house of detention, and
a debtor is perforce imprisoned with the accused, convicted, and
condemned--the three graduated subdivisions of the class generically
styled criminal. David was put for the time being in a cell on the
ground floor from which some prisoner had probably been recently
discharged at the end of his time. Once inscribed on the jailer’s
register, with the amount allowed by the law for a prisoner’s board for
one month, David confronted a big, stout man, more powerful than the
King himself in a prisoner’s eyes; this was the jailer.
An instance of a thin jailer is unknown in the provinces. The place, to
begin with, is almost a sinecure, and a jailer is a kind of innkeeper
who pays no rent and lives very well, while his prisoners fare very ill;
for, like an innkeeper, he gives them rooms according to their payments.
He knew David by name, and what was more, knew about David’s father,
and thought that he might venture to let the printer have a good room on
credit for one night; for David was penniless.
The prison of Angoulême was built in the Middle Ages, and has no more
changed than the old cathedral. It is built against the old _présidial_,
or ancient court of appeal, and people still call it the _maison de
justice_. It boasts the conventional prison gateway, the solid-looking,
nail-studded door, the low, worn archway which the better deserves the
qualification “cyclopean,” because the jailer’s peephole or _judas_
looks out like a single eye from the front of the building. As you enter
you find yourself in a corridor which runs across the entire width of
the building, with a row of doors of cells that give upon the prison
yard and are lighted by high windows covered with a square iron grating.
The jailer’s house is separated from these cells by an archway in the
middle, through which you catch a glimpse of the iron gate of the prison
yard. The jailer installed David in a cell next to the archway, thinking
that he would like to have a man of David’s stamp as a near neighbor for
the sake of company.
“This is the best room,” he said. David was struck dumb with amazement
at the sight of it.
The stone walls were tolerably damp. The windows, set high in the wall,
were heavily barred; the stone-paved floor was cold as ice, and from
the corridor outside came the sound of the measured tramp of the warder,
monotonous as waves on the beach. “You are a prisoner! you are watched
and guarded!” said the footsteps at every moment of every hour. All
these small things together produce a prodigious effect upon the minds
of honest folk. David saw that the bed was execrable, but the first
night in a prison is full of violent agitation, and only on the second
night does the prisoner notice that his couch is hard. The jailer was
graciously disposed; he naturally suggested that his prisoner should
walk in the yard until nightfall.
David’s hour of anguish only began when he was locked into his cell for
the night. Lights are not allowed in the cells. A prisoner detained on
arrest used to be subjected to rules devised for malefactors, unless he
brought a special exemption signed by the public prosecutor. The jailer
certainly might allow David to sit by his fire, but the prisoner must go
back to his cell at locking-up time. Poor David learned the horrors
of prison life by experience, the rough coarseness of the treatment
revolted him. Yet a revulsion, familiar to those who live by thought,
passed over him. He detached himself from his loneliness, and found a
way of escape in a poet’s waking dream.
At last the unhappy man’s thoughts turned to his own affairs. The
stimulating influence of a prison upon conscience and self-scrutiny is
immense. David asked himself whether he had done his duty as the head of
a family. What despairing grief his wife must feel at this moment! Why
had he not done as Marion had said, and earned money enough to pursue
his investigations at leisure?
“How can I stay in Angoulême after such a disgrace? And when I come out
of prison, what will become of us? Where shall we go?”
Doubts as to his process began to occur to him, and he passed through
an agony which none save inventors can understand. Going from doubt to
doubt, David began to see his real position more clearly; and to himself
he said, as the Cointets had said to old Séchard, as Petit-Claud had
just said to Eve, “Suppose that all should go well, what does it amount
to in practice? The first thing to be done is to take out a patent, and
money is needed for that--and experiments must be tried on a large scale
in a paper-mill, which means that the discovery must pass into other
hands. Oh! Petit-Claud was right!”
A very vivid light sometimes dawns in the darkest prison.
“Pshaw!” said David; “I shall see Petit-Claud to-morrow no doubt,” and
he turned and slept on the filthy mattress covered with coarse brown
sacking.
So when Eve unconsciously played into the hands of the enemy that
morning, she found her husband more than ready to listen to proposals.
She put her arms about him and kissed him, and sat down on the edge of
the bed (for there was but one chair of the poorest and commonest kind
in the cell). Her eyes fell on the unsightly pail in a corner, and over
the walls covered with inscriptions left by David’s predecessors, and
tears filled the eyes that were red with weeping. She had sobbed long
and very bitterly, but the sight of her husband in a felon’s cell drew
fresh tears.
