At half-past four o’clock Theodose was at his post. He had put on his
vacant, half-servile manner and soft voice, and he drew Thuillier at
once into the garden.
“My friend,” he said, “I don’t doubt your triumph, but I feel the
necessity of again warning you to be absolutely silent. If you are
questioned about anything, especially about Celeste, make evasive
answers which will keep your questioners in suspense. You must have
learned how to do that in a government office.”
“I understand!” said Thuillier. “But what certainty have you?”
“You’ll see what a fine dessert I have prepared for you. But please
be modest. There come the Minards; let me pipe to them. Bring them out
here, and then disappear yourself.”
After the first salutations, la Peyrade was careful to keep close to the
mayor, and presently at an opportune moment he drew him aside to say:--
“Monsieur le maire, a man of your political importance doesn’t come to
bore himself in a house of this kind without an object. I don’t want to
fathom your motives--which, indeed, I have no right to do--and my part
in this world is certainly not to mingle with earthly powers; but please
pardon my apparent presumption, and deign to listen to a piece of advice
which I shall venture to give you. If I do you a service to-day you are
in a position to return it to me to-morrow; therefore, in case I should
be so fortunate as to do you a good turn, I am really only obeying the
law of self-interest. Our friend Thuillier is in despair at being
a nobody; he has taken it into his head that he wants to become a
personage in this arrondissement--”
“Ah! ah!” exclaimed Minard.
“Oh! nothing very exalted; he wants to be elected to the municipal
council. Now, I know that Phellion, seeing the influence such a service
would have on his family interests, intends to propose your poor
friend as candidate. Well, perhaps you might think it wise, in your own
interests, to be beforehand with him. Thuillier’s nomination could only
be favorable for you--I mean agreeable; and he’ll fill his place in the
council very well; there are some there who are not as strong as he.
Besides, owing to his place to your support, he will see with your eyes;
he already looks to you as one of the lights of the town.”
“My dear fellow, I thank you very much,” replied Minard. “You are doing
me a service I cannot sufficiently acknowledge, and which proves to
me--”
“That I don’t like those Phellions,” said la Peyrade, taking advantage
of a slight hesitation on the part of the mayor, who feared to express
an idea in which the lawyer might see contempt. “I hate people who make
capital out of their honesty and coin money from fine sentiments.”
“You know them well,” said Minard; “they are sycophants. That man’s
whole life for the last ten years is explained by this bit of red
ribbon,” added the mayor, pointing to his own buttonhole.
“Take care!” said the lawyer, “his son is in love with Celeste, and he’s
fairly in the heart of the family.”
“Yes, but my son has twelve thousand a year in his own right.”
“Oh!” said Theodose, with a start, “Mademoiselle Brigitte was saying the
other day that she wanted at least as much as that in Celeste’s suitor.
Moreover, six months hence you’ll probably hear that Thuillier has a
property worth forty thousand francs a year.”
“The devil! well, I thought as much. Yes, certainly, he shall be made a
member of the municipal council.”
“In any case, don’t say anything about me to him,” said the advocate of
the poor, who now hastened away to speak to Madame Phellion. “Well, my
fair lady,” he said, when he reached her, “have you succeeded?”
“I waited till four o’clock, and then that worthy and excellent man
would not let me finish what I had to say. He is much to busy to accept
such an office, and he sent a letter which Monsieur Phellion has read,
saying that he, Doctor Bianchon, thanked him for his good intentions,
and assured him that his own candidate was Monsieur Thuillier. He said
that he should use all his influence in his favor, and begged my husband
to do the same.”
“And what did your excellent husband say?”
“‘I have done my duty,’ he said. ‘I have not been false to my
conscience, and now I am all for Thuillier.’”
“Well, then, the thing is settled,” said la Peyrade. “Ignore my visit,
and take all the credit of the idea to yourselves.”
Then he went to Madame Colleville, composing himself in the attitude and
manner of the deepest respect.
“Madame,” he said, “have the goodness to send out to me here that kindly
papa Colleville. A surprise is to be given to Monsieur Thuillier, and I
want Monsieur Colleville to be in the secret.”
While la Peyrade played the part of man of the world with Colleville,
and allowed himself various witty sarcasms when explaining to him
Thuillier’s candidacy, telling him he ought to support it, if only
to exhibit his incapacity, Flavie was listening in the salon to the
following conversation, which bewildered her for the moment and made her
ears ring.
“I should like to know what Monsieur Colleville and Monsieur de la
Peyrade can be saying to each other to make them laugh like that,” said
Madame Thuillier, foolishly, looking out of the window.
“A lot of improper things, as men always do when they talk together,”
replied Mademoiselle Thuillier, who often attacked men with the sort of
instinct natural to old maids.
