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

worst of all,--to complete his humiliation and his sense of failure,--he felt that he was not cured of the passionate emotion he had felt for this woman, the author of his great disaster, and the instrument of his ruin.

Either this Delilah was a very great lady, sufficiently high in station to allow herself such compromising caprices,--but even so, she would scarcely have cared to play the role of a coquette in a vaudeville where he himself played the part of ninny,--_or_ she was some noted adventuress who was in the pay of this du Portail and the agent of his singular matrimonial designs. Evil life or evil heart, these were the only two verdicts to be pronounced on this dangerous siren, and in either case, it would seem, she was not very deserving of the regrets of her victim; nevertheless, he was conscious of feeling them. We must put ourselves in the place of this son of Provence, this region of hot blood and ardent heads, who, for the first time in his life finding himself face to face with jewelled love in laces, believed he was to drink that passion from a wrought-gold cup. Just as our minds on waking keep the impression of a vivid dream and continue in love with what we know was but a shadow, la Peyrade had need of all his mental energy to drive away the memory of that treacherous countess. We might go further and say that he never ceased to long for her, though he was careful to drape with an honest pretext the intense desire that he had to find her. That desire he called curiosity, ardor for revenge; and here follow the ingenious deductions which he drew for himself:--

"Cerizet talked to me about a rich heiress; the countess, in her letter, intimates that the whole intrigue she wound about me was to lead to a rich marriage; rich marriages flung at a man's head are not so plentiful that two such chances should come to me within a few weeks; therefore the match offered by Cerizet and that proposed by the countess must be the crazy girl they are so frantic to make me marry; therefore Cerizet, being in the plot, must know the countess; therefore, through him I shall get upon her traces. In any case, I am sure of information about this extraordinary choice that has fallen upon me; evidently, these people, whoever they are, who can pull the wires of such puppets to reach their ends must be persons of considerable position; therefore, I'll go and see Cerizet."

And he went to see Cerizet.

Since the dinner at the Rocher de Cancale, the pair had not met. Once or twice la Peyrade had asked Dutocq at the Thuilliers' (where the latter seldom went now, on account of the distance to their new abode) what had become of his copying clerk.

"He never speaks of you," Dutocq had answered.

Hence it might be inferred that resentment, the "manet alta mente repostum" was still living in the breast of the vindictive usurer. La Peyrade, however, was not stopped by that consideration. After all, he was not going to ask for anything; he went under the pretext of renewing an affair in which Cerizet had taken part, and Cerizet never took part in anything unless he had a personal interest in it. The chances were, therefore, that he would be received with affectionate eagerness rather than unpleasant acerbity. Moreover, he decided to go and see the copying clerk at Dutocq's office; it would look, he thought, less like a visit than if he went to his den in the rue des Poules. It was nearly two o'clock when la Peyrade made his entrance into the precincts of the justice-of-peace of the 12th arrondissement. He crossed the first room, in which were a crowd of persons whom civil suits of one kind or another summoned before the magistrate. Without pausing in that waiting-room, la Peyrade pushed on to the office adjoining that of Dutocq. There he found Cerizet at a shabby desk of blackened wood, at which another clerk, then absent, occupied the opposite seat.

Seeing his visitor, Cerizet cast a savage look at him and said, without rising, or suspending the copy of the judgment he was then engrossing:--

"You here, Sieur la Peyrade? You have been doing fine things for your friend Thuillier!"

"How are you?" asked la Peyrade, in a tone both resolute and friendly.

"I?" replied Cerizet. "As you see, still rowing my galley; and, to follow out the nautical metaphor, allow me to ask what wind has blown you hither; is it, perchance, the wind of adversity?"

La Peyrade, without replying, took a chair beside his questioner, after which he said in a grave tone:--

"My dear fellow, we have something to say to each other."

"I suppose," said Cerizet, spitefully, "the Thuilliers have grown cold since the seizure of the pamphlet."

"The Thuilliers are ungrateful people; I have broken with them," replied la Peyrade.

"Rupture or dismissal," said Cerizet, "their door is shut against you; and from what Dutocq tells me, I judge that Brigitte is handling you without gloves. You see, my friend, what it is to try and manage affairs alone; complications come, and there's no one to smooth the angles. If you had got me that lease, I should have had a footing at the Thuilliers', Dutocq would not have abandoned you, and together we could have brought you gently into port."

"But suppose I don't want to re-enter that port?" said la Peyrade, with some sharpness. "I tell you I've had enough of those Thuilliers, and I broke with them myself; I warned them to get out of my sun; and if Dutocq told you anything else you may tell him from me that he lies. Is that clear enough? It seems to me I've made it plain."

