During the extreme poverty of la Peyrade’s first years in Paris, none
but Cerizet had ever gone to see him in the wretched garret where, in
severely cold weather, he stayed in bed for want of clothes. Only one
shirt remained to him. For three days he lived on one loaf of bread,
cutting it into measured morsels, and asking himself, “What am I to do?”
At this moment it was that his former partner came to him, having just
left prison, pardoned. The projects which the two men then formed before
a fire of laths, one wrapped in his landlady’s counterpane, the other
in his infamy, it is useless to relate. The next day Cerizet, who had
talked with Dutocq in the course of the morning, returned, bringing
trousers, waistcoat, coat, hat, and boots, bought in the Temple, and
he carried off Theodose to dine with himself and Dutocq. The hungry
Provencal ate at Pinson’s, rue de l’Ancienne Comedie, half of a dinner
costing forty-seven francs. At dessert, after Theodose had drunk freely,
Cerizet said to him:--
“Will you sign me bills of exchange for fifty thousand francs in your
capacity as a barrister?”
“You couldn’t get five thousand on them.”
“That’s not your affair, but ours; I mean monsieur’s here, who is giving
us this dinner, and mine, in a matter where you risk nothing, but in
which you’ll get your title as barrister, a fine practice, and the hand
in marriage of a girl about the age of an old dog, and rich by twenty or
thirty thousand francs a year. Neither Dutocq nor I can marry her; but
we’ll equip you, give you the look of a decent man, feed and lodge you,
and set you up generally. Consequently, we want security. I don’t say
that on my own account, for I know you, but for monsieur here, whose
proxy I am. We’ll equip you as a pirate, hey! to do the white-slave
trade! If we can’t capture that ‘dot,’ we’ll try other plans. Between
ourselves, none of us need be particular what we touch--that’s plain
enough. We’ll give you careful instructions; for the matter is certain
to take time, and there’ll probably be some bother about it. Here, see,
I have brought stamped paper.”
“Waiter, pens and ink!” cried Theodose.
“Ha! I like fellows of that kind!” exclaimed Dutocq.
“Sign: ‘Theodose de la Peyrade,’ and after your name put ‘Barrister, rue
Saint-Dominique d’Enfer,’ under the words ‘Accepted for ten thousand.’
We’ll date the notes and sue you,--all secretly, of course, but in
order to have a hold upon you; the owners of a privateer ought to have
security when the brig and the captain are at sea.”
The day after this interview the bailiff of the justice-of-peace did
Cerizet the service of suing la Peyrade secretly. He went to see the
barrister that evening, and the whole affair was done without any
publicity. The Court of commerce has a hundred such cases in the course
of one term. The strict regulations of the council of barristers of
the bar of Paris are well known. This body, and also the council of
attorneys, exercise severe discipline over their members. A barrister
liable to go to Clichy would be disbarred. Consequently, Cerizet, under
Dutocq’s advice, had taken against their puppet measures which were
certain to secure to each of them twenty-five thousand francs out of
Celeste’s “dot.” In signing the notes, Theodose saw but one thing,--his
means of living secured; but as time had gone on, and the horizon grew
clearer, and he mounted, step by step, to a better position on the
social ladder, he began to dream of getting rid of his associates. And
now, on obtaining twenty-five thousand francs from Thuillier, he hoped
to treat on the basis of fifty per cent for the return of his fatal
notes by Cerizet.
Unfortunately, this sort of infamous speculation is not an exceptional
fact; it takes place in Paris under various forms too little disguised
for the historian of manners and morals to pass them over unnoticed in
a complete and accurate picture of society in the nineteenth century.
Dutocq, an arrant scoundrel, still owed fifteen thousand francs on his
practice, and lived in hopes of something turning up to keep his head,
as the saying is, above water until the close of 1840. Up to the present
time none of the three confederates had flinched or groaned. Each felt
his strength and knew his danger. Equals they were in distrust, in
watchfulness; equals, too, in apparent confidence; and equally stolid in
silence and look when mutual suspicions rose to the surface of face or
speech. For the last two months the position of Theodose was acquiring
the strength of a detached fort. But Cerizet and Dutocq held it
undermined by a mass of powder, with the match ever lighted; but the
wind might extinguish the match or the devil might flood the mine.
