From that day forth Thuillier became a dear, good friend. “My dear, good
friend,” was the name given to him by Theodose, with voice inflections
of varieties of tenderness which astonished Flavie. But “little aunt,”
a name that flattered Brigitte deeply, was only given in family secrecy,
and occasionally before Flavie. The activity of Theodose and Dutocq,
Cerizet, Barbet, Metivier, Minard, Phellion, Colleville, and others of
the Thuillier circle was extreme. Great and small, they all put their
hands to the work. Cadenet procured thirty votes in his section. On the
30th of April Thuillier was proclaimed member of the Council-general of
the department of the Seine by an imposing majority; in fact, he
only needed sixty more votes to make his election unanimous. May
1st Thuillier joined the municipal body and went to the Tuileries to
congratulate the King on his fete-day, and returned home radiant. He had
gone where Minard went!
Ten days later a yellow poster announced the sale of the house, after
due publication; the price named being seventy-five thousand francs;
the final purchase to take place about the last of July. On this point
Cerizet and Claparon had an agreement by which Cerizet pledged the sum
of fifteen thousand francs (in words only, be it understood) to Claparon
in case the latter could deceive the notary and keep him quiet until the
time expired during which he might withdraw the property by bidding it
in. Mademoiselle Thuillier, notified by Theodose, agreed entirely to
this secret clause, understanding perfectly the necessity of paying
the culprits guilty of the treachery. The money was to pass through la
Peyrade’s hands. Claparon met his accomplice, the notary, on the Place
de l’Observatoire by midnight. This young man, the successor of Leopold
Hannequin, was one of those who run after fortune instead of following
it leisurely. He now saw another future before him, and he managed his
present affairs in order to be free to take hold of it. In this midnight
interview, he offered Claparon ten thousand francs to secure himself
in this dirty business,--a sum which was only to be paid on receipt,
through Claparon, of a counter-deed from the nominal purchaser of
the property. The notary was aware that that sum was all-important to
Claparon to extricate him from present difficulties, and he felt secure
of him.
“Who but you, in all Paris, would give me such a fee for such an
affair?” Claparon said to him, with a false show of naivete. “You can
sleep in peace; my ostensible purchaser is one of those men of honor who
are too stupid to have ideas of your kind; he is a retired government
employee; give him the money to make the purchase and he’ll sign the
counter-deed at once.”
When the notary had made Claparon clearly understand that he could not
get more than the ten thousand francs from him, Cerizet offered the
latter twelve thousand down, and asked Theodose for fifteen thousand,
intending to keep the balance for himself. All these scenes between
the four men were seasoned with the finest speeches about feelings,
integrity, and the honor that men owed to one another in doing business.
While these submarine performances were going on, apparently in the
interests of Thuillier, to whom Theodose related them with the deepest
manifestations of disgust at being implicated therein, the pair were
meditating the great political work which “my dear good friend” was
to publish. Thus the new municipal councillor naturally acquired a
conviction that he could never do or be anything without the help of
this man of genius; whose mind so amazed him, and whose ability was now
so important to him, that every day he became more and more convinced of
the necessity of marrying him to Celeste, and of taking the young couple
to live with him. In fact, after May the 1st, Theodose had already dined
four times a week with “my dear, good friend.”
This was the period when Theodose reigned without a dissenting voice in
the bosom of that household, and all the friends of the family approved
of him--for the following reason: The Phellions, hearing his praises
sung by Brigitte and Thuillier, feared to displease the two powers and
chorussed their words, even when such perpetual laudation seemed to them
exaggerated. The same may be said of the Minards. Moreover la Peyrade’s
behavior, as “friend of the family” was perfect. He disarmed distrust by
the manner in which he effaced himself; he was there like a new piece
of furniture; and he contrived to make both the Phellions and Minards
believe that Brigitte and Thuillier had weighed him, and found him too
light in the scales to be anything more in the family than a young man
whose services were useful to them.
“He may think,” said Thuillier one day to Minard, “that my sister will
put him in her will; he doesn’t know her.”
This speech, inspired by Theodose himself, calmed the uneasiness of
Minard “pere.”
“He is devoted to us,” said Brigitte to Madame Phellion; “but he
certainly owes us a great deal of gratitude. We have given him his
lodging rent-free, and he dines with us almost every day.”
This speech of the old maid, also instigated by Theodose, went from
ear to ear among the families who frequented the Thuillier salon, and
dissipated all fears. The young man called attention to the remarks
of Thuillier and his sister with the servility of a parasite; when he
played whist he justified the blunders of his dear, good friend, and he
kept upon his countenance a smile, fixed and benign, like that of Madame
Thuillier, ready to bestow upon all the bourgeois sillinesses of the
brother and sister.
He obtained, what he wanted above all, the contempt of his true
antagonists; and he used it as a cloak to hide his real power. For four
consecutive months his face wore a torpid expression, like that of a
snake as it gulps and digests its prey. But at times he would rush into
the garden with Colleville or Flavie, to laugh and lay off his mask,
and rest himself; or get fresh strength by giving way before his future
mother-in-law to fits of nervous passion which either terrified or
deeply touched her.
“Don’t you pity me?” he cried to her the evening before the preparatory
sale of the house, when Thuillier was to make the purchase at
seventy-five thousand francs. “Think of a man like me, forced to creep
like a cat, to choke down every pointed word, to swallow my own gall,
and submit to your rebuffs!”
“My friend! my child!” Flavie replied, undecided in mind how to take
him.
