While old Saillard was driving across Paris his son-in-law, Isidore
Baudoyer, and his daughter, Elisabeth, Baudoyer’s wife, were playing
a virtuous game of boston with their confessor, the Abbe Gaudron,
in company with a few neighbors and a certain Martin Falleix, a
brass-founder in the fauborg Saint-Antoine, to whom Saillard had loaned
the necessary money to establish a business. This Falleix, a
respectable Auvergnat who had come to seek his fortune in Paris with his
smelting-pot on his back, had found immediate employment with the firm
of Brezac, collectors of metals and other relics from all chateaux
in the provinces. About twenty-seven years of age, and spoiled, like
others, by success, Martin Falleix had had the luck to become the active
agent of Monsieur Saillard, the sleeping-partner in the working out of
a discovery made by Falleix in smelting (patent of invention and gold
medal granted at the exposition of 1825). Madame Baudoyer, whose only
daughter was treading--to use an expression of old Saillard’s--on the
tail of her twelve years, laid claim to Falleix, a thickset, swarthy,
active young fellow, of shrewd principles, whose education she was
superintending. The said education, according to her ideas, consisted in
teaching him to play boston, to hold his cards properly, and not to let
others see his game; to shave himself regularly before he came to the
house, and to wash his hands with good cleansing soap; not to swear, to
speak her kind of French, to wear boots instead of shoes, cotton shirts
instead of sacking, and to brush up his hair instead of plastering
it flat. During the preceding week Elisabeth had finally succeeded in
persuading Falleix to give up wearing a pair of enormous flat earrings
resembling hoops.
“You go too far, Madame Baudoyer,” he said, seeing her satisfaction at
the final sacrifice; “you order me about too much. You make me clean my
teeth, which loosens them; presently you will want me to brush my nails
and curl my hair, which won’t do at all in our business; we don’t like
dandies.”
Elisabeth Baudoyer, nee Saillard, is one of those persons who escape
portraiture through their utter commonness; yet who ought to be
sketched, because they are specimens of that second-rate Parisian
bourgeoisie which occupies a place above the well-to-do artisan and
below the upper middle classes,--a tribe whose virtues are well-nigh
vices, whose defects are never kindly, but whose habits and manners,
dull and insipid though they be, are not without a certain originality.
Something pinched and puny about Elisabeth Saillard was painful to the
eye. Her figure, scarcely over four feet in height, was so thin that
the waist measured less than twenty inches. Her small features, which
clustered close about the nose, gave her face a vague resemblance to a
weasel’s snout. Though she was past thirty years old she looked scarcely
more than sixteen. Her eyes, of porcelain blue, overweighted by heavy
eyelids which fell nearly straight from the arch of the eyebrows, had
little light in them. Everything about her appearance was commonplace:
witness her flaxen hair, tending to whiteness; her flat forehead, from
which the light did not reflect; and her dull complexion, with gray,
almost leaden, tones. The lower part of the face, more triangular than
oval, ended irregularly the otherwise irregular outline of her face.
Her voice had a rather pretty range of intonation, from sharp to sweet.
Elisabeth was a perfect specimen of the second-rate little bourgeoisie
who lectures her husband behind the curtains; obtains no credit for her
virtues; is ambitious without intelligent object, and solely through the
development of her domestic selfishness. Had she lived in the country
she would have bought up adjacent land; being, as she was, connected
with the administration, she was determined to push her way. If we
relate the life of her father and mother, we shall show the sort of
woman she was by a picture of her childhood and youth.
Monsieur Saillard married the daughter of an upholsterer keeping shop
under the arcades of the Market. Limited means compelled Monsieur and
Madame Saillard at their start in life to bear constant privation. After
thirty-three years of married life, and twenty-nine years of toil in
a government office, the property of “the Saillards”--their circle
of acquaintance called them so--consisted of sixty thousand francs
entrusted to Falleix, the house in the place Royale, bought for forty
thousand in 1804, and thirty-six thousand francs given in dowry to their
daughter Elisabeth. Out of this capital about fifty thousand came
to them by the will of the widow Bidault, Madame Saillard’s mother.
Saillard’s salary from the government had always been four thousand five
hundred francs a year, and no more; his situation was a blind alley
that led nowhere, and had tempted no one to supersede him. Those ninety
thousand francs, put together sou by sou, were the fruit therefore of a
sordid economy unintelligently employed. In fact, the Saillards did
not know how better to manage their savings than to carry them, five
thousand francs at a time, to their notary, Monsieur Sorbier, Cardot’s
predecessor, and let him invest them at five per cent in first
mortgages, with the wife’s rights reserved in case the borrower was
married! In 1804 Madame Saillard obtained a government office for the
sale of stamped papers, a circumstance which brought a servant into the
household for the first time. At the time of which we write, the house,
which was worth a hundred thousand francs, brought in a rental of eight
thousand. Falleix paid seven per cent for the sixty thousand invested
in the foundry, besides an equal division of profits. The Saillards were
therefore enjoying an income of not less than seventeen thousand francs
a year. The whole ambition of the good man now centred on obtaining the
cross of the Legion and his retiring pension.
