initial commit of ebook 1403HEADmain

1 files changed, 7242 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/1403-0.txt b/old/1403-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f7247c6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/1403-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7242 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Start in Life, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Start in Life
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+Release Date: July, 1997  [Etext #1403]
+Posting Date: February 24, 2010
+Last Updated: November 23, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A START IN LIFE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+A START IN LIFE
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+
+Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+                             To Laure.
+
+  Let the brilliant mind that gave me the subject of this Scene
+  have the honor of it.
+
+  Her brother,
+
+  De Balzac
+
+
+
+
+
+A START IN LIFE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. THAT WHICH WAS LACKING TO PIERROTIN’S HAPPINESS
+
+
+Railroads, in a future not far distant, must force certain industries
+to disappear forever, and modify several others, more especially those
+relating to the different modes of transportation in use around Paris.
+Therefore the persons and things which are the elements of this Scene
+will soon give to it the character of an archaeological work. Our
+nephews ought to be enchanted to learn the social material of an epoch
+which they will call the “olden time.” The picturesque “coucous”
+ which stood on the Place de la Concorde, encumbering the
+Cours-la-Reine,--coucous which had flourished for a century, and were
+still numerous in 1830, scarcely exist in 1842, unless on the occasion
+of some attractive suburban solemnity, like that of the Grandes Eaux of
+Versailles. In 1820, the various celebrated places called the “Environs
+of Paris” did not all possess a regular stage-coach service.
+
+Nevertheless, the Touchards, father and son, had acquired a monopoly of
+travel and transportation to all the populous towns within a radius of
+forty-five miles; and their enterprise constituted a fine establishment
+in the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis. In spite of their long-standing
+rights, in spite, too, of their efforts, their capital, and all
+the advantages of a powerful centralization, the Touchard coaches
+(“messageries”) found terrible competition in the coucous for all points
+with a circumference of fifteen or twenty miles. The passion of
+the Parisian for the country is such that local enterprise could
+successfully compete with the Lesser Stage company,--Petites
+Messageries, the name given to the Touchard enterprise to distinguish it
+from that of the Grandes Messageries of the rue Montmartre. At the time
+of which we write, the Touchard success was stimulating speculators.
+For every small locality in the neighborhood of Paris there sprang up
+schemes of beautiful, rapid, and commodious vehicles, departing and
+arriving in Paris at fixed hours, which produced, naturally, a fierce
+competition. Beaten on the long distances of twelve to eighteen miles,
+the coucou came down to shorter trips, and so lived on for several
+years. At last, however, it succumbed to omnibuses, which demonstrated
+the possibility of carrying eighteen persons in a vehicle drawn by two
+horses. To-day the coucous--if by chance any of those birds of ponderous
+flight still linger in the second-hand carriage-shops--might be made,
+as to its structure and arrangement, the subject of learned researches
+comparable to those of Cuvier on the animals discovered in the chalk
+pits of Montmartre.
+
+These petty enterprises, which had struggled since 1822 against the
+Touchards, usually found a strong foothold in the good-will and sympathy
+of the inhabitants of the districts which they served. The person
+undertaking the business as proprietor and conductor was nearly always
+an inn-keeper along the route, to whom the beings, things, and interests
+with which he had to do were all familiar. He could execute commissions
+intelligently; he never asked as much for his little stages, and
+therefore obtained more custom than the Touchard coaches. He managed
+to elude the necessity of a custom-house permit. If need were, he was
+willing to infringe the law as to the number of passengers he might
+carry. In short, he possessed the affection of the masses; and thus it
+happened that whenever a rival came upon the same route, if his days for
+running were not the same as those of the coucou, travellers would put
+off their journey to make it with their long-tried coachman, although
+his vehicle and his horses might be in a far from reassuring condition.
+
+One of the lines which the Touchards, father and son, endeavored to
+monopolize, and the one most stoutly disputed (as indeed it still is),
+is that of Paris to Beaumont-sur-Oise,--a line extremely profitable, for
+three rival enterprises worked it in 1822. In vain the Touchards
+lowered their price; in vain they constructed better coaches and started
+oftener. Competition still continued, so productive is a line on which
+are little towns like Saint-Denis and Saint-Brice, and villages
+like Pierrefitte, Groslay, Ecouen, Poncelles, Moisselles, Monsoult,
+Maffliers, Franconville, Presles, Nointel, Nerville, etc. The Touchard
+coaches finally extended their route to Chambly; but competition
+followed. To-day the Toulouse, a rival enterprise, goes as far as
+Beauvais.
+
+Along this route, which is that toward England, there lies a road which
+turns off at a place well-named, in view of its topography, The Cave,
+and leads through a most delightful valley in the basin of the Oise to
+the little town of Isle-Adam, doubly celebrated as the cradle of the
+family, now extinct, of Isle-Adam, and also as the former residence
+of the Bourbon-Contis. Isle-Adam is a little town flanked by two large
+villages, Nogent and Parmain, both remarkable for splendid quarries,
+which have furnished material for many of the finest buildings in modern
+Paris and in foreign lands,--for the base and capital of the columns
+of the Brussels theatre are of Nogent stone. Though remarkable for
+its beautiful sites, for the famous chateaux which princes, monks, and
+designers have built, such as Cassan, Stors, Le Val, Nointel, Persan,
+etc., this region had escaped competition in 1822, and was reached by
+two coaches only, working more or less in harmony.
+
+This exception to the rule of rivalry was founded on reasons that are
+easy to understand. From the Cave, the point on the route to England
+where a paved road (due to the luxury of the Princes of Conti) turned
+off to Isle-Adam, the distance is six miles. No speculating enterprise
+would make such a detour, for Isle-Adam was the terminus of the road,
+which did not go beyond it. Of late years, another road has been made
+between the valley of Montmorency and the valley of the Oise; but in
+1822 the only road which led to Isle-Adam was the paved highway of the
+Princes of Conti. Pierrotin and his colleague reigned, therefore, from
+Paris to Isle-Adam, beloved by every one along the way. Pierrotin’s
+vehicle, together with that of his comrade, and Pierrotin himself, were
+so well known that even the inhabitants on the main road as far as the
+Cave were in the habit of using them; for there was always better chance
+of a seat to be had than in the Beaumont coaches, which were almost
+always full. Pierrotin and his competitor were on the best of terms.
+When the former started from Isle-Adam, the latter was returning from
+Paris, and vice versa.
+
+It is unnecessary to speak of the rival. Pierrotin possessed the
+sympathies of his region; besides, he is the only one of the two who
+appears in this veracious narrative. Let it suffice you to know that the
+two coach proprietors lived under a good understanding, rivalled each
+other loyally, and obtained customers by honorable proceedings. In Paris
+they used, for economy’s sake, the same yard, hotel, and stable, the
+same coach-house, office, and clerk. This detail is alone sufficient to
+show that Pierrotin and his competitor were, as the popular saying is,
+“good dough.” The hotel at which they put up in Paris, at the corner of
+the rue d’Enghien, is still there, and is called the “Lion d’Argent.”
+ The proprietor of the establishment, which from time immemorial had
+lodged coachmen and coaches, drove himself for the great company of
+Daumartin, which was so firmly established that its neighbors, the
+Touchards, whose place of business was directly opposite, never dreamed
+of starting a rival coach on the Daumartin line.
+
+Though the departures for Isle-Adam professed to take place at a fixed
+hour, Pierrotin and his co-rival practised an indulgence in that respect
+which won for them the grateful affection of the country-people, and
+also violent remonstrances on the part of strangers accustomed to
+the regularity of the great lines of public conveyances. But the two
+conductors of these vehicles, which were half diligence, half coucou,
+were invariably defended by their regular customers. The afternoon
+departure at four o’clock usually lagged on till half-past, while that
+of the morning, fixed for eight o’clock, was seldom known to take
+place before nine. In this respect, however, the system was elastic.
+In summer, that golden period for the coaching business, the rule of
+departure, rigorous toward strangers, was often relaxed for country
+customers. This method not infrequently enabled Pierrotin to pocket
+two fares for one place, if a countryman came early and wanted a seat
+already booked and paid for by some “bird of passage” who was, unluckily
+for himself, a little late. Such elasticity will certainly not commend
+itself to purists in morality; but Pierrotin and his colleague justified
+it on the varied grounds of “hard times,” of their losses during the
+winter months, of the necessity of soon getting better coaches, and of
+the duty of keeping exactly to the rules written on the tariff, copies
+of which were, however, never shown, unless some chance traveller was
+obstinate enough to demand it.
+
+Pierrotin, a man about forty years of age, was already the father of a
+family. Released from the cavalry on the great disbandment of 1815, the
+worthy fellow had succeeded his father, who for many years had driven a
+coucou of capricious flight between Paris and Isle-Adam. Having married
+the daughter of a small inn-keeper, he enlarged his business, made it
+a regular service, and became noted for his intelligence and a certain
+military precision. Active and decided in his ways, Pierrotin (the name
+seems to have been a sobriquet) contrived to give, by the vivacity
+of his countenance, an expression of sly shrewdness to his ruddy and
+weather-stained visage which suggested wit. He was not without that
+facility of speech which is acquired chiefly through “seeing life”
+ and other countries. His voice, by dint of talking to his horses and
+shouting “Gare!” was rough; but he managed to tone it down with the
+bourgeois. His clothing, like that of all coachmen of the second class,
+consisted of stout boots, heavy with nails, made at Isle-Adam, trousers
+of bottle-green velveteen, waistcoat of the same, over which he wore,
+while exercising his functions, a blue blouse, ornamented on the collar,
+shoulder-straps and cuffs, with many-colored embroidery. A cap with
+a visor covered his head. His military career had left in Pierrotin’s
+manners and customs a great respect for all social superiority, and a
+habit of obedience to persons of the upper classes; and though he never
+willingly mingled with the lesser bourgeoisie, he always respected women
+in whatever station of life they belonged. Nevertheless, by dint of
+“trundling the world,”--one of his own expressions,--he had come to look
+upon those he conveyed as so many walking parcels, who required less
+care than the inanimate ones,--the essential object of a coaching
+business.
+
+Warned by the general movement which, since the Peace, was
+revolutionizing his calling, Pierrotin would not allow himself to be
+outdone by the progress of new lights. Since the beginning of the summer
+season he had talked much of a certain large coach, ordered from Farry,
+Breilmann, and Company, the best makers of diligences,--a purchase
+necessitated by an increasing influx of travellers. Pierrotin’s present
+establishment consisted of two vehicles. One, which served in winter,
+and the only one he reported to the tax-gatherer, was the coucou which
+he inherited from his father. The rounded flanks of this vehicle allowed
+him to put six travellers on two seats, of metallic hardness in spite of
+the yellow Utrecht velvet with which they were covered. These seats were
+separated by a wooden bar inserted in the sides of the carriage at the
+height of the travellers’ shoulders, which could be placed or removed
+at will. This bar, specially covered with velvet (Pierrotin called it
+“a back”), was the despair of the passengers, from the great difficulty
+they found in placing and removing it. If the “back” was difficult and
+even painful to handle, that was nothing to the suffering caused to the
+omoplates when the bar was in place. But when it was left to lie loose
+across the coach, it made both ingress and egress extremely perilous,
+especially to women.
+
+Though each seat of this vehicle, with rounded sides like those of a
+pregnant woman, could rightfully carry only three passengers, it was
+not uncommon to see eight persons on the two seats jammed together like
+herrings in a barrel. Pierrotin declared that the travellers were far
+more comfortable in a solid, immovable mass; whereas when only three
+were on a seat they banged each other perpetually, and ran much risk
+of injuring their hats against the roof by the violent jolting of the
+roads. In front of the vehicle was a wooden bench where Pierrotin
+sat, on which three travellers could perch; when there, they went, as
+everybody knows, by the name of “rabbits.” On certain trips Pierrotin
+placed four rabbits on the bench, and sat himself at the side, on a
+sort of box placed below the body of the coach as a foot-rest for the
+rabbits, which was always full of straw, or of packages that feared
+no damage. The body of this particular coucou was painted yellow,
+embellished along the top with a band of barber’s blue, on which could
+be read, on the sides, in silvery white letters, “Isle-Adam, Paris,” and
+across the back, “Line to Isle-Adam.”
+
+Our descendants will be mightily mistaken if they fancy that thirteen
+persons including Pierrotin were all that this vehicle could carry. On
+great occasions it could take three more in a square compartment covered
+with an awning, where the trunks, cases, and packages were piled; but
+the prudent Pierrotin only allowed his regular customers to sit there,
+and even they were not allowed to get in until at some distance beyond
+the “barriere.” The occupants of the “hen-roost” (the name given by
+conductors to this section of their vehicles) were made to get down
+outside of every village or town where there was a post of gendarmerie;
+the overloading forbidden by law, “for the safety of passengers,”
+ being too obvious to allow the gendarme on duty--always a friend to
+Pierrotin--to avoid the necessity of reporting this flagrant violation
+of the ordinances. Thus on certain Saturday nights and Monday mornings,
+Pierrotin’s coucou “trundled” fifteen travellers; but on such occasions,
+in order to drag it along, he gave his stout old horse, called Rougeot,
+a mate in the person of a little beast no bigger than a pony, about
+whose merits he had much to say. This little horse was a mare named
+Bichette; she ate little, she was spirited, she was indefatigable, she
+was worth her weight in gold.
+
+“My wife wouldn’t give her for that fat lazybones of a Rougeot!” cried
+Pierrotin, when some traveller would joke him about his epitome of a
+horse.
+
+The difference between this vehicle and the other consisted chiefly
+in the fact that the other was on four wheels. This coach, of comical
+construction, called the “four-wheel-coach,” held seventeen travellers,
+though it was bound not to carry more than fourteen. It rumbled so
+noisily that the inhabitants of Isle-Adam frequently said, “Here comes
+Pierrotin!” when he was scarcely out of the forest which crowns the
+slope of the valley. It was divided into two lobes, so to speak: one,
+called the “interior,” contained six passengers on two seats; the other,
+a sort of cabriolet constructed in front, was called the “coupe.” This
+coupe was closed in with very inconvenient and fantastic glass sashes,
+a description of which would take too much space to allow of its
+being given here. The four-wheeled coach was surmounted by a hooded
+“imperial,” into which Pierrotin managed to poke six passengers; this
+space was inclosed by leather curtains. Pierrotin himself sat on an
+almost invisible seat perched just below the sashes of the coupe.
+
+The master of the establishment paid the tax which was levied upon all
+public conveyances on his coucou only, which was rated to carry six
+persons; and he took out a special permit each time that he drove the
+four-wheeler. This may seem extraordinary in these days, but when the
+tax on vehicles was first imposed, it was done very timidly, and such
+deceptions were easily practised by the coach proprietors, always
+pleased to “faire la queue” (cheat of their dues) the government
+officials, to use the argot of their vocabulary. Gradually the greedy
+Treasury became severe; it forced all public conveyances not to roll
+unless they carried two certificates,--one showing that they had been
+weighed, the other that their taxes were duly paid. All things have
+their salad days, even the Treasury; and in 1822 those days still
+lasted. Often in summer, the “four-wheel-coach,” and the coucou
+journeyed together, carrying between them thirty-two passengers, though
+Pierrotin was only paying a tax on six. On these specially lucky days
+the convoy started from the faubourg Saint-Denis at half-past four
+o’clock in the afternoon, and arrived gallantly at Isle-Adam by ten at
+night. Proud of this service, which necessitated the hire of an extra
+horse, Pierrotin was wont to say:--
+
+“We went at a fine pace!”
+
+But in order to do the twenty-seven miles in five hours with his
+caravan, he was forced to omit certain stoppages along the road,--at
+Saint-Brice, Moisselles, and La Cave.
+
+The hotel du Lion d’Argent occupies a piece of land which is very deep
+for its width. Though its frontage has only three or four windows on
+the faubourg Saint-Denis, the building extends back through a long
+court-yard, at the end of which are the stables, forming a large house
+standing close against the division wall of the adjoining property.
+The entrance is through a sort of passage-way beneath the floor of the
+second story, in which two or three coaches had room to stand. In 1822
+the offices of all the lines of coaches which started from the Lion
+d’Argent were kept by the wife of the inn-keeper, who had as many books
+as there were lines. She received the fares, booked the passengers, and
+stowed away, good-naturedly, in her vast kitchen the various packages
+and parcels to be transported. Travellers were satisfied with this
+easy-going, patriarchal system. If they arrived too soon, they seated
+themselves beneath the hood of the huge kitchen chimney, or stood within
+the passage-way, or crossed to the Cafe de l’Echiquier, which forms the
+corner of the street so named.
+
+In the early days of the autumn of 1822, on a Saturday morning,
+Pierrotin was standing, with his hands thrust into his pockets through
+the apertures of his blouse, beneath the porte-cochere of the Lion
+d’Argent, whence he could see, diagonally, the kitchen of the inn, and
+through the long court-yard to the stables, which were defined in black
+at the end of it. Daumartin’s diligence had just started, plunging
+heavily after those of the Touchards. It was past eight o’clock. Under
+the enormous porch or passage, above which could be read on a long
+sign, “Hotel du Lion d’Argent,” stood the stablemen and porters of the
+coaching-lines watching the lively start of the vehicles which deceives
+so many travellers, making them believe that the horses will be kept to
+that vigorous gait.
+
+“Shall I harness up, master?” asked Pierrotin’s hostler, when there was
+nothing more to be seen along the road.
+
+“It is a quarter-past eight, and I don’t see any travellers,” replied
+Pierrotin. “Where have they poked themselves? Yes, harness up all the
+same. And there are no parcels either! Twenty good Gods! a fine day
+like this, and I’ve only four booked! A pretty state of things for a
+Saturday! It is always the same when you want money! A dog’s life, and a
+dog’s business!”
+
+“If you had more, where would you put them? There’s nothing left but the
+cabriolet,” said the hostler, intending to soothe Pierrotin.
+
+“You forget the new coach!” cried Pierrotin.
+
+“Have you really got it?” asked the man, laughing, and showing a set of
+teeth as white and broad as almonds.
+
+“You old good-for-nothing! It starts to-morrow, I tell you; and I want
+at least eighteen passengers for it.”
+
+“Ha, ha! a fine affair; it’ll warm up the road,” said the hostler.
+
+“A coach like that which runs to Beaumont, hey? Flaming! painted red
+and gold to make Touchard burst with envy! It takes three horses! I have
+bought a mate for Rougeot, and Bichette will go finely in unicorn.
+Come, harness up!” added Pierrotin, glancing out towards the street,
+and stuffing the tobacco into his clay pipe. “I see a lady and lad
+over there with packages under their arms; they are coming to the Lion
+d’Argent, for they’ve turned a deaf ear to the coucous. Tiens, tiens!
+seems to me I know that lady for an old customer.”
+
+“You’ve often started empty, and arrived full,” said his porter, still
+by way of consolation.
+
+“But no parcels! Twenty good Gods! What a fate!”
+
+And Pierrotin sat down on one of the huge stone posts which protected
+the walls of the building from the wheels of the coaches; but he did so
+with an anxious, reflective air that was not habitual with him.
+
+This conversation, apparently insignificant, had stirred up cruel
+anxieties which were slumbering in his breast. What could there be to
+trouble the heart of Pierrotin in a fine new coach? To shine upon
+“the road,” to rival the Touchards, to magnify his own line, to carry
+passengers who would compliment him on the conveniences due to the
+progress of coach-building, instead of having to listen to perpetual
+complaints of his “sabots” (tires of enormous width),--such was
+Pierrotin’s laudable ambition; but, carried away with the desire to
+outstrip his comrade on the line, hoping that the latter might some day
+retire and leave to him alone the transportation to Isle-Adam, he had
+gone too far. The coach was indeed ordered from Barry, Breilmann, and
+Company, coach-builders, who had just substituted square English
+springs for those called “swan-necks,” and other old-fashioned French
+contrivances. But these hard and distrustful manufacturers would only
+deliver over the diligence in return for coin. Not particularly pleased
+to build a vehicle which would be difficult to sell if it remained upon
+their hands, these long-headed dealers declined to undertake it at all
+until Pierrotin had made a preliminary payment of two thousand francs.
+To satisfy this precautionary demand, Pierrotin had exhausted all his
+resources and all his credit. His wife, his father-in-law, and his
+friends had bled. This superb diligence he had been to see the evening
+before at the painter’s; all it needed now was to be set a-rolling, but
+to make it roll, payment in full must, alas! be made.
+
+Now, a thousand francs were lacking to Pierrotin, and where to get them
+he did not know. He was in debt to the master of the Lion d’Argent; he
+was in danger of his losing his two thousand francs already paid to the
+coach-builder, not counting five hundred for the mate to Rougeot, and
+three hundred for new harnesses, on which he had a three-months’ credit.
+Driven by the fury of despair and the madness of vanity, he had just
+openly declared that the new coach was to start on the morrow. By
+offering fifteen hundred francs, instead of the two thousand five
+hundred still due, he was in hopes that the softened carriage-builders
+would give him his coach. But after a few moments’ meditation, his
+feelings led him to cry out aloud:--
+
+“No! they’re dogs! harpies! Suppose I appeal to Monsieur Moreau, the
+steward at Presles? he is such a kind man,” thought Pierrotin, struck
+with a new idea. “Perhaps he would take my note for six months.”
+
+At this moment a footman in livery, carrying a leather portmanteau and
+coming from the Touchard establishment, where he had gone too late to
+secure places as far as Chambly, came up and said:--
+
+“Are you Pierrotin?”
+
+“Say on,” replied Pierrotin.
+
+“If you would wait a quarter of an hour, you could take my master.
+If not, I’ll carry back the portmanteau and try to find some other
+conveyance.”
+
+“I’ll wait two, three quarters, and throw a little in besides, my lad,”
+ said Pierrotin, eyeing the pretty leather trunk, well buckled, and
+bearing a brass plate with a coat of arms.
+
+“Very good; then take this,” said the valet, ridding his shoulder of the
+trunk, which Pierrotin lifted, weighed, and examined.
+
+“Here,” he said to his porter, “wrap it up carefully in soft hay and put
+it in the boot. There’s no name upon it,” he added.
+
+“Monseigneur’s arms are there,” replied the valet.
+
+“Monseigneur! Come and take a glass,” said Pierrotin, nodding toward
+the Cafe de l’Echiquier, whither he conducted the valet. “Waiter, two
+absinthes!” he said, as he entered. “Who is your master? and where is
+he going? I have never seen you before,” said Pierrotin to the valet as
+they touched glasses.
+
+“There’s a good reason for that,” said the footman. “My master only
+goes into your parts about once a year, and then in his own carriage. He
+prefers the valley d’Orge, where he has the most beautiful park in the
+neighborhood of Paris, a perfect Versailles, a family estate of which he
+bears the name. Don’t you know Monsieur Moreau?”
+
+“The steward of Presles?”
+
+“Yes. Monsieur le Comte is going down to spend a couple of days with
+him.”
+
+“Ha! then I’m to carry Monsieur le Comte de Serizy!” cried the
+coach-proprietor.
+
+“Yes, my land, neither more nor less. But listen! here’s a special
+order. If you have any of the country neighbors in your coach you are
+not to call him Monsieur le comte; he wants to travel ‘en cognito,’ and
+told me to be sure to say he would pay a handsome pourboire if he was
+not recognized.”
+
+“So! Has this secret journey anything to do with the affair which Pere
+Leger, the farmer at the Moulineaux, came to Paris the other day to
+settle?”
+
+“I don’t know,” replied the valet, “but the fat’s in the fire. Last
+night I was sent to the stable to order the Daumont carriage to be ready
+to go to Presles at seven this morning. But when seven o’clock came,
+Monsieur le comte countermanded it. Augustin, his valet de chambre,
+attributes the change to the visit of a lady who called last night, and
+again this morning,--he thought she came from the country.”
+
+“Could she have told him anything against Monsieur Moreau?--the best of
+men, the most honest of men, a king of men, hey! He might have made a
+deal more than he has out of his position, if he’d chosen; I can tell
+you that.”
+
+“Then he was foolish,” answered the valet, sententiously.
+
+“Is Monsieur le Serizy going to live at Presles at last?” asked
+Pierrotin; “for you know they have just repaired and refurnished the
+chateau. Do you think it is true he has already spent two hundred
+thousand francs upon it?”
+
+“If you or I had half what he has spent upon it, you and I would be rich
+bourgeois. If Madame la comtesse goes there--ha! I tell you what! no
+more ease and comfort for the Moreaus,” said the valet, with an air of
+mystery.
+
+“He’s a worthy man, Monsieur Moreau,” remarked Pierrotin, thinking of
+the thousand francs he wanted to get from the steward. “He is a man who
+makes others work, but he doesn’t cheapen what they do; and he gets all
+he can out of the land--for his master. Honest man! He often comes to
+Paris and gives me a good fee: he has lots of errands for me to do in
+Paris; sometimes three or four packages a day,--either from monsieur or
+madame. My bill for cartage alone comes to fifty francs a month, more or
+less. If madame does set up to be somebody, she’s fond of her children;
+and it is I who fetch them from school and take them back; and each time
+she gives me five francs,--a real great lady couldn’t do better than
+that. And every time I have any one in the coach belonging to them or
+going to see them, I’m allowed to drive up to the chateau,--that’s all
+right, isn’t it?”
+
+“They say Monsieur Moreau wasn’t worth three thousand francs when
+Monsieur le comte made him steward of Presles,” said the valet.
+
+“Well, since 1806, there’s seventeen years, and the man ought to have
+made something at any rate.”
+
+“True,” said the valet, nodding. “Anyway, masters are very annoying; and
+I hope, for Moreau’s sake, that he has made butter for his bread.”
+
+“I have often been to your house in the rue de la Chaussee d’Antin
+to carry baskets of game,” said Pierrotin, “but I’ve never had the
+advantage, so far of seeing either monsieur or madame.”
+
+“Monsieur le comte is a good man,” said the footman, confidentially.
+“But if he insists on your helping to keep up his cognito there’s
+something in the wind. At any rate, so we think at the house; or else,
+why should he countermand the Daumont,--why travel in a coucou? A peer
+of France might afford to hire a cabriolet to himself, one would think.”
+
+“A cabriolet would cost him forty francs to go there and back; for
+let me tell you, if you don’t know it, that road was only made for
+squirrels,--up-hill and down, down-hill and up!” said Pierrotin. “Peer
+of France or bourgeois, they are all looking after the main chance, and
+saving their money. If this journey concerns Monsieur Moreau, faith, I’d
+be sorry any harm should come to him! Twenty good Gods! hadn’t I better
+find some way of warning him?--for he’s a truly good man, a kind man, a
+king of men, hey!”
+
+“Pooh! Monsieur le comte thinks everything of Monsieur Moreau,” replied
+the valet. “But let me give you a bit of good advice. Every man for
+himself in this world. We have enough to do to take care of ourselves.
+Do what Monsieur le comte asks you to do, and all the more because
+there’s no trifling with him. Besides, to tell the truth, the count is
+generous. If you oblige him so far,” said the valet, pointing half-way
+down his little finger, “he’ll send you on as far as that,” stretching
+out his arm to its full length.
+
+This wise reflection, and the action that enforced it, had the effect,
+coming from a man who stood as high as second valet to the Comte de
+Serizy, of cooling the ardor of Pierrotin for the steward of Presles.
+
+“Well, adieu, Monsieur Pierrotin,” said the valet.
+
+A glance rapidly cast on the life of the Comte de Serizy, and on that of
+his steward, is here necessary in order to fully understand the little
+drama now about to take place in Pierrotin’s vehicle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. THE STEWARD IN DANGER
+
+
+Monsieur Huguet de Serisy descends in a direct line from the famous
+president Huguet, ennobled under Francois I.
+
+This family bears: party per pale or and sable, an orle counterchanged
+and two lozenges counterchanged, with: “i, semper melius eris,”--a motto
+which, together with the two distaffs taken as supporters, proves the
+modesty of the burgher families in the days when the Orders held their
+allotted places in the State; and the naivete of our ancient customs by
+the pun on “eris,” which word, combined with the “i” at the beginning
+and the final “s” in “melius,” forms the name (Serisy) of the estate
+from which the family take their title.
+
+The father of the present count was president of a parliament before
+the Revolution. He himself a councillor of State at the Grand Council
+of 1787, when he was only twenty-two years of age, was even then
+distinguished for his admirable memoranda on delicate diplomatic
+matters. He did not emigrate during the Revolution, and spent that
+period on his estate of Serizy near Arpajon, where the respect in
+which his father was held protected him from all danger. After spending
+several years in taking care of the old president, who died in 1794,
+he was elected about that time to the Council of the Five Hundred, and
+accepted those legislative functions to divert his mind from his grief.
+After the 18th Brumaire, Monsieur de Serizy became, like so many other
+of the old parliamentary families, an object of the First Consul’s
+blandishment. He was appointed to the Council of State, and received one
+of the most disorganized departments of the government to reconstruct.
+This scion of an old historical family proved to be a very active wheel
+in the grand and magnificent organization which we owe to Napoleon.
+
+The councillor of State was soon called from his particular
+administration to a ministry. Created count and senator by the Emperor,
+he was made proconsul to two kingdoms in succession. In 1806, when
+forty years of age, he married the sister of the ci-devant Marquis
+de Ronquerolles, the widow at twenty of Gaubert, one of the most
+illustrious of the Republican generals, who left her his whole property.
+This marriage, a suitable one in point of rank, doubled the already
+considerable fortune of the Comte de Serizy, who became through his wife
+the brother-in-law of the ci-devant Marquis de Rouvre, made count and
+chamberlain by the Emperor.
+
+In 1814, weary with constant toil, the Comte de Serizy, whose shattered
+health required rest, resigned all his posts, left the department at
+the head of which the Emperor had placed him, and came to Paris, where
+Napoleon was compelled by the evidence of his eyes to admit that the
+count’s illness was a valid excuse, though at first that _unfatiguable_
+master, who gave no heed to the fatigue of others, was disposed to
+consider Monsieur de Serizy’s action as a defection. Though the senator
+was never in disgrace, he was supposed to have reason to complain of
+Napoleon. Consequently, when the Bourbons returned, Louis XVIII., whom
+Monsieur de Serizy held to be his legitimate sovereign, treated the
+senator, now a peer of France, with the utmost confidence, placed him
+in charge of his private affairs, and appointed him one of his cabinet
+ministers. On the 20th of March, Monsieur de Serizy did not go to Ghent.
+He informed Napoleon that he remained faithful to the house of Bourbon;
+would not accept his peerage during the Hundred Days, and passed that
+period on his estate at Serizy.
+
+After the second fall of the Emperor, he became once more a
+privy-councillor, was appointed vice-president of the Council of State,
+and liquidator, on behalf of France, of claims and indemnities demanded
+by foreign powers. Without personal assumption, without ambition even,
+he possessed great influence in public affairs. Nothing of importance
+was done without consulting him; but he never went to court, and was
+seldom seen in his own salons. This noble life, devoting itself from its
+very beginning to work, had ended by becoming a life of incessant toil.
+The count rose at all seasons by four o’clock in the morning, and
+worked till mid-day, attended to his functions as peer of France and
+vice-president of the Council of State in the afternoons, and went to
+bed at nine o’clock. In recognition of such labor, the King had made
+him a knight of his various Orders. Monsieur de Serizy had long worn the
+grand cross of the Legion of honor; he also had the orders of the Golden
+Fleece, of Saint-Andrew of Russia, that of the Prussian Eagle, and
+nearly all the lesser Orders of the courts of Europe. No man was less
+obvious, or more useful in the political world than he. It is easy
+to understand that the world’s honor, the fuss and feathers of public
+favor, the glories of success were indifferent to a man of this stamp;
+but no one, unless a priest, ever comes to life of this kind without
+some serious underlying reason. His conduct had its cause, and a cruel
+one.
+
+In love with his wife before he married her, this passion had lasted
+through all the secret unhappiness of his marriage with a widow,--a
+woman mistress of herself before as well as after her second marriage,
+and who used her liberty all the more freely because her husband treated
+her with the indulgence of a mother for a spoilt child. His constant
+toil served him as shield and buckler against pangs of heart which he
+silenced with the care that diplomatists give to the keeping of secrets.
+He knew, moreover, how ridiculous was jealousy in the eyes of a society
+that would never have believed in the conjugal passion of an old
+statesman. How happened it that from the earliest days of his marriage
+his wife so fascinated him? Why did he suffer without resistance? How
+was it that he dared not resist? Why did he let the years go by and
+still hope on? By what means did this young and pretty and clever woman
+hold him in bondage?
+
+The answer to all these questions would require a long history, which
+would injure our present tale. Let us only remark here that the constant
+toil and grief of the count had unfortunately contributed not a little
+to deprive him of personal advantages very necessary to a man who
+attempts to struggle against dangerous comparisons. In fact, the most
+cruel of the count’s secret sorrows was that of causing repugnance to
+his wife by a malady of the skin resulting solely from excessive labor.
+Kind, and always considerate of the countess, he allowed her to be
+mistress of herself and her home. She received all Paris; she went into
+the country; she returned from it precisely as though she were still a
+widow. He took care of her fortune and supplied her luxury as a steward
+might have done. The countess had the utmost respect for her husband.
+She even admired his turn of mind; she knew how to make him happy by
+approbation; she could do what she pleased with him by simply going to
+his study and talking for an hour with him. Like the great seigneurs of
+the olden time, the count protected his wife so loyally that a single
+word of disrespect said of her would have been to him an unpardonable
+injury. The world admired him for this; and Madame de Serizy owed
+much to it. Any other woman, even though she came of a family as
+distinguished as the Ronquerolles, might have found herself degraded
+in public opinion. The countess was ungrateful, but she mingled a charm
+with her ingratitude. From time to time she shed a balm upon the wounds
+of her husband’s heart.
+
+Let us now explain the meaning of this sudden journey, and the incognito
+maintained by a minister of State.
+
+A rich farmer of Beaumont-sur-Oise, named Leger, leased and cultivated
+a farm, the fields of which projected into and greatly injured the
+magnificent estate of the Comte de Serizy, called Presles. This farm
+belonged to a burgher of Beaumont-sur-Oise, named Margueron. The lease
+made to Leger in 1799, at a time when the great advance of agriculture
+was not foreseen, was about to expire, and the owner of the farm refused
+all offers from Leger to renew the lease. For some time past, Monsieur
+de Serizy, wishing to rid himself of the annoyances and petty disputes
+caused by the inclosure of these fields within his land, had desired to
+buy the farm, having heard that Monsieur Margueron’s chief ambition was
+to have his only son, then a mere tax-gatherer, made special collector
+of finances at Beaumont. The farmer, who knew he could sell the fields
+piecemeal to the count at a high price, was ready to pay Margueron even
+more than he expected from the count.
+
+Thus matters stood when, two days earlier than that of which we write,
+Monsieur de Serizy, anxious to end the matter, sent for his notary,
+Alexandre Crottat, and his lawyer, Derville, to examine into all the
+circumstances of the affair. Though Derville and Crottat threw some
+doubt on the zeal of the count’s steward (a disturbing letter from whom
+had led to the consultation), Monsieur de Serizy defended Moreau, who,
+he said, had served him faithfully for seventeen years.
+
+“Very well!” said Derville, “then I advise your Excellency to go to
+Presles yourself, and invite this Margueron to dinner. Crottat will send
+his head-clerk with a deed of sale drawn up, leaving only the necessary
+lines for description of property and titles in blank. Your Excellency
+should take with you part of the purchase money in a check on the
+Bank of France, not forgetting the appointment of the son to the
+collectorship. If you don’t settle the thing at once that farm will slip
+through your fingers. You don’t know, Monsieur le comte, the trickery of
+these peasants. Peasants against diplomat, and the diplomat succumbs.”
+
+Crottat agreed in this advice, which the count, if we may judge by the
+valet’s statements to Pierrotin, had adopted. The preceding evening
+he had sent Moreau a line by the diligence to Beaumont, telling him to
+invite Margueron to dinner in order that they might then and there close
+the purchase of the farm of Moulineaux.
+
+Before this matter came up, the count had already ordered the chateau of
+Presles to be restored and refurnished, and for the last year, Grindot,
+an architect then in fashion, was in the habit of making a weekly visit.
+So, while concluding his purchase of the farm, Monsieur de Serizy also
+intended to examine the work of restoration and the effect of the new
+furniture. He intended all this to be a surprise to his wife when he
+brought her to Presles, and with this idea in his mind, he had put some
+personal pride and self-love into the work. How came it therefore that
+the count, who intended in the evening to drive to Presles openly in
+his own carriage, should be starting early the next morning incognito in
+Pierrotin’s coucou?
+
+Here a few words on the life of the steward Moreau become indispensable.
+
+Moreau, steward of the state of Presles, was the son of a provincial
+attorney who became during the Revolution syndic-attorney at Versailles.
