Every morning of the year, at exactly eight o’clock, a new and almost
tenantless house in a remote quarter of Paris, echoed to cries, calls,
merry laughter, ringing clear in the desert of the staircase:
“Father, don’t forget my music.”
“Father, my crochet wool.”
“Father, bring us some rolls.”
And the voice of the father calling from below:
“Yaia, bring me down my portfolio, please.”
“There you are, you see! He has forgotten his portfolio.”
And there would be a glad scurry from top to bottom of the house, a
running of all those pretty faces confused by sleep, of all those heads
with disordered hair which the owners made tidy as they ran, until the
moment when, leaning over the baluster, half a dozen girls bade loud
good-bye to a little, old gentleman, neat and well-groomed, whose
reddish face and short profile disappeared at length in the spiral
perspective of the stairs. M. Joyeuse had departed for his office.
At once the whole band, escaped from their cage, would rush quickly
upstairs again to the fourth floor, and, the door having been opened,
group themselves at an open casement to gain one last glimpse of their
father. The little man used to turn round, kisses were exchanged across
the distance, then the windows were closed, the new and tenantless house
became quiet again, except for the posters dancing their wild saraband
in the wind of the unfinished street, as if made gay, they also, by all
these proceedings. A moment later the photographer on the fifth floor
would descend to hang at the door his showcase, always the same, in
which was to be seen the old gentleman in a white tie surrounded by his
daughters in various groups; he went upstairs again in his turn, and the
calm which succeeded immediately upon this little morning uproar left
one to imagine that the “father” and his young ladies had re-entered the
case of photographs, where they remained smiling and motionless until
evening.
From the Rue Saint-Ferdinand to the establishment of Hemerlingue &
Son, his employers, M. Joyeuse had a good three-quarters of an hour’s
journey. He walked with head erect and straight, as though he had feared
to disarrange the smart knot of the cravat tied by his daughters, or his
hat put on by them, and when the eldest, ever anxious and prudent, just
as he went out raised his coat-collar to protect him against the
harsh gusts of the wind that blew round the street corner, even if the
temperature were that of a hothouse M. Joyeuse would not lower it again
until he reached the office, like the lover who, quitting his mistress’s
arms, dares not to move for fear of losing the intoxicating perfume.
A widower for some years, this worthy man lived only for his children,
thought only of them, went through life surrounded by those fair little
heads that fluttered around him confusedly as in a picture of the
Assumption. All his desires, all his projects, bore reference to “those
young ladies,” returned to them without ceasing, sometimes after long
circuits, for M. Joyeuse--this was connected no doubt with the fact that
he possessed a short neck and a small figure whereof his turbulent
blood made the circuit in a moment--was a man of fecund and astonishing
imagination. In his brain the ideas performed their evolutions with the
rapidity of hollow straws around a sieve. At the office, figures kept
his steady attention by reason of their positive quality; but, outside,
his mind took its revenge upon that inexorable occupation. The activity
of the walk, the habit that led him by a route where he was familiar
with the least incidents, allowed full liberty to his imaginative
faculties. He invented at these times extraordinary adventures, enough
of them to crank out a score of the serial stories that appear in the
newspapers.
If, for example, M. Joyeuse, as he went up the Faubourg Saint-Honore,
on the right-hand footwalk--he always took that one--noticed a heavy
laundry-cart going along at a quick pace, driven by a woman from the
country with a child perched on a bundle of linen and leaning over
somewhat:
“The child!” the terrified old fellow would cry. “Have a care of the
child!”
His voice would be lost in the noise of the wheels and his warning among
the secrets of Providence. The cart passed. He would follow it for a
moment with his eye, then resume his walk; but the drama begun in
his mind would continue to unfold itself there, with a thousand
catastrophes. The child had fallen. The wheels were about to pass over
him. M. Joyeuse dashed forward, saved the little creature on the very
brink of destruction; the pole of the cart, however, struck himself
full in the chest and he fell bathed in blood. Then he would see himself
borne to some chemists’ shop through the crowd that had collected. He
was placed in an ambulance, carried to his own house, and then suddenly
he would hear the piercing cry of his daughters, his well-beloved
daughters, when they beheld him in this condition. And that agonized
cry touched his heart so deeply, he would hear it so distinctly, so
realistically: “Papa, my dear papa,” that he would himself utter it
aloud in the street, to the great astonishment of the passers-by, in a
hoarse voice which would wake him from his fictitious nightmare.
