For a month past Rogron had ceased to carry the “Constitutionnel” to
Gouraud; the colonel came obsequiously to fetch his paper, gossip a
little, and take Rogron off to walk if the weather was fine. Sure
of seeing the colonel and being able to question him, Sylvie dressed
herself as coquettishly as she knew how. The old maid thought she was
attractive in a green gown, a yellow shawl with a red border, and a
white bonnet with straggling gray feathers. About the hour when the
colonel usually came Sylvie stationed herself in the salon with
her brother, whom she had compelled to stay in the house in his
dressing-gown and slippers.
“It is a fine day, colonel,” said Rogron, when Gouraud with his heavy
step entered the room. “But I’m not dressed; my sister wanted to go out,
and I was going to keep the house. Wait for me; I’ll be ready soon.”
So saying, Rogron left Sylvie alone with the colonel.
“Where were you going? you are dressed divinely,” said Gouraud, who
noticed a certain solemnity on the pock-marked face of the old maid.
“I wanted very much to go out, but my little cousin is ill, and I cannot
leave her.”
“What is the matter with her?”
“I don’t know; she had to go to bed.”
Gouraud’s caution, not to say his distrust, was constantly excited by
the results of his alliance with Vinet. It certainly appeared that the
lawyer had got the lion’s share in their enterprise. Vinet controlled
the paper, he reigned as sole master over it, he took the revenues;
whereas the colonel, the responsible editor, earned little. Vinet and
Cournant had done the Rogrons great services; whereas Gouraud, a colonel
on half-pay, could do nothing. Who was to be deputy? Vinet. Who was the
chief authority in the party? Vinet. Whom did the liberals all consult?
Vinet. Moreover, the colonel knew fully as well as Vinet himself the
extent and depth of the passion suddenly aroused in Rogron by the
beautiful Bathilde de Chargeboeuf. This passion had now become intense,
like all the last passions of men. Bathilde’s voice made him tremble.
Absorbed in his desires Rogron hid them; he dared not hope for such
a marriage. To sound him, the colonel mentioned that he was thinking
himself of asking for Bathilde’s hand. Rogron turned pale at the thought
of such a formidable rival, and had since then shown coldness and even
hatred to Gouraud.
Thus Vinet reigned supreme in the Rogron household while he, the
colonel, had no hold there except by the extremely hypothetical tie of
his mendacious affection for Sylvie, which it was not yet clear that
Sylvie reciprocated. When the lawyer told him of the priest’s manoeuvre,
and advised him to break with Sylvie and marry Pierrette, he certainly
flattered Gouraud’s foible; but after analyzing the inner purpose of
that advice and examining the ground all about him, the colonel thought
he perceived in his ally the intention of separating him from Sylvie,
and profiting by her fears to throw the whole Rogron property into the
hands of Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf.
Therefore, when the colonel was left alone with Sylvie his perspicacity
possessed itself immediately of certain signs which betrayed her
uneasiness. He saw at once that she was under arms and had made this
plan for seeing him alone. As he already suspected Vinet of playing
him some trick, he attributed the conference to the instigation of the
lawyer, and was instantly on his guard, as he would have been in an
enemy’s country,--with an eye all about him, an ear to the faintest
sound, his mind on the qui vive, and his hand on a weapon. The colonel
had the defect of never believing a single word said to him by a woman;
so that when the old maid brought Pierrette on the scene, and told him
she had gone to bed before midday, he concluded that Sylvie had locked
her up by way of punishment and out of jealousy.
“She is getting to be quite pretty, that little thing,” he said with an
easy air.
“She will be pretty,” replied Mademoiselle Rogron.
“You ought to send her to Paris and put her in a shop,” continued the
colonel. “She would make her fortune. The milliners all want pretty
girls.”
“Is that really your advice?” asked Sylvie, in a troubled voice.
“Good!” thought the colonel, “I was right. Vinet advised me to marry
Pierrette just to spoil my chance with the old harridan. But,” he said
aloud, “what else can you do with her? There’s that beautiful
girl Bathilde de Chargeboeuf, noble and well-connected, reduced to
single-blessedness,--nobody will have her. Pierrette has nothing, and
she’ll never marry. As for beauty, what is it? To me, for example, youth
and beauty are nothing; for haven’t I been a captain of cavalry in the
imperial guard, and carried my spurs into all the capitals of Europe,
and known all the handsomest women of these capitals? Don’t talk to
me; I tell you youth and beauty are devilishly common and silly. At
forty-eight,” he went on, adding a few years to his age, to match
Sylvie’s, “after surviving the retreat from Moscow and going through
that terrible campaign of France, a man is broken down; I’m nothing but
an old fellow now. A woman like you would pet me and care for me, and
her money, joined to my poor pension, would give me ease in my old days;
of course I should prefer such a woman to a little minx who would worry
the life out of me, and be thirty years old, with passions, when
I should be sixty, with rheumatism. At my age, a man considers and
calculates. To tell you the truth between ourselves, I should not wish
to have children.”