+In that position, Moreau the father had been the means of almost saving
+both the lives and property of the Serizys, father and son. Citizen
+Moreau belonged to the Danton party; Robespierre, implacable in his
+hatreds, pursued him, discovered him, and finally had him executed at
+Versailles. Moreau the son, heir to the doctrines and friendships of
+his father, was concerned in one of the conspiracies which assailed
+the First Consul on his accession to power. At this crisis, Monsieur
+de Serizy, anxious to pay his debt of gratitude, enabled Moreau, lying
+under sentence of death, to make his escape; in 1804 he asked for his
+pardon, obtained it, offered him first a place in his government office,
+and finally took him as private secretary for his own affairs.
+
+Some time after the marriage of his patron Moreau fell in love with the
+countess’s waiting-woman and married her. To avoid the annoyances of the
+false position in which this marriage placed him (more than one example
+of which could be seen at the imperial court), Moreau asked the count to
+give him the management of the Presles estate, where his wife could
+play the lady in a country region, and neither of them would be made
+to suffer from wounded self-love. The count wanted a trustworthy man
+at Presles, for his wife preferred Serizy, an estate only fifteen miles
+from Paris. For three or four years Moreau had held the key of the
+count’s affairs; he was intelligent, and before the Revolution he had
+studied law in his father’s office; so Monsieur de Serizy granted his
+request.
+
+“You can never advance in life,” he said to Moreau, “for you have broken
+your neck; but you can be happy, and I will take care that you are so.”
+
+He gave Moreau a salary of three thousand francs and his residence in a
+charming lodge near the chateau, all the wood he needed from the timber
+that was cut on the estate, oats, hay, and straw for two horses, and a
+right to whatever he wanted of the produce of the gardens. A sub-prefect
+is not as well provided for.
+
+During the first eight years of his stewardship, Moreau managed the
+estate conscientiously; he took an interest in it. The count, coming
+down now and then to examine the property, pass judgment on what had
+been done, and decide on new purchases, was struck with Moreau’s evident
+loyalty, and showed his satisfaction by liberal gifts.
+
+But after the birth of Moreau’s third child, a daughter, he felt himself
+so securely settled in all his comforts at Presles that he ceased to
+attribute to Monsieur de Serizy those enormous advantages. About the
+year 1816, the steward, who until then had only taken what he needed
+for his own use from the estate, accepted a sum of twenty-five thousand
+francs from a wood-merchant as an inducement to lease to the latter,
+for twelve years, the cutting of all the timber. Moreau argued this: he
+could have no pension; he was the father of a family; the count really
+owed him that sum as a gift after ten years’ management; already the
+legitimate possessor of sixty thousand francs in savings, if he added
+this sum to that, he could buy a farm worth a hundred and twenty-five
+thousand francs in Champagne, a township just above Isle-Adam, on the
+right bank of the Oise. Political events prevented both the count and
+the neighboring country-people from becoming aware of this investment,
+which was made in the name of Madame Moreau, who was understood to have
+inherited property from an aunt of her father.
+
+As soon as the steward had tasted the delightful fruit of the possession
+of the property, he began, all the while maintaining toward the world
+an appearance of the utmost integrity, to lose no occasion of increasing
+his fortune clandestinely; the interests of his three children served as
+a poultice to the wounds of his honor. Nevertheless, we ought in justice
+to say that while he accepted casks of wine, and took care of himself in
+all the purchases that he made for the count, yet according to the terms
+of the Code he remained an honest man, and no proof could have
+been found to justify an accusation against him. According to the
+jurisprudence of the least thieving cook in Paris, he shared with the
+count in the profits due to his own capable management. This manner
+of swelling his fortune was simply a case of conscience, that was
+all. Alert, and thoroughly understanding the count’s interests, Moreau
+watched for opportunities to make good purchases all the more eagerly,
+because he gained a larger percentage on them. Presles returned
+a revenue of seventy thousand francs net. It was a saying of the
+country-side for a circuit of thirty miles:--
+
+“Monsieur de Serizy has a second self in Moreau.”
+
+Being a prudent man, Moreau invested yearly, after 1817, both his
+profits and his salary on the Grand Livre, piling up his heap with the
+utmost secrecy. He often refused proposals on the plea of want of money;
+and he played the poor man so successfully with the count that the
+latter gave him the means to send both his sons to the school Henri IV.
+At the present moment Moreau was worth one hundred and twenty thousand
+francs of capital invested in the Consolidated thirds, now paying
+five per cent, and quoted at eighty francs. These carefully hidden one
+hundred and twenty thousand francs, and his farm at Champagne, enlarged
+by subsequent purchases, amounted to a fortune of about two hundred and
+eighty thousand francs, giving him an income of some sixteen thousand.
+
+Such was the position of the steward at the time when the Comte de
+Serizy desired to purchase the farm of Moulineaux,--the ownership
+of which was indispensable to his comfort. This farm consisted of
+ninety-six parcels of land bordering the estate of Presles, and
+frequently running into it, producing the most annoying discussions
+as to the trimming of hedges and ditches and the cutting of trees. Any
+other than a cabinet minister would probably have had scores of lawsuits
+on his hands. Pere Leger only wished to buy the property in order
+to sell to the count at a handsome advance. In order to secure the
+exorbitant sum on which his mind was set, the farmer had long endeavored
+to come to an understanding with Moreau. Impelled by circumstances, he
+had, only three days before this critical Sunday, had a talk with the
+steward in the open field, and proved to him clearly that he (Moreau)
+could make the count invest his money at two and a half per cent, and
+thus appear to serve his patron’s interests, while he himself pocketed
+forty thousand francs which Leger offered him to bring about the
+transaction.
+
+“I tell you what,” said the steward to his wife, as he went to bed
+that night, “if I make fifty thousand francs out of the Moulineaux
+affair,--and I certainly shall, for the count will give me ten thousand
+as a fee,--we’ll retire to Isle-Adam and live in the Pavillon de
+Nogent.”
+
+This “pavillon” was a charming place, originally built by the Prince de
+Conti for a mistress, and in it every convenience and luxury had been
+placed.
+
+“That will suit me,” said his wife. “The Dutchman who lives there has
+put it in good order, and now that he is obliged to return to India, he
+would probably let us have it for thirty thousand francs.”
+
+“We shall be close to Champagne,” said Moreau. “I am in hopes of buying
+the farm and mill of Mours for a hundred thousand francs. That would
+give us ten thousand a year in rentals. Nogent is one of the most
+delightful residences in the valley; and we should still have an income
+of ten thousand from the Grand-Livre.”
+
+“But why don’t you ask for the post of juge-de-paix at Isle-Adam? That
+would give us influence, and fifteen hundred a year salary.”
+
+“Well, I did think of it.”
+
+With these plans in mind, Moreau, as soon as he heard from the count
+that he was coming to Presles, and wished him to invite Margueron to
+dinner on Saturday, sent off an express to the count’s head-valet,
+inclosing a letter to his master, which the messenger failed to deliver
+before Monsieur de Serizy retired at his usually early hour. Augustin,
+however, placed it, according to custom in such cases, on his master’s
+desk. In this letter Moreau begged the count not to trouble himself to
+come down, but to trust entirely to him. He added that Margueron was no
+longer willing to sell the whole in one block, and talked of cutting the
+farm up into a number of smaller lots. It was necessary to circumvent
+this plan, and perhaps, added Moreau, it might be best to employ a third
+party to make the purchase.
+
+Everybody has enemies in this life. Now the steward and his wife had
+wounded the feelings of a retired army officer, Monsieur de Reybert, and
+his wife, who were living near Presles. From speeches like pin-pricks,
+matters had advanced to dagger-thrusts. Monsieur de Reybert breathed
+vengeance. He was determined to make Moreau lose his situation and
+gain it himself. The two ideas were twins. Thus the proceedings of the
+steward, spied upon for two years, were no secret to Reybert. The same
+conveyance that took Moreau’s letter to the count conveyed Madame de
+Reybert, whom her husband despatched to Paris. There she asked with such
+earnestness to see the count that although she was sent away at nine
+o’clock, he having then gone to bed, she was ushered into his study the
+next morning at seven.
+
+“Monsieur,” she said to the cabinet-minister, “we are incapable, my
+husband and I, of writing anonymous letters, therefore I have come to
+see you in person. I am Madame de Reybert, nee de Corroy. My husband is
+a retired officer, with a pension of six hundred francs, and we live at
+Presles, where your steward has offered us insult after insult, although
+we are persons of good station. Monsieur de Reybert, who is not an
+intriguing man, far from it, is a captain of artillery, retired in 1816,
+having served twenty years,--always at a distance from the Emperor,
+Monsieur le comte. You know of course how difficult it is for soldiers
+who are not under the eye of their master to obtain promotion,--not
+counting that the integrity and frankness of Monsieur de Reybert were
+displeasing to his superiors. My husband has watched your steward for
+the last three years, being aware of his dishonesty and intending to
+have him lose his place. We are, as you see, quite frank with you.
+Moreau has made us his enemies, and we have watched him. I have come to
+tell you that you are being tricked in the purchase of the Moulineaux
+farm. They mean to get an extra hundred thousand francs out of you,
+which are to be divided between the notary, the farmer Leger, and
+Moreau. You have written Moreau to invite Margueron, and you are going
+to Presles to-day; but Margueron will be ill, and Leger is so certain
+of buying the farm that he is now in Paris to draw the money. If we
+have enlightened you as to what is going on, and if you want an upright
+steward you will take my husband; though noble, he will serve you as he
+has served the State. Your steward has made a fortune of two hundred
+and fifty thousand francs out of his place; he is not to be pitied
+therefore.”
+
+The count thanked Madame de Reybert coldly, bestowing upon her the
+holy-water of courts, for he despised backbiting; but for all that, he
+remembered Derville’s doubts, and felt inwardly shaken. Just then he saw
+his steward’s letter and read it. In its assurances of devotion and its
+respectful reproaches for the distrust implied in wishing to negotiate
+the purchase for himself, he read the truth.
+
+“Corruption has come to him with fortune,--as it always does!” he said
+to himself.
+
+The count then made several inquiries of Madame de Reybert, less to
+obtain information than to gain time to observe her; and he wrote a
+short note to his notary telling him not to send his head-clerk to
+Presles as requested, but to come there himself in time for dinner.
+
+“Though Monsieur le comte,” said Madame de Reybert in conclusion, “may
+have judged me unfavorably for the step I have taken unknown to my
+husband, he ought to be convinced that we have obtained this information
+about his steward in a natural and honorable manner; the most sensitive
+conscience cannot take exception to it.”
+
+So saying, Madame de Reybert, nee de Corroy, stood erect as a
+pike-staff. She presented to the rapid investigation of the count a
+face seamed with the small-pox like a colander with holes, a flat,
+spare figure, two light and eager eyes, fair hair plastered down upon
+an anxious forehead, a small drawn-bonnet of faded green taffetas lined
+with pink, a white gown with violet spots, and leather shoes. The
+count recognized the wife of some poor, half-pay captain, a puritan,
+subscribing no doubt to the “Courrier Francais,” earnest in virtue, but
+aware of the comfort of a good situation and eagerly coveting it.
+
+“You say your husband has a pension of six hundred francs,” he said,
+replying to his own thoughts, and not to the remark Madame de Reybert
+had just made.
+
+“Yes, monsieur.”
+
+“You were born a Corroy?”
+
+“Yes, monsieur,--a noble family of Metz, where my husband belongs.”
+
+“In what regiment did Monsieur de Reybert serve?”
+
+“The 7th artillery.”
+
+“Good!” said the count, writing down the number.
+
+He had thought at one time of giving the management of the estate to
+some retired army officer, about whom he could obtain exact information
+from the minister of war.
+
+“Madame,” he resumed, ringing for his valet, “return to Presles, this
+afternoon with my notary, who is going down there for dinner, and to
+whom I have recommended you. Here is his address. I am going myself
+secretly to Presles, and will send for Monsieur de Reybert to come and
+speak to me.”
+
+It will thus be seen that Monsieur de Serizy’s journey by a public
+conveyance, and the injunction conveyed by the valet to conceal his name
+and rank had not unnecessarily alarmed Pierrotin. That worthy had just
+forebodings of a danger which was about to swoop down upon one of his
+best customers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE TRAVELLERS
+
+
+As Pierrotin issued from the Cafe de l’Echiquier, after treating the
+valet, he saw in the gate-way of the Lion d’Argent the lady and the
+young man in whom his perspicacity at once detected customers, for the
+lady with outstretched neck and anxious face was evidently looking for
+him. She was dressed in a black-silk gown that was dyed, a brown bonnet,
+an old French cashmere shawl, raw-silk stockings, and low shoes; and in
+her hand she carried a straw bag and a blue umbrella. This woman, who
+had once been beautiful, seemed to be about forty years of age; but her
+blue eyes, deprived of the fire which happiness puts there, told plainly
+that she had long renounced the world. Her dress, as well as her whole
+air and demeanor, indicated a mother wholly devoted to her household
+and her son. If the strings of her bonnet were faded, the shape betrayed
+that it was several years old. The shawl was fastened by a broken
+needle converted into a pin by a bead of sealing-wax. She was waiting
+impatiently for Pierrotin, wishing to recommend to his special care her
+son, who was doubtless travelling for the first time, and with whom she
+had come to the coach-office as much from doubt of his ability as from
+maternal affection.
+
+This mother was in every way completed by the son, so that the son would
+not be understood without the mother. If the mother condemned herself to
+mended gloves, the son wore an olive-green coat with sleeves too short
+for him, proving that he had grown, and might grow still more, like
+other adults of eighteen or nineteen years of age. The blue trousers,
+mended by his mother, presented to the eye a brighter patch of color
+when the coat-tails maliciously parted behind him.
+
+“Don’t rub your gloves that way, you’ll spoil them,” she was saying as
+Pierrotin appeared. “Is this the conductor? Ah! Pierrotin, is it you?”
+ she exclaimed, leaving her son and taking the coachman apart a few
+steps.
+
+“I hope you’re well, Madame Clapart,” he replied, with an air that
+expressed both respect and familiarity.
+
+“Yes, Pierrotin, very well. Please take good care of my Oscar; he is
+travelling alone for the first time.”
+
+“Oh! so he is going alone to Monsieur Moreau!” cried Pierrotin, for the
+purpose of finding out whether he were really going there.
+
+“Yes,” said the mother.
+
+“Then Madame Moreau is willing?” returned Pierrotin, with a sly look.
+
+“Ah!” said the mother, “it will not be all roses for him, poor child!
+But his future absolutely requires that I should send him.”
+
+This answer struck Pierrotin, who hesitated to confide his fears for
+the steward to Madame Clapart, while she, on her part, was afraid of
+injuring her boy if she asked Pierrotin for a care which might have
+transformed him into a mentor. During this short deliberation, which was
+ostensibly covered by a few phrases as to the weather, the journey, and
+the stopping-places along the road, we will ourselves explain what were
+the ties that united Madame Clapart with Pierrotin, and authorized the
+two confidential remarks which they have just exchanged.
+
+Often--that is to say, three or four times a month--Pierrotin, on his
+way to Paris, would find the steward on the road near La Cave. As soon
+as the vehicle came up, Moreau would sign to a gardener, who, with
+Pierrotin’s help, would put upon the coach either one or two baskets
+containing the fruits and vegetables of the season, chickens, eggs,
+butter, and game. The steward always paid the carriage and Pierrotin’s
+fee, adding the money necessary to pay the toll at the barriere, if
+the baskets contained anything dutiable. These baskets, hampers, or
+packages, were never directed to any one. On the first occasion, which
+served for all others, the steward had given Madame Clapart’s address by
+word of mouth to the discreet Pierrotin, requesting him never to deliver
+to others the precious packages. Pierrotin, impressed with the idea
+of an intrigue between the steward and some pretty girl, had gone as
+directed to number 7 rue de la Cerisaie, in the Arsenal quarter, and had
+there found the Madame Clapart just portrayed, instead of the young and
+beautiful creature he expected to find.
+
+The drivers of public conveyances and carriers are called by their
+business to enter many homes, and to be cognizant of many secrets; but
+social accident, that sub-providence, having willed that they be without
+education and devoid of the talent of observation, it follows that they
+are not dangerous. Nevertheless, at the end of a few months, Pierrotin
+was puzzled to explain the exact relations of Monsieur Moreau and Madame
+Clapart from what he saw of the household in the rue de la Cerisaie.
+Though lodgings were not dear at that time in the Arsenal quarter,
+Madame Clapart lived on a third floor at the end of a court-yard, in a
+house which was formerly that of a great family, in the days when the
+higher nobility of the kingdom lived on the ancient site of the Palais
+des Tournelles and the hotel Saint-Paul. Toward the end of the sixteenth
+century, the great seigneurs divided among themselves these vast spaces,
+once occupied by the gardens of the kings of France, as indicated by the
+present names of the streets,--Cerisaie, Beautreillis, des Lions, etc.
+Madame Clapart’s apartment, which was panelled throughout with ancient
+carvings, consisted of three connecting rooms, a dining-room, salon, and
+bedroom. Above it was the kitchen, and a bedroom for Oscar. Opposite
+to the entrance, on what is called in Paris “le carre,”--that is, the
+square landing,--was the door of a back room, opening, on every floor,
+into a sort of tower built of rough stone, in which was also the well
+for the staircase. This was the room in which Moreau slept whenever he
+went to Paris.
+
+Pierrotin had seen in the first room, where he deposited the hampers,
+six wooden chairs with straw seats, a table, and a sideboard; at the
+windows, discolored curtains. Later, when he entered the salon, he
+noticed some old Empire furniture, now shabby; but only as much as all
+proprietors exact to secure their rent. Pierrotin judged of the bedroom
+by the salon and dining-room. The wood-work, painted coarsely of a
+reddish white, which thickened and blurred the mouldings and figurines,
+far from being ornamental, was distressing to the eye. The floors, never
+waxed, were of that gray tone we see in boarding-schools. When Pierrotin
+came upon Monsieur and Madame Clapart at their meals he saw that their
+china, glass, and all other little articles betrayed the utmost poverty;
+and yet, though the chipped and mended dishes and tureens were those
+of the poorest families and provoked pity, the forks and spoons were of
+silver.
+
+Monsieur Clapart, clothed in a shabby surtout, his feet in broken
+slippers, always wore green spectacles, and exhibited, whenever he
+removed his shabby cap of a bygone period, a pointed skull, from the top
+of which trailed a few dirty filaments which even a poet could scarcely
+call hair. This man, of wan complexion, seemed timorous, but withal
+tyrannical.
+
+In this dreary apartment, which faced the north and had no other outlook
+than to a vine on the opposite wall and a well in the corner of the
+yard, Madame Clapart bore herself with the airs of a queen, and moved
+like a woman unaccustomed to go anywhere on foot. Often, while thanking
+Pierrotin, she gave him glances which would have touched to pity an
+intelligent observer; from time to time she would slip a twelve-sous
+piece into his hand, and then her voice was charming. Pierrotin had
+never seen Oscar, for the reason that the boy was always in school at
+the time his business took him to the house.
+
+Here is the sad story which Pierrotin could never have discovered, even
+by asking for information, as he sometimes did, from the portress of
+the house; for that individual knew nothing beyond the fact that the
+Claparts paid a rent of two hundred and fifty francs a year, had no
+servant but a charwoman who came daily for a few hours in the morning,
+that Madame Clapart did some of her smaller washing herself, and paid
+the postage on her letters daily, being apparently unable to let the sum
+accumulate.
+
+There does not exist, or rather, there seldom exists, a criminal who is
+wholly criminal. Neither do we ever meet with a dishonest nature which
+is completely dishonest. It is possible for a man to cheat his master
+to his own advantage, or rake in for himself alone all the hay in
+the manger, but, even while laying up capital by actions more or
+less illicit, there are few men who never do good ones. If only from
+self-love, curiosity, or by way of variety, or by chance, every man has
+his moment of beneficence; he may call it his error, he may never do it
+again, but he sacrifices to Goodness, as the most surly man sacrifices
+to the Graces once or twice in his life. If Moreau’s faults can ever
+be excused, it might be on the score of his persistent kindness in
+succoring a woman of whose favors he had once been proud, and in whose
+house he was hidden when in peril of his life.
+
+This woman, celebrated under the Directory for her liaison with one
+of the five kings of that reign, married, through that all-powerful
+protection, a purveyor who was making his millions out of the
+government, and whom Napoleon ruined in 1802. This man, named Husson,
+became insane through his sudden fall from opulence to poverty; he flung
+himself into the Seine, leaving the beautiful Madame Husson pregnant.
+Moreau, very intimately allied with Madame Husson, was at that time
+condemned to death; he was unable therefore to marry the widow, being
+forced to leave France. Madame Husson, then twenty-two years old,
+married in her deep distress a government clerk named Clapart, aged
+twenty-seven, who was said to be a rising man. At that period of our
+history, government clerks were apt to become persons of importance;
+for Napoleon was ever on the lookout for capacity. But Clapart, though
+endowed by nature with a certain coarse beauty, proved to have no
+intelligence. Thinking Madame Husson very rich, he feigned a great
+passion for her, and was simply saddled with the impossibility of
+satisfying either then or in the future the wants she had acquired in a
+life of opulence. He filled, very poorly, a place in the Treasury that
+gave him a salary of eighteen hundred francs; which was all the
+new household had to live on. When Moreau returned to France as the
+secretary of the Comte de Serizy he heard of Madame Husson’s pitiable
+condition, and he was able, before his own marriage, to get her an
+appointment as head-waiting-woman to Madame Mere, the Emperor’s mother.
+But in spite of that powerful protection Clapart was never promoted; his
+incapacity was too apparent.
+
+Ruined in 1815 by the fall of the Empire, the brilliant Aspasia of the
+Directory had no other resources than Clapart’s salary of twelve hundred
+francs from a clerkship obtained for him through the Comte de Serizy.
+Moreau, the only protector of a woman whom he had known in possession of
+millions, obtained a half-scholarship for her son, Oscar Husson, at
+the school of Henri IV.; and he sent her regularly, by Pierrotin, such
+supplies from the estate at Presles as he could decently offer to a
+household in distress.
+
+Oscar was the whole life and all the future of his mother. The poor
+woman could now be reproached with no other fault than her exaggerated
+tenderness for her boy,--the bete-noire of his step-father. Oscar was,
+unfortunately, endowed by nature with a foolishness his mother did not
+perceive, in spite of the step-father’s sarcasms. This foolishness--or,
+to speak more specifically, this overweening conceit--so troubled
+Monsieur Moreau that he begged Madame Clapart to send the boy down to
+him for a month that he might study his character, and find out what
+career he was fit for. Moreau was really thinking of some day proposing
+Oscar to the count as his successor.
+
+But to give to the devil and to God what respectively belongs to them,
+perhaps it would be well to show the causes of Oscar Husson’s silly
+self-conceit, premising that he was born in the household of Madame
+Mere. During his early childhood his eyes were dazzled by imperial
+splendors. His pliant imagination retained the impression of those
+gorgeous scenes, and nursed the images of a golden time of pleasure
+in hopes of recovering them. The natural boastfulness of school-boys
+(possessed of a desire to outshine their mates) resting on these
+memories of his childhood was developed in him beyond all measure. It
+may also have been that his mother at home dwelt too fondly on the days
+when she herself was a queen in Directorial Paris. At any rate, Oscar,
+who was now leaving school, had been made to bear many humiliations
+which the paying pupils put upon those who hold scholarships, unless the
+scholars are able to impose respect by superior physical ability.
+
+This mixture of former splendor now departed, of beauty gone, of blind
+maternal love, of sufferings heroically borne, made the mother one of
+those pathetic figures which catch the eye of many an observer in Paris.
+
+Incapable, naturally, of understanding the real attachment of Moreau to
+this woman, or that of the woman for the man she had saved in 1797,
+now her only friend, Pierrotin did not think it best to communicate
+the suspicion that had entered his head as to some danger which was
+threatening Moreau. The valet’s speech, “We have enough to do in this
+world to look after ourselves,” returned to his mind, and with it came
+that sentiment of obedience to what he called the “chefs de file,”--the
+front-rank men in war, and men of rank in peace. Besides, just now
+Pierrotin’s head was as full of his own stings as there are five-franc
+pieces in a thousand francs. So that the “Very good, madame,”
+ “Certainly, madame,” with which he replied to the poor mother, to whom a
+trip of twenty miles appeared a journey, showed plainly that he desired
+to get away from her useless and prolix instructions.
+
+“You will be sure to place the packages so that they cannot get wet if
+the weather should happen to change.”
+
+“I’ve a hood,” replied Pierrotin. “Besides, see, madame, with what care
+they are being placed.”
+
+“Oscar, don’t stay more than two weeks, no matter how much they may ask
+you,” continued Madame Clapart, returning to her son. “You can’t please
+Madame Moreau, whatever you do; besides, you must be home by the end of
+September. We are to go to Belleville, you know, to your uncle Cardot.”
+
+“Yes, mamma.”
+
+“Above all,” she said, in a low voice, “be sure never to speak about
+servants; keep thinking all the time that Madame Moreau was once a
+waiting-maid.”
+
+“Yes, mamma.”
+
+Oscar, like all youths whose vanity is excessively ticklish, seemed
+annoyed at being lectured on the threshold of the Lion d’Argent.
+
+“Well, now good-bye, mamma. We shall start soon; there’s the horse all
+harnessed.”
+
+The mother, forgetting that she was in the open street, embraced her
+Oscar, and said, smiling, as she took a little roll from her basket:--
+
+“Tiens! you were forgetting your roll and the chocolate! My child, once
+more, I repeat, don’t take anything at the inns; they’d make you pay for
+the slightest thing ten times what it is worth.”
+
+Oscar would fain have seen his mother farther off as she stuffed the
+bread and chocolate into his pocket. The scene had two witnesses,--two
+young men a few years older than Oscar, better dressed than he,
+without a mother hanging on to them, whose actions, dress, and ways all
+betokened that complete independence which is the one desire of a lad
+still tied to his mother’s apron-strings.
+
+“He said _mamma_!” cried one of the new-comers, laughing.
+
+The words reached Oscar’s ears and drove him to say, “Good-bye, mother!”
+ in a tone of terrible impatience.
+
+Let us admit that Madame Clapart spoke too loudly, and seemed to wish to
+show to those around them her tenderness for the boy.
+
+“What is the matter with you, Oscar?” asked the poor hurt woman. “I
+don’t know what to make of you,” she added in a severe tone, fancying
+herself able to inspire him with respect,--a great mistake made by those
+who spoil their children. “Listen, my Oscar,” she said, resuming at once
+her tender voice, “you have a propensity to talk, and to tell all you
+know, and all that you don’t know; and you do it to show off, with
+the foolish vanity of a mere lad. Now, I repeat, endeavor to keep your
+tongue in check. You are not sufficiently advanced in life, my treasure,
+to be able to judge of the persons with whom you may be thrown; and
+there is nothing more dangerous than to talk in public conveyances.
+Besides, in a diligence well-bred persons always keep silence.”
+
+The two young men, who seemed to have walked to the farther end of the
+establishment, here returned, making their boot-heels tap upon the paved
+passage of the porte-cochere. They might have heard the whole of this
+maternal homily. So, in order to rid himself of his mother, Oscar had
+recourse to an heroic measure, which proved how vanity stimulates the
+intellect.
+
+“Mamma,” he said, “you are standing in a draught, and you may take cold.
+Besides, I am going to get into the coach.”
+
+The lad must have touched some tender spot, for his mother caught him
+to her bosom, kissed him as if he were starting upon a long journey, and
+went with him to the vehicle with tears in her eyes.
+
+“Don’t forget to give five francs to the servants when you come away,”
+ she said; “write me three times at least during the fifteen days; behave
+properly, and remember all that I have told you. You have linen enough;
+don’t send any to the wash. And above all, remember Monsieur Moreau’s
+kindness; mind him as you would a father, and follow his advice.”
+
+As he got into the coach, Oscar’s blue woollen stockings became visible,
+through the action of his trousers which drew up suddenly, also the
+new patch in the said trousers was seen, through the parting of his
+coat-tails. The smiles of the two young men, on whom these signs of
+an honorable indigence were not lost, were so many fresh wounds to the
+lad’s vanity.
+
+“The first place was engaged for Oscar,” said the mother to Pierrotin.
+“Take the back seat,” she said to the boy, looking fondly at him with a
+loving smile.
+
+Oh! how Oscar regretted that trouble and sorrow had destroyed his
+mother’s beauty, and that poverty and self-sacrifice prevented her from
+being better dressed! One of the young men, the one who wore top-boots
+and spurs, nudged the other to make him take notice of Oscar’s mother,
+and the other twirled his moustache with a gesture which signified,--
+
+“Rather pretty figure!”
+
+“How shall I ever get rid of mamma?” thought Oscar.
+
+“What’s the matter?” asked Madame Clapart.
+
+Oscar pretended not to hear, the monster! Perhaps Madame Clapart was
+lacking in tact under the circumstances; but all absorbing sentiments
+have so much egotism!
+
+“Georges, do you like children when travelling?” asked one young man of
+the other.
+
+“Yes, my good Amaury, if they are weaned, and are named Oscar, and have
+chocolate.”
+
+These speeches were uttered in half-tones to allow Oscar to hear them or
+not hear them as he chose; his countenance was to be the weather-gauge
+by which the other young traveller could judge how much fun he might be
+able to get out of the lad during the journey. Oscar chose not to hear.
+He looked to see if his mother, who weighed upon him like a nightmare,
+was still there, for he felt that she loved him too well to leave him
+so quickly. Not only did he involuntarily compare the dress of his
+travelling companion with his own, but he felt that his mother’s toilet
+counted for much in the smiles of the two young men.
+
+“If they would only take themselves off!” he said to himself.
+
+Instead of that, Amaury remarked to Georges, giving a tap with his cane
+to the heavy wheel of the coucou:
+
+“And so, my friend, you are really going to trust your future to this
+fragile bark?”
+
+“I must,” replied Georges, in a tone of fatalism.
+
+Oscar gave a sigh as he remarked the jaunty manner in which his
+companion’s hat was stuck on one ear for the purpose of showing a
+magnificent head of blond hair beautifully brushed and curled; while he,
+by order of his step-father, had his black hair cut like a clothes-brush
+across the forehead, and clipped, like a soldier’s, close to the head.
+The face of the vain lad was round and chubby and bright with the hues
+of health, while that of his fellow-traveller was long, and delicate,
+and pale. The forehead of the latter was broad, and his chest filled
+out a waistcoat of cashmere pattern. As Oscar admired the tight-fitting
+iron-gray trousers and the overcoat with its frogs and olives clasping
+the waist, it seemed to him that this romantic-looking stranger, gifted
+with such advantages, insulted him by his superiority, just as an ugly
+woman feels injured by the mere sight of a pretty one. The click of the
+stranger’s boot-heels offended his taste and echoed in his heart. He
+felt as hampered by his own clothes (made no doubt at home out of those
+of his step-father) as that envied young man seemed at ease in his.
+
+“That fellow must have heaps of francs in his trousers pocket,” thought
+Oscar.
+
+The young man turned round. What were Oscar’s feelings on beholding
+a gold chain round his neck, at the end of which no doubt was a gold
+watch! From that moment the young man assumed, in Oscar’s eyes, the
+proportions of a personage.
+
+Living in the rue de la Cerisaie since 1815, taken to and from school
+by his step-father, Oscar had no other points of comparison since his
+adolescence than the poverty-stricken household of his mother. Brought
+up strictly, by Moreau’s advice, he seldom went to the theatre, and
+then to nothing better than the Ambigu-Comique, where his eyes could see
+little elegance, if indeed the eyes of a child riveted on a melodrama
+were likely to examine the audience. His step-father still wore, after
+the fashion of the Empire, his watch in the fob of his trousers, from
+which there depended over his abdomen a heavy gold chain, ending in a
+bunch of heterogeneous ornaments, seals, and a watch-key with a round
+top and flat sides, on which was a landscape in mosaic. Oscar,
+who considered that old-fashioned finery as the “ne plus ultra” of
+adornment, was bewildered by the present revelation of superior and
+negligent elegance. The young man exhibited, offensively, a pair of
+spotless gloves, and seemed to wish to dazzle Oscar by twirling with
+much grace a gold-headed switch cane.
+
+Oscar had reached that last quarter of adolescence when little things
+cause immense joys and immense miseries,--a period when youth prefers
+misfortune to a ridiculous suit of clothes, and caring nothing for
+the real interests of life, torments itself about frivolities, about
+neckcloths, and the passionate desire to appear a man. Then the young
+fellow swells himself out; his swagger is all the more portentous
+because it is exercised on nothings. Yet if he envies a fool who is
+elegantly dressed, he is also capable of enthusiasm over talent, and of
+genuine admiration for genius. Such defects as these, when they have no
+root in the heart, prove only the exuberance of sap,--the richness of
+the youthful imagination. That a lad of nineteen, an only child, kept
+severely at home by poverty, adored by a mother who put upon herself
+all privations for his sake, should be moved to envy by a young man of
+twenty-two in a frogged surtout-coat silk-lined, a waist-coat of fancy
+cashmere, and a cravat slipped through a ring of the worse taste, is
+nothing more than a peccadillo committed in all ranks of social life by
+inferiors who envy those that seem beyond them. Men of genius themselves
+succumb to this primitive passion. Did not Rousseau admire Ventura and
+Bacle?
+
+But Oscar passed from peccadillo to evil feelings. He felt humiliated;
+he was angry with the youth he envied, and there rose in his heart a
+secret desire to show openly that he himself was as good as the object
+of his envy.
+
+The two young fellows continued to walk up and own from the gate to the
+stables, and from the stables to the gate. Each time they turned they
+looked at Oscar curled up in his corner of the coucou. Oscar, persuaded
+that their jokes and laughter concerned himself, affected the utmost
+indifference. He began to hum the chorus of a song lately brought into
+vogue by the liberals, which ended with the words, “‘Tis Voltaire’s
+fault, ‘tis Rousseau’s fault.”
+
+“Tiens! perhaps he is one of the chorus at the Opera,” said Amaury.
+
+This exasperated Oscar, who bounded up, pulled out the wooden “back,”
+ and called to Pierrotin:--
+
+“When do we start?”
+
+“Presently,” said that functionary, who was standing, whip in hand, and
+gazing toward the rue d’Enghien.
+
+At this moment the scene was enlivened by the arrival of a young man
+accompanied by a true “gamin,” who was followed by a porter dragging
+a hand-cart. The young man came up to Pierrotin and spoke to him
+confidentially, on which the latter nodded his head, and called to his
+own porter. The man ran out and helped to unload the little hand-cart,
+which contained, besides two trunks, buckets, brushes, boxes of singular
+shape, and an infinity of packages and utensils which the youngest of
+the new-comers, who had climbed into the imperial, stowed away with
+such celerity that Oscar, who happened to be smiling at his mother, now
+standing on the other side of the street, saw none of the paraphernalia
+which might have revealed to him the profession of his new travelling
+companion.
+
+The gamin, who must have been sixteen years of age, wore a gray blouse
+buckled round his waist by a polished leather belt. His cap, jauntily
+perched on the side of his head, seemed the sign of a merry nature, and
+so did the picturesque disorder of the curly brown hair which fell upon
+his shoulders. A black-silk cravat drew a line round his very white
+neck, and added to the vivacity of his bright gray eyes. The animation
+of his brown and rosy face, the moulding of his rather large lips, the
+ears detached from his head, his slightly turned-up nose,--in fact, all
+the details of his face proclaimed the lively spirit of a Figaro, and
+the careless gayety of youth, while the vivacity of his gesture and his
+mocking eye revealed an intellect already developed by the practice of a
+profession adopted very early in life. As he had already some claims
+to personal value, this child, made man by Art or by vocation, seemed
+indifferent to the question of costume; for he looked at his boots,
+which had not been polished, with a quizzical air, and searched for
+the spots on his brown Holland trousers less to remove them than to see
+their effect.
+
+“I’m in style,” he said, giving himself a shake and addressing his
+companion.
+
+The glance of the latter, showed authority over his adept, in whom
+a practised eye would at once have recognized the joyous pupil of a
+painter, called in the argot of the studios a “rapin.”
+
+“Behave yourself, Mistigris,” said his master, giving him the nickname
+which the studio had no doubt bestowed upon him.