The moment when wild beasts seize their food is always the most
critical, and that moment had now arrived for these three hungry tigers.
Cerizet would sometimes say to Theodose, with that revolutionary glance
which twice in this century sovereigns have had to meet:--
“I have made you king, and here am I still nothing! for it is nothing
not to be all.”
A reaction of envy was rushing its avalanche through Cerizet. Dutocq was
at the mercy of his copying clerk. Theodose would gladly have burned his
copartners could he have burned their papers in the same conflagration.
All three studied each other too carefully, in order to conceal their
own thoughts, not to be in turn divined. Theodose lived a life of three
hells as he thought of what lay below the cards, then of his own game,
and then of his future. His speech to Thuillier was a cry of despair;
he threw his lead into the waters of the old bourgeois and found there
nothing more than twenty-five thousand francs.
“And,” he said to himself as he went to his own room, “possibly nothing
at all a month hence.”
He new felt the deepest hatred to the Thuilliers. But Thuillier himself
he held by a harpoon stuck into the depths of the man’s vanity; namely,
by the projected work, entitled “Taxation and the Sinking Fund,” for
which he intended to rearrange the ideas of the Saint-Simonian “Globe,”
giving them a systematic form, and coloring them with his fervid
Southern diction. Thuillier’s bureaucratic knowledge of the subject
would be of use to him here. Theodose therefore clung to this rope,
resolving to do battle, on so poor a base of operations, with the vanity
of a fool, which, according to individual character, is either granite
or sand. On reflection, Theodose was inclined to be content with the
prospect.
On the evening before the right of redemption expired, Claparon and
Cerizet proceeded to manipulate the notary in the following manner.
Cerizet, to whom Claparon had revealed the password and the notary’s
retreat, went out to this hiding-place to say to the latter:--
“One of my friends, Claparon, whom you know, has asked me to come and
see you; he will expect you to-morrow, in the evening, you know where.
He has the paper you expect from him, which he will exchange with
you for the ten thousand agreed upon; but I must be present, for five
thousand of that sum belong to me; and I warn you, my dear monsieur,
that the name in the counter-deed is in blank.”
“I shall be there,” replied the ex-notary.
The poor devil waited the whole night in agonies of mind that can well
be imagined, for safety or inevitable ruin were in the balance. At
sunrise he saw approaching him, instead of Claparon, a bailiff of the
Court of commerce, who produced a judgment against him in regular form,
and informed him that he must go with him to Clichy.
Cerizet had made an arrangement with one of the creditors of the
luckless notary, pledging himself to deliver up the debtor on payment
to himself of half the debt. Out of the ten thousand francs promised to
Claparon, the victim of this trap was obliged, in order to obtain his
liberty, to pay six thousand down, the amount of his debt.
On receiving his share of this extortion Cerizet said to himself:
“There’s three thousand to make Cerizet clear out.”
Cerizet then returned to the notary and said: “Claparon is a scoundrel,
monsieur; he has received fifteen thousand francs from the proposed
purchaser of your house, who will now, of course, become the owner.
Threaten to reveal his hiding-place to his creditors, and to have him
sued for fraudulent bankruptcy, and he’ll give you half.”
In his wrath the notary wrote a fulminating letter to Claparon.
Claparon, alarmed, feared an arrest, and Cerizet offered to get him a
passport.
“You have played me many a trick, Claparon,” he said, “but listen to
me now, and you can judge of my kindness. I possess, as my whole means,
three thousand francs; I’ll give them to you; start for America, and
make your fortune there, as I’m trying to make mine here.”
That evening Claparon, carefully disguised by Cerizet, left for Havre by
the diligence. Cerizet remained master of the fifteen thousand francs
to be paid to Claparon, and he awaited Theodose with the payment thereof
tranquilly.
“The limit for bidding-in is passed,” thought Theodose, as he went to
find Dutocq and ask him to bring Cerizet to his office. “Suppose I were
now to make an effort to get rid of my leech?”
