Through the door of a third chamber, which the old man had left open,
Godefroid beheld two cots of painted wood, like those of the cheapest
boarding-schools, each with a straw bed and a thin mattress, on which
there was but one blanket. A small iron stove like those that porters
cook by, near which lay a few squares of peat, would alone have shown
the poverty of the household without the help of other details.
Advancing a step or two, Godefroid saw utensils such as the poorest
persons use,--earthenware jugs, and pans in which potatoes floated
in dirty water. Two tables of blackened wood, covered with books and
papers, stood before the windows that looked out upon the rue Notre-Dame
des Champs, and indicated the nocturnal occupations of father and son.
On each of the tables was a flat iron candlestick, such as are used by
the very poor, and in them Godefroid noticed tallow-candles of the kind
that are sold at eight to the pound.
On a third table glittered two forks and spoons and another little spoon
of silver-gilt, together with plates, bowls, and cups of Sevres china,
and a silver-gilt knife and fork in an open case, all evidently for the
service of the sick woman.
The stove was lighted; the water in the copper was steaming slightly.
A painted wooden closet or wardrobe contained, no doubt, the linen and
clothing of Monsieur Bernard’s daughter. On the old man’s bed Godefroid
noticed that the habiliments he had worn the night before lay spread
as a covering. The floor, evidently seldom swept, looked like that of a
boy’s class-room. A six-pound loaf of bread, from which some slices had
been cut, was on a shelf above the table. Here was poverty in its last
stages, poverty resolutely accepted with stern endurance, making shift
with the lowest and poorest means. A strong and sickening odor came from
this room, which was rarely cleaned.
The antechamber, in which Godefroid stood, was at any rate decent, and
he suspected that it served to conceal the horrors of the room in which
the grandfather and the grandson lived. This antechamber, hung with a
checked paper of Scotch pattern, held four walnut chairs, a small table,
a colored engraving of the Emperor after Horace Vernet, also portraits
of Louis XVIII., Charles X., and Prince Poniatowski, no doubt the friend
of Monsieur Bernard’s father-in-law. The window was draped with white
calico curtains edged with red bands and fringe.
Godefroid watched for Nepomucene, and when the latter made his next trip
with wood signed to him to stack it very gently in Monsieur Bernard’s
antechamber; then (a perception which proved some progress in our
initiate) he closed the door of the inner lair that Madame Vauthier’s
slave might not see the old man’s squalor.
The antechamber was just then encumbered with three plant-stands filled
with plants; two were oblong, one round, all three were of a species
of ebony and of great elegance; even Nepomucene took notice of them and
said as he deposited the wood:--
“Hey! ain’t they pretty? They must have cost a good bit!”
“Jean! don’t make so much noise!” called Monsieur Bernard from his
daughter’s room.
“Did you hear that?” whispered Nepomucene to Godefroid. “He’s cracked,
for sure, that old fellow.”
“You don’t know what you may be at his age.”
“Yes, I do know,” responded Nepomucene, “I shall be in the sugar-bowl.”
“The sugar-bowl?”
“Yes, they’ll have made my bones into charcoal by that time; I often see
the carts of the refineries coming to Montsouris for charcoal; they tell
me they make sugar of it.” And he departed after another load of wood,
satisfied with this philosophical reflection.
Godefroid discreetly withdrew to his own rooms, closing Monsieur
Bernard’s door behind him. Madame Vauthier, who during this time had
been preparing her new lodger’s breakfast, now came up to serve it,
attended by Felicite. Godefroid, lost in reflection, stared into his
fire. He was absorbed in meditation on this great misery which contained
so many different miseries, and yet within which he could see the
ineffable joys of the many triumphs of paternal and filial love; they
were gems shining in the blackness of the pit.
