“I am a non-dispossessable property-owner!” cried Thuillier, coming home
after visiting his notary. “No human power can get that house away from
me. Cardot says so.”
The bourgeoisie think much more of what their notary tells them than of
what their attorney says. The notary is nearer to them than any other
ministerial officer. The Parisian bourgeois never pays a visit to his
attorney without a sense of fear; whereas he mounts the stairs with
ever-renewed pleasure to see his notary; he admires that official’s
virtue and his sound good sense.
“Cardot, who is looking for an apartment for one of his clients, wants
to know about our second floor,” continued Thuillier. “If I choose he’ll
introduce to me on Sunday a tenant who is ready to sign a lease for
eighteen years at forty thousand francs and taxes! What do you say to
that, Brigitte?”
“Better wait,” she replied. “Ah! that dear Theodose, what a fright he
gave me!”
“Hey! my dearest girl, I must tell you that when Cardot asked who put me
in the way of this affair he said I owed him a present of at least ten
thousand francs. The fact is, I owe it all to him.”
“But he is the son of the house,” responded Brigitte.
“Poor lad! I’ll do him the justice to say that he asks for nothing.”
“Well, dear, good friend,” said la Peyrade, coming in about three
o’clock, “here you are, richissime!”
“And through you, Theodose.”
“And you, little aunt, have you come to life again? Ah! you were not
half as frightened as I was. I put your interests before my own; I
haven’t breathed freely till this morning at eleven o’clock; and yet I
am sure now of having two mortal enemies at my heels in the two men I
have tricked for your sake. As I walked home, just now, I asked myself
what could be your influence over me to make me commit such a crime, and
whether the happiness of belonging to your family and becoming your son
could ever efface the stain I have put upon my conscience.”
“Bah! you can confess it,” said Thuillier, the free-thinker.
“And now,” said Theodose to Brigitte, “you can pay, in all security,
the cost of the house,--eighty thousand francs, and thirty thousand
to Grindot; in all, with what you have paid in costs, one hundred and
twenty thousand; and this last twenty thousand added make one hundred
and forty thousand. If you let the house outright to a single tenant ask
him for the last year’s rent in advance, and reserve for my wife and me
the whole of the first floor above the entresol. Make those conditions
and you’ll still get your forty thousand francs a year. If you should
want to leave this quarter so as to be nearer the Chamber, you can
always take up your abode with us on that vast first floor, which has
stables and coach-house belonging to it; in fact, everything that is
needful for a splendid life. And now, Thuillier, I am going to get the
cross of the Legion of honor for you.”
Hearing this last promise, Brigitte cried out in her enthusiasm:--
“Faith! my dear boy, you’ve done our business so well that I’ll leave
you to manage that of letting the house.”
“Don’t abdicate, dear aunt,” replied Theodose. “God keep me from ever
taking a step without you! You are the good genius of this family; I
think only of the day when Thuillier will take his seat in the Chamber.
If you let the house you will come into possession of your forty
thousand francs for the last year of the lease in two months from now;
and that will not prevent Thuillier from drawing his quarterly ten
thousand of the rental.”
After casting this hope into the mind of the old maid, who was jubilant,
Theodose drew Thuillier into the garden and said to him, without beating
round the bush:--
“Dear, good friend, find means to get ten thousand francs from your
sister, and be sure not to let her suspect that you pay them to me; tell
her that sum is required in the government office to facilitate your
appointment as chevalier of the Legion of honor; tell her, too, that you
know the persons among whom that sum should be distributed.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Thuillier; “besides, I’ll pay it back to her
when I get my rents.”
“Have the money ready this evening, dear friend. Now I am going out on
business about your cross; to-morrow we shall know something definitely
about it.”
“What a man you are!” cried Thuillier.
“The ministry of the 1st of March is going to fall, and we must get it
out of them beforehand,” said Theodose, shrewdly.
He now hurried to Madame Colleville, crying out as he entered her
room:--
“I’ve conquered! We shall have a piece of landed property for Celeste
worth a million, a life-interest in which will be given to her by her
marriage-contract; but keep the secret, or your daughter will be hunted
down by peers of France. Besides, this settlement will only be made in
my favor. Now dress yourself, and let us go and call on Madame du Bruel;
she can get the cross for Thuillier. While you are getting under arms
I’ll do a little courting to Celeste; you and I can talk as we drive
along.”
