“Do you take me for a fool, like your mother?” he exclaimed. “And
do you think I don’t know what life you lead?”
“My life is that of a poor devil who works as hard as he can.”
“Indeed! How is it, then, that women are constantly seen at your
house, whose dresses and manners are a scandal in the neighborhood?”
“You have been deceived, father.”
“I have seen.”
“It is impossible. Let me explain.”
“No, you would have your trouble for nothing. You are, and you will
ever remain, the same; and it would be folly on my part to introduce
into an office where I enjoy the esteem of all, a fellow, who, some
day or other, will be fatally dragged into the mud by some lost
creature.”
Such discussions were not calculated to make the relations between
father and son more cordial. Several times M. Favoral had
insinuated, that, since Maxence lodged away from home, he might as
well dine away too. And he would evidently have notified him to
do so, had he not been prevented by a remnant of human respect,
and the fear of gossip.
On the other hand, the bitter regret of having, perhaps, spoiled
his life, the uncertainty of the future, the penury of the moment,
all the unsatisfied desires of youth, kept Maxence in a state of
perpetual irritation.
The excellent Mme. Favoral exhausted all her arguments to quiet him.
“Your father is harsh for us,” she said; “but is he less harsh for
himself? He forgives nothing; but he has never needed to be
forgiven himself. He does not understand youth, but he has never
been young himself; and at twenty he was as grave and as cold as
you see him now. How could he know what pleasure is?--he to whom
the idea has never come to take an hour’s enjoyment.”
“Have I, then, been guilty of any crimes, to be thus treated by my
father?” exclaimed Maxence, flushed with anger. “Our existence here
is an unheard-of thing. You, poor, dear mother!--you have never
had the free disposition of a five-franc-piece. Gilberte spends
her days turning her dresses, after having had them dyed. I am
driven to a petty clerkship. And my father has fifty thousand
francs a year!”
Such, indeed, was the figure at which the most moderate estimated
M. Favoral’s fortune. M. Chapelain, who was supposed to be well
informed, insinuated freely that his friend Vincent, besides being
the cashier of the Mutual Credit, must also be one of its principal
stock-holders. Now, judging from the dividend which had just been
paid, the Mutual Credit must, since the war, have realized enormous
profits. All its enterprises were successful; and it was on the
point of negotiating a foreign loan which would infallibly fill its
exchequer to overflowing.
M. Favoral, moreover, defended himself feebly from these accusations
of concealed opulence. When M. Desormeaux told him, “Come, now,
between us, candidly, how many millions have you?” he had such a
strange way of affirming that people were very much mistaken, that
his friends’ convictions became only the more settled. And, as
soon as they had a few thousand francs of savings, they promptly
brought them to him, imitated in this by a goodly number of the
small capitalists of the neighborhood, who were wont to remark
among themselves,
“That man is safer than the bank!”
Millionaire or otherwise, the cashier of the Mutual Credit became
daily more difficult to live with. If strangers, those who had
with him but a superficial intercourse, if the Saturday guests
themselves, discovered in him no appreciable change, his wife and
his children followed with anxious surprise the modifications of
his humor.
If outwardly he still appeared the same impassible, precise, and
grave man, he showed himself at home more fretful than an old maid,
--nervous, agitated, and subject to the oddest whims. After
remaining three or four days without opening his lips, he would
begin to speak upon all sorts of subjects with amazing volubility.
Instead of watering his wine freely, as formerly, he had begun to
drink it pure; and he often took two bottles at his meal, excusing
himself upon the necessity that he felt the need of stimulating
himself a little after his excessive labors.
Then he would be taken with fits of coarse gayety; and he related
singular anecdotes, intermingled with slang expressions, which
Maxence alone could understand.
On the morning of the first day of January, 1872, as he sat down
to breakfast, he threw upon the table a roll of fifty napoleons,
saying to his children,
“Here is your New Year’s gift! Divide, and buy anything you like.”
And as they were looking at him, staring, stupid with astonishment,
“Well, what of it?” he added with an oath. “Isn’t it well, once in
a while, to scatter the coins a little?”
