“I have aborigines enough whom I am forced to receive; these two will
fairly kill me. With your permission, I shall deprive myself of their
society.”
“You are mistress in your own house,” replied he; “but that will make
enemies. The Rogrons will fling themselves into the opposition, which
hitherto has had no real strength in Provins. That Rogron is already
intimate with Baron Gouraud and the lawyer Vinet.”
“Then,” said Melanie, laughing, “they will do you some service. Where
there are no opponents, there is no triumph. A liberal conspiracy,
an illegal cabal, a struggle of any kind, will bring you into the
foreground.”
The justice looked at his young wife with a sort of alarmed admiration.
The next day it was whispered about that the Rogrons had not altogether
succeeded in Madame Tiphaine’s salon. That lady’s speech about an
inn was immensely admired. It was a whole month before she returned
Mademoiselle Sylvie’s visit. Insolence of this kind is very much noticed
in the provinces.
During the evening which Sylvie had spent at Madame Tiphaine’s a
disagreeable scene occurred between herself and old Madame Julliard
while playing boston, apropos of a trick which Sylvie declared the old
lady had made her lose on purpose; for the old maid, who liked to trip
others, could never endure the same game on herself. The next time she
was invited out the mistress took care to make up the card-tables before
she arrived; so that Sylvie was reduced to wandering from table to
table as an onlooker, the players glancing at her with scornful eyes. At
Madame Julliard senior’s house, they played whist, a game Sylvie did not
know.
The old maid at last understood that she was under a ban; but she had
no conception of the reason of it. She fancied herself an object of
jealousy to all these persons. After a time she and her brother received
no invitations, but they still persisted in paying evening visits.
Satirical persons made fun of them,--not spitefully, but amusingly;
inveigling them to talk absurdly about the eggs in their cornice, and
their wonderful cellar of wine, the like of which was not in Provins.
Before long the Rogron house was completely finished, and the brother
and sister then resolved to give several sumptuous dinners, as much to
return the civilities they had received as to exhibit their luxury. The
invited guests accepted from curiosity only. The first dinner was given
to the leading personages of the town; to Monsieur and Madame Tiphaine,
with whom, however the Rogrons had never dined; to Monsieur and Madame
Julliard, senior and junior; to Monsieur Lesourd, Monsieur le cure,
and Monsieur and Madame Galardon. It was one of those interminable
provincial dinners, where you sit at table from five to nine o’clock.
Madame Tiphaine had introduced into Provins the Parisian custom of
taking leave as soon as coffee had been served. On this occasion she had
company at home and was anxious to get away. The Rogrons accompanied her
husband and herself to the street door, and when they returned to the
salon, disconcerted at not being able to keep their chief guests, the
rest of the party were preparing to imitate Madame Tiphaine’s fashion
with cruel provincial promptness.
“They won’t see our salon lighted up,” said Sylvie, “and that’s the show
of the house.”
The Rogrons had counted on surprising their guests. It was the first
time any one had been admitted to the now celebrated house, and the
company assembled at Madame Tiphaine’s was eagerly awaiting her opinion
of the marvels of the “Rogron palace.”
“Well!” cried little Madame Martener, “you’ve seen the Louvre; tell us
all about it.”
“All? Well, it would be like the dinner,--not much.”
“But do describe it.”
“Well, to begin with, that front door, the gilded grating of which we
have all admired,” said Madame Tiphaine, “opens upon a long corridor
which divides the house unequally; on the right side there is one
window, on the other, two. At the garden end, the corridor opens with
a glass door upon a portico with steps to the lawn, where there’s a
sun dial and a plaster statue of Spartacus, painted to imitate bronze.
Behind the kitchen, the builder has put the staircase, and a sort of
larder which we are spared the sight of. The staircase, painted to
imitate black marble with yellow veins, turns upon itself like those
you see in cafes leading from the ground-floor to the entresol. The
balustrade, of walnut with brass ornaments and dangerously slight, was
pointed out to us as one of the seven wonders of the world. The
cellar stairs run under it. On the other side of the corridor is the
dining-room, which communicates by folding-doors with a salon of equal
size, the windows of which look on the garden.”