“You can’t settle this affair anywhere but at Cerizet’s, because
Claparon must be present, and he is hiding there,” said Dutocq.
Accordingly, Theodose went, between seven and eight o’clock, to the den
of the “banker of the poor,” whom Dutocq had notified of his coming.
Cerizet received him in the horrible kitchen where miseries and sorrows
were chopped and cooked, as we have seen already. The pair then walked
up and down, precisely like two animals in a cage, while mutually
playing the following scene:--
“Have you brought the fifteen thousand francs?”
“No, but I have them at home.”
“Why not have them in your pocket?” asked Cerizet, sharply.
“I’ll tell you,” replied Theodose, who, as he walked from the rue
Saint-Dominique to the Estrapade, had decided on his course of action.
The Provencal, writhing upon the gridiron on which his partners held
him, became suddenly possessed with a good idea, which flashed from the
body of the live coal under him. Peril has gleams of light. He
resolved to rely on the power of frankness, which affects all men, even
swindlers. Every one is grateful to an adversary who bares himself to
the waist in a duel.
“Well!” said Cerizet, “now the humbug begins.”
The words seemed to come wholly through the hole in his nose with
horrible intonations.
“You have put me in a magnificent position, and I shall never forget the
service you have done me, my friend,” began Theodose, with emotion.
“Oh, that’s how you take it, is it?” said Cerizet.
“Listen to me; you don’t understand my intentions.”
“Yes, I do!” replied the lender by “the little week.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You intend not to give up those fifteen thousand francs.”
Theodose shrugged his shoulders and looked fixedly at Cerizet, who,
struck by the two motions, kept silence.
“Would you live in my position, knowing yourself within range of a
cannon loaded with grape-shot, without feeling a strong desire to
get out of it? Now listen to me carefully. You are doing a dangerous
business, and you would be glad enough to have some solid protection in
the very heart of the magistracy of Paris. If I can continue my
present course, I shall be substitute attorney-general, possibly
attorney-general, in three years. I offer you to-day the offices of a
devoted friendship, which will serve you hereafter most assuredly, if
only to replace you in a honorable position. Here are my conditions--”
“Conditions!” exclaimed Cerizet.
“In ten minutes I will bring you twenty-five thousand francs if you
return to me all the notes which you have against me.”
“But Dutocq? and Claparon?” said Cerizet.
“Leave them in the lurch!” replied Theodose, with his lips at Cerizet’s
ear.
“That’s a pretty thing to say!” cried Cerizet. “And so you have invented
this little game of hocus-pocus because you hold in your fingers fifteen
thousand francs that don’t belong to you!”
“But I’ve added ten thousand francs to them. Besides, you and I know
each other.”
“If you are able to get ten thousand francs out of your bourgeois you
can surely get fifteen,” said Cerizet. “For thirty thousand I’m your
man. Frankness for frankness, you know.”
“You ask the impossible,” replied Theodose. “At this very moment, if you
had to do with Claparon instead of with me, your fifteen thousand would
be lost, for Thuillier is to-day the owner of that house.”
“I’ll speak to Claparon,” said Cerizet, pretending to go and consult
him, and mounting the stairs to the bedroom, from which Claparon had
only just departed on his road to Havre.
The two adversaries had been speaking, we should here remark, in a
manner not to be overheard; and every time that Theodose raised his
voice Cerizet would make a gesture, intimating that Claparon, from
above, might be listening. The five minutes during which Theodose heard
what seemed to be the murmuring of two voices were torture to him, for
he had staked his very life upon the issue. Cerizet at last came down,
with a smile upon his lips, his eyes sparkling with infernal mischief,
his whole frame quivering in his joy, a Lucifer of gaiety!
“I know nothing, so it seems!” he cried, shaking his shoulders, “but
Claparon knows a great deal; he has worked with the big-wig bankers, and
when I told what you wanted he began to laugh, and said, ‘I thought as
much!’ You will have to bring me the twenty-five thousand you offer me
to-morrow morning, my lad; and as much more before you can recover your
notes.”
“Why?” asked Theodose, feeling his spinal column liquidizing as if the
discharge of some inward electric fluid had melted it.