Will you have another sample of this prodigious imagination? It is
raining, freezing; wretched weather. M. Joyeuse has taken the omnibus
to go to his office. Finding himself seated opposite a sort of colossus,
with the head of a brute and formidable biceps, M. Joyeuse, himself very
small, very puny, with his portfolio on his knees, draws in his legs in
order to make room for the enormous columns which support the monumental
body of his neighbour. As the vehicle moves on and as the rain beats on
the windows, M. Joyeuse falls into reverie. And suddenly the colossus
opposite, whose face is kind after all, is very much surprised to see
the little man change colour, look at him and grind his teeth, look at
him with ferocious eyes, an assassin’s eyes. Yes, with the eyes of a
veritable assassin, for at that moment M. Joyeuse is dreaming a terrible
dream. He sees one of his daughters sitting there opposite him, by the
side of this giant brute, and the wretch has put his arm round her waist
under her cape.
“Remove your hand, sir!” M. Joyeuse has already said twice over. The
other has only sneered. Now he wishes to kiss Elise.
“Ah, rascal!”
Too feeble to defend his daughter, M. Joyeuse, foaming with rage, draws
his knife from his pocket, stabs the insolent fellow full in the breast,
and with head high goes off, strong in the right of an outraged father,
to make his declaration at the nearest police-station.
“I have just killed a man in an omnibus!” At the sound of his own voice
actually uttering these sinister words, but not in the police-station,
the poor fellow wakes us, guesses from the bewildered manner
of the passengers that he must have spoken the words aloud,
and very quickly takes advantage of the conductor’s call,
“Saint-Philippe--Pantheon--Bastille--” to alight, feeling greatly
confused, amid general stupefaction.
This imagination constantly on the stretch, gave to M. Joyeuse a
singular physiognomy, feverish and worn, in strong contrast with the
general correct appearance of a subordinate clerk which he presented.
In one day he lived so many passionate existences. The race is more
numerous than one thinks of these waking dreamers, in whom a too
restricted fate compresses forces unemployed and heroic faculties.
Dreaming is the safety-valve through which all those expend themselves
with terrible ebullitions, as of the vapour of a furnace and floating
images that are forthwith dissipated into air. From these visions
some return radiant, others exhausted and discouraged, as they find
themselves once more on the every-day level. M. Joyeuse was of these
latter, rising without ceasing to heights whence a man cannot but
re-descend, somewhat bruised by the velocity of the transit.
Now, one morning that our “visionary” had left his house at his habitual
hour, and under the usual circumstances, he began at the turning of the
Rue Saint-Ferdinand one of his little private romances. As the end of
the year was at hand, perhaps it was the hammer-strokes on a wooden hut
which was being erected in the neighbouring timber-yard that caused his
thoughts to turn to “presents--New Year’s Day.” And immediately the word
bounty implanted itself in his mind as the first landmark of a marvelous
story. In the month of December all persons in Hemerlingue’s service
received double pay, and you know that in small households there are
founded on windfalls of this kind a thousand projects, ambitious or
kind, presents to be made, a piece of furniture to be replaced, a little
sum of money to be saved in a drawer against the unforeseen.
In simple fact, M. Joyeuse was not rich. His wife, a Mlle. de
Saint-Armand, tormented with ideas of greatness and society, had set
this little clerk’s household on a ruinous footing, and though since her
death three years had passed during which Bonne Maman had managed the
housekeeping with so much wisdom, they had not yet been able to save
anything, so heavy had proved the burden of the past. Suddenly it
occurred to the good fellow that this year the bounty would be larger
by reason of the increase of work which had been caused by the Tunisian
loan. The loan constituted a very fine stroke of business for the firm,
too fine even, for M. Joyeuse had permitted himself to remark in the
office that this time “Hemerlingue & Son had shaved the Turk a little
too close.”