Sylvie’s face was an open book to the colonel during this tirade, and
her next question proved to him Vinet’s perfidy.
“Then you don’t love Pierrette?” she said.
“Heavens! are you out of your mind, my dear Sylvie?” he cried. “Can
those who have no teeth crack nuts? Thank God I’ve got some common-sense
and know what I’m about.”
Sylvie thus reassured resolved not to show her own hand, and thought
herself very shrewd in putting her own ideas into her brother’s mouth.
“Jerome,” she said, “thought of the match.”
“How could your brother take up such an incongruous idea? Why, it is
only a few days ago that, in order to find out his secrets, I told him I
loved Bathilde. He turned as white as your collar.”
“My brother! does he love Bathilde?” asked Sylvie.
“Madly,--and yet Bathilde is only after his money.” (“One for you,
Vinet!” thought the colonel.) “I can’t understand why he should have
told you that about Pierrette. No, Sylvie,” he said, taking her hand and
pressing it in a certain way, “since you have opened this matter” (he
drew nearer to her), “well” (he kissed her hand; as a cavalry captain he
had already proved his courage), “let me tell you that I desire no wife
but you. Though such a marriage may look like one of convenience, I
feel, on my side, a sincere affection for you.”
“But if I _wish_ you to marry Pierrette? if I leave her my fortune--eh,
colonel?”
“But I don’t want to be miserable in my home, and in less than ten
years see a popinjay like Julliard hovering round my wife and addressing
verses to her in the newspapers. I’m too much of a man to stand that.
No, I will never make a marriage that is disproportionate in age.”
“Well, colonel, we will talk seriously of this another time,” said
Sylvie, casting a glance upon him which she supposed to be full of love,
though, in point of fact, it was a good deal like that of an ogress. Her
cold, blue lips of a violet tinge drew back from the yellow teeth, and
she thought she smiled.
“I’m ready,” said Rogron, coming in and carrying off the colonel, who
bowed in a lover-like way to the old maid.
Gouraud determined to press on his marriage with Sylvie, and make
himself master of the house; resolving to rid himself, through his
influence over Sylvie during the honeymoon, of Bathilde and Celeste
Habert. So, during their walk, he told Rogron he had been joking the
other day; that he had no real intention of aspiring to Bathilde; that
he was not rich enough to marry a woman without fortune; and then he
confided to him his real wishes, declaring that he had long chosen
Sylvie for her good qualities,--in short, he aspired to the honor of
being Rogron’s brother-in-law.
“Ah, colonel, my dear baron! if nothing is wanting but my consent you
have it with no further delay than the law requires,” cried Rogron,
delighted to be rid of his formidable rival.
Sylvie spent the morning in her own room considering how the new
household could be arranged. She determined to build a second storey for
her brother and to furnish the rest for herself and her husband; but she
also resolved, in the true old-maidish spirit, to subject the colonel to
certain proofs by which to judge of his heart and his morals before she
finally committed herself. She was still suspicious, and wanted to make
sure that Pierrette had no private intercourse with the colonel.
Pierrette came down before the dinner-hour to lay the table. Sylvie had
been forced to cook the dinner, and had sworn at that “cursed Pierrette”
for a spot she had made on her gown,--wasn’t it plain that if Pierrette
had done her own work Sylvie wouldn’t have got that grease-spot on her
silk dress?
“Oh, here you are, _peakling_? You are like the dog of the marshal who
woke up as soon as the saucepans rattled. Ha! you want us to think you
are ill, you little liar!”
That idea: “You did not tell the truth about what happened in the square
this morning, therefore you lie in everything,” was a hammer with
which Sylvie battered the head and also the heart of the poor girl
incessantly.
To Pierrette’s great astonishment Sylvie sent her to dress in her best
clothes after dinner. The liveliest imagination is never up to the level
of the activity which suspicion excites in the mind of an old maid. In
this particular case, this particular old maid carried the day against
politicians, lawyers, notaries, and all other self-interests. Sylvie
determined to consult Vinet, after examining herself into all the
suspicious circumstances. She kept Pierrette close to her, so as to find
out from the girl’s face whether the colonel had told her the truth.
