The next afternoon at three o’clock a cabriolet stopped before the
house, and Godefroid saw Halpersohn getting out of it, wrapped in a
monstrous bear-skin pelisse. The cold had strengthened during the night,
the thermometer marking ten degrees of it.
The Jewish doctor examined with curious eyes, though furtively, the
room in which his client of the day before received him, and Godefroid
detected the suspicious thought which darted from his eyes like
the sharp point of a dagger. This rapid conception of distrust gave
Godefroid a cold chill, for he thought within himself that such a man
would be pitiless in all relations; it is so natural to suppose that
genius is connected with goodness that a strong sensation of disgust
took possession of him.
“Monsieur,” he said, “I see that the simplicity of my room makes you
uneasy; therefore you need not be surprised at my method of proceeding.
Here are your two hundred francs, and here, too, are three notes of a
thousand francs each,” he added, drawing from his pocket-book the money
Madame de la Chanterie had given him to release Monsieur Bernard’s
book; but in case you still feel doubtful of my solvency I offer you as
reference Messrs. Mongenod, bankers, rue de la Victoire.”
“I know them,” said Halpersohn, putting the ten gold pieces into his
pocket.
“He’ll inquire of them,” thought Godefroid.
“Where is the patient?” asked the doctor, rising like a man who knows
the value of time.
“This way, monsieur,” said Godefroid, preceding him to show the way.
The Jew examined with a shrewd and suspicious eye the places he passed
through, giving them the keen, rapid glance of a spy; he saw all the
horrors of poverty through the door of the room in which the grandfather
and the grandson lived; for, unfortunately, Monsieur Bernard had gone
in to change his clothes before entering his daughter’s room, and in his
haste to open the outer door to the doctor, he had forgotten to close
that of his lair.
He bowed in a stately manner to Halpersohn, and opened the door of his
daughter’s room cautiously.
“Vanda, my child, here is the doctor,” he said.
Then he stood aside to allow Halpersohn, who kept on his bear-skin
pelisse, to pass him. The Jew was evidently surprised at the luxury of
the room, which in this quarter, and more especially in this house, was
an anomaly; but his surprise only lasted for an instant, for he had
seen among German and Russian Jews many instances of the same contrast
between apparent misery and hoarded wealth. As he walked from the door
to the bed he kept his eye on the patient, and the moment he reached her
he said in Polish:--
“You are a Pole?”
“No, I am not; my mother was.”
“Whom did your grandfather, Colonel Tarlowski, marry?”
“A Pole.”
“From what province?”
“A Soboleska, of Pinsk.”
“Very good; monsieur is your father?”
“Yes.”
“Monsieur,” he said, turning to the old man; “your wife--”
“Is dead;” said Monsieur Bernard.
“Was she very fair?” said Halpersohn, showing a slight impatience at
being interrupted.
“Here is her portrait,” said Monsieur Bernard, unhooking from the wall a
handsome frame which enclosed several fine miniatures.
Halpersohn felt the head and handled the hair of the patient while he
looked at the portrait of Vanda Tarlowska, born Countess Sobolewska.
“Relate to me the symptoms of your illness,” he said, placing himself
on the sofa and looking fixedly at Vanda during the twenty minutes the
history, given alternately by the father and daughter, lasted.
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“Ah! good!” he cried, rising; “I will answer for the cure. Mind, I
do not say that I can restore the use of her legs; but cured of the
disease, that she shall be. Only, I must have her in a private hospital
under my own eye.”
“But, monsieur, my daughter cannot be moved!”
“I will answer for her,” said Halpersohn, curtly; “but I will answer
for her only on those conditions. She will have to exchange her present
malady for another still more terrible, which may last a year, six
months at the very least. You may come and see her at the hospital,
since you are her father.”
“Are you certain of curing her?” said Monsieur Bernard.
“Certain,” repeated the Jew. “Madame has in her body an element, a
vitiated fluid, the national disease, and it must be eliminated.
You must bring her to me at Challot, rue Basse-Saint-Pierre, private
hospital of Doctor Halpersohn.”
“How can I?”
“On a stretcher, just as all sick persons are carried to hospitals.”
“But the removal will kill her!”
“No.”
As he said the word in a curt tone he was already at the door; Godefroid
rejoined him on the staircase. The Jew, who was stifling with heat, said
in his ear:
“Besides the three thousand francs, the cost will be fifteen francs a
day, payable three months in advance.”
“Very good, monsieur. And,” continued Godefroid, putting one foot on the
step of the cabriolet, into which the doctor had sprung, “you say you
will answer for the cure?”
“I will answer for it,” said the Jewish doctor. “Are you in love with
the lady?”