“No, they are incapable of that,” said Phellion, gravely. “Monsieur de
la Peyrade is one of the most virtuous young men I have ever met.
People know what I think of Felix; well, I put the two on the same line;
indeed, I wish my son had a little more of Monsieur de la Peyrade’s
beautiful piety.”
“You are right; he is a man of great merit, who is sure to succeed,”
said Minard. “As for me, my suffrages--for I really ought not to say
protection--are his.”
“He pays more for oil than for bread,” said Dutocq. “I know that.”
“His mother, if he has the happiness to still possess her, must be proud
of him,” remarked Madame Thuillier, sententiously.
“He is a real treasure for us,” said Thuillier. “If you only knew how
modest he is! He doesn’t do himself justice.”
“I can answer for one thing,” added Dutocq; “no young man ever
maintained a nobler attitude in poverty; he triumphed over it; but he
suffered--it is easy to see that.”
“Poor young man!” cried Zelie. “Such things make my heart ache!”
“Any one could safely trust both secrets and fortune to him,” said
Thuillier; “and in these days that is the finest thing that can be said
of a man.”
“It is Colleville who is making him laugh,” cried Dutocq.
Just then Colleville and la Peyrade returned from the garden the very
best friends in the world.
“Messieurs,” said Brigitte, “the soup and the King must never be kept
waiting; give your hand to the ladies.”
Five minutes after this little pleasantry (issuing from the lodge of
her father the porter) Brigitte had the satisfaction of seeing her table
surrounded by the principal personages of this drama; the rest, with the
one exception of the odious Cerizet, arrived later.
The portrait of the former maker of canvas money-bags would be
incomplete if we omitted to give a description of one of her best
dinners. The physiognomy of the bourgeois cook of 1840 is, moreover,
one of those details essentially necessary to a history of manners and
customs, and clever housewives may find some lessons in it. A woman
doesn’t make empty bags for twenty years without looking out for
the means to fill a few of them. Now Brigitte had one peculiar
characteristic. She united the economy to which she owed her fortune
with a full understanding of necessary expenses. Her relative
prodigality, when it concerned her brother or Celeste, was the antipodes
of avarice. In fact, she often bemoaned herself that she couldn’t be
miserly. At her last dinner she had related how, after struggling ten
minute and enduring martyrdom, she had ended by giving ten francs to a
poor workwoman whom she knew, positively, had been without food for two
days.
“Nature,” she said naively, “is stronger than reason.”
The soup was a rather pale bouillon; for, even on an occasion like this,
the cook had been enjoined to make a great deal of bouillon out of the
beef supplied. Then, as the said beef was to feed the family on the next
day and the day after that, the less juice it expended in the bouillon,
the more substantial were the subsequent dinners. The beef, little
cooked, was always taken away at the following speech from Brigitte,
uttered as soon as Thuillier put his knife into it:--
“I think it is rather tough; send it away, Thuillier, nobody will eat
it; we have other things.”
The soup was, in fact, flanked by four viands mounted on old hot-water
chafing-dishes, with the plating worn off. At this particular dinner
(afterwards called that of the candidacy) the first course consisted
of a pair of ducks with olives, opposite to which was a large pie with
forcemeat balls, while a dish of eels “a la tartare” corresponded in
like manner with a fricandeau on chicory. The second course had for its
central dish a most dignified goose stuffed with chestnuts, a salad of
vegetables garnished with rounds of beetroot opposite to custards in
cups, while lower down a dish of turnips “au sucre” faced a timbale of
macaroni. This gala dinner of the concierge type cost, at the utmost,
twenty francs, and the remains of the feast provided the household for a
couple of days; nevertheless, Brigitte would say:--
“Pest! when one has to have company how the money goes! It is fearful!”
The table was lighted by two hideous candlesticks of plated silver with
four branches each, in which shone eight of those thrifty wax-candles
that go by the name of Aurora. The linen was dazzling in whiteness,
and the silver, with beaded edges, was the fruit, evidently, of some
purchase made during the Revolution by Thuillier’s father. Thus the fare
and the service were in keeping with the house, the dining-room, and
the Thuilliers themselves, who could never, under any circumstances, get
themselves above this style of living. The Minards, Collevilles, and
la Peyrade exchanged now and then a smile which betrayed their mutually
satirical but repressed thoughts. La Peyrade, seated beside Flavie,
whispered in her ear:--
“You must admit that they ought to be taught how to live. But those
Minards are no better in their way. What cupidity! they’ve come here
solely after Celeste. Your daughter will be lost to you if you let them
have her. These parvenus have all the vices of the great lords of other
days without their elegance. Minard’s son, who has twelve thousand
francs a year of his own, could very well find a wife elsewhere, instead
of pushing his speculating rake in here. What fun it would be to play
upon those people as one would on a bass-viol or a clarionet!”
