The drawing-room of the house in the grey Batignolles quarter
was humble, the only decorations being copies of the engravings
in the Louvre, little statues, cups and dishes of Sèvres china,
trivial-looking ornaments, which somehow proclaimed the fact that the
lady of the house was connected with Government officials.
Madame Cheiral, _née_ Loyer, was the sister of the Minister of Justice
and Public Worship. She was the widow of a commission-agent in the
Rue d’Hauteville, who had died without leaving a penny, and she had
attached herself to her brother, partly for the sake of a home, and
partly out of maternal ambition. She ruled the old bachelor, who ruled
the country, and had forced him to take as his secretary-in-chief her
son Maurice, who was not fitted for anything in particular, and was
good for nothing except some public office.
Uncle Loyer had a room in the little flat of the Avenue de Clichy,
where he came to stay for a while every spring, at which season he was
subject to attacks of giddiness and drowsiness, for he was getting old.
As soon, however, as his head felt better and his tread became more
assured, he returned to the attic-room, where he had lived for half a
century, a room where he had twice been arrested by the agents of the
Empire, and from which he could see the trees of the Luxembourg. He
still kept the pipe of Jules Grévy in this garret of his.
This pipe was perhaps the most treasured possession of the old fellow,
who had gone through many phases as a Member of Parliament: the days
of eloquence and the days of affairs. He had controlled as Minister
of the Interior the secret funds of three budgets. He had bought many
a conscience for his party, a corrupter of others, but incorruptible
himself. He had always had an infinite indulgence for the hypocrisies
of his friends, but was jealous himself of retaining in the midst of
his power the vantage-ground of a simulated poverty that was at once
cynical, obstinate, deep-rooted, and honourable.
His eye was dim now and his mind inactive, but in the intervals, when
his old skill and decisive spirit returned to him, he applied all his
remaining vigour to concentrated thought, and the game of billiards.
Madame Cheiral, whose intelligence was limited and whose skill but
moderate, did what she liked with the cunning, quiet, silent, and
coarse-minded old man, who for the sixth time in his career had been
selected as a member of the cabinet that had followed upon the heels of
the clerical cabinet, and who saw his nephew fulfilling the indefinite
duties of secretary-in-chief without an idea of leadership, nor a
glimmer of moral principle. No doubt, Loyer was somewhat surprised to
find that his nephew had reactionary and clerical tendencies, but he
was too much inclined to apoplexy to run the risk of thwarting his
sister.
Madame Cheiral was staying at home that day, and when Madame
Worms-Clavelin called to see her somewhat late in the afternoon, when
no further callers were expected, she received her very cordially. They
wished each other good-bye, for the _préfet’s_ wife was returning home
on the morrow.
“Going already, darling?”
“I must,” replied Madame Worms-Clavelin sweetly, looking quite innocent
in her black feather-trimmed hat.
She always affected this hat when paying calls, likening herself to a
plume-bedecked horse attached to a funeral car.
“You must stay and dine with us, dear; we so seldom see you in Paris.
We shall be quite alone. I don’t think my brother will be here. He is
so busy and engrossed in his work just now! But perhaps Maurice will be
with us; the young men of to-day are much steadier than they used to
be. Maurice often spends an evening at home with me.”
She began to try to prevail upon Madame Worms-Clavelin with all the
persuasive eloquence of a sociable soul.
“We shall be quite among ourselves. Your dress will do very nicely. I
assure you we shall be absolutely _en famille_.”
Now Madame Worms-Clavelin had obtained from the Minister of the
Interior the Cross of the Legion of Honour for her husband; she had
exacted from the Minister of Instruction and Public Worship a promise
that the name of M. Guitrel, as candidate for the bishopric of
Tourcoing, should be on the list of candidates selected for the six
vacant sees, so there was nothing to keep her any longer in Paris. She
had intended to return home that very evening.
She excused herself, saying that she had “so many things to see to,”
but Madame Cheiral insisted; then, as Madame Worms-Clavelin persisted
in her refusal, she showed her displeasure by tightened lips and acid
tones, so Madame Worms-Clavelin, who had no wish to annoy her, gave in.
“That’s right; and, as I said before, we shall be quite by ourselves.”
They were by themselves, for Loyer never came, and Maurice, who
was expected, did not turn up either. But in their place came a
lady tobacconist[A] and a well-known elementary school teacher. The
conversation was deep and serious. Madame Cheiral, who really was only
interested in her own affairs, and who had no spite against anyone
except her dearest friends, picked out the men whom she thought worthy
of the Senate, the Chamber, and the Institute, not that she cared about
politics, science, or literature, but because she thought it her duty,
as the sister of a Cabinet Minister, to hold opinions on everything
that contributed to the moral and intellectual greatness of her country.
