The Two Brothers - Honoré de Balzac (best fiction books of all time .TXT) 📗

moment; "I am taking my uncle for a walk, as you see, and trying to improve him; for we are in an age when children are obliged to educate their grandparents."

They all bowed to each other.

"You behold in my dear uncle the effects of an unhappy passion. Those two want to strip him of his fortune and leave him in the lurch--you know to whom I refer? He sees the plot; but he hasn't the courage to give up his SUGAR-PLUM for a few days so as to baffle it."

Philippe briefly explained his uncle's position.

"Gentlemen," he remarked, in conclusion, "you see there are no two ways of saving him: either Colonel Bridau must kill Captain Gilet, or Captain Gilet must kill Colonel Bridau. We celebrate the Emperor's coronation on the day after to-morrow; I rely upon you to arrange the seats at the banquet so that I shall sit opposite to Gilet. You will do me the honor, I hope, of being my seconds."

"We will appoint you to preside, and sit ourselves on either side of you. Max, as vice-president, will of course sit opposite," said Mignonnet.

"Oh! the scoundrel will have Potel and Renard with him," said Carpentier. "In spite of all that Issoudun now knows and says of his midnight maraudings, those two worthy officers, who have already been his seconds, remain faithful to him."

"You see how it all maps out, uncle," said Philippe. "Therefore, sign no paper before the third of December; the next day you shall be free, happy, and beloved by Flore, without having to coax for it."

"You don't know him, Philippe," said the terrified old man. "Maxence has killed nine men in duels."

"Yes; but ninety thousand francs a year didn't depend on it," answered Philippe.

"A bad conscience shakes the hand," remarked Mignonnet sententiously.

"In a few days from now," resumed Philippe, "you and the Rabouilleuse will be living together as sweet as honey,--that is, after she gets through mourning. At first she'll twist like a worm, and yelp, and weep; but never mind, let the water run!"

The two soldiers approved of Philippe's arguments, and tried to hearten up old Rouget, with whom they walked about for nearly two hours. At last Philippe took his uncle home, saying as they parted:--

"Don't take any steps without me. I know women. I have paid for one, who cost me far more than Flore can ever cost you. But she taught me how to behave to the fair sex for the rest of my days. Women are bad children; they are inferior animals to men; we must make them fear us; the worst condition in the world is to be governed by such brutes."

It was about half-past two in the afternoon when the old man got home. Kouski opened the door in tears,--that is, by Max's orders, he gave signs of weeping.

"Oh! Monsieur, Madame has gone away, and taken Vedie with her!"

"Gone--a--way!" said the old man in a strangled voice.

The blow was so violent that Rouget sat down on the stairs, unable to stand. A moment after, he rose, looked about the hall, into the kitchen, went up to his own room, searched all the chambers, and returned to the salon, where he threw himself into a chair, and burst into tears.

"Where is she?" he sobbed. "Oh! where is she? where is Max?"

"I don't know," answered Kouski. "The captain went out without telling me."

Gilet thought it politic to be seen sauntering about the town. By leaving the old man alone with his despair, he knew he should make him feel his desertion the more keenly, and reduce him to docility. To keep Philippe from assisting his uncle at this crisis, he had given Kouski strict orders not to open the door to any one. Flore away, the miserable old man grew frantic, and the situation of things approached a crisis. During his walk through the town, Maxence Gilet was avoided by many persons who a day or two earlier would have hastened to shake hands with him. A general reaction had set in against him. The deeds of the Knights of Idleness were ringing on every tongue. The tale of Joseph Bridau's arrest, now cleared up, disgraced Max in the eyes of all; and his life and conduct received in one day their just award. Gilet met Captain Potel, who was looking for him, and seemed almost beside himself.

"What's the matter with you, Potel?"

"My dear fellow, the Imperial Guard is being black-guarded all over the town! These civilians are crying you down! and it goes to the bottom of my heart."

"What are they complaining of?" asked Max.

"Of what you do at night."

"As if we couldn't amuse ourselves a little!"

"But that isn't all," said Potel.

Potel belonged to the same class as the officer who replied to the burgomasters: "Eh! your town will be paid for, if we do burn it!" So he was very little troubled about the deeds of the Order of Idleness.

"What more?" inquired Gilet.

"The Guard is against the Guard. It is that that breaks my heart. Bridau has set all these bourgeois on you. The Guard against the Guard! no, it ought not to be! You can't back down, Max; you must meet Bridau. I had a great mind to pick a quarrel with the low scoundrel myself and send him to the shades; I wish I had, and then the bourgeois wouldn't have seen the spectacle of the Guard against the Guard. In war times, I don't say anything against it. Two heroes of the Guard may quarrel, and fight,--but at least there are no civilians to look on and sneer. No, I say that big villain never served in the Guard. A guardsman would never behave as he does to another guardsman, under the very eyes of the bourgeois; impossible! Ah! it's all wrong; the Guard is disgraced--and here, at Issoudun! where it was once so honored."