These words are a thermometer which will show the temperature at which
this clever manipulator maintained his intrigue with Flavie. He kept
her floating between her heart and her moral sense, between religious
sentiments and this mysterious passion.
During this time Felix Phellion was giving, with a devotion and
constancy worthy of all praise, regular lessons to young Colleville.
He spent much of his time upon these lessons, feeling that he was thus
working for his future family. To acknowledge this service, he was
invited, by advice of Theodose to Flavie, to dine at the Collevilles’
every Thursday, where la Peyrade always met him. Flavie was usually
making either a purse or slippers or a cigar-case for the happy young
man, who would say, deprecatingly:--
“I am only too well rewarded, madame, by the happiness I feel in being
useful to you.”
“We are not rich, monsieur,” replied Colleville, “but, God bless me! we
are not ungrateful.”
Old Phellion would rub his hands as he listened to his son’s account
of these evenings, beholding his dear and noble Felix already wedded to
Celeste.
But Celeste, the more she loved Felix, the more grave and serious she
became with him; partly because her mother sharply lectured her, saying
to her one evening:--
“Don’t give any hope whatever to that young Phellion. Neither your
father nor I can arrange your marriage. You have expectations to be
consulted. It is much less important to please a professor without a
penny than to make sure of the affection and good-will of Mademoiselle
Brigitte and your godfather. If you don’t want to kill your mother--yes,
my dear, kill her--you must obey me in this affair blindly; and remember
that what we want to secure, above all, is your good.”
As the date of the final sale was set for the last of July, Theodose
advised Brigitte by the end of June to arrange her affairs in time to
be ready for the payment. Accordingly, she now sold out her own and her
sister-in-law’s property in the Funds. The catastrophe of the treaty of
the four powers, an insult to France, is now an established historical
fact; but it is necessary to remind the reader that from July to the
last of August the French funds, alarmed by the prospect of war, a fear
which Monsieur Thiers did much to promote, fell twenty francs, and the
Three-per-cents went down to sixty. That was not all: this financial
fiasco had a most unfortunate influence on the value of real estate in
Paris; and all those who had such property then for sale suffered
loss. These events made Theodose a prophet in the eyes of Brigitte and
Thuillier, to whom the house was now about to be definitely sold for
seventy-five thousand francs. The notary, involved in the political
disaster, and whose practice was already sold, concealed himself for a
time in the country; but he took with him the ten thousand francs for
Claparon. Advised by Theodose, Thuillier made a contract with Grindot,
who supposed he was really working for the notary in finishing the
house; and as, during this period of financial depression, suspended
work left many workmen with their arms folded, the architect was able
to finish off the building in a splendid manner at a low cost. Theodose
insisted that the agreement should be in writing.
This purchase increased Thuillier’s importance ten-fold. As for the
notary, he had temporarily lost his head in presence of political events
which came upon him like a waterspout out of cloudless skies. Theodose,
certain now of his supremacy, holding Thuillier fast by his past
services and by the literary work in which they were both engaged,
admired by Brigitte for his modesty and discretion,--for never had he
made the slightest allusion to his own poverty or uttered one word about
money,--Theodose began to assume an air that was rather less servile
than it had been. Brigitte and Thuillier said to him one day:--
“Nothing can deprive you of our esteem; you are here in this house as if
in your own home; the opinion of Minard and Phellion, which you seem to
fear, has no more value for us than a stanza of Victor Hugo. Therefore,
let them talk! Carry your head high!”
“But we shall still need them for Thuillier’s election to the Chamber,”
said Theodose. “Follow my advice; you have found it good so far, haven’t
you? When the house is actually yours, you will have got it for almost
nothing; for you can now buy into the Three-per-cents at sixty in Madame
Thuillier’s name, and thus replace nearly the whole of her fortune. Wait
only for the expiration of the time allowed to the nominal creditor
to buy it in, and have the fifteen thousand francs ready for our
scoundrels.”
Brigitte did not wait; she took her whole capital with the exception
of a sum of one hundred and twenty thousand francs, and bought into
the Three-per-cents in Madame Thuillier’s name to the amount of
twelve thousand francs a year, and in her own for ten thousand a year,
resolving in her own mind to choose no other kind of investment in
future. She saw her brother secure of forty thousand francs a year
besides his pension, twelve thousand a year for Madame Thuillier and
eighteen thousand a year for herself, besides the house they lived in,
the rental of which she valued at eight thousand.
“We are worth quite as much as the Minards,” she remarked.
“Don’t chant victory before you win it,” said Theodose. “The right of
redemption doesn’t expire for another week. I have attended to your
affairs, but mine have gone terribly to pieces.”
“My dear child, you have friends,” cried Brigitte; “if you should happen
to want five hundred francs or so, you will always find them here.”
Theodose exchanged a smile with Thuillier, who hastened to carry him
off, saying:--
“Excuse my poor sister; she sees the world through a small hole. But if
you should want twenty-five thousand francs I’ll lend them to you--out
of my first rents,” he added.
“Thuillier,” exclaimed Theodose, “the rope is round my neck. Ever
since I have been a barrister I have had notes of hand running. But say
nothing about it,” added Theodose, frightened himself at having let out
the secret of his situation. “I’m in the claws of scoundrels, but I hope
to crush them yet.”
In telling this secret Theodose, though alarmed as he did so, had a
two-fold purpose: first, to test Thuillier; and next, to avert the
consequences of a fatal blow which might be dealt to him any day in
a secret and sinister struggle he had long foreseen. Two words will
explain his horrible position.