“No,” replied Godefroid.
“You must not repeat what I am about to say to you; I only say it to
prove to you that I am certain of a cure. If you are guilty of the
slightest indiscretion you will kill her.”
Godefroid replied with a gesture only.
“For the last seventeen years she has been a victim to the element in
her system called _plica polonica_,[*] which has produced all these
ravages. I have seen more terrible cases than this. Now, I alone in the
present day know how to bring this disease to a crisis, and force it
outward so as to obtain a chance to cure it--for it cannot always be
cured. You see, monsieur, that I am disinterested. If this lady were of
great importance, a Baronne de Nucingen, or any other wife or daughter
of a modern Croesus, this cure would bring me one hundred--two hundred
thousand francs; in short, anything I chose to ask for it. However, it
is only a trifling loss to me.”
[*] Balzac’s description of _plica polonica_ does not agree
with that given in English medical dictionaries and
cyclopedias. But as the book was written at Wierschovnia,
Poland, in 1847, when he was attended by a celebrated Polish
physician, and as, moreover, he was always so scrupulously
accurate in his descriptions, it is fair to suppose that he
knew of some form of the disease other than that given in
the books. His account probably applies to the period before
it takes the visible form described in the books.
“About conveying her?”
“Bah! she’ll seem to be dying, but she won’t die. There’s life enough
in her to last a hundred years, when the disease is out of her system.
Come, Jacques, drive on! quick,--rue de Monsieur! quick!” he said to his
man.
Godefroid was left on the boulevard gazing stupidly after the cabriolet.
“Who is that queer man in a bearskin?” asked Madame Vauthier, whom
nothing escaped; “is it true, what the man in the cabriolet told me,
that he is one of the greatest doctors in Paris?”
“What is that to you?”
“Oh! nothing at all,” she replied, making a face.
“You made a great mistake in not putting yourself on my side,” said
Godefroid, returning slowly to the house; “you would have made more out
of me than you will ever get from Barbet and Metivier; from whom, mark
my words, you’ll get nothing.”
“I am not for them particularly,” said Madame Vauthier, shrugging her
shoulders; “Monsieur Barbet is my proprietor, that’s all!”
It required two days’ persuasion to induce Monsieur Bernard to separate
from his daughter and take her to Chaillot. Godefroid and the old man
made the trip walking on each side of the litter, canopied with blue and
white striped linen, in which was the dear patient, partly bound to a
mattress, so much did her father dread the possible convulsions of
a nervous attack. They started at three o’clock and reached their
destination at five just as evening was coming on. Godefroid paid the
sum demanded for three months’ board in advance, being careful to obtain
a receipt for the money. When he went back to pay the bearers of the
litter, he was followed by Monsieur Bernard, who took from beneath the
mattress a bulky package carefully sealed up, and gave it to Godefroid.
“One of these men will fetch you a cab,” said the old man; “for you
cannot carry these four volumes under your arm. That is my book; give
it to your reader; he may keep it the whole of the coming week. I shall
stay at least that time in this quarter; for I cannot leave my daughter
in such total abandonment. I trust my grandson; he can take care of our
rooms; especially if you keep an eye on him. If I were what I once was I
would ask you the name of my critic, the former magistrate you spoke of;
there were but few of them whom I did not know.”
“Oh, there’s no mystery about it!” said Godefroid, interrupting Monsieur
Bernard. “Now that you have shown this entire confidence in trusting
me with your book, I will tell you that your censor is the former
president, Lecamus de Tresnes.”
“Oh, yes!--of the Royal Court of Paris. Take him the book; he is one of
the noblest characters of the present day. He and the late Popinot,
a judge of the Lower Court, were both worthy of the days of the old
Parliaments. All my fears, if I had any, are dissipated. Where does he
live? I should like to go and thank him for the trouble he is taking.”
“You will find him in the rue Chanoinesse, under the name of Monsieur
Joseph. I am going there now. Where is that agreement you made with your
swindlers?”
“Auguste will give it to you,” said the old man, re-entering the
courtyard of the hospital.
A cab was now brought up by the porter, and Godefroid jumped into
it,--promising the coachman a good pourboire if he would get him to the
rue Chanoinesse in good time, for he wanted to dine there.
Half an hour after Vanda’s departure, three men dressed in black, whom
Madame Vauthier let into the house by the door on the rue Notre-Dame des
Champs, filed up the staircase, accompanied by their female Judas, and
knocked gently at the door of Monsieur Bernard’s lodging. As it happened
to be a Thursday, Auguste was at home. He opened the door, and the three
men glided in like shadows.
“What do you want, messieurs?” asked the lad.