Those unexpected thousand francs Maxence and Mlle. Gilberte applied
to the purchase of a shawl, which their mother had wished for
ten years.
She laughed and she cried with pleasure and emotion, the poor woman;
and, whilst draping it over her shoulders,
“Well, well, my dear children,” she said: “your father, after all,
is not such a bad man.”
Of which they did not seem very well convinced. “One thing is sure,”
remarked Mlle. Gilberte: “to permit himself such liberality, papa
must be awfully rich.”
M. Favoral was not present at this scene. The yearly accounts kept
him so closely confined to his office, that he remained forty-eight
hours without coming home. A journey which he was compelled to
undertake for M. de Thaller consumed the balance of the week.
But on his return he seemed satisfied and quiet. Without giving up
his situation at the Mutual Credit, he was about, he stated, to
associate himself with the Messrs. Jottras, M. Saint Pavin of
“The Financial Pilot,” and M. Costeclar, to undertake the
construction of a foreign railway.
M. Costeclar was at the head of this enterprise, the enormous
profits of which were so certain and so clear; that they could be
figured in advance.
And whilst on this same subject,
“You were very wrong,” he said to Mlle. Gilberte, “not to make haste
and marry Costeclar when he was willing to have you. You will never
find another such match,--a man who, before ten years, will be a
financial power.”
The very name of M. Costeclar had the effect of irritating the young
girl.
“I thought you had fallen out?” she said to her father.
“So we had,” he replied with some embarrassment, “because he has
never been willing to tell me why he had withdrawn; but people
always make up again when they have interests in common.”
Formerly, before the war, M. Favoral would certainly never have
condescended to enter into all these details. But he was becoming
almost communicative. Mlle. Gilberte, who was observing him with
interested attention, fancied she could see that he was yielding
to that necessity of expansion, more powerful than the will itself,
which besets the man who carries within him a weighty secret.
Whilst for twenty years he had, so to speak, never breathed a word
on the subject of the Thaller family, now he was continually
speaking of them. He told his Saturday friends all about the
princely style of the baron, the number of his servants and horses,
the color of his liveries, the parties that he gave, what he spent
for pictures and objects of art, and even the very names of his
mistresses; for the baron had too much respect for himself not to
lay every year a few thousand napoleons at the feet of some young
lady sufficiently conspicuous to be mentioned in the society
newspapers.
M. Favoral confessed that he did not approve the baron; but it was
with a sort of bitter hatred that he spoke of the baroness. It was
impossible, he affirmed to his guests, to estimate even approximately
the fabulous sums squandered by her, scattered, thrown to the four
winds. For she was not prodigal, she was prodigality itself,--that
idiotic, absurd, unconscious prodigality which melts a fortune in a
turn of the hand; which cannot even obtain from money the
satisfaction of a want, a wish, or a fancy.
He said incredible things of her,--things which made Mme.
Desclavettes jump upon her seat, explaining that he learned all
these details from M. de Thaller, who had often commissioned him to
pay his wife’s debts, and also from the baroness herself, who did
not hesitate to call sometimes at the office for twenty francs; for
such was her want of order, that, after borrowing all the savings
of her servants, she frequently had not two cents to throw to a
beggar.
Neither did the cashier of the Mutual Credit seem to have a very
good opinion of Mademoiselle de Thaller.
Brought up at hap-hazard, in the kitchen much more than in the
parlor, until she was twelve, and, later, dragged by her mother
anywhere,--to the races, to the first representations, to the
watering-places, always escorted by a squadron of the young men
of the bourse, Mlle. de Thaller had adopted a style which would
have been deemed detestable in a man. As soon as some questionable
fashion appeared, she appropriated it at once, never finding any
thing eccentric enough to make herself conspicuous. She rode on
horseback, fenced, frequented pigeon-shooting matches, spoke slang,
sang Theresa’s songs, emptied neatly her glass of champagne, and
smoked her cigarette.
The guests were struck dumb with astonishment.
“But those people must spend millions!” interrupted M. Chapelain.