The Collevilles and their children became, naturally, the nucleus of the
circle which Mademoiselle Thuillier had the ambition to group around
her brother. A former clerk in the Billardiere division of the ministry,
named Phellion, had lived for the last thirty years in their present
quarter. He was promptly greeted by Colleville and Thuillier at the
first review. Phellion proved to be one of the most respected men in the
arrondissement. He had one daughter, now married to a school-teacher in
the rue Saint-Hyacinthe, a Monsieur Barniol. Phellion’s eldest son was
a professor of mathematics in a royal college; he gave lectures and
private lessons, being devoted, so his father was wont to say, to pure
mathematics. A second son was in the government School of Engineering.
Phellion had a pension of nine hundred francs, and he possessed a little
property of nine thousand and a few odd hundred francs; the fruit of his
economy and that of his wife during thirty years of toil and privation.
He was, moreover, the owner of a little house and garden where he lived
in the “impasse” des Feuillantines,--in thirty years he had never used
the old-fashioned word “cul-de-sac”!
Dutocq, the clerk of the justice of peace, was also a former employee
at the ministry of finance. Sacrificed, in former days, to one of those
necessities which are always met with in representative government, he
had accepted the position of scapegoat, receiving, privately, a round
sum of money and the opportunity to buy his present post of clerk in the
arrondissement. This man, not very honorable, and known to be a spy in
the government offices, was never welcomed as he thought he ought to be
by the Thuilliers; but the coldness of his landlords only made him the
more persistent in going to see them. He was a bachelor and had various
vices; he therefore concealed his life carefully, knowing well how to
maintain his position by flattering his superiors. The justice of peace
was much attached to Dutocq. This man, base as he was, managed, in the
end, to make himself tolerated by the Thuilliers, chiefly by coarse and
cringing adulation. He knew the facts of Thuillier’s whole life, his
relations with Colleville, and, above all, with Madame Colleville. One
and all they feared his tongue, and the Thuilliers, without admitting
him to any intimacy, endured his visits.
The family which became the flower of the Thuillier salon was that of
a former ministerial clerk, once an object of pity in the government
offices, who, driven by poverty, left the public service, in 1827, to
fling himself into a business enterprise, having, as he thought, an
idea. Minard (that was his name) foresaw a fortune in one of those
wicked conceptions which reflect such discredit on French commerce,
but which, in the year 1827, had not yet been exposed and blasted by
publicity. Minard bought tea and mixed it with tea-leaves already used;
also he adulterated the elements of chocolate in a manner which enabled
him to sell the chocolate itself very cheaply. This trade in colonial
products, begun in the quartier Saint-Marcel, made a merchant of Minard.
He started a factory, and through these early connections he was able to
reach the sources of raw material. He then did honorably, and on a large
scale, a business begun in the first instance dishonorably. He became a
distiller, worked upon untold quantities of products, and, by the year
1835, was considered the richest merchant in the region of the Place
Maubert. By that time he had bought a handsome house in the rue des
Macons-Sorbonne; he had been assistant mayor, and in 1839 became mayor
of his arrondissement and judge in the Court of Commerce. He kept a
carriage, had a country-place near Lagny; his wife wore diamonds at the
court balls, and he prided himself on the rosette of an officer of the
Legion of honor in his buttonhole.
Minard and his wife were exceedingly benevolent. Perhaps he wished to
return in retail to the poor the sums he had mulcted from the public
by the wholesale. Phellion, Colleville, and Thuillier met their old
comrade, Minard, at election, and an intimacy followed; all the closer
with the Thuilliers and Collevilles because Madame Minard seemed
enchanted to make an acquaintance for her daughter in Celeste
Colleville. It was at a grand ball given by the Minards that Celeste
made her first appearance in society (being at that time sixteen and a
half years old), dressed as her Christian named demanded, which seemed
to be prophetic of her coming life. Delighted to be friendly with
Mademoiselle Minard, her elder by four years, she persuaded her father
and godfather to cultivate the Minard establishment, with its gilded
salons and great opulence, where many political celebrities of the
“juste milieu” were wont to congregate, such as Monsieur Popinot, who
became, after a time, minister of commerce; Cochin, since made Baron
Cochin, a former employee at the ministry of finance, who, having a
large interest in the drug business, was now the oracle of the Lombard
and Bourdonnais quarters, conjointly with Monsieur Anselme Popinot.