Elisabeth, the only child, had toiled steadily from infancy in a home
where the customs of life were rigid and the ideas simple. A new hat for
Saillard was a matter of deliberation; the time a coat could last was
estimated and discussed; umbrellas were carefully hung up by means of
a brass buckle. Since 1804 no repairs of any kind had been done to the
house. The Saillards kept the ground-floor in precisely the state in
which their predecessor left it. The gilding of the pier-glasses was
rubbed off; the paint on the cornices was hardly visible through the
layers of dust that time had collected. The fine large rooms still
retained certain sculptured marble mantel-pieces and ceilings, worthy
of Versailles, together with the old furniture of the widow Bidault. The
latter consisted of a curious mixture of walnut armchairs, disjointed,
and covered with tapestry; rosewood bureaus; round tables on single
pedestals, with brass railings and cracked marble tops; one superb
Boulle secretary, the value of which style had not yet been recognized;
in short, a chaos of bargains picked up by the worthy widow,--pictures
bought for the sake of the frames, china services of a composite order;
to wit, a magnificent Japanese dessert set, and all the rest porcelains
of various makes, unmatched silver plate, old glass, fine damask, and a
four-post bedstead, hung with curtains and garnished with plumes.
Amid these curious relics, Madame Saillard always sat on a sofa of
modern mahogany, near a fireplace full of ashes and without fire, on the
mantel-shelf of which stood a clock, some antique bronzes, candelabra
with paper flowers but no candles, for the careful housewife lighted the
room with a tall tallow candle always guttering down into the flat brass
candlestick which held it. Madame Saillard’s face, despite its wrinkles,
was expressive of obstinacy and severity, narrowness of ideas, an
uprightness that might be called quadrangular, a religion without piety,
straightforward, candid avarice, and the peace of a quiet conscience.
You may see in certain Flemish pictures the wives of burgomasters cut
out by nature on the same pattern and wonderfully reproduced on canvas;
but these dames wear fine robes of velvet and precious stuffs, whereas
Madame Saillard possessed no robes, only that venerable garment called
in Touraine and Picardy “cottes,” elsewhere petticoats, or skirts
pleated behind and on each side, with other skirts hanging over them.
Her bust was inclosed in what was called a “casaquin,” another obsolete
name for a short gown or jacket. She continued to wear a cap with
starched wings, and shoes with high heels. Though she was now
fifty-seven years old, and her lifetime of vigorous household work ought
now to be rewarded with well-earned repose, she was incessantly employed
in knitting her husband’s stockings and her own, and those of an uncle,
just as her countrywomen knit them, moving about the room, talking,
pacing up and down the garden, or looking round the kitchen to watch
what was going on.
The Saillard’s avarice, which was really imposed on them in the first
instance by dire necessity, was now a second nature. When the cashier
got back from the office, he laid aside his coat, and went to work in
the large garden, shut off from the courtyard by an iron railing, and
which the family reserved to itself. For years Elisabeth, the daughter,
went to market every morning with her mother, and the two did all
the work of the house. The mother cooked well, especially a duck with
turnips; but, according to Saillard, no one could equal Elisabeth in
hashing the remains of a leg of mutton with onions. “You might eat
your boots with those onions and not know it,” he remarked. As soon
as Elisabeth knew how to hold a needle, her mother had her mend the
household linen and her father’s coats. Always at work, like a servant,
she never went out alone. Though living close by the boulevard du
Temple, where Franconi, La Gaite, and l’Ambigu-Comique were within a
stone’s throw, and, further on, the Porte-Saint-Martin, Elisabeth had
never seen a comedy. When she asked to “see what it was like” (with the
Abbe Gaudron’s permission, be it understood), Monsieur Baudoyer took
her--for the glory of the thing, and to show her the finest that was to
be seen--to the Opera, where they were playing “The Chinese Laborer.”
Elisabeth thought “the comedy” as wearisome as the plague of flies, and
never wished to see another. On Sundays, after walking four times to
and fro between the place Royale and Saint-Paul’s church (for her mother
made her practise the precepts and the duties of religion), her parents
took her to the pavement in front of the Cafe Ture, where they sat on
chairs placed between a railing and the wall. The Saillards always made
haste to reach the place early so as to choose the best seats, and found
much entertainment in watching the passers-by. In those days the Cafe
Ture was the rendezvous of the fashionable society of the Marais, the
faubourg Saint-Antoine, and the circumjacent regions.
Elisabeth never wore anything but cotton gowns in summer and merino in
the winter, which she made herself. Her mother gave her twenty francs
a month for her expenses, but her father, who was very fond of her,
mitigated this rigorous treatment with a few presents. She never read
what the Abbe Gaudron, vicar of Saint-Paul’s and the family director,
called profane books. This discipline had borne fruit. Forced to employ
her feelings on some passion or other, Elisabeth became eager after
gain. Though she was not lacking in sense or perspicacity, religious
theories, and her complete ignorance of higher emotions had encircled
all her faculties with an iron hand; they were exercised solely on the
commonest things of life; spent in a few directions they were able
to concentrate themselves on a matter in hand. Repressed by religious
devotion, her natural intelligence exercised itself within the limits
marked out by cases of conscience, which form a mine of subtleties
among which self-interest selects its subterfuges. Like those saintly
personages in whom religion does not stifle ambition, Elisabeth was
capable of requiring others to do a blamable action that she might reap
the fruits; and she would have been, like them again, implacable as to
her dues and dissembling in her actions. Once offended, she watched her
adversaries with the perfidious patience of a cat, and was capable of
bringing about some cold and complete vengeance, and then laying it to
the account of God. Until her marriage the Saillards lived without other
society than that of the Abbe Gaudron, a priest from Auvergne appointed
vicar of Saint-Paul’s after the restoration of Catholic worship. Besides
this ecclesiastic, who was a friend of the late Madame Bidault, a
paternal uncle of Madame Saillard, an old paper-dealer retired from
business ever since the year II. of the Republic, and now sixty-nine
years old, came to see them on Sundays only, because on that day no
government business went on.
