Paris, but so far it was rather a name than a practical result. Emile’s
indolence, recklessness, and happy-go-lucky ways drove his real father
to despair; and when that father died, a half-ruined man, turned out
of office by one of the political reactions so frequent under the
Restoration, it was with a mind uneasy as to the future of a man endowed
with the most brilliant qualities.
Emile Blondet found support in a friendship with a Mlle. de Troisville,
whom he had known before her marriage with the Comte de Montcornet. His
mother was living when the Troisvilles came back after the emigration;
she was related to the family, distantly it is true, but the connection
was close enough to allow her to introduce Emile to the house. She, poor
woman, foresaw the future. She knew that when she died her son would
lose both mother and father, a thought which made death doubly bitter,
so she tried to interest others in him. She encouraged the liking
that sprang up between Emile and the eldest daughter of the house of
Troisville; but while the liking was exceedingly strong on the young
lady’s part, a marriage was out of the question. It was a romance on the
pattern of Paul et Virginie. Mme. Blondet did what she could to teach
her son to look to the Troisvilles, to found a lasting attachment on
a children’s game of “make-believe” love, which was bound to end as
boy-and-girl romances usually do. When Mlle. de Troisville’s marriage
with General Montcornet was announced, Mme. Blondet, a dying woman, went
to the bride and solemnly implored her never to abandon Emile, and to
use her influence for him in society in Paris, whither the General’s
fortune summoned her to shine.
Luckily for Emile, he was able to make his own way. He made his
appearance, at the age of twenty, as one of the masters of modern
literature; and met with no less success in the society into which he
was launched by the father who at first could afford to bear the expense
of the young man’s extravagance. Perhaps Emile’s precocious celebrity
and the good figure that he made strengthened the bonds of his
friendship with the Countess. Perhaps Mme. de Montcornet, with the
Russian blood in her veins (her mother was the daughter of the Princess
Scherbelloff), might have cast off the friend of her childhood if he
had been a poor man struggling with all his might among the difficulties
which beset a man of letters in Paris; but by the time that the
real strain of Emile’s adventurous life began, their attachment was
unalterable on either side. He was looked upon as one of the leading
lights of journalism when young d’Esgrignon met him at his first supper
party in Paris; his acknowledged position in the world of letters was
very high, and he towered above his reputation. Goodman Blondet had not
the faintest conception of the power which the Constitutional Government
had given to the press; nobody ventured to talk in his presence of the
son of whom he refused to hear. And so it came to pass that he knew
nothing of Emile whom he had cursed and Emile’s greatness.
Old Blondet’s integrity was as deeply rooted in him as his passion for
flowers; he knew nothing but law and botany. He would have interviews
with litigants, listen to them, chat with them, and show them his
flowers; he would accept rare seeds from them; but once on the bench, no
judge on earth was more impartial. Indeed, his manner of proceeding was
so well known, that litigants never went near him except to hand over
some document which might enlighten him in the performance of his duty,
and nobody tried to throw dust in his eyes. With his learning, his
lights, and his way of holding his real talents cheap, he was so
indispensable to President du Ronceret, that, matrimonial schemes apart,
that functionary would have done all that he could, in an underhand way,
to prevent the vice-president from retiring in favor of his son. If the
learned old man left the bench, the President would be utterly unable to
do without him.
Goodman Blondet did not know that it was in Emile’s power to fulfil all
his wishes in a few hours. The simplicity of his life was worthy of one
of Plutarch’s men. In the evening he looked over his cases; next morning
he worked among his flowers; and all day long he gave decisions on the
bench. The pretty maid-servant, now of ripe age, and wrinkled like an
Easter pippin, looked after the house, and they lived according to
the established customs of the strictest parsimony. Mlle. Cadot always
carried the keys of her cupboards and fruit-loft about with her. She
was indefatigable. She went to market herself, she cooked and dusted
and swept, and never missed mass of a morning. To give some idea of the
domestic life of the household, it will be enough to remark that the
father and son never ate fruit till it was beginning to spoil, because
Mlle. Cadot always brought out anything that would not keep. No one in
the house ever tasted the luxury of new bread, and all the fast days in
the calendar were punctually observed. The gardener was put on rations
like a soldier; the elderly Valideh always kept an eye upon him. And
she, for her part, was so deferentially treated, that she took her meals
with the family, and in consequence was continually trotting to and fro
between the kitchen and the parlor at breakfast and dinner time.