On this particular evening the Chargeboeuf ladies were the first to
arrive. Bathilde, by Vinet’s advice, had become more elaborate in her
dress. She now wore a charming gown of blue velveteen, with the same
transparent fichu, garnet pendants in her ears, her hair in ringlets,
the wily _jeannette_ round her throat, black satin slippers, gray silk
stockings, and _gants de Suede_; add to these things the manners of a
queen and the coquetry of a young girl determined to capture Rogron.
Her mother, calm and dignified, retained, as did her daughter, a certain
aristocratic insolence, with which the two women hedged themselves
and preserved the spirit of their caste. Bathilde was a woman of
intelligence, a fact which Vinet alone had discovered during the
two months’ stay the ladies had made at his house. When he had fully
fathomed the mind of the girl, wounded and disappointed as it was by
the fruitlessness of her beauty and her youth, and enlightened by the
contempt she felt for the men of a period in which money was the only
idol, Vinet, himself surprised, exclaimed,--
“If I could only have married you, Bathilde, I should to-day be Keeper
of the Seals. I should call myself Vinet de Chargeboeuf, and take my
seat as deputy of the Right.”
Bathilde had no vulgar idea in her marriage intentions. She did not
marry to be a mother, nor to possess a husband; she married for freedom,
to gain a responsible position, to be called “madame,” and to act as
men act. Rogron was nothing but a name to her; she expected to make
something of the fool,--a voting deputy, for instance, whose instigator
she would be; moreover, she longed to avenge herself on her family, who
had taken no notice of a girl without money. Vinet had much enlarged and
strengthened her ideas by admiring and approving them.
“My dear Bathilde,” he said, while explaining to her the influence of
women, and showing her the sphere of action in which she ought to work,
“do you suppose that Tiphaine, a man of the most ordinary capacity,
could ever get to be a judge of the Royal court in Paris by himself? No,
it is Madame Tiphaine who has got him elected deputy, and it is she who
will push him when they get to Paris. Her mother, Madame Roguin, is a
shrewd woman, who does what she likes with the famous banker du Tillet,
a crony of Nucingen, and both of them allies of the Kellers. The
administration is on the best of terms with those lynxes of the bank.
There is no reason why Tiphaine should not be judge, through his wife,
of a Royal court. Marry Rogron; we’ll have him elected deputy from
Provins as soon as I gain another precinct in the Seine-et-Marne. You
can then get him a place as receiver-general, where he’ll have nothing
to do but sign his name. We shall belong to the opposition _if_ the
Liberals triumph, but if the Bourbons remain--ah! then we shall lean
gently, gently towards the centre. Besides, you must remember Rogron
can’t live forever, and then you can marry a titled man. In short, put
yourself in a good position, and the Chargeboeufs will be ready enough
to serve us. Your poverty has no doubt taught you, as mine did me,
to know what men are worth. We must make use of them as we do of
post-horses. A man, or a woman, will take us along to such or such a
distance.”
Vinet ended by making Bathilde a small edition of Catherine de Medicis.
He left his wife at home, rejoiced to be alone with her two children,
while he went every night to the Rogrons’ with Madame and Mademoiselle
de Chargeboeuf. He arrived there in all the glory of better
circumstances. His spectacles were of gold, his waistcoat silk; a white
cravat, black trousers, thin boots, a black coat made in Paris, and a
gold watch and chain, made up his apparel. In place of the former Vinet,
pale and thin, snarling and gloomy, the present Vinet bore himself with
the air and manner of a man of importance; he marched boldly forward,
certain of success, with that peculiar show of security which belongs to
lawyers who know the hidden places of the law. His sly little head was
well-brushed, his chin well-shaved, which gave him a mincing though
frigid look, that made him seem agreeable in the style of Robespierre.
Certainly he would make a fine attorney-general, endowed with elastic,
mischievous, and even murderous eloquence, or an orator of the shrewd
type of Benjamin Constant. The bitterness and the hatred which formerly
actuated him had now turned into soft-spoken perfidy; the poison was
transformed into anodyne.
“Good-evening, my dear; how are you?” said Madame de Chargeboeuf,
greeting Sylvie.
Bathilde went straight to the fireplace, took off her bonnet, looked
at herself in the glass, and placed her pretty foot on the fender that
Rogron might admire it.