La Peyrade had seen, as he passed the door of the salon, Celeste and
Felix Phellion in close conversation. Flavie had such confidence in
her daughter that she did not fear to leave them together. Now that the
great success of the morning was secured, Theodose felt the necessity
of beginning his courtship of Celeste. It was high time, he thought,
to bring about a quarrel between the lovers. He did not, therefore,
hesitate to apply his ear to the door of the salon before entering it,
in order to discover what letters of the alphabet of love they were
spelling; he was even invited to commit this domestic treachery by
sounds from within, which seemed to say that they were disputing. Love,
according to one of our poets, is a privilege which two persons mutually
take advantage of to cause each other, reciprocally, a great deal of
sorrow about nothing at all.
When Celeste knew that Felix was elected by her heart to be the
companion of her life, she felt a desire, not so much to study him as to
unite herself closely with him by that communion of souls which is the
basis of all affections, and leads, in youthful minds, to involuntary
examination. The dispute to which Theodose was now to listen took its
rise in a disagreement which had sprung up within the last few days
between the mathematician and Celeste. The young girl’s piety was
real; she belonged to the flock of the truly faithful, and to her,
Catholicism, tempered by that mysticism which attracts young souls, was
an inward poem, a life within her life. From this point young girls are
apt to develop into either extremely high-minded women or saints. But,
during this beautiful period of their youth they have in their heart,
in their ideas, a sort of absolutism: before their eyes is the image
of perfection, and all must be celestial, angelic, or divine to satisfy
them. Outside of their ideal, nothing of good can exist; all is stained
and soiled. This idea causes the rejection of many a diamond with a flaw
by girls who, as women, fall in love with paste.
Now, Celeste had seen in Felix, not irreligion, but indifference to
matters of religion. Like most geometricians, chemists, mathematicians,
and great naturalists, he had subjected religion to reason; he
recognized a problem in it as insoluble as the squaring of the circle.
Deist “in petto,” he lived in the religion of most Frenchmen, not
attaching more importance to it than he did to the new laws promulgated
in July. It was necessary to have a God in heaven, just as they set up a
bust of the king at the mayor’s office. Felix Phellion, a worthy son of
his father, had never drawn the slightest veil over his opinions or his
conscience; he allowed Celeste to read into them with the candor and
the inattention of a student of problems. The young girl, on her side,
professed a horror for atheism, and her conscience assured her that a
deist was cousin-germain to an atheist.
“Have you thought, Felix, of doing what you promised me?” asked Celeste,
as soon as Madame Colleville had left them alone.
“No, my dear Celeste,” replied Felix.
“Oh! to have broken his word!” she cried, softly.
“But to have kept it would have been a profanation,” said Felix. “I love
you so deeply, with a tenderness so little proof against your wishes,
that I promised a thing contrary to my conscience. Conscience, Celeste,
is our treasure, our strength, our mainstay. How can you ask me to go
into a church and kneel at the feet of a priest, in whom I can see only
a man? You would despise me if I obeyed you.”
“And so, my dear Felix, you refuse to go to church,” said Celeste,
casting a tearful glance at the man she loved. “If I were your wife you
would let me go alone? You do not love me as I love you! for, alas! I
have a feeling in my heart for an atheist contrary to that which God
commands.”
“An atheist!” cried Felix. “Oh, no! Listen to me, Celeste. There is
certainly a God; I believe in that; but I have higher ideas of Him than
those of your priests; I do not wish to bring Him down to my level;
I want to rise to Him. I listen to the voice He has put within me,--a
voice which honest men call conscience, and I strive not to darken that
divine ray as it comes to me. For instance, I will never harm others;
I will do nothing against the commandments of universal morality, which
was that of Confucius, Moses, Pythagoras, Socrates, as well as of Jesus
Christ. I will stand in the presence of God; my actions shall be my
prayers; I will never be false in word or deed; never will I do a
base or shameful thing. Those are the precepts I have learned from my
virtuous father, and which I desire to bequeath to my children. All the
good that I can do I shall try to accomplish, even if I have to suffer
for it. What can you ask more of a man than that?”
This profession of the Phellion faith caused Celeste to sadly shake her
head.
“Read attentively,” she replied, “‘The Imitation of Jesus Christ.’