“Dear me, is there no ante-chamber?” asked Madame Auffray.
“The corridor, full of draughts, answers for an ante-chamber,” replied
Madame Tiphaine. “Our friends have had, they assured us, the eminently
national, liberal, constitutional, and patriotic feeling to use none but
French woods in the house; so the floor in the dining-room is
chestnut, the sideboards, tables, and chairs, of the same. White calico
window-curtains, with red borders, are held back by vulgar red straps;
these magnificent draperies run on wooden curtain rods ending in brass
lion’s-paws. Above one of the sideboards hangs a dial suspended by a
sort of napkin in gilded bronze,--an idea that seemed to please the
Rogrons hugely. They tried to make me admire the invention; all I could
manage to say was that if it was ever proper to wrap a napkin round a
dial it was certainly in a dining-room. On the sideboard were two
huge lamps like those on the counter of a restaurant. Above the other
sideboard hung a barometer, excessively ornate, which seems to play a
great part in their existence; Rogron gazed at it as he might at his
future wife. Between the two windows is a white porcelain stove in a
niche overloaded with ornament. The walls glow with a magnificent paper,
crimson and gold, such as you see in the same restaurants, where, no
doubt, the Rogrons chose it. Dinner was served on white and gold china,
with a dessert service of light blue with green flowers, but they showed
us another service in earthenware for everyday use. Opposite to each
sideboard was a large cupboard containing linen. All was clean, new, and
horribly sharp in tone. However, I admit the dining-room; it has some
character, though disagreeable; it represents that of the masters of
the house. But there is no enduring the five engravings that hang on the
walls; the Minister of the Interior ought really to frame a law against
them. One was Poniatowski jumping into the Elster; the others, Napoleon
pointing a cannon, the defence at Clichy, and the two Mazepas, all in
gilt frames of the vulgarest description,--fit to carry off the prize of
disgust. Oh! how much I prefer Madame Julliard’s pastels of fruit,
those excellent Louis XV. pastels, which are in keeping with the old
dining-room and its gray panels,--defaced by age, it is true, but they
possess the true provincial characteristics that go well with old
family silver, precious china, and our simple habits. The provinces are
provinces; they are only ridiculous when they mimic Paris. I prefer this
old salon of my husband’s forefathers, with its heavy curtains of green
and white damask, the Louis XV. mantelpiece, the twisted pier-glasses,
the old mirrors with their beaded mouldings, and the venerable card
tables. Yes, I prefer my old Sevres vases in royal blue, mounted on
copper, my clock with those impossible flowers, that rococco chandelier,
and the tapestried furniture, to all the finery of the Rogron salon.”
“What is the salon like?” said Monsieur Martener, delighted with the
praise the handsome Parisian bestowed so adroitly on the provinces.
“As for the salon, it is all red,--the red Mademoiselle Sylvie turns
when she loses at cards.”
“Sylvan-red,” said Monsieur Tiphaine, whose sparkling saying long
remained in the vocabulary of Provins.
“Window-curtains, red; furniture, red; mantelpiece, red, veined yellow,
candelabra and clock ditto mounted on bronze, common and heavy in
design,--Roman standards with Greek foliage! Above the clock is that
inevitable good-natured lion which looks at you with a simper, the
lion of ornamentation, with a big ball under his feet, symbol of the
decorative lion, who passes his life holding a black ball,--exactly like
a deputy of the Left. Perhaps it is meant as a constitutional myth. The
face of the clock is curious. The glass over the chimney is framed in
that new fashion of applied mouldings which is so trumpery and vulgar.
