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

fellow," said the Provencal; "they told me I should find you here."

"You have come, doubtless, for the purpose of explaining to me the strange article you allowed yourself to insert in my name."

"Precisely," said la Peyrade. "The remarkable man whom you know, and whose powerful influence you have already felt, confided to me yesterday, in your interests, the plans of the government, and I saw at once that your defeat was inevitable. I wished therefore to secure to you an honorable and dignified retreat. There was no time to lose; you were absent from Paris, and therefore--"

"Very good, monsieur," said Thuillier; "but you will take notice that from the present moment you are no longer the editor of this paper."

"That is what I came to tell you."

"Perhaps you also came to settle the little account we have together."

"Messieurs," said Minard, "I see that this is a business interview; I shall therefore take leave of you."

As soon as Minard had left the room, la Peyrade pulled out his pocket-book.

"Here are ten thousand francs," he said, "which I will beg you to remit to Mademoiselle Brigitte; and here, also, is the bond by which you secured the payment of twenty-five thousand francs to Madame Lambert; that sum I have now paid in full, and here is the receipt."

"Very good, monsieur," said Thuillier.

La Peyrade bowed and went away.

"Serpent!" said Thuillier as he watched him go.

"Cerizet said the right thing," thought la Peyrade,--"a pompous imbecile!"

The blow struck at Thuillier's candidacy was mortal, but Minard did not profit by it. While the pair were contending for votes, a government man, an aide-de-camp to the king, arrived with his hands full of tobacco licenses and other electoral small change, and, like the third thief, he slipped between the two who were thumping each other, and carried off the booty.

It is needless to say that Brigitte did not get her farm in Beauce. That was only a mirage, by help of which Thuillier was enticed out of Paris long enough for la Peyrade to deal his blow,--a service rendered to the government on the one hand, but also a precious vengeance for the many humiliations he had undergone.

Thuillier had certainly some suspicions as to the complicity of Cerizet, but that worthy managed to justify himself; and by manoeuvring the sale of the "Echo de la Bievre," now become a nightmare to the luckless owner, he ended by appearing as white as snow.

The paper was secretly bought up by Corentin, and the late opposition sheet became a "canard" sold on Sundays in the wine-shops and concocted in the dens of the police.


CHAPTER XVII. IN THE EXERCISE OF HIS FUNCTIONS

About two months after the scene in which la Peyrade had been convinced that through a crime of his past life his future was irrevocably settled, he (being now married to his victim, who was beginning to have lucid intervals, though the full return of her reason would not take place until the occasion indicated by the doctors) was sitting one morning with the head of the police in the latter's office. Taking part in the work of the department, the young man was serving an apprenticeship under that great master in the difficult and delicate functions to which he was henceforth riveted. But Corentin found that his pupil did not bring to this initiation all the ardor and amiability that he desired. It was plain that in la Peyrade's soul there was a sense of forfeiture and degradation; time would get the better of that impression, but the callus was not yet formed.

Opening a number of sealed envelopes enclosing the reports of his various agents, Corentin glanced over these documents, seldom as useful as the public suppose, casting them one after another contemptuously into a basket, whence they issued in a mass for a burning. But to one of them the great man evidently gave some particular attention; as he read it a smile flickered on his lips, and when he had finished, instead of adding it to the pile in the basket, he gave it to la Peyrade.

"Here," he said, "here's something that concerns you; it shows that in our profession, which just now seems to you unpleasantly serious, we do occasionally meet with comedies. Read it aloud; it will cheer me up."

Before la Peyrade began to read, Corentin added:--

"I ought to tell you that the report is from a man called Henri, whom Madame Komorn introduced as man-servant at the Thuilliers'; you probably remember him."

"So!" said la Peyrade, "servants placed in families! is that one of your methods?"

"Sometimes," replied Corentin; "in order to know all, we must use all means. But a great many lies are told about us on that subject. It is not true that the police, making a system of it, has, at certain periods, by a general enrolment of lacqueys and lady's-maids, established a vast network in private families. Nothing is fixed and absolute in our manner of proceeding; we act in accordance with the time and circumstances. I wanted an ear and an influence in the Thuillier household; accordingly, I let loose the Godollo upon it, and she, in turn, partly to assist herself, installed there one of our men, an intelligent fellow, as you will see for yourself. But for all that, if, at another time, a servant came and offered to sell me the secrets of his master, I should have him arrested, and let a warning reach the ears of the family to distrust the other servants. Now go on, and read that report."


