Denoisel had spoken as he really felt. If he had sometimes wished for
wealth, he had never envied people who had it. He had a sincere and
thorough contempt for money--the contempt of a man who is rich with very
little.
Denoisel was a Parisian, or rather he was the true Parisian. Well up in
all the experiences of Paris, wonderfully skilled in the great art of
living, thanks to the habits and customs of Parisian life, he was the
very man for that life; he had all its instincts, its sentiments, and
its genius. He represented perfectly that very modern personage, the
civilized man, triumphing, day by day, like the inhabitants of a forest
of Bondy, over the price of things, over the costly life of capitals, as
the savage triumphs over nature in a virgin forest. He had all the show
and glitter of wealth. He lived among rich people, frequented their
restaurants and clubs, had their habits, and shared in their amusements.
He knew some of the wealthiest people, and all that money opened to them
was open to him. He was seen at the grand private balls of the
Provençaux, at the races, and at first nights at the theatres. In summer
he went to the watering-places, to the sea, and to the gambling resorts.
He dressed like a man who owns a carriage.
And yet Denoisel only possessed between four and five thousand pounds.
Belonging to a family that had been steeped in the ideas of the past
with regard to property, attached and devoted to landed wealth, always
talking of bankruptcy, and as mistrustful of stocks and shares as
peasants formerly were of bank-notes, Denoisel had shaken himself free
of all the prejudices of his own people. Without troubling about the
advice, the remonstrances, the indignation, and the threats of old and
distant relatives, he had sold the small farms which his father and
mother had left him. It seemed to him that there was no longer any
proportion between the revenue of land and the expenses of modern life.
In his opinion landed estate might have been a means of wealth at the
time when Paul de Kock's novels said of a young man, "Paul was rich, he
had two hundred and fifty a year." But since that time it had, according
to him, become an anachronism, a kind of archaic property, a fancy fox
which was only permissible in very wealthy people. He therefore realized
his land and turned it into a small capital, which he placed, after
consulting with a friend of his who frequented the Stock Exchange, in
foreign bonds, in shares and securities, thus doubling and tripling his
revenue without any risk to his regular income. Having thus converted
his capital into a figure which meant nothing, except in the eyes of a
notary, and which no longer regulated his current means, Denoisel
arranged his life as he had done his money. He organized his expenses.
He knew exactly the cost in Paris of vanity, little extras, bargains,
and all such ruinous things. He was not ashamed to add up a bill himself
before paying it. Away from home he only smoked fourpenny cigars, but at
home he smoked pipes. He knew where to buy things, discovered the new
shops, which give such good value during the first three months. He knew
the wine-cellars at the various restaurants, ordered Chambertin a
certain distance up the boulevards, and only ordered it there. If he
gave a dinner, his _menu_ won the respect of the waiter. And with all
that, he knew how to order supper for four shillings at the Café
Anglais.
All his expenses were regulated with the same skill. He went to one of
the first tailors in Paris, but a friend of his who was in the Foreign
Office procured for him from London all the suits he wanted between the
seasons. When he had a present to make, or any New Year's gifts to buy,
he always knew of a cargo of Indian or Chinese things that had just
arrived, or he remembered an old piece of Saxony or Sèvres china that
was lying hidden away in some shop in an unfrequented part of Paris, one
of those old curiosities, the price of which cannot be discovered by
the person for whom it is destined. All this with Denoisel was
spontaneous, natural, and instinctive. This never-ending victory of
Parisian intelligence over all the extravagance of life had nothing of
the meanness and pettiness of sordid calculation about it. It was the
happy discovery of a scheme of existence under satisfactory conditions,
and not a series of vulgar petty economies, and in the well-organized
expenditure of his six hundred pounds a year the man remained liberal
and high-minded: he avoided what was too expensive for him, and never
attempted to beat prices down. Denoisel had a flat of his own on the
first storey of a well-ordered house with a carpeted staircase. He had
only three rooms, but the Boulevard des Italiens was at his very door.