From the ceiling hangs a chandelier carefully wrapped in green muslin,
and rightly too, for it is in the worst taste, the sharpest tint of
bronze with hideous ornaments. The walls are covered with a red flock
paper to imitate velvet enclosed in panels, each panel decorated with a
chromo-lithograph in one of those frames festooned with stucco flowers
to represent wood-carving. The furniture, in cashmere and elm-wood,
consists, with classic uniformity, of two sofas, two easy-chairs, two
armchairs, and six common chairs. A vase in alabaster, called a la
Medicis, kept under glass stands on a table between the windows; before
the windows, which are draped with magnificent red silk curtains and
lace curtains under them, are card-tables. The carpet is Aubusson,
and you may be sure the Rogrons did not fail to lay hands on that most
vulgar of patterns, large flowers on a red ground. The room looks as
if no one ever lived there; there are no books, no engravings, none
of those little knick-knacks we all have lying about,” added Madame
Tiphaine, glancing at her own table covered with fashionable trifles,
albums, and little presents given to her by friends; “and there are no
flowers,--it is all cold and barren, like Mademoiselle Sylvie herself.
Buffon says the style is the man, and certainly salons have styles of
their own.”
From this sketch everybody can see the sort of house the brother and
sister lived in, though they can never imagine the absurdities into
which a clever builder dragged the ignorant pair,--new inventions,
fantastic ornaments, a system for preventing smoky chimneys, another
for preventing damp walls; painted marquetry panels on the staircase,
colored glass, superfine locks,--in short, all those vulgarities which
make a house expensive and gratify the bourgeois taste.
No one chose to visit the Rogrons, whose social plans thus came to
nothing. Their invitations were refused under various excuses,--the
evenings were already engaged to Madame Garceland and the other ladies
of the Provins world. The Rogrons had supposed that all that was
required to gain a position in society was to give a few dinners. But
no one any longer accepted them, except a few young men who went to
make fun of their host and hostess, and certain diners-out who went
everywhere.
Frightened at the loss of forty thousand francs swallowed up without
profit in what she called her “dear house,” Sylvie now set to work to
recover it by economy. She gave no more dinners, which had cost her
forty or fifty francs without the wines, and did not fulfil her social
hopes, hopes that are as hard to realize in the provinces as in Paris.
She sent away her cook, took a country-girl to do the menial work, and
did her own cooking, as she said, “for pleasure.”
Fourteen months after their return to Provins, the brother and sister
had fallen into a solitary and wholly unoccupied condition. Their
banishment from society roused in Sylvie’s heart a dreadful hatred
against the Tiphaines, Julliards and all the other members of the social
world of Provins, which she called “the clique,” and with whom her
personal relations became extremely cold. She would gladly have set up
a rival clique, but the lesser bourgeoisie was made up of either small
shopkeepers who were only free on Sundays and fete-days, or smirched
individuals like the lawyer Vinet and Doctor Neraud, and wholly
inadmissible Bonapartists like Baron Gouraud, with whom, however, Rogron
thoughtlessly allied himself, though the upper bourgeoisie had warned
him against them.
The brother and sister were, therefore, forced to sit by the fire of the
stove in the dining-room, talking over their former business, trying to
recall the faces of their customers and other matters they had intended
to forget. By the end of the second winter ennui weighed heavily on
them. They did not know how to get through each day; sometimes as they
went to bed the words escaped them, “There’s another over!” They dragged
out the morning by staying in bed, and dressing slowly. Rogron shaved
himself every day, examined his face, consulted his sister on any
changes he thought he saw there, argued with the servant about the
temperature of his hot water, wandered into the garden, looked to see if
the shrubs were budding, sat at the edge of the water where he had built
himself a kiosk, examined the joinery of his house,--had it sprung?
had the walls settled, the panels cracked? or he would come in fretting
about a sick hen, and complaining to his sister, who was nagging the
servant as she set the table, of the dampness which was coming out in
spots upon the plaster. The barometer was Rogron’s most useful bit of
property. He consulted it at all hours, tapped it familiarly like a
friend, saying: “Vile weather!” to which his sister would reply, “Pooh!
it is only seasonable.” If any one called to see him the excellence of
that instrument was his chief topic of conversation.
Breakfast took up some little time; with what deliberation those two
human beings masticated their food! Their digestions were perfect;
cancer of the stomach was not to be dreaded by them. They managed to
get along till twelve o’clock by reading the “Bee-hive” and the
“Constitutionnel.” The cost of subscribing to the Parisian paper was
shared by Vinet the lawyer, and Baron Gouraud. Rogron himself carried
the paper to Gouraud, who had been a colonel and lived on the square,
and whose long yarns were Rogron’s delight; the latter sometimes puzzled
over the warnings he had received, and asked himself how such a lively
companion could be dangerous. He was fool enough to tell the colonel he
had been warned against him, and to repeat all the “clique” had said.