“Certainly, yes, the bounty will be doubled,” reflected the visionary,
as he walked; and already he saw himself, a month thence, mounting with
his comrades, for the New Year’s visit, the little staircase that led
to Hemerlingue’s apartment. He announced the good news to them; then he
detained M. Joyeuse for a few words in private. And, behold, that master
habitually so cold in his manner, sheathed in his yellow fat as in
a bale of raw silk, became affectionate, paternal, communicative. He
desired to know how many daughters Joyeuse had.
“I have three; no, I should say, four, M. le Baron. I always confuse
them. The eldest is such a sensible girl.”
Further he wished to know their ages.
“Aline is twenty, M. le Baron. She is the eldest. Then we have Elise,
who is preparing for the examination which she must pass when she is
eighteen. Henriette, who is fourteen, and Zara or Yaia who is only
twelve.”
That pet name of Yaia intensely amused M. le Baron, who inquired next
what were the resources of this interesting family.
“My salary, M. le Baron; nothing else. I had a little money put aside,
but my poor wife’s illness, the education of the girls--”
“What you are earning is not sufficient, my dear Joyeuse. I raise your
salary to a thousand francs a month.”
“Oh, M. le Baron, it is too much.”
But although he had uttered this last sentence aloud, in the ear of
a policeman who watched with a mistrustful eye the little man pass,
gesticulating and nodding his head, the poor visionary awoke not. With
admiration he saw himself returning home, announcing the news to his
daughters, taking them to the theatre in the evening in celebration of
the happy day. _Dieu!_ how pretty they looked in the front of their box,
the Demoiselles Joyeuse, what a bouquet of rosy faces! And then, the
next day, the two eldest asked in marriage by--Impossible to determine
by whom, for M. Joyeuse had just suddenly found himself once more
beneath the arch of the Hemerlingue establishment, before the swing-door
surmounted by a “counting-house” in letters of gold.
“I shall always be the same, it seems,” said he to himself, laughing a
little and passing his hand over his forehead, on which the perspiration
stood in drops.
In a good humour as the result of this pleasant fancy and at the sight
of the fire crackling in the suite of parquet-floored offices, with
their screens of iron trellis-work and their air of secrecy in the cold
light of the ground floor, where one could count the pieces of gold
without dazzling his eyes, M. Joyeuse gave a gay greeting to the
other clerks and slipped on his working coat and his black velvet cap.
Suddenly, some one whistled from upstairs, and the cashier, applying his
ear to the tube, heard the oily and gelatinous voice of Hemerlingue,
the sole and veritable Hemerlingue--the other, the son, was always
absent--asking for M. Joyeuse.
What! Could the dream be continuing?
He was conscious of a great agitation; took the little inside staircase
which he had seen himself ascending just before so bravely, and found
himself in the banker’s private room, a narrow apartment, with a very
high ceiling, furnished only with green curtains and enormous leather
easy chairs of a size proportioned to the terrific bulk of the head of
the house. He was there, seated at his desk which his belly prevented
him from approaching very closely, obese, ill-shaped, and so yellow that
his round face with its hooked nose, the head of a fat and sick owl,
suggested as it were a light at the end of the solemn and gloomy room. A
rich Moorish merchant grown mouldy in the damp of his little court-yard.
Beneath his heavy eyelids, raised with an effort, his glance glittered
for a second when the accountant entered; he signed to him to approach,
and slowly, coldly, pausing to take breath between his sentences,
instead of “M. Joyeuse, how many daughters have you?” he said this:
“Joyeuse, you have allowed yourself to criticise in the office our last
operations in the Tunis market. Useless to defend yourself. Your remarks
have been reported to me word for word. And as I am unable to admit them
from the mouth of one in my service, I give you notice that dating from
the end of this month you cease to be a member of my establishment.”
