The Slaves of Paris - Émile Gaboriau (macos ebook reader .txt) 📗

“Would the Viscountess de Bois Arden suit you?”

“No one better; she is a relation of the Count de Mussidan.”

“Good; then when you wish, Madame de Bois Arden will introduce you as a suitor for the young lady’s hand, and praise you up to the skies.”

The Marquis looked very jubilant at hearing this. “All right,” cried he; “then that decides the matter.”

Paul wondered whether he was awake or dreaming. He too had been promised a rich wife, and here was another man who was being provided for in the same manner. “These people,” muttered he, “seem to keep a matrimonial agency as well as a servants’ registry office!”

“All that is left, then,” said the Marquis, “is to arrange the⁠—shall I call it the commission?”

“I was about to come to that,” returned Mascarin.

“Well, I will give you a fourth of the dowry, and on the day of my marriage will hand you a cheque for that amount.”

Paul now imagined that he saw how matters worked. “If I marry Flavia,” thought he, “I shall have to share her dowry with these highly respectable gentlemen.”

The offer made by the Marquis did not, however, seem to please Mascarin. “That is not what we want,” said he.

“No⁠—well, must I give you more? Say how much.”

Mascarin shook his head.

“Well then, I will give you a third; it is not worth while to give you more.”

“No, no; I would not take half, nor even the whole of the dowry. You may keep that as well as what you owe us.”

“Well, but tell me what you do want.”

“I will do so,” answered Mascarin, adjusting his spectacles carefully; “but before doing so, I feel that I must give you a short account of the rise and progress of this association.”

At this statement Hortebise and Catenac sprang to their feet in surprise and terror. “Are you mad?” said they at length, with one voice.

Mascarin shrugged his shoulders.

“Not yet,” answered he gently, “and I beg that you will permit me to go on.”

“But surely we have some voice in the matter,” faltered Catenac.

“That is enough,” exclaimed Mascarin angrily, “Am not I the head of this association? Do you think,” he continued in tones of deep sarcasm, “that we cannot speak openly before the Marquis?”

Hortebise and the lawyer resignedly resumed their seats. Croisenois thought that a word from him might reassure them.

“Among honest men⁠—” began he.

“We are not honest men,” interrupted Mascarin. “Sir,” added he in a severe tone, “nor are you either.”

This plain speaking brought a bright flush to the face of the Marquis, who had half a mind to be angry, but policy restrained him, and he affected to look on the matter as a joke. “Your joke is a little personal,” said he.

But Mascarin took no heed of his remark. “Listen to me,” said he, “for we have no time to waste, and do you,” he added, turning to Paul, “pay the greatest attention.”

A moment of perfect silence ensued, broken only by the hum of voices in the outer office.

“Marquis,” said Mascarin, whose whole face blazed with a gleam of conscious power, “twenty-five years ago I and my associates were young and in a very different position. We were honest then, and all the illusions of youth were in full force; we had faith and hope. We all then tenanted a wretched garret in the Rue de la Harpe, and loved each other like brothers.”

“That was long, long ago,” murmured Hortebise.

“Yes,” rejoined Mascarin; “and yet the effluxion of times does not hinder me from seeing things as they then were, and my heart aches as I compare the hopes of those days with the realities of the present. Then, Marquis, we were poor, miserably poor, and yet we all had vague hopes of future greatness.”

Croisenois endeavored to conceal a sneer; the story was not a very interesting one.

“As I said before, each one of us anticipated a brilliant career. Catenac had gained a prize by his ‘Treatise on the Transfer of Real Estate,’ and Hortebise had written a pamphlet regarding which the great Orfila had testified approval. Nor was I without my successes. Hortebise had unluckily quarrelled with his family. Catenac’s relatives were poor, and I, well, I had no family. I stood alone. We were literally starving, and I was the only one earning money. I prepared pupils for the military colleges, but as I only earned twenty-five sous a day by cramming a dull boy’s brain with algebra and geometry, that was not enough to feed us all. Well, to cut a long story short, the day came when we had not a coin among us. I forgot to tell you that I was devotedly attached to a young girl who was dying of consumption, and who had neither food nor fuel. What could I do? I knew not. Half mad, I rushed from the house, asking myself if I had better plead for charity or take the money I required by force from the first passerby. I wandered along the quays, half inclined to confide my sorrow to the Seine, when suddenly I remembered it was a holiday at the Polytechnic School, and that if I went to the Café Semblon or the Palais Royal, I should most likely meet with some of my old pupils, who could perhaps lend me a few sous. Five francs perhaps, Marquis⁠—that is a very small sum, but in that day it meant the life of my dear Marie and of my two friends. Have you ever been hungry, M. de Croisenois?”

De Croisenois started; he had never suffered from hunger, but how could he tell what the future might bring? for his resources were so nearly exhausted, that even tomorrow he might be compelled to discard his fictitious splendor and sink into the abyss of poverty.

“When I reached the Café Semblon,” continued Mascarin, “I could not see a single pupil, and the waiter to whom I addressed my inquiries looked at me with the utmost contempt, for my clothes were in