Gazonal belonged to the party.
Seeing that this new-comer was well-dressed, in black, the provincial
did not know in which political category to place him; but he followed
the others into the garden contiguous to the hall which follows the line
of the quai Napoleon. Once in the garden the ci-devant young man gave
way to a peal of laughter which he seemed to have been repressing since
he entered the lobby.
“What is it?” asked Leon de Lora.
“My dear friend, to prove the sincerity of the constitutional
government we are forced to tell the most frightful lies with incredible
self-possession. But as for me, I’m freakish; some days I can lie like
a prospectus; other days I can’t be serious. This is one of my hilarious
days. Now, at this moment, the prime minister, being summoned by the
Opposition to make known a certain diplomatic secret, is going through
his paces in the tribune. Being an honest man who never lies on his own
account, he whispered to me as he mounted the breach: ‘Heaven knows
what I shall say to them.’ A mad desire to laugh overcame me, and as one
mustn’t laugh on the ministerial bench I rushed out, for my youth does
come back to me most unseasonably at times.”
“At last,” cried Gazonal, “I’ve found an honest man in Paris! You must
be a very superior man,” he added, looking at the stranger.
“Ah ca! who is this gentleman?” said the ci-devant young man, examining
Gazonal.
“My cousin,” said Leon, hastily. “I’ll answer for his silence and his
honor as for my own. It is on his account we have come here now; he has
a case before the administration which depends on your ministry. His
prefect evidently wants to ruin him, and we have come to see you in
order to prevent the Council of State from ratifying a great injustice.”
“Who brings up the case?”
“Massol.”
“Good.”
“And our friends Giraud and Claude Vignon are on the committee,” said
Bixiou.
“Say just a word to them,” urged Leon; “tell them to come to-night to
Carabine’s, where du Tillet gives a fete apropos of railways,--they are
plundering more than ever on the roads.”
“Ah ca! but isn’t your cousin from the Pyrenees?” asked the young man,
now become serious.
“Yes,” replied Gazonal.
“And you did not vote for us in the last elections?” said the statesman,
looking hard at Gazonal.
“No; but what you have just said in my hearing has bribed me; on the
word of a commandant of the National Guard I’ll have your candidate
elected--”
“Very good; will you guarantee your cousin?” asked the young man,
turning to Leon.
“We are forming him,” said Bixiou, in a tone irresistibly comic.
“Well, I’ll see about it,” said the young man, leaving his friends and
rushing precipitately back to the Chamber.
“Who is that?” asked Gazonal.
“The Comte de Rastignac; the minister of the department in which your
affair is brought up.”
“A minister! Isn’t a minister anything more than that?”
“He is an old friend of ours. He now has three hundred thousand francs
a year; he’s a peer of France; the king has made him a count; he
married Nucingen’s daughter; and he is one of the two or three statesmen
produced by the revolution of July. But his fame and his power bore him
sometimes, and he comes down to laugh with us.”
“Ah ca! cousin; why didn’t you tell us you belonged to the Opposition?”
asked Leon, seizing Gazonal by the arm. “How stupid of you! One deputy
more or less to Right or Left and your bed is made.”
“We are all for the Others down my way.”
“Let ‘em go,” said Bixiou, with a facetious look; “they have Providence
on their side, and Providence will bring them back without you and in
spite of themselves. A manufacturer ought to be a fatalist.”
“What luck! There’s Maxime, with Canalis and Giraud,” said Leon.
“Come along, friend Gazonal, the promised actors are mustering on the
stage,” said Bixiou.
And all three advanced to the above-named personages, who seemed to be
sauntering along with nothing to do.
“Have they turned you out, or why are you idling about in this way?”
said Bixiou to Giraud.
“No, while they are voting by secret ballot we have come out for a
little air,” replied Giraud.
“How did the prime minister pull through?”
“He was magnificent!” said Canalis.
“Magnificent!” repeated Maxime.
“Magnificent!” cried Giraud.
“So! so! Right, Left, and Centre are unanimous!”
“All with a different meaning,” observed Maxime de Trailles.
Maxime was the ministerial deputy.
“Yes,” said Canalis, laughing.
Though Canalis had already been a minister, he was at this moment
tending toward the Right.
“Ah! but you had a fine triumph just now,” said Maxime to Canalis; “it
was you who forced the minister into the tribune.”
“And made him lie like a charlatan,” returned Canalis.
“A worthy victory,” said the honest Giraud. “In his place what would you
have done?”
“I should have lied.”