While the dishes of the second course were being removed, Minard, afraid
that Phellion would precede him, said to Thuillier with a grave air:--
“My dear Thuillier, in accepting your dinner, I did so for the purpose
of making an important communication, which does you so much honor that
all here present ought to be made participants in it.”
Thuillier turned pale.
“Have you obtained the cross for me?” he cried, on receiving a glance
from Theodose, and wishing to prove that he was not without craft.
“You will doubtless receive it ere long,” replied the mayor. “But the
matter now relates to something better than that. The cross is a favor
due to the good opinion of a minister, whereas the present question
concerns an election due to the consent of your fellow citizens. In a
word, a sufficiently large number of electors in your arrondissement
have cast their eyes upon you, and wish to honor you with their
confidence by making you the representative of this arrondissement
in the municipal council of Paris; which, as everybody knows, is the
Council-general of the Seine.”
“Bravo!” cried Dutocq.
Phellion rose.
“Monsieur le maire has forestalled me,” he said in an agitated voice,
“but it is so flattering for our friend to be the object of eagerness on
the part of all good citizens, and to obtain the public vote of high
and low, that I cannot complain of being obliged to come second only;
therefore, all honor to the initiatory authority!” (Here he bowed
respectfully to Minard.) “Yes, Monsieur Thuillier, many electors think
of giving you their votes in that portion of the arrondissement where
I keep my humble penates; and you have the special advantage of being
suggested to their minds by a distinguished man.” (Sensation.) “By a man
in whose person we desired to honor one of the most virtuous inhabitants
of the arrondissement, who for twenty years, I may say, was the father
of it. I allude to the late Monsieur Popinot, counsellor, during his
lifetime, to the Royal court, and our delegate in the municipal council
of Paris. But his nephew, of whom I speak, Doctor Bianchon, one of
our glories, has, in view of his absorbing duties, declined the
responsibility with which we sought to invest him. While thanking us for
our compliment he has--take note of this--indicated for our suffrages
the candidate of Monsieur le maire as being, in his opinion, capable,
owing to the position he formerly occupied, of exercising the
magisterial functions of the aedileship.”
And Phellion sat down amid approving murmurs.
“Thuillier, you can count on me, your old friend,” said Colleville.
At this moment the guests were sincerely touched by the sight presented
of old Mademoiselle Brigitte and Madame Thuillier. Brigitte, pale as
though she were fainting, was letting the slow tears run, unheeded,
down her cheeks, tears of deepest joy; while Madame Thuillier sat, as if
struck by lightning, with her eyes fixed. Suddenly the old maid darted
into the kitchen, crying out to Josephine the cook:--
“Come into the cellar my girl, we must get out the wine behind the
wood!”
“My friends,” said Thuillier, in a shaking voice, “this is the finest
moment of my life, finer than even the day of my election, should
I consent to allow myself to be presented to the suffrages of my
fellow-citizens” (“You must! you must!”); “for I feel myself much worn
down by thirty years of public service, and, as you may well believe, a
man of honor has need to consult his strength and his capacities before
he takes upon himself the functions of the aedileship.”
“I expected nothing less of you, Monsieur Thuillier,” cried Phellion.
“Pardon me; this is the first time in my life that I have ever
interrupted a superior; but there are circumstances--”
“Accept! accept!” cried Zelie. “Bless my soul! what we want are men like
you to govern us.”
“Resign yourself, my chief!” cried Dutocq, and, “Long live the future
municipal councillor! but we haven’t anything to drink--”
“Well, the thing is settled,” said Minard; “you are to be our
candidate.”
“You think too much of me,” replied Thuillier.
“Come, come!” cried Colleville. “A man who has done thirty years in the
galleys of the ministry of finance is a treasure to the town.”
“You are much too modest,” said the younger Minard; “your capacity is
well known to us; it remains a tradition at the ministry of finance.”
“As you all insist--” began Thuillier.
“The King will be pleased with our choice; I can assure you of that,”
said Minard, pompously.
“Gentlemen,” said la Peyrade, “will you permit a recent dweller in the
faubourg Saint-Jacques to make one little remark, which is not without
importance?”
The consciousness that everybody had of the sterling merits of the
advocate of the poor produced the deepest silence.
“The influence of Monsieur le maire of an adjoining arrondissement,
which is immense in ours where he has left such excellent memories;
that of Monsieur Phellion, the oracle--yes, let the truth be spoken,”
he exclaimed, noticing a gesture made by Phellion--“the _oracle_ of his
battalion; the influence, no less powerful, which Monsieur Colleville
owes to the frank heartiness of his manner, and to his urbanity; that of
Monsieur Dutocq, the clerk of the justice court, which will not be less
efficacious, I am sure; and the poor efforts which I can offer in my
humble sphere of activity,--are pledges of success, but they are not
success itself. To obtain a rapid triumph we should pledge ourselves,
now and here, to keep the deepest secrecy on the manifestation of
sentiments which has just taken place. Otherwise, we should excite,
without knowing or willing it, envy and all the other secondary
passions, which would create for us later various obstacles to overcome.