“The house is ours.”
“How?”
“Claparon has bit it in under the name of one of his creditors, a little
toad named Sauvaignou. Desroches, the lawyer, has taken the case, and
you’ll get a notice to-morrow. This affair will oblige Claparon, Dutocq,
and me to raise funds. What would become of me without Claparon! So I
forgive him--yes, I forgave him, and though you may not believe it, my
dear friend, I actually kissed him! Change your terms.”
The last three words were horrible to hear, especially when illustrated
by the face of the speaker, who amused himself by playing a scene from
the “Legataire,” all the while studying attentively the Provencal’s
character.
“Oh, Cerizet!” cried Theodose; “I, who wished to do you so much good!”
“Don’t you see, my dear fellow,” returned Cerizet, “that between you and
me there ought to be _this_,--” and he struck his heart,--“of which you
have none. As soon as you thought you had a lever on us, you have tried
to knock us over. I saved you from the horrors of starvation and vermin!
You’ll die like the idiot you are. We put you on the high-road to
fortune; we gave you a fine social skin and a position in which you
could grasp the future--and look what you do! _Now_ I know you! and from
this time forth, we shall go armed.”
“Then it is war between us!” exclaimed Theodose.
“You fired first,” returned Cerizet.
“If you pull me down, farewell to your hopes and plans; if you don’t
pull me down, you have in me an enemy.”
“That’s just what I said yesterday to Dutocq; but, how can we help it?
We are forced to choose between two alternatives--we must go according
to circumstances. I’m a good-natured fellow myself,” he added, after a
pause; “bring me your twenty-five thousand francs to-morrow morning and
Thuillier shall keep the house. We’ll continue to help you at both ends,
but you’ll have to pay up, my boy. After what has just happened that’s
pretty kind, isn’t it?”
And Cerizet patted Theodose on the shoulder, with a cynicism that seemed
to brand him more than the iron of the galleys.
“Well, give me till to-morrow at mid-day,” replied the Provencal, “for
there’ll be, as you said, some manipulation to do.”
“I’ll try to keep Claparon quiet; he’s in such a hurry, that man!”
“To-morrow then,” said Theodose, in the tone of a man who decides his
course.
“Good-night, friend,” said Cerizet, in his nasal tone, which degraded
the finest word in the language. “There’s one who has got a mouthful
to suck!” thought Cerizet, as he watched Theodose going down the street
with the step of a dazed man.
When la Peyrade reached the rue des Postes he went with rapid strides
to Madame Colleville’s house, exciting himself as he walked along, and
talking aloud. The fire of his roused passions and the sort of inward
conflagration of which many Parisians are conscious (for such situations
abound in Paris) brought him finally to a pitch of frenzy and eloquence
which found expression, as he turned into the rue des Deux-Eglises, in
the words:--
“I will kill him!”
“There’s a fellow who is not content!” said a passing workman, and the
jesting words calmed the incandescent madness to which Theodose was a
prey.
As he left Cerizet’s the idea came to him to go to Flavie and tell
her all. Southern natures are born thus--strong until certain passions
arise, and then collapsed. He entered Flavie’s room; she was alone, and
when she saw Theodose she fancied her last hour had come.
“What is the matter?” she cried.
“I--I--” he said. “Do you love me, Flavie?”
“Oh! how can you doubt it?”
“Do you love me absolutely?--if I were criminal, even?”
“Has he murdered some one?” she thought, replying to his question by a
nod.
Theodose, thankful to seize even this branch of willow, drew a chair
beside Flavie’s sofa, and there gave way to sobs that might have touched
the oldest judge, while torrents of tears began to flow from his eyes.
Flavie rose and left the room to say to her maid: “I am not at home to
any one.” Then she closed all doors and returned to Theodose, moved to
the utmost pitch of maternal solicitude. She found him stretched out,
his head thrown back, and weeping. He had taken out his handkerchief,
and when Flavie tried to move it from his face it was heavy with tears.
“But what is the matter?” she asked; “what ails you?”
Nature, more impressive than art, served Theodose well; no longer was he
playing a part; he was himself; this nervous crisis and these tears were
the winding up of his preceding scenes of acted comedy.