“It isn’t called lying,” said Maxime de Trailles; “it is called
protecting the crown.”
So saying, he led Canalis away to a little distance.
“That’s a great orator,” said Leon to Giraud, pointing to Canalis.
“Yes and no,” replied the councillor of state. “A fine bass voice, and
sonorous, but more of an artist in words than an orator. In short, he’s
a fine instrument but he isn’t music, consequently he has not, and he
never will have, the ear of the Chamber; in no case will he ever be
master of the situation.”
Canalis and Maxime were returning toward the little group as Giraud,
deputy of the Left Centre, pronounced this verdict. Maxime took Giraud
by the arm and led him off, probably to make the same confidence he had
just made Canalis.
“What an honest, upright fellow that is,” said Leon to Canalis, nodding
towards Giraud.
“One of those upright fellows who kill administrators,” replied Canalis.
“Do you think him a good orator?”
“Yes and no,” replied Canalis; “he is wordy; he’s long-winded, a plodder
in argument, and a good logician; but he doesn’t understand the higher
logic, that of events and circumstances; consequently he has never had,
and never will have, the ear of the Chamber.”
At the moment when Canalis uttered this judgment on Giraud, the latter
was returning with Maxime to the group; and forgetting the presence of
a stranger whose discretion was not known to them like that of Leon and
Bixiou, he took Canalis by the hand in a very significant manner.
“Well,” he said, “I consent to what Monsieur de Trailles proposes. I’ll
put the question to you in the Chamber, but I shall do it with great
severity.”
“Then we shall have the house with us, for a man of your weight and
your eloquence is certain to have the ear of the Chamber,” said Canalis.
“I’ll reply to you; but I shall do it sharply, to crush you.”
“You could bring about a change of the cabinet, for on such ground you
can do what you like with the Chamber, and be master of the situation.”
“Maxime has trapped them both,” said Leon to his cousin; “that fellow is
like a fish in water among the intrigues of the Chamber.”
“Who is he?” asked Gazonal.
“An ex-scoundrel who is now in a fair way to become an ambassador,”
replied Bixiou.
“Giraud!” said Leon to the councillor of state, “don’t leave the Chamber
without asking Rastignac what he promised to tell you about a suit you
are to render a decision on two days hence. It concerns my cousin here;
I’ll go and see you to-morrow morning early about it.”
The three friends followed the three deputies, at a distance, into the
lobby.
“Cousin, look at those two men,” said Leon, pointing out to him a former
minister and the leader of the Left Centre. “Those are two men who
really have ‘the ear of the Chamber,’ and who are called in jest
ministers of the department of the Opposition. They have the ear of the
Chamber so completely that they are always pulling it.”
“It is four o’clock,” said Bixiou, “let us go back to the rue de
Berlin.”
“Yes; you’ve now seen the heart of the government, cousin, and you
must next be shown the ascarides, the taenia, the intestinal worm,--the
republican, since I must needs name him,” said Leon.
When the three friends were once more packed into their hackney-coach,
Gazonal looked at his cousin and Bixiou like a man who had a mind to
launch a flood of oratorical and Southern bile upon the elements.
“I distrusted with all my might this great hussy of a town,” he rolled
out in Southern accents; “but since this morning I despise her! The poor
little province you think so petty is an honest girl; but Paris is a
prostitute, a greedy, lying comedian; and I am very thankful not to be
robbed of my skin in it.”
“The day is not over yet,” said Bixiou, sententiously, winking at Leon.
“And why do you complain in that stupid way,” said Leon, “of a
prostitution to which you will owe the winning of your lawsuit? Do you
think you are more virtuous than we, less of a comedian, less greedy,
less liable to fall under some temptation, less conceited than those we
have been making dance for you like puppets?”
“Try me!”
“Poor lad!” said Leon, shrugging his shoulders, “haven’t you already
promised Rastignac your electoral influence?”
“Yes, because he was the only one who ridiculed himself.”
“Poor lad!” repeated Bixiou, “why slight me, who am always ridiculing
myself? You are like a pug-dog barking at a tiger. Ha! if you saw us
really ridiculing a man, you’d see that we can drive a sane man mad.”
This conversation brought Gazonal back to his cousin’s house, where the
sight of luxury silenced him, and put an end to the discussion. Too late
he perceived that Bixiou had been making him pose.