The political meaning of the new social organization, its very basis,
its token, and the guarantee for its continuance, are in a certain
sharing of the governing power with the middle classes, classes who are
the true strength of modern societies, the centre of morality, of
all good sentiments and intelligent work. But we cannot conceal from
ourselves that the principle of election, extended now to almost every
function, has brought the interests of ambition, and the passion for
being _something_, excuse the word, into social depths where they ought
never to have penetrated. Some see good in this; others see evil; it
is not my place to judge between them in presence of minds before whose
eminence I bow. I content myself by simply suggesting this question in
order to show the dangers which the banner of our friend must meet. See
for yourselves! the decease of our late honorable representative in
the municipal council dates back scarcely one week, and already the
arrondissement is being canvassed by inferior ambitions. Such men put
themselves forward to be seen at any price. The writ of convocation
will, probably, not take effect for a month to come. Between now and
then, imagine the intrigues! I entreat you not to expose our friend
Thuillier to the blows of his competitors; let us not deliver him over
to public discussion, that modern harpy which is but the trumpet of envy
and calumny, the pretext seized by malevolence to belittle all that is
great, soil all that is immaculate and dishonor whatever is sacred. Let
us, rather, do as the Third Party is now doing in the Chamber,--keep
silence and vote!”
“He speaks well,” said Phellion to his neighbor Dutocq.
“And how strong the statement is!”
Envy had turned Minard and his son green and yellow.
“That is well said and very true,” remarked Minard.
“Unanimously adopted!” cried Colleville. “Messieurs, we are men of
honor; it suffices to understand each other on this point.”
“Whoso desires the end accepts the means,” said Phellion, emphatically.
At this moment, Mademoiselle Thuillier reappeared, followed by her two
servants; the key of the cellar was hanging from her belt, and three
bottles of champagne, three of hermitage, and one bottle of malaga were
placed upon the table. She herself was carrying, with almost respectful
care, a smaller bottle, like a fairy Carabosse, which she placed before
her. In the midst of the hilarity caused by this abundance of excellent
things--a fruit of gratitude, which the poor spinster in the delirium
of her joy poured out with a profusion which put to shame the sparing
hospitality of her usual fortnightly dinners--numerous dessert dishes
made their appearance: mounds of almonds, raisins, figs, and nuts
(popularly known as the “four beggars”), pyramids of oranges,
confections, crystallized fruits, brought from the hidden depths of her
cupboards, which would never have figured on the table-cloth had it not
been for the “candidacy.”
“Celeste, they will bring you a bottle of brandy which my father
obtained in 1802; make an orange-salad!” cried Brigitte to her
sister-in-law. “Monsieur Phellion, open the champagne; that bottle is
for you three. Monsieur Dutocq, take this one. Monsieur Colleville, you
know how to pop corks!”
The two maids distributed champagne glasses, also claret glasses, and
wine glasses. Josephine also brought three more bottles of Bordeaux.
“The year of the comet!” cried Thuillier, laughing, “Messieurs, you have
turned my sister’s head.”
“And this evening you shall have punch and cakes,” she said. “I have
sent to the chemists for some tea. Heavens! if I had only known the
affair concerned an election,” she cried, looking at her sister-in-law,
“I’d have served the turkey.”
A general laugh welcomed this speech.
“We have a goose!” said Minard junior.
“The carts are unloading!” cried Madame Thuillier, as “marrons glaces”
and “meringues” were placed upon the table.
Mademoiselle Thuillier’s face was blazing. She was really superb to
behold. Never did sisterly love assume such a frenzied expression.
“To those who know her, it is really touching,” remarked Madame
Colleville.
The glasses were filled. The guests all looked at one another, evidently
expecting a toast, whereupon la Peyrade said:--
“Messieurs, let us drink to something sublime.”
Everybody looked curious.
“To Mademoiselle Brigitte!”
They all rose, clinked glasses, and cried with one voice, “Mademoiselle
Brigitte!” so much enthusiasm did the exhibition of a true feeling
excite.
“Messieurs,” said Phellion, reading from a paper written in pencil, “To
work and its splendors, in the person of our former comrade, now become
one of the mayors of Paris,--to Monsieur Minard and his wife!”
After five minutes’ general conversation Thuillier rose and said:--
“Messieurs, To the King and the royal family! I add nothing; the toast
says all.”