Minard’s eldest son, a lawyer, aiming to succeed those barristers who
were turned down from the Palais for political reasons in 1830, was
the genius of the household, and his mother, even more than his father,
aspired to marry him well. Zelie Minard, formerly a flower-maker, felt
an ardent passion for the upper social spheres, and desired to enter
them through the marriages of her son and daughter; whereas Minard,
wiser than she, and imbued with the vigor of the middle classes, which
the revolution of July had infiltrated into the fibres of government,
thought only of wealth and fortune.
He frequented the Thuillier salon to gain information as to Celeste’s
probable inheritance. He knew, like Dutocq and Phellion, the reports
occasioned by Thuillier’s former intimacy with Flavie, and he saw at
a glance the idolatry of the Thuilliers for their godchild. Dutocq, to
gain admittance to Minard’s house, fawned upon him grossly. When Minard,
the Rothschild of the arrondissement, appeared at the Thuilliers’, he
compared him cleverly to Napoleon, finding him stout, fat, and blooming,
having left him at the ministry thin, pale, and puny.
“You looked, in the division Billardiere,” he said, “like Napoleon
before the 18th Brumaire, and I behold you now the Napoleon of the
Empire.”
Notwithstanding which flattery, Minard received Dutocq very coldly and
did not invite him to his house; consequently, he made a mortal enemy of
the former clerk.
Monsieur and Madame Phellion, worthy as they were, could not keep
themselves from making calculations and cherishing hopes; they thought
that Celeste would be the very wife for their son the professor;
therefore, to have, as it were, a watcher in the Thuillier salon, they
introduced their son-in-law, Monsieur Barniol, a man much respected
in the faubourg Saint-Jacques, and also an old employee at the mayor’s
office, an intimate friend of theirs, named Laudigeois. Thus the
Phellions formed a phalanx of seven persons; the Collevilles were not
less numerous; so that on Sundays it often appeared that thirty persons
were assembled in the Thuillier salon. Thuillier renewed acquaintance
with the Saillards, Baudoyers, and Falleixs,--all persons of
respectability in the quarter of the Palais-Royal, whom they often
invited to dinner.
Madame Colleville was, as a woman, the most distinguished member of
this society, just as Minard junior and Professor Phellion were superior
among the men. All the others, without ideas or education, and issuing
from the lower ranks, presented the types and the absurdities of the
lesser bourgeoisie. Though all success, especially if won from distant
sources, seems to presuppose some genuine merit, Minard was really
an inflated balloon. Expressing himself in empty phrases, mistaking
sycophancy for politeness, and wordiness for wit, he uttered his
commonplaces with a brisk assurance that passed for eloquence. Certain
words which said nothing but answered all things,--progress, steam,
bitumen, National guard, order, democratic element, spirit of
association, legality, movement, resistance,--seemed, as each political
phase developed, to have been actually made for Minard, whose talk was
a paraphrase on the ideas of his newspaper. Julien Minard, the young
lawyer, suffered from his father as much as his father suffered from
his wife. Zelie had grown pretentious with wealth, without, at the same
time, learning to speak French. She was now very fat, and gave the idea,
in her rich surroundings, of a cook married to her master.
Phellion, that type and model of the petty bourgeois, exhibited as many
virtues as he did absurdities. Accustomed to subordination during his
bureaucratic life, he respected all social superiority. He was therefore
silent before Minard. During the critical period of retirement from
office, he had held his own admirably, for the following reason. Never
until now had that worthy and excellent man been able to indulge his
own tastes. He loved the city of Paris; he was interested in its
embellishment, in the laying out of its streets; he was capable of
standing for hours to watch the demolition of houses. He might now
have been observed, stolidly planted on his legs, his nose in the air,
watching for the fall of a stone which some mason was loosening at the
top of a wall, and never moving till the stone fell; when it had fallen
he went away as happy as an academician at the fall of a romantic drama.
