“What Sarah did during the three first months of her freedom, I cannot
tell. If she went and rented furnished lodgings, she did it under a
false name. A clerk in the mayor’s office, who is a great lover of
curiosities, and for whom I have procured many a good bargain, had
all the lists of lodging-houses for the four months from April to July
carefully examined; but no Ernestine Bergot could be found.
“I am quite sure, however, that she thought of the stage. One of
the former secretaries of the Lyric Theatre told me he recollected
distinctly a certain Ernestine, beautiful beyond description, who, came
several times, and requested a trial. She was, however, refused, simply
because her pretensions were almost ridiculous. And this was quite
natural; for her head was still full of all the ambitious dreams of the
old artist.
“The first positive trace I find of Sarah in that year appears towards
the end of summer. She was then living in a fashionable street with
a young painter full of talent, and very rich, called Planix. Did she
really love him? The friends of the unfortunate young man were sure she
did not. But he--he worshipped her; he loved her passionately, madly,
and was so absurdly jealous, that he became desperate if she stayed out
an hour longer than he expected. Hence she often complained of his love,
which restrained her cherished liberty; and still she bore it patiently
till fate threw in her way Maxime de Brevan.”
At the name of the wretch who had been so bent upon ruining them both,
and who had been so nearly successful, Henrietta and Daniel trembled,
and looked at each other. But Papa Ravinet did not give them, time to
ask any questions, and continued, as calmly as if he had been reading a
report,--
“It was several years before this, that Justin Chevassat, released from
the galleys, had made a nobleman of himself, and claimed before all the
world to be Maxime de Brevan. We need not be surprised, in this age of
ours, where impudence takes the place of everything else, that he should
have promptly succeeded in making his way into high life, and in being
admitted to many houses which were considered more or less exclusive.
In a society which seems to have adopted for its motto the words
‘Toleration and Discretion,’ and where, consequently, anybody is
admitted without question, Justin Chevassat very naturally had a great
success. He had carefully prepared his way, like those adventurers who
never appear abroad without having their passports in much better order
than most honest travellers. He had learned prudence by experience; for
his antecedents were stormy enough, though less so than Sarah’s.
“Justin’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Chevassat, now concierges of No. 23
Water Street, were, some thirty-eight or forty years ago, living in the
upper part of the suburb of Saint Honore. They had a very modest little
shop, partly restaurant, partly bar: their customers were generally the
servants of the neighborhood. They were people of easy principles and
loose morals,--as there are so many in our day,--honest enough as long
as there is nothing to be gained by being otherwise. As their trade
prospered, they were not dishonest; and, when any of their customers
forgot their portemonnaies at the shop, they always returned them. The
husband was twenty-four, and the wife nineteen years old, when, to their
great joy, a son was born. There was rejoicing in the shop; and the
child was christened Justin, in honor of his godfather, who was no less
a personage than the valet of the Marquis de Brevan.
“But to have a son is a small matter. To bring him up till he is
seven or eight years old, is nothing. The difficulty is to give him an
education which shall secure him a position in the world. This thought
now began to occupy the minds of his parents incessantly. These stupid
people, who had a business which supported them handsomely, and enabled
them, in the course of time, to amass a small fortune, did not see that
the best thing they could have done would have been to enlarge it, and
to leave it to their son. But no. They vowed they would sacrifice all
their savings, and deprive themselves even of the necessaries of life,
in order that their Justin might become a ‘gentleman.’
“And what a gentleman! The mother dreamed of him as a rich broker, or,
at the very least, a notary’s first clerk. The father preferred seeing
him a government official, holding one of those much-coveted places,
which give the owner, after twenty-five years’ service, a title, and an
income of some six or seven hundred dollars.
“The result of all these speculations was, that, at the age of nine,
Master Justin was sent to a high school. He conducted himself there just
badly enough to be perpetually on the brink of being sent away, without
ever being really expelled. This made but little impression upon the two
Chevassats. They had become so accustomed to look upon their son as a
superior being, that it never entered their mind to think he was not the
first, the best, and the most remarkable pupil of the establishment. If
Justin’s reports were bad,--and they were always bad,--they accused
the teachers of partiality. If he gained no prize at the end of the
year,--and he never got any,--they did not know what to do for him to
console him for having been victimized by such cruel injustice.
“The consequences of such a system need hardly be stated.
“When Justin was fourteen years old, he despised his parents thoroughly,
treated them like servants, and was so much ashamed of them, that he
would not allow his mother to come and see him in the parlor of the
college to which he had been admitted of late. When he was at home
during vacations, he would have cut his right arm off rather than help
his father, or pour out a glass of wine for a customer. He even stayed
away from the house on the plea that he could not endure the odors from
the kitchen.
“Thus he reached his seventeenth year. His course was not completed;
but, as he was tired of college-life, he declared he would not return
there, and he never did return. When his father asked him timidly what
he proposed doing, he shrugged his shoulders as his sole reply. What did
he do? Nothing. He idled about Paris.
“To dress in the height of fashion; to walk up and down before the most
renowned restaurants, with a toothpick in his mouth; to hire a carriage,
and drive it himself, having a hired groom in livery by his side,--this
was the delight of those days. At night he gambled; and, when he lost,
there was the till in his father’s shop.
“His parents had rented for him, and comfortably furnished, a nice set
of rooms in their house, and tried by all manner of servility to keep
him at home, neglecting even their own business in order to be always
ready for his orders. But this did not prevent him from being constantly
away. He said he could not possibly receive his friends in a house where
his name was to be seen on the signboard of such a low establishment.
“It was his despair to be the son of a restaurant-keeper, and to be
called Chevassat.
“But greater grief was to come to him after two years’ idle and
expensive life such as has been described.
“One fine morning when he needed a couple of hundred dollars, his
parents told him, with tears in their eyes, that they had not twenty
dollars in the house; that they were at the end of their resources; that
the day before a note of theirs had been protested; and that they were
at that moment on the brink of bankruptcy. They did not reproach Justin
with having spent all their savings; oh, no! On the contrary, they
humbly asked his pardon, if they were no longer able to provide for his
wants. And, with fear and trembling, they at last ventured to suggest,
that perhaps it would be well if he should seek some kind of work.
“He told them coolly that he would think it over, but that he must have
his two hundred dollars. And he got them. His father and mother had
still a watch and some jewelry; they pawned everything and brought him
the proceeds.
“Still he saw that the till he had considered inexhaustible was really
empty, and that henceforth his pockets also would be empty, unless he
could devise some means to fill them. He went, therefore, in search of
some employment; and his godfather, the valet, found one for him at the
house of a banker, who was in want of a reliable young man to be trained
for his business, and hereafter to be intrusted with the management of
his funds.”
Papa Ravinet’s voice changed so perceptibly as he uttered these last
words, that Daniel and Henrietta, with one impulse, asked him,--
“Is anything the matter, sir?”