“What is the matter with you?” she said to him, looking directly in
his face. “You have not bowed to me. Pray why should we put on our best
velvet gowns to please you?”
She pushed past Pierrette to lay down her hat, which the latter took
from her hand, and which she let her take exactly as though she were a
servant. Men are supposed to be ferocious, and tigers too; but neither
tigers, vipers, diplomatists, lawyers, executioners or kings ever
approach, in their greatest atrocities, the gentle cruelty, the poisoned
sweetness, the savage disdain of one young woman for another, when
she thinks herself superior in birth, or fortune, or grace, and some
question of marriage, or precedence, or any of the feminine rivalries,
is raised. The “Thank you, mademoiselle,” which Bathilde said to
Pierrette was a poem in many strophes. She was named Bathilde, and the
other Pierrette. She was a Chargeboeuf, the other a Lorrain. Pierrette
was small and weak, Bathilde was tall and full of life. Pierrette
was living on charity, Bathilde and her mother lived on their means.
Pierrette wore a stuff gown with a chemisette, Bathilde made the velvet
of hers undulate. Bathilde had the finest shoulders in the department,
and the arm of a queen; Pierrette’s shoulder-blades were skin and bone.
Pierrette was Cinderella, Bathilde was the fairy. Bathilde was about to
marry, Pierrette was to die a maid. Bathilde was adored, Pierrette was
loved by none. Bathilde’s hair was ravishingly dressed, she had so
much taste; Pierrette’s was hidden beneath her Breton cap, and she
knew nothing of the fashions. Moral, Bathilde was everything, Pierrette
nothing. The proud little Breton girl understood this tragic poem.
“Good-evening, little girl,” said Madame de Chargeboeuf, from the
height of her condescending grandeur, and in the tone of voice which her
pinched nose gave her.
Vinet put the last touch to this sort of insult by looking fixedly
at Pierrette and saying, in three keys, “Oh! oh! oh! how fine we are
to-night, Pierrette!”
“Fine!” said the poor child; “you should say that to Mademoiselle de
Chargeboeuf, not to me.”
“Oh! she is always beautifully dressed,” replied the lawyer. “Isn’t she,
Rogron?” he added, turning to the master of the house, and grasping his
hand.
“Yes,” said Rogron.
“Why do you force him to say what he does not think?” said Bathilde;
“nothing about me pleases him. Isn’t that true?” she added, going up to
Rogron and standing before him. “Look at me, and say if it isn’t true.”
Rogron looked at her from head to foot, and gently closed his eyes like
a cat whose head is being scratched.
“You are too beautiful,” he said; “too dangerous.”
“Why?”
Rogron looked at the fire and was silent. Just then Mademoiselle Habert
entered the room, followed by the colonel.
Celeste Habert, who had now become the common enemy, could only reckon
Sylvie on her side; nevertheless, everybody present showed her the more
civility and amiable attention because each was undermining her. Her
brother, though no longer able to be on the scene of action, was
well aware of what was going on, and as soon as he perceived that
his sister’s hopes were killed he became an implacable and terrible
antagonist to the Rogrons.
Every one will immediately picture to themselves Mademoiselle Habert
when they know that if she had not kept an institution for young ladies
she would still have had the air of a school-mistress. School-mistresses
have a way of their own in putting on their caps. Just as old
Englishwomen have acquired a monopoly in turbans, school-mistresses have
a monopoly of these caps. Flowers nod above the frame-work, flowers that
are more than artificial; lying by in closets for years the cap is both
new and old, even on the day it is first worn. These spinsters make it
a point of honor to resemble the lay figures of a painter; they sit on
their hips, never on their chairs. When any one speaks to them they turn
their whole busts instead of simply turning their heads; and when their
gowns creak one is tempted to believe that the mechanism of these beings
is out of order. Mademoiselle Habert, an ideal of her species, had a
stern eye, a grim mouth, and beneath her wrinkled chin the strings of
her cap, always limp and faded, floated as she moved. Two moles, rather
large and brown, adorned that chin, and from them sprouted hairs which
she allowed to grow rampant like clematis. And finally, to complete her
portrait, she took snuff, and took it ungracefully.
The company went to work at their boston. Mademoiselle Habert sat
opposite to Sylvie, with the colonel at her side opposite to Madame
de Chargeboeuf. Bathilde was near her mother and Rogron. Sylvie placed
Pierrette between herself and the colonel; Rogron had set out a second
card-table, in case other company arrived. Two lamps were on the
chimney-piece between the candelabra and the clock, and the tables were
lighted by candles at forty sous a pound, paid for by the price of the
cards.