His little drawing-room, which he had furnished as a smoking-den, was
charming. It was one of those snug little rooms which Parisian
upholsterers are so clever in arranging. It was all draped and furnished
with chintz, and had divans as wide as beds. It had been Denoisel's own
wish that the absence of all objects of art should complete the cheerful
look of the room. He was waited on in the morning by his hall-porter,
who brought him a cup of chocolate and did all the necessary housework.
He dined at a club or restaurant or with friends.
The low rent and the simplicity of his household and domestic
arrangements left Denoisel more of that money of which wealthy people
are so often short, that money for the little luxuries of life, which is
more necessary than any other in Paris, and which is known as
pocket-money. Occasionally, however, that _force majeure_, the
Unforeseen, would suddenly arrive in the midst of this regular existence
and disarrange its equilibrium and its budget.
Denoisel would then disappear from Paris for a time. He would ruralize
at some little country inn, near a river, on half-a-crown a day, and he
would spend no other money than what was necessary for tobacco. Two or
three winters, finding himself quite out of funds, he had emigrated,
and, on discovering a city like Florence, where happiness costs nothing
and where the living is almost as inexpensive as that happiness, he had
stayed there six months, lodging in a room with a cupola, dining _à la
trattoria_ on truffles with Parmesan cheese, passing his evenings in the
boxes of society people, going to the Grand Duke's balls, fêted, invited
everywhere, with white camellias in his buttonhole--economizing in the
happiest way in the world.
Denoisel spent no more for his love-affairs than for other things. It
was no longer a question of self-respect with him, so that he only paid
what he thought them worth. And yet such things had been his one
allurement as a young man. He had, however, always been cool and
methodical, even in his love-affairs. He had wanted, in a lordly way, to
test for himself what the love of the woman who was the most in vogue in
Paris was like. He allowed himself for this experiment about two
thousand pounds of the seven thousand he then possessed, and, during the
six months that he was the accepted lover of the celebrated Génicot, a
woman who would give a five-pound note as a tip to her postillion on
returning from the Marche, he lived in the same style as a man with five
thousand a year. When the six months were over he left her, and she, for
the first time in her life, was in love with a man who had paid for that
love.
Tempered by this proof he had had several other experiences afterward,
until they had palled on him; and then there had suddenly come to him,
not a desire for further love adventures, but a great curiosity about
women. He set out to discover all that was unforeseen, unexpected, and
unknown to him in woman. All actresses seemed to him very much the same
kind of courtesan, and all courtesans very much the same kind of
actress. What attracted him now was the unclassed woman, the woman that
bewilders the observer and the oldest Parisian. He often went wandering
about at night, vaguely and irresistibly led on by one of those
creatures who are neither all vice nor all virtue, and who walk so
gracefully along in the mire. Sometimes he was dazzled by one of those
fine-looking girls, so often seen in Paris, who seem to brighten
everything as they pass along, and he would turn round to look at her
and stand there even after she had suddenly disappeared in the darkness
of some passage. His vocation was to discover tarnished stars. Now and
then in some faubourg he would come across one of these marvellous
daughters of the people and of Nature, and he would talk to her, watch
her, listen to her, and study her; then when she wearied him he would
let her go, and it would amuse him later on to raise his hat to her when
he met her again driving in a carriage.
Denoisel's wealthy air won for him a welcome in social circles. He soon
established himself there and on a superior footing, thanks to his
geniality and wit, the services of every kind he was always ready to
render, and the need every one had of him. His large circle of
acquaintances among foreigners, artists, and theatrical people, his
knowledge of the ins and outs of things when small favours were
required, made him very valuable on hundreds of occasions. Every one
applied to him for a box at a theatre, permission to visit a prison or a
picture gallery, an entrance for a lady to the law courts at some trial,
or a foreign decoration for some man. In two or three duels in which he
had served as seconds, he had shown sound sense, decision, and a manly
regard for the honour as well as the life of the man for whom he was
answerable. People were under all kinds of obligations to him, and the
respect they had for him was not lessened by his reputation as a
first-rate swordsman. His character had won for him the esteem of all
with whom he came in contact, and he was even held in high consideration
by wealthy people, whose millions, nevertheless, were not always
respected by him.