At half-past five o’clock, the moment when Leon de Lora was making
his evening toilet to the great wonderment of Gazonal, who counted the
thousand and one superfluities of his cousin, and admired the solemnity
of the valet as he performed his functions, the “pedicure of monsieur”
was announced, and Publicola Masson, a little man fifty years of age,
made his appearance, laid a small box of instruments on the floor, and
sat down on a small chair opposite to Leon, after bowing to Gazonal and
Bixiou.
“How are matters going with you?” asked Leon, delivering to Publicola
one of his feet, already washed and prepared by the valet.
“I am forced to take two pupils,--two young fellows who, despairing of
fortune, have quitted surgery for corporistics; they were actually dying
of hunger; and yet they are full of talent.”
“I’m not asking you about pedestrial affairs, I want to know how you are
getting on politically.”
Masson gave a glance at Gazonal, more eloquent than any species of
question.
“Oh! you can speak out, that’s my cousin; in a way he belongs to you; he
thinks himself legitimist.”
“Well! we are coming along, we are advancing! In five years from now
Europe will be with us. Switzerland and Italy are fermenting finely; and
when the occasion comes we are all ready. Here, in Paris, we have fifty
thousand armed men, without counting two hundred thousand citizens who
haven’t a penny to live upon.”
“Pooh,” said Leon, “how about the fortifications?”
“Pie-crust; we can swallow them,” replied Masson.
“In the first place, we sha’n’t let the cannon in, and, in the second,
we’ve got a little machine more powerful than all the forts in the
world,--a machine, due to a doctor, which cured more people during the
short time we worked it than the doctors ever killed.”
“How you talk!” exclaimed Gazonal, whose flesh began to creep at
Publicola’s air and manner.
“Ha! that’s the thing we rely on! We follow Saint-Just and Robespierre;
but we’ll do better than they; they were timid, and you see what came
of it; an emperor! the elder branch! the younger branch! The Montagnards
didn’t lop the social tree enough.”
“Ah ca! you, who will be, they tell me, consul, or something of that
kind, tribune perhaps, be good enough to remember,” said Bixiou, “that I
have asked your protection for the last dozen years.”
“No harm shall happen to you; we shall need wags, and you can take the
place of Barere,” replied the corn-doctor.
“And I?” said Leon.
“Ah, you! you are my client, and that will save you; for genius is an
odious privilege, to which too much is accorded in France; we shall be
forced to annihilate some of our greatest men in order to teach others
to be simple citizens.”
The corn-cutter spoke with a semi-serious, semi-jesting air that made
Gazonal shudder.
“So,” he said, “there’s to be no more religion?”
“No more religion _of the State_,” replied the pedicure, emphasizing the
last words; “every man will have his own. It is very fortunate that the
government is just now endowing convents; they’ll provide our funds.
Everything, you see, conspires in our favour. Those who pity the
peoples, who clamor on behalf of proletaries, who write works against
the Jesuits, who busy themselves about the amelioration of no matter
what,--the communists, the humanitarians, the philanthropists, you
understand,--all these people are our advanced guard. While we are
storing gunpowder, they are making the tinder which the spark of a
single circumstance will ignite.”
“But what do you expect will make the happiness of France?” cried
Gazonal.
“Equality of citizens and cheapness of provisions. We mean that there
will be no persons lacking anything, no millionaires, no suckers of
blood and victims.”
“That’s it!--maximum and minimum,” said Gazonal.
“You’ve said it,” replied the corn-cutter, decisively.
“No more manufacturers?” asked Gazonal.
“The state will manufacture. We shall all be the usufructuaries of
France; each will have his ration as on board ship; and all the world
will work according to their capacity.”
“Ah!” said Gazonal, “and while awaiting the time when you can cut off
the heads of aristocrats--”
“I cut their nails,” said the radical republican, putting up his tools
and finishing the jest himself.
Then he bowed very politely and went away.
“Can this be possible in 1845?” cried Gazonal.
“If there were time we could show you,” said his cousin, “all the
personages of 1793, and you could talk with them. You have just seen
Marat; well! we know Fouquier-Tinville, Collot d’Herbois, Robespierre,
Chabot, Fouche, Barras; there is even a magnificent Madame Roland.”
“Well, the tragic is not lacking in your play,” said Gazonal.
“It is six o’clock. Before we take you to see Odry in ‘Les
Saltimbauques’ to-night,” said Leon to Gazonal, “we must go and pay
a visit to Madame Cadine,--an actress whom your committee-man Massol
cultivates, and to whom you must therefore pay the most assiduous
court.”
“And as it is all important that you conciliate that power, I am going
to give you a few instructions,” said Bixiou. “Do you employ workwomen
in your manufactory?”
