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

for us. But who can ever sound the depths of souls like his? I thought him reformed. A manager, I said to myself, is only a machine; he can do no harm. I expected to find him a man of straw; well, I was mistaken, he will never be anything but a man of mud."

"All that is very fine," said Thuillier, "but those twenty-five thousand francs found so conveniently in your possession, where did you get them? That is the point you are forgetting to explain."

"But to reason about it," said la Peyrade; "a man of my character in the pay of the police and yet so poor that I could not pay the ten thousand francs your harpy of a sister demanded with an insolence which you yourself witnessed--"

"But," said Thuillier, "if the origin of this money is honest, as I sincerely desire it may be, what hinders you from telling me how you got it?"

"I cannot," said la Peyrade; "the history of that money is a secret entrusted to me professionally."

"Come, come, you told me yourself that the statutes of your order forbid all barristers from doing business of any kind."

"Let us suppose," said la Peyrade, "that I have done something not absolutely regular; it would be strange indeed after what I risked, as you know, for you, if you should have the face to reproach me with it."

"My poor friend, you are trying to shake off the hounds; but you can't make me lose the scent. You wish to keep your secret; then keep it. I am master of my own confidence and my own esteem; by paying you the forfeit stipulated in our deed I take the newspaper into my own hands."

"Do you mean that you dismiss me?" cried la Peyrade. "The money that you have put into the affair, all your chances of election, sacrificed to the calumnies of such a being as Cerizet!"

"In the first place," said Thuillier, "another editor-in-chief can be found; it is a true saying that no man is indispensable. As for election to the Chamber I would rather never receive it than owe it to the help of one who--"

"Go on," said la Peyrade, seeing that Thuillier hesitated, "or rather, no, be silent, for you will presently blush for your suspicions and ask my pardon humbly."

By this time la Peyrade saw that without a confession to which he must compel himself, the influence and the future he had just recovered would be cut from under his feet. Resuming his speech he said, solemnly:--

"You will remember, my friend, that you were pitiless, and, by subjecting me to a species of moral torture, you have forced me to reveal to you a secret that is not mine."

"Go on," said Thuillier, "I take the whole responsibility upon myself. Make me see the truth clearly in this darkness, and if I have done wrong I will be the first to say so."

"Well," said la Peyrade, "those twenty-five thousand francs are the savings of a servant-woman who came to me and asked me to take them and to pay her interest."

"A servant with twenty-five thousand francs of savings! Nonsense; she must serve in monstrously rich households."

"On the contrary, she is the one servant of an infirm old savant; and it was on account of the discrepancy which strikes your mind that she wanted to put her money in my hands as a sort of trustee."

"Bless me! my friend," said Thuillier, flippantly, "you said we were in want of a romance-feuilletonist; but really, after this, I sha'n't be uneasy. Here's imagination for you!"

"What?" said la Peyrade, angrily, "you don't believe me?"

"No, I do not believe you. Twenty-five thousand francs savings in the service of an old savant! that is about as believable as the officer of La Dame Blanche buying a chateau with his pay."

"But if I prove to you the truth of my words; if I let you put your finger upon it?"

"In that case, like Saint Thomas, I shall lower my flag before the evidence. Meanwhile you must permit me, my noble friend, to wait until you offer me that proof."

Thuillier felt really superb.

"I'd give a hundred francs," he said to himself, "if Brigitte could have been here and heard me impeach him."

"Well," said la Peyrade, "suppose that without leaving this office, and by means of a note which you shall read, I bring into your presence the person from whom I received the money; if she confirms what I say will you believe me?"

This proposal and the assurance with which it was made rather staggered Thuillier.

"I shall know what to do when the time comes," he replied, changing his tone. "But this must be done at once, now, here."

"I said, without leaving this office. I should think that was clear enough."

"And who will carry the note you write?" asked Thuillier, believing that by thus examining every detail he was giving proofs of amazing perspicacity.

"Carry the note! why, your own porter of course," replied la Peyrade; "you can send him yourself."

"Then write it," said Thuillier, determined to push him to the wall.

La Peyrade took a sheet of paper with the new heading and wrote as follows, reading the note aloud:--

Madame Lambert is requested to call at once, on urgent business, at the office of the "Echo de la Bievre," rue Saint-Dominique d'Enfer. The bearer of this note will conduct her. She is awaited impatiently by her devoted servant,

Theodose de la Peyrade.

"There, will that suit you?" said the barrister, passing the paper to Thuillier.

"Perfectly," replied Thuillier, taking the precaution to fold the letter himself and seal it. "Put the address," he added.