A wave of blood mounted to the accountant’s face, fell back, returned
again, bringing each time a confused whizzing into his ears, into his
brain a tumult of thoughts and images.
His daughters!
What was to become of them?
Employment is so hard to find at that period of the year.
Poverty appeared before his eyes and also the vision of an unfortunate
man falling at Hemerlingue’s feet, supplicating him, threatening him,
springing at his throat in an access of despairing rage. All this
agitation passed over his features like a gust of wind which throws the
surface of a lake into ripples, fashioning there all manner of mobile
whirlpools; but he remained mute, standing in the same place, and upon
the master’s intimation that he could withdraw, went down with tottering
step to resume his work in the counting-house.
In the evening when he went home to the Rue Saint-Ferdinand, M. Joyeuse
told his daughters nothing. He did not dare. The idea of darkening that
radiant gaiety which was the life of the house, of making dull with
heavy tears those pretty bright eyes, was insupportable to him.
Timorous, too, and weak, he was of those who always say, “Let us wait
till to-morrow.” He waited therefore before speaking, at first until the
month of November should be ended, deluding himself with the vague hope
that Hemerlingue might change his mind, as though he did not know that
will as of some mollusk flabby and tenacious upon its ingot of gold.
Then when his salary had been paid up and another accountant had taken
his place before the high desk at which he had stood for so long, he
hoped to find something else quickly and repair his misfortune before
being obliged to confess it.
Every morning he feigned to start for the office, allowed himself to
be equipped and accompanied to the door as usual, his huge leather
portfolio all ready for the evening’s numerous commissions. Although he
would forget some of them on purpose because of the approaching and
so problematical end of the month, he did not lack time now to execute
them. He had his day to himself, the whole of an interminable day which
he spent in rushing about Paris in search for an employment. People gave
him addresses, excellent recommendations. But in that terrible month of
December, so cold and with such short hours of daylight, bringing with
it so many expenses and preoccupations, employees need to take patience
and employers also. Each man tries to end the year in peace, postponing
to the month of January, to that great leap of time towards a fresh
halting-place, any changes, ameliorations, attempts at a new life.
In every house where M. Joyeuse presented himself, he beheld faces
suddenly grow cold as soon as he explained the object of his visit.
“What! You are no longer with Hemerlingue & Son? How is that?”
He would explain the matter as best he could through a caprice of the
head of the firm, the ferocious Hemerlingue whom Paris knew; but he
was conscious of a coldness, a mistrust in the uniform reply which he
received: “Call on us again after the holidays.” And, timid as he was to
begin with, he reached a point at which he could no longer bring himself
to call on any one, a point at which he could walk past the same door
a score of times and never have crossed its threshold at all had it not
been for the thought of his daughters. This alone pushed him along by
the shoulders, put heart in his legs, despatched him in the course
of the same day to the opposite extremities of Paris, to very vague
addresses given to him by comrades, to a great manufactory of animal
black at Aubervilliers, where he was made to return for nothing three
days in succession.
Oh, the journeys in the rain, in the frost, the closed doors, the master
who is out or engaged, the promises given and immediately withdrawn,
the hopes deceived, the enervation of hours of waiting, the humiliations
reserved for every man who asks for work, as though it were a shameful
thing to lack it. M. Joyeuse knew all these melancholy things and, too,
the good will that tires and grows discouraged before the persistence of
evil fortune. And you may imagine how the hard martyrdom of “the man who
seeks a place” was rendered tenfold more bitter by the mirages of his
imagination, by those chimeras which rose before him from the Paris
pavements as over them he journeyed along on foot in every direction.
