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

for reading plays, with the power to join unto himself as assistants a certain number of the notables of the Latin quarter,--the selection being left to him.

We shall soon know exactly how near was the realization of la Peyrade's projects for the possession of Celeste's "dot"; let us merely say now that these projects in approaching maturity had inevitably become noised abroad; and as this condition of things pointed, of course, to the exclusion of Minard junior and also of Felix the professor, the prejudice hitherto manifested by Minard pere against old Phellion was transformed into an unequivocal disposition towards friendly cordiality; there is nothing that binds and soothes like the feeling of a checkmate shared in common. Judged without the evil eye of paternal rivalry, Phellion became to Minard a Roman of incorruptible integrity and a man whose little treatises had been adopted by the University,--in other words, a man of sound and tested intellect.

So that when it became the duty of the mayor to select the members of the dramatic custom-house, of which he was now the head, he immediately thought of Phellion. As for the great citizen, he felt, on the day when a post was offered to him in that august tribunal, that a crown of gold had been placed upon his brow.

It will be well understood that it was not lightly, nor without having deeply meditated, that a man of Phellion's solemnity had accepted the high and sacred mission which was offered to him. He said within himself that he was called upon to exercise the functions of a magistracy, a priestly office.

"To judge of men," he replied to Minard, who was much surprised at his hesitation, "is an alarming task, but to judge of minds!--who can believe himself equal to such a mission?"

Once more the family--that rock on which the firmest resolutions split--had threatened to infringe on the domain of his conscience. The thought of boxes and tickets of which the future member of the committee could dispose in favor of his own kin had excited in the household so eager a ferment that his freedom of decision seemed for a moment in danger. But, happily, Brutus was able to decide himself in the same direction along which a positive uprising of the whole Phellionian tribe intended to push him. From the observations of Barniol, his son-in-law, and also by his own personal inspiration, he became persuaded that by his vote, always given to works of irreproachable morality, and by his firm determination to bar the way to all plays that mothers of families could not take their daughters to witness, he was called upon to render the most signal services to morals and public order. Phellion, to use his own expression, had therefore become a member of the areopagus presided over by Minard, and--still speaking as he spoke--he was issuing from the exercise of his functions, which were both delicate and interesting, when the conversation we are about to report took place. A knowledge of this conversation is necessary to an understanding of the ulterior events of this history, and it will also serve to put into relief the envious insight which is one of the most marked traits of the bourgeois character.

The session of the committee had been extremely stormy. On the subject of a tragedy entitled, "The Death of Hercules," the classic party and the romantic party, whom the mayor had carefully balanced in the composition of his committee, had nearly approached the point of tearing each other's hair out. Twice Phellion had risen to speak, and his hearers were astonished at the quantity of metaphors the speech of a major of the National Guard could contain when his literary convictions were imperilled. As the result of a vote, victory remained with the opinions of which Phellion was the eloquent organ. It was while descending the stairway of the theatre with Minard that he remarked:--

"We have done a good work this day. 'The Death of Hercules' reminded me of 'The Death of Hector,' by the late Luce de Lancival; the work we have just accepted sparkles with sublime verses."

"Yes," said Minard, "the versification has taste; there are some really fine lines in it, and I admit to you that I think this sort of literature rather above the anagrams of Master Colleville."

"Oh!" replied Minard, "Colleville's anagrams are mere witticisms, which have nothing in common with the sterner accents of Melpomene."

"And yet," said Minard, "I can assure you he attaches the greatest importance to that rubbish, and apropos to his anagrams, as, indeed, about many other things, he is not a little puffed up. Since their emigration to the Madeleine quarter it seems to me that not only the Sieur Colleville, but his wife and daughter, and the Thuilliers and the whole coterie have assumed an air of importance which is rather difficult to justify."

"No wonder!" said Phellion; "one must have a pretty strong head to stand the fumes of opulence. Our friends have become so very rich by the purchase of that property where they have gone to live that we ought to forgive them for a little intoxication; and I must say the dinner they gave us yesterday for a house-warming was really as well arranged as it was succulent."

"I myself," said Minard, "have given a few remarkable dinners to which men in high government positions have not disdained to come, yet I am not puffed up with pride on that account; such as my friends have always known me, that I have remained."

"You, Monsieur le maire, have long been habituated to the splendid existence you have made for yourself by your high commercial talents; our friends, on the contrary, so lately embarked on the smiling ship of Fortune, have not yet found, as the vulgar saying is, their sea-legs."

And then to cut short a conversation in which Phellion began to think the mayor rather "caustic," he made as if he intended to take leave of him. In order to reach their respective homes they did not always take the same way.