“To the election of my brother!” said Mademoiselle Thuillier a moment
later.
“Now I’ll make you laugh,” whispered la Peyrade in Flavie’s ear.
And he rose.
“To Woman!” he said; “that enchanting sex to whom we owe our
happiness,--not to speak of our mothers, our sisters, and our wives!”
This toast excited general hilarity, and Colleville, already somewhat
gay, exclaimed:--
“Rascal! you have stolen my speech!”
The mayor then rose; profound silence reigned.
“Messieurs, our institutions! from which come the strength and grandeur
of dynastic France!”
The bottles disappeared amid a chorus of admiration as to the marvellous
goodness and delicacy of their contents.
Celeste Colleville here said timidly:--
“Mamma, will you permit me to give a toast?”
The good girl had noticed the dull, bewildered look of her godmother,
neglected and forgotten,--she, the mistress of that house, wearing
almost the expression of a dog that is doubtful which master to
obey, looking from the face of her terrible sister-in-law to that of
Thuillier, consulting each countenance, and oblivious of herself; but
joy on the face of that poor helot, accustomed to be nothing, to repress
her ideas, her feelings, had the effect of a pale wintry sun behind a
mist; it barely lighted her faded, flabby flesh. The gauze cap trimmed
with dingy flowers, the hair ill-dressed, the gloomy brown gown, with
no ornament but a thick gold chain--all, combined with the expression
of her countenance, stimulated the affection of the young Celeste,
who--alone in the world--knew the value of that woman condemned to
silence but aware of all about her, suffering from all yet consoling
herself in God and in the girl who now was watching her.
“Yes, let the dear child give us her little toast,” said la Peyrade to
Madame Colleville.
“Go on, my daughter,” cried Colleville; “here’s the hermitage still to
be drunk--and it’s hoary with age,” he added.
“To my kind godmother!” said the girl, lowering her glass respectfully
before Madame Thuillier, and holding it towards her.
The poor woman, startled, looked through a veil of tears first at her
husband, and then at Brigitte; but her position in the family was so
well known, and the homage paid by innocence to weakness had something
so beautiful about it, that the emotion was general; the men all rose
and bowed to Madame Thuillier.
“Ah! Celeste, I would I had a kingdom to lay at your feet,” murmured
Felix Phellion.
The worthy Phellion wiped away a tear. Dutocq himself was moved.
“Oh! the charming child!” cried Mademoiselle Thuillier, rising, and
going round to kiss her sister-in-law.
“My turn now!” said Colleville, posing like an athlete. “Now listen: To
friendship! Empty your glasses; refill your glasses. Good! To the
fine arts,--the flower of social life! Empty your glasses; refill your
glasses. To another such festival on the day after election!”
“What is that little bottle you have there?” said Dutocq to Mademoiselle
Thuillier.
“That,” she said, “is one of my three bottles of Madame Amphoux’
liqueur; the second is for the day of Celeste’s marriage; the third for
the day on which her first child is baptized.”
“My sister is losing her head,” remarked Thuillier to Colleville.
The dinner ended with a toast, offered by Thuillier, but suggested to
him by Theodose at the moment when the malaga sparkled in the little
glasses like so many rubies.
“Colleville, messieurs, has drunk to _friendship_. I now drink, in this
most generous wine, To my friends!”
An hurrah, full of heartiness, greeted that fine sentiment, but Dutocq
remarked aside to Theodose:--
“It is a shame to pour such wine down the throats of such people.”
“Ah! if we could only make such wine as that!” cried Zelie, making her
glass ring by the way in which she sucked down the Spanish liquid. “What
fortunes we could get!”
Zelie had now reached her highest point of incandescence, and was really
alarming.
“Yes,” replied Minard, “but ours is made.”
“Don’t you think, sister,” said Brigitte to Madame Thuillier, “that we
had better take coffee in the salon?”
Madame Thuillier obediently assumed the air of mistress of the house,
and rose.
“Ah! you are a great wizard,” said Flavie Colleville, accepting la
Peyrade’s arm to return to the salon.
“And yet I care only to bewitch you,” he answered. “I think you more
enchanting than ever this evening.”
“Thuillier,” she said, to evade the subject, “Thuillier made to think
himself a political character! oh! oh!”
“But, my dear Flavie, half the absurdities of life are the result of
such conspiracies; and men are not alone in these deceptions. In how
many families one sees the husband, children, and friends persuading a
silly mother that she is a woman of sense, or an old woman of fifty that
she is young and beautiful. Hence, inconceivable contrarieties for
those who go about the world with their eyes shut. One man owes his
ill-savored conceit to the flattery of a mistress; another owes his
versifying vanity to those who are paid to call him a great poet.