“What romances, even those that are most famous, can equal such
realities?” he thought. “What a life it will be to relieve the burden of
such existences, to seek out causes and effects and remedy them, calming
sorrows, helping good; to incarnate one’s own being in misery; to
familiarize one’s self with homes like that; to act out constantly in
life those dramas which move us so in fiction! I never imagined that
good could be more interesting, more piquant than vice.”
“Is monsieur satisfied with his breakfast?” asked Madame Vauthier, who
now, with Felicite’s assistance, brought the table close to Godefroid.
Godefroid then saw a cup of excellent _cafe au lait_ with a smoking
omelet, fresh butter, and little red radishes.
“Where the devil did you get those radishes?” he asked.
“They were given me by Monsieur Cartier,” answered Madame Vauthier; “and
I make a present of them to monsieur.”
“And what are you going to ask me for such a breakfast daily?”
“Well now, monsieur, be fair,--I couldn’t do it for less than thirty
sous.”
“Very good, thirty sous then;” said Godefroid; “but how is it that
they ask me only forty-five francs a month for dinner, close by here at
Machillot’s? That is the same price you ask me for breakfast.”
“But what a difference, monsieur, between preparing a dinner for fifteen
or twenty persons and going out to get you just what you want for
breakfast! See here! there’s a roll, eggs, butter, the cost of lighting
a fire, sugar, milk, coffee!--just think! they ask you sixteen sous for
a cup of coffee alone on the place de l’Odeon, and then you have to give
a sou or two to the waiter. Here you have no trouble; you can breakfast
in slippers.”
“Very well, very well,” said Godefroid.
“Without Madame Cartier who supplies me with milk and eggs and herbs
I couldn’t manage it. You ought to go and see their establishment,
monsieur. Ha! it’s fine! They employ five journeymen gardeners, and
Nepomucene goes there in summer to draw water for them; they hire him of
me as a waterer. They make lots of money out of melons and strawberries.
It seems monsieur takes quite an interest in Monsieur Bernard,”
continued the widow in dulcet tones; “or he wouldn’t be responsible for
his debts. Perhaps he doesn’t know all that family owes. There’s the
lady who keeps the circulating library on the place Saint-Michel; she is
always coming here after thirty francs they owe her,--and she needs it,
God knows! That sick woman in there, she reads, reads, reads! Two sous a
volume makes thirty francs in three months.”
“That means a hundred volumes a month,” said Godefroid.
“Ah! there’s the old man going now to fetch a roll and cream for his
daughter’s tea,--yes, tea! she lives on tea, that lady. She drinks it
twice a day. And twice a week she has to have sweet things. Oh! she’s
dainty! The old man buys cakes and pates from the pastry cook in the rue
de Buci. He don’t care what he spends, if it’s for her. He calls her his
daughter! It ain’t often that men of his age do for a daughter what he
does for her! He just kills himself, he and Auguste too, for that woman.
Monsieur is just like me; I’d give anything to see her. Monsieur Berton
says she’s a monster,--something like those they show for money. That’s
the reason they’ve come to live here, in this lonely quarter. Well, so
monsieur thinks of dining at Madame Machillot’s, does he?”
“Yes, I think of making an arrangement there.”
“Monsieur, it isn’t that I want to interfere, but I must say, comparing
food with food, you’d do much better to dine in the rue de Tournon; you
needn’t engage by the month, and you’ll find a better table.”
“Whereabouts in the rue de Tournon?”
“At the successors to Madame Giraud. That’s where the gentlemen upstairs
go; they are satisfied, and more than satisfied.”
“Well, I’ll take your advice and dine there to-day.”
“My dear monsieur,” said the woman, emboldened by the good-nature which
Godefroid intentionally assumed, “tell me seriously, you are not going
to be such a muff as to pay Monsieur Bernard’s debts? It would really
trouble me if you did; for just reflect, my kind monsieur Godefroid,
he’s nearly seventy, and after him, what then? not a penny of pension!
How’ll you get paid? Young men are so imprudent! Do you know that he
owes three thousand francs?”
“To whom?” inquired Godefroid.
