The Lesser Bourgeoisie - Honoré de Balzac (top novels to read txt) 📗

by the little week," as interpreted by Cerizet, is not, considering all things, so cruel a thing as the pawn-shop. Cerizet loaned ten francs Tuesday on condition of receiving twelve francs Sunday morning. In five weeks he doubled his capital; but he had to make many compromises. His kindness consisted in accepting, from time to time, eleven francs and fifty centimes; sometimes the whole interest was still owing. When he gave fifty francs for sixty to a fruit-stall man, or a hundred francs for one hundred and twenty to a seller of peat-fuel, he ran great risks.

On reaching the rue des Poules through the rue des Postes, Theodose and Dutocq saw a great assemblage of men and women, and by the light which the wine-merchant's little oil-lamps cast upon these groups, they were horrified at beholding that mass of red, seamed, haggard faces; solemn with suffering, withered, distorted, swollen with wine, pallid from liquor; some threatening, others resigned, some sarcastic or jeering, others besotted; all rising from the midst of those terrible rags, which no designer can surpass in his most extravagant caricatures.

"I shall be recognized," said Theodose, pulling Dutocq away; "we have done a foolish thing to come here at this hour and take him in the midst of his business."

"All the more that Claparon may be sleeping in his lair, the interior of which we know nothing about. Yes, there are dangers for you, but none for me; I shall be thought to have business with my copying-clerk, and I'll go and tell him to come and dine with us; this is court day, so we can't have him to breakfast. I'll tell him to meet us at the 'Chaumiere' in one of the garden dining-rooms."

"Bad; anybody could listen to us there without being seen," said la Peyrade. "I prefer the 'Petit Rocher de Cancale'; we can go into a private room and speak low."

"But suppose you are seen with Cerizet?"

"Well, then, let's go to the 'Cheval Rouge,' quai de la Tournelle."

"That's best; seven o'clock; nobody will be there then."

Dutocq advanced alone into the midst of that congress of beggars, and he heard his own name repeated from mouth to mouth, for he could hardly fail to encounter among them some jail-bird familiar with the judge's office, just as Theodose was certain to have met a client.

In these quarters the justice-of-peace is the supreme authority; all legal contests stop short at his office, especially since the law was passed giving to those judges sovereign power in all cases of litigation involving not over one hundred and forty francs. A way was made for the judge's clerk, who was not less feared than the judge himself. He saw women seated on the staircase; a horrible display of pallor and suffering of many kinds. Dutocq was almost asphyxiated when he opened the door of the room in which already sixty persons had left their odors.

"Your number? your number?" cried several voices.

"Hold your jaw!" cried a gruff voice from the street, "that's the pen of the judge."

Profound silence followed. Dutocq found his copying clerk clothed in a jacket of yellow leather like that of the gloves of the gendarmerie, beneath which he wore an ignoble waistcoat of knitted wool. The reader must imagine the man's diseased head issuing from this species of scabbard and covered with a miserable Madras handkerchief, which, leaving to view the forehead and neck, gave to that head, by the gleam of a tallow candle of twelve to the pound, its naturally hideous and threatening character.

"It can't be done that way, papa Lantimeche," Cerizet was saying to a tall old man, seeming to be about seventy years of age, who was standing before him with a red woollen cap in his hand, exhibiting a bald head, and a breast covered with white hairs visible through his miserable linen jacket. "Tell me exactly what you want to undertake. One hundred francs, even on condition of getting back one hundred and twenty, can't be let loose that way, like a dog in a church--"

The five other applicants, among whom were two women, both with infants, one knitting, the other suckling her child, burst out laughing.

When Cerizet saw Dutocq, he rose respectfully and went rather hastily to meet him, adding to his client:--

"Take time to reflect; for, don't you see? it makes me doubtful to have such a sum as that, one hundred francs! asked for by an old journeyman locksmith!"

"But I tell you it concerns an invention," cried the old workman.

"An invention and one hundred francs!" said Dutocq. "You don't know the laws; you must take out a patent, and that costs two thousand francs, and you want influence."

"All that is true," said Cerizet, who, however, reckoned a good deal on such chances. "Come to-morrow morning, papa Lantimeche, at six o'clock, and we'll talk it over; you can't talk inventions in public."

Cerizet then turned to Dutocq whose first words were:--

"If the thing turns out well, half profits!"

"Why did you get up at this time in the morning to come here and say that to me?" demanded the distrustful Cerizet, already displeased with the mention of "half profits." "You could have seen me as usual at the office."

And he looked askance at Dutocq; the latter, while telling him his errand and speaking of Claparon and the necessity of pushing forward in the Theodose affair, seemed confused.

"All the same you could have seen me this morning at the office," repeated Cerizet, conducting his visitor to the door.