For a month he was one of those woeful puppets, talking in monologue,
gesticulating on the footways, from whom every chance collision with the
crowd wrests an exclamation as of one walking in his sleep. “I told you
so,” or “I have no doubt of it, sir.” One passes by, almost one would
laugh, but one is seized with pity before the unconsciousness of those
unhappy men possessed by a fixed idea, blind whom the dream leads, drawn
along by an invisible leash. The terrible thing was that after those
long, cruel days of inaction and fatigue, when M. Joyeuse returned home,
he had perforce to play the comedy of the man returning from his work,
to recount the incidents of the day, the things he had heard, the gossip
of the office with which he had been always wont to entertain his girls.
In humble homes there is always a name which comes up more often than
all others, which is invoked in days of stress, which is mingled with
every wish, with every hope, even with the games of the children,
penetrated as they are with its importance, a name which sustains in
the dwelling the part of a sub-Providence, or rather of a household
divinity, familiar and supernatural. In the Joyeuse family, it was
Hemerlingue, always Hemerlingue, returning ten times, twenty times a
day in the conversation of the girls, who associated it with all their
plans, with the most intimate details of their feminine ambitions.
“If Hemerlingue would only----” “All that depends on Hemerlingue.” And
nothing could be more charming than the familiarity with which these
young people spoke of that enormously wealthy man whom they had never
seen.
They would ask for news of him. Had their father spoken to him? Was he
in a good temper? And to think that we all of us, whatever our position,
however humble we be, however weighed down by fate, we have always
beneath us unfortunate beings more humble, yet more weighed down, for
whom we are great, for whom we are as gods, and in our quality of gods,
indifferent, disdainful, or cruel.
One imagines the torture of M. Joyeuse, obliged to invent stories and
anecdotes about the wretch who had so ruthlessly discharged him after
ten years of good service. He played his little comedy, however, so well
as completely to deceive everybody. Only one thing had been remarked,
and that was that father when he came home in the evening always sat
down to table with a great appetite. I believe it! Since he lost his
place the poor man had gone without his luncheon.
The days passed. M. Joyeuse found nothing. Yes, one place as accountant
in the Territorial Bank, which he refused, however, knowing too much
about banking operations, about all the corners and innermost recesses
of the financial Bohemia in general, and of the Territorial bank in
particular, to set foot in that den.
“But,” said Passajon to him--for it was Passajon who, meeting the honest
fellow and hearing that he was out of employment, had suggested to
him that he should come to Paganetti’s--“but since I repeat that it is
serious. We have lots of money. They pay one. I have been paid. See how
prosperous I look.”
In effect, the old office porter had a new livery, and beneath his tunic
with its buttons of silver-gilt his paunch protruded, majestic. All
the same M. Joyeuse had not allowed himself to be tempted, even after
Passajon, opening wide his shallow-set blue eyes, had whispered into his
ear with emphasis these words rich in promises:
“The Nabob is in the concern.”
Even after that, M. Joyeuse had had the courage to say No. Was it not
better to die of hunger than to enter a fraudulent house of which
he might perhaps one day be summoned to report upon the books in the
courts?
So he continued to wander; but, discouraged, he no longer sought employ.
As it was necessary that he should absent himself from home, he used
to linger over the stalls on the quays, lean for hours on the parapets,
watch the water flow and the unladening of the vessels. He became one of
those idlers whom one sees in the first rank whenever a crowd collects
in the street, taking shelter from the rain under the porches, warming
himself at the stoves where, in the open air, the tar of the asphalters
reeks, sinking on a bench of some boulevard when his legs could no
longer carry him.
To do nothing! What a fine way of making life seem longer!
On certain days, however, when M. Joyeuse was too weary or the sky
too unkind, he would wait at the end of the street until his daughters
should have closed their window again and, returning to the house,
keeping close to the walls, would mount the staircase very quickly, pass
before his own door holding his breath, and take refuge in the apartment
of the photographer Andre Maranne, who, aware of his ill-fortune, always
gave him that kindly welcome which the poor have for each other. Clients
are rare so near the outskirts of the town. He used to remain long hours
in the studio, talking in a very low voice, reading at his friend’s
side, listening to the rain on the window-panes or the wind that blew
as it does on the open sea, shaking the old doors and the window-sashes
below in the wood-sheds. Beneath him he could hear sounds well known
and full of charm, songs that escaped in the satisfaction of work
accomplished, assembled laughter, the pianoforte lesson being given by
Bonne Maman, the tic-tac of the metronome, all the delicious household
stir that pleased his heart. He lived with his darlings, who certainly
never could have guessed that they had him so near them.