Veritable supernumeraries of the social comedy, Phellion, Laudigeois,
and their kind, fulfilled the functions of the antique chorus. They wept
when weeping was in order, laughed when they should laugh, and sang in
parts the public joys and sorrows; they triumphed in their corner with
the triumphs of Algiers, of Constantine, of Lisbon, of Sainte-Jean
d’Ulloa; they deplored the death of Napoleon and the fatal catastrophes
of the Saint-Merri and the rue Transnonnain, grieving over celebrated
men who were utterly unknown to them. Phellion alone presents a double
side: he divides himself conscientiously between the reasons of the
opposition and those of the government. When fighting went on in
the streets, Phellion had the courage to declare himself before his
neighbors; he went to the Place Saint-Michel, the place where his
battalion assembled; he felt for the government and did his duty. Before
and during the riot, he supported the dynasty, the product of July; but,
as soon as the political trials began, he stood by the accused. This
innocent “weather-cockism” prevails in his political opinions; he
produces, in reply to all arguments, the “colossus of the North.”
England is, to his thinking, as to that of the old “Constitutionnel,”
a crone with two faces,--Machiavellian Albion, and the model nation:
Machiavellian, when the interests of France and of Napoleon are
concerned; the model nation when the faults of the government are in
question. He admits, with his chosen paper, the democratic element,
but refuses in conversation all compact with the republican spirit. The
republican spirit to him means 1793, rioting, the Terror, and
agrarian law. The democratic element is the development of the lesser
bourgeoisie, the reign of Phellions.
The worthy old man is always dignified; dignity serves to explain his
life. He has brought up his children with dignity; he has kept himself
a father in their eyes; he insists on being honored in his home, just as
he himself honors power and his superiors. He has never made debts. As
a juryman his conscience obliges him to sweat blood and water in the
effort to follow the debates of a trial; he never laughs, not even if
the judge, and audience, and all the officials laugh. Eminently useful,
he gives his services, his time, everything--except his money. Felix
Phellion, his son, the professor, is his idol; he thinks him capable of
attaining to the Academy of Sciences. Thuillier, between the audacious
nullity of Minard, and the solid silliness of Phellion, was a neutral
substance, but connected with both through his dismal experience. He
managed to conceal the emptiness of his brain by commonplace talk, just
as he covered the yellow skin of his bald pate with thready locks of his
gray hair, brought from the back of his head with infinite art by the
comb of his hairdresser.
“In any other career,” he was wont to say, speaking of the government
employ, “I should have made a very different fortune.”
He had seen the _right_, which is possible in theory and impossible in
practice,--results proving contrary to premises,--and he related the
intrigues and the injustices of the Rabourdin affair.
“After that, one can believe all, and believe nothing,” he would say.
“Ah! it is a queer thing, government! I’m very glad not to have a son,
and never to see him in the career of a place-hunter.”
Colleville, ever gay, rotund, and good-humored, a sayer of “quodlibets,”
a maker of anagrams, always busy, represented the capable and bantering
bourgeois, with faculty without success, obstinate toil without result;
he was also the embodiment of jovial resignation, mind without object,
art with usefulness, for, excellent musician that he was, he never
played now except for his daughter.
The Thuillier salon was in some sort a provincial salon, lighted,
however, by continual flashes from the Parisian conflagration; its
mediocrity and its platitudes followed the current of the times. The
popular saying and thing (for in Paris the thing and its saying are
like the horse and its rider) ricochetted, so to speak, to this company.