+
+The master was a slight and pale young man, with extremely thick black
+hair, worn in a disorder that was actually fantastic. But this abundant
+mass of hair seemed necessary to an enormous head, whose vast forehead
+proclaimed a precocious intellect. A strained and harassed face, too
+original to be ugly, was hollowed as if this noticeable young man
+suffered from some chronic malady, or from privations caused by poverty
+(the most terrible of all chronic maladies), or from griefs too recent
+to be forgotten. His clothing, analogous, with due allowance, to that of
+Mistigris, consisted of a shabby surtout coat, American-green in color,
+much worn, but clean and well-brushed; a black waistcoat buttoned to the
+throat, which almost concealed a scarlet neckerchief; and trousers,
+also black and even more worn than the coat, flapping his thin legs. In
+addition, a pair of very muddy boots indicated that he had come on
+foot and from some distance to the coach office. With a rapid look this
+artist seized the whole scene of the Lion d’Argent, the stables, the
+courtyard, the various lights and shades, and the details; then he
+looked at Mistigris, whose satirical glance had followed his own.
+
+“Charming!” said Mistigris.
+
+“Yes, very,” replied the other.
+
+“We seem to have got here too early,” pursued Mistigris. “Couldn’t we
+get a mouthful somewhere? My stomach, like Nature, abhors a vacuum.”
+
+“Have we time to get a cup of coffee?” said the artist, in a gentle
+voice, to Pierrotin.
+
+“Yes, but don’t be long,” answered the latter.
+
+“Good; that means we have a quarter of an hour,” remarked Mistigris,
+with the innate genius for observation of the Paris rapin.
+
+The pair disappeared. Nine o’clock was striking in the hotel kitchen.
+Georges thought it just and reasonable to remonstrate with Pierrotin.
+
+“Hey! my friend; when a man is blessed with such wheels as these
+(striking the clumsy tires with his cane) he ought at least to have the
+merit of punctuality. The deuce! one doesn’t get into that thing for
+pleasure; I have business that is devilishly pressing or I wouldn’t
+trust my bones to it. And that horse, which you call Rougeot, he doesn’t
+look likely to make up for lost time.”
+
+“We are going to harness Bichette while those gentlemen take their
+coffee,” replied Pierrotin. “Go and ask, you,” he said to his porter,
+“if Pere Leger is coming with us--”
+
+“Where is your Pere Leger?” asked Georges.
+
+“Over the way, at number 50. He couldn’t get a place in the Beaumont
+diligence,” said Pierrotin, still speaking to his porter and apparently
+making no answer to his customer; then he disappeared himself in search
+of Bichette.
+
+Georges, after shaking hands with his friend, got into the coach,
+handling with an air of great importance a portfolio which he placed
+beneath the cushion of the seat. He took the opposite corner to that of
+Oscar, on the same seat.
+
+“This Pere Leger troubles me,” he said.
+
+“They can’t take away our places,” replied Oscar. “I have number one.”
+
+“And I number two,” said Georges.
+
+Just as Pierrotin reappeared, having harnessed Bichette, the porter
+returned with a stout man in tow, whose weight could not have been less
+than two hundred and fifty pounds at the very least. Pere Leger belonged
+to the species of farmer which has a square back, a protuberant stomach,
+a powdered pigtail, and wears a little coat of blue linen. His white
+gaiters, coming above the knee, were fastened round the ends of his
+velveteen breeches and secured by silver buckles. His hob-nailed shoes
+weighed two pounds each. In his hand, he held a small reddish stick,
+much polished, with a large knob, which was fastened round his wrist by
+a thong of leather.
+
+“And you are called Pere Leger?” asked Georges, very seriously, as the
+farmer attempted to put a foot on the step.
+
+“At your service,” replied the farmer, looking in and showing a face
+like that of Louis XVIII., with fat, rubicund cheeks, from between which
+issued a nose that in any other face would have seemed enormous. His
+smiling eyes were sunken in rolls of fat. “Come, a helping hand, my
+lad!” he said to Pierrotin.
+
+The farmer was hoisted in by the united efforts of Pierrotin and the
+porter, to cries of “Houp la! hi! ha! hoist!” uttered by Georges.
+
+“Oh! I’m not going far; only to La Cave,” said the farmer,
+good-humoredly.
+
+In France everybody takes a joke.
+
+“Take the back seat,” said Pierrotin, “there’ll be six of you.”
+
+“Where’s your other horse?” demanded Georges. “Is it as mythical as the
+third post-horse.”
+
+“There she is,” said Pierrotin, pointing to the little mare, who was
+coming along alone.
+
+“He calls that insect a horse!” exclaimed Georges.
+
+“Oh! she’s good, that little mare,” said the farmer, who by this time
+was seated. “Your servant, gentlemen. Well, Pierrotin, how soon do you
+start?”
+
+“I have two travellers in there after a cup of coffee,” replied
+Pierrotin.
+
+The hollow-cheeked young man and his page reappeared.
+
+“Come, let’s start!” was the general cry.
+
+“We are going to start,” replied Pierrotin. “Now, then, make ready,” he
+said to the porter, who began thereupon to take away the stones which
+stopped the wheels.
+
+Pierrotin took Rougeot by the bridle and gave that guttural cry, “Ket,
+ket!” to tell the two animals to collect their energy; on which, though
+evidently stiff, they pulled the coach to the door of the Lion d’Argent.
+After which manoeuvre, which was purely preparatory, Pierrotin gazed up
+the rue d’Enghien and then disappeared, leaving the coach in charge of
+the porter.
+
+“Ah ca! is he subject to such attacks,--that master of yours?” said
+Mistigris, addressing the porter.
+
+“He has gone to fetch his feed from the stable,” replied the porter,
+well versed in all the usual tricks to keep passengers quiet.
+
+“Well, after all,” said Mistigris, “‘art is long, but life is short’--to
+Bichette.”
+
+At this particular epoch, a fancy for mutilating or transposing proverbs
+reigned in the studios. It was thought a triumph to find changes of
+letters, and sometimes of words, which still kept the semblance of the
+proverb while giving it a fantastic or ridiculous meaning.[*]
+
+  [*] It is plainly impossible to translate many of these proverbs
+      and put any fun or meaning into them.--Tr.
+
+“Patience, Mistigris!” said his master; “‘come wheel, come whoa.’”
+
+Pierrotin here returned, bringing with him the Comte de Serizy, who had
+come through the rue de l’Echiquier, and with whom he had doubtless had
+a short conversation.
+
+“Pere Leger,” said Pierrotin, looking into the coach, “will you give
+your place to Monsieur le comte? That will balance the carriage better.”
+
+“We sha’n’t be off for an hour if you go on this way,” cried Georges.
+“We shall have to take down this infernal bar, which cost such trouble
+to put up. Why should everybody be made to move for the man who comes
+last? We all have a right to the places we took. What place has monsieur
+engaged? Come, find that out! Haven’t you a way-book, a register, or
+something? What place has Monsieur Lecomte engaged?--count of what, I’d
+like to know.”
+
+“Monsieur le comte,” said Pierrotin, visibly troubled, “I am afraid you
+will be uncomfortable.”
+
+“Why didn’t you keep better count of us?” said Mistigris. “‘Short counts
+make good ends.’”
+
+“Mistigris, behave yourself,” said his master.
+
+Monsieur de Serizy was evidently taken by all the persons in the coach
+for a bourgeois of the name of Lecomte.
+
+“Don’t disturb any one,” he said to Pierrotin. “I will sit with you in
+front.”
+
+“Come, Mistigris,” said the master to his rapin, “remember the respect
+you owe to age; you don’t know how shockingly old you may be yourself
+some day. ‘Travel deforms youth.’ Give your place to monsieur.”
+
+Mistigris opened the leathern curtain and jumped out with the agility of
+a frog leaping into the water.
+
+“You mustn’t be a rabbit, august old man,” he said to the count.
+
+“Mistigris, ‘ars est celare bonum,’” said his master.
+
+“I thank you very much, monsieur,” said the count to Mistigris’s master,
+next to whom he now sat.
+
+The minister of State cast a sagacious glance round the interior of the
+coach, which greatly affronted both Oscar and Georges.
+
+“When persons want to be master of a coach, they should engage all the
+places,” remarked Georges.
+
+Certain now of his incognito, the Comte de Serizy made no reply to this
+observation, but assumed the air of a good-natured bourgeois.
+
+“Suppose you were late, wouldn’t you be glad that the coach waited for
+you?” said the farmer to the two young men.
+
+Pierrotin still looked up and down the street, whip in hand, apparently
+reluctant to mount to the hard seat where Mistigris was fidgeting.
+
+“If you expect some one else, I am not the last,” said the count.
+
+“I agree to that reasoning,” said Mistigris.
+
+Georges and Oscar began to laugh impertinently.
+
+“The old fellow doesn’t know much,” whispered Georges to Oscar, who was
+delighted at this apparent union between himself and the object of his
+envy.
+
+“Parbleu!” cried Pierrotin, “I shouldn’t be sorry for two more
+passengers.”
+
+“I haven’t paid; I’ll get out,” said Georges, alarmed.
+
+“What are you waiting for, Pierrotin?” asked Pere Leger.
+
+Whereupon Pierrotin shouted a certain “Hi!” in which Bichette and
+Rougeot recognized a definitive resolution, and they both sprang toward
+the rise of the faubourg at a pace which was soon to slacken.
+
+The count had a red face, of a burning red all over, on which were
+certain inflamed portions which his snow-white hair brought out into
+full relief. To any but heedless youths, this complexion would have
+revealed a constant inflammation of the blood, produced by incessant
+labor. These blotches and pimples so injured the naturally noble air of
+the count that careful examination was needed to find in his green-gray
+eyes the shrewdness of the magistrate, the wisdom of a statesman, and
+the knowledge of a legislator. His face was flat, and the nose seemed
+to have been depressed into it. The hat hid the grace and beauty of his
+forehead. In short, there was enough to amuse those thoughtless youths
+in the odd contrasts of the silvery hair, the burning face, and the
+thick, tufted eye-brows which were still jet-black.
+
+The count wore a long blue overcoat, buttoned in military fashion to the
+throat, a white cravat around his neck, cotton wool in his ears, and a
+shirt-collar high enough to make a large square patch of white on each
+cheek. His black trousers covered his boots, the toes of which were
+barely seen. He wore no decoration in his button-hole, and doeskin
+gloves concealed his hands. Nothing about him betrayed to the eyes of
+youth a peer of France, and one of the most useful statesmen in the
+kingdom.
+
+Pere Leger had never seen the count, who, on his side, knew the former
+only by name. When the count, as he got into the carriage, cast the
+glance about him which affronted Georges and Oscar, he was, in reality,
+looking for the head-clerk of his notary (in case he had been forced,
+like himself, to take Pierrotin’s vehicle), intending to caution
+him instantly about his own incognito. But feeling reassured by the
+appearance of Oscar, and that of Pere Leger, and, above all, by the
+quasi-military air, the waxed moustaches, and the general look of an
+adventurer that distinguished Georges, he concluded that his note had
+reached his notary, Alexandre Crottat, in time to prevent the departure
+of the clerk.
+
+“Pere Leger,” said Pierrotin, when they reached the steep hill of the
+faubourg Saint-Denis by the rue de la Fidelite, “suppose we get out,
+hey?”
+
+“I’ll get out, too,” said the count, hearing Leger’s name.
+
+“Goodness! if this is how we are going, we shall do fourteen miles in
+fifteen days!” cried Georges.
+
+“It isn’t my fault,” said Pierrotin, “if a passenger wishes to get out.”
+
+“Ten louis for you if you keep the secret of my being here as I told you
+before,” said the count in a low voice, taking Pierrotin by the arm.
+
+“Oh, my thousand francs!” thought Pierrotin as he winked an eye at
+Monsieur de Serizy, which meant, “Rely on me.”
+
+Oscar and Georges stayed in the coach.
+
+“Look here, Pierrotin, since Pierrotin you are,” cried Georges, when the
+passengers were once more stowed away in the vehicle, “if you don’t mean
+to go faster than this, say so! I’ll pay my fare and take a post-horse
+at Saint-Denis, for I have important business on hand which can’t be
+delayed.”
+
+“Oh! he’ll go well enough,” said Pere Leger. “Besides, the distance
+isn’t great.”
+
+“I am never more than half an hour late,” asserted Pierrotin.
+
+“Well, you are not wheeling the Pope in this old barrow of yours,” said
+Georges, “so, get on.”
+
+“Perhaps he’s afraid of shaking monsieur,” said Mistigris looking round
+at the count. “But you shouldn’t have preferences, Pierrotin, it isn’t
+right.”
+
+“Coucous and the Charter make all Frenchmen equals,” said Georges.
+
+“Oh! be easy,” said Pere Leger; “we are sure to get to La Chapelle by
+mid-day,”--La Chapelle being the village next beyond the Barriere of
+Saint-Denis.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. THE GRANDSON OF THE FAMOUS CZERNI-GEORGES
+
+
+Those who travel in public conveyances know that the persons thus united
+by chance do not immediately have anything to say to one another; unless
+under special circumstances, conversation rarely begins until they have
+gone some distance. This period of silence is employed as much in mutual
+examination as in settling into their places. Minds need to get their
+equilibrium as much as bodies. When each person thinks he has discovered
+the age, profession, and character of his companions, the most talkative
+member of the company begins, and the conversation gets under way with
+all the more vivacity because those present feel a need of enlivening
+the journey and forgetting its tedium.
+
+That is how things happen in French stage-coaches. In other countries
+customs are very different. Englishmen pique themselves on never opening
+their lips; Germans are melancholy in a vehicle; Italians too wary to
+talk; Spaniards have no public conveyances; and Russians no roads.
+There is no amusement except in the lumbering diligences of France, that
+gabbling and indiscreet country, where every one is in a hurry to laugh
+and show his wit, and where jest and epigram enliven all things, even
+the poverty of the lower classes and the weightier cares of the
+solid bourgeois. In a coach there is no police to check tongues, and
+legislative assemblies have set the fashion of public discussion. When
+a young man of twenty-two, like the one named Georges, is clever and
+lively, he is much tempted, especially under circumstances like the
+present, to abuse those qualities.
+
+In the first place, Georges had soon decided that he was the superior
+human being of the party there assembled. He saw in the count a
+manufacturer of the second-class, whom he took, for some unknown reason,
+to be a chandler; in the shabby young man accompanied by Mistigris,
+a fellow of no account; in Oscar a ninny, and in Pere Leger, the fat
+farmer, an excellent subject to hoax. Having thus looked over the
+ground, he resolved to amuse himself at the expense of such companions.
+
+“Let me see,” he thought to himself, as the coucou went down the hill
+from La Chapelle to the plain of Saint-Denis, “shall I pass myself
+off for Etienne or Beranger? No, these idiots don’t know who they are.
+Carbonaro? the deuce! I might get myself arrested. Suppose I say I’m the
+son of Marshal Ney? Pooh! what could I tell them?--about the execution
+of my father? It wouldn’t be funny. Better be a disguised Russian prince
+and make them swallow a lot of stuff about the Emperor Alexander. Or I
+might be Cousin, and talk philosophy; oh, couldn’t I perplex ‘em! But
+no, that shabby fellow with the tousled head looks to me as if he
+had jogged his way through the Sorbonne. What a pity! I can mimic
+an Englishman so perfectly I might have pretended to be Lord Byron,
+travelling incognito. Sapristi! I’ll command the troops of Ali, pacha of
+Janina!”
+
+During this mental monologue, the coucou rolled through clouds of dust
+rising on either side of it from that much travelled road.
+
+“What dust!” cried Mistigris.
+
+“Henry IV. is dead!” retorted his master. “If you’d say it was scented
+with vanilla that would be emitting a new opinion.”
+
+“You think you’re witty,” replied Mistigris. “Well, it _is_ like vanilla
+at times.”
+
+“In the Levant--” said Georges, with the air of beginning a story.
+
+“‘Ex Oriente flux,’” remarked Mistigris’s master, interrupting the
+speaker.
+
+“I said in the Levant, from which I have just returned,” continued
+Georges, “the dust smells very good; but here it smells of nothing,
+except in some old dust-barrel like this.”
+
+“Has monsieur lately returned from the Levant?” said Mistigris,
+maliciously. “He isn’t much tanned by the sun.”
+
+“Oh! I’ve just left my bed after an illness of three months, from the
+germ, so the doctors said, of suppressed plague.”
+
+“Have you had the plague?” cried the count, with a gesture of alarm.
+“Pierrotin, stop!”
+
+“Go on, Pierrotin,” said Mistigris. “Didn’t you hear him say it was
+inward, his plague?” added the rapin, talking back to Monsieur de
+Serizy. “It isn’t catching; it only comes out in conversation.”
+
+“Mistigris! if you interfere again I’ll have you put off into the road,”
+ said his master. “And so,” he added, turning to Georges, “monsieur has
+been to the East?”
+
+“Yes, monsieur; first to Egypt, then to Greece, where I served under
+Ali, pacha of Janina, with whom I had a terrible quarrel. There’s no
+enduring those climates long; besides, the emotions of all kinds in
+Oriental life have disorganized my liver.”
+
+“What, have you served as a soldier?” asked the fat farmer. “How old are
+you?”
+
+“Twenty-nine,” replied Georges, whereupon all the passengers looked at
+him. “At eighteen I enlisted as a private for the famous campaign of
+1813; but I was present at only one battle, that of Hanau, where I was
+promoted sergeant-major. In France, at Montereau, I won the rank of
+sub-lieutenant, and was decorated by,--there are no informers here, I’m
+sure,--by the Emperor.”
+
+“What! are you decorated?” cried Oscar. “Why don’t you wear your cross?”
+
+“The cross of ‘ceux-ci’? No, thank you! Besides, what man of any
+breeding would wear his decorations in travelling? There’s monsieur,” he
+said, motioning to the Comte de Serizy. “I’ll bet whatever you like--”
+
+“Betting whatever you like means, in France, betting nothing at all,”
+ said Mistigris’s master.
+
+“I’ll bet whatever you like,” repeated Georges, incisively, “that
+monsieur here is covered with stars.”
+
+“Well,” said the count, laughing, “I have the grand cross of the Legion
+of honor, that of Saint Andrew of Russia, that of the Prussian Eagle,
+that of the Annunciation of Sardinia, and the Golden Fleece.”
+
+“Beg pardon,” said Mistigris, “are they all in the coucou?”
+
+“Hey! that brick-colored old fellow goes it strong!” whispered Georges
+to Oscar. “What was I saying?--oh! I know. I don’t deny that I adore the
+Emperor--”
+
+“I served under him,” said the count.
+
+“What a man he was, wasn’t he?” cried Georges.
+
+“A man to whom I owe many obligations,” replied the count, with a silly
+expression that was admirably assumed.
+
+“For all those crosses?” inquired Mistigris.
+
+“And what quantities of snuff he took!” continued Monsieur de Serizy.
+
+“He carried it loose in his pockets,” said Georges.
+
+“So I’ve been told,” remarked Pere Leger with an incredulous look.
+
+“Worse than that; he chewed and smoked,” continued Georges. “I saw him
+smoking, in a queer way, too, at Waterloo, when Marshal Soult took him
+round the waist and flung him into his carriage, just as he had seized a
+musket and was going to charge the English--”
+
+“You were at Waterloo!” cried Oscar, his eyes stretching wide open.
+
+“Yes, young man, I did the campaign of 1815. I was a captain at
+Mont-Saint-Jean, and I retired to the Loire, after we were all
+disbanded. Faith! I was disgusted with France; I couldn’t stand it. In
+fact, I should certainly have got myself arrested; so off I went, with
+two or three dashing fellows,--Selves, Besson, and others, who are now
+in Egypt,--and we entered the service of pacha Mohammed; a queer sort of
+fellow he was, too! Once a tobacco merchant in the bazaars, he is now
+on the high-road to be a sovereign prince. You’ve all seen him in
+that picture by Horace Vernet,--‘The Massacre of the Mameluks.’ What
+a handsome fellow he was! But I wouldn’t give up the religion of my
+fathers and embrace Islamism; all the more because the abjuration
+required a surgical operation which I hadn’t any fancy for. Besides,
+nobody respects a renegade. Now if they had offered me a hundred
+thousand francs a year, perhaps--and yet, no! The pacha did give me a
+thousand talari as a present.”
+
+“How much is that?” asked Oscar, who was listening to Georges with all
+his ears.
+
+“Oh! not much. A talaro is, as you might say, a five-franc piece.
+But faith! I got no compensation for the vices I contracted in that
+God-forsaken country, if country it is. I can’t live now without smoking
+a narghile twice a-day, and that’s very costly.”
+
+“How did you find Egypt?” asked the count.
+
+“Egypt? Oh! Egypt is all sand,” replied Georges, by no means taken
+aback. “There’s nothing green but the valley of the Nile. Draw a
+green line down a sheet of yellow paper, and you have Egypt. But those
+Egyptians--fellahs they are called--have an immense advantage over us.
+There are no gendarmes in that country. You may go from end to end of
+Egypt, and you won’t see one.”
+
+“But I suppose there are a good many Egyptians,” said Mistigris.
+
+“Not as many as you think for,” replied Georges. “There are many more
+Abyssinians, and Giaours, and Vechabites, Bedouins, and Cophs. But all
+that kind of animal is very uninteresting, and I was glad enough to
+embark on a Genoese polacca which was loading for the Ionian Islands
+with gunpowder and munitions for Ali de Tebelen. You know, don’t
+you, that the British sell powder and munitions of war to all the
+world,--Turks, Greeks, and the devil, too, if the devil has money? From
+Zante we were to skirt the coasts of Greece and tack about, on and off.
+Now it happens that my name of Georges is famous in that country. I am,
+such as you see me, the grandson of the famous Czerni-Georges who made
+war upon the Porte, and, instead of crushing it, as he meant to do, got
+crushed himself. His son took refuge in the house of the French consul
+at Smyrna, and he afterwards died in Paris, leaving my mother pregnant
+with me, his seventh child. Our property was all stolen by friends of
+my grandfather; in fact, we were ruined. My mother, who lived on her
+diamonds, which she sold one by one, married, in 1799, my step-father,
+Monsieur Yung, a purveyor. But my mother is dead, and I have quarrelled
+with my step-father, who, between ourselves, is a blackguard; he is
+still alive, but I never see him. That’s why, in despair, left all to
+myself, I went off to the wars as a private in 1813. Well, to go back
+to the time I returned to Greece; you wouldn’t believe with what joy old
+Ali Tebelen received the grandson of Czerni-Georges. Here, of course, I
+call myself simply Georges. The pacha gave me a harem--”
+
+“You have had a harem?” said Oscar.
+
+“Were you a pacha with _many_ tails?” asked Mistigris.
+
+“How is it that you don’t know,” replied Georges, “that only the Sultan
+makes pachas, and that my friend Tebelen (for we were as friendly as
+Bourbons) was in rebellion against the Padishah! You know, or you don’t
+know, that the true title of the Grand Seignior is Padishah, and not
+Sultan or Grand Turk. You needn’t think that a harem is much of a thing;
+you might as well have a herd of goats. The women are horribly
+stupid down there; I much prefer the grisettes of the Chaumieres at
+Mont-Parnasse.”
+
+“They are nearer, at any rate,” said the count.
+
+“The women of the harem couldn’t speak a word of French, and that
+language is indispensable for talking. Ali gave me five legitimate wives
+and ten slaves; that’s equivalent to having none at all at Janina. In
+the East, you must know, it is thought very bad style to have wives and
+women. They have them, just as we have Voltaire and Rousseau; but who
+ever opens his Voltaire or his Rousseau? Nobody. But, for all that, the
+highest style is to be jealous. They sew a woman up in a sack and fling
+her into the water on the slightest suspicion,--that’s according to
+their Code.”
+
+“Did you fling any in?” asked the farmer.
+
+“I, a Frenchman! for shame! I loved them.”
+
+Whereupon Georges twirled and twisted his moustache with a dreamy air.
+
+They were now entering Saint-Denis, and Pierrotin presently drew up
+before the door of a tavern where were sold the famous cheese-cakes of
+that place. All the travellers got out. Puzzled by the apparent truth
+mingled with Georges’ inventions, the count returned to the coucou when
+the others had entered the house, and looked beneath the cushion for
+the portfolio which Pierrotin told him that enigmatical youth had
+placed there. On it he read the words in gilt letters: “Maitre Crottat,
+notary.” The count at once opened it, and fearing, with some reason,
+that Pere Leger might be seized with the same curiosity, he took out the
+deed of sale for the farm at Moulineaux, put it into his coat pocket,
+and entered the inn to keep an eye on the travellers.
+
+“This Georges is neither more nor less than Crottat’s second clerk,”
+ thought he. “I shall pay my compliments to his master, whose business it
+was to send me his head-clerk.”
+
+From the respectful glances of Pere Leger and Oscar, Georges perceived
+that he had made for himself two fervent admirers. Accordingly, he now
+posed as a great personage; paid for their cheese-cakes, and ordered
+for each a glass of Alicante. He offered the same to Mistigris and his
+master, who refused with smiles; but the friend of Ali Tebelen profited
+by the occasion to ask the pair their names.
+
+“Oh! monsieur,” said Mistigris’ master, “I am not blessed, like you,
+with an illustrious name; and I have not returned from Asia--”
+
+At this moment the count, hastening into the huge inn-kitchen lest his
+absence should excite inquiry, entered the place in time to hear the
+conclusion of the young man’s speech.
+
+“--I am only a poor painter lately returned from Rome, where I went at
+the cost of the government, after winning the ‘grand prix’ five years
+ago. My name is Schinner.”
+
+“Hey! bourgeois, may I offer you a glass of Alicante and some
+cheese-cakes?” said Georges to the count.
+
+“Thank you,” replied the latter. “I never leave home without taking my
+cup of coffee and cream.”
+
+“Don’t you eat anything between meals? How bourgeois, Marais, Place
+Royale, that is!” cried Georges. “When he ‘blagued’ just now about his
+crosses, I thought there was something in him,” whispered the Eastern
+hero to the painter. “However, we’ll set him going on his decorations,
+the old tallow-chandler! Come, my lad,” he added, calling to Oscar,
+“drink me down the glass poured out for the chandler; that will start
+your moustache.”
+
+Oscar, anxious to play the man, swallowed the second glass of wine, and
+ate three more cheese-cakes.
+
+“Good wine, that!” said Pere Leger, smacking his lips.
+
+“It is all the better,” said Georges, “because it comes from Bercy. I’ve
+been to Alicante myself, and I know that this wine no more resembles
+what is made there than my arm is like a windmill. Our made-up wines are
+a great deal better than the natural ones in their own country. Come,
+Pierrotin, take a glass! It is a great pity your horses can’t take one,
+too; we might go faster.”
+
+“Forward, march!” cried Pierrotin, amid a mighty cracking of whips,
+after the travellers were again boxed up.
+
+It was now eleven o’clock. The weather, which had been cloudy, cleared;
+the breeze swept off the mists, and the blue of the sky appeared in
+spots; so that when the coucou trundled along the narrow strip of road
+from Saint-Denis to Pierrefitte, the sun had fairly drunk up the last
+floating vapors of the diaphanous veil which swathed the scenery of that
+famous region.
+
+“Well, now, tell us why you left your friend the pacha,” said Pere
+Leger, addressing Georges.
+
+“He was a very singular scamp,” replied Georges, with an air that hid a
+multitude of mysteries. “He put me in command of his cavalry,--so far,
+so good--”
+
+“Ah! that’s why he wears spurs,” thought poor Oscar.
+
+“At that time Ali Tebelen wanted to rid himself of Chosrew pacha,
+another queer chap! You call him, here, Chaureff; but the name is
+pronounced, in Turkish, Cosserew. You must have read in the newspapers
+how old Ali drubbed Chosrew, and soundly, too, faith! Well, if it
+hadn’t been for me, Ali Tebelen himself would have bit the dust two days
+earlier. I was at the right wing, and I saw Chosrew, an old sly-boots,
+thinking to force our centre,--ranks closed, stiff, swift, fine movement
+a la Murat. Good! I take my time; then I charge, double-quick, and cut
+his line in two,--you understand? Ha! ha! after the affair was over, Ali
+kissed me--”
+
+“Do they do that in the East?” asked the count, in a joking way.
+
+“Yes, monsieur,” said the painter, “that’s done all the world over.”
+
+“After that,” continued Georges, “Ali gave me yataghans, and carbines,
+and scimetars, and what-not. But when we got back to his capital he
+made me propositions, wanted me to drown a wife, and make a slave of
+myself,--Orientals are so queer! But I thought I’d had enough of it;
+for, after all, you know, Ali was a rebel against the Porte. So I
+concluded I had better get off while I could. But I’ll do Monsieur
+Tebelen the justice to say that he loaded me with presents,--diamonds,
+ten thousand talari, one thousand gold coins, a beautiful Greek girl for
+groom, a little Circassian for a mistress, and an Arab horse! Yes, Ali
+Tebelen, pacha of Janina, is too little known; he needs an historian.
+It is only in the East one meets with such iron souls, who can nurse a
+vengeance twenty years and accomplish it some fine morning. He had
+the most magnificent white beard that was ever seen, and a hard, stern
+face--”
+
+“But what did you do with your treasures?” asked farmer Leger.
+
+“Ha! that’s it! you may well ask that! Those fellows down there haven’t
+any Grand Livre nor any Bank of France. So I was forced to carry off my
+windfalls in a felucca, which was captured by the Turkish High-Admiral
+himself. Such as you see me here to-day, I came very near being impaled
+at Smyrna. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for Monsieur de Riviere, our
+ambassador, who was there, they’d have taken me for an accomplice of Ali
+pacha. I saved my head, but, to tell the honest truth, all the rest,
+the ten thousand talari, the thousand gold pieces, and the fine weapons,
+were all, yes all, drunk up by the thirsty treasury of the Turkish
+admiral. My position was the more perilous because that very admiral
+happened to be Chosrew pacha. After I routed him, the fellow had managed
+to obtain a position which is equal to that of our Admiral of the
+Fleet--”
+
+“But I thought he was in the cavalry?” said Pere Leger, who had followed
+the narrative with the deepest attention.
+
+“Dear me! how little the East is understood in the French provinces!”
+ cried Georges. “Monsieur, I’ll explain the Turks to you. You are a
+farmer; the Padishah (that’s the Sultan) makes you a marshal; if you
+don’t fulfil your functions to his satisfaction, so much the worse
+for you, he cuts your head off; that’s his way of dismissing his
+functionaries. A gardener is made a prefect; and the prime minister
+comes down to be a foot-boy. The Ottomans have no system of promotion
+and no hierarchy. From a cavalry officer Chosrew simply became a naval
+officer. Sultan Mahmoud ordered him to capture Ali by sea; and he did
+get hold of him, assisted by those beggarly English--who put their
+paw on most of the treasure. This Chosrew, who had not forgotten the
+riding-lesson I gave him, recognized me. You understand, my goose
+was cooked, oh, brown! when it suddenly came into my head to claim
+protection as a Frenchman and a troubadour from Monsieur de Riviere. The
+ambassador, enchanted to find something to show him off, demanded that I
+should be set at liberty. The Turks have one good trait in their nature;
+they are as willing to let you go as they are to cut your head off;
+they are indifferent to everything. The French consul, charming fellow,
+friend of Chosrew, made him give back two thousand of the talari, and,
+consequently, his name is, as I may say, graven on my heart--”
+
+“What was his name?” asked Monsieur de Serizy; and a look of some
+surprise passed over his face as Georges named, correctly, one of our
+most distinguished consul-generals who happened at that time to be
+stationed at Smyrna.
+
+“I assisted,” added Georges, “at the execution of the Governor of
+Smyrna, whom the Sultan had ordered Chosrew to put to death. It was one
+of the most curious things I ever saw, though I’ve seen many,--I’ll tell
+you about it when we stop for breakfast. From Smyrna I crossed to Spain,
+hearing there was a revolution there. I went straight to Mina, who
+appointed me as his aide-de-camp with the rank of colonel. I fought for
+the constitutional cause, which will certainly be defeated when we enter
+Spain--as we undoubtedly shall, some of these days--”
+
+“You, a French soldier!” said the count, sternly. “You show
+extraordinary confidence in the discretion of those who are listening to
+you.”
+
+“But there are no spies here,” said Georges.
+
+“Are you aware, Colonel Georges,” continued the count, “that the Court
+of Peers is at this very time inquiring into a conspiracy which has made
+the government extremely severe in its treatment of French soldiers
+who bear arms against France, and who deal in foreign intrigues for the
+purpose of overthrowing our legitimate sovereigns.”
+
+On hearing this stern admonition the painter turned red to his ears and
+looked at Mistigris, who seemed dumfounded.
+
+“Well,” said Pere Leger, “what next?”
+
+“If,” continued the count, “I were a magistrate, it would be my duty to
+order the gendarmes at Pierrefitte to arrest the aide-de-camp of Mina,
+and to summon all present in this vehicle to testify to his words.”
+
+This speech stopped Georges’ narrative all the more surely, because
+at this moment the coucou reached the guard-house of a brigade of
+gendarmerie,--the white flag floating, as the orthodox saying is, upon
+the breeze.
+
+“You have too many decorations to do such a dastardly thing,” said
+Oscar.
+
+“Never mind; we’ll catch up with him soon,” whispered Georges in the
+lad’s ear.
+
+“Colonel,” cried Leger, who was a good deal disturbed by the count’s
+outburst, and wanted to change the conversation, “in all these countries
+where you have been, what sort of farming do they do? How do they vary
+the crops?”
+
+“Well, in the first place, my good fellow, you must understand, they are
+too busy cropping off each others’ heads to think much of cropping the
+ground.”
+
+The count couldn’t help smiling; and that smile reassured the narrator.
+
+“They have a way of cultivating which you will think very queer. They
+don’t cultivate at all; that’s their style of farming. The Turks and
+the Greeks, they eat onions or rise. They get opium from poppies, and
+it gives them a fine revenue. Then they have tobacco, which grows of
+itself, famous latakiah! and dates! and all kinds of sweet things that
+don’t need cultivation. It is a country full of resources and commerce.
+They make fine rugs at Smyrna, and not dear.”
+
+“But,” persisted Leger, “if the rugs are made of wool they must come
+from sheep; and to have sheep you must have fields, farms, culture--”
+
+“Well, there may be something of that sort,” replied Georges. “But their
+chief crop, rice, grows in the water. As for me, I have only been along
+the coasts and seen the parts that are devastated by war. Besides, I
+have the deepest aversion to statistics.”
+
+“How about the taxes?” asked the farmer.
+
+“Oh! the taxes are heavy; they take all a man has, and leave him the
+rest. The pacha of Egypt was so struck with the advantages of that
+system, that, when I came away he was on the point of organizing his own
+administration on that footing--”
+
+“But,” said Leger, who no longer understood a single word, “how?”
+
+“How?” said Georges. “Why, agents go round and take all the harvests,
+and leave the fellahs just enough to live on. That’s a system that does
+away with stamped papers and bureaucracy, the curse of France, hein?”
+
+“By virtue of what right?” said Leger.
+
+“Right? why it is a land of despotism. They haven’t any rights. Don’t
+you know the fine definition Montesquieu gives of despotism. ‘Like the
+savage, it cuts down the tree to gather the fruits.’ They don’t tax,
+they take everything.”
+
+“And that’s what our rulers are trying to bring us to. ‘Tax
+vobiscum,’--no, thank you!” said Mistigris.
+
+“But that is what we _are_ coming to,” said the count. “Therefore, those
+who own land will do well to sell it. Monsieur Schinner must have seen
+how things are tending in Italy, where the taxes are enormous.”
+
+“Corpo di Bacco! the Pope is laying it on heavily,” replied Schinner.
+“But the people are used to it. Besides, Italians are so good-natured
+that if you let ‘em murder a few travellers along the highways they’re
+contented.”
+
+“I see, Monsieur Schinner,” said the count, “that you are not wearing
+the decoration you obtained in 1819; it seems the fashion nowadays not
+to wear orders.”
+
+Mistigris and the pretended Schinner blushed to their ears.
+
+“Well, with me,” said the artist, “the case is different. It isn’t on
+account of fashion; but I don’t want to be recognized. Have the goodness
+not to betray me, monsieur; I am supposed to be a little painter of
+no consequence,--a mere decorator. I’m on may way to a chateau where I
+mustn’t rouse the slightest suspicion.”
+
+“Ah! I see,” said the count, “some intrigue,--a love affair! Youth is
+happy!”
+
+Oscar, who was writhing in his skin at being a nobody and having nothing
+to say, gazed at Colonel Czerni-Georges and at the famous painter
+Schinner, and wondered how he could transform himself into somebody. But
+a youth of nineteen, kept at home all his life, and going for two weeks
+only into the country, what could he be, or do, or say? However, the
+Alicante had got into his head, and his vanity was boiling in his veins;
+so when the famous Schinner allowed a romantic adventure to be guessed
+at in which the danger seemed as great as the pleasure, he fastened his
+eyes, sparkling with wrath and envy, upon that hero.
+
+“Yes,” said the count, with a credulous air, “a man must love a woman
+well to make such sacrifices.”
+
+“What sacrifices?” demanded Mistigris.