This little old man, with a livid face blazoned by the red nose of a
tippler and lighted by two gleaming vulture eyes, allowed his gray hair
to hang loose under a three-cornered hat, wore breeches with straps that
extended beyond the buckles, cotton stockings of mottled thread knitted
by his niece, whom he always called “the little Saillard,” stout shoes
with silver buckles, and a surtout coat of mixed colors. He looked very
much like those verger-beadle-bell-ringing-grave-digging-parish-clerks
who are taken to be caricatures until we see them performing their
various functions. On the present occasion he had come on foot to dine
with the Saillards, intending to return in the same way to the rue
Greneta, where he lived on the third floor of an old house. His business
was that of discounting commercial paper in the quartier Saint-Martin,
where he was known by the nickname of “Gigonnet,” from the nervous
convulsive movement with which he lifted his legs in walking, like a
cat. Monsieur Bidault began this business in the year II. in partnership
with a dutchman named Werbrust, a friend of Gobseck.
Some time later Saillard made the acquaintance of Monsieur and Madame
Transon, wholesale dealers in pottery, with an establishment in the rue
de Lesdiguieres, who took an interest in Elisabeth and introduced young
Isadore Baudoyer to the family with the intention of marrying her.
Gigonnet approved of the match, for he had long employed a certain
Mitral, uncle of the young man, as clerk. Monsieur and Madame Baudoyer,
father and mother of Isidore, highly respected leather-dressers in the
rue Censier, had slowly made a moderate fortune out of a small trade.
After marrying their only son, on whom they settled fifty thousand
francs, they determined to live in the country, and had lately removed
to the neighborhood of Ile-d’Adam, where after a time they were joined
by Mitral. They frequently came to Paris, however, where they kept a
corner in the house in the rue Censier which they gave to Isidore on
his marriage. The elder Baudoyers had an income of about three thousand
francs left to live upon after establishing their son.
Mitral was a being with a sinister wig, a face the color of Seine water,
lighted by a pair of Spanish-tobacco-colored eyes, cold as a well-rope,
always smelling a rat, and close-mouthed about his property. He probably
made his fortune in his own hole and corner, just as Werbrust and
Gigonnet made theirs in the quartier Saint-Martin.
Though the Saillards’ circle of acquaintance increased, neither their
ideas nor their manners and customs changed. The saint’s-days of father,
mother, daughter, son-in-law, and grandchild were carefully observed,
also the anniversaries of birth and marriage, Easter, Christmas,
New Year’s day, and Epiphany. These festivals were preceded by great
domestic sweepings and a universal clearing up of the house, which added
an element of usefulness to the ceremonies. When the festival day
came, the presents were offered with much pomp and an accompaniment of
flowers,--silk stockings or a fur cap for old Saillard; gold earrings
and articles of plate for Elisabeth or her husband, for whom, little
by little, the parents were accumulating a whole silver service; silk
petticoats for Madame Saillard, who laid the stuff by and never made it
up. The recipient of these gifts was placed in an armchair and asked
by those present for a certain length of time, “Guess what we have for
you!” Then came a splendid dinner, lasting at least five hours, to which
were invited the Abbe Gaudron, Falleix, Rabourdin, Monsieur Godard,
under-head-clerk to Monsieur Baudoyer, Monsieur Bataille, captain of
the company of the National Guard to which Saillard and his son-in-law
belonged. Monsieur Cardot, who was invariably asked, did as Rabourdin
did, namely, accepted one invitation out of six. The company sang at
dessert, shook hands and embraced with enthusiasm, wishing each other
all manner of happiness; the presents were exhibited and the opinion of
the guests asked about them. The day Saillard received his fur cap
he wore it during the dessert, to the satisfaction of all present. At
night, mere ordinary acquaintances were bidden, and dancing went on till
very late, formerly to the music of one violin, but for the last six
years Monsieur Godard, who was a great flute player, contributed
the piercing tones of a flageolet to the festivity. The cook, Madame
Baudoyer’s nurse, and old Catherine, Madame Saillard’s woman-servant,
together with the porter or his wife, stood looking on at the door of
the salon. The servants always received three francs on these occasions
to buy themselves wine or coffee.
This little circle looked upon Saillard and Baudoyer as transcendent
beings; they were government officers; they had risen by their own
merits; they worked, it was said, with the minister himself; they owed
their fortune to their talents; they were politicians. Baudoyer was
considered the more able of the two; his position as head of a bureau
presupposed labor that was more intricate and arduous than that of a
cashier. Moreover, Isidore, though the son of a leather-dresser, had had
the genius to study and to cast aside his father’s business and find a
career in politics, which had led him to a post of eminence. In short,
silent and uncommunicative as he was, he was looked upon as a deep
thinker, and perhaps, said the admiring circle, he would some day
become deputy of the eighth arrondissement. As Gigonnet listened to such
remarks as these, he pressed his already pinched lips closer together,
and threw a glance at his great-niece, Elisabeth.