“You are a child,” she said, in a gentle voice, stroking his hair
softly.
“I have but you, you only, in all the world!” he replied, kissing her
hands with a sort of passion; “and if you are true to me, if you are
mine, as the body belongs to the soul and the soul to the body, then--”
he added, recovering himself with infinite grace, “_Then_ I can have
courage.”
He rose, and walked about the room.
“Yes, I will struggle; I will recover my strength, like Antaeus, from
a fall; I will strangle with my own hands the serpents that entwine
me, that kiss with serpent kisses, that slaver my cheeks, that suck my
blood, my honor! Oh, misery! oh, poverty! Oh, how great are they who can
stand erect and carry high their heads! I had better have let myself die
of hunger, there, on my wretched pallet, three and a half years ago! A
coffin is a softer bed to lie in than the life I lead! It is eighteen
months that I have _fed on bourgeois_! and now, at the moment of
attaining an honest, fortunate life, a magnificent future, at the moment
when I was about to sit down to the social banquet, the executioner
strikes me on the shoulder! Yes, the monster! he struck me there, on my
shoulder, and said to me: ‘Pay thy dues to the devil, or die!’ And shall
I not crush them? Shall I not force my arm down their throats to their
very entrails? Yes, yes, I will, I will! See, Flavie, my eyes are dry
now. Ha, ha! now I laugh; I feel my strength come back to me; power is
mine! Oh! say that you love me; say it again! At this moment it sounds
like the word ‘Pardon’ to the man condemned to death!”
“You are terrible, my friend!” cried Flavie. “Oh! you are killing me.”
She understood nothing of all this, but she fell upon the sofa,
exhausted by the spectacle. Theodose flung himself at her feet.
“Forgive me! forgive me!” he said.
“But what is the matter? what is it?” she asked again.
“They are trying to destroy me. Oh! promise to give me Celeste, and
you shall see what a glorious life I will make you share. If you
hesitate--very good; that is saying you will be wholly mine, and I will
have you!”
He made so rapid a movement that Flavie, terrified, rose and moved away.
“Oh! my saint!” he cried, “at thy feet I fall--a miracle! God is for me,
surely! A flash of light has come to me--an idea--suddenly! Oh, thanks,
my good angel, my grand Saint-Theodose! thou hast saved me!”
Flavie could not help admiring that chameleon being; one knee on the
floor, his hands crossed on his breast, and his eyes raised to heaven
in religious ecstasy, he recited a prayer; he was a fervent Catholic;
he reverently crossed himself. It was fine; like the vision of
Saint-Jerome.
“Adieu!” he said, with a melancholy look and a moving tone of voice.
“Oh!” cried Flavie, “leave me this handkerchief.”
Theodose rushed away like one possessed, sprang into the street, and
darted towards the Thuilliers’, but turned, saw Flavie at her window,
and made her a little sign of triumph.
“What a man!” she thought to herself.
“Dear, good friend,” he said to Thuillier, in a calm and gentle, almost
caressing voice, “we have fallen into the hands of atrocious scoundrels.
But I mean to read them a lesson.”
“What has happened?” asked Brigitte.
“They want twenty-five thousand francs, and, in order to get the better
of us, the notary, or his accomplices, have determined to bid in the
property. Thuillier, put five thousand francs in your pocket and come
with me; I will secure that house to you. I am making myself implacable
enemies!” he cried; “they are seeking to destroy me morally. But all
I ask is that you will disregard their infamous calumnies and feel no
change of heart to me. After all, what is it? If I succeed, you will
only have paid one hundred and twenty-five thousand francs for the house
instead of one hundred and twenty.”
“Provided the same thing doesn’t happen again,” said Brigitte, uneasily,
her eyes dilating under the effect of a violent suspicion.
“Preferred creditors have alone the right to bid in property, and as,
in this case, there is but one, and he has used that right, we are safe.
The amount of his claim is really only two thousand francs, but there
are lawyers, attorneys, and so forth, to pay in such matters, and we
shall have to drop a note of a thousand francs to make the creditor
happy.”