“These are the rooms of Monsieur Bernard,--that is, Monsieur le
baron,--are they not?”
“Yes; but what do you want?”
“You know very well, young man, what we want! We are informed that
your grandfather has left this house with a covered litter. That’s not
surprising; he had the right to do so. But I am the sheriff, and I have
come to seize everything he has left. On Monday he received a summons
to pay three thousand francs, with interest and costs, to Monsieur
Metivier, under pain of arrest for debt duly notified to him, and like
an old stager who is up to the tricks of his own trade, he has walked
off just in time. However, if we can’t catch him, his furniture hasn’t
taken wings. You see we know all about it, young man.”
“Here are the stamped papers your grandpapa didn’t choose to take,” said
Madame Vauthier, thrusting three writs into Auguste’s hand.
“Remain here, madame,” said the sheriff; “we shall make you legal
guardian of the property. The law gives you forty sous a day, and that’s
not to be sneezed at.”
“Ha! now I shall see the inside of that fine bedroom!” cried the
Vauthier.
“You shall not go into my mother’s room!” said the young lad, in a
threatening voice, springing between the door and the three men in
black.
At a sign from the sheriff, two of the men seized Auguste.
“No resistance, young man; you are not master here,” said the sheriff.
“We shall draw up the proces-verbal, and you will sleep in jail.”
Hearing that dreadful word, Auguste burst into tears.
“Ah, how fortunate,” he cried, “that mamma has gone! It would have
killed her.”
A conference now took place between the sheriff, the other men, and
Vauthier, by which Auguste discovered, although they spoke in a low
voice, that his grandfather’s manuscripts were what they chiefly wanted.
On that, he opened the door of his mother’s bedroom.
“Go in,” he said, “but take care to do no injury. You will be paid
to-morrow morning.”
Then he went off weeping into the lair, seized his grandfather’s notes
and stuck them into the stove, in which, as he knew very well, there was
not a spark of fire.
The thing was done so rapidly that the sheriff--a sly, keen fellow,
worthy of his clients Barbet and Metivier--found the lad weeping in his
chair when he entered the wretched room, after assuring himself that the
manuscripts were not in the antechamber.
Though it is not permissible to seize books or manuscripts for debt, the
bill of sale which Monsieur Bernard had made of his work justified
this proceeding. It was, however, easy to oppose various delays to this
seizure, and Monsieur Bernard, had he been there, would not have failed
to do so. For that reason the whole affair had been conducted slyly.
Madame Vauthier had not attempted to give the writs to Monsieur Bernard;
she meant to have flung them into the room on entering behind the
sheriff’s men, so to give the appearance of their being in the old man’s
possession.
The proces-verbal of the seizure took an hour to write down; the sheriff
omitted nothing, and declared that the value of the property seized
was sufficient to pay the debt. As soon as he and his men had
departed, Auguste took the writs and rushed to the hospital to find his
grandfather. The sheriff having told him that Madame Vauthier was now
responsible, under heavy penalties, for the safety of the property, he
could leave the house without fear of robbery.
The idea of his grandfather being dragged to prison for debt drove the
poor lad, if not exactly crazy, at any rate as crazy as youth becomes
under one of those dangerous and fatal excitements in which all powers
ferment at once, and lead as often to evil actions as to heroic deeds.
When he reached the rue Basse-Saint-Pierre, the porter told him that he
did not know what had become of the father of the lady who had arrived
that afternoon; the orders of Monsieur Halpersohn were to admit no one
to see her for the next eight days, under pain of putting her life in
danger.
This answer brought Auguste’s exasperation to a crisis. He returned to
the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, turning over in his mind the wildest
and most extravagant plans of action. He reached home at half-past eight
o’clock, half famished, and so exhausted with hunger and distress that
he listened to Madame Vauthier when she asked him to share her supper,
which happened to be a mutton stew with potatoes. The poor lad fell half
dead upon a chair in that atrocious woman’s room.
Persuaded by the wheedling and honeyed words of the old vulture, he
replied to a few questions about Godefroid which she adroitly put to
him, letting her discover that it was really her other lodger who was
to pay his grandfather’s debts the next day, and also that it was to him
they owed the improvement in their condition during the past week. The
widow listened to these confidences with a dubious air, plying Auguste
with several glasses of wine meantime.
About ten o’clock a cab stopped before the house, and Madame Vauthier
looking out exclaimed:--
“Oh! it is Monsieur Godefroid.”
Auguste at once took the key of his apartment and went up to meet the
protector of his family; but he found Godefroid’s face and manner so
changed that he hesitated to address him until, generous lad that he
was, the thought of his grandfather’s danger came over him and gave him
courage.