Monsieur Minard was always impatiently expected, for he was certain to
know the truth of important circumstances. The women of the Thuillier
salon held by the Jesuits; the men defended the University; and, as a
general thing, the women listened. A man of intelligence (could he have
borne the dulness of these evenings) would have laughed, as he would at
a comedy of Moliere, on hearing, amid endless discussion, such remarks
as the following:--
“How could the Revolution of 1789 have been avoided? The loans of Louis
XIV. prepared the way for it. Louis XV., an egotist, a man of narrow
mind (didn’t he say, ‘If I were lieutenant of police I would suppress
cabriolets’?), that dissolute king--you remember his Parc aux
Cerfs?--did much to open the abyss of revolution. Monsieur de Necker,
an evil-minded Genovese, set the thing a-going. Foreigners have always
tried to injure France. The maximum did great harm to the Revolution.
Legally Louis XVI. should never have been condemned; a jury would have
acquitted him. Why did Charles X. fall? Napoleon was a great man, and
the facts that prove his genius are anecdotal: he took five pinches of
snuff a minute out of a pocket lined with leather made in his waistcoat.
He looked into all his tradesmen’s accounts; he went to Saint-Denis
to judge for himself the prices of things. Talma was his friend; Talma
taught him his gestures; nevertheless, he always refused to give Talma
the Legion of honor! The emperor mounted guard for a sentinel who went
to sleep, to save him from being shot. Those were the things that made
his soldiers adore him. Louis XVIII., who certainly had some sense, was
very unjust in calling him Monsieur de Buonaparte. The defect of the
present government is in letting itself be led instead of leading. It
holds itself too low. It is afraid of men of energy. It ought to have
torn up all the treaties of 1815 and demanded the Rhine. They keep the
same men too long in the ministry”; etc., etc.
“Come, you’ve exerted your minds long enough,” said Mademoiselle
Thuillier, interrupting one of these luminous talks; “the altar is
dressed; begin your little game.”
If these anterior facts and all these generalities were not placed here
as the frame of the present Scene, to give an idea of the spirit of
this society, the following drama would certainly have suffered greatly.
Moreover, this sketch is historically faithful; it shows a social
stratum of importance in any portrayal of manners and morals, especially
when we reflect that the political system of the Younger branch rests
almost wholly upon it.
The winter of the year 1839 was, it may be said, the period when the
Thuillier salon was in its greatest glory. The Minards came nearly every
Sunday, and began their evening by spending an hour there, if they had
other engagements elsewhere. Often Minard would leave his wife at the
Thuilliers and take his son and daughter to other houses. This assiduity
on the part of the Minards was brought about by a somewhat tardy meeting
between Messieurs Metivier, Barbet, and Minard on an evening when the
two former, being tenants of Mademoiselle Thuillier, remained rather
longer than usual in discussing business with her. From Barbet, Minard
learned that the old maid had money transactions with himself and
Metivier to the amount of sixty thousand francs, besides having a large
deposit in the Bank.
“Has she an account at the Bank?” asked Minard.
“I believe so,” replied Barbet. “I give her at least eighty thousand
francs there.”
Being on intimate terms with a governor of the Bank, Minard ascertained
that Mademoiselle Thuillier had, in point of fact, an account of over
two hundred thousand francs, the result of her quarterly deposits for
many years. Besides this, she owned the house they lived in, which was
not mortgaged, and was worth at least one hundred thousand francs, if
not more.
“Why should Mademoiselle Thuillier work in this way?” said Minard to
Metivier. “She’d be a good match for you,” he added.
“I? oh, no,” replied Metivier. “I shall do better by marrying a cousin;
my uncle Metivier has given me the succession to his business; he has a
hundred thousand francs a year and only two daughters.”
However secretive Mademoiselle Thuillier might be,--and she said nothing
of her investments to any one, not even to her brother, although a large
amount of Madame Thuillier’s fortune went to swell the amount of her
own savings,--it was difficult to prevent some ray of light from gliding
under the bushel which covered her treasure.
Dutocq, who frequented Barbet, with whom he had some resemblance in
character and countenance, had appraised, even more correctly than
Minard, the Thuillier finances. He knew that their savings amounted, in
1838, to one hundred and fifty thousand francs, and he followed their
progress secretly, calculating profits by the help of that all-wise
money-lender, Barbet.