In person, Isidore was a tall, stout man of thirty-seven, who perspired
freely, and whose head looked as if he had water on the brain. This
enormous head, covered with chestnut hair cropped close, was joined to
the neck by rolls of flesh which overhung the collar of his coat. He had
the arms of Hercules, hands worthy of Domitian, a stomach which
sobriety held within the limits of the majestic, to use a saying of
Brillaet-Savarin. His face was a good deal like that of the Emperor
Alexander. The Tartar type was in the little eyes and the flattened nose
turned slightly up, in the frigid lips and the short chin. The forehead
was low and narrow. Though his temperament was lymphatic, the devout
Isidore was under the influence of a conjugal passion which time did not
lessen.
In spite, however, of his resemblance to the handsome Russian Emperor
and the terrible Domitian, Isidore Baudoyer was nothing more than a
political office-holder, of little ability as head of his department, a
cut-and-dried routine man, who concealed the fact that he was a flabby
cipher by so ponderous a personality that no scalpel could cut deep
enough to let the operator see into him. His severe studies, in which
he had shown the patience and sagacity of an ox, and his square head,
deceived his parents, who firmly believed him an extraordinary man.
Pedantic and hypercritical, meddlesome and fault-finding, he was a
terror to the clerks under him, whom he worried in their work,
enforcing the rules rigorously, and arriving himself with such terrible
punctuality that not one of them dared to be a moment late. Baudoyer
wore a blue coat with gilt buttons, a chamois waistcoat, gray trousers
and cravats of various colors. His feet were large and ill-shod. From
the chain of his watch depended an enormous bunch of old trinkets, among
which in 1824 he still wore “American beads,” which were very much the
fashion in the year VII.
In the bosom of this family, bound together by the force of religious
ties, by the inflexibility of its customs, by one solitary emotion, that
of avarice, a passion which was now as it were its compass, Elisabeth
was forced to commune with herself, instead of imparting her ideas to
those around her, for she felt herself without equals in mind who could
comprehend her. Though facts compelled her to judge her husband, her
religious duty led her to keep up as best she could a favorable opinion
of him; she showed him marked respect; honored him as the father of her
child, her husband, the temporal power, as the vicar of Saint-Paul’s
told her. She would have thought it a mortal sin to make a single
gesture, or give a single glance, or say a single word which would
reveal to others her real opinion of the imbecile Baudoyer. She even
professed to obey passively all his wishes. But her ears were receptive
of many things; she thought them over, weighed and compared them in the
solitude of her mind, and judged so soberly of men and events that at
the time when our history begins she was the hidden oracle of the two
functionaries, her husband and father, who had, unconsciously, come
to do nothing whatever without consulting her. Old Saillard would say,
innocently, “Isn’t she clever, that Elisabeth of mine?” But Baudoyer,
too great a fool not to be puffed up by the false reputation the
quartier Saint-Antoine bestowed upon him, denied his wife’s cleverness
all the while that he was making use of it.
Elisabeth had long felt sure that her uncle Bidault, otherwise called
Gigonnet, was rich and handled vast sums of money. Enlightened by
self-interest, she had come to understand Monsieur des Lupeaulx far
better than the minister understood him. Finding herself married to
a fool, she never allowed herself to think that life might have gone
better with her, she only imagined the possibility of better things
without expecting or wishing to attain them. All her best affections
found their vocation in her love for her daughter, to whom she spared
the pains and privations she had borne in her own childhood; she
believed that in this affection she had her full share in the world of
feeling. Solely for her daughter’s sake she had persuaded her father to
take the important step of going into partnership with Falleix. Falleix
had been brought to the Saillard’s house by old Bidault, who lent
him money on his merchandise. Falleix thought his old countryman
extortionate, and complained to the Saillards that Gigonnet demanded
eighteen per cent from an Auvergnat. Madame Saillard ventured to
remonstrate with her uncle.
“It is just because he is an Auvergnat that I take only eighteen per
cent,” said Gigonnet, when she spoke of him.
Falleix, who had made a discovery at the age of twenty-eight, and
communicated it to Saillard, seemed to carry his heart in his hand (an
expression of old Saillard’s), and also seemed likely to make a great
fortune. Elisabeth determined to husband him for her daughter and train
him herself, having, as she calculated, seven years to do it in. Martin
Falleix felt and showed the deepest respect for Madame Baudoyer, whose
superior qualities he was able to recognize. If he were fated to make
millions he would always belong to her family, where he had found a
home. The little Baudoyer girl was already trained to bring him his tea
and to take his hat.
On the evening of which we write, Monsieur Saillard, returning from the
ministry, found a game of boston in full blast; Elisabeth was advising
Falleix how to play; Madame Saillard was knitting in the chimney-corner
and overlooking the cards of the vicar; Monsieur Baudoyer, motionless as
a mile-stone, was employing his mental capacity in calculating how the
cards were placed, and sat opposite to Mitral, who had come up from
Ile-d’Adam for the Christmas holidays. No one moved as the cashier
entered, and for some minutes he walked up and down the room, his fat
face contracted with unaccustomed thought.