“Go, Thuillier,” said Brigitte, “get your hat and gloves, and take the
money--from you know where.”
“As I paid those fifteen thousand francs without success, I don’t wish
to have any more money pass through my hands. Thuillier must pay it
himself,” said Theodose, when he found himself alone with Brigitte. “You
have, however, gained twenty thousand on the contract I enabled you to
make with Grindot, who thought he was serving the notary, and you own a
piece of property which in five years will be worth nearly a million. It
is what is called a ‘boulevard corner.’”
Brigitte listened uneasily, precisely like a cat which hears a mouse
within the wall. She looked Theodose straight in the eye, and, in spite
of the truth of his remarks, doubts possessed her.
“What troubles you, little aunt?”
“Oh! I shall be in mortal terror until that property is securely ours.”
“You would be willing to give twenty thousand francs, wouldn’t you,”
said Theodose, “to make sure that Thuillier was what we call, in law,
‘owner not dispossessable’ of that property? Well, then, remember that I
have saved you twice that amount.”
“Where are we going?” asked Thuillier, returning.
“To Maitre Godeschal! We must employ him as our attorney.”
“But we refused him for Celeste.”
“Well, that’s one reason for going to him,” replied Theodose. “I have
taken his measure; he’s a man of honor, and he’ll think it a fine thing
to do you a service.”
Godeschal, now Derville’s successor, had formerly been, for more
than two years, head-clerk with Desroches. Theodose, to whom that
circumstance was known, seemed to hear the name flung into his ear
in the midst of his despair by an inward voice, and he foresaw a
possibility of wrenching from the hands of Claparon the weapon with
which Cerizet had threatened him. He must, however, in the first
instance, gain an entrance to Desroches, and get some light on the
actual situation of his enemies. Godeschal, by reason of the intimacy
still existing between the former clerk and his old master, could be his
go-between. When the attorneys of Paris have ties like those which bound
Godeschal and Desroches together, they live in true fraternity, and the
result is a facility in arranging any matters which are, as one may say,
arrangeable. They obtain from one another, on the ground of reciprocity,
all possible concessions by the application of the proverb, “Pass me the
rhubarb, and I’ll pass you the senna,” which is put in practice in
all professions, between ministers, soldiers, judges, business men;
wherever, in short, enmity has not raised barriers too strong and high
between the parties.
“I gain a pretty good fee out of this compromise,” is a reason that
needs no expression in words: it is visible in the gesture, the tone,
the glance; and as attorneys and solicitors meet constantly on this
ground, the matter, whatever it is, is arranged. The counterpoise
of this fraternal system is found in what we may call professional
conscience. The public must believe the physician who says, giving
medical testimony, “This body contains arsenic”; nothing is supposed to
exceed the integrity of the legislator, the independence of the cabinet
minister. In like manner, the attorney of Paris says to his brother
lawyer, good-humoredly, “You can’t obtain that; my client is furious,”
and the other answers, “Very good; I must do without it.”
Now, la Peyrade, a shrewd man, had worn his legal gown about the Palais
long enough to know how these judicial morals might be made to serve his
purpose.
“Sit in the carriage,” he said to Thuillier, when they reached the rue
Vivienne, where Godeschal was now master of the practice he had formerly
served as clerk. “You needn’t show yourself until he undertakes the
affair.”
It was eleven o’clock at night; la Peyrade was not mistaken in supposing
that he should find a newly fledged master of a practice in his office
at that hour.
“To what do I owe this visit, monsieur?” said Godeschal, coming forward
to meet the barrister.
Foreigners, provincials, and persons in high society may not be aware
that barristers are to attorneys what generals are to marshals. There
exists a line of demarcation, strictly maintained, between the order of
barristers and the guild of attorneys and solicitors in Paris. However
venerable an attorney may be, however capable and strong in his
profession, he must go to the barrister. The attorney is the
administrator, who maps out the plan of the campaign, collects the
munitions of war, and puts the force in motion; the barrister gives
battle. It is not known why the law gives a man two men to defend him
any more than it is known why an author is forced to have both printer
and publisher. The rules of the bar forbid its members to do any act
belonging to the guild of attorneys. It is very rare that a barrister
puts his foot in an attorney’s office; the two classes meet in the
law-courts. In society, there is no barrier between them, and some
barristers, those in la Peyrade’s situation particularly, demean
themselves by calling occasionally on attorneys, though even these cases
are rare, and are usually excused by some special urgency.