“Celeste will have from my brother and myself two hundred thousand
francs in ready money,” the old maid had said to Barbet in confidence,
“and Madame Thuillier wishes to secure to her by the marriage contract
the ultimate possession of her own fortune. As for me, my will is made.
My brother will have everything during his lifetime, and Celeste will
be my heiress with that reservation. Monsieur Cardot, the notary, is my
executor.”
Mademoiselle Thuillier now instigated her brother to renew his former
relations with the Saillards, Baudoyers, and others, who held a position
similar to that of the Thuilliers in the quartier Saint-Antoine, of
which Monsieur Saillard was mayor. Cardot, the notary, had produced
his aspirant for Celeste’s hand in the person of Monsieur Godeschal,
attorney and successor to Derville; an able man, thirty-six years of
age, who had paid one hundred thousand francs for his practice, which
the two hundred thousand of the “dot” would doubly clear off. Minard,
however, got rid of Godeschal by informing Mademoiselle Thuillier that
Celeste’s sister-in-law would be the famous Mariette of the Opera.
“She came from the stage,” said Colleville, alluding to his wife, “and
there’s no need she should return to it.”
“Besides, Monsieur Godeschal is too old for Celeste,” remarked Brigitte.
“And ought we not,” added Madame Thuillier, timidly, “to let her marry
according to her own taste, so as to be happy?”
The poor woman had detected in Felix Phellion a true love for Celeste;
the love that a woman crushed by Brigitte and wounded by her husband’s
indifference (for Thuillier cared less for his wife than he did for
a servant) had dreamed that love might be,--bold in heart, timid
externally, sure of itself, reserved, hidden from others, but expanding
toward heaven. At twenty-three years of age, Felix Phellion was a
gentle, pure-minded young man, like all true scholars who cultivate
knowledge for knowledge’s sake. He had been sacredly brought up by his
father, who, viewing all things seriously, had given him none but good
examples accompanied by trivial maxims. He was a young man of medium
height, with light chestnut hair, gray eyes, and a skin full of
freckles; gifted with a charming voice, a tranquil manner; making
few gestures; thoughtful, saying little, and that little sensible;
contradicting no one, and quite incapable of a sordid thought or a
selfish calculation.
“That,” thought Madame Thuillier, “is what I should have liked my
husband to be.”
One evening, in the month of February, 1840, the Thuillier salon
contained the various personages whose silhouettes we have just traced
out, together with some others. It was nearly the end of the month.
Barbet and Metivier having business with mademoiselle Brigitte, were
playing whist with Minard and Phellion. At another table were Julien
the advocate (a nickname given by Colleville to young Minard), Madame
Colleville, Monsieur Barniol, and Madame Phellion. “Bouillotte,” at
five sous a stake, occupied Madame Minard, who knew no other game,
Colleville, old Monsieur Saillard, and Bandoze, his son-in-law. The
substitutes were Laudigeois and Dutocq. Mesdames Falleix, Baudoyer,
Barniol, and Mademoiselle Minard were playing boston, and Celeste was
sitting beside Prudence Minard. Young Phellion was listening to Madame
Thuillier and looking at Celeste.
At a corner of the fireplace sat enthroned on a sofa the Queen Elizabeth
of the family, as simply dressed as she had been for the last thirty
years; for no prosperity could have made her change her habits. She
wore on her chinchilla hair a black gauze cap, adorned with the geranium
called Charles X.; her gown, of plum-colored stuff, made with a yoke,
cost fifteen francs, her embroidered collarette was worth six, and
it ill disguised the deep wrinkle produced by the two muscles which
fastened the head to the vertebral column. The actor, Monvel, playing
Augustus Caesar in his old age, did not present a harder and sterner
profile than that of this female autocrat, knitting socks for her
brother. Before the fireplace stood Thuillier in an attitude, ready to
go forward and meet the arriving guests; near him was a young man whose
entrance had produced a great effect, when the porter (who on Sundays
wore his best clothes and waited on the company) announced Monsieur
Olivier Vinet.