“He is always so when he dines at the ministry,” remarked Madame
Saillard; “happily, it is only twice a year, or he’d die of it. Saillard
was never made to be in the government--Well, now, I do hope, Saillard,”
she continued in a loud tone, “that you are not going to keep on those
silk breeches and that handsome coat. Go and take them off; don’t wear
them at home, my man.”
“Your father has something on his mind,” said Baudoyer to his wife, when
the cashier was in his bedroom, undressing without any fire.
“Perhaps Monsieur de la Billardiere is dead,” said Elisabeth, simply;
“and as he is anxious you should have the place, it worries him.”
“Can I be useful in any way?” said the vicar of Saint-Paul’s; “if
so, pray use my services. I have the honor to be known to Madame la
Dauphine. These are days when public offices should be given only to
faithful men, whose religious principles are not to be shaken.”
“Dear me!” said Falleix, “do men of merit need protectors and influence
to get places in the government service? I am glad I am an iron-master;
my customers know where to find a good article--”
“Monsieur,” interrupted Baudoyer, “the government is the government;
never attack it in this house.”
“You speak like the ‘Constitutionel,’” said the vicar.
“The ‘Constitutionel’ never says anything different from that,” replied
Baudoyer, who never read it.
The cashier believed his son-in-law to be as superior in talent
to Rabourdin as God was greater than Saint-Crepin, to use his
own expression; but the good man coveted this appointment in a
straightforward, honest way. Influenced by the feeling which leads all
officials to seek promotion,--a violent, unreflecting, almost brutal
passion,--he desired success, just as he desired the cross of the Legion
of honor, without doing anything against his conscience to obtain it,
and solely, as he believed, on the strength of his son-in-law’s merits.
To his thinking, a man who had patiently spent twenty-five years in a
government office behind an iron railing had sacrificed himself to his
country and deserved the cross. But all that he dreamed of doing to
promote his son-in-law’s appointment in La Billardiere’s place was to
say a word to his Excellency’s wife when he took her the month’s salary.
“Well, Saillard, you look as if you had lost all your friends! Do speak;
do, pray, tell us something,” cried his wife when he came back into the
room.
Saillard, after making a little sign to his daughter, turned on his heel
to keep himself from talking politics before strangers. When Monsieur
Mitral and the vicar had departed, Saillard rolled back the card-table
and sat down in an armchair in the attitude he always assumed when about
to tell some office-gossip,--a series of movements which answered the
purpose of the three knocks given at the Theatre-Francais. After binding
his wife, daughter, and son-in-law to the deepest secrecy,--for,
however petty the gossip, their places, as he thought, depended on their
discretion,--he related the incomprehensible enigma of the resignation
of a deputy, the very legitimate desire of the general-secretary to get
elected to the place, and the secret opposition of the minister to this
wish of a man who was one of his firmest supporters and most zealous
workers. This, of course, brought down an avalanche of suppositions,
flooded with the sapient arguments of the two officials, who sent back
and forth to each other a wearisome flood of nonsense. Elisabeth quietly
asked three questions:--
“If Monsieur des Lupeaulx is on our side, will Monsieur Baudoyer be
appointed in Monsieur de la Billardiere’s place?”
“Heavens! I should think so,” cried the cashier.
“My uncle Bidault and Monsieur Gobseck helped in him 1814,” thought she.
“Is he in debt?” she asked, aloud.
“Yes,” cried the cashier with a hissing and prolonged sound on the last
letter; “his salary was attached, but some of the higher powers released
it by a bill at sight.”
“Where is the des Lupeaulx estate?”
“Why, don’t you know? in the part of the country where your grandfather
and your great-uncle Bidault belong, in the arrondissement of the deputy
who wants to resign.”
When her colossus of a husband had gone to bed, Elisabeth leaned over
him, and though he always treated her remarks as women’s nonsense, she
said, “Perhaps you will really get Monsieur de la Billardiere’s place.”
“There you go with your imaginations!” said Baudoyer; “leave Monsieur
Gaudron to speak to the Dauphine and don’t meddle with politics.”
At eleven o’clock, when all were asleep in the place Royale, Monsieur
des Lupeaulx was leaving the Opera for the rue Duphot. This particular
Wednesday was one of Madame Rabourdin’s most brilliant evenings. Many of
her customary guests came in from the theatres and swelled the company
already assembled, among whom were several celebrities, such as: Canalis
the poet, Schinner the painter, Dr. Bianchon, Lucien de Rubempre, Octave
de Camps, the Comte de Granville, the Vicomte de Fontaine, du Bruel the
vaudevillist, Andoche Finot the journalist, Derville, one of the best
heads in the law courts, the Comte du Chatelet, deputy, du Tillet,
banker, and several elegant young men, such as Paul de Manerville and
the Vicomte de Portenduere. Celestine was pouring out tea when the
general-secretary entered. Her dress that evening was very becoming;
she wore a black velvet robe without ornament of any kind, a black gauze
scarf, her hair smoothly bound about her head and raised in a heavy
braided mass, with long curls a l’Anglaise falling on either side of her
face. The charms which particularly distinguished this woman were the
Italian ease of her artistic nature, her ready comprehension, and the
grace with which she welcomed and promoted the least appearance of a
wish on the part of others. Nature had given her an elegant, slender
figure, which could sway lightly at a word, black eyes of oriental
shape, able, like those of the Chinese women, to see out of their
corners. She well knew how to manage a soft, insinuating voice, which
threw a tender charm into every word, even such as she merely chanced
to utter; her feet were like those we see in portraits where the painter
boldly lies and flatters his sitter in the only way which does not
compromise anatomy. Her complexion, a little yellow by day, like that
of most brunettes, was dazzling at night under the wax candles, which
brought out the brilliancy of her black hair and eyes. Her slender and
well-defined outlines reminded an artist of the Venus of the Middle Ages
rendered by Jean Goujon, the illustrious sculptor of Diane de Poitiers.