“Oh! to whom? that’s not my affair,” said the widow, mysteriously; “it
is enough that he does owe them. Between ourselves I’ll tell you this:
somebody will soon be down on him for that money, and he can’t get a
penny of credit now in the quarter just on that account.”
“Three thousand francs!” repeated Godefroid; “oh, you needn’t be afraid
I’ll lend him that. If I had three thousand francs to dispose of I
shouldn’t be your lodger. But I can’t bear to see others suffer, and
just for a hundred or so of francs I sha’n’t let my neighbor, a man with
white hair too, lack for bread or wood; why, one often loses as much
as that at cards. But three thousand francs! good heavens! what are you
thinking of?”
Madame Vauthier, deceived by Godefroid’s apparent frankness, let a smile
of satisfaction appear on her specious face, which confirmed all her
lodger’s suspicions. Godefroid was convinced that the old woman was an
accomplice in some plot that was brewing against the unfortunate old
man.
“It is strange, monsieur,” she went on, “what fancies one takes into
one’s head! You’ll think me very curious, but yesterday, when I saw you
talking with Monsieur Bernard I said to myself that you were the clerk
of some publisher; for this, you know, is a publisher’s quarter. I once
lodged the foreman of a printing-house in the rue de Vaugirard, and his
name was the same as yours--”
“What does my business signify to you?” interrupted Godefroid.
“Oh, pooh! you can tell me, or you needn’t tell me; I shall know it all
the same,” retorted Vauthier. “There’s Monsieur Bernard, for instance,
for eighteen months he concealed everything from me, but on the
nineteenth I discovered that he had been a magistrate, a judge somewhere
or other, I forget where, and was writing a book on law matters. What
did he gain by concealing it, I ask you. If he had told me I’d have said
nothing about it--so there!”
“I am not yet a publisher’s clerk, but I expect to be,” said Godefroid.
“I thought so!” exclaimed Madame Vauthier, turning round from the bed
she had been making as a pretext for staying in the room. “You have come
here to cut the ground from under the feet of--Good! _a man warned_ is a
man armed.”
“Stop!” cried Godefroid, placing himself between the Vauthier and the
door. “Look here, what interest have you in the matter?”
“Gracious!” said the old woman, eyeing Godefroid cautiously, “you’re a
bold one, anyhow.”
She went to the door of the outer room and bolted it; then she came back
and sat down on a chair beside the fire.
“On my word of honor, and as sure as my name is Vauthier, I took you
for a student until I saw you giving your wood to that old Bernard. Ha!
you’re a sly one; and what a play-actor! I was so certain you were a
ninny! Look here, will you guarantee me a thousand francs? As sure as
the sun shines, my old Barbet and Monsieur Metivier have promised me
five hundred to keep my eyes open for them.”
“They! five hundred francs! nonsense!” cried Godefroid. “I know their
ways; two hundred is the very most, my good woman, and even that is only
promised; you can’t assign it. But I will say this: if you will put me
in the way to do the business they want to do with Monsieur Bernard I
will pay you four hundred francs. Now, then, how does the matter stand?”
“They have advanced fifteen hundred francs upon the work,” said Madame
Vauthier, making no further effort at deception, “and the old man has
signed an acknowledgment for three thousand. They wouldn’t do it under
a hundred per cent. He thought he could easily pay them out of his book,
but they have arranged to get the better of him there. It was they who
sent Cartier here, and the other creditors.”
Here Godefroid gave the old woman a glance of ironical intelligence,
which showed her that he saw through the role she was playing in
the interest of her proprietor. Her words were, in fact, a double
illumination to Godefroid; the curious scene between himself and the
gardener was now explained.
“Well,” she resumed, “they have got him now. Where is he to find three
thousand francs? They intend to offer him five hundred the day he puts
the first volume of his book into their hands, and five hundred for each
succeeding volume. The affair isn’t in their names; they have put
it into the hands of a publisher whom Barbet set up on the quai des
Augustins.”