“I have come on important business,” replied la Peyrade; “it concerns,
especially, a question of delicacy which you and I ought to solve
together. Thuillier is below, in a carriage, and I have come up to see
you, not as a barrister, but as his friend. You are in a position to do
him an immense service; and I have told him that you have too noble a
soul (as a worthy successor of our great Derville must have) not to put
your utmost capacity at his orders. Here’s the affair.”
After explaining, wholly to his own advantage, the swindling trick which
must, he said, be met with caution and ability, the barrister developed
his plan of campaign.
“You ought, my dear maitre, to go this very evening to Desroches,
explain the whole plot and persuade him to send to-morrow for his
client, this Sauvaignou. We’ll confess the fellow between us, and if
he wants a note for a thousand francs over and above the amount of his
claim, we’ll let him have it; not counting the five hundred for you
and as much more for Desroches, provided Thuillier receives the
relinquishment of his claim by ten o’clock to-morrow morning. What does
this Sauvaignou want? Nothing but money. Well, a haggler like that won’t
resist the attraction of an extra thousand francs, especially if he is
only the instrument of a cupidity behind him. It is no matter to us how
he fights it out with those who prompt him. Now, then, do you think you
can get the Thuillier family out of this?”
“I’ll go and see Desroches at once,” said Godeschal.
“Not before Thuillier gives you a power of attorney and five hundred
francs. The money should be on the table in a case like this.”
After the interview with Thuillier was over, la Peyrade took Godeschal
in the carriage to the rue du Bethizy, where Desroches lived, explaining
that it was on their way back to the rue Saint-Dominique d’Enfer. When
they stopped at Desroches’s door la Peyrade made an appointment with
Godeschal to meet him there the next morning at seven o’clock.
La Peyrade’s whole future and fortune lay in the outcome of this
conference. It is therefore not astonishing that he disregarded the
customs of the bar and went to Desroches’s office, to study Sauvaignou
and take part in the struggle, in spite of the danger he ran in thus
placing himself visibly before the eyes of one of the most dreaded
attorneys in Paris.
As he entered the office and made his salutations, he took note
of Sauvaignou. The man was, as the name had already told him, from
Marseilles,--the foreman of a master-carpenter, entrusted with the
giving out of sub-contracts. The profits of this work consisted of what
he could make between the price he paid for the work and that paid to
him by the master-carpenter; this agreement being exclusive of material,
his contract being only for labor. The master-carpenter had failed.
Sauvaignou had thereupon appealed to the court of commerce for
recognition as creditor with a lien on the property. He was a stocky
little man, dressed in a gray linen blouse, with a cap on his head, and
was seated in an armchair. Three banknotes, of a thousand francs each,
lying visibly before him on Desroches’s desk, informed la Peyrade that
the negotiation had already taken place, and that the lawyers were
worsted. Godeschal’s eyes told the rest, and the glance which Desroches
cast at the “poor man’s advocate” was like the blow of a pick-axe into
the earth of a grave. Stimulated by his danger, the Provencal became
magnificent. He coolly took up the bank-notes and folded them, as if to
put them in his pocket, saying to Desroches:--
“Thuillier has changed his mind.”
“Very good; then we are all agreed,” said the terrible attorney.
“Yes; your client must now hand over to us the fifty thousand francs
we have spent on finishing the house, according to the contract between
Thuillier and Grindot. I did not tell you that yesterday,” he added,
turning to Godeschal.
“Do you hear that?” said Desroches to Sauvaignou. “That’s a case I shall
not touch without proper guarantees.”
“But, messieurs,” said Sauvaignou, “I can’t negotiate this matter until
I have seen the worthy man who paid me five hundred francs on account
for having signed him that bit of a proxy.”
“Are you from Marseilles?” said la Peyrade, in patois.
“Oh! if he tackles him with patois the fellow is beaten,” said Godeschal
to Desroches in a low tone.