“Of course I do,” replied Gazonal.
“That’s all I want to know,” resumed Bixiou. “You are not married, and
you are a great--”
“Yes!” cried Gazonal, “you’ve guessed my strong point, I’m a great lover
of women.”
“Well, then! if you will execute the little manoeuvre which I am about
to prescribe for you, you will taste, without spending a farthing, the
sweets to be found in the good graces of an actress.”
When they reached the rue de la Victoire where the celebrated actress
lived, Bixiou, who meditated a trick upon the distrustful provincial,
had scarcely finished teaching him his role; but Gazonal was quick, as
we shall see, to take a hint.
The three friends went up to the second floor of a rather handsome
house, and found Madame Jenny Cadine just finishing dinner, for she
played that night in an afterpiece at the Gymnase. Having presented
Gazonal to this great power, Leon and Bixiou, in order to leave them
alone together, made the excuse of looking at a piece of furniture in
another room; but before leaving, Bixiou had whispered in the actress’s
ear: “He is Leon’s cousin, a manufacturer, enormously rich; he wants
to win a suit before the Council of State against his prefect, and he
thinks it wise to fascinate you in order to get Massol on his side.”
All Paris knows the beauty of that young actress, and will therefore
understand the stupefaction of the Southerner on seeing her. Though she
had received him at first rather coldly, he became the object of her
good graces before they had been many minutes alone together.
“How strange!” said Gazonal, looking round him disdainfully on the
furniture of the salon, the door of which his accomplices had left
half open, “that a woman like you should be allowed to live in such an
ill-furnished apartment.”
“Ah, yes, indeed! but how can I help it? Massol is not rich; I am hoping
he will be made a minister.”
“What a happy man!” cried Gazonal, heaving the sigh of a provincial.
“Good!” thought she. “I shall have new furniture, and get the better of
Carabine.”
“Well, my dear!” said Leon, returning, “you’ll be sure to come to
Carabine’s to-night, won’t you?--supper and lansquenet.”
“Will monsieur be there?” said Jenny Cadine, looking artlessly and
graciously at Gazonal.
“Yes, madame,” replied the countryman, dazzled by such rapid success.
“But Massol will be there,” said Bixiou.
“Well, what of that?” returned Jenny. “Come, we must part, my treasures;
I must go to the theatre.”
Gazonal gave his hand to the actress, and led her to the citadine which
was waiting for her; as he did so he pressed hers with such ardor that
Jenny Cadine exclaimed, shaking her fingers: “Take care! I haven’t any
others.”
When the three friends got back into their own vehicle, Gazonal
endeavoured to seize Bixiou round the waist, crying out: “She bites!
You’re a fine rascal!”
“So women say,” replied Bixiou.
At half-past eleven o’clock, after the play, another citadine took the
trio to the house of Mademoiselle Seraphine Sinet, better known under
the name of Carabine,--one of those pseudonyms which famous lorettes
take, or which are given to them; a name which, in this instance, may
have referred to the pigeons she had killed.
Carabine, now become almost a necessity for the banker du Tillet, deputy
of the Left, lived in a charming house in the rue Saint-Georges. In
Paris there are many houses the destination of which never varies; and
the one we now speak of had already seen seven careers of courtesans.
A broker had brought there, about the year 1827, Suzanne du Val-Noble,
afterwards Madame Gaillard. In that house the famous Esther caused the
Baron de Nucingen to commit the only follies of his life. Florine, and
subsequently, a person now called in jest “the late Madame Schontz,”
had scintillated there in turn. Bored by his wife, du Tillet bought this
modern little house, and there installed the celebrated Carabine,
whose lively wit and cavalier manners and shameless brilliancy were a
counterpoise to the dulness of domestic life, and the toils of finance
and politics.
Whether du Tillet or Carabine were at home or not at home, supper was
served, and splendidly served, for ten persons every day. Artists, men
of letters, journalists, and the habitues of the house supped there when
they pleased. After supper they gambled. More than one member of
both Chambers came there to buy what Paris pays for by its weight in
gold,--namely, the amusement of intercourse with anomalous untrammelled
women, those meteors of the Parisian firmament who are so difficult to
class. There wit reigns; for all can be said, and all is said. Carabine,
a rival of the no less celebrated Malaga, had finally inherited the
salon of Florine, now Madame Raoul Nathan, and of Madame Schontz, now
wife of Chief-Justice du Ronceret.