Every family has its great man; and the result is, as we see it in the
Chamber, general obscurity of the lights of France. Well, men of real
mind are laughing to themselves about it, that’s all. You are the mind
and the beauty of this little circle of the petty bourgeoisie; it is
this superiority which led me in the first instance to worship you. I
have since longed to drag you out of it; for I love you sincerely--more
in friendship than in love; though a great deal of love is gliding into
it,” he added, pressing her to his heart under cover of the recess of a
window to which he had taken her.
“Madame Phellion will play the piano,” cried Colleville. “We must all
dance to-night--bottles and Brigitte’s francs and all the little girls!
I’ll go and fetch my clarionet.”
He gave his empty coffee-cup to his wife, smiling to see her so friendly
with la Peyrade.
“What have you said and done to my husband?” asked Flavie, when
Colleville had left them.
“Must I tell you all our secrets?”
“Ah! you don’t love me,” she replied, looking at him with the coquettish
slyness of a woman who is not quite decided in her mind.
“Well, since you tell me yours,” he said, letting himself go to the
lively impulse of Provencal gaiety, always so charming and apparently so
natural, “I will not conceal from you an anxiety in my heart.”
He took her back to the same window and said, smiling:--
“Colleville, poor man, has seen in me the artist repressed by all these
bourgeois; silent before them because I feel misjudged, misunderstood,
and repelled by them. He has felt the heat of the sacred fire that
consumes me. Yes I am,” he continued, in a tone of conviction, “an
artist in words after the manner of Berryer; I could make juries weep,
by weeping myself, for I’m as nervous as a woman. Your husband, who
detests the bourgeoisie, began to tease me about them. At first we
laughed; then, in becoming serious, he found out that I was as strong as
he. I told him of the plan concocted to make _something_ of Thuillier,
and I showed him all the good he could get himself out of a political
puppet. ‘If it were only,’ I said to him, ‘to make yourself Monsieur
_de_ Colleville, and to put your charming wife where I should like to
see her, as the wife of a receiver-general, or deputy. To make yourself
all that you and she ought to be, you have only to go and live a few
years in the Upper or Lower Alps, in some hole of a town where everybody
will like you, and your wife will seduce everybody; and this,’ I added,
‘you cannot fail to obtain, especially if you give your dear Celeste to
some man who can influence the Chamber.’ Good reasons, stated in jest,
have the merit of penetrating deeper into some minds than if they were
given soberly. So Colleville and I became the best friends in the world.
Didn’t you hear him say to me at table, ‘Rascal! you have stolen my
speech’? To-night we shall be theeing and thouing each other. I intend
to have a choice little supper-party soon, where artists, tied to the
proprieties at home, always compromise themselves. I’ll invite him,
and that will make us as solidly good friends as he is with Thuillier.
There, my dear adorned one, is what a profound sentiment gives a man the
courage to produce. Colleville must adopt me; so that I may visit your
house by his invitation. But what couldn’t you make me do? lick lepers,
swallow live toads, seduce Brigitte--yes, if you say so, I’ll impale my
own heart on that great picket-rail to please you.”
“You frightened me this morning,” she said.
“But this evening you are reassured. Yes,” he added, “no harm will ever
happen to you through me.”
“You are, I must acknowledge, a most extraordinary man.”
“Why, no! the smallest as well as the greatest of my efforts are merely
the reflections of the flame which you have kindled. I intend to be your
son-in-law that we may never part. My wife, heavens! what could she be
to me but a machine for child-bearing? whereas the divinity, the sublime
being will be--you,” he whispered in her ear.
“You are Satan!” she said, in a sort of terror.
“No, I am something of a poet, like all the men of my region. Come,
be my Josephine! I’ll go and see you to-morrow. I have the most ardent
desire to see where you live and how you live, the furniture you use,
the color of your stuffs, the arrangement of all things about you. I
long to see the pearl in its shell.”
He slipped away cleverly after these words, without waiting for an
answer.
Flavie, to whom in all her life love had never taken the language of
romance, sat still, but happy, her heart palpitating, and saying to
herself that it was very difficult to escape such influence. For the
first time Theodose had appeared in a pair of new trousers, with gray
silk stockings and pumps, a waistcoat of black silk, and a cravat of
black satin on the knot of which shone a plain gold pin selected with
taste. He wore also a new coat in the last fashion, and yellow gloves,
relieved by white shirt-cuffs; he was the only man who had manners, or
deportment in that salon, which was now filling up for the evening.
Madame Pron, nee Barniol, arrived with two school-girls, aged seventeen,
confided to her maternal care by families residing in Martinique.
Monsieur Pron, professor of rhetoric in a college presided over by
priests, belonged to the Phellion class; but, instead of expanding on
the surface in phrases and demonstrations, and posing as an example, he
was dry and sententious. Monsieur and Madame Pron, the flowers of the
Phellion salon, received every Monday. Though a professor, the little
man danced. He enjoyed great influence in the quarter enclosed by the
boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, the Luxembourg, and the rue de Sevres.