"Come, Potel, don't worry yourself," answered Max; "even if you do not see me at the banquet--"

"What! do you mean that you won't be there the day after to-morrow?" cried Potel, interrupting his friend. "Do you wish to be called a coward? and have it said you are running away from Bridau? No, no! The unmounted grenadiers of the Guard can not draw back before the dragoons of the Guard. Arrange your business in some other way and be there!"

"One more to send to the shades!" said Max. "Well, I think I can manage my business so as to get there--For," he thought to himself, "that power of attorney ought not to be in my name; as old Heron says, it would look too much like theft."

This lion, tangled in the meshes Philippe Bridau was weaving for him, muttered between his teeth as he went along; he avoided the looks of those he met and returned home by the boulevard Vilatte, still talking to himself.

"I will have that money before I fight," he said. "If I die, it shall not go to Philippe. I must put it in Flore's name. She will follow my instructions, and go straight to Paris. Once there, she can marry, if she chooses, the son of some marshal of France who has been sent to the right-about. I'll have that power of attorney made in Baruch's name, and he'll transfer the property by my order."

Max, to do him justice, was never more cool and calm in appearance than when his blood and his ideas were boiling. No man ever united in a higher degree the qualities which make a great general. If his career had not been cut short by his captivity at Cabrera, the Emperor would certainly have found him one of those men who are necessary to the success of vast enterprises. When he entered the room where the hapless victim of all these comic and tragic scenes was still weeping, Max asked the meaning of such distress; seemed surprised, pretended that he knew nothing, and heard, with well-acted amazement, of Flore's departure. He questioned Kouski, to obtain some light on the object of this inexplicable journey.

"Madame said like this," Kouski replied, "--that I was to tell monsieur she had taken twenty thousand francs in gold from his drawer, thinking that monsieur wouldn't refuse her that amount as wages for the last twenty-two years."

"Wages?" exclaimed Rouget.

"Yes," replied Kouski. "Ah! I shall never come back," she said to Vedie as she drove away. "Poor Vedie, who is so attached to monsieur, remonstrated with madame. 'No, no,' she answered, 'he has no affection for me; he lets his nephew treat me like the lowest of the low'; and she wept--oh! bitterly."

"Eh! what do I care for Philippe?" cried the old man, whom Max was watching. "Where is Flore? how can we find out where she is?"

"Philippe, whose advice you follow, will help you," said Max coldly.

"Philippe?" said the old man, "what has he to do with the poor child? There is no one but you, my good Max, who can find Flore. She will follow you--you could bring her back to me--"

"I don't wish to oppose Monsieur Bridau," observed Max.

"As for that," cried Rouget, "if that hinders you, he told me he meant to kill you."

"Ah!" exclaimed Gilet, laughing, "we will see about it!"

"My friend," said the old man, "find Flore, and I will do all she wants of me."

"Some one must have seen her as she passed through the town," said Maxence to Kouski. "Serve dinner; put everything on the table, and then go and make inquiries from place to place. Let us know, by dessert, which road Mademoiselle Brazier has taken."

This order quieted for a time the poor creature, who was moaning like a child that has lost its nurse. At this moment Rouget, who hated Max, thought his tormentor an angel. A passion like that of this miserable old man for Flore is astonishingly like the emotions of childhood. At six o'clock, the Pole, who had merely taken a walk, returned to announce that Flore had driven towards Vatan.

"Madame is going back to her own people, that's plain," said Kouski.

"Would you like to go to Vatan to-night?" said Max. "The road is bad, but Kouski knows how to drive, and you'll make your peace better to-night than to-morrow morning."

"Let us go!" cried Rouget.

"Put the horse in quietly," said Max to Kouski; "manage, if you can, that the town shall not know of this nonsense, for Monsieur Rouget's sake. Saddle my horse," he added in a whisper. "I will ride on ahead of you."

Monsieur Hochon had already notified Philippe of Flore's departure; and the colonel rose from Monsieur Mignonnet's dinner-table to rush to the place Saint-Jean; for he at once guessed the meaning of this clever strategy. When Philippe presented himself at his uncle's house, Kouski answered through a window that Monsieur Rouget was unable to see any one.

"Fario," said Philippe to the Spaniard, who was stationed in the Grande-Narette, "go and tell Benjamin to mount his horse; it is all-important that I shall know what Gilet does with my uncle."

"They are now putting the horse into the caleche," said Fario, who had been watching the Rouget stable.

"If they go towards Vatan," answered Philippe, "get me another horse, and come yourself with Benjamin to Monsieur Mignonnet's."

"What do you mean to do?" asked Monsieur Hochon, who had come out of his own