Strive to convert yourself to the holy Catholic, apostolic, and Roman
Church, and you will see how empty your words are. Hear me, Felix;
marriage is not, the Church says, the affair of a day, the mere
satisfaction of our own desires; it is made for eternity. What! shall we
be united day and night, shall we form one flesh, one word, and yet
have two languages, two faiths in our heart, and a cause of perpetual
dissension? Would you condemn me to weep tears over the state of your
soul,--tears that I must ever conceal from you? Could I address myself
in peace to God when I see his arm stretched out in wrath against you?
Must my children inherit the blood of a deist and his convictions? Oh!
God, what misery for a wife! No, no, these ideas are intolerable. Felix!
be of my faith, for I cannot share yours. Do not put a gulf between us.
If you loved me, you would already have read ‘The Imitation of Jesus
Christ.’”
The Phellion class, sons of the “Constitutionnel,” dislike the priestly
mind. Felix had the imprudence to reply to this sort of prayer from the
depths of an ardent heart:--
“You are repeating, Celeste, the lessons your confessor teaches you;
nothing, believe me, is more fatal to happiness than the interference of
priests in a home.”
“Oh!” cried Celeste, wounded to the quick, for love alone inspired her,
“you do not love! The voice of my heart is not in unison with yours!
You have not understood me, because you have not listened to me; but I
forgive you, for you know not what you say.”
She wrapped herself in solemn silence, and Felix went to the window and
drummed upon the panes,--music familiar to those who have indulged
in poignant reflections. Felix was, in fact, presenting the following
delicate and curious questions to the Phellion conscience.
“Celeste is a rich heiress, and, in yielding against the voice of
natural religion, to her ideas, I should have in view the making of what
is certainly an advantageous marriage,--an infamous act. I ought not, as
father of a family, to allow the priesthood to have an influence in my
home. If I yield to-day, I do a weak act, which will be followed by many
others equally pernicious to the authority of a husband and father. All
this is unworthy of a philosopher.”
Then he returned to his beloved.
“Celeste, I entreat you on my knees,” he said, “not to mingle that which
the law, in its wisdom, has separated. We live in two worlds,--society
and heaven. Each has its own way of salvation; but as to society, is it
not obeying God to obey the laws? Christ said: ‘Render unto Caesar that
which is Caesar’s.’ Caesar is the body politic. Dear, let us forget our
little quarrel.”
“Little quarrel!” cried the young enthusiast; “I want you to have my
whole heart as I want to have the whole of yours; and you make it
into two parts! Is not that an evil? You forget that marriage is a
sacrament.”
“Your priesthood have turned your head,” exclaimed the mathematician,
impatiently.
“Monsieur Phellion,” said Celeste, interrupting him hastily, “enough of
this!”
It was at this point of the quarrel that Theodose considered it
judicious to enter the room. He found Celeste pale, and the young
professor as anxious as a lover should be who has just irritated his
mistress.
“I heard the word ‘enough’; then something is too much?” he said,
inquiringly, looking in turn from Celeste to Felix.
“We were talking religion,” replied Felix, “and I was saying to
mademoiselle how dangerous ecclesiastical influence is in the bosom of
families.”
“That was not the point, monsieur,” said Celeste, sharply; “it was
to know if husband and wife could be of one heart when the one is an
atheist and the other Catholic.”
“Can there be such a thing as atheists?” cried Theodose, with all the
signs of extreme wonderment. “Could a true Catholic marry a Protestant?
There is no safety possible for a married pair unless they have perfect
conformity in the matter of religious opinions. I, who come from the
Comtat, of a family which counts a pope among its ancestors--for our
arms are: gules, a key argent, with supporters, a monk holding a church,
and a pilgrim with a staff, or, and the motto, ‘I open, I shut’--I am,
of course, intensely dogmatic on such points. But in these days, thanks
to our modern system of education, it does not seem to me strange that
religion should be called into question. I myself would never marry a
Protestant, had she millions, even if I loved her distractedly. Faith is
a thing that cannot be tampered with. ‘Una fides, unus Dominus,’ that is
my device in life.”
“You hear that!” cried Celeste, triumphantly, looking at Felix Phellion.