“And the desire of fame may lead one to this!” she cried. “Oh! my angel,
give up your career. Let us walk together along the beaten track; we
will not try to make haste to be rich, David.... I need very little
to be very happy, especially now, after all that we have been through
.... And if you only knew--the disgrace of arrest is not the worst....
Look.”
She held out Lucien’s letter, and when David had read it, she tried to
comfort him by repeating Petit-Claud’s bitter comment.
“If Lucien has taken his life, the thing is done by now,” said David;
“if he has not made away with himself by this time, he will not kill
himself. As he himself says, ‘his courage cannot last longer than a
morning----’”
“But the suspense!” cried Eve, forgiving almost everything at the
thought of death. Then she told her husband of the proposals which
Petit-Claud professed to have received from the Cointets. David accepted
them at once with manifest pleasure.
“We shall have enough to live upon in a village near L’Houmeau, where
the Cointets’ paper-mill stands. I want nothing now but a quiet life,”
said David. “If Lucien has punished himself by death, we can wait so
long as father lives; and if Lucien is still living, poor fellow, he
will learn to adapt himself to our narrow ways. The Cointets certainly
will make money by my discovery; but, after all, what am I compared with
our country? One man in it, that is all; and if the whole country is
benefited, I shall be content. There! dear Eve, neither you nor I were
meant to be successful in business. We do not care enough about making a
profit; we have not the dogged objection to parting with our money,
even when it is legally owing, which is a kind of virtue of the
counting-house, for these two sorts of avarice are called prudence and a
faculty of business.”
Eve felt overjoyed; she and her husband held the same views, and this is
one of the sweetest flowers of love; for two human beings who love
each other may not be of the same mind, nor take the same view of their
interests. She wrote to Petit-Claud telling him that they both consented
to the general scheme, and asked him to release David. Then she begged
the jailer to deliver the message.
Ten minutes later Petit-Claud entered the dismal place. “Go home,
madame,” he said, addressing Eve, “we will follow you.--Well, my dear
friend” (turning to David), “so you allowed them to catch you! Why did
you come out? How came you to make such a mistake?”
“Eh! how could I do otherwise? Look at this letter that Lucien wrote.”
David held out a sheet of paper. It was Cérizet’s forged letter.
Petit-Claud read it, looked at it, fingered the paper as he talked, and
still taking, presently, as if through absence of mind, folded it up and
put it in his pocket. Then he linked his arm in David’s, and they went
out together, the order for release having come during the conversation.
It was like heaven to David to be at home again. He cried like a child
when he took little Lucien in his arms and looked round his room after
three weeks of imprisonment, and the disgrace, according to provincial
notions, of the last few hours. Kolb and Marion had come back. Marion
had heard in L’Houmeau that Lucien had been seen walking along on the
Paris road, somewhere beyond Marsac. Some country folk, coming in to
market, had noticed his fine clothes. Kolb, therefore, had set out on
horseback along the highroad, and heard at last at Mansle that Lucien
was traveling post in a calèche--M. Marron had recognized him as he
passed.
“What did I tell you?” said Petit-Claud. “That fellow is not a poet; he
is a romance in heaven knows how many chapters.”
“Traveling post!” repeated Eve. “Where can he be going this time?”
“Now go to see the Cointets, they are expecting you,” said Petit-Claud,
turning to David.
“Ah, monsieur!” cried the beautiful Eve, “pray do your best for our
interests; our whole future lies in your hands.”
“If you prefer it, madame, the conference can be held here. I will leave
David with you. The Cointets will come this evening, and you shall see
if I can defend your interests.”
“Ah! monsieur, I should be very glad,” said Eve.
“Very well,” said Petit-Claud; “this evening, at seven o’clock.”
“Thank you,” said Eve; and from her tone and glance Petit-Claud knew
that he had made great progress in his fair client’s confidence.
“You have nothing to fear; you see I was right,” he added. “Your brother
is a hundred miles away from suicide, and when all comes to all, perhaps
you will have a little fortune this evening. A _bona-fide_ purchaser for
the business has turned up.”
“If that is the case,” said Eve, “why should we not wait awhile before
binding ourselves to the Cointets?”
Petit-Claud saw the danger. “You are forgetting, madame,” he said, “that
you cannot sell your business until you have paid M. Métivier; for a
distress warrant has been issued.”
As soon as Petit-Claud reached home he sent for Cérizet, and when the
printer’s foreman appeared, drew him into the embrasure of the window.