Mlle. Blandureau’s parents had consented to her marriage with Joseph
Blondet upon one condition--the penniless and briefless barrister must
be an assistant judge. So, with the desire of fitting his son to fill
the position, old M. Blondet racked his brains to hammer the law into
his son’s head by dint of lessons, so as to make a cut-and-dried lawyer
of him. As for Blondet junior, he spent almost every evening at the
Blandureaus’ house, to which also young Fabien du Ronceret had been
admitted since his return, without raising the slightest suspicion in
the minds of father or son.
Everything in this life of theirs was measured with an accuracy worthy
of Gerard Dow’s Money Changer; not a grain of salt too much, not a
single profit foregone; but the economical principles by which it was
regulated were relaxed in favor of the greenhouse and garden. “The
garden was the master’s craze,” Mlle. Cadot used to say. The master’s
blind fondness for Joseph was not a craze in her eyes; she shared the
father’s predilection; she pampered Joseph; she darned his stockings;
and would have been better pleased if the money spent on the garden had
been put by for Joseph’s benefit.
That garden was kept in marvelous order by a single man; the paths,
covered with river-sand, continually turned over with the rake,
meandered among the borders full of the rarest flowers. Here were all
kinds of color and scent, here were lizards on the walls, legions of
little flower-pots standing out in the sun, regiments of forks and hoes,
and a host of innocent things, a combination of pleasant results to
justify the gardener’s charming hobby.
At the end of the greenhouse the judge had set up a grandstand, an
amphitheatre of benches to hold some five or six thousand pelargoniums
in pots--a splendid and famous show. People came to see his geraniums
in flower, not only from the neighborhood, but even from the departments
round about. The Empress Marie Louise, passing through the town, had
honored the curiously kept greenhouse with a visit; so much was she
impressed with the sight, that she spoke of it to Napoleon, and the
old judge received the Cross of the Legion of Honor. But as the learned
gardener never mingled in society at all, and went nowhere except to
the Blandureaus, he had no suspicion of the President’s underhand
manoeuvres; and others who could see the President’s intentions were far
too much afraid of him to interfere or to warn the inoffensive Blondets.
As for Michu, that young man with his powerful connections gave much
more thought to making himself agreeable to the women in the upper
social circles to which he was introduced by the Cinq-Cygnes, than
to the extremely simple business of a provincial Tribunal. With his
independent means (he had an income of twelve thousand livres), he was
courted by mothers of daughters, and led a frivolous life. He did just
enough at the Tribunal to satisfy his conscience, much as a schoolboy
does his exercises, saying ditto on all occasions, with a “Yes, dear
President.” But underneath the appearance of indifference lurked the
unusual powers of the Paris law student who had distinguished himself as
one of the staff of prosecuting counsel before he came to the provinces.
He was accustomed to taking broad views of things; he could do rapidly
what the President and Blondet could only do after much thinking, and
very often solved knotty points for them. In delicate conjunctures the
President and Vice-President took counsel with their junior, confided
thorny questions to him, and never failed to wonder at the readiness
with which he brought back a task in which old Blondet found nothing
to criticise. Michu was sure of the influence of the most crabbed
aristocrats, and he was young and rich; he lived, therefore, above the
level of departmental intrigues and pettinesses. He was an indispensable
man at picnics, he frisked with young ladies and paid court to their
mothers, he danced at balls, he gambled like a capitalist. In short, he
played his part of young lawyer of fashion to admiration; without, at
the same time, compromising his dignity, which he knew how to assert
at the right moment like a man of spirit. He won golden opinions by
the manner in which he threw himself into provincial ways, without
criticising them; and for these reasons, every one endeavored to make
his time of exile endurable.