"Are you going through the Luxembourg?" asked Minard, not allowing Phellion to give him the slip.

"I shall cross it, but I have an appointment to meet Madame Phellion and the little Barniols at the end of the grand alley."

"Then," said Minard, "I'll go with you and have the pleasure of making my bow to Madame Phellion; and I shall get the fresh air at the same time, for, in spite of hearing fine things, one's head gets tired at the business we have just been about."

Minard had felt that Phellion gave rather reluctant assent to his sharp remarks about the new establishment of the Thuilliers, and he did not attempt to renew the subject; but when he had Madame Phellion for a listener, he was very sure that his spite would find an echo.

"Well, fair lady," he began, "what did you think of yesterday's dinner?"

"It was very fine," replied Madame Phellion; "as I tasted that soup 'a la bisque' I knew that some caterer, like Chevet, had supplanted the cook. But the whole affair was dull; it hadn't the gaiety of our old meetings in the Latin quarter. And then, didn't it strike you, as it did me, that Madame and Mademoiselle Thuillier no longer seemed mistresses of their own house? I really felt as if I were the guest of Madame--what _is_ her name? I never can remember it."

"Torna, Comtesse de Godollo," said Phellion, intervening. "The name is euphonious enough to remember."

"Euphonious if you like, my dear; but to me it never seems a name at all."

"It is a Magyar, or to speak more commonly, a Hungarian name. Our own name, if we wanted to discuss it, might be said to be a loan from the Greek language."

"Very likely; at any rate we have the advantage of being known, not only in our own quarter, but throughout the tuition world, where we have earned an honorable position; while this Hungarian countess, who makes, as they say, the good and the bad weather in the Thuilliers' home, where does she come from, I'd like to know? How did such a fine lady,--for she has good manners and a very distinguished air, no one denies her that,--how came she to fall in love with Brigitte; who, between ourselves, keeps a sickening odor of the porter's lodge about her. For my part, I think this devoted friend is an intriguing creature, who scents money, and is scheming for some future gain."

"Ah ca!" said Minard, "then you don't know the original cause of the intimacy between Madame la Comtesse de Godollo and the Thuilliers?"

"She is a tenant in their house; she occupies the entresol beneath their apartment."

"True, but there's something more than that in it. Zelie, my wife, heard it from Josephine, who wanted, lately, to enter our service; the matter came to nothing, for Francoise, our woman, who thought of marrying, changed her mind. You must know, fair lady, that it was solely Madame de Godollo who brought about the emigration of the Thuilliers, whose upholsterer, as one might say, she is."

"What! their upholsterer?" cried Phellion,--"that distinguished woman, of whom one may truly say, 'Incessu patuit dea'; which in French we very inadequately render by the expression, 'bearing of a queen'?"

"Excuse me," said Minard. "I did not mean that Madame de Godollo is actually in the furniture business; but, at the time when Mademoiselle Thuillier decided, by la Peyrade's advice, to manage the new house herself, that little fellow, who hasn't all the ascendancy over her mind he thinks he has, couldn't persuade her to move the family into the splendid apartment where they received us yesterday. Mademoiselle Brigitte objected that she should have to change her habits, and that her friends and relations wouldn't follow her to such a distant quarter--"

"It is quite certain," interrupted Madame Phellion, "that to make up one's mind to hire a carriage every Sunday, one wants a prospect of greater pleasure than can be found in that salon. When one thinks that, except on the day of the famous dance of the candidacy, they never once opened the piano in the rue Saint-Dominique!"

"It would have been, I am sure, most agreeable to the company to have a talent like yours put in requisition," remarked Minard; "but those are not ideas that could ever come into the mind of that good Brigitte. She'd have seen two more candles to light. Five-franc pieces are her music. So, when la Peyrade and Thuillier insisted that she should move into the apartment in the Place de la Madeleine, she thought of nothing but the extra costs entailed by the removal. She judged, rightly enough, that beneath those gilded ceilings her old 'penates' might have a singular effect."

"See how all things link together," remarked Phellion, "and how, from the summits of society, luxury infiltrates itself, sooner or later, through the lower classes, leading to the ruin of empires."

"You are broaching there, my dear commander," said Minard, "one of the most knotty questions of political economy. Many good minds think, on the contrary, that luxury is absolutely demanded in the interests of commerce, which is certainly the life of States. In any case, this view, which isn't yours, appears to have been that of Madame de Godollo, for, they tell me, her apartment is very coquettishly furnished; and to coax Mademoiselle Brigitte into the same path of elegance she made a proposal to her as follows: 'A friend of mine,' she said, 'a Russian princess for whom one of the first upholsterers has just made