"Well, exactly, my good fellow, if you are so savage against your Thuilliers you ought to have put me among them, and then you'd have seen me avenge you."

"There you are right," said la Peyrade; "I wish I could have set you at their legs--but as for that matter of the lease I tell you again, I was not master of it."

"Of course," said Cerizet, "it was your conscience which obliged you to tell Brigitte that the twelve thousand francs a year I expected to make out of it were better in her pocket than in mine."

"It seems that Dutocq continues the honorable profession of spy which he formerly practised at the ministry of finance," said la Peyrade, "and, like others who do that dirty business, he makes his reports more witty than truthful--"

"Take care!" said Cerizet; "you are talking of my patron in his own lair."

"Look here!" said la Peyrade. "I have come to talk to you on serious matters. Will you do me the favor to drop the Thuilliers and all their belongings, and give me your attention?"

"Say on, my friend," said Cerizet, laying down his pen, which had never ceased to run, up to this moment, "I am listening."

"You talked to me some time ago," said la Peyrade, "about marrying a girl who was rich, fully of age, and slightly hysterical, as you were pleased to put it euphemistically."

"Well done!" cried Cerizet. "I expected this; but you've been some time coming to it."

"In offering me this heiress, what did you have in your mind?" asked la Peyrade.

"Parbleu! to help you to a splendid stroke of business. You had only to stoop and take it. I was formally charged to propose it to you; and, as there wasn't any brokerage, I should have relied wholly on your generosity."

"But you are not the only person who was commissioned to make me that offer. A woman had the same order."

"A woman!" cried Cerizet in a perfectly natural tone of surprise. "Not that I know of."

"Yes, a foreigner, young and pretty, whom you must have met in the family of the bride, to whom she seems to be ardently devoted."

"Never," said Cerizet, "never has there been the slightest question of a woman in this negotiation. I have every reason to believe that I am exclusively charged with it."

"What!" said la Peyrade, fixing upon Cerizet a scrutinizing eye, "did you never hear of the Comtesse Torna de Godollo?"

"Never, in all my life; this is the first time I ever heard that name."

"Then," said la Peyrade, "it must really have been another match; for that woman, after many singular preliminaries, too long to explain to you, made me a formal offer of the hand of a young woman much richer than Mademoiselle Colleville--"

"And hysterical?" asked Cerizet.

"No, she did not embellish the proposal with that accessory; but there's another detail which may put you on the track of her. Madame de Godollo exhorted me, if I wished to push the matter, to go and see a certain Monsieur du Portail--"

"Rue Honore-Chevalier?" exclaimed Cerizet, quickly.

"Precisely."

"Then it is the same marriage which is offered to you through two different mediums. It is strange I was not informed of this collaboration!"

"In short," said la Peyrade, "you not only didn't have wind of the countess's intervention, but you don't know her, and you can't give me any information about her--is that so?"

"At present I can't," replied Cerizet, "but I'll find out about her; for the whole proceeding is rather cavalier towards me; but this employment of two agents only shows you how desirable you are to the family."

At this moment the door of the room was opened cautiously, a woman's head appeared, and a voice, which was instantly recognized by la Peyrade, said, addressing the copying-clerk:--

"Ah! excuse me! I see monsieur is busy. Could I say a word to monsieur when he is alone?"

Cerizet, who had an eye as nimble as a hand, instantly noticed a certain fact. La Peyrade, who was so placed as to be plainly seen by the new-comer, no sooner heard that drawling, honeyed voice, than he turned his head in a manner to conceal his features. Instead therefore of being roughly sent away, as usually happened to petitioners who addressed the most surly of official clerks, the modest visitor heard herself greeted in a very surprising manner.

"Come in, come in, Madame Lambert," said Cerizet; "you won't be kept waiting long; come in."

The visitor advanced, and then came face to face with la Peyrade.

"Ah! monsieur!" cried his creditor, whom the reader has no doubt recognized, "how fortunate I am to meet monsieur! I have been several times to his office to ask if he had had time to attend to my little affair."

"I have had many engagements which have kept me away from my office lately; but I attended to that matter; everything has been done right, and is now in the hands of the secretary."

"Oh! how good monsieur is! I pray God to bless him," said the pious woman, clasping her hands.

"Bless me! do you have business with Madame Lambert?" said Cerizet; "you never told me that. Are you Pere Picot's counsel?"

"No, unfortunately," said Madame Lambert, "my master won't take any counsel; he is so self-willed, so obstinate! But, my good monsieur, what I came to ask is whether the family council is to meet."

"Of course," said Cerizet, "and not later than to-morrow."

"But monsieur, I hear those gentlemen of the Royal court said the family had no rights--"

"Yes, that's so," said the