Then he rang the bell for the porter.

"You will carry this letter to its address," he said to the man, "and bring back with you the person named. But will she be there?" he asked, on reflection.

"It is more than probable," replied la Peyrade; "in any case, neither you nor I will leave this room until she comes. This matter must be cleared up."

"Then go!" said Thuillier to the porter, in a theatrical tone.

When they were alone, la Peyrade took up a newspaper and appeared to be absorbed in its perusal.

Thuillier, beginning to get uneasy as to the upshot of the affair, regretted that he had not done something the idea of which had come to him just too late.

"Yes, I ought," he said to himself, "to have torn up that letter, and not driven him to prove his words."

Wishing to do something that might look like retaining la Peyrade in the position of which he had threatened to deprive him, he remarked presently:--

"By the bye, I have just come from the printing-office; the new type has arrived, and I think we might make our first appearance to-morrow."

La Peyrade did not answer; but he got up and took his paper nearer to the window.

"He is sulky," thought Thuillier, "and if he is innocent, he may well be. But, after all, why did he ever bring a man like that Cerizet here?"

Then to hide his embarrassment and the preoccupation of his mind, he sat down before the editor's table, took a sheet of the head-lined paper and made himself write a letter.

Presently la Peyrade returned to the table and sitting down, took another sheet and with the feverish rapidity of a man stirred by some emotion he drove his pen over the paper.

From the corner of his eye, Thuillier tried hard to see what la Peyrade was writing, and noticing that his sentences were separated by numbers placed between brackets, he said:--

"Tiens! are you drawing up a parliamentary law?"

"Yes," replied la Peyrade, "the law of the vanquished."

Soon after this, the porter opened the door and introduced Madame Lambert, whom he had found at home, and who arrived looking rather frightened.

"You are Madame Lambert?" asked Thuillier, magisterially.

"Yes, monsieur," said the woman, in an anxious voice.

After requesting her to be seated and noticing that the porter was still there as if awaiting further orders he said to the man:--

"That will do; you may go; and don't let any one disturb us."

The gravity and the lordly tone assumed by Thuillier only increased Madame Lambert's uneasiness. She came expecting to see only la Peyrade, and she found herself received by an unknown man with a haughty manner, while the barrister, who had merely bowed to her, said not a word; moreover, the scene took place in a newspaper office, and it is a well-known fact that to pious persons especially all that relates to the press is infernal and diabolical.

"Well," said Thuillier to the barrister, "it seems to me that nothing hinders you from explaining to madame why you have sent for her."

In order to leave no loophole for suspicion in Thuillier's mind la Peyrade knew that he must put his question bluntly and without the slightest preparation; he therefore said to her "ex abrupto":--

"We wish to ask you, madame, if it is not true that about two and a half months ago you placed in my hands, subject to interest, the sum, in round numbers, of twenty-five thousand francs."

Though she felt the eyes of Thuillier and those of la Peyrade upon her, Madame Lambert, under the shock of this question fired at her point-blank, could not restrain a start.

"Heavens!" she exclaimed, "twenty-five thousand francs! and where should I get such a sum as that?"

La Peyrade gave no sign on his face of the vexation he might be supposed to feel. As for Thuillier, who now looked at him with sorrowful commiseration, he merely said:--

"You see, my friend!"

"So," resumed la Peyrade, "you are very certain that you did not place in my hands the sum of twenty-five thousand francs; you declare this, you affirm it?"

"Why, monsieur! did you ever hear of such a sum as that in the pocket of a poor woman like me? The little that I had, as everybody knows, has gone to eke out the housekeeping of that poor dear gentleman whose servant I have been for more than twenty years."

"This," said Thuillier, pompously, "seems to me categorical."

La Peyrade still did not show the slightest sign of annoyance; on the contrary, he seemed to be playing into Thuillier's hand.

"You hear, my dear Thuillier," he said, "and if necessary I shall call for your testimony, that madame here declares that she did not possess twenty-five thousand francs and could not therefore have placed them in my hands. Now, as the notary Dupuis, in whose hands I fancied I had placed them, left Paris this morning for Brussels carrying with him the money of all his clients, I have no account with madame, by her own showing, and the absconding of the notary--"

"Has the notary Dupuis absconded?" screamed Madame Lambert, driven by this dreadful news entirely out of her usual tones of dulcet sweetness and Christian resignation. "Ah, the villain! it was only this morning that he was taking the sacrament at Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas."

"To pray for a safe journey, probably," said la Peyrade.

"Monsieur talks lightly enough," continued Madame Lambert, "though that brigand has carried off my savings. But I gave them to