God knows how the colonel, who feared no one, and was equally to be
dreaded with pistols or a sword, gave tongue about Madame Tiphaine and
her Amadis, and the ministerialists of the Upper town, persons capable
of any villany to get places, and who counted the votes at elections to
suit themselves, etc.
About two o’clock Rogron started for a little walk. He was quite happy
if some shopkeeper standing on the threshold of his door would stop
him and say, “Well, pere Rogron, how goes it with _you_?” Then he
would talk, and ask for news, and gather all the gossip of the town.
He usually went as far as the Upper town, sometimes to the ravines,
according to the weather. Occasionally he would meet old men taking
their walks abroad like himself. Such meetings were joyful events to
him. There happened to be in Provins a few men weary of Parisian life,
quiet scholars who lived with their books. Fancy the bewilderment of the
ignorant Rogron when he heard a deputy-judge named Desfondrilles, more
of an archaeologist than a magistrate, saying to old Monsieur Martener,
a really learned man, as he pointed to the valley:--
“Explain to me why the idlers of Europe go to Spa instead of coming to
Provins, when the springs here have a superior curative value recognized
by the French faculty,--a potential worthy of the medicinal properties
of our roses.”
“That is one of the caprices of caprice,” said the old gentleman.
“Bordeaux wine was unknown a hundred years ago. Marechal de Richelieu,
one of the noted men of the last century, the French Alcibiades, was
appointed governor of Guyenne. His lungs were diseased, and, heaven
knows why! the wine of the country did him good and he recovered.
Bordeaux instantly made a hundred millions; the marshal widened its
territory to Angouleme, to Cahors,--in short, to over a hundred miles of
circumference! it is hard to tell where the Bordeaux vineyards end.
And yet they haven’t erected an equestrian statue to the marshal in
Bordeaux!”
“Ah! if anything of that kind happens to Provins,” said Monsieur
Desfondrilles, “let us hope that somewhere in the Upper or Lower
town they will set up a bas-relief of the head of Monsieur Opoix, the
re-discoverer of the mineral waters of Provins.”
“My dear friend, the revival of Provins is impossible,” replied Monsieur
Martener; “the town was made bankrupt long ago.”
“What!” cried Rogron, opening his eyes very wide.
“It was once a capital, holding its own against Paris in the twelfth
century, when the Comtes de Champagne held their court here, just as
King Rene held his in Provence,” replied the man of learning; “for in
those days civilization, gaiety, poesy, elegance, and women, in short
all social splendors, were not found exclusively in Paris. It is as
difficult for towns and cities as it is for commercial houses to recover
from ruin. Nothing is left to us of the old Provins but the fragrance of
our historical glory and that of our roses,--and a sub-prefecture!”
“Ah! what mightn’t France be if she had only preserved her feudal
capitals!” said Desfondrilles. “Can sub-prefects replace the poetic,
gallant, warlike race of the Thibaults who made Provins what Ferrara was
to Italy, Weimar to Germany,--what Munich is trying to be to-day.”
“Was Provins ever a capital?” asked Rogron.
“Why! where do you come from?” exclaimed the archaeologist. “Don’t you
know,” he added, striking the ground of the Upper town where they stood
with his cane, “don’t you know that the whole of this part of Provins is
built on catacombs?”
“Catacombs?”
“Yes, catacombs, the extent and height of which are yet undiscovered.
They are like the naves of cathedrals, and there are pillars in them.”
“Monsieur is writing a great archaeological work to explain these
strange constructions,” interposed Monsieur Martener, seeing that the
deputy-judge was about to mount his hobby.
Rogron came home much comforted to know that his house was in
the valley. The crypts of Provins kept him occupied for a week in
explorations, and gave a topic of conversation to the unhappy celibates
for many evenings.
In the course of these ramblings Rogron picked up various bits of
information about Provins, its inhabitants, their marriages, together
with stale political news; all of which he narrated to his sister.