The public prosecutor was a lawyer of the highest ability; he had taken
the plunge into political life, and was one of the most distinguished
speakers on the ministerialist benches. The President stood in awe of
him; if he had not been away in Paris at the time, no steps would
have been taken against Victurnien; his dexterity, his experience
of business, would have prevented the whole affair. At that moment,
however, he was in the Chamber of Deputies, and the President and
du Croisier had taken advantage of his absence to weave their plot,
calculating, with a certain ingenuity, that if once the law stepped in,
and the matter was noised abroad, things would have gone too far to be
remedied.
As a matter of fact, no staff of prosecuting counsel in any Tribunal,
at that particular time, would have taken up a charge of forgery against
the eldest son of one of the noblest houses in France without going into
the case at great length, and a special reference, in all probability,
to the Attorney-General. In such a case as this, the authorities and the
Government would have tried endless ways of compromising and hushing
up an affair which might send an imprudent young man to the hulks. They
would very likely have done the same for a Liberal family in a prominent
position, so long as the Liberals were not too openly hostile to the
throne and the altar. So du Croisier’s charge and the young Count’s
arrest had not been very easy to manage. The President and du Croisier
had compassed their ends in the following manner.
M. Sauvager, a young Royalist barrister, had reached the position of
deputy public prosecutor by dint of subservience to the Ministry. In
the absence of his chief he was head of the staff of counsel for
prosecution, and, consequently, it fell to him to take up the charge
made by du Croisier. Sauvager was a self-made man; he had nothing but
his stipend; and for that reason the authorities reckoned upon some one
who had everything to gain by devotion. The President now exploited
the position. No sooner was the document with the alleged forgery in du
Croisier’s hands, than Mme. la Presidente du Ronceret, prompted by her
spouse, had a long conversation with M. Sauvager. In the course of it
she pointed out the uncertainties of a career in the magistrature debout
compared with the magistrature assise, and the advantages of the bench
over the bar; she showed how a freak on the part of some official, or a
single false step, might ruin a man’s career.
“If you are conscientious and give your conclusions against the powers
that be, you are lost,” continued she. “Now, at this moment, you might
turn your position to account to make a fine match that would put you
above unlucky chances for the rest of your life; you may marry a wife
with fortune sufficient to land you on the bench, in the magistrature
assise. There is a fine chance for you. M. du Croisier will never have
any children; everybody knows why. His money, and his wife’s as well,
will go to his niece, Mlle. Duval. M. Duval is an ironmaster, his purse
is tolerably filled, to begin with, and his father is still alive, and
has a little property besides. The father and son have a million of
francs between them; they will double it with du Croisier’s help, for
du Croisier has business connections among great capitalists and
manufacturers in Paris. M. and Mme. Duval the younger would be certain
to give their daughter to a suitor brought forward by du Croisier, for
he is sure to leave two fortunes to his niece; and, in all probability,
he will settle the reversion of his wife’s property upon Mlle. Duval in
the marriage contract, for Mme. du Croisier has no kin. You know how du
Croisier hates the d’Esgrignons. Do him a service, be his man, take
up this charge of forgery which he is going to make against young
d’Esgrignon, and follow up the proceedings at once without consulting
the public prosecutor at Paris. And, then, pray Heaven that the Ministry
dismisses you for doing your office impartially, in spite of the powers
that be; for if they do, your fortune is made! You will have a charming
wife and thirty thousand francs a year with her, to say nothing of four
millions expectations in ten years’ time.”
In two evenings Sauvager was talked over. Both he and the President kept
the affair a secret from old Blondet, from Michu, and from the second
member of the staff of prosecuting counsel. Feeling sure of Blondet’s
impartiality on a question of fact, the President made certain of
a majority without counting Camusot. And now Camusot’s unexpected
defection had thrown everything out. What the President wanted was a
committal for trial before the public prosecutor got warning. How if
Camusot or the second counsel for the prosecution should send word to
Paris?