Des Lupeaulx stopped in the doorway, and leaned against the woodwork.
This ferret of ideas did not deny himself the pleasure of spying upon
sentiment, and this woman interested him more than any of the others to
whom he had attached himself. Des Lupeaulx had reached an age when men
assert pretensions in regard to women. The first white hairs lead to
the latest passions, all the more violent because they are astride of
vanishing powers and dawning weakness. The age of forty is the age
of folly,--an age when man wants to be loved for himself; whereas at
twenty-five life is so full that he has no wants. At twenty-five he
overflows with vigor and wastes it with impunity, but at forty he learns
that to use it in that way is to abuse it. The thoughts that came into
des Lupeaulx’s mind at this moment were melancholy ones. The nerves of
the old beau relaxed; the agreeable smile, which served as a mask and
made the character of his countenance, faded; the real man appeared, and
he was horrible. Rabourdin caught sight of him and thought, “What has
happened to him? can he be disgraced in any way?” The general-secretary
was, however, only thinking how the pretty Madame Colleville, whose
intentions were exactly those of Madame Rabourdin, had summarily
abandoned him when it suited her to do so. Rabourdin caught the sham
statesman’s eyes fixed on his wife, and he recorded the look in his
memory. He was too keen an observer not to understand des Lupeaulx to
the bottom, and he deeply despised him; but, as with most busy men,
his feelings and sentiments seldom came to the surface. Absorption in a
beloved work is practically equivalent to the cleverest dissimulation,
and thus it was that the opinions and ideas of Rabourdin were a sealed
book to des Lupeaulx. The former was sorry to see the man in his house,
but he was never willing to oppose his wife’s wishes. At this particular
moment, while he talked confidentially with a supernumerary of his
office who was destined, later, to play an unconscious part in a
political intrigue resulting from the death of La Billardiere, he
watched, though half-abstractedly, his wife and des Lupeaulx.
Here we must explain, as much for foreigners as for our own
grandchildren, what a supernumerary in a government office in Paris
means.
The supernumerary is to the administration what a choir-boy is to a
church, what the company’s child is to the regiment, what the figurante
is to a theatre; something artless, naive, innocent, a being blinded by
illusions. Without illusions what would become of any of us? They give
strength to bear the res angusta domi of arts and the beginnings of all
science by inspiring us with faith. Illusion is illimitable faith. Now
the supernumerary has faith in the administration; he never thinks
it cold, cruel, and hard, as it really is. There are two kinds of
supernumeraries, or hangers-on,--one poor, the other rich. The poor one
is rich in hope and wants a place, the rich one is poor in spirit and
wants nothing. A wealthy family is not so foolish as to put its able
men into the administration. It confides an unfledged scion to some
head-clerk, or gives him in charge of a directory who initiates him into
what Bilboquet, that profound philosopher, called the high comedy of
government; he is spared all the horrors of drudgery and is finally
appointed to some important office. The rich supernumerary never alarms
the other clerks; they know he does not endanger their interests, for he
seeks only the highest posts in the administration. About the period of
which we write many families were saying to themselves: “What can we do
with our sons?” The army no longer offered a chance for fortune. Special
careers, such as civil and military engineering, the navy, mining, and
the professorial chair were all fenced about by strict regulations or
to be obtained only by competition; whereas in the civil service
the revolving wheel which turned clerks into prefects, sub-prefects,
assessors, and collectors, like the figures in a magic lantern, was
subjected to no such rules and entailed no drudgery. Through this easy
gap emerged into life the rich supernumeraries who drove their tilburys,
dressed well, and wore moustachios, all of them as impudent as parvenus.
Journalists were apt to persecute the tribe, who were cousins, nephews,
brothers, or other relatives of some minister, some deputy, or an
influential peer. The humbler clerks regarded them as a means of
influence.
The poor supernumerary, on the other hand, who is the only real worker,
is almost always the son of some former clerk’s widow, who lives on a
meagre pension and sacrifices herself to support her son until he can
get a place as copying-clerk, and then dies leaving him no nearer the
head of his department than writer of deeds, order-clerks, or, possibly,
under-head-clerk. Living always in some locality where rents are low,
this humble supernumerary starts early from home. For him the Eastern
question relates only to the morning skies. To go on foot and not get
muddied, to save his clothes, and allow for the time he may lose in
standing under shelter during a shower, are the preoccupations of
his mind. The street pavements, the flaggings of the quays and the
boulevards, when first laid down, were a boon to him. If, for some
extraordinary reason, you happen to be in the streets of Paris at
half-past seven or eight o’clock of a winter’s morning, and see through
piercing cold or fog or rain a timid, pale young man loom up, cigarless,
take notice of his pockets. You will be sure to see the outline of
a roll which his mother has given him to stay his stomach between
breakfast and dinner. The guilelessness of the supernumerary does not
last long. A youth enlightened by gleams by Parisian life soon measures
the frightful distance that separates him from the head-clerkship, a
distance which no mathematician, neither Archimedes, nor Leibnitz, nor
Laplace has ever reckoned, the distance that exists between 0 and the
figure 1. He begins to perceive the impossibilities of his career; he
hears talk of favoritism; he discovers the intrigues of officials: he
sees the questionable means by which his superiors have pushed their
way,--one has married a young woman who made a false step; another, the
natural daughter of a minister; this one shouldered the responsibility
of another’s fault; that one, full of talent, risks his health in doing,
with the perseverance of a mole, prodigies of work which the man of
influence feels incapable of doing for himself, though he takes the
credit. Everything is known in a government office. The incapable man
has a wife with a clear head, who has pushed him along and got him
nominated for deputy; if he has not talent enough for an office, he
cabals in the Chamber. The wife of another has a statesman at her feet.
