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

turned to Brigitte.

"Mademoiselle," he said, "when I had the honor to be received by you I was poor; you long saw me suffering and ill at ease, knowing, alas! too well, the indignities that poverty must bear. From the day that I was able to give you a fortune which I never thought of for myself I have felt, it is true, more assurance; and your own kindness encouraged me to rise out of my timidity and depression. To-day, when I, by frank and loyal conduct, release you from anxiety,--for, if you chose to be honest, you would acknowledge that you have been thinking of another husband for Celeste,--we might still remain friends, even though I renounce a marriage which my delicacy forbids me to pursue. But you have not chosen to restrain yourself with the limits of social politeness, of which you have a model beside you in Madame de Godollo, who, I am persuaded, although she is not at all friendly to me, would never have approved of your odious behavior. Thank Heaven! I have in my heart some religious sentiment at least; the Gospel is not to me a mere dead-letter, and--understand me well, mademoiselle--_I forgive you_. It is not to Thuillier, who would refuse them, but to you that I shall, before long, pay the ten thousand francs which you insinuate I have applied to my own purposes. If, by the time they are returned to you, you feel regret for your unjust suspicions, and are unwilling to accept the money, I request that you will turn it over to the bureau of Benevolence to the poor--"

"To the bureau of Benevolence!" cried Brigitte, interrupting him. "No, I thank you! the idea of all that money being distributed among a crowd of do-nothings and devotes, who'll spend it in junketing! I've been poor too, my lad; I made bags for the money of others long before I had any money of my own; I have some now, and I take care of it. So, whenever you will, I am ready to receive that ten thousand francs and keep it. If you didn't know how to do what you undertook to do, and spent that money in trying to put salt on a sparrow's tail, so much the worse for you."

Seeing that he had missed his effect, and had made not the slightest impression on Brigitte's granite, la Peyrade cast a disdainful look upon her and left the room majestically. As he did so he noticed a movement made by Thuillier to follow him, and also the imperious gesture of Brigitte, always queen and mistress, which nailed her brother to his chair.


CHAPTER VIII

At the moment when la Peyrade was preparing to lay at the feet of the countess the liberty he had recovered in so brutal a manner, he received a perfumed note, which made his heart beat, for on the seal was that momentous "All or Nothing" which she had given him as the rule of the relation now to be inaugurated between them. The contents of the note were as follows:--

Dear Monsieur,--I have heard of the step you have taken; thank
you! But I must now prepare to take my own. I cannot, as you may
well think, continue to live in this house, and among these people
who are so little of our own class and with whom we have nothing
in common. To arrange this transaction, and to avoid explanations
of the fact that the entresol welcomes the voluntary exile from
the first-floor, I need to-day and to-morrow to myself. Do not
therefore come to see me until the day after. By that time I shall
have executed Brigitte, as they say at the Bourse, and have much
to tell you.

Tua tota,

Torna de Godollo.

That "Wholly thine" in Latin seemed charming to la Peyrade, who was not, however, astonished, for Latin is a second national language to the Hungarians. The two days' waiting to which he was thus condemned only fanned the flame of the ardent passion which possessed him, and on the third day when reached the house by the Madeleine his love had risen to a degree of incandescence of which only a few days earlier he would scarcely have supposed himself capable.

This time the porter's wife perceived him; but he was now quite indifferent as to whether or not the object of his visit should be known. The ice was broken, his happiness was soon to be official, and he was more disposed to cry it aloud in the streets than to make a mystery of it.

Running lightly up the stairs, he prepared to ring the bell, when, on putting out his hand to reach the silken bell-cord he perceived that the bell-cord had disappeared. La Peyrade's first thought was that one of those serious illnesses which make all noises intolerable to a patient would explain its absence; but with the thought came other observations that weakened it, and which, moreover, were not in themselves comforting.

From the vestibule to the countess's door a stair carpet, held at each step by a brass rod, made a soft ascent to the feet of visitors; this, too, had been removed. A screen-door covered with green velvet and studded with brass nails had hitherto protected the entrance to the apartment; of that no sign, except the injury to the wall done by the workmen in taking it away. For a moment the barrister thought, in his agitation, that he must have mistaken the floor, but, casting his eye over the baluster he saw that he had not passed the entresol. Madame de Godollo must, therefore, be in the act of moving away.