“What, that little fellow?”
“Yes, that little Morand, who was formerly Barbet’s clerk. It seems they
expect a good bit of money out of the affair.”
“There’s a good bit to spend,” said Godefroid, with a significant
grimace.
Just then a gentle rap was heard at the door of the outer room.
Godefroid, glad of the interruption, having got all he wanted to know
out of Madame Vauthier, went to open it.
“What is said, is said, Madame Vauthier,” he remarked as he did so. The
visitor was Monsieur Bernard.
“Ah! Monsieur Bernard,” cried the widow when she saw him, “I’ve got a
letter downstairs for you.”
The old man followed her down a few steps. When they were out of hearing
from Godefroid’s room she stopped.
“No,” she said, “I haven’t any letter; I only wanted to tell you to
beware of that young man; he belongs to a publishing house.”
“That explains everything,” thought the old man.
He went back to his neighbor with a very different expression of
countenance.
The look of calm coldness with which Monsieur Bernard now entered the
room contrasted so strongly with the frank and cordial air he had worn
not an instant earlier that Godefroid was forcibly struck by it.
“Pardon me, monsieur,” said the old man, stiffly, “but you have shown
me many favors, and a benefactor creates certain rights in those he
benefits.”
Godefroid bowed.
“I, who for the last five years have endured a passion like that of
our Lord, I, who for thirty-six years represented social welfare,
government, public vengeance, have, as you may well believe, no
illusions--no, I have nothing left but anguish. Well, monsieur, I was
about to say that your little act in closing the door of my wretched
lair, that simple little thing, was to me the glass of water Bossuet
tells of. Yes, I did find in my heart, that exhausted heart which cannot
weep, just as my withered body cannot sweat, I did find a last drop of
the elixir which makes us fancy in our youth that all human beings
are noble, and I came to offer you my hand; I came to bring you that
celestial flower of belief in good--”
“Monsieur Bernard,” said Godefroid, remembering the kind old Alain’s
lessons. “I have done nothing to obtain your gratitude. You are quite
mistaken.”
“Ah, that is frankness indeed!” said the former magistrate. “Well, it
pleases me. I was about to reproach you; pardon me, I now esteem you.
So you are a publisher, and you have come here to get my work away from
Barbet, Metivier, and Morand? All is now explained. You are making me
advances in money as they did, only you do it with some grace.”
“Did Madame Vauthier just tell you that I was employed by a publisher?”
asked Godefroid.
“Yes.”
“Well, then, Monsieur Bernard, before I can say how much I can _give_
over what those other gentlemen _offer_, I must know the terms on which
you stand with them.”
“That is fair,” said Monsieur Bernard, who seemed rather pleased to find
himself the object of a competition by which he might profit. “Do you
know what my work is?”
“No; I only know it is a good enterprise from a business point of view.”
“It is only half-past nine, my daughter has breakfasted, and Cartier
will not bring the flowers for an hour or more; we have time to talk,
Monsieur--Monsieur who?”
“Godefroid.”
“Monsieur Godefroid, the work in question was projected by me in
1825, at the time when the ministry, being alarmed by the persistent
destruction of landed estates, proposed that law of primogeniture which
was, you will remember, defeated. I had remarked certain imperfections
in our codes and in the fundamental institutions of France. Our codes
have often been the subject of important works, but those works were
all from the point of view of jurisprudence. No one had even ventured to
consider the work of the Revolution, or (if you prefer it) of Napoleon,
as a whole; no one had studied the spirit of those laws, and judged
them in their application. That is the main purpose of my work; it
is entitled, provisionally, ‘The Spirit of the New Laws;’ it includes
organic laws as well as codes, all codes; for we have many more than
five codes. Consequently, my work is in several volumes; six in all, the
last being a volume of citations, notes, and references. It will take
me now about three months to finish it. The proprietor of this house, a
former publisher, of whom I made a few inquiries, perceived, scented I
may say, the chance of a speculation. I, in the first instance, thought
only of doing a service to my country, and not of my own profit. Well,
this Barbet has circumvented me. You will ask me how it was possible for
a publisher to get the better of a magistrate, a man who knows the laws.