A third is the hidden informant of a powerful journalist. Often the
disgusted and hopeless supernumerary sends in his resignation. About
three fourths of his class leave the government employ without ever
obtaining an appointment, and their number is winnowed down to
either those young men who are foolish or obstinate enough to say to
themselves, “I have been here three years, and I must end sooner or
later by getting a place,” or to those who are conscious of a vocation
for the work. Undoubtedly the position of supernumerary in a government
office is precisely what the novitiate is in a religious order,--a
trial. It is a rough trial. The State discovers how many of them can
bear hunger, thirst, and penury without breaking down, how many can toil
without revolting against it; it learns which temperaments can bear
up under the horrible experience--or if you like, the disease--of
government official life. From this point of view the apprenticeship of
the supernumerary, instead of being an infamous device of the government
to obtain labor gratis, becomes a useful institution.
The young man with whom Rabourdin was talking was a poor supernumerary
named Sebastien de la Roche, who had picked his way on the points of his
toes, without incurring the least splash upon his boots, from the rue du
Roi-Dore in the Marais. He talked of his mamma, and dared not raise his
eyes to Madame Rabourdin, whose house appeared to him as gorgeous as
the Louvre. He was careful to show his gloves, well cleaned with
india-rubber, as little as he could. His poor mother had put five francs
in his pocket in case it became absolutely necessary that he should play
cards; but she enjoined him to take nothing, to remain standing, and
to be very careful not to knock over a lamp or the bric-a-brac from an
etagere. His dress was all of the strictest black. His fair face, his
eyes, of a fine shade of green with golden reflections, were in keeping
with a handsome head of auburn hair. The poor lad looked furtively at
Madame Rabourdin, whispering to himself, “How beautiful!” and was likely
to dream of that fairy when he went to bed.
Rabourdin had noted a vocation for his work in the lad, and as he
himself took the whole service seriously, he felt a lively interest in
him. He guessed the poverty of his mother’s home, kept together on a
widow’s pension of seven hundred francs a year--for the education of
the son, who was just out of college, had absorbed all her savings. He
therefore treated the youth almost paternally; often endeavoured to
get him some fee from the Council, or paid it from his own pocket. He
overwhelmed Sebastien with work, trained him, and allowed him to do the
work of du Bruel’s place, for which that vaudevillist, otherwise known
as Cursy, paid him three hundred francs out of his salary. In the minds
of Madame de la Roche and her son, Rabourdin was at once a great man, a
tyrant, and an angel. On him all the poor fellow’s hopes of getting an
appointment depended, and the lad’s devotion to his chief was boundless.
He dined once a fortnight in the rue Duphot; but always at a family
dinner, invited by Rabourdin himself; Madame asked him to evening
parties only when she wanted partners.
At that moment Rabourdin was scolding poor Sebastien, the only human
being who was in the secret of his immense labors. The youth copied and
recopied the famous “statement,” written on a hundred and fifty
folio sheets, besides the corroborative documents, and the summing up
(contained in one page), with the estimates bracketed, the captions in a
running hand, and the sub-titles in a round one. Full of enthusiasm, in
spite of his merely mechanical participation in the great idea, the lad
of twenty would rewrite whole pages for a single blot, and made it his
glory to touch up the writing, regarding it as the element of a noble
undertaking. Sebastien had that afternoon committed the great imprudence
of carrying into the general office, for the purpose of copying, a paper
which contained the most dangerous facts to make known prematurely,
namely, a memorandum relating to the officials in the central offices
of all ministries, with facts concerning their fortunes, actual and
prospective, together with the individual enterprises of each outside of
his government employment.
All government clerks in Paris who are not endowed, like Rabourdin, with
patriotic ambition or other marked capacity, usually add the profits
of some industry to the salary of their office, in order to eke out a
living. A number do as Monsieur Saillard did,--put their money into a
business carried on by others, and spend their evenings in keeping
the books of their associates. Many clerks are married to milliners,
licensed tobacco dealers, women who have charge of the public lotteries
or reading-rooms. Some, like the husband of Madame Colleville,
Celestine’s rival, play in the orchestra of a theatre; others like du
Bruel, write vaudeville, comic operas, melodramas, or act as prompters
behind the scenes. We may mention among them Messrs. Planard, Sewrin,
etc. Pigault-Lebrun, Piis, Duvicquet, in their day, were in government
employ. Monsieur Scribe’s head-librarian was a clerk in the Treasury.