“To-morrow evening,” he said, “you will be the proprietor of the
Séchards’ printing-office, and then there are those behind you who have
influence enough to transfer the license;” (then in a lowered voice),
“but you have no mind to end in the hulks, I suppose?”
“The hulks! What’s that? What’s that?”
“Your letter to David was a forgery. It is in my possession. What would
Henriette say in a court of law? I do not want to ruin you,” he added
hastily, seeing how white Cérizet’s face grew.
“You want something more of me?” cried Cérizet.
“Well, here it is,” said Petit-Claud. “Follow me carefully. You will be
a master printer in Angoulême in two months’ time . . . but you will not
have paid for your business--you will not pay for it in ten years. You
will work a long while yet for those that have lent you the money, and
you will be the cat’s-paw of the Liberal party. . . . Now _I_ shall draw
up your agreement with Gannerac, and I can draw it up in such a way that
you will have the business in your own hands one of these days. But--if
the Liberals start a paper, if you bring it out, and if I am deputy
public prosecutor, then you will come to an understanding with the
Cointets and publish articles of such a nature that they will have the
paper suppressed. . . . The Cointets will pay you handsomely for that
service. . . . I know, of course, that you will be a hero, a victim
of persecution; you will be a personage among the Liberals--a Sergeant
Mercier, a Paul-Louis Courier, a Manual on a small scale. I will take
care that they leave you your license. In fact, on the day when the
newspaper is suppressed, I will burn this letter before your eyes. . . .
Your fortune will not cost you much.”
A working man has the haziest notions as to the law with regard to
forgery; and Cérizet, who beheld himself already in the dock, breathed
again.
“In three years’ time,” continued Petit-Claud, “I shall be public
prosecutor in Angoulême. You may have need of me some day; bear that in
mind.”
“It’s agreed,” said Cérizet, “but you don’t know me. Burn that letter
now and trust to my gratitude.”
Petit-Claud looked Cérizet in the face. It was a duel in which one man’s
gaze is a scalpel with which he essays to probe the soul of another,
and the eyes of that other are a theatre, as it were, to which all his
virtue is summoned for display.
Petit-Claud did not utter a word. He lighted a taper and burned the
letter. “He has his way to make,” he said to himself.
“Here is one that will go through fire and water for you,” said Cérizet.
David awaited the interview with the Cointets with a vague feeling of
uneasiness; not, however, on account of the proposed partnership, nor
for his own interests--he felt nervous as to their opinion of his work.
He was in something the same position as a dramatic author before his
judges. The inventor’s pride in the discovery so nearly completed left
no room for any other feelings.
At seven o’clock that evening, while Mme. du Châtelet, pleading a sick
headache, had gone to her room in her unhappiness over the rumors of
Lucien’s departure; while M. de Comte, left to himself, was entertaining
his guests at dinner--the tall Cointet and his stout brother,
accompanied by Petit-Claud, opened negotiations with the competitor who
had delivered himself up, bound hand and foot.
A difficulty awaited them at the outset. How was it possible to draw
up a deed of partnership unless they knew David’s secret? And if
David divulged his secret, he would be at the mercy of the Cointets.
Petit-Claud arranged that the deed of partnership should be the first
drawn up. Thereupon the tall Cointet asked to see some specimens of
David’s work, and David brought out the last sheet that he had made,
guaranteeing the price of production.
“Well,” said Petit-Claud, “there you have the basis of the agreement
ready made. You can go into partnership on the strength of those
samples, inserting a clause to protect yourselves in case the conditions
of the patent are not fulfilled in the manufacturing process.”
“It is one thing to make samples of paper on a small scale in your own
room with a small mould, monsieur, and another to turn out a quantity,”
said the tall Cointet, addressing David. “Quite another thing, as you
may judge from this single fact. We manufacture colored papers. We buy
parcels of coloring absolutely identical. Every cake of indigo used
for ‘blueing’ our post-demy is taken from a batch supplied by the
same maker. Well, we have never yet been able to obtain two batches of
precisely the same shade. There are variations in the material which
we cannot detect. The quantity and the quality of the pulp modify every
question at once. Suppose that you have in a caldron a quantity of
ingredients of some kind (I don’t ask to know what they are), you can do
as you like with them, the treatment can be uniformly applied, you can
manipulate, knead, and pestle the mass at your pleasure until you have
a homogeneous substance. But who will guarantee that it will be the same
with a batch of five hundred reams, and that your plan will succeed in
bulk?”
David, Eve, and Petit-Claud looked at one another; their eyes said many
things.
