“Two thousand debtors! did you say that, madame? two thousand accounts
to keep! why, it is immense!”
“Oh! I meant two thousand accounts which rely for liquidation, as I
told you, on the delicacy and good feeling of our debtors; but there are
fully three thousand other families whom we help who make us no other
return than thanks to God. This is why we feel, as I told you, the
necessity of keeping books ourselves. If you prove to us your discretion
and capacity you shall be, if you like, our accountant. We keep a
day-book, a ledger, a book of current accounts, and a bank-book. We have
many notes, but we lose a great deal of time in looking them up. Ah!
here are the gentlemen,” she added.
Godefroid, grave and thoughtful, took little part in the general
conversation which now followed. He was stunned by the communication
Madame de la Chanterie had just made to him, in a tone which implied
that she wished to reward his ardor.
“Five thousand families assisted!” he kept repeating to himself. “If
they were to cost what I am to spend on Monsieur Bernard, we must have
millions scattered through Paris.”
This thought was the last expiring movement of the spirit of the world,
which had slowly and insensibly become extinguished in Godefroid. On
reflection he saw that the united fortunes of Madame de la Chanterie,
Messieurs Alain, Nicolas, Joseph, and that of Judge Popinot, the gifts
obtained through the Abbe de Veze, and the assistance lent by the
firm of Mongenod must produce a large capital; and that this capital,
increased during the last dozen years by grateful returns from those
assisted, must have grown like a snowball, inasmuch as the charitable
stewards of it spent so little on themselves. Little by little he began
to see clearly into this vast work, and his desire to co-operate in it
increased.
He was preparing at nine o’clock to return on foot to the boulevard du
Mont-Parnasse; but Madame de la Chanterie, fearing the solitude of that
neighborhood at a late hour, made him take a cab. When he reached the
house Godefroid heard the sound of an instrument, though the shutters
were so carefully closed that not a ray of light issued through them. As
soon as he reached the landing, Auguste, who was probably on the watch
for him, opened the door of Monsieur Bernard’s apartment and said:--
“Mamma would like to see you, and my grandfather offers you a cup of
tea.”
When Godefroid entered, the patient seemed to him transfigured by the
pleasure she felt in making music; her face was radiant, her eyes were
sparkling like diamonds.
“I ought to have waited to let you hear the first sounds,” she said to
Godefroid, “but I flung myself upon the little organ as a starving man
flings himself on food. You have a soul that comprehends me, and I know
you will forgive.”
Vanda made a sign to her son, who placed himself in such a way as to
press with his foot the pedal which filled the bellows; and then the
invalid, whose fingers had for the time recovered all their strength
and agility, raising her eyes to heaven like Saint Cecilia, played the
“Prayer of Moses in Egypt,” which her son had bought for her and which
she had learned by heart in a few hours. Godefroid recognized in her
playing the same quality as in Chopin’s. The soul was satisfied by
divine sounds of which the dominant note was that of tender melancholy.
Monsieur Bernard had received Godefroid with a look that was long a
stranger to his eyes. If tears were not forever dried at their source,
withered by such scorching sorrows, that look would have been tearful.
The old man sat playing with his snuff-box and looking at his daughter
in silent ecstasy.
“To-morrow, madame,” said Godefroid, when the music ceased; “to-morrow
your fate will be decided. I bring you good news. The celebrated
Halpersohn is coming to see you at three o’clock in the afternoon. He
has promised,” added Godefroid in a low voice to Monsieur Bernard, “to
tell me the exact truth.”
The old man rose, and grasping Godefroid’s hand, drew him to a corner of
the room beside the fireplace.
“Ah! what a night I shall pass! a definitive decision! My daughter cured
or doomed!”
“Courage!” said Godefroid; “after tea come out with me.”
“My child, my child, don’t play any more,” said the old man; “you
will bring on an attack; such a strain upon your strength must end in
reaction.”
He made Auguste take away the instrument and offered a cup of tea to his
daughter with the coaxing manner of a nurse quieting the petulance of a
child.
“What is the doctor like?” she asked, her mind already distracted by the
prospect of seeing a new person.