As he entered, Gazonal made one remark only, but that remark was both
legitimate and legitimist: “It is finer than the Tuileries!” The satins,
velvets, brocades, the gold, the objects of art that swarmed there,
so filled the eyes of the wary provincial that at first he did not
see Madame Jenny Cadine, in a toilet intended to inspire respect, who,
concealed behind Carabine, watched his entrance observingly, while
conversing with others.
“My dear child,” said Leon to Carabine, “this is my cousin, a
manufacturer, who descended upon me from the Pyrenees this morning. He
knows nothing of Paris, and he wants Massol to help him in a suit he
has before the Council of State. We have therefore taken the liberty to
bring him--his name is Gazonal--to supper, entreating you to leave him
his full senses.”
“That’s as monsieur pleases; wine is dear,” said Carabine, looking
Gazonal over from head to foot, and thinking him in no way remarkable.
Gazonal, bewildered by the toilets, the lights, the gilding, the chatter
of the various groups whom he thought to be discussing him, could only
manage to stammer out the words: “Madame--madame--is--very good.”
“What do you manufacture?” said the mistress of the house, laughing.
“Say laces and offer her some guipure,” whispered Bixiou in Gazonal’s
ear.
“La-ces,” said Gazonal, perceiving that he would have to pay for his
supper. “It will give me the greatest pleasure to offer you a dress--a
scarf--a mantilla of my make.”
“Ah, three things! Well, you are nicer than you look to be,” returned
Carabine.
“Paris has caught me!” thought Gazonal, now perceiving Jenny Cadine, and
going up to her.
“And I,” said the actress, “what am I to have?”
“All I possess,” replied Gazonal, thinking that to offer all was to give
nothing.
Massol, Claude Vignon, du Tillet, Maxime de Trailles, Nucingen, du
Bruel, Malaga, Monsieur and Madame Gaillard, Vauvinet, and a crowd of
other personages now entered.
After a conversation with the manufacturer on the subject of his suit,
Massol, without making any promises, told him that the report was not
yet written, and that citizens could always rely on the knowledge
and the independence of the Council of State. Receiving that cold and
dignified response, Gazonal, in despair, thought it necessary to set
about seducing the charming Jenny, with whom he was by this time in
love. Leon de Lora and Bixiou left their victim in the hands of that
most roguish and frolicsome member of the anomalous society,--for Jenny
Cadine is the sole rival in that respect of the famous Dejazet.
At the supper-table, where Gazonal was fascinated by a silver service
made by the modern Benvenuto Cellini, Froment-Meurice, the contents of
which were worthy of the container, his mischievous friends were careful
to sit at some distance from him; but they followed with cautious
eye the manoeuvres of the clever actress, who, being attracted by the
insidious hope of getting her furniture renewed, was playing her cards
to take the provincial home with her. No sheep upon the day of the
Fete-Dieu ever more meekly allowed his little Saint John to lead him
along than Gazonal as he followed his siren.
Three days later, Leon and Bixiou, who had not seen Gazonal since that
evening, went to his lodgings about two in the afternoon.
“Well, cousin,” said Leon, “the Council of State has decided in favour
of your suit.”
“Maybe, but it is useless now, cousin,” said Gazonal, lifting a
melancholy eye to his two friends. “I’ve become a republican.”
“What does that mean?” asked Leon.
“I haven’t anything left; not even enough to pay my lawyer,” replied
Gazonal. “Madame Jenny Cadine has got notes of hand out of me to the
amount of more money than all the property I own--”
“The fact is Cadine is rather dear; but--”
“Oh, but I didn’t get anything for my money,” said Gazonal. “What a
woman! Well, I’ll own the provinces are not a match for Paris; I shall
retire to La Trappe.”
“Good!” said Bixiou, “now you are reasonable. Come, recognize the
majesty of the capital.”
“And of capital,” added Leon, holding out to Gazonal his notes of hand.
Gazonal gazed at the papers with a stupefied air.
“You can’t say now that we don’t understand the duties of hospitality;
haven’t we educated you, saved you from poverty, feasted you, and amused
you?” said Bixiou.
“_And_ fooled you,” added Leon, making the gesture of gamins to express
the action of picking pockets.
ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Brambourg, Comte de
A Bachelor’s Establishment
Cadine, Jenny
Cousin Betty
Beatrix
The Member for Arcis
Canalis, Constant-Cyr-Melchior, Baron de
Letters of Two Brides
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Modeste Mignon
The Magic Skin
Another Study of Woman
A Start in Life
Beatrix
The Member for Arcis
Collin, Jacqueline
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Cousin Betty