+
+“Don’t you know, my little friend, that a ceiling painted by so great a
+master as yours is worth its weight in gold?” replied the count. “If the
+civil list paid you, as it did, thirty thousand francs for each of
+those rooms in the Louvre,” he continued, addressing Schinner, “a
+bourgeois,--as you call us in the studios--ought certainly to pay
+you twenty thousand. Whereas, if you go to this chateau as a humble
+decorator, you will not get two thousand.”
+
+“The money is not the greatest loss,” said Mistigris. “The work is
+sure to be a masterpiece, but he can’t sign it, you know, for fear of
+compromising _her_.”
+
+“Ah! I’d return all my crosses to the sovereigns who gave them to me for
+the devotion that youth can win,” said the count.
+
+“That’s just it!” said Mistigris, “when one’s young, one’s loved; plenty
+of love, plenty of women; but they do say: ‘Where there’s wife, there’s
+mope.’”
+
+“What does Madame Schinner say to all this?” pursued the count; “for I
+believe you married, out of love, the beautiful Adelaide de Rouville,
+the protegee of old Admiral de Kergarouet; who, by the bye, obtained for
+you the order for the Louvre ceilings through his nephew, the Comte de
+Fontaine.”
+
+“A great painter is never married when he travels,” said Mistigris.
+
+“So that’s the morality of studios, is it?” cried the count, with an air
+of great simplicity.
+
+“Is the morality of courts where you got those decorations of yours any
+better?” said Schinner, recovering his self-possession, upset for the
+moment by finding out how much the count knew of Schinner’s life as an
+artist.
+
+“I never asked for any of my orders,” said the count. “I believe I have
+loyally earned them.”
+
+“‘A fair yield and no flavor,’” said Mistigris.
+
+The count was resolved not to betray himself; he assumed an air of
+good-humored interest in the country, and looked up the valley of
+Groslay as the coucou took the road to Saint-Brice, leaving that to
+Chantilly on the right.
+
+“Is Rome as fine as they say it is?” said Georges, addressing the great
+painter.
+
+“Rome is fine only to those who love it; a man must have a passion for
+it to enjoy it. As a city, I prefer Venice,--though I just missed being
+murdered there.”
+
+“Faith, yes!” cried Mistigris; “if it hadn’t been for me you’d have been
+gobbled up. It was that mischief-making tom-fool, Lord Byron, who
+got you into the scrape. Oh! wasn’t he raging, that buffoon of an
+Englishman?”
+
+“Hush!” said Schinner. “I don’t want my affair with Lord Byron talked
+about.”
+
+“But you must own, all the same, that you were glad enough I knew how to
+box,” said Mistigris.
+
+From time to time, Pierrotin exchanged sly glances with the count,
+which might have made less inexperienced persons than the five other
+travellers uneasy.
+
+“Lords, pachas, and thirty-thousand-franc ceilings!” he cried. “I seem
+to be driving sovereigns. What pourboires I’ll get!”
+
+“And all the places paid for!” said Mistigris, slyly.
+
+“It is a lucky day for me,” continued Pierrotin; “for you know, Pere
+Leger, about my beautiful new coach on which I have paid an advance of
+two thousand francs? Well, those dogs of carriage-builders, to whom I
+have to pay two thousand five hundred francs more, won’t take fifteen
+hundred down, and my note for a thousand for two months! Those vultures
+want it all. Who ever heard of being so stiff with a man in business
+these eight years, and the father of a family?--making me run the risk
+of losing everything, carriage and money too, if I can’t find before
+to-morrow night that miserable last thousand! Hue, Bichette! They won’t
+play that trick on the great coach offices, I’ll warrant you.”
+
+“Yes, that’s it,” said the rapin; “‘your money or your strife.’”
+
+“Well, you have only eight hundred now to get,” remarked the count,
+who considered this moan, addressed to Pere Leger, a sort of letter of
+credit drawn upon himself.
+
+“True,” said Pierrotin. “Xi! xi! Rougeot!”
+
+“You must have seen many fine ceilings in Venice,” resumed the count,
+addressing Schinner.
+
+“I was too much in love to take any notice of what seemed to me then
+mere trifles,” replied Schinner. “But I was soon cured of that folly,
+for it was in the Venetian states--in Dalmatia--that I received a cruel
+lesson.”
+
+“Can it be told?” asked Georges. “I know Dalmatia very well.”
+
+“Well, if you have been there, you know that all the people at that end
+of the Adriatic are pirates, rovers, corsairs retired from business, as
+they haven’t been hanged--”
+
+“Uscoques,” said Georges.
+
+Hearing the right name given, the count, who had been sent by Napoleon
+on one occasion to the Illyrian provinces, turned his head and looked at
+Georges, so surprised was he.
+
+“The affair happened in that town where they make maraschino,” continued
+Schinner, seeming to search for a name.
+
+“Zara,” said Georges. “I’ve been there; it is on the coast.”
+
+“You are right,” said the painter. “I had gone there to look at the
+country, for I adore scenery. I’ve longed a score of times to paint
+landscape, which no one, as I think, understands but Mistigris, who
+will some day reproduce Hobbema, Ruysdael, Claude Lorrain, Poussin, and
+others.”
+
+“But,” exclaimed the count, “if he reproduces one of them won’t that be
+enough?”
+
+“If you persist in interrupting, monsieur,” said Oscar, “we shall never
+get on.”
+
+“And Monsieur Schinner was not addressing himself to you in particular,”
+ added Georges.
+
+“‘Tisn’t polite to interrupt,” said Mistigris, sententiously, “but we
+all do it, and conversation would lose a great deal if we didn’t scatter
+little condiments while exchanging our reflections. Therefore, continue,
+agreeable old gentleman, to lecture us, if you like. It is done in the
+best society, and you know the proverb: ‘we must ‘owl with the wolves.’”
+
+“I had heard marvellous things of Dalmatia,” resumed Schinner, “so I
+went there, leaving Mistigris in Venice at an inn--”
+
+“‘Locanda,’” interposed Mistigris; “keep to the local color.”
+
+“Zara is what is called a country town--”
+
+“Yes,” said Georges; “but it is fortified.”
+
+“Parbleu!” said Schinner; “the fortifications count for much in my
+adventure. At Zara there are a great many apothecaries. I lodged with
+one. In foreign countries everybody makes a principal business of
+letting lodgings; all other trades are accessory. In the evening, linen
+changed, I sat in my balcony. In the opposite balcony I saw a woman; oh!
+such a woman! Greek,--_that tells all_! The most beautiful creature in
+the town; almond eyes, lids that dropped like curtains, lashes like a
+paint-brush, a face with an oval to drive Raffaelle mad, a skin of the
+most delicious coloring, tints well-blended, velvety! and hands, oh!--”
+
+“They weren’t made of butter like those of the David school,” put in
+Mistigris.
+
+“You are always lugging in your painting,” cried Georges.
+
+“La, la!” retorted Mistigris; “‘an ounce o’ paint is worth a pound of
+swagger.’”
+
+“And such a costume! pure Greek!” continued Schinner. “Conflagration of
+soul! you understand? Well, I questioned my Diafoirus; and he told me
+that my neighbor was named Zena. Changed my linen. The husband, an old
+villain, in order to marry Zena, paid three hundred thousand francs to
+her father and mother, so celebrated was the beauty of that beautiful
+creature, who was truly the most beautiful girl in all Dalmatia,
+Illyria, Adriatica, and other places. In those parts they buy their
+wives without seeing them--”
+
+“I shall not go _there_,” said Pere Leger.
+
+“There are nights when my sleep is still illuminated by the eyes of
+Zena,” continued Schinner. “The husband was sixty-nine years of age,
+and jealous! not as a tiger, for they say of a tiger, ‘jealous as a
+Dalmatian’; and my man was worse than A Dalmatian, one Dalmatian,--he
+was three and a half Dalmatians at the very least; he was an Uscoque,
+tricoque, archicoque in a bicoque of a paltry little place like Zara--”
+
+“Horrid fellow, and ‘horrider bellow,’” put in Mistigris.
+
+“Ha! good,” said Georges, laughing.
+
+“After being a corsair, and probably a pirate, he thought no more
+of spitting a Christian on his dagger than I did of spitting on the
+ground,” continued Schinner. “So that was how the land lay. The old
+wretch had millions, and was hideous with the loss of an ear some pacha
+had cut off, and the want of an eye left I don’t know where. ‘Never,’
+said the little Diafoirus, ‘never does he leave his wife, never for
+a second.’ ‘Perhaps she’ll want your services, and I could go in your
+clothes; that’s a trick that has great success in our theatres,’ I told
+him. Well, it would take too long to tell you all the delicious moments
+of that lifetime--to wit, three days--which I passed exchanging looks
+with Zena, and changing linen every day. It was all the more violently
+titillating because the slightest motion was significant and dangerous.
+At last it must have dawned upon Zena’s mind that none but a Frenchman
+and an artist was daring enough to make eyes at her in the midst of the
+perils by which she was surrounded; and as she hated her hideous pirate,
+she answered my glances with delightful ogles fit to raise a man to
+the summit of Paradise without pulleys. I attained to the height of Don
+Quixote; I rose to exaltation! and I cried: ‘The monster may kill me,
+but I’ll go, I’ll go!’ I gave up landscape and studied the ignoble
+dwelling of the Uscoque. That night, changed linen, and put on the most
+perfumed shirt I had; then I crossed the street, and entered--”
+
+“The house?” cried Oscar.
+
+“The house?” echoed Georges.
+
+“The house,” said Schinner.
+
+“Well, you’re a bold dog,” cried farmer Leger. “I should have kept out
+of it myself.”
+
+“Especially as you could never have got through the doorway,” replied
+Schinner. “So in I went,” he resumed, “and I found two hands stretched
+out to meet mine. I said nothing, for those hands, soft as the peel of
+an onion, enjoined me to silence. A whisper breathed into my ear, ‘He
+sleeps!’ Then, as we were sure that nobody would see us, we went to
+walk, Zena and I, upon the ramparts, but accompanied, if you please, by
+a duenna, as hideous as an old portress, who didn’t leave us any more
+than our shadow; and I couldn’t persuade Madame Pirate to send her away.
+The next night we did the same thing, and again I wanted to get rid of
+the old woman, but Zena resisted. As my sweet love spoke only Greek, and
+I Venetian, we couldn’t understand each other, and so we quarrelled.
+I said to myself, in changing linen, ‘As sure as fate, the next time
+there’ll be no old woman, and we can make it all up with the language of
+love.’ Instead of which, fate willed that that old woman should save
+my life! You’ll hear how. The weather was fine, and, not to create
+suspicion, I took a turn at landscape,--this was after our quarrel was
+made up, you understand. After walking along the ramparts for some time,
+I was coming tranquilly home with my hands in my pockets, when I saw the
+street crowded with people. Such a crowd! like that for an execution. It
+fell upon me; I was seized, garroted, gagged, and guarded by the police.
+Ah! you don’t know--and I hope you never may know--what it is to be
+taken for a murderer by a maddened populace which stones you and howls
+after you from end to end of the principal street of a town, shouting
+for your death! Ah! those eyes were so many flames, all mouths were
+a single curse, while from the volume of that burning hatred rose the
+fearful cry: ‘To death! to death! down with the murderer!’”
+
+“So those Dalmatians spoke our language, did they?” said the count. “I
+observe you relate the scene as if it happened yesterday.”
+
+Schinner was nonplussed.
+
+“Riot has but one language,” said the astute statesman Mistigris.
+
+“Well,” continued Schinner, “when I was brought into court in presence
+of the magistrates, I learned that the cursed corsair was dead, poisoned
+by Zena. I’d liked to have changed linen then. Give you my word, I knew
+nothing of _that_ melodrama. It seems the Greek girl put opium (a great
+many poppies, as monsieur told us, grow about there) in the pirate’s
+grog, just to make him sleep soundly and leave her free for a little
+walk with me, and the old duenna, unfortunate creature, made a mistake
+and trebled the dose. The immense fortune of that cursed pirate was
+really the cause of all my Zena’s troubles. But she explained matters
+so ingenuously that I, for one, was released with an injunction from the
+mayor and the Austrian commissary of police to go back to Rome. Zena,
+who let the heirs of the Uscoque and the judges get most of the old
+villain’s wealth, was let off with two years’ seclusion in a convent,
+where she still is. I am going back there some day to paint her
+portrait; for in a few years, you know, all this will be forgotten. Such
+are the follies one commits at eighteen!”
+
+“And you left me without a sou in the locanda at Venice,” said
+Mistigris. “And I had to get from Venice to Rome by painting portraits
+for five francs apiece, which they didn’t pay me. However, that was my
+halcyon time. I don’t regret it.”
+
+“You can imagine the reflections that came to me in that Dalmatian
+prison, thrown there without protection, having to answer to Austrians
+and Dalmatians, and in danger of losing my head because I went twice to
+walk with a woman. There’s ill-luck, with a vengeance!”
+
+“Did all that really happen to you?” said Oscar, naively.
+
+“Why shouldn’t it happen to him, inasmuch as it had already happened
+during the French occupation of Illyria to one of our most gallant
+officers of artillery?” said the count, slyly.
+
+“And you believed that artillery officer?” said Mistigris, as slyly to
+the count.
+
+“Is that all?” asked Oscar.
+
+“Of course he can’t tell you that they cut his head off,--how could he?”
+ said Mistigris. “‘Dead schinners tell no tales.’”
+
+“Monsieur, are there farms in that country?” asked Pere Leger. “What do
+they cultivate?”
+
+“Maraschino,” replied Mistigris,--“a plant that grows to the height of
+the lips, and produces a liqueur which goes by that name.”
+
+“Ah!” said Pere Leger.
+
+“I only stayed three days in the town and fifteen in prison,” said
+Schinner, “so I saw nothing; not even the fields where they grow the
+maraschino.”
+
+“They are fooling you,” said Georges to the farmer. “Maraschino comes in
+cases.”
+
+“‘Romances alter cases,’” remarked Mistigris.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. THE DRAMA BEGINS
+
+
+Pierrotin’s vehicle was now going down the steep incline of the valley
+of Saint-Brice to the inn which stands in the middle of the large
+village of that name, where Pierrotin was in the habit of stopping an
+hour to breathe his horses, give them their oats, and water them. It was
+now about half-past one o’clock.
+
+“Ha! here’s Pere Leger,” cried the inn-keeper, when the coach pulled up
+before the door. “Do you breakfast?”
+
+“Always once a day,” said the fat farmer; “and I’ll break a crust here
+and now.”
+
+“Give us a good breakfast,” cried Georges, twirling his cane in a
+cavalier manner which excited the admiration of poor Oscar.
+
+But that admiration was turned to jealousy when he saw the gay
+adventurer pull out from a side-pocket a small straw case, from which
+he selected a light-colored cigar, which he proceeded to smoke on the
+threshold of the inn door while waiting for breakfast.
+
+“Do you smoke?” he asked of Oscar.
+
+“Sometimes,” replied the ex-schoolboy, swelling out his little chest and
+assuming a jaunty air.
+
+Georges presented the open case to Oscar and Schinner.
+
+“Phew!” said the great painter; “ten-sous cigars!”
+
+“The remains of those I brought back from Spain,” said the adventurer.
+“Do you breakfast here?”
+
+“No,” said the artist. “I am expected at the chateau. Besides, I took
+something at the Lion d’Argent just before starting.”
+
+“And you?” said Georges to Oscar.
+
+“I have breakfasted,” replied Oscar.
+
+Oscar would have given ten years of his life for boots and straps to his
+trousers. He sneezed, he coughed, he spat, and swallowed the smoke with
+ill-disguised grimaces.
+
+“You don’t know how to smoke,” said Schinner; “look at me!”
+
+With a motionless face Schinner breathed in the smoke of his cigar
+and let it out through his nose without the slightest contraction of
+feature. Then he took another whiff, kept the smoke in his throat,
+removed the cigar from his lips, and allowed the smoke slowly and
+gracefully to escape them.
+
+“There, young man,” said the great painter.
+
+“Here, young man, here’s another way; watch this,” said Georges,
+imitating Schinner, but swallowing the smoke and exhaling none.
+
+“And my parents believed they had educated me!” thought Oscar,
+endeavoring to smoke with better grace.
+
+But his nausea was so strong that he was thankful when Mistigris filched
+his cigar, remarking, as he smoked it with evident satisfaction, “You
+haven’t any contagious diseases, I hope.”
+
+Oscar in reply would fain have punched his head.
+
+“How he does spend money!” he said, looking at Colonel Georges. “Eight
+francs for Alicante and the cheese-cakes; forty sous for cigars; and his
+breakfast will cost him--”
+
+“Ten francs at least,” replied Mistigris; “but that’s how things are.
+‘Sharp stomachs make short purses.’”
+
+“Come, Pere Leger, let us drink a bottle of Bordeaux together,” said
+Georges to the farmer.
+
+“Twenty francs for his breakfast!” cried Oscar; “in all, more than
+thirty-odd francs since we started!”
+
+Killed by a sense of his inferiority, Oscar sat down on a stone post,
+lost in a revery which did not allow him to perceive that his trousers,
+drawn up by the effect of his position, showed the point of junction
+between the old top of his stocking and the new “footing,”--his mother’s
+handiwork.
+
+“We are brothers in socks,” said Mistigris, pulling up his own trousers
+sufficiently to show an effect of the same kind,--“‘By the footing,
+Hercules.’”
+
+The count, who overheard this, laughed as he stood with folded arms
+under the porte-cochere, a little behind the other travellers. However
+nonsensical these lads might be, the grave statesman envied their very
+follies; he liked their bragging and enjoyed the fun of their lively
+chatter.
+
+“Well, are you to have Les Moulineaux? for I know you went to Paris to
+get the money for the purchase,” said the inn-keeper to Pere Leger, whom
+he had just taken to the stables to see a horse he wanted to sell to
+him. “It will be queer if you manage to fleece a peer of France and a
+minister of State like the Comte de Serizy.”
+
+The person thus alluded to showed no sign upon his face as he turned to
+look at the farmer.
+
+“I’ve done for him,” replied Pere Leger, in a low voice.
+
+“Good! I like to see those nobles fooled. If you should want twenty
+thousand francs or so, I’ll lend them to you--But Francois, the
+conductor of Touchard’s six o’clock coach, told me that Monsieur
+Margueron was invited by the Comte de Serizy to dine with him to-day at
+Presles.”
+
+“That was the plan of his Excellency, but we had our own little ways of
+thwarting it,” said the farmer, laughing.
+
+“The count could appoint Monsieur Margueron’s son, and you haven’t any
+place to give,--remember that,” said the inn-keeper.
+
+“Of course I do; but if the count has the ministry on his side, I have
+King Louis XVIII.,” said Pere Leger, in a low voice. “Forty thousand of
+his pictures on coin of the realm given to Moreau will enable me to buy
+Les Moulineaux for two hundred and sixty thousand, money down, before
+Monsieur de Serizy can do so. When he finds the sale is made, he’ll
+be glad enough to buy the farm for three hundred and sixty thousand,
+instead of letting me cut it up in small lots right in the heart of his
+property.”
+
+“Well done, bourgeois!” cried the inn-keeper.
+
+“Don’t you think that’s good play?” said Leger.
+
+“Besides,” said the inn-keeper, “the farm is really worth that to him.”
+
+“Yes; Les Moulineaux brings in to-day six thousand francs in rental.
+I’ll take another lease of it at seven thousand five hundred for
+eighteen years. Therefore it is really an investment at more than two
+and a half per cent. The count can’t complain of that. In order not to
+involve Moreau, he is himself to propose me as tenant and farmer; it
+gives him a look of acting for his master’s interests by finding him
+nearly three per cent for his money, and a tenant who will pay well.”
+
+“How much will Moreau make, in all?”
+
+“Well, if the count gives him ten thousand francs for the transaction
+the matter will bring him fifty thousand,--and well-earned, too.”
+
+“After all, the count, so they tell me, doesn’t like Presles. And
+then he is so rich, what does it matter what it costs him?” said the
+inn-keeper. “I have never seen him, myself.”
+
+“Nor I,” said Pere Leger. “But he must be intending to live there,
+or why should he spend two hundred thousand francs in restoring the
+chateau? It is as fine now as the King’s own palace.”
+
+“Well, well,” said the inn-keeper, “it was high time for Moreau to
+feather his nest.”
+
+“Yes, for if the masters come there,” replied Leger, “they won’t keep
+their eyes in their pockets.”
+
+The count lost not a word of this conversation, which was held in a low
+voice, but not in a whisper.
+
+“Here I have actually found the proofs I was going down there to seek,”
+ he thought, looking at the fat farmer as he entered the kitchen. “But
+perhaps,” he added, “it is only a scheme; Moreau may not have listened
+to it.”
+
+So unwilling was he to believe that his steward could lend himself to
+such a conspiracy.
+
+Pierrotin here came out to water his horses. The count, thinking that
+the driver would probably breakfast with the farmer and the inn-keeper,
+feared some thoughtless indiscretion.
+
+“All these people combine against us,” he thought; “it is allowable to
+baffle them--Pierrotin,” he said in a low voice as the man passed him,
+“I promised you ten louis to keep my secret; but if you continue to
+conceal my name (and remember, I shall know if you pronounce it, or make
+the slightest sign that reveals it to any one, no matter who, here or at
+Isle-Adam, before to-night), I will give you to-morrow morning, on your
+return trip, the thousand francs you need to pay for your new coach.
+Therefore, by way of precaution,” added the count, striking Pierrotin,
+who was pale with happiness, on the shoulder, “don’t go in there to
+breakfast; stay with your horses.”
+
+“Monsieur le comte, I understand you; don’t be afraid! it relates to
+Pere Leger, of course.”
+
+“It relates to every one,” replied the count.
+
+“Make yourself easy.--Come, hurry,” said Pierrotin, a few moments later,
+putting his head into the kitchen. “We are late. Pere Leger, you know
+there’s a hill to climb; I’m not hungry, and I’ll drive on slowly; you
+can soon overtake me,--it will do you good to walk a bit.”
+
+“What a hurry you are in, Pierrotin!” said the inn-keeper. “Can’t you
+stay and breakfast? The colonel here pays for the wine at fifty sous,
+and has ordered a bottle of champagne.”
+
+“I can’t. I’ve got a fish I must deliver by three o’clock for a great
+dinner at Stors; there’s no fooling with customers, or fishes, either.”
+
+“Very good,” said Pere Leger to the inn-keeper. “You can harness that
+horse you want to sell me into the cabriolet; we’ll breakfast in peace
+and overtake Pierrotin, and I can judge of the beast as we go along. We
+can go three in your jolter.”
+
+To the count’s surprise, Pierrotin himself rebridled the horses.
+Schinner and Mistigris had walked on. Scarcely had Pierrotin overtaken
+the two artists and was mounting the hill from which Ecouen, the steeple
+of Mesnil, and the forests that surround that most beautiful region,
+came in sight, when the gallop of a horse and the jingling of a vehicle
+announced the coming of Pere Leger and the grandson of Czerni-Georges,
+who were soon restored to their places in the coucou.
+
+As Pierrotin drove down the narrow road to Moisselles, Georges, who had
+so far not ceased to talk with the farmer of the beauty of the hostess
+at Saint-Brice, suddenly exclaimed: “Upon my word, this landscape is not
+so bad, great painter, is it?”
+
+“Pooh! you who have seen the East and Spain can’t really admire it.”
+
+“I’ve two cigars left! If no one objects, will you help me finish them,
+Schinner? the little young man there seems to have found a whiff or two
+enough for him.”
+
+Pere Leger and the count kept silence, which passed for consent.
+
+Oscar, furious at being called a “little young man,” remarked, as the
+other two were lighting their cigars:
+
+“I am not the aide-de-camp of Mina, monsieur, and I have not yet been to
+the East, but I shall probably go there. The career to which my family
+destine me will spare me, I trust, the annoyances of travelling in a
+coucou before I reach your present age. When I once become a personage I
+shall know how to maintain my station.”
+
+“‘Et caetera punctum!’” crowed Mistigris, imitating the hoarse voice
+of a young cock; which made Oscar’s deliverance all the more absurd,
+because he had just reached the age when the beard sprouts and the voice
+breaks. “‘What a chit for chat!’” added the rapin.
+
+“Your family, young man, destine you to some career, do they?” said
+Georges. “Might I ask what it is?”
+
+“Diplomacy,” replied Oscar.
+
+Three bursts of laughter came from Mistigris, the great painter, and the
+farmer. The count himself could not help smiling. Georges was perfectly
+grave.
+
+“By Allah!” he exclaimed, “I see nothing to laugh at in that. Though it
+seems to me, young man, that your respectable mother is, at the present
+moment, not exactly in the social sphere of an ambassadress. She carried
+a handbag worthy of the utmost respect, and wore shoe-strings which--”
+
+“My mother, monsieur!” exclaimed Oscar, in a tone of indignation. “That
+was the person in charge of our household.”
+
+“‘Our household’ is a very aristocratic term,” remarked the count.
+
+“Kings have households,” replied Oscar, proudly.
+
+A look from Georges repressed the desire to laugh which took possession
+of everybody; he contrived to make Mistigris and the painter understand
+that it was necessary to manage Oscar cleverly in order to work this new
+mine of amusement.
+
+“Monsieur is right,” said the great Schinner to the count, motioning
+towards Oscar. “Well-bred people always talk of their ‘households’;
+it is only common persons like ourselves who say ‘home.’ For a man so
+covered with decorations--”
+
+“‘Nunc my eye, nunc alii,’” whispered Mistigris.
+
+“--you seem to know little of the language of the courts. I ask your
+future protection, Excellency,” added Schinner, turning to Oscar.
+
+“I congratulate myself on having travelled with three such distinguished
+men,” said the count,--“a painter already famous, a future general, and
+a young diplomatist who may some day recover Belgium for France.”
+
+Having committed the odious crime of repudiating his mother, Oscar,
+furious from a sense that his companions were laughing at him, now
+resolved, at any cost, to make them pay attention to him.
+
+“‘All is not gold that glitters,’” he began, his eyes flaming.
+
+“That’s not it,” said Mistigris. “‘All is not old that titters.’ You’ll
+never get on in diplomacy if you don’t know your proverbs better than
+that.”
+
+“I may not know proverbs, but I know my way--”
+
+“It must be far,” said Georges, “for I saw that person in charge of
+your household give you provisions enough for an ocean voyage: rolls,
+chocolate--”
+
+“A special kind of bread and chocolate, yes, monsieur,” returned Oscar;
+“my stomach is much too delicate to digest the victuals of a tavern.”
+
+“‘Victuals’ is a word as delicate and refined as your stomach,” said
+Georges.
+
+“Ah! I like that word ‘victuals,’” cried the great painter.
+
+“The word is all the fashion in the best society,” said Mistigris. “I
+use it myself at the cafe of the Black Hen.”
+
+“Your tutor is, doubtless, some celebrated professor, isn’t
+he?--Monsieur Andrieux of the Academie Francaise, or Monsieur
+Royer-Collard?” asked Schinner.
+
+“My tutor is or was the Abbe Loraux, now vicar of Saint-Sulpice,”
+ replied Oscar, recollecting the name of the confessor at his school.
+
+“Well, you were right to take a private tutor,” said Mistigris. “‘Tuto,
+tutor, celeritus, and jocund.’ Of course, you will reward him well, your
+abbe?”
+
+“Undoubtedly he will be made a bishop some day,” said Oscar.
+
+“By your family influence?” inquired Georges gravely.
+
+“We shall probably contribute to his rise, for the Abbe Frayssinous is
+constantly at our house.”
+
+“Ah! you know the Abbe Frayssinous?” asked the count.
+
+“He is under obligations to my father,” answered Oscar.
+
+“Are you on your way to your estate?” asked Georges.
+
+“No, monsieur; but I am able to say where I am going, if others are not.
+I am going to the Chateau de Presles, to the Comte de Serizy.”
+
+“The devil! are you going to Presles?” cried Schinner, turning as red as
+a cherry.
+
+“So you know his Excellency the Comte de Serizy?” said Georges.
+
+Pere Leger turned round to look at Oscar with a stupefied air.
+
+“Is Monsieur de Serizy at Presles?” he said.
+
+“Apparently, as I am going there,” replied Oscar.
+
+“Do you often see the count,” asked Monsieur de Serizy.
+
+“Often,” replied Oscar. “I am a comrade of his son, who is about my age,
+nineteen; we ride together on horseback nearly every day.”
+
+“‘Aut Caesar, aut Serizy,’” said Mistigris, sententiously.
+
+Pierrotin and Pere Leger exchanged winks on hearing this statement.
+
+“Really,” said the count to Oscar, “I am delighted to meet with a young
+man who can tell me about that personage. I want his influence on a
+rather serious matter, although it would cost him nothing to oblige me.
+It concerns a claim I wish to press on the American government. I should
+be glad to obtain information about Monsieur de Serizy.”
+
+“Oh! if you want to succeed,” replied Oscar, with a knowing look, “don’t
+go to him, but go to his wife; he is madly in love with her; no one
+knows more than I do about that; but she can’t endure him.”
+
+“Why not?” said Georges.
+
+“The count has a skin disease which makes him hideous. Doctor Albert has
+tried in vain to cure it. The count would give half his fortune if he
+had a chest like mine,” said Oscar, swelling himself out. “He lives
+a lonely life in his own house; gets up very early in the morning
+and works from three to eight o’clock; after eight he takes his
+remedies,--sulphur-baths, steam-baths, and such things. His valet bakes
+him in a sort of iron box--for he is always in hopes of getting cured.”
+
+“If he is such a friend of the King as they say he is, why doesn’t he
+get his Majesty to touch him?” asked Georges.
+
+“The count has lately promised thirty thousand francs to a celebrated
+Scotch doctor who is coming over to treat him,” continued Oscar.
+
+“Then his wife can’t be blamed if she finds better--” said Schinner, but
+he did not finish his sentence.
+
+“I should say so!” resumed Oscar. “The poor man is so shrivelled and old
+you would take him for eighty! He’s as dry as parchment, and, unluckily
+for him, he feels his position.”
+
+“Most men would,” said Pere Leger.
+
+“He adores his wife and dares not find fault with her,” pursued Oscar,
+rejoicing to have found a topic to which they listened. “He plays scenes
+with her which would make you die of laughing,--exactly like Arnolphe in
+Moliere’s comedy.”
+
+The count, horror-stricken, looked at Pierrotin, who, finding that the
+count said nothing, concluded that Madame Clapart’s son was telling
+falsehoods.
+
+“So, monsieur,” continued Oscar, “if you want the count’s influence, I
+advise you to apply to the Marquis d’Aiglemont. If you get that former
+adorer of Madame de Serizy on your side, you will win husband and wife
+at one stroke.”
+
+“Look here!” said the painter, “you seem to have seen the count without
+his clothes; are you his valet?”
+
+“His valet!” cried Oscar.
+
+“Hang it! people don’t tell such things about their friends in public
+conveyances,” exclaimed Mistigris. “As for me, I’m not listening to you;
+I’m deaf: ‘discretion plays the better part of adder.’”
+
+“‘A poet is nasty and not fit,’ and so is a tale-bearer,” cried
+Schinner.
+
+“Great painter,” said Georges, sententiously, “learn this: you can’t
+say harm of people you don’t know. Now the little one here has proved,
+indubitably, that he knows his Serizy by heart. If he had told us about
+the countess, perhaps--?”
+
+“Stop! not a word about the Comtesse de Serizy, young men,” cried the
+count. “I am a friend of her brother, the Marquis de Ronquerolles, and
+whoever attempts to speak disparagingly of the countess must answer to
+me.”
+
+“Monsieur is right,” cried the painter; “no man should blaguer women.”
+
+“God, Honor, and the Ladies! I believe in that melodrama,” said
+Mistigris.
+
+“I don’t know the guerrilla chieftain, Mina, but I know the Keeper of
+the Seals,” continued the count, looking at Georges; “and though I don’t
+wear my decorations,” he added, looking at the painter, “I prevent those
+who do not deserve them from obtaining any. And finally, let me say that
+I know so many persons that I even know Monsieur Grindot, the architect
+of Presles. Pierrotin, stop at the next inn; I want to get out a
+moment.”
+
+Pierrotin hurried his horses through the village street of Moisselles,
+at the end of which was the inn where all travellers stopped. This short
+distance was done in silence.
+
+“Where is that young fool going?” asked the count, drawing Pierrotin
+into the inn-yard.
+
+“To your steward. He is the son of a poor lady who lives in the rue de
+la Cerisaie, to whom I often carry fruit, and game, and poultry from
+Presles. She is a Madame Husson.”
+
+“Who is that man?” inquired Pere Leger of Pierrotin when the count had
+left him.
+
+“Faith, I don’t know,” replied Pierrotin; “this is the first time I
+have driven him. I shouldn’t be surprised if he was that prince who owns
+Maffliers. He has just told me to leave him on the road near there; he
+doesn’t want to go on to Isle-Adam.”
+
+“Pierrotin thinks he is the master of Maffliers,” said Pere Leger,
+addressing Georges when he got back into the coach.
+
+The three young fellows were now as dull as thieves caught in the act;
+they dared not look at each other, and were evidently considering the
+consequences of their fibs.
+
+“This is what is called ‘suffering for license sake,’” said Mistigris.
+
+“You see I did know the count,” said Oscar.
+
+“Possibly. But you’ll never be an ambassador,” replied Georges. “When
+people want to talk in public conveyances, they ought to be careful,
+like me, to talk without saying anything.”
+
+“That’s what speech is for,” remarked Mistigris, by way of conclusion.
+
+The count returned to his seat and the coucou rolled on amid the deepest
+silence.
+
+“Well, my friends,” said the count, when they reached the Carreau woods,
+“here we all are, as silent as if we were going to the scaffold.”
+
+“‘Silence gives content,’” muttered Mistigris.
+
+“The weather is fine,” said Georges.
+
+“What place is that?” said Oscar, pointing to the chateau de
+Franconville, which produces a fine effect at that particular spot,
+backed, as it is, by the noble forest of Saint-Martin.
+
+“How is it,” cried the count, “that you, who say you go so often to
+Presles, do not know Franconville?”
+
+“Monsieur knows men, not castles,” said Mistigris.
+
+“Budding diplomatists have so much else to take their minds,” remarked
+Georges.
+
+“Be so good as to remember my name,” replied Oscar, furious. “I am Oscar
+Husson, and ten years hence I shall be famous.”
+
+After that speech, uttered with bombastic assumption, Oscar flung
+himself back in his corner.
+
+“Husson of what, of where?” asked Mistigris.
+
+“It is a great family,” replied the count. “Husson de la Cerisaie;
+monsieur was born beneath the steps of the Imperial throne.”
+
+Oscar colored crimson to the roots of his hair, and was penetrated
+through and through with a dreadful foreboding.
+
+They were now about to descend the steep hill of La Cave, at the foot of
+which, in a narrow valley, flanked by the forest of Saint-Martin, stands
+the magnificent chateau of Presles.
+
+“Messieurs,” said the count, “I wish you every good fortune in your
+various careers. Monsieur le colonel, make your peace with the King
+of France; the Czerni-Georges ought not to snub the Bourbons. I have
+nothing to wish for you, my dear Monsieur Schinner; your fame is already
+won, and nobly won by splendid work. But you are much to be feared in
+domestic life, and I, being a married man, dare not invite you to my
+house. As for Monsieur Husson, he needs no protection; he possesses the
+secrets of statesmen and can make them tremble. Monsieur Leger is about
+to pluck the Comte de Serizy, and I can only exhort him to do it with a
+firm hand. Pierrotin, put me out here, and pick me up at the same place
+to-morrow,” added the count, who then left the coach and took a path
+through the woods, leaving his late companions confused and bewildered.
+
+“He must be that count who has hired Franconville; that’s the path to
+it,” said Leger.
+
+“If ever again,” said the false Schinner, “I am caught blague-ing in
+a public coach, I’ll fight a duel with myself. It was your fault,
+Mistigris,” giving his rapin a tap on the head.
+
+“All I did was to help you out, and follow you to Venice,” said
+Mistigris; “but that’s always the way, ‘Fortune belabors the slave.’”
+
+“Let me tell you,” said Georges to his neighbor Oscar, “that if, by
+chance, that was the Comte de Serizy, I wouldn’t be in your skin for a
+good deal, healthy as you think it.”
+
+Oscar, remembering his mother’s injunctions, which these words recalled
+to his mind, turned pale and came to his senses.
+
+“Here you are, messieurs!” cried Pierrotin, pulling up at a fine iron
+gate.
+
+“Here we are--where?” said the painter, and Georges, and Oscar all at
+once.
+
+“Well, well!” exclaimed Pierrotin, “if that doesn’t beat all! Ah ca,
+monsieurs, have none of you been here before? Why, this is the chateau
+de Presles.”