“Yes, monsieur,” replied the Marseillais.
“Well, you poor devil,” continued Theodose, “don’t you see that they
want to ruin you? Shall I tell you what you ought to do? Pocket these
three thousand francs, and when your worthy man comes after you, take
your rule and hit him a rap over the knuckles; tell him he’s a rascal
who wants you to do his dirty work, and instead of that you revoke your
proxy and will pay him his five hundred francs in the week with three
Thursdays. Then be off with you to Marseilles with these three thousand
francs and your savings in your pocket. If anything happens to you
there, let me know through these gentlemen, and I’ll get you out of the
scrape; for, don’t you see? I’m not only a Provencal, but I’m also one
of the leading lawyers in Paris, and the friend of the poor.”
When the workman found a compatriot sanctioning in a tone of authority
the reasons by which he could betray Cerizet, he capitulated, asking,
however, for three thousand five hundred francs. That demand having been
granted he remarked:--
“It is none too much for a rap over the knuckles; he might put me in
prison for assault.”
“Well, you needn’t strike unless he insults you,” replied la Peyrade,
“and that’s self-defence.”
When Desroches had assured him that la Peyrade was really a barrister in
good standing, Sauvaignou signed the relinquishment, which contained a
receipt for the amount, principal and interest, of his claim, made
in duplicate between himself and Thuillier, and witnessed by the two
attorneys; so that the paper was a final settlement of the whole matter.
“We’ll leave the remaining fifteen hundred between you,” whispered la
Peyrade to Desroches and Godeschal, “on condition that you give me the
relinquishment, which I will have Thuillier accept and sign before his
notary, Cardot. Poor man! he never closed his eyes all night!”
“Very well,” replied Desroches. “You may congratulate yourself,” he
added, making Sauvaignou sign the paper, “that you’ve earned that money
pretty easily.”
“It is really mine, isn’t it, monsieur?” said the Marseillais, already
uneasy.
“Yes, and legally, too,” replied Desroches, “only you must let your
man know this morning that you have revoked your proxy under date of
yesterday. Go out through my clerk’s office, here, this way.”
Desroches told his head-clerk what the man was to do, and he sent a
pupil-clerk with him to see that a sheriff’s officer carried the notice
to Cerizet before ten o’clock.
“I thank you, Desroches,” said la Peyrade, pressing the attorney’s hand;
“you think of everything; I shall never forget this service.”
“Don’t deposit the deed with Cardot till after twelve o’clock,” returned
Desroches.
“Hay! comrade,” cried the barrister, in Provencal, following Sauvaignou
into the next room, “take your Margot to walk about Belleville, and be
sure you don’t go home.”
“I hear,” said Sauvaignou. “I’m off to-morrow; adieu!”
“Adieu,” returned la Peyrade, with a Provencal cry.
“There is something behind all this,” said Desroches in an undertone to
Godeschal, as la Peyrade followed Sauvaignou into the clerk’s office.
“The Thuilliers get a splendid piece of property for next to nothing,”
replied Godeschal; “that’s all.”
“La Peyrade and Cerizet look to me like two divers who are fighting
under water,” replied Desroches. “What am I to say to Cerizet, who put
the matter into my hands?” he added, as the barrister returned to them.
“Tell him that Sauvaignou forced your hand,” replied la Peyrade.
“And you fear nothing?” said Desroches, in a sudden manner.
“I? oh no! I want to give Cerizet a lesson.”
“To-morrow, I shall know the truth,” said Desroches, in a low tone, to
Godeschal; “no one chatters like a beaten man.”
La Peyrade departed, carrying with him the deed of relinquishment.
At eleven o’clock he was in the courtroom of the justice-of-peace,
perfectly calm, and firm. When he saw Cerizet come in, pale with rage,
his eyes full of venom, he said in his ear:--
“My dear friend, I’m a pretty good fellow myself, and I hold that
twenty-five thousand francs in good bank-bills at your disposal,
whenever you will return to me those notes of mine which you hold.”
Cerizet looked at the advocate of the poor, without being able to say
one word in reply; he was green; the bile had struck in.