“I am not openly devout,” continued la Peyrade. “I go to mass at six
every morning, that I may not be observed; I fast on Fridays; I am,
in short, a son of the Church, and I would not undertake any serious
enterprise without prayer, after the ancient fashion of our ancestors;
but no one is able to notice my religion. A singular thing happened to
our family during the Revolution of 1789, which attached us more closely
than ever to our holy mother the Church. A poor young lady of the elder
branch of the Peyrades, who owned the little estate of la Peyrade,--for
we ourselves are Peyrades of Canquoelle, but the two branches inherit
from one another,--well, this young lady married, six years before
the Revolution, a barrister who, after the fashion of the times, was
Voltairean, that is to say, an unbeliever, or, if you choose, a deist.
He took up all the revolutionary ideas, and practised the charming rites
that you know of in the worship of the goddess Reason. He came into
our part of the country imbued with the ideas of the Convention, and
fanatical about them. His wife was very handsome; he compelled her to
play the part of Liberty; and the poor unfortunate creature went mad.
She died insane! Well, as things are going now it looks as if we might
have another 1793.”
This history, invented on the spot, made such an impression on Celeste’s
fresh and youthful imagination that she rose, bowed to the young men and
hastened to her chamber.
“Ah! monsieur, why did you tell her that?” cried Felix, struck to the
heart by the cold look the young girl, affecting profound indifference,
cast upon him. She fancied herself transformed into a goddess of Reason.
“Why not? What were you talking about?” asked Theodose.
“About my indifference to religion.”
“The great sore of this century,” replied Theodose, gravely.
“I am ready,” said Madame Colleville, appearing in a toilet of much
taste. “But what is the matter with my poor daughter? She is crying!”
“Crying? madame,” exclaimed Felix; “please tell her that I will study
‘The Imitation of Christ’ at once.”
Felix left the house with Theodose and Flavie, whose arm the barrister
pressed to let her know he would explain in the carriage the apparent
dementia of the young professor.
An hour later, Madame Colleville and Celeste, Colleville and Theodose
were entering the Thuilliers’ apartment to dine there. Theodose and
Flavie took Thuillier into the garden, where the former said to him:--
“Dear, good friend! you will have the cross within a week. Our charming
friend here will tell you about our visit to the Comtesse du Bruel.”
And Theodose left Thuillier, having caught sight of Desroches in the
act of being brought by Mademoiselle Thuillier into the garden; he went,
driven by a terrible and glacial presentiment, to meet him.
“My good friend,” said Desroches in his ear, “I have come to see if you
can procure at once twenty-five thousand francs plus two thousand six
hundred and eighty for costs.”
“Are you acting for Cerizet?” asked the barrister.
“Cerizet has put all the papers into the hands of Louchard, and you know
what you have to expect if arrested. Is Cerizet wrong in thinking you
have twenty-five thousand francs in your desk? He says you offered them
to him and he thinks it only natural not to leave them in your hands.”
“Thank you for taking the step, my good friend,” replied Theodose. “I
have been expecting this attack.”
“Between ourselves,” replied Desroches, “you have made an utter fool
of him, and he is furious. The scamp will stop at nothing to get his
revenge upon you--for he’ll lose everything if he forces you to fling
your barrister’s gown, as they say, to the nettles and go to prison.”
“I?” said Theodose. “I’m going to pay him. But even so, there will still
be five notes of mine in his hands, for five thousand francs each; what
does he mean to do with them?”
“Oh! after the affair of this morning, I can’t tell you; my client is a
crafty, mangy cur, and he is sure to have his little plans.”
“Look here, Desroches,” said Theodose, taking the hard, unyielding
attorney round the waist, “those papers are in your hands, are not
they?”
“Will you pay them?”
“Yes, in three hours.”
“Very good, then. Be at my office at nine o’clock; I’ll receive the
money and give you your notes; _but_, at half-past nine o’clock, they
will be in the sheriff’s hands.”
“To-night, then, at nine o’clock,” said Theodose.
“Nine o’clock,” repeated Desroches, whose glance had taken in the whole
family, then assembled in the garden.
Celeste, with red eyes, was talking to her godmother; Colleville and
Brigitte, Flavie and Thuillier were on the steps of the broad portico
leading to the entrance-hall. Desroches remarked to Theodose, who
followed him to the door:--
“You can pay off those notes.”
At a single glance the shrewd attorney had comprehended the whole scheme
of the barrister.