Once, when Maranne was out, M. Joyeuse keeping faithful watch over the
studio and its new apparatus, heard two little strokes given on the
ceiling of the apartment below, two separate, very distinct strokes,
then a cautious pattering of fingers, like the scamper of mice. The
friendliness of the photographer with his neighbours sufficiently
authorized these communications like those of prisoners. But what did
they mean? How reply to what seemed a call? Quite at hazard, he repeated
the two strokes, the light tapping, and the conversation ended there. On
the return of Andre Maranne he learned the explanation of the incident.
It was very simple. Sometimes, in the course of the day, the young
ladies below, who only saw their neighbour in the evening, would inquire
how things were going with him, whether any clients were coming in. The
signal he had heard meant, “Is business good to-day?” And M. Joyeuse had
replied, obeying only an instinct without any knowledge, “Fairly well
for the season.” Although young Maranne was very red as he made this
affirmation, M. Joyeuse accepted his word at once. Only this idea of
frequent communications between the two households made him afraid for
the secrecy of his position, and from that time forward he cut himself
off from what he used to call his “artistic days.” Moreover, the
moment was approaching when he would no longer be able to conceal his
misfortune, the end of the month arriving, complicated by the ending of
the year.
Paris was already assuming the holiday appearance which it wears during
the last weeks of December. In the way of national or popular rejoicing
it had little left but that. The follies of the Carnival died with
Gavarni, the religious festivals with their peals of bells which one
scarcely hears amid the noise of the streets confine themselves within
their heavy church-doors, the 15th of August has never been anything but
the Saint Charles-the-Great of the barracks; but Paris has maintained
its observance of New Year’s Day.
From the beginning of December an immense childishness begins to
permeate the town. You see hand-carts pass laden with gilded drums,
wooden horses, playthings by the dozen. In the industrial quarters, from
top to bottom of the five-storied houses, the old private residences
still standing in that low-lying district, where the warehouses have
such lofty ceilings and majestic double doors, the nights are passed in
the making up of gauze flowers and spangles, in the gumming of labels
upon satin-lined boxes, in sorting, marking, packing, the thousand
details of the toy, that great branch of commerce on which Paris places
the seal of its elegance. There is a smell about of new wood, of fresh
paint, glossy varnish, and, in the dust of garrets, on the wretched
stairways where the poor leave behind them all the dirt through which
they have passed, there lie shavings of rosewood, scraps of satin and
velvet, bits of tinsel, all the _debris_ of the luxury whose end is to
dazzle the eyes of children. Then the shop-windows are decorated. Behind
the panes of clear glass the gilt of presentation-books rises like a
glittering wave under the gaslight, the stuffs of various and tempting
colours display their brittle and heavy folds, while the young ladies
behind the counter, with their hair dressed tapering to a point and with
a ribbon beneath their collar, tie up the article, little finger in the
air, or fill bags of moire into which the sweets fall like a rain of
pearls.
But, over against this kind of well-to-do business, established in
its own house, warmed, withdrawn behind its rich shop-front, there is
installed the improvised commerce of those wooden huts, open to the
wind of the streets, of which the double row gives to the boulevards
the aspect of some foreign mall. It is in these that you find the true
interest and the poetry of New Year’s gifts. Sumptuous in the district
of the Madeleine, well-to-do towards the Boulevard Saint-Denis, of more
“popular” order as you ascend to the Bastille, these little sheds adapt
themselves according to their public, calculate their chances of success
by the more or less well-lined purses of the passers-by. Among these,
there are set up portable tables, laden with trifling objects, miracles
of the Parisian trade that deals in such small things, constructed out
of nothing, frail and delicate, and which the wind of fashion sometimes
sweeps forward in its great rush by reason of their very triviality.