[A] The sale of tobacco in France is controlled by the State, and
given to the widows and daughters of Government officials,
military and naval officers, etc.
Madame Worms-Clavelin listened to her with charming deference, always
retaining the same air of innocence that she reserved for people who
bored her. When in society she had a way of looking down which gave
old gentlemen a thrill, and which to-day excited the admiration of the
hoary-headed instructor of grammar and gymnastics, who endeavoured
to press her foot with his own under the table. However, she had
made up her mind to return by train from the Avenue de Clichy to the
Arc-de-Triomphe, where, among the radiating avenues that look like an
enormous cross of honour, her boarding house was situated. But when
she returned to the drawing-room on the arm of the old gentleman who
had rendered such signal services to elementary instruction she found
Maurice Cheiral, who had been detained at the ministry, and who, after
dining at a restaurant, had returned home to dress, prior to spending
the evening at a theatre.
He examined Madame Worms-Clavelin with interest, and sat down beside
her on the comfortable old couch that stood under a great Sèvres dish
decorated in neo-Chinese style, and suspended on the wall in a blue
plush frame.
“Madame Clavelin! You are the very person I wanted to see!”
In her younger days Madame Worms-Clavelin had been thin and dark, and
in such guise had not been unattractive to men. As time went on she
became fat and fair, and in this guise she was again not unattractive
to men.
“Did you see my uncle yesterday?”
“Yes. He was so sweet to me. How is he to-day?”
“Tired, very tired. He gave me the papers.”
“What papers?”
“The papers referring to the candidatures for the six vacant sees. You
are very anxious for Abbé Guitrel to be elected, are you not?”
“My husband is anxious. Your uncle told me that the thing was settled.”
“My uncle; you should not take any notice of what he says--he is a
Minister and cannot know. People are always fooling him, and then he
often says what he does not mean. Why didn’t you come to me?”
With charming modesty Madame Worms-Clavelin replied in a low voice:
“Well, I do come to you!”
“And you are wise to do so,” replied the secretary-in-chief. “All
the more so because the business is not going on as you wish, and it
depends upon me whether it proceeds or not. My uncle told you, no
doubt, that he was going to present the six applications to the Pope?”
“Yes.”
“Well, they have already been presented. I know that, for I sent them.
I take a special interest in Church matters. My uncle is one of the
old school; he does not understand the importance of religion, while I
realize it thoroughly. Now this is how things stand: the six candidates
have been presented to the Pope, and the Holy Father has only accepted
four. As far as the other two are concerned, that is M. Guitrel and M.
Morrue, he does not absolutely reject them, but he says he has not yet
sufficient information concerning them.” Maurice Cheiral shook his head
gravely. “He has not sufficient information! And when he gets more I do
not know what he will say. Between ourselves, dear lady, Guitrel looks
to me a bit of a rogue, and we cannot be too careful in choosing our
bishops. The clergy is a force upon which a prudent Government should
be able to rely; we are just beginning to realize that.”
“You are quite right,” said Madame Clavelin.
“On the other hand,” went on the secretary-in-chief, “your candidate
seems learned, well read, and open-minded.”
“Well?” asked Madame Worms-Clavelin, with a delightful smile.
“It is difficult!” replied Cheiral.
Cheiral was not a very clever man. He took few things into
consideration, and always acted on reasons so futile that they were
difficult to unravel. And so it was thought, that, being still young,
he was swayed by personal motives. At the present time he had just
finished reading a book by M. Imbert de Saint-Amand on the Tuileries
during the second Empire; the splendour of the brilliant court had
particularly taken his fancy, and the book had fired him with the
desire to live, like the Duc de Morny, a life in which politics should
be combined with pleasure and power of every description. He looked
at Madame Worms-Clavelin in a manner the significance of which she
thoroughly comprehended as she sat there silent with lowered gaze.
“My uncle,” went on Cheiral, “gives me a free hand in this matter,
which does not interest him at all. I can set about it in two ways. I
can propose without further delay the four candidates accepted by the
Holy Father, or I can tell the Nuncio that things will remain at a
standstill until the Holy See has approved of six candidates. I have
not yet made up my mind, but should be delighted to talk the matter
over with you. Shall I expect you to-morrow afternoon at five o’clock,
and wait for you in a closed carriage at the end of the Rue Vigny by
the gates of the Park Monceau?”
“There’s not much risk in that,” thought Madame Worms-Clavelin, her
only reply a slight quivering of her downcast lids.