A private communication made by Cardot to the celebrated
“procureur-general,” father of this young man, was the cause of
his visit. Olivier Vinet had just been promoted from the court of
Arcis-sur-Aube to that of the Seine, where he now held the post of
substitute “procureur-de-roi.” Cardot had already invited Thuillier and
the elder Vinet, who was likely to become minister of justice, with his
son, to dine with him. The notary estimated the fortunes which would
eventually fall to Celeste at seven hundred thousand francs. Vinet
junior appeared charmed to obtain the right to visit the Thuilliers
on Sundays. Great dowries make men commit great and unbecoming follies
without reserve or decency in these days.
Ten minutes later another young man, who had been talking with Thuillier
before the arrival of Olivier Vinet, raised his voice eagerly, in a
political discussion, and forced the young magistrate to follow his
example in the vivacious argument which now ensued. The matter related
to the vote by which the Chamber of Deputies had just overthrown the
ministry of the 12th of May, refusing the allowance demanded for the Duc
de Nemours.
“Assuredly,” said the young man, “I am far from belonging to the
dynastic party; I am very far from approving of the rise of the
bourgeoisie to power. The bourgeoisie ought not, any more than the
aristocracy of other days, to assume to be the whole nation. But the
French bourgeoisie has now taken upon itself to create a new dynasty, a
royalty of its own, and behold how it treats it! When the people allowed
Napoleon to rise to power, it created with him a splendid and monumental
state of things; it was proud of his grandeur; and it nobly gave its
blood and sweat in building up the edifice of the Empire. Between
the magnificence of the aristocratic throne and those of the imperial
purple, between the great of the earth and the People, the bourgeoisie
is proving itself petty; it degrades power to its own level instead
of rising up to it. The saving of candle-ends it has so long practised
behind its counters, it now seeks to impose on its princes. What may
perhaps have been virtue in its shops is a blunder and a crime higher
up. I myself have wanted many things for the people, but I never should
have begun by lopping off ten millions of francs from the new civil
list. In becoming, as it were, nearly the whole of France, the
bourgeoisie owed to us the prosperity of the people, splendor without
ostentation, grandeur without privilege.”
The father of Olivier Vinet was just now sulking with the government.
The robe of Keeper of the Seals, which had been his dream, was slow in
coming to him. The young substitute did not, therefore, know exactly how
to answer this speech; he thought it wise to enlarge on one of its side
issues.
“You are right, monsieur,” said Olivier Vinet. “But, before manifesting
itself magnificently, the bourgeoisie has other duties to fulfil towards
France. The luxury you speak of should come after duty. That which seems
to you so blameable is the necessity of the moment. The Chamber is far
from having its full share in public affairs; the ministers are less for
France than they are for the crown, and parliament has determined that
the administration shall have, as in England, a strength and power
of its own, and not a mere borrowed power. The day on which the
administration can act for itself, and represent the Chamber as the
Chamber represents the country, parliament will be found very liberal
toward the crown. The whole question is there. I state it without
expressing my own opinion, for the duties of my post demand, in
politics, a certain fealty to the crown.”
“Setting aside the political question,” replied the young man, whose
voice and accent were those of a native of Provence, “it is certainly
true that the bourgeoisie has ill understood its mission. We can see,
any day, the great law officers, attorney-generals, peers of France in
omnibuses, judges who live on their salaries, prefects without fortunes,
ministers in debt! Whereas the bourgeoisie, who have seized upon those
offices, ought to dignify them, as in the olden time when aristocracy
dignified them, and not occupy such posts solely for the purpose of
making their fortune, as scandalous disclosures have proved.”
“Who is this young man?” thought Olivier Vinet. “Is he a relative?
Cardot ought to have come with me on this first visit.”
“Who is that little monsieur?” asked Minard of Barbet. “I have seen him
here several times.”
“He is a tenant,” replied Metivier, shuffling the cards.
“A lawyer,” added Barbet, in a low voice, “who occupies a small
apartment on the third floor front. Oh! _He_ doesn’t amount to much; he
has nothing.”