Finally, along the curbs of the footways, lost in the defile of the
carriage traffic which grazes their wandering path, the orange-girls
complete this peripatetic commerce, heaping up the sun-coloured fruit
beneath their lanterns of red paper, crying “La Valence” amid the fog,
the tumult, the excessive haste which Paris displays at the ending of
its year.
Ordinarily, M. Joyeuse was accustomed to make one of the busy crowd
which goes and comes with the jingle of money in its pocket and parcels
in every hand. He would wander about with Bonne Maman at his side on the
lookout for New Year’s presents for his girls, stop before the booths of
the small dealers, who are accustomed to do much business and excited
by the appearance of the least important customer, have based upon
this short season hopes of extraordinary profits. And there would be
colloquies, reflections, an interminable perplexity to know what to
select in that little complex brain of his, always ahead of the present
instant and of the occupation of the moment.
This year, alas! nothing of that kind. He wandered sadly through the
town in its rejoicing, time seeming to hang all the heavier for the
activity around him, jostled, hustled, as all are who stand obstructing
the way of active folk, his heart beating with a perpetual fear, for
Bonne Maman for some days past, in conversation with him at table,
had been making significant allusions with regard to the New Year’s
presents. Consequently he avoided finding himself alone with her and had
forbidden her to come to meet him at the office at closing-time. But
in spite of all his efforts he knew the moment was drawing near when
concealment would be impossible and his grievous secret be unveiled.
Was, then, a very formidable person, Bonne Maman, that M. Joyeuse should
stand in such fear of her? By no means. A little stern, that was all,
with a pretty smile that instantly forgave one. But M. Joyeuse was
a coward, timid from his birth; twenty years of housekeeping with a
masterful wife, “a member of the nobility,” having made him a slave for
ever, like those convicts who, after their imprisonment is over, have to
undergo a period of surveillance. And for him this meant all his life.
One evening the Joyeuse family was gathered in the little drawing-room,
last relic of its splendour, still containing two upholstered chairs,
many crochet decorations, a piano, two lamps crowned with little green
shades, and a what-not covered with bric-a-brac.
True family life exists in humble homes.
For the sake of economy, there was lighted for the whole household but
one fire and a single lamp, around which the occupations and amusements
of all were grouped. A fine big family lamp, whose old painted
shade--night scenes pierced with shining dots--had been the astonishment
and the joy of every one of those young girls in her early childhood.
Issuing softly from the shadow of the room, four young heads were bent
forward, fair or dark, smiling or intent, into that intimate and warm
circle of light which illumined them as far as the eyes, seemed to feed
the fire of their glance, to shelter them, protect them, preserve them
from the black cold blowing outside, from phantoms, from snares, from
miseries and terrors, from all the sinister things that a winter night
in Paris brings forth in the remoteness of its quiet suburbs.
Thus, drawn close together in a small room at the top of the lonely
house, in the warmth, the security of their comfortable home, the
Joyeuse household seems like a nest right at the top of a lofty
tree. The girls sew, read, chat a little. A leap of the lamp-flame,
a crackling of fire, is what you may hear, with from time to time an
exclamation from M. Joyeuse, a little removed from his small circle,
lost in the shadow where he hides his anxious brow and all the
extravagance of his imagination. Just now he is imagining that in
the distress into which he finds himself driven beyond possibility
of escape, in that absolute necessity of confessing everything to his
children, this evening, at latest to-morrow, an unhoped-for succour may
come to him. Hemerlingue, seized with remorse, sends to him, as to
all those who took part in the work connected with the Tunis loan, his
December gratuity. A tall footman brings it: “On behalf of M. le Baron.”
The visionary says those words aloud. The pretty faces turn towards him;
the girls laugh, move their chairs, and the poor fellow awakes suddenly
to reality.