“Take a somewhat similar case,” continued the tall Cointet after a
pause. “You cut two or three trusses of meadow hay, and store it in a
loft before ‘the heat is out of the grass,’ as the peasants say; the
hay ferments, but no harm comes of it. You follow up your experiment by
storing a couple of thousand trusses in a wooden barn--and, of course,
the hay smoulders, and the barn blazes up like a lighted match. You are
an educated man,” continued Cointet; “you can see the application for
yourself. So far, you have only cut your two trusses of hay; we are
afraid of setting fire to our paper-mill by bringing in a couple of
thousand trusses. In other words, we may spoil more than one batch, make
heavy losses, and find ourselves none the better for laying out a good
deal of money.”
David was completely floored by this reasoning. Practical wisdom spoke
in matter-of-fact language to theory, whose word is always for the
future.
“Devil fetch me, if I’ll sign such a deed of partnership!” the stout
Cointet cried bluntly. “You may throw away your money if you like,
Boniface; as for me, I shall keep mine. Here is my offer--to pay M.
Séchard’s debts _and_ six thousand francs, and another three thousand
francs in bills at twelve and fifteen months,” he added. “That will be
quite enough risk to run.--We have a balance of twelve thousand francs
against Métivier. That will make fifteen thousand francs.--That is
all that I would pay for the secret if I were going to exploit it for
myself. So this is the great discovery that you were talking about,
Boniface! Many thanks! I thought you had more sense. No, you can’t call
this business.”
“The question for you,” said Petit-Claud, undismayed by the explosion,
“resolves itself into this: ‘Do you care to risk twenty thousand francs
to buy a secret that may make rich men of you?’ Why, the risk usually is
in proportion to the profit, gentlemen. You stake twenty thousand francs
on your luck. A gambler puts down a louis at roulette for a chance of
winning thirty-six, but he knows that the louis is lost. Do the same.”
“I must have time to think it over,” said the stout Cointet; “I am not
so clever as my brother. I am a plain, straight-forward sort of chap,
that only knows one thing--how to print prayer-books at twenty sous and
sell them for two francs. Where I see an invention that has only been
tried once, I see ruin. You succeed with the first batch, you spoil the
next, you go on, and you are drawn in; for once put an arm into that
machinery, the rest of you follows,” and he related an anecdote very
much to the point--how a Bordeaux merchant had ruined himself by
following a scientific man’s advice, and trying to bring the Landes
into cultivation; and followed up the tale with half-a-dozen similar
instances of agricultural and commercial failures nearer home in
the departments of the Charente and Dordogne. He waxed warm over his
recitals. He would not listen to another word. Petit-Claud’s demurs, so
far from soothing the stout Cointet, appeared to irritate him.
“I would rather give more for a certainty, if I made only a small profit
on it,” he said, looking at his brother. “It is my opinion that things
have gone far enough for business,” he concluded.
“Still you came here for something, didn’t you?” asked Petit-Claud.
“What is your offer?”
“I offer to release M. Séchard, and, if his plan succeeds, to give him
thirty per cent of the profits,” the stout Cointet answered briskly.
“But, monsieur,” objected Eve, “how should we live while the experiments
were being made? My husband has endured the disgrace of imprisonment
already; he may as well go back to prison, it makes no difference now,
and we will pay our debts ourselves----”
Petit-Claud laid a finger on his lips in warning.
“You are unreasonable,” said he, addressing the brothers. “You have seen
the paper; M. Séchard’s father told you that he had shut his son up,
and that he had made capital paper in a single night from materials that
must have cost a mere nothing. You are here to make an offer. Are you
purchasers, yes or no?”
“Stay,” said the tall Cointet, “whether my brother is willing or no, I
will risk this much myself. I will pay M. Séchard’s debts, I will pay
six thousand francs over and above the debts, and M. Séchard shall have
thirty per cent of the profits. But mind this--if in the space of one
year he fails to carry out the undertakings which he himself will make
in the deed of partnership, he must return the six thousand francs, and
we shall keep the patent and extricate ourselves as best we may.”
“Are you sure of yourself?” asked Petit-Claud, taking David aside.
“Yes,” said David. He was deceived by the tactics of the brothers, and
afraid lest the stout Cointet should break off the negotiations on which
his future depended.
“Very well, I will draft the deed,” said Petit-Claud, addressing the
rest of the party. “Each of you shall have a copy to-night, and you
will have all to-morrow morning in which to think it over. To-morrow
afternoon at four o’clock, when the court rises, you will sign the
agreement. You, gentlemen, will withdraw Métivier’s suit, and I, for my
part, will write to stop proceedings in the Court-Royal; we will give
notice on either side that the affair has been settled out of court.”