Therefore, as soon as Phellion saw his friend, he took him by the
arm into a corner to inform him of the Thuillier candidacy. After ten
minutes’ consultation they both went to find Thuillier, and the recess
of a window, opposite to that where Flavie still sat absorbed in her
reflections, no doubt, heard a “trio” worthy, in its way, of that of the
Swiss in “Guillaume Tell.”
“Do you see,” said Theodose, returning to Flavie, “the pure and honest
Phellion intriguing over there? Give a personal reason to a virtuous man
and he’ll paddle in the slimiest puddle; he is hooking that little Pron,
and Pron is taking it all in, solely to get your little Celeste for
Felix Phellion. Separate them, and in ten minutes they’ll get together
again, and that young Minard will be growling round them like an angry
bulldog.”
Felix, still under the strong emotion imparted to him by Celeste’s
generous action and the cry that came from the girl’s heart, though no
one but Madame Thuillier still thought of it, became inspired by one of
those ingenuous artfulnesses which are the honest charlatanism of
true love; but he was not to the manner born of it, and mathematics,
moreover, made him somewhat absent-minded. He stationed himself near
Madame Thuillier, imagining that Madame Thuillier would attract Celeste
to her side. This astute calculation succeeded all the better because
young Minard, who saw in Celeste nothing more than a “dot,” had no such
sudden inspiration, and was drinking his coffee and talking politics
with Laudigeois, Monsieur Barniol, and Dutocq by order of his
father, who was thinking and planning for the general election of the
legislature in 1842.
“Who wouldn’t love Celeste?” said Felix to Madame Thuillier.
“Little darling, no one in the world loves me as she does,” replied the
poor slave, with difficulty restraining her tears.
“Ah! madame, we both love you,” said the candid professor, sincerely.
“What are you saying to each other?” asked Celeste, coming up.
“My child,” said the pious woman, drawing her god-daughter down to her
and kissing her on the forehead. “He said that you both loved me.”
“Do not be angry with my presumption, mademoiselle. Let me do all I can
to prove it,” murmured Felix. “Ah! I cannot help it, I was made this
way; injustice revolts me to the soul! Yes, the Saviour of men was right
to promise the future to the meek heart, to the slain lamb! A man who
did not love you, Celeste, must have adored you after that sublime
impulse of yours at table. Ah, yes! innocence alone can console the
martyr. You are a kind young girl; you will be one of those wives who
make the glory and the happiness of a family. Happy be he whom you will
choose!”
“Godmamma, with what eyes do you think Monsieur Felix sees me?”
“He appreciates you, my little angel; I shall pray to God for both of
you.”
“If you knew how happy I am that my father can do a service to Monsieur
Thuillier, and how I wish I could be useful to your brother--”
“In short,” said Celeste, laughing, “you love us all.”
“Well, yes,” replied Felix.
True love wraps itself in the mysteries of reserve, even in its
expression; it proves itself by itself; it does not feel the necessity,
as a false love does, of lighting a conflagration. By an observer (if
such a being could have glided into the Thuillier salon) a book might
have been made in comparing the two scenes of love-making, and in
watching the enormous preparations of Theodose and the simplicity of
Felix: one was nature, the other was society,--the true and the false
embodied. Noticing her daughter glowing with happiness, exhaling her
soul through the pores of her face, and beautiful with the beauty of a
young girl gathering the first roses of an indirect declaration, Flavie
had an impulse of jealousy in her heart. She came across to Celeste and
said in her ear:--
“You are not behaving well, my daughter; everybody is observing you; you
are compromising yourself by talking so long to Monsieur Felix without
knowing whether we approve of it.”
“But, mamma, my godmother is here.”
“Ah! pardon me, dear friend,” said Madame Colleville; “I did not notice
you.”
“You do as others do,” said the poor nonentity.
That reply stung Madame Colleville, who regarded it as a barbed arrow.
She cast a haughty glance at Felix and said to Celeste, “Sit there, my
daughter,” seating herself at the same time beside Madame Thuillier and
pointing to a chair on the other side of her.
“I will work myself to death,” said Felix to Madame Thuillier. “I’ll be
a member of the Academy of Sciences; I’ll make some great discovery, and
win her hand by force of fame.”
“Ah!” thought the poor woman to herself, “I ought to have had a gentle,
peaceful, learned man like that. I might have slowly developed in a life
of quietness. It was not thy will, O God! but, I pray thee, unite and
bless these children; they are made for one another.”