+
+“Oh, yes; all right, friend,” said Georges, recovering his audacity.
+“But I happen to be going on to Les Moulineaux,” he added, not wishing
+his companions to know that he was really going to the chateau.
+
+“You don’t say so? Then you are coming to me,” said Pere Leger.
+
+“How so?”
+
+“Why, I’m the farmer at Moulineaux. Hey, colonel, what brings you
+there?”
+
+“To taste your butter,” said Georges, pulling out his portfolio.
+
+“Pierrotin,” said Oscar, “leave my things at the steward’s. I am going
+straight to the chateau.”
+
+Whereupon Oscar plunged into a narrow path, not knowing, in the least,
+where he was going.
+
+“Hi! Monsieur l’ambassadeur,” cried Pere Leger, “that’s the way to the
+forest; if you really want to get to the chateau, go through the little
+gate.”
+
+Thus compelled to enter, Oscar disappeared into the grand court-yard.
+While Pere Leger stood watching Oscar, Georges, utterly confounded
+by the discovery that the farmer was the present occupant of Les
+Moulineaux, has slipped away so adroitly that when the fat countryman
+looked round for his colonel there was no sign of him.
+
+The iron gates opened at Pierrotin’s demand, and he proudly drove in to
+deposit with the concierge the thousand and one utensils belonging to
+the great Schinner. Oscar was thunderstruck when he became aware that
+Mistigris and his master, the witnesses of his bravado, were to be
+installed in the chateau itself. In ten minutes Pierrotin had discharged
+the various packages of the painter, the bundles of Oscar Husson, and
+the pretty little leather portmanteau, which he took from its nest of
+hay and confided mysteriously to the wife of the concierge. Then he
+drove out of the courtyard, cracking his whip, and took the road that
+led through the forest to Isle-Adam, his face beaming with the sly
+expression of a peasant who calculates his profits. Nothing was lacking
+now to his happiness; on the morrow he would have his thousand francs,
+and, as a consequence, his magnificent new coach.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. THE MOREAU INTERIOR
+
+
+Oscar, somewhat abashed, was skulking behind a clump of trees in the
+centre of the court-yard, and watching to see what became of his two
+road-companions, when Monsieur Moreau suddenly came out upon the portico
+from what was called the guard-room. He was dressed in a long blue
+overcoat which came to his heels, breeches of yellowish leather and
+top-boots, and in his hand he carried a riding-whip.
+
+“Ah! my boy, so here you are? How is the dear mamma?” he said, taking
+Oscar by the hand. “Good-day, messieurs,” he added to Mistigris and his
+master, who then came forward. “You are, no doubt, the two painters whom
+Monsieur Grindot, the architect, told me to expect.”
+
+He whistled twice at the end of his whip; the concierge came.
+
+“Take these gentlemen to rooms 14 and 15. Madame Moreau will give you
+the keys. Go with them to show the way; make fires there, if necessary,
+and take up all their things. I have orders from Monsieur le comte,”
+ he added, addressing the two young men, “to invite you to my table,
+messieurs; we dine at five, as in Paris. If you like hunting, you will
+find plenty to amuse you; I have a license from the Eaux et Forets;
+and we hunt over twelve thousand acres of forest, not counting our own
+domain.”
+
+Oscar, the painter, and Mistigris, all more or less subdued, exchanged
+glances, but Mistigris, faithful to himself, remarked in a low tone,
+“‘Veni, vidi, cecidi,--I came, I saw, I slaughtered.’”
+
+Oscar followed the steward, who led him along at a rapid pace through
+the park.
+
+“Jacques,” said Moreau to one of his children whom they met, “run in and
+tell your mother that little Husson has come, and say to her that I am
+obliged to go to Les Moulineaux for a moment.”
+
+The steward, then about fifty years old, was a dark man of medium
+height, and seemed stern. His bilious complexion, to which country
+habits had added a certain violent coloring, conveyed, at first sight,
+the impression of a nature which was other than his own. His blue
+eyes and a large crow-beaked nose gave him an air that was the more
+threatening because his eyes were placed too close together. But his
+large lips, the outline of his face, and the easy good-humor of his
+manner soon showed that his nature was a kindly one. Abrupt in speech
+and decided in tone, he impressed Oscar immensely by the force of his
+penetration, inspired, no doubt, by the affection which he felt for the
+boy. Trained by his mother to magnify the steward, Oscar had always felt
+himself very small in Moreau’s presence; but on reaching Presles a new
+sensation came over him, as if he expected some harm from this fatherly
+figure, his only protector.
+
+“Well, my Oscar, you don’t look pleased at getting here,” said the
+steward. “And yet you’ll find plenty of amusement; you shall learn to
+ride on horseback, and shoot, and hunt.”
+
+“I don’t know any of those things,” said Oscar, stupidly.
+
+“But I brought you here to learn them.”
+
+“Mamma told me only to stay two weeks because of Madame Moreau.”
+
+“Oh! we’ll see about that,” replied Moreau, rather wounded that his
+conjugal authority was doubted.
+
+Moreau’s youngest son, an active, strapping lad of twelve, here ran up.
+
+“Come,” said his father, “take Oscar to your mother.”
+
+He himself went rapidly along the shortest path to the gamekeeper’s
+house, which was situated between the park and the forest.
+
+The pavilion, or lodge, in which the count had established his steward,
+was built a few years before the Revolution. It stood in the centre of
+a large garden, one wall of which adjoined the court-yard of the stables
+and offices of the chateau itself. Formerly its chief entrance was on
+the main road to the village. But after the count’s father bought the
+building, he closed that entrance and united the place with his own
+property.
+
+The house, built of freestone, in the style of the period of Louis XV.
+(it is enough to say that its exterior decoration consisted of a stone
+drapery beneath the windows, as in the colonnades of the Place Louis
+XV., the flutings of which were stiff and ungainly), had on the
+ground-floor a fine salon opening into a bedroom, and a dining-room
+connected with a billiard-room. These rooms, lying parallel to one
+another, were separated by a staircase, in front of which was a sort of
+peristyle which formed an entrance-hall, on which the two suits of rooms
+on either side opened. The kitchen was beneath the dining-room, for the
+whole building was raised ten steps from the ground level.
+
+By placing her own bedroom on the first floor above the ground-floor,
+Madame Moreau was able to transform the chamber adjoining the salon into
+a boudoir. These two rooms were richly furnished with beautiful pieces
+culled from the rare old furniture of the chateau. The salon, hung
+with blue and white damask, formerly the curtains of the state-bed, was
+draped with ample portieres and window curtains lined with white silk.
+Pictures, evidently from old panels, plant-stands, various pretty
+articles of modern upholstery, handsome lamps, and a rare old cut-glass
+chandelier, gave a grandiose appearance to the room. The carpet was a
+Persian rug. The boudoir, wholly modern, and furnished entirely after
+Madame Moreau’s own taste, was arranged in imitation of a tent, with
+ropes of blue silk on a gray background. The classic divan was there, of
+course, with its pillows and footstools. The plant-stands, taken care of
+by the head-gardener of Presles, rejoiced the eye with their pyramids of
+bloom. The dining-room and billiard-room were furnished in mahogany.
+
+Around the house the steward’s wife had laid out a beautiful garden,
+carefully cultivated, which opened into the great park. Groups of choice
+parks hid the offices and stables. To improve the entrance by which
+visitors came to see her, she had substituted a handsome iron gateway
+for the shabby railing, which she discarded.
+
+The dependence in which the situation of their dwelling placed the
+Moreaus, was thus adroitly concealed, and they seemed all the more like
+rich and independent persons taking care of the property of a friend,
+because neither the count nor the countess ever came to Presles to take
+down their pretensions. Moreover, the perquisites granted by Monsieur de
+Serizy allowed them to live in the midst of that abundance which is
+the luxury of country life. Milk, eggs, poultry, game, fruits, flowers,
+forage, vegetables, wood, the steward and his wife used in profusion,
+buying absolutely nothing but butcher’s-meat, wines, and the colonial
+supplies required by their life of luxury. The poultry-maid baked their
+bread; and of late years Moreau had paid his butcher with pigs from the
+farm, after reserving those he needed for his own use.
+
+On one occasion, the countess, always kind and good to her former maid,
+gave her, as a souvenir perhaps, a little travelling-carriage, the
+fashion of which was out of date. Moreau had it repainted, and now drove
+his wife about the country with two good horses which belonged to the
+farm. Besides these horses, Moreau had his own saddle-horse. He did
+enough farming on the count’s property to keep the horses and maintain
+his servants. He stacked three hundred tons of excellent hay, but
+accounted for only one hundred, making use of a vague permission once
+granted by the count. He kept his poultry-yard, pigeon-cotes, and cattle
+at the cost of the estate, but the manure of the stables was used by
+the count’s gardeners. All these little stealings had some ostensible
+excuse.
+
+Madame Moreau had taken into her service a daughter of one of the
+gardeners, who was first her maid and afterwards her cook. The
+poultry-game, also the dairy-maid, assisted in the work of the
+household; and the steward had hired a discharged soldier to groom the
+horses and do the heavy labor.
+
+At Nerville, Chaumont, Maffliers, Nointel, and other places of the
+neighborhood, the handsome wife of the steward was received by
+persons who either did not know, or pretended not to know her previous
+condition. Moreau did services to many persons. He induced his master to
+agree to certain things which seem trifles in Paris, but are really of
+immense importance in the country. After bringing about the appointment
+of a certain “juge de paix” at Beaumont and also at Isle-Adam, he had,
+in the same year, prevented the dismissal of a keeper-general of the
+Forests, and obtained the cross of the Legion of honor for the first
+cavalry-sergeant at Beaumont. Consequently, no festivity was ever given
+among the bourgeoisie to which Monsieur and Madame Moreau were not
+invited. The rector of Presles and the mayor of Presles came every
+evening to play cards with them. It is difficult for a man not to be
+kind and hospitable after feathering his nest so comfortably.
+
+A pretty woman, and an affected one, as all retired waiting-maids
+of great ladies are, for after they are married they imitate their
+mistresses, Madame Moreau imported from Paris all the new fashions. She
+wore expensive boots, and never was seen on foot, except, occasionally,
+in the finest weather. Though her husband allowed but five hundred
+francs a year for her toilet, that sum is immense in the provinces,
+especially if well laid out. So that Madame Moreau, fair, rosy, and
+fresh, about thirty-six years of age, still slender and delicate in
+shape in spite of her three children, played the young girl and gave
+herself the airs of a princess. If, when she drove by in her caleche,
+some stranger had asked, “Who is she?” Madame Moreau would have been
+furious had she heard the reply: “The wife of the steward at Presles.”
+ She wished to be taken for the mistress of the chateau. In the villages,
+she patronized the people in the tone of a great lady. The influence of
+her husband over the count, proved in so many years, prevented the small
+bourgeoisie from laughing at Madame Moreau, who, in the eyes of the
+peasants, was really a personage.
+
+Estelle (her name was Estelle) took no more part in the affairs of the
+stewardship then the wife of a broker does in her husband’s affairs at
+the Bourse. She even depended on Moreau for the care of the household
+and their own fortune. Confident of his _means_, she was a thousand
+leagues from dreaming that this comfortable existence, which had lasted
+for seventeen years, could ever be endangered. And yet, when she heard
+of the count’s determination to restore the magnificent chateau, she
+felt that her enjoyments were threatened, and she urged her husband to
+come to the arrangement with Leger about Les Moulineaux, so that they
+might retire from Presles and live at Isle-Adam. She had no intention
+of returning to a position that was more or less that of a servant in
+presence of her former mistress, who, indeed, would have laughed to see
+her established in the lodge with all the airs and graces of a woman of
+the world.
+
+The rancorous enmity which existed between the Reyberts and the Moreaus
+came from a wound inflicted by Madame de Reybert upon Madame Moreau on
+the first occasion when the latter assumed precedence over the former on
+her first arrival at Presles, the wife of the steward being determined
+not to allow her supremacy to be undermined by a woman nee de Corroy.
+Madame de Reybert thereupon reminded, or, perhaps, informed the whole
+country-side of Madame Moreau’s former station. The words “waiting-maid”
+ flew from lip to lip. The envious acquaintances of the Moreaus
+throughout the neighborhood from Beaumont to Moisselles, began to carp
+and criticize with such eagerness that a few sparks of the conflagration
+fell into the Moreau household. For four years the Reyberts, cut dead
+by the handsome Estelle, found themselves the objects of so much
+animadversion on the part of the adherents of the Moreaus that their
+position at Presles would not have been endurable without the thought of
+vengeance which had, so far, supported them.
+
+The Moreaus, who were very friendly with Grindot the architect, had
+received notice from him of the early arrival of the two painters sent
+down to finish the decorations of the chateau, the principal paintings
+for which were just completed by Schinner. The great painter had
+recommended for this work the artist who was accompanied by Mistigris.
+For two days past Madame Moreau had been on the tiptoe of expectation,
+and had put herself under arms to receive him. An artist, who was to be
+her guest and companion for weeks, demanded some effort. Schinner and
+his wife had their own apartment at the chateau, where, by the count’s
+express orders, they were treated with all the consideration due to
+himself. Grindot, who stayed at the steward’s house, showed such respect
+for the great artist that neither the steward nor his wife had attempted
+to put themselves on familiar terms with him. Moreover, the noblest and
+richest people in the surrounding country had vied with each other in
+paying attention to Schinner and his wife. So, very well pleased
+to have, as it were, a little revenge of her own, Madame Moreau was
+determined to cry up the artist she was now expecting, and to present
+him to her social circle as equal in talent to the great Schinner.
+
+Though for two days past Moreau’s pretty wife had arrayed herself
+coquettishly, the prettiest of her toilets had been reserved for this
+very Saturday, when, as she felt no doubt, the artist would arrive for
+dinner. A pink gown in very narrow stripes, a pink belt with a richly
+chased gold buckle, a velvet ribbon and cross at her throat, and velvet
+bracelets on her bare arms (Madame de Serizy had handsome arms and
+showed them much), together with bronze kid shoes and thread stockings,
+gave Madame Moreau all the appearance of an elegant Parisian. She wore,
+also, a superb bonnet of Leghorn straw, trimmed with a bunch of moss
+roses from Nattier’s, beneath the spreading sides of which rippled the
+curls of her beautiful blond hair.
+
+After ordering a very choice dinner and reviewing the condition of her
+rooms, she walked about the grounds, so as to be seen standing near a
+flower-bed in the court-yard of the chateau, like the mistress of the
+house, on the arrival of the coach from Paris. She held above her head a
+charming rose-colored parasol lined with white silk and fringed.
+Seeing that Pierrotin merely left Mistigris’s queer packages with the
+concierge, having, apparently, brought no passengers, Estelle retired
+disappointed and regretting the trouble of making her useless toilet.
+Like many persons who are dressed in their best, she felt incapable of
+any other occupation than that of sitting idly in her salon awaiting the
+coach from Beaumont, which usually passed about an hour after that
+of Pierrotin, though it did not leave Paris till mid-day. She was,
+therefore, in her own apartment when the two artists walked up to the
+chateau, and were sent by Moreau himself to their rooms where they made
+their regulation toilet for dinner. The pair had asked questions of
+their guide, the gardener, who told them so much of Moreau’s beauty that
+they felt the necessity of “rigging themselves up” (studio slang). They,
+therefore, put on their most superlative suits and then walked over to
+the steward’s lodge, piloted by Jacques Moreau, the eldest son, a
+hardy youth, dressed like an English boy in a handsome jacket with a
+turned-over collar, who was spending his vacation like a fish in water
+on the estate where his father and mother reigned as aristocrats.
+
+“Mamma,” he said, “here are the two artists sent down by Monsieur
+Schinner.”
+
+Madame Moreau, agreeably surprised, rose, told her son to place chairs,
+and began to display her graces.
+
+“Mamma, the Husson boy is with papa,” added the lad; “shall I fetch
+him?”
+
+“You need not hurry; go and play with him,” said his mother.
+
+The remark “you need not hurry” proved to the two artists the
+unimportance of their late travelling companion in the eyes of their
+hostess; but it also showed, what they did not know, the feeling of a
+step-mother against a step-son. Madame Moreau, after seventeen years
+of married life, could not be ignorant of the steward’s attachment to
+Madame Clapart and the little Husson, and she hated both mother and
+child so vehemently that it is not surprising that Moreau had never
+before risked bringing Oscar to Presles.
+
+“We are requested, my husband and myself,” she said to the two artists,
+“to do you the honors of the chateau. We both love art, and, above all,
+artists,” she added in a mincing tone; “and I beg you to make yourselves
+at home here. In the country, you know, every one should be at their
+ease; one must feel wholly at liberty, or life is _too_ insipid. We have
+already had Monsieur Schinner with us.”
+
+Mistigris gave a sly glance at his companion.
+
+“You know him, of course?” continued Estelle, after a slight pause.
+
+“Who does not know him, madame?” said the painter.
+
+“Knows him like his double,” remarked Mistigris.
+
+“Monsieur Grindot told me your name,” said Madame Moreau to the painter.
+“But--”
+
+“Joseph Bridau,” he replied, wondering with what sort of woman he had to
+do.
+
+Mistigris began to rebel internally against the patronizing manner of
+the steward’s wife; but he waited, like Bridau, for some word which
+might give him his cue; one of those words “de singe a dauphin” which
+artists, cruel, born-observers of the ridiculous--the pabulum of their
+pencils--seize with such avidity. Meantime Estelle’s clumsy hands and
+feet struck their eyes, and presently a word, or phrase or two, betrayed
+her past, and quite out of keeping with the elegance of her dress, made
+the two young fellows aware of their prey. A single glance at each other
+was enough to arrange a scheme that they should take Estelle seriously
+on her own ground, and thus find amusement enough during the time of
+their stay.
+
+“You say you love art, madame; perhaps you cultivate it successfully,”
+ said Joseph Bridau.
+
+“No. Without being neglected, my education was purely commercial; but
+I have so profound and delicate a sense of art that Monsieur Schinner
+always asked me, when he had finished a piece of work, to give him my
+opinion on it.”
+
+“Just as Moliere consulted La Foret,” said Mistigris.
+
+Not knowing that La Foret was Moliere’s servant-woman, Madame Moreau
+inclined her head graciously, showing that in her ignorance she accepted
+the speech as a compliment.
+
+“Didn’t he propose to ‘croquer’ you?” asked Bridau. “Painters are eager
+enough after handsome women.”
+
+“What may you mean by such language?”
+
+“In the studios we say croquer, craunch, nibble, for sketching,”
+ interposed Mistigris, with an insinuating air, “and we are always
+wanting to croquer beautiful heads. That’s the origin of the expression,
+‘She is pretty enough to eat.’”
+
+“I was not aware of the origin of the term,” she replied, with the
+sweetest glance at Mistigris.
+
+“My pupil here,” said Bridau, “Monsieur Leon de Lora, shows a remarkable
+talent for portraiture. He would be too happy, I know, to leave you a
+souvenir of our stay by painting your charming head, madame.”
+
+Joseph Bridau made a sign to Mistigris which meant: “Come, sail in, and
+push the matter; she is not so bad in looks, this woman.”
+
+Accepting the glance, Leon de Lora slid down upon the sofa beside
+Estelle and took her hand, which she permitted.
+
+“Oh! madame, if you would like to offer a surprise to your husband, and
+will give me a few secret sittings I would endeavor to surpass myself.
+You are so beautiful, so fresh, so charming! A man without any talent
+might become a genius in painting you. He would draw from your eyes--”
+
+“We must paint your dear children in the arabesques,” said Bridau,
+interrupting Mistigris.
+
+“I would rather have them in the salon; but perhaps I am indiscreet in
+asking it,” she replied, looking at Bridau coquettishly.
+
+“Beauty, madame, is a sovereign whom all painters worship; it has
+unlimited claims upon them.”
+
+“They are both charming,” thought Madame Moreau. “Do you enjoy driving?
+Shall I take you through the woods, after dinner, in my carriage?”
+
+“Oh! oh! oh!” cried Mistigris, in three ecstatic tones. “Why, Presles
+will prove our terrestrial paradise.”
+
+“With an Eve, a fair, young, fascinating woman,” added Bridau.
+
+Just as Madame Moreau was bridling, and soaring to the seventh heaven,
+she was recalled like a kite by a twitch at its line.
+
+“Madame!” cried her maid-servant, bursting into the room.
+
+“Rosalie,” said her mistress, “who allowed you to come here without
+being sent for?”
+
+Rosalie paid no heed to the rebuke, but whispered in her mistress’s
+ear:--
+
+“The count is at the chateau.”
+
+“Has he asked for me?” said the steward’s wife.
+
+“No, madame; but he wants his trunk and the key of his apartment.”
+
+“Then give them to him,” she replied, making an impatient gesture to
+hide her real trouble.
+
+“Mamma! here’s Oscar Husson,” said her youngest son, bringing in Oscar,
+who turned as red as a poppy on seeing the two artists in evening dress.
+
+“Oh! so you have come, my little Oscar,” said Estelle, stiffly. “I
+hope you will now go and dress,” she added, after looking at him
+contemptuously from head to foot. “Your mother, I presume, has not
+accustomed you to dine in such clothes as those.”
+
+“Oh!” cried the cruel Mistigris, “a future diplomatist knows the saying
+that ‘two coats are better than none.’”
+
+“How do you mean, a future diplomatist?” exclaimed Madame Moreau.
+
+Poor Oscar had tears in his eyes as he looked in turn from Joseph to
+Leon.
+
+“Merely a joke made in travelling,” replied Joseph, who wanted to save
+Oscar’s feelings out of pity.
+
+“The boy just wanted to be funny like the rest of us, and he blagued,
+that’s all,” said Mistigris.
+
+“Madame,” said Rosalie, returning to the door of the salon, “his
+Excellency has ordered dinner for eight, and wants it served at six
+o’clock. What are we to do?”
+
+During Estelle’s conference with her head-woman the two artists
+and Oscar looked at each other in consternation; their glances were
+expressive of terrible apprehension.
+
+“His Excellency! who is he?” said Joseph Bridau.
+
+“Why, Monsieur le Comte de Serizy, of course,” replied little Moreau.
+
+“Could it have been the count in the coucou?” said Leon de Lora.
+
+“Oh!” exclaimed Oscar, “the Comte de Serizy always travels in his own
+carriage with four horses.”
+
+“How did the Comte de Serizy get here?” said the painter to Madame
+Moreau, when she returned, much discomfited, to the salon.
+
+“I am sure I do not know,” she said. “I cannot explain to myself this
+sudden arrival; nor do I know what has brought him--And Moreau not
+here!”
+
+“His Excellency wishes Monsieur Schinner to come over to the chateau,”
+ said the gardener, coming to the door of the salon. “And he begs
+Monsieur Schinner to give him the pleasure to dine with him; also
+Monsieur Mistigris.”
+
+“Done for!” cried the rapin, laughing. “He whom we took for a bourgeois
+in the coucou was the count. You may well say: ‘Sour are the curses of
+perversity.’”
+
+Oscar was very nearly changed to a pillar of salt; for, at this
+revelation, his throat felt saltier than the sea.
+
+“And you, who talked to him about his wife’s lovers and his skin
+diseases!” said Mistigris, turning on Oscar.
+
+“What does he mean?” exclaimed the steward’s wife, gazing after the two
+artists, who went away laughing at the expression of Oscar’s face.
+
+Oscar remained dumb, confounded, stupefied, hearing nothing, though
+Madame Moreau questioned him and shook him violently by his arm, which
+she caught and squeezed. She gained nothing, however, and was forced to
+leave him in the salon without an answer, for Rosalie appeared again, to
+ask for linen and silver, and to beg she would go herself and see that
+the multiplied orders of the count were executed. All the household,
+together with the gardeners and the concierge and his wife, were going
+and coming in a confusion that may readily be imagined. The master had
+fallen upon his own house like a bombshell.
+
+From the top of the hill near La Cave, where he left the coach, the
+count had gone, by the path through the woods well-known to him, to
+the house of his gamekeeper. The keeper was amazed when he saw his real
+master.
+
+“Is Moreau here?” said the count. “I see his horse.”
+
+“No, monseigneur; he means to go to Moulineaux before dinner, and he has
+left his horse here while he went to the chateau to give a few orders.”
+
+“If you value your place,” said the count, “you will take that horse and
+ride at once to Beaumont, where you will deliver to Monsieur Margueron
+the note that I shall now write.”
+
+So saying the count entered the keeper’s lodge and wrote a line, folding
+it in a way impossible to open without detection, and gave it to the man
+as soon as he saw him in the saddle.
+
+“Not a word to any one,” he said, “and as for you, madame,” he added
+to the gamekeeper’s wife, “if Moreau comes back for his horse, tell him
+merely that I have taken it.”
+
+The count then crossed the park and entered the court-yard of the
+chateau through the iron gates. However worn-out a man may be by the
+wear and tear of public life, by his own emotions, by his own mistakes
+and disappointments, the soul of any man able to love deeply at the
+count’s age is still young and sensitive to treachery. Monsieur de
+Serizy had felt such pain at the thought that Moreau had deceived him,
+that even after hearing the conversation at Saint-Brice he thought
+him less an accomplice of Leger and the notary than their tool. On the
+threshold of the inn, and while that conversation was still going on,
+he thought of pardoning his steward after giving him a good reproof.
+Strange to say, the dishonesty of his confidential agent occupied
+his mind as a mere episode from the moment when Oscar revealed his
+infirmities. Secrets so carefully guarded could only have been revealed
+by Moreau, who had, no doubt, laughed over the hidden troubles of
+his benefactor with either Madame de Serizy’s former maid or with the
+Aspasia of the Directory.
+
+As he walked along the wood-path, this peer of France, this statesman,
+wept as young men weep; he wept his last tears. All human feelings
+were so cruelly hurt by one stroke that the usually calm man staggered
+through his park like a wounded deer.
+
+When Moreau arrived at the gamekeeper’s lodge and asked for his horse,
+the keeper’s wife replied:--
+
+“Monsieur le comte has just taken it.”
+
+“Monsieur le comte!” cried Moreau. “Whom do you mean?”
+
+“Why, the Comte de Serizy, our master,” she replied. “He is probably at
+the chateau by this time,” she added, anxious to be rid of the steward,
+who, unable to understand the meaning of her words, turned back towards
+the chateau.
+
+But he presently turned again and came back to the lodge, intending to
+question the woman more closely; for he began to see something serious
+in this secret arrival, and the apparently strange method of his
+master’s return. But the wife of the gamekeeper, alarmed to find herself
+caught in a vise between the count and his steward, had locked herself
+into the house, resolved not to open to any but her husband. Moreau,
+more and more uneasy, ran rapidly, in spite of his boots and spurs, to
+the chateau, where he was told that the count was dressing.
+
+“Seven persons invited to dinner!” cried Rosalie as soon as she saw him.
+
+Moreau then went through the offices to his own house. On his way he met
+the poultry-girl, who was having an altercation with a handsome young
+man.
+
+“Monsieur le comte particularly told me a colonel, an aide-de-camp of
+Mina,” insisted the girl.
+
+“I am not a colonel,” replied Georges.
+
+“But isn’t your name Georges?”
+
+“What’s all this?” said the steward, intervening.
+
+“Monsieur, my name is Georges Marest; I am the son of a rich wholesale
+ironmonger in the rue Saint-Martin; I come on business to Monsieur le
+Comte de Serizy from Maitre Crottat, a notary, whose second clerk I am.”
+
+“And I,” said the girl, “am telling him that monseigneur said to me:
+‘There’ll come a colonel named Czerni-Georges, aide-de-camp to Mina;
+he’ll come by Pierrotin’s coach; if he asks for me show him into the
+waiting-room.’”
+
+“Evidently,” said the clerk, “the count is a traveller who came down
+with us in Pierrotin’s coucou; if it hadn’t been for the politeness of a
+young man he’d have come as a rabbit.”
+
+“A rabbit! in Pierrotin’s coucou!” exclaimed Moreau and the poultry-girl
+together.
+
+“I am sure of it, from what this girl is now saying,” said Georges.
+
+“How so?” asked the steward.
+
+“Ah! that’s the point,” cried the clerk. “To hoax the travellers and
+have a bit of fun I told them a lot of stuff about Egypt and Greece and
+Spain. As I happened to be wearing spurs I have myself out for a colonel
+of cavalry: pure nonsense!”
+
+“Tell me,” said Moreau, “what did this traveller you take to be Monsieur
+le comte look like?”
+
+“Face like a brick,” said Georges, “hair snow-white, and black
+eyebrows.”
+
+“That is he!”
+
+“Then I’m lost!” exclaimed Georges.
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Oh, I chaffed him about his decorations.”
+
+“Pooh! he’s a good fellow; you probably amused him. Come at once to the
+chateau. I’ll go in and see his Excellency. Where did you say he left
+the coach?”
+
+“At the top of the mountain.”
+
+“I don’t know what to make of it!”
+
+“After all,” thought Georges, “though I did blague him, I didn’t say
+anything insulting.”
+
+“Why have you come here?” asked the steward.
+
+“I have brought the deed of sale for the farm at Moulineaux, all ready
+for signature.”
+
+“Good heavens!” exclaimed the steward, “I don’t understand one word of
+all this!”
+
+Moreau felt his heart beat painfully when, after giving two raps on his
+master’s door, he heard the words:--
+
+“Is that you, _Monsieur_ Moreau?”
+
+“Yes, monseigneur.”
+
+“Come in.”
+
+The count was now wearing a pair of white trousers and thin boots, a
+white waistcoat and a black coat on which shone the grand cross of the
+Legion upon the right breast, and fastened to a buttonhole on the left
+was the order of the Golden Fleece hanging by a short gold chain. He had
+arranged his hair himself, and had, no doubt, put himself in full dress
+to do the honors of Presles to Monsieur Margueron; and, possibly, to
+impress the good man’s mind with a prestige of grandeur.
+
+“Well, monsieur,” said the count, who remained seated, leaving Moreau to
+stand before him. “We have not concluded that purchase from Margueron.”
+
+“He asks too much for the farm at the present moment.”
+
+“But why is he not coming to dinner as I requested?”
+
+“Monseigneur, he is ill.”
+
+“Are you sure?”
+
+“I have just come from there.”
+
+“Monsieur,” said the count, with a stern air which was really terrible,
+“what would you do with a man whom you trusted, if, after seeing you
+dress wounds which you desired to keep secret from all the world,
+he should reveal your misfortunes and laugh at your malady with a
+strumpet?”
+
+“I would thrash him for it.”
+
+“And if you discovered that he was also betraying your confidence and
+robbing you?”
+
+“I should endeavor to detect him, and send him to the galleys.”
+
+“Monsieur Moreau, listen to me. You have undoubtedly spoken of my
+infirmities to Madame Clapart; you have laughed at her house, and with
+her, over my attachment to the Comtesse de Serizy; for her son, little
+Husson, told a number of circumstances relating to my medical treatment,
+to travellers by a public conveyance in my presence, and Heaven knows in
+what language! He dared to calumniate my wife. Besides this, I learned
+from the lips of Pere Leger himself, who was in the coach, of the plan
+laid by the notary at Beaumont and by you and by himself in relation to
+Les Moulineaux. If you have been, as you say, to Monsieur Margueron, it
+was to tell him to feign illness. He is so little ill that he is coming
+here to dinner this evening. Now, monsieur, I could pardon you having
+made two hundred and fifty thousand francs out of your situation in
+seventeen years,--I can understand that. You might each time have asked
+me for what you took, and I would have given it to you; but let that
+pass. You have been, notwithstanding this disloyalty, better than
+others, as I believe. But that you, who knew my toil for our country,
+for France, you have seen me giving night after night to the Emperor’s
+service, and working eighteen hours of each twenty-four for months
+together, you who knew my love for Madame de Serizy,--that you should
+have gossiped about me before a boy! holding up my secrets and my
+affections to the ridicule of a Madame Husson!--”
+
+“Monseigneur!”
+
+“It is unpardonable. To injure a man’s interest, why, that is nothing;
+but to stab his heart!--Oh! you do not know what you have done!”
+
+The count put his head in his hands and was silent for some moments.
+
+“I leave you what you have gained,” he said after a time, “and I shall
+forget you. For my sake, for my dignity, and for your honor, we will
+part decently; for I cannot but remember even now what your father did
+for mine. You will explain the duties of the stewardship in a proper
+manner to Monsieur de Reybert, who succeeds you. Be calm, as I am.
+Give no opportunity for fools to talk. Above all, let there be no
+recrimination or petty meanness. Though you no longer possess my
+confidence, endeavor to behave with the decorum of well-bred persons. As
+for that miserable boy who has wounded me to death, I will not have
+him sleep at Presles; send him to the inn; I will not answer for my own
+temper if I see him.”
+
+“I do not deserve such gentleness, monseigneur,” said Moreau, with tears
+in his eyes. “Yes, you are right; if I had been utterly dishonest I
+should now be worth five hundred thousand francs instead of half that
+sum. I offer to give you an account of my fortune, with all its details.
+But let me tell you, monseigneur, that in talking of you with Madame
+Clapart, it was never in derision; but, on the contrary, to deplore your
+state, and to ask her for certain remedies, not used by physicians, but
+known to the common people. I spoke of your feelings before the boy, who
+was in his bed and, as I supposed, asleep (it seems he must have been
+awake and listening to us), with the utmost affection and respect.
+Alas! fate wills that indiscretions be punished like crimes. But while
+accepting the results of your just anger, I wish you to know what
+actually took place. It was, indeed, from heart to heart that I spoke
+of you to Madame Clapart. As for my wife, I have never said one word of
+these things--”
+
+“Enough,” said the count, whose conviction was now complete; “we are not
+children. All is now irrevocable. Put your affairs and mine in order.
+You can stay in the pavilion until October. Monsieur and Madame de
+Reybert will lodge for the present in the chateau; endeavor to keep on
+terms with them, like well-bred persons who hate each other, but still
+keep up appearances.”
+
+The count and Moreau went downstairs; Moreau white as the count’s hair,
+the count himself calm and dignified.
+
+During the time this interview lasted the Beaumont coach, which left
+Paris at one o’clock, had stopped before the gates of the chateau, and
+deposited Maitre Crottat, the notary, who was shown, according to the
+count’s orders, into the salon, where he found his clerk, extremely
+subdued in manner, and the two painters, all three of them painfully
+self-conscious and embarrassed. Monsieur de Reybert, a man of fifty,
+with a crabbed expression of face, was also there, accompanied by old
+Margueron and the notary of Beaumont, who held in his hand a bundle of
+deeds and other papers.
+
+When these various personages saw the count in evening dress, and
+wearing his orders, Georges Marest had a slight sensation of colic,
+Joseph Bridau quivered, but Mistigris, who was conscious of being in his
+Sunday clothes, and had, moreover, nothing on his conscience, remarked,
+in a sufficiently loud tone:--
+
+“Well, he looks a great deal better like that.”
+
+“Little scamp,” said the count, catching him by the ear, “we are both
+in the decoration business. I hope you recognize your own work, my dear
+Schinner,” he added, pointing to the ceiling of the salon.
+
+“Monseigneur,” replied the artist, “I did wrong to take such a
+celebrated name out of mere bravado; but this day will oblige me to
+do fine things for you, and so bring credit on my own name of Joseph
+Bridau.”
+
+“You took up my defence,” said the count, hastily; “and I hope you will
+give me the pleasure of dining with me, as well as my lively friend
+Mistigris.”
+
+“Your Excellency doesn’t know to what you expose yourself,” said the
+saucy rapin; “‘facilis descensus victuali,’ as we say at the Black Hen.”
+
+“Bridau!” exclaimed the minister, struck by a sudden thought. “Are you
+any relation to one of the most devoted toilers under the Empire, the
+head of a bureau, who fell a victim to his zeal?”
+
+“His son, monseigneur,” replied Joseph, bowing.
+
+“Then you are most welcome here,” said the count, taking Bridau’s hand
+in both of his. “I knew your father, and you can count on me as on--on
+an uncle in America,” added the count, laughing. “But you are too young
+to have pupils of your own; to whom does Mistigris really belong?”
+
+“To my friend Schinner, who lent him to me,” said Joseph. “Mistigris’
+name is Leon de Lora. Monseigneur, if you knew my father, will you deign
+to think of his other son, who is now accused of plotting against the
+State, and is soon to be tried before the Court of Peers?”
+
+“Ah! that’s true,” said the count. “Yes, I will think about it, be sure
+of that. As for Colonel Czerni-Georges, the friend of Ali Pacha, and
+Mina’s aide-de-camp--” he continued, walking up to Georges.
+
+“He! why that’s my second clerk!” cried Crottat.