Scores of times in his walks he would stop and say,--often to the same
person on the same day,--“Well, what’s the news?” When he reached home
he would fling himself on the sofa like a man exhausted with labor,
whereas he was only worn out with the burden of his own dulness. Dinner
came at last, after he had gone twenty times to the kitchen and back,
compared the clocks, and opened and shut all the doors of the house.
So long as the brother and sister could spend their evenings in paying
visits they managed to get along till bedtime; but after they were
compelled to stay at home those evenings became like a parching desert.
Sometimes persons passing through the quiet little square would hear
unearthly noises as though the brother were throttling the sister; a
moment’s listening would show that they were only yawning. These two
human mechanisms, having nothing to grind between their rusty wheels,
were creaking and grating at each other. The brother talked of marrying,
but only in despair. He felt old and weary; the thought of a woman
frightened him. Sylvie, who began to see the necessity of having a third
person in the home, suddenly remembered the little cousin, about whom no
one in Provins had yet inquired, the friends of Madame Lorrain probably
supposing that mother and child were both dead.
Sylvie Rogron never lost anything; she was too thoroughly an old maid
even to mislay the smallest article; but she pretended to have suddenly
found the Lorrains’ letter, so as to mention Pierrette naturally to her
brother, who was greatly pleased at the possibility of having a little
girl in the house. Sylvie replied to Madame Lorrain’s letter half
affectionately, half commercially, as one may say, explaining the delay
by their change of abode and the settlement of their affairs. She seemed
desirous of receiving her little cousin, and hinted that Pierrette would
perhaps inherit twelve thousand francs a year if her brother Jerome did
not marry.
Perhaps it is necessary to have been, like Nebuchadnezzar, something of
a wild beast, and shut up in a cage at the Jardin des Plantes without
other prey than the butcher’s meat doled out by the keeper, or a retired
merchant deprived of the joys of tormenting his clerks, to understand
the impatience with which the brother and sister awaited the arrival
of their cousin Lorrain. Three days after the letter had gone, the pair
were already asking themselves when she would get there.
Sylvie perceived in her spurious benevolence towards her poor cousin
a means of recovering her position in the social world of Provins. She
accordingly went to call on Madame Tiphaine, of whose reprobation she
was conscious, in order to impart the fact of Pierrette’s approaching
arrival,--deploring the girl’s unfortunate position, and posing herself
as being only too happy to succor her and give her a position as
daughter and future heiress.
“You have been rather long in discovering her,” said Madame Tiphaine,
with a touch of sarcasm.
A few words said in a low voice by Madame Garceland, while the cards
were being dealt, recalled to the minds of those who heard her the
shameful conduct of old Rogron about the Auffray property; the notary
explained the iniquity.
“Where is the little girl now?” asked Monsieur Tiphaine, politely.
“In Brittany,” said Rogron.
“Brittany is a large place,” remarked Monsieur Lesourd.
“Her grandfather and grandmother Lorrain wrote to us--when was that, my
dear?” said Rogron addressing his sister.
Sylvie, who was just then asking Madame Garceland where she had bought
the stuff for her gown, answered hastily, without thinking of the effect
of her words:--
“Before we sold the business.”
“And have you only just answered the letter, mademoiselle?” asked the
notary.
Sylvie turned as red as a live coal.
“We wrote to the Institution of Saint-Jacques,” remarked Rogron.
“That is a sort of hospital or almshouse for old people,” said Monsieur
Desfondrilles, who knew Nantes. “She can’t be there; they receive no one
under sixty.”
“She is there, with her grandmother Lorrain,” said Rogron.
“Her mother had a little fortune, the eight thousand francs which your
father--no, I mean of course your grandfather--left to her,” said the
notary, making the blunder intentionally.
“Ah!” said Rogron, stupidly, not understanding the notary’s sarcasm.
“Then you know nothing about your cousin’s position or means?” asked
Monsieur Tiphaine.
“If Monsieur Rogron had known it,” said the deputy-judge, “he would
never have left her all this time in an establishment of that kind. I
remember now that a house in Nantes belonging to Monsieur and Madame
Lorrain was sold under an order of the court, and that Mademoiselle
Lorrain’s claim was swallowed up. I know this, for I was commissioner at
the time.”