Vanda, like all prisoners, was full of eager curiosity. When the
physical phenomena of her malady ceased, they seemed to betake
themselves to the moral nature; she conceived the strangest fancies, the
most violent caprices; she insisted on seeing Rossini, and wept when her
father, whom she believed to be all powerful, refused to fetch him.
Godefroid now gave her a minute account of the Jewish doctor and his
study; of which she knew nothing, for Monsieur Bernard had cautioned
Auguste not to tell his mother of his visits to Halpersohn, so much had
he feared to rouse hopes in her mind which might not be realized.
Vanda hung upon Godefroid’s words like one fascinated; and she fell into
a sort of ecstasy in her passionate desire to see this strange Polish
doctor.
“Poland has produced many singular, mysterious beings,” said Monsieur
Bernard. “To-day, for instance, besides this extraordinary doctor, we
have Hoene Wronski, the enlightened mathematician, the poet Mickievicz,
Towianksi the mystic, and Chopin, whose talent is supernatural. Great
national convulsions always produce various species of dwarfed giants.”
“Oh! dear papa; what a man you are! If you would only write down what we
hear you say merely to amuse me you would make your reputation. Fancy,
monsieur, my dear old father invents wonderful stories when I have no
novels to read; he often puts me to sleep in that way. His voice
lulls me, and he quiets my mind with his wit. Who can ever reward him?
Auguste, my child, you ought for my sake, to kiss the print of your
grandfather’s footsteps.”
The young man raised his beautiful moist eyes to his mother, and the
look he gave her, full of a long-repressed compassion, was a poem.
Godefroid rose, took the lad’s hand, and pressed it.
“God has placed two angels beside you, madame,” he said.
“Yes, I know that. And for that reason I often reproach myself for
harassing them. Come, my dear Auguste, and kiss your mother. He is a
child, monsieur, of whom all mothers might be proud; pure as gold, frank
and honest, a soul without sin--but too passionate a soul, alas! like
that of his poor mother. Perhaps God has fastened me in this bed to
keep me from the follies of women--who have too much heart,” she added,
smiling.
Godefroid replied with a smile and a bow.
“Adieu, monsieur; and thank your friend for the instrument; tell him it
makes the happiness of a poor cripple.”
“Monsieur,” said Godefroid, when they were alone in the latter’s room.
“I think I may assure you that you shall not be robbed by that trio of
bloodsuckers. I have the necessary sum to free your book, but you must
first show me your written agreement with them. And after that, in order
to do still more for you, you must let me have your work to read,--not
I myself, of course, I have not knowledge enough to judge of it, but a
former magistrate, a lawyer of eminence and of perfect integrity, who
will undertake, according to what he thinks of the book, to find you an
honorable publisher with whom you can make an equitable agreement. This,
however, I will not insist upon. Meantime here are five hundred francs,”
he added, giving a bank-note to the stupefied old man, “to meet
your present needs. I do not ask for any receipt; you will be under
obligations to your own conscience only, and that conscience is not to
move you until you have recovered a sufficient competence,--I undertake
to pay Halpersohn.”
“Who are you, then?” asked the old man, dropping into a chair.
“I myself,” replied Godefroid, “am nothing; but I serve powerful persons
to whom your distress is known, and who feel an interest in you. Ask me
nothing more about them.”
“But what induces them to do this?” said the old man.
“Religion.”
“Religion! is it possible?”
“Yes, the catholic, apostolic, and Roman religion.”
“Ah! do you belong to the order of Jesus?”
“No, monsieur,” replied Godefroid. “Do not feel uneasy; these persons
have no designs upon you, except that of helping you to restore your
family to prosperity.”
“Can philanthropy be anything but vanity?”
“Ah! monsieur,” said Godefroid, hastily; “do not insult the virtue
defined by Saint Paul, sacred, catholic Love!”
Monsieur Bernard, hearing this answer, began to stride up and down with
long steps.
“I accept,” he said suddenly, “and I have but one way of thanking
you, and that is to offer you my work. The notes and citations are
unnecessary to the magistrate you speak of; and I have still two months’
work to do in arranging them for the press. To-morrow I will give you
the five volumes,” he added, offering Godefroid his hand.
“Can I have made a conversion?” thought Godefroid, struck by the new
expression which he saw on the old man’s face.