Well, it was in this way: You know my history; Barbet is an usurer;
he has the keen glance and the shrewd action of that breed of men. His
money was always at my heels to help me over my worst needs. Strange to
say, on the days I was most defenceless against despair he happened to
appear.”
“No, no, my dear Monsieur Bernard,” said Godefroid, “he had a spy in
Madame Vauthier; she told him when you needed money. But the terms, the
conditions? Tell them to me briefly.”
“He has lent me from time to time fifteen hundred francs, for which I
have signed three notes of a thousand francs each, and those notes are
secured by a sort of mortgage on the copyright of my book, so that I
cannot sell my book unless I pay off those notes, and the notes are now
protested,--he has taken the matter into court and obtained a judgment
against me. Such are the complications of poverty! At the lowest
valuation, the first edition of my great work, a work representing
ten years’ toil and thirty-six years’ experience, is fully worth ten
thousand francs. Well, ten days ago Morand proposed to give me three
thousand francs and my notes cancelled for the entire rights in
perpetuity. Now as it is not possible for me to refund the amount of my
notes and interest, namely, three thousand two hundred and forty francs,
I must,--unless you intend to step between those usurers and me,--I must
yield to them. They are not content with my word of honor; they
first obtained the notes, then they had them protested, and now I am
threatened with arrest for debt. If I could manage to pay them back,
those scoundrels would have doubled their money. If I accept their terms
they will make a fortune out of my book and I shall get almost nothing;
one of them is a paper-maker, and God knows how they may keep down the
costs of publication. They will have my name, and that alone will sell
ten thousand copies for them.”
“But, monsieur, how could you, a former magistrate!--”
“How could I help it? Not a friend, not a claim that I could make! And
yet I saved many heads, if I made some fall! And, then, my daughter,
my daughter! whose nurse I am, whose companion I must be; so that I can
work but a few hours snatched from sleep. Ah, young man! none but the
wretched can judge the wretched! Sometimes I think I used to be too
stern to misery.”
“Monsieur, I do not ask your name. I cannot provide three thousand
francs, especially if I pay Halpersohn and your lesser debts; but I
will save you if you will promise me not to part with your book
without letting me know. It is impossible for me to arrange a matter as
important as this without consulting others. My backers are powerful,
and I can promise you success if you, in return, will promise me
absolute secrecy, even to your children, and keep your promise.”
“The only success I care for is the recovery of my poor Vanda; for such
sufferings as hers extinguish every other feeling in a father’s heart.
As for fame, what is that to one who sees an open grave before him?”
“I will come and see you this evening; they expect Halpersohn at any
time, and I shall go there day after day until I find him.”
“Ah, monsieur! if you should be the cause of my daughter’s recovery, I
would like,--yes, I would like to give you my work!”
“Monsieur,” said Godefroid, “I am not a publisher.”
The old man started with surprise.
“I let that old Vauthier think so in order to discover the traps they
were laying for you.”
“Then who are you?”
“Godefroid,” replied the initiate; “and since you allow me to offer you
enough to make the pot boil, you can call me, if you like, Godefroid de
Bouillon.”
The old man was far too moved to laugh at a joke. He held out his hand
to Godefroid, and pressed that which the young man gave him in return.
“You wish to keep your incognito?” he said, looking at Godefroid sadly,
with some uneasiness.
“If you will allow it.”
“Well, as you will. Come to-night, and you shall see my daughter if her
condition permits.”
This was evidently a great concession in the eyes of the poor father,
and he had the satisfaction of seeing, by the look on Godefroid’s face,
that it was understood.