“What is the name of that young man?” said Olivier Vinet to Thuillier.
“Theodose de la Peyrade; he is a barrister,” replied Thuillier, in a
whisper.
At that moment the women present, as well as the men, looked at the two
young fellows, and Madame Minard remarked to Colleville:--
“He is rather good-looking, that stranger.”
“I have made his anagram,” replied Colleville, “and his name,
Charles-Marie-Theodose de la Peyrade, prophecies: ‘Eh! monsieur payera,
de la dot, des oies et le char.’ Therefore, my dear Mamma Minard, be
sure you don’t give him your daughter.”
“They say that young man is better-looking than my son,” said Madame
Phellion to Madame Colleville. “What do you think about it?”
“Oh! in the matter of physical beauty a woman might hesitate before
choosing,” replied Madame Colleville.
At that moment it occurred to young Vinet as he looked round the salon,
so full of the lesser bourgeoisie, that it might be a shrewd thing
to magnify that particular class; and he thereupon enlarged upon the
meaning of the young Provencal barrister, declaring that men so honored
by the confidence of the government should imitate royalty and encourage
a magnificence surpassing that of the former court. It was folly, he
said, to lay by the emoluments of an office. Besides, could it be done,
in Paris especially, where costs of living had trebled,--the apartment
of a magistrate, for instance, costing three thousand francs a year?
“My father,” he said in conclusion, “allows me three thousand francs a
year, and that, with my salary, barely allows me to maintain my rank.”
When the young substitute rode boldly into this bog-hole, the Provencal,
who had slyly enticed him there, exchanged, without being observed, a
wink with Dutocq, who was just then waiting for the place of a player at
bouillotte.
“There is such a demand for offices,” remarked the latter, “that they
talk of creating two justices of the peace to each arrondissement in
order to make a dozen new clerkships. As if they could interfere with
our rights and our salaries, which already require an exhorbitant tax!”
“I have not yet had the pleasure of hearing you at the Palais,” said
Vinet to Monsieur de la Peyrade.
“I am advocate for the poor, and I plead only before the justice of
peace,” replied la Peyrade.
Mademoiselle Thuillier, as she listened to young Vinet’s theory of the
necessity of spending an income, assumed a distant air and manner,
the significance of which was well understood by Dutocq and the young
Provencal. Vinet left the house in company with Minard and Julien the
advocate, so that the battle-field before the fire-place was abandoned
to la Peyrade and Dutocq.
“The upper bourgeoisie,” said Dutocq to Thuillier, “will behave, in
future, exactly like the old aristocracy. The nobility wanted girls with
money to manure their lands, and the parvenus of to-day want the same to
feather their nests.”
“That’s exactly what Monsieur Thuillier was saying to me this morning,”
remarked la Peyrade, boldly.
“Vinet’s father,” said Dutocq, “married a Demoiselle de Chargeboeuf
and has caught the opinions of the nobility; he wants a fortune at any
price; his wife spends money regally.”
“Oh!” said Thuillier, in whom the jealousy between the two classes of
the bourgeoisie was fully roused, “take offices away from those fellows
and they’d fall back where they came.”
Mademoiselle was knitting with such precipitous haste that she seemed to
be propelled by a steam-engine.
“Take my place, Monsieur Dutocq,” said Madame Minard, rising. “My feet
are cold,” she added, going to the fire, where the golden ornaments of
her turban made fireworks in the light of the Saint-Aurora wax-candles
that were struggling vainly to light the vast salon.
“He is very small fry, that young substitute,” said Madame Minard,
glancing at Mademoiselle Thuillier.
“Small fry!” cried la Peyrade. “Ah, madame! how witty!”
“But madame has so long accustomed us to that sort of thing,” said the
handsome Thuillier.
Madame Colleville was examining la Peyrade and comparing him with young
Phellion, who was just then talking to Celeste, neither of them paying
any heed to what was going on around them. This is, certainly, the
right moment to depict the singular personage who was destined to play
a signal part in the Thuillier household, and who fully deserves the
appellation of a great artist.