Monsieur the Director of the Secret Police,


read la Peyrade aloud,--

I did not stay long with the little baron; he is a man wholly
occupied in frivolous pleasures; and there was nothing to be
gathered there that was worthy of a report to you. I have found
another place, where I have already witnessed several thing which
fit into the mission that Madame de Godollo gave me, and
therefore, thinking them likely to interest you, I hasten to bring
them to your knowledge. The household in which I am now employed
is that of an old savant, named Monsieur Picot, who lives on a
first floor, Place de la Madeleine, in the house and apartment
formerly occupied by my late masters, the Thuilliers--

"What!" cried la Peyrade, interrupting his reading, "Pere Picot, that ruined old lunatic, occupying such an apartment as that?"

"Go on, go on!" said Corentin; "life is full of many strange things. You'll find the explanation farther along; for our correspondent--it is the defect of those fellows to waste themselves on details--is only too fond of dotting his i's."

La Peyrade read on:--

The Thuilliers left this apartment some weeks ago to return to
their Latin quarter. Mademoiselle Brigitte never really liked our
sphere; her total want of education made her ill at ease. Just
because I speak correctly, she was always calling me 'the orator,'
and she could not endure Monsieur Pascal, her porter, because,
being beadle in the church of the Madeleine, he had manners; she
even found something to say against the dealers in the great
market behind the church, where, of course, she bought her
provisions; she complained that they gave themselves _capable_
airs, merely because they are not so coarse-tongued as those of
the Halle, and only laughed at her when she tried to beat them
down. She has leased the whole house to a certain Monsieur Cerizet
(a very ugly man, with a nose all eaten away) for an annual rent of
fifty-five thousand francs. This tenant seems to know what he is
about. He has lately married an actress at one of the minor
theatres, Mademoiselle Olympe Cardinal, and he was just about to
occupy himself the first-floor apartment, where he proposed to
establish his present business, namely, insurance for the "dots"
of children, when Monsieur Picot, arriving from England with his
wife, a very rich Englishwoman, saw the apartment and offered such
a good price that Monsieur Cerizet felt constrained to take it.
That was the time when, by the help of M. Pascal, the porter, with
whom I have been careful to maintain good relations, I entered the
household of Monsieur Picot.

"Monsieur Picot married to a rich Englishwoman!" exclaimed la Peyrade, interrupting himself again; "but it is incomprehensible."

"Go on, I tell you," said Corentin; "you'll comprehend it presently."


The fortune of my new master,


continued la Peyrade,

is quite a history; and I speak of it to Monsieur le directeur
because another person in whom Madame de Godollo was interested
has his marriage closely mixed up in it. That other person is
Monsieur Felix Phellion, the inventor of a star, who, in despair
at not being able to marry that demoiselle whom they wanted to
give to the Sieur la Peyrade whom Madame de Godollo made such a
fool of--

"Scoundrel!" said the Provencal, in a parenthesis. "Is that how he speaks of me? He doesn't know who I am."

Corentin laughed heartily and exhorted his pupil to read on.

--who, in despair at not being able to marry that demoiselle . . .
went to England in order to embark for a journey round the world
--a lover's notion! Learning of this departure, Monsieur Picot,
his former professor, who took great interest in his pupil, went
after him to prevent that nonsense, which turned out not to be
difficult. The English are naturally very jealous of discoveries,
and when they saw Monsieur Phellion coming to embark at the heels
of their own savants they asked him for his permit from the
Admiralty; which, not having been provided, he could not produce;
so then they laughed in his face and would not let him embark at
all, fearing that he should prove more learned than they.

"He is a fine hand at the 'entente cordiale,' your Monsieur Henri," said la Peyrade, gaily.

"Yes," replied Corentin; "you will be struck, in the reports of nearly all our agents, with this general and perpetual inclination to calumniate. But what's to be done? For the trade of spies we can't have angels."


Left upon the shore, Telemachus and his mentor--


"You see our men are lettered," commented Corentin.

--Telemachus and his mentor thought best to return to France, and
were about to do so when Monsieur Picot received a letter such as
none but an Englishwoman could write. It told him that the writer
had read his "Theory of Perpetual Motion," and had also heard of
his magnificent discovery of a star; that she regarded him as a
genius only second to Newton, and that if the hand of her who
addressed him, joined to eighty thousand pounds sterling--that is,
two millions--of