An hour later, Cartier returned with a number of beautiful flowering
plants, which he placed himself in the jardinieres, covering them
with fresh moss. Godefroid paid his bill; also that of the circulating
library, which was brought soon after. Books and flowers!--these were
the daily bread of this poor invalid, this tortured creature, who was
satisfied with so little.
As he thought of this family, coiled by misfortunes like that of the
Laocoon (sublime image of so many lives), Godefroid, who was now on
his way on foot to the rue Marbeuf, was conscious in his heart of more
curiosity than benevolence. This sick woman, surrounded by luxury in the
midst of such direful poverty, made him forget the horrible details of
the strangest of all nervous disorders, which is happily rare, though
recorded by a few historians. One of our most gossiping chroniclers,
Tallemant des Reaux, cites an instance of it. The mind instinctively
pictures a woman as being elegant in the midst of her worst sufferings;
and Godefroid let himself dwell on the pleasure of entering that chamber
where none but the father, son, and doctor had been admitted for six
years. Nevertheless, he ended by blaming himself for his curiosity. He
even felt that the sentiment, natural as it was, would cease as he went
on exercising his beneficent ministry, from the mere fact of seeing more
distressed homes and many sorrows.
Such agents do reach in time a divine serenity which nothing surprises
or confounds; just as in love we come to the divine quietude of that
emotion, sure of its strength, sure of its lastingness, through our
constant experience of its pains and sweetnesses.
Godefroid was told that Halpersohn had returned during the night, but
had been obliged to go out at once to visit patients who were awaiting
him. The porter told Godefroid to come the next day before nine o’clock
in the morning.
Remembering Monsieur Alain’s injunction to parsimony in his personal
expenses, Godefroid dined for twenty-five sous in the rue de Tournon,
and was rewarded for his abnegation by finding himself in the midst
of compositors and pressmen. He heard a discussion on costs of
manufacturing, and learned that an edition of one thousand copies of an
octavo volume of forty sheets did not cost more than thirty sous a copy,
in the best style of printing. He resolved to ascertain the price at
which publishers of law books sold their volumes, so as to be prepared
for a discussion with the men who held Monsieur Bernard in their
clutches if he should have to meet them.
Towards seven in the evening he returned to the boulevard du
Mont-Parnasse, by way of the rue de Vaugiraud and the rue de l’Ouest,
and he saw then how deserted the quarter was, for he met no one. It is
true that the cold was rigorous, and the snow fell in great flakes, the
wheels of the carriages making no noise upon the pavements.
“Ah, here you are, monsieur!” said Madame Vauthier. “If I had known you
were coming home so early I would have made your fire.”
“I don’t want one,” said Godefroid, seeing that the widow followed him.
“I shall spend the evening in Monsieur Bernard’s apartment.”
“Well, well! you must be his cousin, if you are hand and glove like
that! Perhaps monsieur will finish now the little conversation we
began.”
“Ah, yes!--about that four hundred francs. Look here, my good Madame
Vauthier, you are trying to see which way the cat jumps, and you’ll
tumble yourself between two stools. As for me, you have betrayed me, and
made me miss the whole affair.”
“Now, don’t think that, my dear monsieur. To-morrow, while you
breakfast--”
“To-morrow I shall not breakfast here. I am going out, like your
authors, at cock-crow.”
Godefroid’s antecedents, his life as a man of the world and a
journalist, served him in this, that he felt quite sure, unless he took
this tone, that Barbet’s spy would warn the old publisher of danger,
and probably lead to active measures under which Monsieur Bernard would
before long be arrested; whereas, if he left the trio of harpies to
suppose that their scheme ran no risk of defeat, they would keep quiet.
But Godefroid did not yet know Parisian human nature when embodied in
a Vauthier. That woman resolved to have Godefroid’s money and Barbet’s
too. She instantly ran off to her proprietor, while Godefroid changed
his clothes in order to present himself properly before the daughter of
Monsieur Bernard.