Oh, how angry he is with himself now for his delay in confessing all,
for that false security which he has maintained around him and which he
will have to destroy at a blow. What need had he, too, to criticise that
Tunis loan? At this moment he even reproaches himself for not having
accepted a place in the Territorial Bank. Had he the right to refuse?
Ah, the sorry head of a family, without strength to keep or to defend
the happiness of his own! And, glancing at the pretty group within
the circle of the lamp-shade, whose reposeful aspect forms so great a
contrast with his own internal agitation, he is seized by a remorse so
violent for the weakness of his soul that his secret rises to his lips,
is about to escape him in a burst of sobs, when the ring of a bell--no
chimera, that--gives them all a start and arrests him at the very moment
when he was about to speak.
Whoever could it be, coming at this hour? They had lived in retirement
since the mother’s death and saw almost nobody. Andre Maranne, when
he came down to spend a few minutes with them, tapped like a familiar
friend. Profound silence in the drawing-room, long colloquy on the
landing. Finally, the old servant--she had been in the family as long as
the lamp--showed in a young man, complete stranger, who stopped, struck
with admiration at the charming picture of the four darlings gathered
round the table. This made his entrance timid, rather awkward. However,
he explained clearly the object of his visit. He had been referred to M.
Joyeuse by an honest fellow of his acquaintance, old Passajon, to take
lessons in bookkeeping. One of his friends happened to be engaged in
large financial transactions in connection with an important joint-stock
company. He wished to be of service to him in keeping an eye on the
employment of the capital, the straightforwardness of the operations;
but he was a lawyer, little familiar with financial methods, with the
terms employed in banking. Could not M. Joyeuse in the course of a few
months, with three or four lessons a week--
“Yes, indeed, sir, yes, indeed,” stammered the father, quite overcome by
this unlooked-for piece of good luck. “Assuredly I can undertake, in a
few months, to qualify you for such auditing work. Where shall we have
our lessons?”
“Here, at your own house, if you are agreeable,” said the young man,
“for I am anxious that no one should know that I am working at the
subject. But I shall be grieved if I always frighten everybody away as I
have this evening.”
For, at the first words of the visitor, the four curly heads had
disappeared, with little whisperings, and with rustlings of skirts, and
the drawing-room looked very bare now that the big circle of white light
was empty.
Always quick to take offence, where his daughters were concerned, M.
Joyeuse replied that “the young girls were accustomed to retire early
every evening,” and the words were spoken in a brief, dry tone which
very clearly signified: “Let us talk of our lessons, young man, if you
please.” Days were then fixed, free hours in the evening.
As for the terms, they would be whatever monsieur desired.
Monsieur mentioned a sum.
The accountant became quite red. It was the amount he used to earn at
Hemerlingue’s.
“Oh, no, that is too much.”
But the other was no longer listening. He was seeking for words, as
though he had something very difficult to say, and suddenly, making up
his mind to it:
“Here is your first month’s salary.”
“But, monsieur--”
The young man insisted. He was a stranger. It was only fair that he
should pay in advance. Evidently, Passajon has told his secret.
M. Joyeuse understood, and in a low voice said, “Thank you, oh, thank
you,” so deeply moved that words failed him. Life! it meant life,
several months of life, the time to turn round, to find another place.
His darlings would want for nothing. They would have their New Year’s
presents. Oh, the mercy of Providence!
“Till Wednesday, then, M. Joyeuse.”
“Till Wednesday, monsieur--”
“De Gery--Paul de Gery.”
And they separated, both delighted, fascinated, the one by the
apparition of this unexpected saviour, the other by the adorable picture
of which he had only a glimpse, all those young girls grouped round the
table covered with books, exercise-books, and skeins of wool, with an
air of purity, of industrious honesty. This was a new Paris for Paul de
Gery, a courageous, home-like Paris, very different from that which he
already knew, a Paris of which the writers of stories in the newspapers
and the reporters never speak, and which recalled to him his own country
home, with an additional charm, that charm which the struggle and tumult
around lend to the tranquil, secured refuge.