+
+“You are quite mistaken, Maitre Crottat,” said the count, assuming a
+stern air. “A clerk who intends to be a notary does not leave important
+deeds in a diligence at the mercy of other travellers; neither does he
+spend twenty francs between Paris and Moisselles; or expose himself to
+be arrested as a deserter--”
+
+“Monseigneur,” said Georges Marest, “I may have amused myself with the
+bourgeois in the diligence, but--”
+
+“Let his Excellency finish what he was saying,” said the notary, digging
+his elbow into his clerk’s ribs.
+
+“A notary,” continued the count, “ought to practise discretion,
+shrewdness, caution from the start; he should be incapable of such a
+blunder as taking a peer of France for a tallow-chandler--”
+
+“I am willing to be blamed for my faults,” said Georges; “but I never
+left my deeds at the mercy of--”
+
+“Now you are committing the fault of contradicting the word of a
+minister of State, a gentleman, an old man, and a client,” said the
+count. “Give me that deed of sale.”
+
+Georges turned over and over the papers in his portfolio.
+
+“That will do; don’t disarrange those papers,” said the count, taking
+the deed from his pocket. “Here is what you are looking for.”
+
+Crottat turned the paper back and forth, so astonished was he at
+receiving it from the hands of his client.
+
+“What does this mean, monsieur?” he said, finally, to Georges.
+
+“If I had not taken it,” said the count, “Pere Leger,--who is by
+no means such a ninny as you thought him from his questions
+about agriculture, by which he showed that he attended to his own
+business,--Pere Leger might have seized that paper and guessed my
+purpose. You must give me the pleasure of dining with me, but one on
+condition,--that of describing, as you promised, the execution of the
+Muslim of Smyrna, and you must also finish the memoirs of some client
+which you have certainly read to be so well informed.”
+
+“Schlague for blague!” said Leon de Lora, in a whisper, to Joseph
+Bridau.
+
+“Gentlemen,” said the count to the two notaries and Messieurs Margueron
+and de Reybert, “let us go into the next room and conclude this business
+before dinner, because, as my friend Mistigris would say: ‘Qui esurit
+constentit.’”
+
+“Well, he is very good-natured,” said Leon de Lora to Georges Marest,
+when the count had left the room.
+
+“Yes, HE may be, but my master isn’t,” said Georges, “and he will
+request me to go and blaguer somewhere else.”
+
+“Never mind, you like travel,” said Bridau.
+
+“What a dressing that boy will get from Monsieur and Madame Moreau!”
+ cried Mistigris.
+
+“Little idiot!” said Georges. “If it hadn’t been for him the count would
+have been amused. Well, anyhow, the lesson is a good one; and if ever
+again I am caught bragging in a public coach--”
+
+“It is a stupid thing to do,” said Joseph Bridau.
+
+“And common,” added Mistigris. “‘Vulgarity is the brother of
+pretension.’”
+
+While the matter of the sale was being settled between Monsieur
+Margueron and the Comte de Serizy, assisted by their respective notaries
+in presence of Monsieur de Reybert, the ex-steward walked with slow
+steps to his own house. There he entered the salon and sat down without
+noticing anything. Little Husson, who was present, slipped into a
+corner, out of sight, so much did the livid face of his mother’s friend
+alarm him.
+
+“Eh! my friend!” said Estelle, coming into the room, somewhat tired with
+what she had been doing. “What is the matter?”
+
+“My dear, we are lost,--lost beyond recovery. I am no longer steward of
+Presles, no longer in the count’s confidence.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Pere Leger, who was in Pierrotin’s coach, told the count all about the
+affair of Les Moulineaux. But that is not the thing that has cost me his
+favor.”
+
+“What then?”
+
+“Oscar spoke ill of the countess, and he told about the count’s
+diseases.”
+
+“Oscar!” cried Madame Moreau. “Ah! my dear, your sin has found you out.
+It was well worth while to warm that young serpent in your bosom. How
+often I have told you--”
+
+“Enough!” said Moreau, in a strained voice.
+
+At this moment Estelle and her husband discovered Oscar cowering in his
+corner. Moreau swooped down on the luckless lad like a hawk on its prey,
+took him by the collar of the coat and dragged him to the light of a
+window. “Speak! what did you say to monseigneur in that coach? What
+demon let loose your tongue, you who keep a doltish silence whenever I
+speak to you? What did you do it for?” cried the steward, with frightful
+violence.
+
+Too bewildered to weep, Oscar was dumb and motionless as a statue.
+
+“Come with me and beg his Excellency’s pardon,” said Moreau.
+
+“As if his Excellency cares for a little toad like that!” cried the
+furious Estelle.
+
+“Come, I say, to the chateau,” repeated Moreau.
+
+Oscar dropped like an inert mass to the ground.
+
+“Come!” cried Moreau, his anger increasing at every instant.
+
+“No! no! mercy!” cried Oscar, who could not bring himself to submit to a
+torture that seemed to him worse than death.
+
+Moreau then took the lad by his coat, and dragged him, as he might a
+dead body, through the yards, which rang with the boy’s outcries and
+sobs. He pulled him up the portico, and, with an arm that fury made
+powerful, he flung him, bellowing, and rigid as a pole, into the salon,
+at the very feet of the count, who, having completed the purchase of Les
+Moulineaux, was about to leave the salon for the dining-room with his
+guests.
+
+“On your knees, wretched boy! and ask pardon of him who gave food to
+your mind by obtaining your scholarship.”
+
+Oscar, his face to the ground, was foaming with rage, and did not say a
+word. The spectators of the scene were shocked. Moreau seemed no longer
+in his senses; his face was crimson with injected blood.
+
+“This young man is a mere lump of vanity,” said the count, after waiting
+a moment for Oscar’s excuses. “A proud man humiliates himself because he
+sees there is grandeur in a certain self-abasement. I am afraid that you
+will never make much of that lad.”
+
+So saying, his Excellency passed on. Moreau took Oscar home with him;
+and on the way gave orders that the horses should immediately be put to
+Madame Moreau’s caleche.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. A MOTHER’S TRIALS
+
+
+While the horses were being harnessed, Moreau wrote the following letter
+to Madame Clapart:--
+
+  My dear,--Oscar has ruined me. During his journey in Pierrotin’s
+  coach, he spoke of Madame de Serizy’s behavior to his Excellency,
+  who was travelling incognito, and actually told, to himself, the
+  secret of his terrible malady. After dismissing me from my
+  stewardship, the count told me not to let Oscar sleep at Presles,
+  but to send him away immediately. Therefore, to obey his orders,
+  the horses are being harnessed at this moment to my wife’s
+  carriage, and Brochon, my stable-man, will take the miserable
+  child to you to-night.
+
+  We are, my wife and I, in a distress of mind which you may perhaps
+  imagine, though I cannot describe it to you. I will see you in a
+  few days, for I must take another course. I have three children,
+  and I ought to consider their future. At present I do not know
+  what to do; but I shall certainly endeavor to make the count aware
+  of what seventeen years of the life of a man like myself is worth.
+  Owning at the present moment about two hundred and fifty thousand
+  francs, I want to raise myself to a fortune which may some day
+  make me the equal of his Excellency. At this moment I feel within
+  me the power to move mountains and vanquish insurmountable
+  difficulties. What a lever is such a scene of bitter humiliation
+  as I have just passed through! Whose blood has Oscar in his veins?
+  His conduct has been that of a blockhead; up to this moment when I
+  write to you, he has not said a word nor answered, even by a sign,
+  the questions my wife and I have put to him. Will he become an
+  idiot? or is he one already? Dear friend, why did you not instruct
+  him as to his behavior before you sent him to me? How many
+  misfortunes you would have spared me, had you brought him here
+  yourself as I begged you to do. If Estelle alarmed you, you might
+  have stayed at Moisselles. However, the thing is done, and there
+  is no use talking about it.
+
+  Adieu; I shall see you soon.
+
+Your devoted servant and friend,
+
+Moreau
+
+
+At eight o’clock that evening, Madame Clapart, just returned from a walk
+she had taken with her husband, was knitting winter socks for Oscar, by
+the light of a single candle. Monsieur Clapart was expecting a friend
+named Poiret, who often came in to play dominoes, for never did he allow
+himself to spend an evening at a cafe. In spite of the prudent economy
+to which his small means forced him, Clapart would not have answered for
+his temperance amid a luxury of food and in presence of the usual guests
+of a cafe whose inquisitive observation would have piqued him.
+
+“I’m afraid Poiret came while we were out,” said Clapart to his wife.
+
+“Why, no, my friend; the portress would have told us so when we came
+in,” replied Madame Clapart.
+
+“She may have forgotten it.”
+
+“What makes you think so?”
+
+“It wouldn’t be the first time she has forgotten things for us,--for God
+knows how people without means are treated.”
+
+“Well,” said the poor woman, to change the conversation and escape
+Clapart’s cavilling, “Oscar must be at Presles by this time. How he will
+enjoy that fine house and the beautiful park.”
+
+“Oh! yes,” snarled Clapart, “you expect fine things of him; but, mark my
+words, there’ll be squabbles wherever he goes.”
+
+“Will you never cease to find fault with that poor child?” said the
+mother. “What has he done to you? If some day we should live at our
+ease, we may owe it all to him; he has such a good heart--”
+
+“Our bones will be jelly long before that fellow makes his way in the
+world,” cried Clapart. “You don’t know your own child; he is conceited,
+boastful, deceitful, lazy, incapable of--”
+
+“Why don’t you go to meet Poiret?” said the poor mother, struck to the
+heart by the diatribe she had brought upon herself.
+
+“A boy who has never won a prize at school!” continued Clapart.
+
+To bourgeois eyes, the obtaining of school prizes means the certainty of
+a fine future for the fortunate child.
+
+“Did you win any?” asked his wife. “Oscar stood second in philosophy.”
+
+This remark imposed silence for a moment on Clapart; but presently he
+began again.
+
+“Besides, Madame Moreau hates him like poison, you know why. She’ll try
+to set her husband against him. Oscar to step into his shoes as steward
+of Presles! Why he’d have to learn agriculture, and know how to survey.”
+
+“He can learn.”
+
+“He--that pussy cat! I’ll bet that if he does get a place down there,
+it won’t be a week before he does some doltish thing which will make the
+count dismiss him.”
+
+“Good God! how can you be so bitter against a poor child who is full of
+good qualities, sweet-tempered as an angel, incapable of doing harm to
+any one, no matter who.”
+
+Just then the cracking of a postilion’s whip and the noise of a carriage
+stopping before the house was heard, this arrival having apparently put
+the whole street into a commotion. Clapart, who heard the opening of
+many windows, looked out himself to see what was happening.
+
+“They have sent Oscar back to you in a post-chaise,” he cried, in a tone
+of satisfaction, though in truth he felt inwardly uneasy.
+
+“Good heavens! what can have happened to him?” cried the poor mother,
+trembling like a leaf shaken by the autumn wind.
+
+Brochon here came up, followed by Oscar and Poiret.
+
+“What has happened?” repeated the mother, addressing the stable-man.
+
+“I don’t know, but Monsieur Moreau is no longer steward of Presles, and
+they say your son has caused it. His Excellency ordered that he should
+be sent home to you. Here’s a letter from poor Monsieur Moreau, madame,
+which will tell you all. You never saw a man so changed in a single
+day.”
+
+“Clapart, two glasses of wine for the postilion and for monsieur!” cried
+the mother, flinging herself into a chair that she might read the fatal
+letter. “Oscar,” she said, staggering towards her bed, “do you want to
+kill your mother? After all the cautions I gave you this morning--”
+
+She did not end her sentence, for she fainted from distress of mind.
+When she came to herself she heard her husband saying to Oscar, as he
+shook him by the arm:--
+
+“Will you answer me?”
+
+“Go to bed, monsieur,” she said to her son. “Let him alone, Monsieur
+Clapart. Don’t drive him out of his senses; he is frightfully changed.”
+
+Oscar did not hear his mother’s last words; he had slipped away to bed
+the instant that he got the order.
+
+Those who remember their youth will not be surprised to learn that
+after a day so filled with events and emotions, Oscar, in spite of the
+enormity of his offences, slept the sleep of the just. The next day he
+did not find the world so changed as he thought it; he was surprised
+to be very hungry,--he who the night before had regarded himself as
+unworthy to live. He had only suffered mentally. At his age mental
+impressions succeed each other so rapidly that the last weakens its
+predecessor, however deeply the first may have been cut in. For this
+reason corporal punishment, though philanthropists are deeply opposed
+to it in these days, becomes necessary in certain cases for certain
+children. It is, moreover, the most natural form of retribution, for
+Nature herself employs it; she uses pain to impress a lasting memory of
+her precepts. If to the shame of the preceding evening, unhappily too
+transient, the steward had joined some personal chastisement, perhaps
+the lesson might have been complete. The discernment with which such
+punishment needs to be administered is the greatest argument against it.
+Nature is never mistaken; but the teacher is, and frequently.
+
+Madame Clapart took pains to send her husband out, so that she might be
+alone with her son the next morning. She was in a state to excite
+pity. Her eyes, worn with tears; her face, weary with the fatigue of
+a sleepless night; her feeble voice,--in short, everything about her
+proved an excess of suffering she could not have borne a second time,
+and appealed to sympathy.
+
+When Oscar entered the room she signed to him to sit down beside her,
+and reminded him in a gentle but grieved voice of the benefits they had
+so constantly received from the steward of Presles. She told him that
+they had lived, especially for the last six years, on the delicate
+charity of Monsieur Moreau; and that Monsieur Clapart’s salary, also
+the “demi-bourse,” or scholarship, by which he (Oscar) had obtained an
+education, was due to the Comte de Serizy. Most of this would now cease.
+Monsieur Clapart, she said, had no claim to a pension,--his period of
+service not being long enough to obtain one. On the day when he was no
+longer able to keep his place, what would become of them?
+
+“For myself,” she said, “by nursing the sick, or living as a housekeeper
+in some great family, I could support myself and Monsieur Clapart; but
+you, Oscar, what could you do? You have no means, and you must earn
+some, for you must live. There are but four careers for a young man
+like you,--commerce, government employment, the licensed professions, or
+military service. All forms of commerce need capital, and we have none
+to give you. In place of capital, a young man can only give devotion and
+his capacity. But commerce also demands the utmost discretion, and your
+conduct yesterday proves that you lack it. To enter a government office,
+you must go through a long probation by the help of influence, and you
+have just alienated the only protector that we had,--a most powerful
+one. Besides, suppose you were to meet with some extraordinary help, by
+which a young man makes his way promptly either in business or in
+the public employ, where could you find the money to live and clothe
+yourself during the time that you are learning your employment?”
+
+Here the mother wandered, like other women, into wordy lamentation: What
+should she do now to feed the family, deprived of the benefits Moreau’s
+stewardship had enabled him to send her from Presles? Oscar had
+overthrown his benefactor’s prosperity! As commerce and a government
+clerkship were now impossible, there remained only the professions of
+notary and lawyer, either barristers or solicitors, and sheriffs. But
+for those he must study at least three years, and pay considerable sums
+for entrance fees, examinations, certificates, and diplomas; and here
+again the question of maintenance presented itself.
+
+“Oscar,” she said, in conclusion, “in you I had put all my pride, all my
+life. In accepting for myself an unhappy old age, I fastened my eyes on
+you; I saw you with the prospect of a fine career, and I imagined you
+succeeding in it. That thought, that hope, gave me courage to face the
+privations I have endured for six years in order to carry you through
+school, where you have cost me, in spite of the scholarship, between
+seven and eight hundred francs a year. Now that my hope is vanishing,
+your future terrifies me. I cannot take one penny from Monsieur
+Clapart’s salary for my son. What can you do? You are not strong enough
+to mathematics to enter any of the technical schools; and, besides,
+where could I get the three thousand francs board-money which they
+extract? This is life as it is, my child. You are eighteen, you are
+strong. Enlist in the army; it is your only means, that I can see, to
+earn your bread.”
+
+Oscar knew as yet nothing whatever of life. Like all children who have
+been kept from a knowledge of the trials and poverty of the home, he
+was ignorant of the necessity of earning his living. The word “commerce”
+ presented no idea whatever to his mind; “public employment” said almost
+as little, for he saw no results of it. He listened, therefore, with
+a submissive air, which he tried to make humble, to his mother’s
+exhortations, but they were lost in the void, and did not reach his
+mind. Nevertheless, the word “army,” the thought of being a soldier, and
+the sight of his mother’s tears did at last make him cry. No sooner
+did Madame Clapart see the drops coursing down his cheeks than she felt
+herself helpless, and, like most mothers in such cases, she began the
+peroration which terminates these scenes,--scenes in which they suffer
+their own anguish and that of their children also.
+
+“Well, Oscar, _promise_ me that you will be more discreet in
+future,--that you will not talk heedlessly any more, but will strive to
+repress your silly vanity,” et cetera, et cetera.
+
+Oscar of course promised all his mother asked him to promise, and then,
+after gently drawing him to her, Madame Clapart ended by kissing him to
+console him for being scolded.
+
+“In future,” she said, “you will listen to your mother, and will follow
+her advice; for a mother can give nothing but good counsel to her child.
+We will go and see your uncle Cardot; that is our last hope. Cardot
+owed a great deal to your father, who gave him his sister, Mademoiselle
+Husson, with an enormous dowry for those days, which enabled him to make
+a large fortune in the silk trade. I think he might, perhaps, place
+you with Monsieur Camusot, his successor and son-in-law, in the rue des
+Bourdonnais. But, you see, your uncle Cardot has four children. He
+gave his establishment, the Cocon d’Or, to his eldest daughter, Madame
+Camusot; and though Camusot has millions, he has also four children by
+two wives; and, besides, he scarcely knows of our existence. Cardot has
+married his second daughter, Mariane, to Monsieur Protez, of the firm
+of Protez and Chiffreville. The practice of his eldest son, the notary,
+cost him four hundred thousand francs; and he has just put his second
+son, Joseph, into the drug business of Matifat. So you see, your uncle
+Cardot has many reasons not to take an interest in you, whom he sees
+only four times a year. He has never come to call upon me here, though
+he was ready enough to visit me at Madame Mere’s when he wanted to sell
+his silks to the Emperor, the imperial highnesses, and all the great
+people at court. But now the Camusots have turned ultras. The eldest son
+of Camusot’s first wife married a daughter of one of the king’s ushers.
+The world is mighty hump-backed when it stoops! However, it was a clever
+thing to do, for the Cocon d’Or has the custom of the present court as
+it had that of the Emperor. But to-morrow we will go and see your uncle
+Cardot, and I hope that you will endeavor to behave properly; for, as I
+said before, and I repeat it, that is our last hope.”
+
+Monsieur Jean-Jerome-Severin Cardot had been a widower six years. As
+head-clerk of the Cocon d’Or, one of the oldest firms in Paris, he had
+bought the establishment in 1793, at a time when the heads of the house
+were ruined by the maximum; and the money of Mademoiselle Husson’s
+dowry had enabled him to do this, and so make a fortune that was almost
+colossal in ten years. To establish his children richly during his
+lifetime, he had conceived the idea of buying an annuity for himself and
+his wife with three hundred thousand francs, which gave him an income
+of thirty thousand francs a year. He then divided his capital into three
+shares of four hundred thousand francs each, which he gave to three
+of his children,--the Cocon d’Or, given to his eldest daughter on her
+marriage, being the equivalent of a fourth share. Thus the worthy man,
+who was now nearly seventy years old, could spend his thirty thousand a
+year as he pleased, without feeling that he injured the prospects of
+his children, all finely provided for, whose attentions and proofs of
+affection were, moreover, not prompted by self-interest.
+
+Uncle Cardot lived at Belleville, in one of the first houses above
+the Courtille. He there occupied, on the first floor, an apartment
+overlooking the valley of the Seine, with a southern exposure, and the
+exclusive enjoyment of a large garden, for the sum of a thousand francs
+a year. He troubled himself not at all about the three or four other
+tenants of the same vast country-house. Certain, through a long lease,
+of ending his days there, he lived rather plainly, served by an old cook
+and the former maid of the late Madame Cardot,--both of whom expected
+to reap an annuity of some six hundred francs apiece on the old man’s
+death. These two women took the utmost care of him, and were all the
+more interested in doing so because no one was ever less fussy or less
+fault-finding than he. The apartment, furnished by the late Madame
+Cardot, had remained in the same condition for the last six years,--the
+old man being perfectly contented with it. He spent in all not more than
+three thousand francs a year there; for he dined in Paris five days
+in the week, and returned home at midnight in a hackney-coach, which
+belonged to an establishment at Courtille. The cook had only her
+master’s breakfast to provide on those days. This was served at eleven
+o’clock; after that he dressed and perfumed himself, and departed for
+Paris. Usually, a bourgeois gives notice in the household if he dines
+out; old Cardot, on the contrary, gave notice when he dined at home.
+
+This little old man--fat, rosy, squat, and strong--always looked, in
+popular speech, as if he had stepped from a bandbox. He appeared in
+black silk stockings, breeches of “pou-de-soie” (paduasoy), a white
+pique waistcoat, dazzling shirt-front, a blue-bottle coat, violet silk
+gloves, gold buckles to his shoes and his breeches, and, lastly, a
+touch of powder and a little queue tied with black ribbon. His face
+was remarkable for a pair of eyebrows as thick as bushes, beneath which
+sparkled his gray eyes; and for a square nose, thick and long, which
+gave him somewhat the air of the abbes of former times. His countenance
+did not belie him. Pere Cardot belonged to that race of lively Gerontes
+which is now disappearing rapidly, though it once served as Turcarets
+to the comedies and tales of the eighteenth century. Uncle Cardot always
+said “Fair lady,” and he placed in their carriages, and otherwise paid
+attention to those women whom he saw without protectors; he “placed
+himself at their disposition,” as he said, in his chivalrous way.
+
+But beneath his calm air and his snowy poll he concealed an old age
+almost wholly given up to mere pleasure. Among men he openly professed
+epicureanism, and gave himself the license of free talk. He had seen
+no harm in the devotion of his son-in-law, Camusot, to Mademoiselle
+Coralie, for he himself was secretly the Mecaenas of Mademoiselle
+Florentine, the first danseuse at the Gaiete. But this life and these
+opinions never appeared in his own home, nor in his external conduct
+before the world. Uncle Cardot, grave and polite, was thought to be
+somewhat cold, so much did he affect decorum; a “devote” would have
+called him a hypocrite.
+
+The worthy old gentleman hated priests; he belonged to that great
+flock of ninnies who subscribed to the “Constitutionnel,” and was much
+concerned about “refusals to bury.” He adored Voltaire, though his
+preferences were really for Piron, Vade, and Colle. Naturally, he
+admired Beranger, whom he wittily called the “grandfather of the
+religion of Lisette.” His daughters, Madame Camusot and Madame
+Protez, and his two sons would, to use a popular expression, have been
+flabbergasted if any one had explained to them what their father meant
+by “singing la Mere Godichon.”
+
+This long-headed parent had never mentioned his income to his children,
+who, seeing that he lived in a cheap way, reflected that he had deprived
+himself of his property for their sakes, and, therefore, redoubled
+their attentions and tenderness. In fact, he would sometimes say to his
+sons:--
+
+“Don’t lose your property; remember, I have none to leave you.”
+
+Camusot, in whom he recognized a certain likeness to his own nature,
+and whom he liked enough to make a sharer in his secret pleasures, alone
+knew of the thirty thousand a year annuity. But Camusot approved of the
+old man’s ethics, and thought that, having made the happiness of his
+children and nobly fulfilled his duty by them, he now had a right to end
+his life jovially.
+
+“Don’t you see, my friend,” said the former master of the Cocon d’Or,
+“I might re-marry. A young woman would give me more children. Well,
+Florentine doesn’t cost me what a wife would; neither does she bore me;
+and she won’t give me children to lessen your property.”
+
+Camusot considered that Pere Cardot gave expression to a high sense
+of family duty in these words; he regarded him as an admirable
+father-in-law.
+
+“He knows,” thought he, “how to unite the interests of his children
+with the pleasures which old age naturally desires after the worries of
+business life.”
+
+Neither the Cardots, nor the Camusots, nor the Protez knew anything
+of the ways of life of their aunt Clapart. The family intercourse was
+restricted to the sending of notes of “faire part” on the occasion
+of deaths and marriages, and cards at the New Year. The proud Madame
+Clapart would never have brought herself to seek them were it not for
+Oscar’s interests, and because of her friendship for Moreau, the only
+person who had been faithful to her in misfortune. She had never annoyed
+old Cardot by her visits, or her importunities, but she held to him as
+to a hope, and always went to see him once every three months and talked
+to him of Oscar, the nephew of the late respectable Madame Cardot; and
+she took the boy to call upon him three times during each vacation. At
+each of these visits the old gentleman had given Oscar a dinner at the
+Cadran-Bleu, taking him, afterwards, to the Gaiete, and returning him
+safely to the rue de la Cerisaie. On one occasion, having given the boy
+an entirely new suit of clothes, he added the silver cup and fork and
+spoon required for his school outfit.
+
+Oscar’s mother endeavored to impress the old gentleman with the idea
+that his nephew cherished him, and she constantly referred to the cup
+and the fork and spoon and to the beautiful suit of clothes, though
+nothing was then left of the latter but the waistcoat. But such little
+arts did Oscar more harm than good when practised on so sly an old fox
+as uncle Cardot. The latter had never much liked his departed wife, a
+tall, spare, red-haired woman; he was also aware of the circumstances of
+the late Husson’s marriage with Oscar’s mother, and without in the least
+condemning her, he knew very well that Oscar was a posthumous child. His
+nephew, therefore, seemed to him to have no claims on the Cardot family.
+But Madame Clapart, like all women who concentrate their whole being
+into the sentiment of motherhood, did not put herself in Cardot’s place
+and see the matter from his point of view; she thought he must certainly
+be interested in so sweet a child, who bore the maiden name of his late
+wife.
+
+“Monsieur,” said old Cardot’s maid-servant, coming out to him as
+he walked about the garden while awaiting his breakfast, after his
+hairdresser had duly shaved him and powdered his queue, “the mother of
+your nephew, Oscar, is here.”
+
+“Good-day, fair lady,” said the old man, bowing to Madame Clapart, and
+wrapping his white pique dressing-gown about him. “Hey, hey! how this
+little fellow grows,” he added, taking Oscar by the ear.
+
+“He has finished school, and he regretted so much that his dear uncle
+was not present at the distribution of the Henri IV. prizes, at which
+he was named. The name of Husson, which, let us hope, he will bear
+worthily, was proclaimed--”
+
+“The deuce it was!” exclaimed the little old man, stopping short. Madame
+Clapart, Oscar, and he were walking along a terrace flanked by oranges,
+myrtles, and pomegranates. “And what did he get?”
+
+“The fourth rank in philosophy,” replied the mother proudly.
+
+“Oh! oh!” cried uncle Cardot, “the rascal has a good deal to do to make
+up for lost time; for the fourth rank in philosophy, well, _it isn’t
+Peru_, you know! You will stay and breakfast with me?” he added.
+
+“We are at your orders,” replied Madame Clapart. “Ah! my dear Monsieur
+Cardot, what happiness it is for fathers and mothers when their children
+make a good start in life! In this respect--indeed, in all others,” she
+added, catching herself up, “you are one of the most fortunate fathers
+I have ever known. Under your virtuous son-in-law and your amiable
+daughter, the Cocon d’Or continues to be the greatest establishment of
+its kind in Paris. And here’s your eldest son, for the last ten years
+at the head of a fine practice and married to wealth. And you have such
+charming little granddaughters! You are, as it were, the head of four
+great families. Leave us, Oscar; go and look at the garden, but don’t
+touch the flowers.”
+
+“Why, he’s eighteen years old!” said uncle Cardot, smiling at this
+injunction, which made an infant of Oscar.
+
+“Alas, yes, he is eighteen, my good Monsieur Cardot; and after bringing
+him so far, sound and healthy in mind and body, neither bow-legged nor
+crooked, after sacrificing everything to give him an education, it would
+be hard if I could not see him on the road to fortune.”
+
+“That Monsieur Moreau who got him the scholarship will be sure to look
+after his career,” said uncle Cardot, concealing his hypocrisy under an
+air of friendly good-humor.
+
+“Monsieur Moreau may die,” she said. “And besides, he has quarrelled
+irrevocably with the Comte de Serizy, his patron.”
+
+“The deuce he has! Listen, madame; I see you are about to--”
+
+“No, monsieur,” said Oscar’s mother, interrupting the old man, who,
+out of courtesy to the “fair lady,” repressed his annoyance at being
+interrupted. “Alas, you do not know the miseries of a mother who, for
+seven years past, has been forced to take a sum of six hundred francs a
+year for her son’s education from the miserable eighteen hundred francs
+of her husband’s salary. Yes, monsieur, that is all we have had to live
+upon. Therefore, what more can I do for my poor Oscar? Monsieur Clapart
+so hates the child that it is impossible for me to keep him in the
+house. A poor woman, alone in the world, am I not right to come and
+consult the only relation my Oscar has under heaven?”
+
+“Yes, you are right,” said uncle Cardot. “You never told me of all this
+before.”
+
+“Ah, monsieur!” replied Madame Clapart, proudly, “you were the last
+to whom I would have told my wretchedness. It is all my own fault;
+I married a man whose incapacity is almost beyond belief. Yes, I am,
+indeed, most unhappy.”
+
+“Listen to me, madame,” said the little old man, “and don’t weep; it is
+most painful to me to see a fair lady cry. After all, your son bears the
+name of Husson, and if my dear deceased wife were living she would wish
+to do something for the name of her father and of her brother--”
+
+“She loved her brother,” said Oscar’s mother.
+
+“But all my fortune is given to my children, who expect nothing from
+me at my death,” continued the old man. “I have divided among them the
+millions that I had, because I wanted to see them happy and enjoying
+their wealth during my lifetime. I have nothing now except an annuity;
+and at my age one clings to old habits. Do you know the path on which
+you ought to start this young fellow?” he went on, after calling to
+Oscar and taking him by the arm. “Let him study law; I’ll pay the
+costs. Put him in a lawyer’s office and let him learn the business of
+pettifogging; if he does well, if he distinguishes himself, if he likes
+his profession and I am still alive, each of my children shall, when the
+proper time comes, lend him a quarter of the cost of a practice; and I
+will be security for him. You will only have to feed and clothe him. Of
+course he’ll sow a few wild oats, but he’ll learn life. Look at me: I
+left Lyon with two double louis which my grandmother gave me, and walked
+to Paris; and what am I now? Fasting is good for the health. Discretion,
+honesty, and work, young man, and you’ll succeed. There’s a great deal
+of pleasure in earning one’s fortune; and if a man keeps his teeth
+he eats what he likes in his old age, and sings, as I do, ‘La Mere
+Godichon.’ Remember my words: Honesty, work, discretion.”
+
+“Do you hear that, Oscar?” said his mother. “Your uncle sums up in three
+words all that I have been saying to you. You ought to carve the last
+word in letters of fire on your memory.”
+
+“Oh, I have,” said Oscar.
+
+“Very good,--then thank your uncle; didn’t you hear him say he would
+take charge of your future? You will be a lawyer in Paris.”
+
+“He doesn’t see the grandeur of his destiny,” said the little old man,
+observing Oscar’s apathetic air. “Well, he’s just out of school. Listen,
+I’m no talker,” he continued; “but I have this to say: Remember that
+at your age honesty and uprightness are maintained only by resisting
+temptations; of which, in a great city like Paris, there are many at
+every step. Live in your mother’s home, in the garret; go straight to
+the law-school; from there to your lawyer’s office; drudge night and
+day, and study at home. Become, by the time you are twenty-two, a second
+clerk; by the time you are twenty-four, head-clerk; be steady, and you
+will win all. If, moreover, you shouldn’t like the profession, you
+might enter the office of my son the notary, and eventually succeed
+him. Therefore, work, patience, discretion, honesty,--those are your
+landmarks.”
+
+“God grant that you may live thirty years longer to see your fifth child
+realizing all we expect from him,” cried Madame Clapart, seizing uncle
+Cardot’s hand and pressing it with a gesture that recalled her youth.
+
+“Now come to breakfast,” replied the kind old man, leading Oscar by the
+ear.
+
+During the meal uncle Cardot observed his nephew without appearing to do
+so, and soon saw that the lad knew nothing of life.
+
+“Send him here to me now and then,” he said to Madame Clapart, as he
+bade her good-bye, “and I’ll form him for you.”
+
+This visit calmed the anxieties of the poor mother, who had not hoped
+for such brilliant success. For the next fortnight she took Oscar to
+walk daily, and watched him tyrannically. This brought matters to the
+end of October. One morning as the poor household was breakfasting on a
+salad of herring and lettuce, with milk for a dessert, Oscar beheld with
+terror the formidable ex-steward, who entered the room and surprised
+this scene of poverty.
+
+“We are now living in Paris--but not as we lived at Presles,” said
+Moreau, wishing to make known to Madame Clapart the change in their
+relations caused by Oscar’s folly. “I shall seldom be here myself; for
+I have gone into partnership with Pere Leger and Pere Margueron of
+Beaumont. We are speculating in land, and we have begun by purchasing
+the estate of Persan. I am the head of the concern, which has a capital
+of a million; part of which I have borrowed on my own securities. When I
+find a good thing, Pere Leger and I examine it; my partners have each a
+quarter and I a half in the profits; but I do nearly all the work, and
+for that reason I shall be constantly on the road. My wife lives here,
+in the faubourg du Roule, very plainly. When we see how the business
+turns out, if we risk only the profits, and if Oscar behaves himself, we
+may, perhaps, employ him.”
+
+“Ah! my friend, the catastrophe caused by my poor boy’s heedlessness may
+prove to be the cause of your making a brilliant fortune; for, really
+and truly, you were burying your energy and your capacity at Presles.”
+
+Madame Clapart then went on to relate her visit to uncle Cardot, in
+order to show Moreau that neither she nor her son need any longer be a
+burden on him.
+
+“He is right, that old fellow,” said the ex-steward. “We must hold Oscar
+in that path with an iron hand, and he will end as a barrister or a
+notary. But he mustn’t leave the track; he must go straight through with
+it. Ha! I know how to help you. The legal business of land-agents is
+quite important, and I have heard of a lawyer who has just bought what
+is called a “titre nu”; that means a practice without clients. He is a
+young man, hard as an iron bar, eager for work, ferociously active.
+His name is Desroches. I’ll offer him our business on condition that he
+takes Oscar as a pupil; and I’ll ask him to let the boy live with him at
+nine hundred francs a year, of which I will pay three, so that your son
+will cost you only six hundred francs, without his living, in future.
+If the boy ever means to become a man it can only be under a discipline
+like that. He’ll come out of that office, notary, solicitor, or
+barrister, as he may elect.”
+
+“Come, Oscar; thank our kind Monsieur Moreau, and don’t stand there like
+a stone post. All young men who commit follies have not the good fortune
+to meet with friends who still take an interest in their career, even
+after they have been injured by them.”
+
+“The best way to make your peace with me,” said Moreau, pressing Oscar’s
+hand, “is to work now with steady application, and to conduct yourself
+in future properly.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. TRICKS AND FARCES OF THE EMBRYO LONG ROBE
+
+
+Ten days later, Oscar was taken by Monsieur Moreau to Maitre Desroches,
+solicitor, recently established in the rue de Bethisy, in a vast
+apartment at the end of a narrow court-yard, for which he was paying a
+relatively low price.
+
+Desroches, a young man twenty-six years of age, born of poor parents,
+and brought up with extreme severity by a stern father, had himself
+known the condition in which Oscar now was. Accordingly, he felt an
+interest in him, but the sort of interest which alone he could take,
+checked by the apparent harshness that characterized him. The aspect
+of this gaunt young man, with a muddy skin and hair cropped like a
+clothes-brush, who was curt of speech and possessed a piercing eye and a
+gloomy vivaciousness, terrified the unhappy Oscar.
+
+“We work here day and night,” said the lawyer, from the depths of his
+armchair, and behind a table on which were papers, piled up like Alps.
+“Monsieur Moreau, we won’t kill him; but he’ll have to go at our pace.
+Monsieur Godeschal!” he called out.
+
+Though the day was Sunday, the head-clerk appeared, pen in hand.
+
+“Monsieur Godeschal, here’s the pupil of whom I spoke to you. Monsieur
+Moreau takes the liveliest interest in him. He will dine with us and
+sleep in the small attic next to your chamber. You will allot the exact
+time it takes to go to the law-school and back, so that he does not lose
+five minutes on the way. You will see that he learns the Code and is
+proficient in his classes; that is to say, after he has done his work
+here, you will give him authors to read. In short, he is to be under
+your immediate direction, and I shall keep an eye on it. They want to
+make him what you have made yourself, a capable head-clerk, against the
+time when he can take such a place himself. Go with Monsieur Godeschal,
+my young friend; he’ll show you your lodging, and you can settle down in
+it. Did you notice Godeschal?” continued Desroches, speaking to Moreau.