And she sat there, pensive, listening to the racket made by her
sister-in-law--a ten-horse power at work--who now, lending a hand to
her two servants, cleared the table, taking everything out of the
dining-room to accommodate the dancers, vociferating, like the captain
of a frigate on his quarter-deck when taking his ship into action: “Have
you plenty of raspberry syrup?” “Run out and buy some more orgeat!”
“There’s not enough glasses. Where’s the ‘eau rougie’? Take those
six bottles of ‘vin ordinaire’ and make more. Mind that Coffinet, the
porter, doesn’t get any.” “Caroline, my girl, you are to wait at the
sideboard; you’ll have tongue and ham to slice in case they dance till
morning. But mind, no waste! Keep an eye on everything. Pass me the
broom; put more oil in those lamps; don’t make blunders. Arrange the
remains of the dessert so as to make a show on the sideboard; ask my
sister to come and help us. I’m sure I don’t know what she’s thinking
about, that dawdle! Heavens, how slow she is! Here, take away these
chairs, they’ll want all the room they can get.”
The salon was full of Barniols, Collevilles, Phellions, Laudigeois, and
many others whom the announcement of a dance at the Thuilliers’, spread
about in the Luxembourg between two and four in the afternoon, the hour
at which the bourgeoisie takes its walk, had drawn thither.
“Are you ready, Brigitte?” said Colleville, bolting into the
dining-room; “it is nine o’clock, and they are packed as close as
herrings in the salon. Cardot, his wife and son and daughter and future
son-in-law have just come, accompanied by that young Vinet; the whole
faubourg Saint Antoine is debouching. Can’t we move the piano in here?”
Then he gave the signal, by tuning his clarionet, the joyous sounds of
which were greeted with huzzas from the salon.
It is useless to describe a ball of this kind. The toilets, faces,
and conversations were all in keeping with one fact which will surely
suffice even the dullest imagination; they passed round, on tarnished
and discolored trays, common tumblers filled with wine, “eau rougie,”
and “eau sucree.” The trays on which were glasses of orgeat and glasses
of syrup and water appeared only at long intervals. There were five
card-tables and twenty-five players, and eighteen dancers of both
sexes. At one o’clock in the morning, all present--Madame Thuillier,
Mademoiselle Brigitte, Madame Phellion, even Phellion himself--were
dragged into the vivacities of a country-dance, vulgarly called “La
Boulangere,” in which Dutocq figured with a veil over his head, after
the manner of the Kabyl. The servants who were waiting to escort
their masters home, and those of the household, were audience to this
performance; and after the interminable dance had lasted one whole
hour it was proposed to carry Brigitte in triumph when she gave the
announcement that supper was served. This circumstance made her see
the necessity of hiding a dozen bottles of old burgundy. In short, the
company had amused themselves so well, the matrons as well as the young
girls, that Thuillier found occasion to say:--
“Well, well, this morning we little thought we should have such a fete
to-night.”
“There’s never more pleasure,” said the notary Cardot, “than in just
such improvised balls. Don’t talk to me of parties where everybody
stands on ceremony.”
This opinion, we may remark, is a standing axiom among the bourgeoisie.
“Well, for my part,” said Madame Minard, “I prefer the dignified old
ways.”
“We didn’t mean that for you, madame; your salon is the chosen haunt of
pleasure,” said Dutocq.
When “La Boulangere” came to an end, Theodose pulled Dutocq from the
sideboard where he was preparing to eat a slice of tongue, and said to
him:--
“Let us go; we must be at Cerizet’s very early in the morning; we ought
both of us to think over that affair; it is not so easy to manage as
Cerizet seems to imagine.”
“Why not?” asked Dutocq, bringing his slice of tongue to eat in the
salon.
“Don’t you know the law?”
“I know enough of it to be aware of the dangers of the affair. If that
notary wants the house and we filch it from him, there are means
by which he can recover it; he can put himself into the skin of a
registered creditor. By the present legal system relating to mortgages,
when a house is sold at the request of creditors, if the price obtained
for it at auction is not enough to pay all debts, the owners have the
right to bid it in and hold it for a higher sum; now the notary, seeing
himself caught, may back out of the sale in that way.”
“Well,” said la Peyrade, “it needs attention.”
“Very good,” replied Dutocq, “we’ll go and see Cerizet.”
These words, “go and see Cerizet,” were overheard by Minard, who was
following the two associates; but they offered no meaning to his mind.
The two men were so outside of his own course and projects that he heard
them without listening to them.
“This has been one of the finest days in our lives,” said Brigitte
to her brother, when she found herself alone with him in the deserted
salon, at half-past two in the morning. “What a distinction! to be thus
selected by your fellow-citizens!”
“Don’t be mistaken about it, Brigitte; we owe it all, my child, to one
man.”
“What man?”
“To our friend, la Peyrade.”