Besides such information as this, Rabourdin’s memorandum contained an
inquiry into the moral and physical capacities and faculties necessary
in those who were to examine the intelligence, aptitude for labor,
and sound health of the applicants for government service,--three
indispensable qualities in men who are to bear the burden of public
affairs and should do their business well and quickly. But this careful
study, the result of ten years’ observation and experience, and of a
long acquaintance with men and things obtained by intercourse with the
various functionaries in the different ministries, would assuredly have,
to those who did not see its purport and connection, an air of treachery
and police espial. If a single page of these papers were to fall under
the eye of those concerned, Monsieur Rabourdin was lost. Sebastien,
who admired his chief without reservation, and who was, as yet, wholly
ignorant of the evils of bureaucracy, had the follies of guilelessness
as well as its grace. Blamed on a former occasion for carrying away
these papers, he now bravely acknowledged his fault to its fullest
extent; he related how he had put away both the memorandum and the copy
carefully in a box in the office where no one would ever find them.
Tears rolled from his eyes as he realized the greatness of his offence.
“Come, come!” said Rabourdin, kindly. “Don’t be so imprudent again, but
never mind now. Go to the office very early tomorrow morning; here is
the key of a small safe which is in my roller secretary; it shuts with
a combination lock. You can open it with the word ‘sky’; put the
memorandum and your copy into it and shut it carefully.”
This proof of confidence dried the poor fellow’s tears. Rabourdin
advised him to take a cup of tea and some cakes.
“Mamma forbids me to drink tea, on account of my chest,” said Sebastien.
“Well, then, my dear child,” said the imposing Madame Rabourdin, who
wished to appear gracious, “here are some sandwiches and cream; come and
sit by me.”
She made Sebastien sit down beside her, and the lad’s heart rose in
his throat as he felt the robe of this divinity brush the sleeve of
his coat. Just then the beautiful woman caught sight of Monsieur des
Lupeaulx standing in the doorway. She smiled, and not waiting till he
came to her, she went to him.
“Why do you stay there as if you were sulking?” she asked.
“I am not sulking,” he returned; “I came to announce some good news,
but the thought has overtaken me that it will only add to your severity
towards me. I fancy myself six months hence almost a stranger to you.
Yes, you are too clever, and I too experienced,--too blase, if you
like,--for either of us to deceive the other. Your end is attained
without its costing you more than a few smiles and gracious words.”
“Deceive each other! what can you mean?” she cried, in a hurt tone.
“Yes; Monsieur de la Billardiere is dying, and from what the minister
told me this evening I judge that your husband will be appointed in his
place.”
He thereupon related what he called his scene at the ministry and the
jealousy of the countess, repeating her remarks about the invitation he
had asked her to send to Madame Rabourdin.
“Monsieur des Lupeaulx,” said Madame Rabourdin, with dignity, “permit me
to tell you that my husband is the oldest head-clerk as well as the most
capable man in the division; also that the appointment of La Billardiere
over his head made much talk in the service, and that my husband has
stayed on for the last year expecting this promotion, for which he has
really no competitor and no rival.”
“That is true.”
“Well, then,” she resumed, smiling and showing her handsome teeth,
“how can you suppose that the friendship I feel for you is marred by a
thought of self-interest? Why should you think me capable of that?”
Des Lupeaulx made a gesture of admiring denial.
“Ah!” she continued, “the heart of woman will always remain a secret
for even the cleverest of men. Yes, I welcomed you to my house with the
greatest pleasure; and there was, I admit, a motive of self-interest
behind my pleasure--”
“Ah!”
“You have a career before you,” she whispered in his ear, “a future
without limit; you will be deputy, minister!” (What happiness for an
ambitious man when such things as these are warbled in his ear by the
sweet voice of a pretty woman!) “Oh, yes! I know you better than you
know yourself. Rabourdin is a man who could be of immense service to
you in such a career; he could do the steady work while you were in
the Chamber. Just as you dream of the ministry, so I dream of seeing
Rabourdin in the Council of State, and general director. It is therefore
my object to draw together two men who can never injure, but, on the
contrary, must greatly help each other. Isn’t that a woman’s mission?
If you are friends, you will both rise the faster, and it is surely
high time that each of you made hay. I have burned my ships,” she added,
smiling. “But you are not as frank with me as I have been with you.”
“You would not listen to me if I were,” he replied, with a melancholy
air, in spite of the deep inward satisfaction her remarks gave him.
“What would such future promotions avail me, if you dismiss me now?”
“Before I listen to you,” she replied, with naive Parisian liveliness,
“we must be able to understand each other.”
And she left the old fop to go and speak with Madame de Chessel, a
countess from the provinces, who seemed about to take leave.
“That is a very extraordinary woman,” said des Lupeaulx to himself. “I
don’t know my own self when I am with her.”
Accordingly, this man of no principle, who six years earlier had kept
a ballet-girl, and who now, thanks to his position, made himself a
seraglio with the pretty wives of the under-clerks, and lived in the
world of journalists and actresses, became devotedly attentive all the
evening to Celestine, and was the last to leave the house.
“At last!” thought Madame Rabourdin, as she undressed that night, “we
have the place! Twelve thousand francs a year and perquisites, beside
the rents of our farms at Grajeux,--nearly twenty thousand francs a
year. It is not affluence, but at least it isn’t poverty.”