+“There’s a fellow who, like me, has nothing. His sister Mariette, the
+famous danseuse, is laying up her money to buy him a practice in ten
+years. My clerks are young blades who have nothing but their ten fingers
+to rely upon. So we all, my five clerks and I, work as hard as a dozen
+ordinary fellows. But in ten years I’ll have the finest practice in
+Paris. In my office, business and clients are a passion, and that’s
+beginning to make itself felt. I took Godeschal from Derville, where he
+was only just made second clerk. He gets a thousand francs a year from
+me, and food and lodging. But he’s worth it; he is indefatigable. I love
+him, that fellow! He has managed to live, as I did when a clerk, on six
+hundred francs a year. What I care for above all is honesty, spotless
+integrity; and when it is practised in such poverty as that, a man’s a
+man. For the slightest fault of that kind a clerk leaves my office.”
+
+“The lad is in a good school,” thought Moreau.
+
+For two whole years Oscar lived in the rue de Bethisy, a den of
+pettifogging; for if ever that superannuated expression was applicable
+to a lawyer’s office, it was so in this case. Under this supervision,
+both petty and able, he was kept to his regular hours and to his work
+with such rigidity that his life in the midst of Paris was that of a
+monk.
+
+At five in the morning, in all weathers, Godeschal woke up. He went down
+with Oscar to the office, where they always found their master up and
+working. Oscar then did the errands of the office and prepared his
+lessons for the law-school,--and prepared them elaborately; for
+Godeschal, and frequently Desroches himself, pointed out to their pupil
+authors to be looked through and difficulties to overcome. He was not
+allowed to leave a single section of the Code until he had thoroughly
+mastered it to the satisfaction of his chief and Godeschal, who put him
+through preliminary examinations more searching and longer than those of
+the law-school. On his return from his classes, where he was kept but a
+short time, he went to his work in the office; occasionally he was sent
+to the Palais, but always under the thumb of the rigid Godeschal, till
+dinner. The dinner was that of his master,--one dish of meat, one of
+vegetables, and a salad. The dessert consisted of a piece of Gruyere
+cheese. After dinner, Godeschal and Oscar returned to the office and
+worked till night. Once a month Oscar went to breakfast with his uncle
+Cardot, and he spent the Sundays with his mother. From time to time
+Moreau, when he came to the office about his own affairs, would take
+Oscar to dine in the Palais-Royal, and to some theatre in the evening.
+Oscar had been so snubbed by Godeschal and by Desroches for his attempts
+at elegance that he no longer gave a thought to his clothes.
+
+“A good clerk,” Godeschal told him, “should have two black coats, one
+new, one old, a pair of black trousers, black stockings, and shoes.
+Boots cost too much. You can’t have boots till you are called to the
+bar. A clerk should never spend more than seven hundred francs a year.
+Good stout shirts of strong linen are what you want. Ha! when a man
+starts from nothing to reach fortune, he has to keep down to bare
+necessities. Look at Monsieur Desroches; he did what we are doing, and
+see where he is now.”
+
+Godeschal preached by example. If he professed the strictest principles
+of honor, discretion, and honesty, he practised them without assumption,
+as he walked, as he breathed; such action was the natural play of his
+soul, as walking and breathing were the natural play of his organs.
+Eighteen months after Oscar’s installation into the office, the second
+clerk was, for the second time, slightly wrong in his accounts, which
+were comparatively unimportant. Godeschal said to him in presence of all
+the other clerks:
+
+“My dear Gaudet, go away from here of your own free will, that it may
+not be said that Monsieur Desroches has dismissed you. You have been
+careless or absent-minded, and neither of those defects can pass here.
+The master shall know nothing about the matter; that is all that I can
+do for a comrade.”
+
+At twenty years of age, Oscar became third clerk in the office. Though
+he earned no salary, he was lodged and fed, for he did the work of the
+second clerk. Desroches employed two chief clerks, and the work of
+the second was unremitting toil. By the end of his second year in the
+law-school Oscar knew more than most licensed graduates; he did the
+work at the Palais intelligently, and argued some cases in chambers.
+Godeschal and Desroches were satisfied with him. And yet, though he now
+seemed a sensible man, he showed, from time to time, a hankering after
+pleasure and a desire to shine, repressed, though it was, by the stern
+discipline and continual toil of his life.
+
+Moreau, satisfied with Oscar’s progress, relaxed, in some degree, his
+watchfulness; and when, in July, 1825, Oscar passed his examinations
+with a spotless record, the land-agent gave him the money to dress
+himself elegantly. Madame Clapart, proud and happy in her son, prepared
+the outfit splendidly for the rising lawyer.
+
+In the month of November, when the courts reopened, Oscar Husson
+occupied the chamber of the second clerk, whose work he now did
+wholly. He had a salary of eight hundred francs with board and lodging.
+Consequently, uncle Cardot, who went privately to Desroches and made
+inquiries about his nephew, promised Madame Clapart to be on the lookout
+for a practice for Oscar, if he continued to do as well in the future.
+
+In spite of these virtuous appearances, Oscar Husson was undergoing a
+great strife in his inmost being. At times he thought of quitting a
+life so directly against his tastes and his nature. He felt that
+galley-slaves were happier than he. Galled by the collar of this iron
+system, wild desires seized him to fly when he compared himself in the
+street with the well-dressed young men whom he met. Sometimes he was
+driven by a sort of madness towards women; then, again, he resigned
+himself, but only to fall into a deeper disgust for life. Impelled by
+the example of Godeschal, he was forced, rather than led of himself, to
+remain in that rugged way.
+
+Godeschal, who watched and took note of Oscar, made it a matter of
+principle not to allow his pupil to be exposed to temptation. Generally
+the young clerk was without money, or had so little that he could
+not, if he would, give way to excess. During the last year, the worthy
+Godeschal had made five or six parties of pleasure with Oscar, defraying
+the expenses, for he felt that the rope by which he tethered the young
+kid must be slackened. These “pranks,” as he called them, helped Oscar
+to endure existence, for there was little amusement in breakfasting with
+his uncle Cardot, and still less in going to see his mother, who lived
+even more penuriously than Desroches. Moreau could not make himself
+familiar with Oscar as Godeschal could; and perhaps that sincere friend
+to young Husson was behind Godeschal in these efforts to initiate the
+poor youth safely into the mysteries of life. Oscar, grown prudent, had
+come, through contact with others, to see the extent and the character
+of the fault he had committed on that luckless journey; but the volume
+of his repressed fancies and the follies of youth might still get the
+better of him. Nevertheless, the more knowledge he could get of the
+world and its laws, the better his mind would form itself, and, provided
+Godeschal never lost sight of him, Moreau flattered himself that between
+them they could bring the son of Madame Clapart through in safety.
+
+“How is he getting on?” asked the land-agent of Godeschal on his return
+from one of his journeys which had kept him some months out of Paris.
+
+“Always too much vanity,” replied Godeschal. “You give him fine clothes
+and fine linen, he wears the shirt-fronts of a stockbroker, and so my
+dainty coxcomb spends his Sundays in the Tuileries, looking out for
+adventures. What else can you expect? That’s youth. He torments me
+to present him to my sister, where he would see a pretty sort of
+society!--actresses, ballet-dancers, elegant young fops, spendthrifts
+who are wasting their fortunes! His mind, I’m afraid, is not fitted for
+law. He can talk well, though; and if we could make him a barrister he
+might plead cases that were carefully prepared for him.”
+
+In the month of November, 1825, soon after Oscar Husson had taken
+possession of his new clerkship, and at the moment when he was about to
+pass his examination for the licentiate’s degree, a new clerk arrived to
+take the place made vacant by Oscar’s promotion.
+
+This fourth clerk, named Frederic Marest, intended to enter the
+magistracy, and was now in his third year at the law school. He was a
+fine young man of twenty-three, enriched to the amount of some twelve
+thousand francs a year by the death of a bachelor uncle, and the son
+of Madame Marest, widow of the wealthy wood-merchant. This future
+magistrate, actuated by a laudable desire to understand his vocation
+in its smallest details, had put himself in Desroches’ office for the
+purpose of studying legal procedure, and of training himself to take a
+place as head-clerk in two years. He hoped to do his “stage” (the period
+between the admission as licentiate and the call to the bar) in Paris,
+in order to be fully prepared for the functions of a post which would
+surely not be refused to a rich young man. To see himself, by the time
+he was thirty, “procureur du roi” in any court, no matter where, was
+his sole ambition. Though Frederic Marest was cousin-german to Georges
+Marest, the latter not having told his surname in Pierrotin’s coucou,
+Oscar Husson did not connect the present Marest with the grandson of
+Czerni-Georges.
+
+“Messieurs,” said Godeschal at breakfast time, addressing all the
+clerks, “I announce to you the arrival of a new jurisconsult; and as
+he is rich, rishissime, we will make him, I hope, pay a glorious
+entrance-fee.”
+
+“Forward, the book!” cried Oscar, nodding to the youngest clerk, “and
+pray let us be serious.”
+
+The youngest clerk climbed like a squirrel along the shelves which lined
+the room, until he could reach a register placed on the top shelf, where
+a thick layer of dust had settled on it.
+
+“It is getting colored,” said the little clerk, exhibiting the volume.
+
+We must explain the perennial joke of this book, then much in vogue in
+legal offices. In a clerical life where work is the rule, amusement is
+all the more treasured because it is rare; but, above all, a hoax or a
+practical joke is enjoyed with delight. This fancy or custom does, to
+a certain extent, explain Georges Marest’s behavior in the coucou. The
+gravest and most gloomy clerk is possessed, at times, with a craving
+for fun and quizzing. The instinct with which a set of young clerks will
+seize and develop a hoax or a practical joke is really marvellous.
+The denizens of a studio and of a lawyer’s office are, in this line,
+superior to comedians.
+
+In buying a practice without clients, Desroches began, as it were, a new
+dynasty. This circumstance made a break in the usages relative to the
+reception of new-comers. Moreover, Desroches having taken an office
+where legal documents had never yet been scribbled, had bought new
+tables, and white boxes edged with blue, also new. His staff was made
+up of clerks coming from other officers, without mutual ties, and
+surprised, as one may say, to find themselves together. Godeschal, who
+had served his apprenticeship under Maitre Derville, was not the sort of
+clerk to allow the precious tradition of the “welcome” to be lost.
+This “welcome” is a breakfast which every neophyte must give to the
+“ancients” of the office into which he enters.
+
+Now, about the time when Oscar came to the office, during the first six
+months of Desroches’ installation, on a winter evening when the work had
+been got through more quickly than usual, and the clerks were warming
+themselves before the fire preparatory to departure, it came
+into Godeschal’s head to construct and compose a Register
+“architriclino-basochien,” of the utmost antiquity, saved from the
+fires of the Revolution, and derived through the procureur of the
+Chatelet-Bordin, the immediate predecessor of Sauvaguest, the attorney,
+from whom Desroches had bought his practice. The work, which was highly
+approved by the other clerks, was begun by a search through all the
+dealers in old paper for a register, made of paper with the mark of
+the eighteenth century, duly bound in parchment, on which should be the
+stamp of an order in council. Having found such a volume it was left
+about in the dust, on the stove, on the ground, in the kitchen, and even
+in what the clerks called the “chamber of deliberations”; and thus
+it obtained a mouldiness to delight an antiquary, cracks of aged
+dilapidation, and broken corners that looked as though the rats had
+gnawed them; also, the gilt edges were tarnished with surprising
+perfection. As soon as the book was duly prepared, the entries were
+made. The following extracts will show to the most obtuse mind the
+purpose to which the office of Maitre Desroches devoted this register,
+the first sixty pages of which were filled with reports of fictitious
+cases. On the first page appeared as follows, in the legal spelling of
+the eighteenth century:--
+
+  In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, so be it. This
+  day, the feast of our lady Saincte-Geneviesve, patron saint of
+  Paris, under whose protection have existed, since the year 1525
+  the clerks of this Practice, we the under-signed, clerks and
+  sub-clerks of Maistre Jerosme-Sebastien Bordin, successor to the
+  late Guerbet, in his lifetime procureur at the Chastelet, do hereby
+  recognize the obligation under which we lie to renew and continue
+  the register and the archives of installation of the clerks of
+  this noble Practice, a glorious member of the Kingdom of Basoche,
+  the which register, being now full in consequence of the many acts
+  and deeds of our well-beloved predecessors, we have consigned to
+  the Keeper of the Archives of the Palais for safe-keeping, with
+  the registers of other ancient Practices; and we have ourselves
+  gone, each and all, to hear mass at the parish church of
+  Saint-Severin to solemnize the inauguration of this our new
+  register.
+
+  In witness whereof we have hereunto signed our names: Malin,
+  head-clerk; Grevin, second-clerk; Athanase Feret, clerk; Jacques
+  Heret, clerk; Regnault de Saint-Jean-d’Angely, clerk; Bedeau,
+  youngest clerk and gutter-jumper.
+
+  In the year of our Lord 1787.
+
+  After the mass aforesaid was heard, we conveyed ourselves to
+  Courtille, where, at the common charge, we ordered a fine
+  breakfast; which did not end till seven o’clock the next morning.
+
+This was marvellously well engrossed. An expert would have said that
+it was written in the eighteenth century. Twenty-seven reports of
+receptions of neophytes followed, the last in the fatal year of 1792.
+Then came a blank of fourteen years; after which the register began
+again, in 1806, with the appointment of Bordin as attorney before the
+first Court of the Seine. And here follows the deed which proclaimed the
+reconstitution of the kingdom of Basoche:--
+
+  God in his mercy willed that, in spite of the fearful storms which
+  have cruelly ravaged the land of France, now become a great
+  Empire, the archives of the very celebrated Practice of Maitre
+  Bordin should be preserved; and we, the undersigned, clerks of the
+  very virtuous and very worthy Maitre Bordin, do not hesitate to
+  attribute this unheard-of preservation, when all titles,
+  privileges, and charters were lost, to the protection of
+  Sainte-Genevieve, patron Saint of this office, and also to the
+  reverence which the last of the procureurs of noble race had for
+  all that belonged to ancient usages and customs. In the uncertainty
+  of knowing the exact part of Sainte-Genevieve and Maitre Bordin in
+  this miracle, we have resolved, each of us, to go to Saint-Etienne
+  du Mont and there hear mass, which will be said before the altar
+  of that Holy-Shepherdess who sends us sheep to shear, and also to
+  offer a breakfast to our master Bordin, hoping that he will pay
+  the costs.
+
+  Signed: Oignard, first clerk; Poidevin, second clerk; Proust,
+  clerk; Augustin Coret, sub-clerk.
+
+  At the office.
+
+  November, 1806.
+
+  At three in the afternoon, the above-named clerks hereby return
+  their grateful thanks to their excellent master, who regaled them
+  at the establishment of the Sieur Rolland restaurateur, rue du
+  Hasard, with exquisite wines of three regions, to wit: Bordeaux,
+  Champagne, and Burgundy, also with dishes most carefully chosen,
+  between the hours of four in the afternoon to half-past seven in
+  the evening. Coffee, ices, and liqueurs were in abundance. But
+  the presence of the master himself forbade the chanting of hymns
+  of praise in clerical stanzas. No clerk exceeded the bounds of
+  amiable gayety, for the worthy, respectable, and generous patron
+  had promised to take his clerks to see Talma in “Brittanicus,” at
+  the Theatre-Francais. Long life to Maitre Bordin! May God shed
+  favors on his venerable pow! May he sell dear so glorious a
+  practice! May the rich clients for whom he prays arrive! May his
+  bills of costs and charges be paid in a trice! May our masters to
+  come be like him! May he ever be loved by clerks in other worlds
+  than this!
+
+Here followed thirty-three reports of various receptions of new clerks,
+distinguished from one another by different writing and different inks,
+also by quotations, signatures, and praises of good cheer and wines,
+which seemed to show that each report was written and signed on the
+spot, “inter pocula.”
+
+Finally, under date of the month of June, 1822, the period when
+Desroches took the oath, appears this constitutional declaration:--
+
+  I, the undersigned, Francois-Claude-Marie Godeschal, called by
+  Maitre Desroches to perform the difficult functions of head-clerk
+  in a Practice where the clients have to be created, having learned
+  through Maitre Derville, from whose office I come, of the
+  existence of the famous archives architriclino-basochien, so
+  celebrated at the Palais, have implored our gracious master to
+  obtain them from his predecessor; for it has become of the highest
+  importance to recover a document bearing date of the year 1786,
+  which is connected with other documents deposited for safe-keeping
+  at the Palais, the existence of which has been certified to by
+  Messrs. Terrasse and Duclos, keepers of records, by the help of
+  which we may go back to the year 1525, and find historical
+  indications of the utmost value on the manners, customs, and
+  cookery of the clerical race.
+
+  Having received a favorable answer to this request, the present
+  office has this day been put in possession of these proofs of the
+  worship in which our predecessors held the Goddess Bottle and good
+  living.
+
+  In consequence thereof, for the edification of our successors, and
+  to renew the chain of years and goblets, I, the said Godeschal,
+  have invited Messieurs Doublet, second clerk; Vassal, third clerk;
+  Herisson and Grandemain, clerks; and Dumets, sub-clerk, to
+  breakfast, Sunday next, at the “Cheval Rouge,” on the Quai
+  Saint-Bernard, where we will celebrate the victory of obtaining
+  this volume which contains the Charter of our gullets.
+
+  This day, Sunday, June 27th, were imbibed twelve bottles of twelve
+  different wines, regarded as exquisite; also were devoured melons,
+  “pates au jus romanum,” and a fillet of beef with mushroom sauce.
+  Mademoiselle Mariette, the illustrious sister of our head-clerk
+  and leading lady of the Royal Academy of music and dancing, having
+  obligingly put at the disposition of this Practice orchestra seats
+  for the performance of this evening, it is proper to make this
+  record of her generosity. Moreover, it is hereby decreed that the
+  aforesaid clerks shall convey themselves in a body to that noble
+  demoiselle to thank her in person, and declare to her that on the
+  occasion of her first lawsuit, if the devil sends her one, she
+  shall pay the money laid out upon it, and no more.
+
+  And our head-clerk Godeschal has been and is hereby proclaimed a
+  flower of Basoche, and, more especially, a good fellow. May a man
+  who treats so well be soon in treaty for a Practice of his own!
+
+On this record were stains of wine, pates, and candle-grease. To exhibit
+the stamp of truth that the writers had managed to put upon these
+records, we may here give the report of Oscar’s own pretended
+reception:--
+
+  This day, Monday, November 25th, 1822, after a session held
+  yesterday at the rue de la Cerisaie, Arsenal quarter, at the house
+  of Madame Clapart, mother of the candidate-basochien Oscar Husson,
+  we, the undersigned, declare that the repast of admission
+  surpassed our expectations. It was composed of radishes, pink and
+  black, gherkins, anchovies, butter and olives for hors-d’oeuvre; a
+  succulent soup of rice, bearing testimony to maternal solicitude,
+  for we recognized therein a delicious taste of poultry; indeed, by
+  acknowledgment of the new member, we learned that the gibbets of a
+  fine stew prepared by the hands of Madame Clapart herself had been
+  judiciously inserted into the family soup-pot with a care that is
+  never taken except in such households.
+
+  Item: the said gibbets inclosed in a sea of jelly.
+
+  Item: a tongue of beef with tomatoes, which rendered us all
+  tongue-tied automatoes.
+
+  Item: a compote of pigeons with caused us to think the angels had
+  had a finger in it.
+
+  Item: a timbale of macaroni surrounded by chocolate custards.
+
+  Item: a dessert composed of eleven delicate dishes, among which we
+  remarked (in spite of the tipsiness caused by sixteen bottles of
+  the choicest wines) a compote of peaches of august and mirobolant
+  delicacy.
+
+  The wines of Roussillon and those of the banks of the Rhone
+  completely effaced those of Champagne and Burgundy. A bottle of
+  maraschino and another of kirsch did, in spite of the exquisite
+  coffee, plunge us into so marked an oenological ecstasy that we
+  found ourselves at a late hour in the Bois de Boulogne instead of
+  our domicile, where we thought we were.
+
+  In the statutes of our Order there is one rule which is rigidly
+  enforced; namely, to allow all candidates for the privilege of
+  Basoche to limit the magnificence of their feast of welcome to the
+  length of their purse; for it is publicly notorious that no one
+  delivers himself up to Themis if he has a fortune, and every clerk
+  is, alas, sternly curtailed by his parents. Consequently, we
+  hereby record with the highest praise the liberal conduct of
+  Madame Clapart, widow, by her first marriage, of Monsieur Husson,
+  father of the candidate, who is worthy of the hurrahs which we
+  gave for her at dessert.
+
+  To all of which we hereby set our hands.
+
+  [Signed by all the clerks.]
+
+Three clerks had already been deceived by the Book, and three real
+“receptions of welcome,” were recorded on this imposing register.
+
+The day after the arrival of each neophyte, the little sub-clerk (the
+errand-boy and “gutter-jumper”) laid upon the new-comer’s desk the
+“Archives Architriclino-Basochiennes,” and the clerks enjoyed the sight
+of his countenance as he studied its facetious pages. Inter pocula
+each candidate had learned the secret of the farce, and the revelation
+inspired him with the desire to hoax his successor.
+
+We see now why Oscar, become in his turn participator in the hoax,
+called out to the little clerk, “Forward, the book!”
+
+Ten minutes later a handsome young man, with a fine figure and pleasant
+face, presented himself, asked for Monsieur Desroches, and gave his name
+without hesitation to Godeschal.
+
+“I am Frederic Marest,” he said, “and I come to take the place of third
+clerk.”
+
+“Monsieur Husson,” said Godeschal to Oscar, “show monsieur his seat and
+tell him about the customs of the office.”
+
+The next day the new clerk found the register lying on his desk. He took
+it up, but after reading a few pages he began to laugh, said nothing to
+the assembled clerks, and laid the book down again.
+
+“Messieurs,” he said, when the hour of departure came at five o’clock,
+“I have a cousin who is head clerk of the notary Maitre Leopold
+Hannequin; I will ask his advice as to what I ought to do for my
+welcome.”
+
+“That looks ill,” cried Godeschal, when Frederic had gone, “he hasn’t
+the cut of a novice, that fellow!”
+
+“We’ll get some fun out of him yet,” said Oscar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX, LA MARQUISE DE LAS FLORENTINAS Y CABIROLOS
+
+
+The following day, at two o’clock, a young man entered the office,
+whom Oscar recognized as Georges Marest, now head-clerk of the notary
+Hannequin.
+
+“Ha! here’s the friend of Ali pacha!” he exclaimed in a flippant way.
+
+“Hey! you here, Monsieur l’ambassadeur!” returned Georges, recollecting
+Oscar.
+
+“So you know each other?” said Godeschal, addressing Georges.
+
+“I should think so! We got into a scrape together,” replied Georges,
+“about two years ago. Yes, I had to leave Crottat and go to Hannequin in
+consequence of that affair.”
+
+“What was it?” asked Godeschal.
+
+“Oh, nothing!” replied Georges, at a sign from Oscar. “We tried to hoax
+a peer of France, and he bowled us over. Ah ca! so you want to jockey my
+cousin, do you?”
+
+“We jockey no one,” replied Oscar, with dignity; “there’s our charter.”
+
+And he presented the famous register, pointing to a place where sentence
+of banishment was passed on a refractory who was stated to have been
+forced, for acts of dishonesty, to leave the office in 1788.
+
+Georges laughed as he looked through the archives.
+
+“Well, well,” he said, “my cousin and I are rich, and we’ll give you
+a fete such as you never had before,--something to stimulate your
+imaginations for that register. To-morrow (Sunday) you are bidden to the
+Rocher de Cancale at two o’clock. Afterwards, I’ll take you to spend the
+evening with Madame la Marquise de las Florentinas y Cabirolos, where
+we shall play cards, and you’ll see the elite of the women of fashion.
+Therefore, gentleman of the lower courts,” he added, with notarial
+assumption, “you will have to behave yourselves, and carry your wine
+like the seigneurs of the Regency.”
+
+“Hurrah!” cried the office like one man. “Bravo! very well! vivat! Long
+live the Marests!”
+
+“What’s all this about?” asked Desroches, coming out from his private
+office. “Ah! is that you, Georges? I know what you are after; you want
+to demoralize my clerks.”
+
+So saying, he withdrew into his own room, calling Oscar after him.
+
+“Here,” he said, opening his cash-box, “are five hundred francs. Go
+to the Palais, and get from the registrar a copy of the decision in
+Vandernesse against Vandernesse; it must be served to-night if possible.
+I have promised a PROD of twenty francs to Simon. Wait for the copy if
+it is not ready. Above all, don’t let yourself be fooled; for Derville
+is capable, in the interest of his clients, to stick a spoke in our
+wheel. Count Felix de Vandernesse is more powerful than his brother, our
+client, the ambassador. Therefore keep your eyes open, and if there’s
+the slightest hitch come back to me at once.”
+
+Oscar departed with the full intention of distinguishing himself in
+this little skirmish,--the first affair entrusted to him since his
+installation as second clerk.
+
+After the departure of Georges and Oscar, Godeschal sounded the new
+clerk to discover the joke which, as he thought, lay behind this
+Marquise de las Florentinas y Cabirolos. But Frederic, with the coolness
+and gravity of a king’s attorney, continued his cousin’s hoax, and by
+his way of answering, and his manner generally, he succeeded in making
+the office believe that the marquise might really be the widow of a
+Spanish grandee, to whom his cousin Georges was paying his addresses.
+Born in Mexico, and the daughter of Creole parents, this young and
+wealthy widow was noted for the easy manners and habits of the women of
+those climates.
+
+“She loves to laugh, she loves to sing, she loves to drink like me!” he
+said in a low voice, quoting the well-known song of Beranger. “Georges,”
+ he added, “is very rich; he has inherited from his father (who was a
+widower) eighteen thousand francs a year, and with the twelve thousand
+which an uncle has just left to each of us, he has an income of thirty
+thousand. So he pays his debts, and gives up the law. He hopes to be
+Marquis de las Florentinas, for the young widow is marquise in her own
+right, and has the privilege of giving her titles to her husband.”
+
+Though the clerks were still a good deal undecided in mind as to the
+marquise, the double perspective of a breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale
+and a fashionable festivity put them into a state of joyous expectation.
+They reserved all points as to the Spanish lady, intending to judge her
+without appeal after the meeting.
+
+The Marquise de las Florentinas y Cabirolos was neither more nor less
+than Mademoiselle Agathe-Florentine Cabirolle, first danseuse at
+the Gaiete, with whom uncle Cardot was in the habit of singing “Mere
+Godichon.” A year after the very reparable loss of Madame Cardot, the
+successful merchant encountered Florentine as she was leaving Coulon’s
+dancing-class. Attracted by the beauty of that choregraphic flower
+(Florentine was then about thirteen years of age), he followed her to
+the rue Pastourel, where he found that the future star of the ballet was
+the daughter of a portress. Two weeks later, the mother and daughter,
+established in the rue de Crussol, were enjoying a modest competence. It
+was to this protector of the arts--to use the consecrated phrase--that
+the theatre owed the brilliant danseuse. The generous Maecenas made two
+beings almost beside themselves with joy in the possession of mahogany
+furniture, hangings, carpets, and a regular kitchen; he allowed them a
+woman-of-all-work, and gave them two hundred and fifty francs a month
+for their living. Pere Cardot, with his hair in “pigeon-wings,” seemed
+like an angel, and was treated with the attention due to a benefactor.
+To him this was the age of gold.
+
+For three years the warbler of “Mere Godichon” had the wise policy to
+keep Mademoiselle Cabirolle and her mother in this little apartment,
+which was only ten steps from the theatre; but he gave the girl, out of
+love for the choregraphic art, the great Vestris for a master. In 1820
+he had the pleasure of seeing Florentine dance her first “pas” in the
+ballet of a melodrama entitled “The Ruins of Babylon.” Florentine was
+then about sixteen. Shortly after this debut Pere Cardot became an “old
+screw” in the eyes of his protegee; but as he had the sense to see that
+a danseuse at the Gaiete had a certain rank to maintain, he raised the
+monthly stipend to five hundred francs, for which, although he did not
+again become an angel, he was, at least, a “friend for life,” a second
+father. This was his silver age.
+
+From 1820 to 1823, Florentine had the experience of every danseuse
+of nineteen to twenty years of age. Her friends were the illustrious
+Mariette and Tullia, leading ladies of the Opera, Florine, and also poor
+Coralie, torn too early from the arts, and love, and Camusot. As old
+Cardot had by this time acquired five additional years, he had fallen
+into the indulgence of a semi-paternity, which is the way with old men
+towards the young talents they have trained, and which owe their success
+to them. Besides, where could he have found another Florentine who knew
+all his habits and likings, and with whom he and his friends could sing
+“Mere Godichon”? So the little old man remained under a yoke that was
+semi-conjugal and also irresistibly strong. This was the brass age for
+the old fellow.
+
+During the five years of silver and gold Pere Cardot had laid by eighty
+thousand francs. The old gentleman, wise from experience, foresaw that
+by the time he was seventy Florentine would be of age, probably engaged
+at the Opera, and, consequently, wanting all the luxury of a theatrical
+star. Some days before the party mentioned by Georges, Pere Cardot
+had spent the sum of forty-five thousand francs in fitting up for his
+Florentine the former apartment of the late Coralie. In Paris there
+are suites of rooms as well as houses and streets that have their
+predestinations. Enriched with a magnificent service of plate, the
+“prima danseuse” of the Gaiete began to give dinners, spent three
+hundred francs a month on her dress, never went out except in a hired
+carriage, and had a maid for herself, a cook, and a little footman.
+
+In fact, an engagement at the Opera was already in the wind. The
+Cocon d’Or did homage to its first master by sending its most splendid
+products for the gratification of Mademoiselle Cabirolle, now called
+Florentine. The magnificence which suddenly burst upon her apartment
+in the rue de Vendome would have satisfied the most ambitious
+supernumerary. After being the master of the ship for seven years,
+Cardot now found himself towed along by a force of unlimited caprice.
+But the luckless old gentleman was fond of his tyrant. Florentine was
+to close his eyes; he meant to leave her a hundred thousand francs. The
+iron age had now begun.
+
+Georges Marest, with thirty thousand francs a year, and a handsome face,
+courted Florentine. Every danseuse makes a point of having some young
+man who will take her to drive, and arrange the gay excursions into the
+country which all such women delight in. However disinterested she may
+be, the courtship of such a star is a passion which costs some trifles
+to the favored mortal. There are dinners at restaurants, boxes at the
+theatres, carriages to go to the environs and return, choice wines
+consumed in profusion,--for an opera danseuse eats and drinks like an
+athlete. Georges amused himself like other young men who pass at a jump
+from paternal discipline to a rich independence, and the death of his
+uncle, nearly doubling his means, had still further enlarged his ideas.
+As long as he had only his patrimony of eighteen thousand francs a year,
+his intention was to become a notary, but (as his cousin remarked to the
+clerks of Desroches) a man must be stupid who begins a profession with
+the fortune most men hope to acquire in order to leave it. Wiser then
+Georges, Frederic persisted in following the career of public office,
+and of putting himself, as we have seen, in training for it.
+
+A young man as handsome and attractive as Georges might very well aspire
+to the hand of a rich creole; and the clerks in Desroches’ office, all
+of them the sons of poor parents, having never frequented the great
+world, or, indeed, known anything about it, put themselves into their
+best clothes on the following day, impatient enough to behold, and be
+presented to the Mexican Marquise de las Florentinas y Cabirolos.
+
+“What luck,” said Oscar to Godeschal, as they were getting up in the
+morning, “that I had just ordered a new coat and trousers and waistcoat,
+and that my dear mother had made me that fine outfit! I have six frilled
+shirts of fine linen in the dozen she made for me. We shall make an
+appearance! Ha! ha! suppose one of us were to carry off the Creole
+marchioness from that Georges Marest!”
+
+“Fine occupation that, for a clerk in our office!” cried Godeschal.
+“Will you never control your vanity, popinjay?”
+
+“Ah! monsieur,” said Madame Clapart, who entered the room at that
+moment to bring her son some cravats, and overhead the last words of the
+head-clerk, “would to God that my Oscar might always follow your advice.
+It is what I tell him all the time: ‘Imitate Monsieur Godeschal; listen
+to what he tells you.’”
+
+“He’ll go all right, madame,” interposed Godeschal, “but he mustn’t
+commit any more blunders like one he was guilty of last night, or he’ll
+lose the confidence of the master. Monsieur Desroches won’t stand any
+one not succeeding in what he tells them to do. He ordered your son,
+for a first employment in his new clerkship, to get a copy of a judgment
+which ought to have been served last evening, and Oscar, instead of
+doing so, allowed himself to be fooled. The master was furious. It’s a
+chance if I have been able to repair the mischief by going this morning,
+at six o’clock, to see the head-clerk at the Palais, who has promised me
+to have a copy ready by seven o’clock to-morrow morning.”
+
+“Ah, Godeschal!” cried Oscar, going up to him and pressing his hand.
+“You are, indeed, a true friend.”
+
+“Ah, monsieur!” said Madame Clapart, “a mother is happy, indeed,
+in knowing that her son has a friend like you; you may rely upon a
+gratitude which can end only with my life. Oscar, one thing I want to
+say to you now. Distrust that Georges Marest. I wish you had never met
+him again, for he was the cause of your first great misfortune in life.”
+
+“Was he? How so?” asked Godeschal.
+
+The too devoted mother explained succinctly the adventure of her poor
+Oscar in Pierrotin’s coucou.
+
+“I am certain,” said Godeschal, “that that blagueur is preparing some
+trick against us for this evening. As for me, I can’t go to the Marquise
+de las Florentinas’ party, for my sister wants me to draw up the terms
+of her new engagement; I shall have to leave after the dessert. But,
+Oscar, be on your guard. They will ask you to play, and, of course, the
+Desroches office mustn’t draw back; but be careful. You shall play for
+both of us; here’s a hundred francs,” said the good fellow, knowing that
+Oscar’s purse was dry from the demands of his tailor and bootmaker. “Be
+prudent; remember not to play beyond that sum; and don’t let yourself
+get tipsy, either with play or libations. Saperlotte! a second clerk is
+already a man of weight, and shouldn’t gamble on notes, or go beyond a
+certain limit in anything. His business is to get himself admitted
+to the bar. Therefore don’t drink too much, don’t play too long, and
+maintain a proper dignity,--that’s your rule of conduct. Above all, get
+home by midnight; for, remember, you must be at the Palais to-morrow
+morning by seven to get that judgment. A man is not forbidden to amuse
+himself, but business first, my boy.”
+
+“Do you hear that, Oscar?” said Madame Clapart. “Monsieur Godeschal is
+indulgent; see how well he knows how to combine the pleasures of youth
+and the duties of his calling.”
+
+Madame Clapart, on the arrival of the tailor and the bootmaker with
+Oscar’s new clothes, remained alone with Godeschal, in order to return
+him the hundred francs he had just given her son.
+
+“Ah, monsieur!” she said, “the blessings of a mother will follow you
+wherever you go, and in all your enterprises.”
+
+Poor woman! she now had the supreme delight of seeing her son
+well-dressed, and she gave him a gold watch, the price of which she had
+saved by economy, as the reward of his good conduct.
+
+“You draw for the conscription next week,” she said, “and to prepare, in
+case you get a bad number, I have been to see your uncle Cardot. He is
+very much pleased with you; and so delighted to know you are a second
+clerk at twenty, and to hear of your successful examination at the
+law-school, that he promised me the money for a substitute. Are not you
+glad to think that your own good conduct has brought such reward? Though
+you have some privations to bear, remember the happiness of being able,
+five years from now, to buy a practice. And think, too, my dear little
+kitten, how happy you make your mother.”
+
+Oscar’s face, somewhat thinned by study, had acquired, through habits
+of business, a serious expression. He had reached his full growth, his
+beard was thriving; adolescence had given place to virility. The mother
+could not refrain from admiring her son and kissing him, as she said:--
+
+“Amuse yourself, my dear boy, but remember the advice of our good
+Monsieur Godeschal. Ah! by the bye, I was nearly forgetting! Here’s a
+present our friend Moreau sends you. See! what a pretty pocket-book.”
+
+“And I want it, too; for the master gave me five hundred francs to get
+that cursed judgment of Vandernesse versus Vandernesse, and I don’t want
+to leave that sum of money in my room.”
+
+“But, surely, you are not going to carry it with you!” exclaimed his
+mother, in alarm. “Suppose you should lose a sum like that! Hadn’t you
+better give it to Monsieur Godeschal for safe keeping?”
+
+“Godeschal!” cried Oscar, who thought his mother’s suggestion excellent.
+
+But Godeschal, who, like all clerks, has his time to himself on Sundays,
+from ten to two o’clock, had already departed.