The notary spoke of Colonel Lorrain, who, had he lived, would have been
much amazed to know that his daughter was in such an institution. The
Rogrons beat a retreat, saying to each other that the world was very
malicious. Sylvie perceived that the news of her benevolence had missed
its effect,--in fact, she had lost ground in all minds; and she felt
that henceforth she was forbidden to attempt an intimacy with the upper
class of Provins. After this evening the Rogrons no longer concealed
their hatred of that class and all its adherents. The brother told the
sister the scandals that Colonel Gouraud and the lawyer Vinet had put
into his head about the Tiphaines, the Guenees, the Garcelands, the
Julliards, and others:--
“I declare, Sylvie, I don’t see why Madame Tiphaine should turn up her
nose at shopkeeping in the rue Saint-Denis; it is more honest than what
she comes from. Madame Roguin, her mother, is cousin to those Guillaumes
of the ‘Cat-playing-ball’ who gave up the business to Joseph Lebas,
their son-in-law. Her father is that Roguin who failed in 1819, and
ruined the house of Cesar Birotteau. Madame Tiphaine’s fortune was
stolen,--for what else are you to call it when a notary’s wife who is
very rich lets her husband make a fraudulent bankruptcy? Fine doings!
and she marries her daughter in Provins to get her out of the way,--all
on account of her own relations with du Tillet. And such people set up
to be proud! Well, well, that’s the world!”
On the day when Jerome Rogron and his sister began to declaim against
“the clique” they were, without being aware of it, on the road to having
a society of their own; their house was to become a rendezvous for other
interests seeking a centre,--those of the hitherto floating elements of
the liberal party in Provins. And this is how it came about: The launch
of the Rogrons in society had been watched with great curiosity by
Colonel Gouraud and the lawyer Vinet, two men drawn together, first by
their ostracism, next by their opinions. They both professed patriotism
and for the same reason,--they wished to become of consequence. The
Liberals in Provins were, so far, confined to one old soldier who kept a
cafe, an innkeeper, Monsieur Cournant a notary, Doctor Neraud, and a
few stray persons, mostly farmers or those who had bought lands of the
public domain.
The colonel and the lawyer, delighted to lay hands on a fool whose money
would be useful to their schemes, and who might himself, in certain
cases, be made to bell the cat, while his house would serve as a
meeting-ground for the scattered elements of the party, made the most of
the Rogrons’ ill-will against the upper classes of the place. The
three had already a slight tie in their united subscription to the
“Constitutionnel”; it would certainly not be difficult for the colonel
to make a Liberal of the ex-mercer, though Rogron knew so little of
politics that he was capable of regarding the exploits of Sergeant
Mercier as those of a brother shopkeeper.
The expected arrival of Pierrette brought to sudden fruition the selfish
ideas of the two men, inspired as they were by the folly and ignorance
of the celibates. Seeing that Sylvie had lost all chance of establishing
herself in the good society of the place, an afterthought came to the
colonel. Old soldiers have seen so many horrors in all lands, so many
grinning corpses on battle-fields, that no physiognomies repel them; and
Gouraud began to cast his eyes on the old maid’s fortune. This imperial
colonel, a short, fat man, wore enormous rings in ears that were bushy
with tufts of hair. His sparse and grizzled whiskers were called in 1799
“fins.” His jolly red face was rather discolored, like those of all who
had lived to tell of the Beresina. The lower half of his big, pointed
stomach marked the straight line which characterizes a cavalry officer.
Gouraud had commanded the Second Hussars. His gray moustache hid a huge
blustering mouth,--if we may use a term which alone describes that gulf.
He did not eat his food, he engulfed it. A sabre cut had slit his nose,
by which his speech was made thick and very nasal, like that attributed
to Capuchins. His hands, which were short and broad, were of the kind
that make women say: “You have the hands of a rascal.” His legs seemed
slender for his torso. In that fat and active body an absolutely lawless
spirit disported itself, and a thorough experience of the things of
life, together with a profound contempt for social convention, lay
hidden beneath the apparent indifference of a soldier. Colonel Gouraud
wore the cross of an officer of the Legion of honor, and his emoluments
from that, together with his salary as a retired officer, gave him in
all about three thousand francs a year.