“Come, Pierrette, take your work, my dear,” said Sylvie, with
treacherous softness, noticing that the girl was watching the colonel’s
game.
She usually affected to treat Pierrette well before company. This
deception irritated the honest Breton girl, and made her despise her
cousin. She took her embroidery, but as she drew her stitches she still
watched Gouraud’s play. Gouraud behaved as if he did not know the girl
was near him. Sylvie noticed this apparent indifference and thought
it extremely suspicious. Presently she undertook a _grande misere_ in
hearts, the pool being full of counters, besides containing twenty-seven
sous. The rest of the company had now arrived; among them the
deputy-judge Desfondrilles, who for the last two months had abandoned
the Tiphaine party and connected himself more or less with the Vinets.
He was standing before the chimney-piece, with his back to the fire and
the tails of his coat over his arms, looking round the fine salon of
which Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf was the shining ornament; for it
really seemed as if all the reds of its decoration had been made
expressly to enhance her style of beauty. Silence reigned; Pierrette
was watching the game, Sylvie’s attention was distracted from her by the
interest of the _grande misere_.
“Play that,” said Pierrette to the colonel, pointing to a heart in his
hand.
The colonel began a sequence in hearts; the hearts all lay between
himself and Sylvie; the colonel won her ace, though it was protected by
five small hearts.
“That’s not fair!” she cried. “Pierrette saw my hand, and the colonel
took her advice.”
“But, mademoiselle,” said Celeste, “it was the colonel’s game to play
hearts after you began them.”
The scene made Monsieur Desfondrilles smile; his was a keen mind, which
found much amusement in watching the play of all the self-interests in
Provins.
“Yes, it was certainly the colonel’s game,” said Cournant the notary,
not knowing what the question was.
Sylvie threw a look at Mademoiselle Habert,--one of those glances which
pass from old maid to old maid, feline and cruel.
“Pierrette, you did see my hand,” said Sylvie fixing her eyes on the
girl.
“No, cousin.”
“I was looking at you all,” said the deputy-judge, “and I can swear that
Pierrette saw no one’s hand but the colonel’s.”
“Pooh!” said Gouraud, alarmed, “little girls know how to slide their
eyes into everything.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Sylvie.
“Yes,” continued Gouraud. “I dare say she looked into your hand to play
you a trick. Didn’t you, little one?”
“No,” said the truthful Breton, “I wouldn’t do such a thing; if I had,
it would have been in my cousin’s interests.”
“You know you are a story-teller and a little fool,” cried Sylvie.
“After what happened this morning do you suppose I can believe a word
you say? You are a--”
Pierrette did not wait for Sylvie to finish her sentence; foreseeing a
torrent of insults, she rushed away without a light and ran to her room.
Sylvie turned white with anger and muttered between her teeth, “She
shall pay for this!”
“Shall you pay for the _misere_?” said Madame de Chargeboeuf.
As she spoke Pierrette struck her head against the door of the passage
which some one had left open.
“Good! I’m glad of it,” cried Sylvie, as they heard the blow.
“She must be hurt,” said Desfondrilles.
“She deserves it,” replied Sylvie.
“It was a bad blow,” said Mademoiselle Habert.
Sylvie thought she might escape paying her _misere_ if she went to see
after Pierrette, but Madame de Chargeboeuf stopped her.
“Pay us first,” she said, laughing; “you will forget it when you come
back.”
The remark, based on the old maid’s trickery and her bad faith in paying
her debts at cards was approved by the others. Sylvie sat down and
thought no more of Pierrette,--an indifference which surprised no one.
When the game was over, about half past nine o’clock, she flung herself
into an easy chair at the corner of the fireplace and did not even rise
as her guests departed. The colonel was torturing her; she did not know
what to think of him.
“Men are so false!” she cried, as she went to bed.
Pierrette had given herself a frightful blow on the head, just above the
ear, at the spot where young girls part their hair when they put their
“front hair” in curlpapers. The next day there was a large swelling.
“God has punished you,” said Sylvie at the breakfast table. “You
disobeyed me; you treated me with disrespect in leaving the room before
I had finished my sentence; you got what you deserved.”
“Nevertheless,” said Rogron, “she ought to put on a compress of salt and
water.”
“Oh, it is nothing at all, cousin,” said Pierrette.
The poor child had reached a point where even such a remark seemed to
her a proof of kindness.