And here some portion of Camusot’s private history may perhaps explain
how it came to pass that Chesnel took it for granted that the examining
magistrate would be on the d’Esgrignons’ side, and how he had the
boldness to tamper in the open street with that representative of
justice.
Camusot’s father, a well-known silk mercer in the Rue des Bourdonnais,
was ambitious for the only son of his first marriage, and brought him
up to the law. When Camusot junior took a wife, he gained with her the
influence of an usher of the Royal cabinet, backstairs influence, it
is true, but still sufficient, since it had brought him his first
appointment as justice of the peace, and the second as examining
magistrate. At the time of his marriage, his father only settled an
income of six thousand francs upon him (the amount of his mother’s
fortune, which he could legally claim), and as Mlle. Thirion brought
him no more than twenty thousand francs as her portion, the young couple
knew the hardships of hidden poverty. The salary of a provincial justice
of the peace does not exceed fifteen hundred francs, while an examining
magistrate’s stipend is augmented by something like a thousand francs,
because his position entails expenses and extra work. The post,
therefore, is much coveted, though it is not permanent, and the work is
heavy, and that was why Mme. Camusot had just scolded her husband for
allowing the President to read his thoughts.
Marie Cecile Amelie Thirion, after three years of marriage, perceived
the blessing of Heaven upon it in the regularity of two auspicious
events--the births of a girl and a boy; but she prayed to be less
blessed in the future. A few more of such blessings would turn
straitened means into distress. M. Camusot’s father’s money was not
likely to come to them for a long time; and, rich as he was, he would
scarcely leave more than eight or ten thousand francs a year to each
of his children, four in number, for he had been married twice. And
besides, by the time that all “expectations,” as matchmakers call them,
were realized, would not the magistrate have children of his own to
settle in life? Any one can imagine the situation for a little woman
with plenty of sense and determination, and Mme. Camusot was such a
woman. She did not refrain from meddling in matters judicial. She had
far too strong a sense of the gravity of a false step in her husband’s
career.
She was the only child of an old servant of Louis XVIII., a valet
who had followed his master in his wanderings in Italy, Courland, and
England, till after the Restoration the King awarded him with the one
place that he could fill at Court, and made him usher by rotation to the
royal cabinet. So in Amelie’s home there had been, as it were, a sort of
reflection of the Court. Thirion used to tell her about the lords,
and ministers, and great men whom he announced and introduced and saw
passing to and fro. The girl, brought up at the gates of the Tuileries,
had caught some tincture of the maxims practised there, and adopted the
dogma of passive obedience to authority. She had sagely judged that her
husband, by ranging himself on the side of the d’Esgrignons, would
find favor with Mme. la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and with two powerful
families on whose influence with the King the Sieur Thirion could depend
at an opportune moment. Camusot might get an appointment at the first
opportunity within the jurisdiction of Paris, and afterwards at Paris
itself. That promotion, dreamed of and longed for at every moment, was
certain to have a salary of six thousand francs attached to it, as well
as the alleviation of living in her own father’s house, or under the
Camusots’ roof, and all the advantages of a father’s fortune on either
side. If the adage, “Out of sight is out of mind,” holds good of
most women, it is particularly true where family feeling or royal or
ministerial patronage is concerned. The personal attendants of kings
prosper at all times; you take an interest in a man, be it only a man in
livery, if you see him every day.
Mme. Camusot, regarding herself as a bird of passage, had taken a little
house in the Rue du Cygne. Furnished lodgings there were none; the town
was not enough of a thoroughfare, and the Camusots could not afford to
live at an inn like M. Michu. So the fair Parisian had no choice for
it but to take such furniture as she could find; and as she paid a
very moderate rent, the house was remarkably ugly, albeit a certain
quaintness of detail was not wanting. It was built against a neighboring
house in such a fashion that the side with only one window in each
story, gave upon the street, and the front looked out upon a yard where
rose-bushes and buckhorn were growing along the wall on either side.