The lawyer, tall and thin, had liberal opinions in place of talent,
and his only revenue was the meagre profits of his office. In Provins
lawyers plead their own cases. The court was unfavorable to Vinet
on account of his opinions; consequently, even the farmers who were
Liberals, when it came to lawsuits preferred to employ some lawyer who
was more congenial to the judges. Vinet was regarded with disfavor in
other ways. He was said to have seduced a rich girl in the neighborhood
of Coulommiers, and thus have forced her parents to marry her to him.
Madame Vinet was a Chargeboeuf, an old and noble family of La Brie,
whose name comes from the exploit of a squire during the expedition of
Saint Louis to Egypt. She incurred the displeasure of her father and
mother, who arranged, unknown to Vinet, to leave their entire fortune to
their son, doubtless charging him privately, to pay over a portion of it
to his sister’s children.
Thus the first bold effort of the ambitious man was a failure. Pursued
by poverty, and ashamed not to give his wife the means of making a
suitable appearance, he had made desperate efforts to enter public life,
but the Chargeboeuf family refused him their influence. These Royalists
disapproved, on moral grounds, of his forced marriage; besides, he was
named Vinet, and how could they be expected to protect a plebian? Thus
he was driven from branch to branch when he tried to get some good
out of his marriage. Repulsed by every one, filled with hatred for the
family of his wife, for the government which denied him a place, for the
social world of Provins, which refused to admit him, Vinet submitted to
his fate; but his gall increased. He became a Liberal in the belief that
his fortune might yet be made by the triumph of the opposition, and he
lived in a miserable little house in the Upper town from which his wife
seldom issued. Madame Vinet had found no one to defend her since her
marriage except an old Madame de Chargeboeuf, a widow with one daughter,
who lived at Troyes. The unfortunate young woman, destined for better
things, was absolutely alone in her home with a single child.
There are some kinds of poverty which may be nobly accepted and gaily
borne; but Vinet, devoured by ambition, and feeling himself guilty
towards his wife, was full of darkling rage; his conscience grew
elastic; and he finally came to think any means of success permissible.
His young face changed. Persons about the courts were sometimes
frightened as they looked at his viperish, flat head, his slit mouth,
his eyes gleaming through glasses, and heard his sharp, persistent voice
which rasped their nerves. His muddy skin, with its sickly tones of
green and yellow, expressed the jaundice of his balked ambition, his
perpetual disappointments and his hidden wretchedness. He could talk and
argue; he was well-informed and shrewd, and was not without smartness
and metaphor. Accustomed to look at everything from the standpoint of
his own success, he was well fitted for a politician. A man who shrinks
from nothing so long as it is legal, is strong; and Vinet’s strength lay
there.
This future athlete of parliamentary debate, who was destined to share
in proclaiming the dynasty of the house of Orleans had a terrible
influence on Pierrette’s fate. At the present moment he was bent on
making for himself a weapon by founding a newspaper at Provins. After
studying the Rogrons at a distance (the colonel aiding him) he had come
to the conclusion that the brother might be made useful. This time he
was not mistaken; his days of poverty were over, after seven wretched
years, when even his daily bread was sometimes lacking. The day when
Gouraud told him in the little square that the Rogrons had finally
quarrelled with the bourgeois aristocracy of the Upper town, he nudged
the colonel in the ribs significantly, and said, with a knowing look:--
“One woman or another--handsome or ugly--_you_ don’t care; marry
Mademoiselle Rogron and we can organize something at once.”
“I have been thinking of it,” replied Gouraud, “but the fact is they
have sent for the daughter of Colonel Lorrain, and she’s their next of
kin.”
“You can get them to make a will in your favor. Ha! you would get a very
comfortable house.”
“As for the little girl--well, well, let’s see her,” said the colonel,
with a leering and thoroughly wicked look, which proved to a man of
Vinet’s quality how little respect the old trooper could feel for any
girl.