"There's a man," thought he, as he returned to his seat, "who seems to me to have breathed on his lantern so that I may not see clear. Well, well, I'll give up that place of copying clerk. Ha! your turn, little mother!" he cried; "you invent children! That's amusing enough, though the trick is well known."

It is all the more useless to relate the conversation which took place between the three confederates at the "Cheval Rouge," because the arrangements there concluded were the basis of certain confidences made, as we shall see, by Theodose to Mademoiselle Thuillier; but it is necessary to remark that the cleverness displayed by la Peyrade seemed almost alarming to Cerizet and Dutocq. After this conference, the banker of the poor, finding himself in company with such powerful players, had it in mind to make sure of his own stake at the first chance. To win the game at any price over the heads of the ablest gamblers, by cheating if necessary, is the inspiration of a special sort of vanity peculiar to friends of the green cloth. Hence came the terrible blow which la Peyrade was about to receive.

He knew his two associates well; and therefore, in spite of the perpetual activity of his intellectual forces, in spite of the perpetual watchfulness his personality of ten faces required, nothing fatigued him as much as the part he had to play with his two accomplices. Dutocq was a great knave, and Cerizet had once been a comic actor; they were both experts in humbug. A motionless face like Talleyrand's would have made then break at once with the Provencal, who was now in their clutches; it was necessary, therefore, that he should make a show of ease and confidence and of playing above board--the very height of art in such affairs. To delude the pit is an every-day triumph, but to deceive Mademoiselle Mars, Frederic Lemaitre, Potier, Talma, Monrose, is the acme of art.

This conference at the "Cheval Rouge" had therefore the result of giving to la Peyrade, who was fully as sagacious as Cerizet, a secret fear, which, during the latter period of this daring game, so fired his blood and heated his brain that there came moments when he fell into the morbid condition of the gambler, who follows with his eye the roll of the ball on which he has staked his last penny. The senses then have a lucidity in their action and the mind takes a range, which human knowledge has no means of measuring.


CHAPTER X. HOW BRIGITTE WAS WON

The day after this conference at the "Cheval Rouge," la Peyrade went to dine with the Thuilliers, and on the commonplace pretext of a visit to pay, Thuillier carried off his wife, leaving Theodose alone with Brigitte. Neither Thuillier, nor his sister, nor Theodose, were the dupes of this comedy; but the old beau of the Empire considered the manoeuvre a piece of diplomacy.

"Young man, do not take advantage of my sister's innocence; respect it," said Thuillier solemnly, as he departed.

"Mademoiselle," said Theodose, drawing his chair closer to the sofa where Brigitte sat knitting, "have you thought of inducing the business men of the arrondissement to support Thuillier's interests?"

"How can I?" she asked.

"Why! you are in close relations with Barbet and Metivier."

"Ah! you are right! Faith! you are no blunderer!" she said after a pause.

"When we love our friends, we serve them," he replied, sententiously.

To capture Brigitte would be like carrying the redoubt of the Moskowa, the culminating strategic point. But it was necessary to possess that old maid as the devil was supposed in the middle ages to possess men, and in a way to make any awakening impossible for her. For the last three days la Peyrade had been measuring himself for the task; he had carefully reconnoitred the ground to see all difficulty. Flattery, that almost infallible means in able hands, would certainly miscarry with a woman who for years had known she had no beauty. But a man of strong will finds nothing impregnable; the Lamarques could never have failed to take Capri. Therefore, nothing must be omitted from the memorable scene which was now to take place; all things about it had their own importance,--inflections of the voice, pauses, glances, lowered eyes.

"But," rejoined Brigitte, "you have already proved to us your affection."

"Your brother has told you--?"

"No, he merely told me that you had something to tell me."

"Yes, mademoiselle, I have; for you are the man of the family. In reflecting on this matter, I find many dangers for myself, such as a man only risks for his nearest and dearest. It involves a fortune; thirty to forty thousand francs a year, and not the slightest speculation--a piece of landed property. The hope of helping Thuillier to win such a fortune enticed me from the first. 'It fascinates me,' I said to him--for, unless a man is an absolute fool, he can't help asking himself: 'Why should he care to do us all this good?' So I told him frankly that in working for his interests, I flattered myself I was working for my own, as I'll explain to you later. If he wishes to be deputy, two things are absolutely necessary: to comply with the law as to property, and to win for his name some sort of public celebrity. If I myself push my devotion to the point of helping him to write a book on public financiering--or anything else, no matter what--which would give him that celebrity, I ought also to think of the other matter, his property--it would be absurd to expect you to give him this house--"

"For my brother? Why, I'd put it in his name to-morrow," cried Brigitte. "You don't know me."

"I don't know you thoroughly," said la Peyrade, "but I do know things about you which now make me regret that I did not tell you the whole affair from its origin; I mean from the moment when