On the farther side, opposite the house, stood a shed, a roof over two
brick arches. A little wicket-gate gave entrance into the gloomy place
(made gloomier still by the great walnut-tree which grew in the yard),
but a double flight of steps, with an elaborately-wrought but rust-eaten
handrail, led to the house door. Inside the house there were two rooms
on each floor. The dining-room occupied that part of the ground floor
nearest the street, and the kitchen lay on the other side of a narrow
passage almost wholly taken up by the wooden staircase. Of the two
first-floor rooms, one did duty as the magistrate’s study, the other as
a bedroom, while the nursery and the servants’ bedroom stood above in
the attics. There were no ceilings in the house; the cross-beams were
simply white-washed and the spaces plastered over. Both rooms on the
first floor and the dining-room below were wainscoted and adorned with
the labyrinthine designs which taxed the patience of the eighteenth
century joiner; but the carving had been painted a dingy gray most
depressing to behold.
The magistrate’s study looked as though it belonged to a provincial
lawyer; it contained a big bureau, a mahogany armchair, a law student’s
books, and shabby belongings transported from Paris. Mme. Camusot’s
room was more of a native product; it boasted a blue-and-white scheme of
decoration, a carpet, and that anomalous kind of furniture which appears
to be in the fashion, while it is simply some style that has failed in
Paris. As to the dining-room, it was nothing but an ordinary provincial
dining-room, bare and chilly, with a damp, faded paper on the walls.
In this shabby room, with nothing to see but the walnut-tree, the dark
leaves growing against the walls, and the almost deserted road
beyond them, a somewhat lively and frivolous woman, accustomed to the
amusements and stir of Paris, used to sit all day long, day after day,
and for the most part of the time alone, though she received tiresome
and inane visits which led her to think her loneliness preferable to
empty tittle-tattle. If she permitted herself the slightest gleam of
intelligence, it gave rise to interminable comment and embittered her
condition. She occupied herself a great deal with her children, not so
much from taste as for the sake of an interest in her almost solitary
life, and exercised her mind on the only subjects which she could
find--to wit, the intrigues which went on around her, the ways of
provincials, and the ambitions shut in by their narrow horizons. So she
very soon fathomed mysteries of which her husband had no idea. As she
sat at her window with a piece of intermittent embroidery work in her
fingers, she did not see her woodshed full of faggots nor the servant
busy at the wash tub; she was looking out upon Paris, Paris where
everything is pleasure, everything is full of life. She dreamed of Paris
gaieties, and shed tears because she must abide in this dull prison of
a country town. She was disconsolate because she lived in a peaceful
district, where no conspiracy, no great affair would ever occur. She saw
herself doomed to sit under the shadow of the walnut-tree for some time
to come.
Mme. Camusot was a little, plump, fresh, fair-haired woman, with a very
prominent forehead, a mouth which receded, and a turned-up chin, a type
of countenance which is passable in youth, but looks old before the
time. Her bright, quick eyes expressed her innocent desire to get on
in the world, and the envy born of her present inferior position, with
rather too much candor; but still they lighted up her commonplace face
and set it off with a certain energy of feeling, which success was
certain to extinguish in later life. At that time she used to give a
good deal of time and thought to her dresses, inventing trimmings and
embroidering them; she planned out her costumes with the maid whom she
had brought with her from Paris, and so maintained the reputation of
Parisiennes in the provinces. Her caustic tongue was dreaded; she was
not loved. In that keen, investigating spirit peculiar to unoccupied
women who are driven to find some occupation for empty days, she
had pondered the President’s private opinions, until at length she
discovered what he meant to do, and for some time past she had advised
Camusot to declare war. The young Count’s affair was an excellent
opportunity. Was it not obviously Camusot’s part to make a
stepping-stone of this criminal case by favoring the d’Esgrignons, a
family with power of a very different kind from the power of the du
Croisier party?
“Sauvager will never marry Mlle. Duval. They are dangling her before
him, but he will be the dupe of those Machiavels in the Val-Noble to
whom he is going to sacrifice his position. Camusot, this affair, so
unfortunate as it is for the d’Esgrignons, so insidiously brought on by
the President for du Croisier’s benefit, will turn out well for nobody
but _you_,” she had said, as they went in.