He then resigned himself to make known his presence at the great lady's door as he would have done at that of a grisette. He rapped with his knuckles, but a hollow sonority revealing the void, "intonuere cavernae," echoed beyond the door which he vainly appealed to with his fist. He also perceived from beneath that door a ray of vivid light, the sure sign of an uninhabited apartment where curtains and carpets and furniture no longer dim the light or deaden sound. Compelled to believe in a total removal, la Peyrade now supposed that in the rupture with Brigitte, mentioned as probable by Madame de Godollo, some brutal insolence of the old maid had necessitated this abrupt departure. But why had he not been told of it? And what an idea, to expose him to this ridiculous meeting with what the common people call, in their picturesque language, "the wooden face"!

Before leaving the door finally, and as if some doubt still remained in his mind, la Peyrade made a last and most thundering assault upon it.

"Who's knocking like that, as if they'd bring the house down?" said the porter, attracted by the noise to the foot of the staircase.

"Doesn't Madame de Godollo still live here?" asked la Peyrade.

"Of course she doesn't live here now; she has moved away. If monsieur had told me he was going to her apartment I would have spared him the trouble of battering down the door."

"I knew that she was going to leave the apartment," said la Peyrade, not wishing to seem ignorant of the project of departure, "but I had no idea she was going so soon."

"I suppose it was something sudden," said the porter, "for she went off early this morning with post-horses."

"Post-horses!" echoed la Peyrade, stupefied. "Then she has left Paris?"

"That's to be supposed," said the porter; "people don't usually take post-horses and a postilion to change from one quarter of Paris to another."

"And she did not tell you where she was going?"

"Ah! monsieur, what an idea! Do people account to us porters for what they do?"

"No, but her letters--those that come after her departure?"

"Her letters? I am ordered to deliver them to Monsieur le commandeur, the little old gentlemen who came to see her so often; monsieur must have met him."

"Yes, yes, certainly," said la Peyrade, keeping his presence of mind in the midst of the successive shocks which came upon him,--"the powered little man who was here every day."

"I couldn't say every day; but he came often. Well, I am told to give the countess's letters to him."

"And for other persons of her acquaintance," said la Peyrade, carelessly, "did she leave no message?"

"None, monsieur."

"Very well," said la Peyrade, "good-morning." And he turned to go out.

"But I think," said the porter, "that Mademoiselle Thuillier knows more about it than I do. Won't monsieur go up? She is at home; and so is Monsieur Thuillier."

"No, never mind," said la Peyrade, "I only came to tell Madame de Godollo about a commission she asked me to execute; I haven't time to stop now."

"Well, as I told you, she left with post-horses this morning. Two hours earlier monsieur might still have found her; but now, with post-horses, she must by this time have gone a good distance."

La Peyrade departed, with a sense of despair in his heart. Added to the anxiety caused by this hasty departure, jealousy entered his soul, and in this agonizing moment of disappointment the most distressing explanations crowded on his mind.

Then, after further reflection, he said to himself:--

"These clever diplomatic women are often sent on secret missions which require the most absolute silence, and extreme rapidity of movement."

But here a sudden revulsion of thought overcame him:--

"Suppose she were one of those intriguing adventurers whom foreign governments employ as agents? Suppose the tale, more or less probable, of that Russian princess forced to sell her furniture to Brigitte were also that of this Hungarian countess? And yet," he continued, as his brain made a third evolution in this frightful anarchy of ideas and feelings, "her education, her manners, her language, all bespoke a woman of the best position. Besides, if she were only a bird of passage, why have given herself so much trouble to win me over?"

La Peyrade might have continued to plead thus for and against for a long time had he not been suddenly grasped round the shoulders by a strong arm and addressed in a well-known voice.

"Take care! my dear barrister; a frightful danger threatens you; you are running right into it."

La Peyrade, thus arrested, looked round and found himself in the arms of Phellion.

The scene took place in front of a house which was being pulled down at the corner of the rues Duphot and Saint-Honore. Posted on the pavement of the other side of the street, Phellion, whose taste for watching the process of building our readers may remember, had been witnessing for the last fifteen minutes the drama of a wall about to fall beneath the united efforts of a squadron of workmen. Watch in hand, the great citizen was estimating the length of the resistance which that mass of freestone would present to the destructive labor of which it was the object. Precisely at the crucial moment of the impending catastrophe la Peyrade, lost in the tumult of his thoughts, was entering, heedless of the shouts addressed to him on all sides, the radius within which the stones would fall. Seen by Phellion (who, it must be said, would have done the same for a total stranger) la Peyrade undoubtedly owed his life to him; for, at the moment when he was violently flung back by the