+
+When his mother left him, Oscar went to lounge upon the boulevards until
+it was time to go to Georges Marest’s breakfast. Why not display those
+beautiful clothes which he wore with a pride and joy which all young
+fellows who have been pinched for means in their youth will remember. A
+pretty waistcoat with a blue ground and a palm-leaf pattern, a pair of
+black cashmere trousers pleated, a black coat very well fitting, and a
+cane with a gilt top, the cost of which he had saved himself, caused a
+natural joy to the poor lad, who thought of his manner of dress on the
+day of that journey to Presles, as the effect that Georges had then
+produced upon him came back to his mind.
+
+Oscar had before him the perspective of a day of happiness; he was
+to see the gay world at last! Let us admit that a clerk deprived of
+enjoyments, though longing for dissipation, was likely to let his
+unchained senses drive the wise counsels of his mother and Godeschal
+completely out of his mind. To the shame of youth let it be added that
+good advice is never lacking to it. In the matter of Georges, Oscar
+himself had a feeling of aversion for him; he felt humiliated before a
+witness of that scene in the salon at Presles when Moreau had flung
+him at the count’s feet. The moral senses have their laws, which are
+implacable, and we are always punished for disregarding them. There is
+one in particular, which the animals themselves obey without discussion,
+and invariably; it is that which tells us to avoid those who have once
+injured us, with or without intention, voluntarily or involuntarily. The
+creature from whom we receive either damage or annoyance will always be
+displeasing to us. Whatever may be his rank or the degree of affection
+in which he stands to us, it is best to break away from him; for our
+evil genius has sent him to us. Though the Christian sentiment is
+opposed to it, obedience to this terrible law is essentially social and
+conservative. The daughter of James II., who seated herself upon
+her father’s throne, must have caused him many a wound before that
+usurpation. Judas had certainly given some murderous blow to Jesus
+before he betrayed him. We have within us an inward power of sight, an
+eye of the soul which foresees catastrophes; and the repugnance that
+comes over us against the fateful being is the result of that foresight.
+Though religion orders us to conquer it, distrust remains, and its voice
+is forever heard. Would Oscar, at twenty years of age, have the wisdom
+to listen to it?
+
+Alas! when, at half-past two o’clock, Oscar entered the salon of the
+Rocher de Cancale,--where were three invited persons besides the clerks,
+to wit: an old captain of dragoons, named Giroudeau; Finot, a journalist
+who might procure an engagement for Florentine at the Opera, and du
+Bruel, an author, the friend of Tullia, one of Mariette’s rivals,--the
+second clerk felt his secret hostility vanish at the first handshaking,
+the first dashes of conversation as they sat around a table luxuriously
+served. Georges, moreover, made himself charming to Oscar.
+
+“You’ve taken to private diplomacy,” he said; “for what difference is
+there between a lawyer and an ambassador? only that between a nation and
+an individual. Ambassadors are the attorneys of Peoples. If I can ever
+be useful to you, let me know.”
+
+“Well,” said Oscar, “I’ll admit to you now that you once did me a very
+great harm.”
+
+“Pooh!” said Georges, after listening to the explanation for which
+he asked; “it was Monsieur de Serizy who behaved badly. His wife!
+I wouldn’t have her at any price; neither would I like to be in the
+count’s red skin, minister of State and peer of France as he is. He has
+a small mind, and I don’t care a fig for him now.”
+
+Oscar listened with true pleasure to these slurs on the count, for they
+diminished, in a way, the importance of his fault; and he echoed the
+spiteful language of the ex-notary, who amused himself by predicting
+the blows to the nobility of which the bourgeoisie were already
+dreaming,--blows which were destined to become a reality in 1830.
+
+At half-past three the solid eating of the feast began; the dessert did
+not appear till eight o’clock,--each course having taken two hours to
+serve. None but clerks can eat like that! The stomachs of eighteen and
+twenty are inexplicable to the medical art. The wines were worthy of
+Borrel, who in those days had superseded the illustrious Balaine, the
+creator of the first restaurant for delicate and perfectly prepared food
+in Paris,--that is to say, the whole world.
+
+The report of this Belshazzar’s feast for the architriclino-basochien
+register was duly drawn up, beginning, “Inter pocula aurea restauranti,
+qui vulgo dicitur Rupes Cancali.” Every one can imagine the fine page
+now added to the Golden Book of jurisprudential festivals.
+
+Godeschal disappeared after signing the report, leaving the eleven
+guests, stimulated by the old captain of the Imperial Guard, to the
+wines, toasts, and liqueurs of a dessert composed of choice and early
+fruits, in pyramids that rivalled the obelisk of Thebes. By half-past
+ten the little sub-clerk was in such a state that Georges packed him
+into a coach, paid his fare, and gave the address of his mother to the
+driver. The remaining ten, all as drunk as Pitt and Dundas, talked of
+going on foot along the boulevards, considering the fine evening, to
+the house of the Marquise de las Florentinas y Cabirolos, where, about
+midnight, they might expect to find the most brilliant society of Paris.
+They felt the need of breathing the pure air into their lungs; but,
+with the exception of Georges, Giroudeau, du Bruel, and Finot, all
+four accustomed to Parisian orgies, not one of the party could walk.
+Consequently, Georges sent to a livery-stable for three open carriages,
+in which he drove his company for an hour round the exterior boulevards
+from Monmartre to the Barriere du Trone. They returned by Bercy, the
+quays, and the boulevards to the rue de Vendome.
+
+The clerks were fluttering still in the skies of fancy to which youth
+is lifted by intoxication, when their amphitryon introduced them into
+Florentine’s salon. There sparkled a bevy of stage princesses, who,
+having been informed, no doubt, of Frederic’s joke, were amusing
+themselves by imitating the women of good society. They were then
+engaged in eating ices. The wax-candles flamed in the candelabra.
+Tullia’s footmen and those of Madame du Val-Noble and Florine, all in
+full livery, where serving the dainties on silver salvers. The hangings,
+a marvel of Lyonnaise workmanship, fastened by gold cords, dazzled
+all eyes. The flowers of the carpet were like a garden. The richest
+“bibelots” and curiosities danced before the eyes of the new-comers.
+
+At first, and in the state to which Georges had brought them, the
+clerks, and more particularly Oscar, believed in the Marquise de las
+Florentinas y Cabirolos. Gold glittered on four card-tables in the
+bed-chamber. In the salon, the women were playing at vingt-et-un, kept
+by Nathan, the celebrated author.
+
+After wandering, tipsy and half asleep, through the dark exterior
+boulevards, the clerks now felt that they had wakened in the palace
+of Armida. Oscar, presented to the marquise by Georges, was quite
+stupefied, and did not recognize the danseuse he had seen at the Gaiete,
+in this lady, aristocratically decolletee and swathed in laces, till she
+looked like the vignette of a keepsake, who received him with manners
+and graces the like of which was neither in the memory nor the
+imagination of a young clerk rigidly brought up. After admiring the
+splendors of the apartment and the beautiful women there displayed, who
+had all outdone each other in their dress for this occasion, Oscar was
+taken by the hand and led by Florentine to a vingt-et-un table.
+
+“Let me present you,” she said, “to the beautiful Marquise d’Anglade,
+one of my nearest friends.”
+
+And she took Oscar to the pretty Fanny Beaupre, who had just made
+herself a reputation at the Porte-Saint-Martin, in a melodrama entitled
+“La Famille d’Anglade.”
+
+“My dear,” said Florentine, “allow me to present to you a charming
+youth, whom you can take as a partner in the game.”
+
+“Ah! that will be delightful,” replied the actress, smiling, as she
+looked at Oscar. “I am losing. Shall we go shares, monsieur?”
+
+“Madame la marquise, I am at your orders,” said Oscar, sitting down
+beside her.
+
+“Put down the money; I’ll play; you shall being me luck! See, here are
+my last hundred francs.”
+
+And the “marquise” took out from her purse, the rings of which were
+adorned with diamonds, five gold pieces. Oscar pulled out his hundred in
+silver five-franc pieces, much ashamed at having to mingle such ignoble
+coins with gold. In ten throws the actress lost the two hundred francs.
+
+“Oh! how stupid!” she cried. “I’m banker now. But we’ll play together
+still, won’t we?”
+
+Fanny Beaupre rose to take her place as banker, and Oscar, finding
+himself observed by the whole table, dared not retire on the ground that
+he had no money. Speech failed him, and his tongue clove to the roof of
+his mouth.
+
+“Lend me five hundred francs,” said the actress to the danseuse.
+
+Florentine brought the money, which she obtained from Georges, who had
+just passed eight times at ecarte.
+
+“Nathan has won twelve hundred francs,” said the actress to Oscar.
+“Bankers always win; we won’t let them fool us, will we?” she whispered
+in his ear.
+
+Persons of nerve, imagination, and dash will understand how it was that
+poor Oscar opened his pocket-book and took out the note of five
+hundred francs which Desroches had given him. He looked at Nathan, the
+distinguished author, who now began, with Florine, to play a heavy game
+against the bank.
+
+“Come, my little man, take ‘em up,” cried Fanny Beaupre, signing to
+Oscar to rake in the two hundred francs which Nathan and Florine had
+punted.
+
+The actress did not spare taunts or jests on those who lost. She
+enlivened the game with jokes which Oscar thought singular; but
+reflection was stifled by joy; for the first two throws produced a
+gain of two thousand francs. Oscar then thought of feigning illness and
+making his escape, leaving his partner behind him; but “honor” kept him
+there. Three more turns and the gains were lost. Oscar felt a cold sweat
+running down his back, and he was sobered completely.
+
+The next two throws carried off the thousand francs of their mutual
+stake. Oscar was consumed with thirst, and drank three glasses of iced
+punch one after the other. The actress now led him into the bed-chamber,
+where the rest of the company were playing, talking frivolities with an
+easy air. But by this time the sense of his wrong-doing overcame him;
+the figure of Desroches appeared to him like a vision. He turned aside
+to a dark corner and sat down, putting his handkerchief to his eyes, and
+wept. Florentine noticed the attitude of true grief, which, because it
+is sincere, is certain to strike the eye of one who acts. She ran to
+him, took the handkerchief from his hand, and saw his tears; then she
+led him into a boudoir alone.
+
+“What is it, my child?” she said.
+
+At the tone and accent of that voice Oscar recognized a motherly
+kindness which is often found in women of her kind, and he answered
+openly:--
+
+“I have lost five hundred francs which my employer gave me to obtain a
+document to-morrow morning; there’s nothing for me but to fling myself
+into the river; I am dishonored.”
+
+“How silly you are!” she said. “Stay where you are; I’ll get you a
+thousand francs and you can win back what you’ve lost; but don’t risk
+more than five hundred, so that you may be sure of your master’s money.
+Georges plays a fine game at ecarte; bet on him.”
+
+Oscar, frightened by his position, accepted the offer of the mistress of
+the house.
+
+“Ah!” he thought, “it is only women of rank who are capable of such
+kindness. Beautiful, noble, rich! how lucky Georges is!”
+
+He received the thousand francs from Florentine and returned to bet on
+his hoaxer. Georges had just passed for the fourth time when Oscar sat
+down beside him. The other players saw with satisfaction the arrival of
+a new better; for all, with the instinct of gamblers, took the side of
+Giroudeau, the old officer of the Empire.
+
+“Messieurs,” said Georges, “you’ll be punished for deserting me; I feel
+in the vein. Come, Oscar, we’ll make an end of them!”
+
+Georges and his partner lost five games running. After losing the
+thousand francs Oscar was seized with the fury of play and insisted on
+taking the cards himself. By the result of a chance not at all uncommon
+with those who play for the first time, he won. But Georges bewildered
+him with advice; told him when to throw the cards, and even snatched
+them from his hand; so that this conflict of wills and intuitions
+injured his vein. By three o’clock in the morning, after various changes
+of fortune, and still drinking punch, Oscar came down to his last
+hundred francs. He rose with a heavy head, completely stupefied, took a
+few steps forward, and fell upon a sofa in the boudoir, his eyes closing
+in a leaden sleep.
+
+“Mariette,” said Fanny Beaupre to Godeschal’s sister, who had come in
+about two o’clock, “do you dine here to-morrow? Camusot and Pere Cardot
+are coming, and we’ll have some fun.”
+
+“What!” cried Florentine, “and my old fellow never told me!”
+
+“He said he’d tell you to-morrow morning,” remarked Fanny Beaupre.
+
+“The devil take him and his orgies!” exclaimed Florentine. “He and
+Camusot are worse than magistrates or stage-managers. But we have very
+good dinners here, Mariette,” she continued. “Cardot always orders them
+from Chevet’s; bring your Duc de Maufrigneuse and we’ll make them dance
+like Tritons.”
+
+Hearing the names of Cardot and Camusot, Oscar made an effort to throw
+off his sleep; but he could only mutter a few words which were not
+understood, and then he fell back upon the silken cushions.
+
+“You’ll have to keep him here all night,” said Fanny Beaupre, laughing,
+to Florentine.
+
+“Oh! poor boy! he is drunk with punch and despair both. It is the second
+clerk in your brother’s office,” she said to Mariette. “He has lost
+the money his master gave him for some legal affair. He wanted to drown
+himself; so I lent him a thousand francs, but those brigands Finot and
+Giroudeau won them from him. Poor innocent!”
+
+“But we ought to wake him,” said Mariette. “My brother won’t make light
+of it, nor his master either.”
+
+“Oh, wake him if you can, and carry him off with you!” said Florentine,
+returning to the salon to receive the adieux of some departing guests.
+
+Presently those who remained began what was called “character dancing,”
+ and by the time it was broad daylight, Florentine, tired out, went to
+bed, oblivious to Oscar, who was still in the boudoir sound asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. ANOTHER CATASTROPHE
+
+
+About eleven the next morning, a terrible sound awoke the unfortunate
+clerk. Recognizing the voice of his uncle Cardot, he thought it wise to
+feign sleep, and so turned his face into the yellow velvet cushions on
+which he had passed the night.
+
+“Really, my little Florentine,” said the old gentleman, “this is neither
+right nor sensible; you danced last evening in ‘Les Ruines,’ and you
+have spent the night in an orgy. That’s deliberately going to work to
+lose your freshness. Besides which, it was ungrateful to inaugurate this
+beautiful apartment without even letting me know. Who knows what has
+been going on here?”
+
+“Old monster!” cried Florentine, “haven’t you a key that lets you in
+at all hours? My ball lasted till five in the morning, and you have the
+cruelty to come and wake me up at eleven!”
+
+“Half-past eleven, Titine,” observed Cardot, humbly. “I came out early
+to order a dinner fit for an archbishop at Chevet’s. Just see how the
+carpets are stained! What sort of people did you have here?”
+
+“You needn’t complain, for Fanny Beaupre told me you were coming to
+dinner with Camusot, and to please you I’ve invited Tullia, du Bruel,
+Mariette, the Duc de Maufrigneuse, Florine, and Nathan. So you’ll have
+the four loveliest creatures ever seen behind the foot-lights; we’ll
+dance you a ‘pas de Zephire.’”
+
+“It is enough to kill you to lead such a life!” cried old Cardot; “and
+look at the broken glasses! What pillage! The antechamber actually makes
+me shudder--”
+
+At this instant the wrathful old gentleman stopped short as if
+magnetized, like a bird which a snake is charming. He saw the outline of
+a form in a black coat through the door of the boudoir.
+
+“Ah, Mademoiselle Cabirolle!” he said at last.
+
+“Well, what?” she asked.
+
+The eyes of the danseuse followed those of the little old man; and when
+she recognized the presence of the clerk she went off into such fits of
+laughter that not only was the old gentleman nonplussed, but Oscar was
+compelled to appear; for Florentine took him by the arm, still pealing
+with laughter at the conscience-stricken faces of the uncle and nephew.
+
+“You here, nephew?”
+
+“Nephew! so he’s your nephew?” cried Florentine, with another burst of
+laughter. “You never told me about him. Why didn’t Mariette carry you
+off?” she said to Oscar, who stood there petrified. “What can he do now,
+poor boy?”
+
+“Whatever he pleases!” said Cardot, sharply, marching to the door as if
+to go away.
+
+“One moment, papa Cardot. You will be so good as to get your nephew out
+of a scrape into which I led him; for he played the money of his master
+and lost it, and I lend him a thousand francs to win it back, and he
+lost that too.”
+
+“Miserable boy! you lost fifteen hundred francs at play at your age?”
+
+“Oh, uncle, uncle!” cried poor Oscar, plunged by these words into all
+the horrors of his position, and falling on his knees before his uncle,
+with clasped hands, “It is twelve o’clock! I am lost, dishonored!
+Monsieur Desroches will have no pity! He gave me the money for an
+important affair, in which his pride was concerned. I was to get a paper
+at the Palais in the case of Vandernesse versus Vandernesse! What will
+become of me? Oh, save me for the sake of my father and aunt! Come
+with me to Monsieur Desroches, and explain it to him; make some
+excuse,--anything!”
+
+These sentences were jerked out through sobs and tears that might have
+moved the sphinx of Luxor.
+
+“Old skinflint!” said the danseuse, who was crying, “will you let your
+own nephew be dishonored,--the son of the man to whom you owe your
+fortune?--for his name is Oscar Husson. Save him, or Titine will deny
+you forever!”
+
+“But how did he come here?” asked Cardot.
+
+“Don’t you see that the reason he forgot to go for those papers was
+because he was drunk and overslept himself. Georges and his cousin
+Frederic took all the clerks in his office to a feast at the Rocher de
+Cancale.”
+
+Pere Cardot looked at Florentine and hesitated.
+
+“Come, come,” she said, “you old monkey, shouldn’t I have hid him better
+if there had been anything else in it?”
+
+“There, take your five hundred francs, you scamp!” said Cardot to his
+nephew, “and remember, that’s the last penny you’ll ever get from me.
+Go and make it up with your master if you can. I’ll return the thousand
+francs which you borrowed of mademoiselle; but I’ll never hear another
+word about you.”
+
+Oscar disappeared, not wishing to hear more. Once in the street,
+however, he knew not where to go.
+
+Chance which destroys men and chance which saves them were both making
+equal efforts for and against Oscar during that fateful morning. But he
+was doomed to fall before a master who forgave no failure in any affair
+he had once undertaken. When Mariette reached home that night, she
+felt alarmed at what might happen to the youth in whom her brother took
+interest and she wrote a hasty note to Godeschal, telling him what had
+happened to Oscar and inclosing a bank bill for five hundred francs to
+repair his loss. The kind-hearted creature went to sleep after charging
+her maid to carry the little note to Desroches’ office before seven
+o’clock in the morning. Godeschal, on his side, getting up at six and
+finding that Oscar had not returned, guessed what had happened. He took
+the five hundred francs from his own little hoard and rushed to the
+Palais, where he obtained a copy of the judgment and returned in time to
+lay it before Desroches by eight o’clock.
+
+Meantime Desroches, who always rose at four, was in his office by seven.
+Mariette’s maid, not finding the brother of her mistress in his bedroom,
+came down to the office and there met Desroches, to whom she very
+naturally offered the note.
+
+“Is it about business?” he said; “I am Monsieur Desroches.”
+
+“You can see, monsieur,” replied the maid.
+
+Desroches opened the letter and read it. Finding the five-hundred-franc
+note, he went into his private office furiously angry with his second
+clerk. About half-past seven he heard Godeschal dictating to the second
+head-clerk a copy of the document in question, and a few moments later
+the good fellow entered his master’s office with an air of triumph in
+his heart.
+
+“Did Oscar Husson fetch the paper this morning from Simon?” inquired
+Desroches.
+
+“Yes, monsieur.”
+
+“Who gave him the money?”
+
+“Why, you did, Saturday,” replied Godeschal.
+
+“Then it rains five-hundred-franc notes,” cried Desroches. “Look here,
+Godeschal, you are a fine fellow, but that little Husson does not
+deserve such generosity. I hate idiots, but I hate still more the men
+who will go wrong in spite of the fatherly care which watches over
+them.” He gave Godeschal Mariette’s letter and the five-hundred-franc
+note which she had sent. “You must excuse my having opened it,” he said,
+“but your sister’s maid told me it was on business. Dismiss Husson.”
+
+“Poor unhappy boy! what grief he has caused me!” said Godeschal, “that
+tall ne’er-do-well of a Georges Marest is his evil genius; he ought
+to flee him like the plague; if not, he’ll bring him to some third
+disgrace.”
+
+“What do you mean by that?” asked Desroches.
+
+Godeschal then related briefly the affair of the journey to Presles.
+
+“Ah! yes,” said the lawyer, “I remember Joseph Bridau told me that story
+about the time it happened. It is to that meeting that we owe the favor
+Monsieur de Serizy has since shown in the matter of Joseph’s brother,
+Philippe Bridau.”
+
+At this moment Moreau, to whom the case of the Vandernesse estate was of
+much importance, entered the office. The marquis wished to sell the
+land in parcels and the count was opposed to such a sale. The land-agent
+received therefore the first fire of Desroches’ wrath against his
+ex-second clerk and all the threatening prophecies which he fulminated
+against him. The result was that this most sincere friend and protector
+of the unhappy youth came to the conclusion that his vanity was
+incorrigible.
+
+“Make him a barrister,” said Desroches. “He has only his last
+examination to pass. In that line, his defects might prove virtues, for
+self-love and vanity give tongues to half the attorneys.”
+
+At this time Clapart, who was ill, was being nursed by his wife,--a
+painful task, a duty without reward. The sick man tormented the poor
+creature, who was now doomed to learn what venomous and spiteful teasing
+a half-imbecile man, whom poverty had rendered craftily savage, could
+be capable of in the weary tete-a-tete of each endless day. Delighted to
+turn a sharpened arrow in the sensitive heart of the mother, he had, in
+a measure, studied the fears that Oscar’s behavior and defects inspired
+in the poor woman. When a mother receives from her child a shock like
+that of the affair at Presles, she continues in a state of constant
+fear, and, by the manner in which his wife boasted of Oscar every time
+he obtained the slightest success, Clapart knew the extent of her secret
+uneasiness, and he took pains to rouse it on every occasion.
+
+“Well, Madame,” Clapart would say, “Oscar is doing better than I even
+hoped. That journey to Presles was only a heedlessness of youth. Where
+can you find young lads who do not commit just such faults? Poor child!
+he bears his privations heroically! If his father had lived, he would
+never have had any. God grant he may know how to control his passions!”
+ etc., etc.
+
+While all these catastrophes were happening in the rue de Vendome and
+the rue de Bethisy, Clapart, sitting in the chimney corner, wrapped in
+an old dressing-gown, watched his wife, who was engaged over the fire
+in their bedroom in simultaneously making the family broth, Clapart’s
+“tisane,” and her own breakfast.
+
+“Mon Dieu! I wish I knew how the affair of yesterday ended. Oscar was
+to breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale and spend the evening with a
+marquise--”
+
+“Don’t trouble yourself! Sooner or later you’ll find out about your
+swan,” said her husband. “Do you really believe in that marquise? Pooh!
+A young man who has senses and a taste for extravagance like Oscar can
+find such ladies as that on every bush--if he pays for them. Some fine
+morning you’ll find yourself with a load of debt on your back.”
+
+“You are always trying to put me in despair!” cried Madame Clapart. “You
+complained that my son lived on your salary, and never has he cost you
+a penny. For two years you haven’t had the slightest cause of complaint
+against him; here he is second clerk, his uncle and Monsieur Moreau pay
+all expenses, and he earns, himself, a salary of eight hundred francs.
+If we have bread to eat in our old age we may owe it all to that dear
+boy. You are really too unjust--”
+
+“You call my foresight unjust, do you?” replied the invalid, crossly.
+
+Just then the bell rang loudly. Madame Clapart ran to open the door, and
+remained in the outer room with Moreau, who had come to soften the blow
+which Oscar’s new folly would deal to the heart of his poor mother.
+
+“What! he gambled with the money of the office?” she cried, bursting
+into tears.
+
+“Didn’t I tell you so, hey?” said Clapart, appearing like a spectre at
+the door of the salon whither his curiosity had brought him.
+
+“Oh! what shall we do with him?” said Madame Clapart, whose grief made
+her impervious to Clapart’s taunt.
+
+“If he bore my name,” replied Moreau, “I should wait composedly till he
+draws for the conscription, and if he gets a fatal number I should not
+provide him with a substitute. This is the second time your son has
+committed a folly out of sheer vanity. Well, vanity may inspire fine
+deeds in war and may advance him in the career of a soldier. Besides,
+six years of military service will put some lead into his head; and
+as he has only his last legal examination to pass, it won’t be much
+ill-luck for him if he doesn’t become a lawyer till he is twenty-six;
+that is, if he wants to continue in the law after paying, as they say,
+his tax of blood. By that time, at any rate, he will have been severely
+punished, he will have learned experience, and contracted habits of
+subordination. Before making his probation at the bar he will have gone
+through his probations in life.”
+
+“If that is your decision for a son,” said Madame Clapart, “I see that
+the heart of a father is not like that of a mother. My poor Oscar a
+common soldier!--”
+
+“Would you rather he flung himself headforemost into the Seine after
+committing a dishonorable action? He cannot now become a solicitor; do
+you think him steady and wise enough to be a barrister? No. While
+his reason is maturing, what will he become? A dissipated fellow. The
+discipline of the army will, at least, preserve him from that.”
+
+“Could he not go into some other office? His uncle Cardot has promised
+to pay for his substitute; Oscar is to dedicate his graduating thesis to
+him.”
+
+At this moment carriage-wheels were heard, and a hackney-coach
+containing Oscar and all his worldly belongings stopped before the door.
+The luckless young man came up at once.
+
+“Ah! here you are, Monsieur Joli-Coeur!” cried Clapart.
+
+Oscar kissed his mother, and held out to Moreau a hand which the latter
+refused to take. To this rebuff Oscar replied by a reproachful look, the
+boldness of which he had never shown before. Then he turned on Clapart.
+
+“Listen to me, monsieur,” said the youth, transformed into a man. “You
+worry my poor mother devilishly, and that’s your right, for she is,
+unfortunately, your wife. But as for me, it is another thing. I shall be
+of age in a few months; and you have no rights over me even as a minor.
+I have never asked anything of you. Thanks to Monsieur Moreau, I have
+never cost you one penny, and I owe you no gratitude. Therefore, I say,
+let me alone!”
+
+Clapart, hearing this apostrophe, slunk back to his sofa in the chimney
+corner. The reasoning and the inward fury of the young man, who had just
+received a lecture from his friend Godeschal, silenced the imbecile mind
+of the sick man.
+
+“A momentary temptation, such as you yourself would have yielded to
+at my age,” said Oscar to Moreau, “has made me commit a fault which
+Desroches thinks serious, though it is only a peccadillo. I am more
+provoked with myself for taking Florentine of the Gaiete for a marquise
+than I am for losing fifteen hundred francs after a little debauch in
+which everybody, even Godeschal, was half-seas over. This time, at any
+rate, I’ve hurt no one by myself. I’m cured of such things forever. If
+you are willing to help me, Monsieur Moreau, I swear to you that the
+six years I must still stay a clerk before I can get a practice shall be
+spent without--”
+
+“Stop there!” said Moreau. “I have three children, and I can make no
+promises.”
+
+“Never mind, never mind,” said Madame Clapart to her son, casting a
+reproachful glance at Moreau. “Your uncle Cardot--”
+
+“I have no longer an uncle Cardot,” replied Oscar, who related the scene
+at the rue de Vendome.
+
+Madame Clapart, feeling her legs give way under the weight of her body,
+staggered to a chair in the dining-room, where she fell as if struck by
+lightning.
+
+“All the miseries together!” she said, as she fainted.
+
+Moreau took the poor mother in his arms, and carried her to the bed in
+her chamber. Oscar remained motionless, as if crushed.
+
+“There is nothing left for you,” said Moreau, coming back to him, “but
+to make yourself a soldier. That idiot of a Clapart looks to me as
+though he couldn’t live three months, and then your mother will be
+without a penny. Ought I not, therefore, to reserve for her the little
+money I am able to give? It was impossible to tell you this before her.
+As a soldier, you’ll eat plain bread and reflect on life such as it is
+to those who are born into it without fortune.”
+
+“I may get a lucky number,” said Oscar.
+
+“Suppose you do, what then? Your mother has well fulfilled her duty
+towards you. She gave you an education; she placed you on the right
+road, and secured you a career. You have left it. Now, what can you do?
+Without money, nothing; as you know by this time. You are not a man who
+can begin a new career by taking off your coat and going to work in your
+shirt-sleeves with the tools of an artisan. Besides, your mother loves
+you, and she would die to see you come to that.”
+
+Oscar sat down and no longer restrained his tears, which flowed
+copiously. At last he understood this language, so completely
+unintelligible to him ever since his first fault.
+
+“Men without means ought to be perfect,” added Moreau, not suspecting
+the profundity of that cruel sentence.
+
+“My fate will soon be decided,” said Oscar. “I draw my number the day
+after to-morrow. Between now and then I will decide upon my future.”
+
+Moreau, deeply distressed in spite of his stern bearing, left the
+household in the rue de la Cerisaie to its despair.
+
+Three days later Oscar drew the number twenty-seven. In the interests of
+the poor lad the former steward of Presles had the courage to go to the
+Comte de Serizy and ask for his influence to get Oscar into the cavalry.
+It happened that the count’s son, having left the Ecole Polytechnique
+rather low in his class, was appointed, as a favor, sub-lieutenant in
+a regiment of cavalry commanded by the Duc de Maufrigneuse. Oscar had,
+therefore, in his great misfortune, the small luck of being, at the
+Comte de Serizy’s instigation, drafted into that noble regiment, with
+the promise of promotion to quartermaster within a year. Chance had thus
+placed the ex-clerk under the command of the son of the Comte de Serizy.
+
+Madame Clapart, after languishing for some days, so keenly was she
+affected by these catastrophes, became a victim to the remorse which
+seizes upon many a mother whose conduct has been frail in her youth,
+and who, in her old age, turns to repentance. She now considered herself
+under a curse. She attributed the sorrows of her second marriage and the
+misfortunes of her son to a just retribution by which God was compelling
+her to expiate the errors and pleasures of her youth. This opinion soon
+became a certainty in her mind. The poor woman went, for the first
+time in forty years, to confess herself to the Abbe Gaudron, vicar of
+Saint-Paul’s, who led her into the practice of devotion. But so ill-used
+and loving a soul as that of Madame Clapart’s could never be anything
+but simply pious. The Aspasia of the Directory wanted to expiate her
+sins in order to draw down the blessing of God on the head of her poor
+Oscar, and she henceforth vowed herself to works and deeds of the purest
+piety. She believed she had won the attention of heaven when she saved
+the life of Monsieur Clapart, who, thanks to her devotion, lived on to
+torture her; but she chose to see, in the tyranny of that imbecile mind,
+a trial inflicted by the hand of one who loveth while he chasteneth.
+
+Oscar, meantime, behaved so well that in 1830 he was first sergeant
+of the company of the Vicomte de Serizy, which gave him the rank of
+sub-lieutenant of the line. Oscar Husson was by that time twenty-five
+years old. As the Royal Guard, to which his regiment was attached, was
+always in garrison in Paris, or within a circumference of thirty miles
+around the capital, he came to see his mother from time to time, and
+tell her his griefs; for he had the sense to see that he could never
+become an officer as matters then were. At that time the cavalry grades
+were all being taken up by the younger sons of noble families, and men
+without the article to their names found promotion difficult. Oscar’s
+sole ambition was to leave the Guards and be appointed sub-lieutenant in
+a regiment of the cavalry of the line. In the month of February, 1830,
+Madame Clapart obtained this promotion for her son through the influence
+of Madame la Dauphine, granted to the Abbe Gaudron, now rector of
+Saint-Pauls.
+
+Although Oscar outwardly professed to be devoted to the Bourbons, in
+the depths of his heart he was a liberal. Therefore, in the struggle of
+1830, he went over to the side of the people. This desertion, which
+had an importance due to the crisis in which it took place, brought him
+before the eyes of the public. During the excitement of triumph in the
+month of August he was promoted lieutenant, received the cross of the
+Legion of honor, and was attached as aide-de-camp to La Fayette, who
+gave him the rank of captain in 1832. When the amateur of the best of
+all possible republics was removed from the command of the National
+guard, Oscar Husson, whose devotion to the new dynasty amounted to
+fanaticism, was appointed major of a regiment sent to Africa at the time
+of the first expedition undertaken by the Prince-royal. The Vicomte de
+Serizy chanced to be the lieutenant-colonel of this regiment. At the
+affair of the Makta, where the field had to be abandoned to the
+Arabs, Monsieur de Serizy was left wounded under a dead horse. Oscar,
+discovering this, called out to the squadron:
+
+“Messieurs, it is going to death, but we cannot abandon our colonel.”
+
+He dashed upon the enemy, and his electrified soldiers followed him.
+The Arabs, in their first astonishment at this furious and unlooked-for
+return, allowed Oscar to seize the viscount, whom he flung across his
+horse, and carried off at full gallop,--receiving, as he did so, two
+slashes from yataghans on his left arm.
+
+Oscar’s conduct on this occasion was rewarded with the officer’s
+cross of the Legion of honor, and by his promotion to the rank of
+lieutenant-colonel. He took the most affectionate care of the Vicomte de
+Serizy, whose mother came to meet him on the arrival of the regiment at
+Toulon, where, as we know, the young man died of his wounds.
+
+The Comtesse de Serizy had not separated her son from the man who had
+shown him such devotion. Oscar himself was so seriously wounded that the
+surgeons whom the countess had brought with her from Paris thought best
+to amputate his left arm.
+
+Thus the Comte de Serizy was led not only to forgive Oscar for his
+painful remarks on the journey to Presles, but to feel himself his
+debtor on behalf of his son, now buried in the chapel of the chateau de
+Serizy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. OSCAR’S LAST BLUNDER
+
+
+Some years after the affair at Makta, an old lady, dressed in black,
+leaning on the arm of a man about thirty-four years of age, in whom
+observers would recognize a retired officer, from the loss of an arm and
+the rosette of the Legion of honor in his button-hole, was standing, at
+eight o’clock, one morning in the month of May, under the porte-cochere
+of the Lion d’Argent, rue de Faubourg Saint-Denis, waiting, apparently,
+for the departure of a diligence. Undoubtedly Pierrotin, the master of
+the line of coaches running through the valley of the Oise (despatching
+one through Saint-Leu-Taverny and Isle-Adam to Beaumont), would scarcely
+have recognized in this bronzed and maimed officer the little Oscar
+Husson he had formerly taken to Presles. Madame Husson, at last a widow,
+was as little recognizable as her son. Clapart, a victim of Fieschi’s
+machine, had served his wife better by death than by all his previous
+life. The idle lounger was hanging about, as usual, on the boulevard du
+Temple, gazing at the show, when the explosion came. The poor widow
+was put upon the pension list, made expressly for the families of the
+victim, at fifteen hundred francs a year.
+
+The coach, to which were harnessed four iron-gray horses that would
+have done honor to the Messageries-royales, was divided into three
+compartments, coupe, interieur, and rotonde, with an imperiale above. It
+resembled those diligences called “Gondoles,” which now ply, in rivalry
+with the railroad, between Paris and Versailles. Both solid and light,
+well-painted and well-kept, lined with fine blue cloth, and furnished
+with blinds of a Moorish pattern and cushions of red morocco, the
+“Swallow of the Oise” could carry, comfortably, nineteen passengers.
+Pierrotin, now about fifty-six years old, was little changed. Still
+dressed in a blue blouse, beneath which he wore a black suit, he smoked
+his pipe, and superintended the two porters in livery, who were stowing
+away the luggage in the great imperiale.
+
+“Are your places taken?” he said to Madame Clapart and Oscar, eyeing
+them like a man who is trying to recall a likeness to his memory.
+
+“Yes, two places for the interieur in the name of my servant,
+Bellejambe,” replied Oscar; “he must have taken them last evening.”
+
+“Ah! monsieur is the new collector of Beaumont,” said Pierrotin. “You
+take the place of Monsieur Margueron’s nephew?”
+
+“Yes,” replied Oscar, pressing the arm of his mother, who was about to
+speak.
+
+The officer wished to remain unknown for a time.
+
+Just then Oscar thrilled at hearing the well-remembered voice of Georges
+Marest calling out from the street: “Pierrotin, have you one seat left?”
+
+“It seems to me you could say ‘monsieur’ without cracking your throat,”
+ replied the master of the line of coaches of the Valley of the Oise,
+sharply.
+
+Unless by the sound of the voice, Oscar could never have recognized the
+individual whose jokes had been so fatal to him. Georges, almost bald,
+retained only three or four tufts of hair above his ears; but these were
+elaborately frizzed out to conceal, as best they could, the nakedness
+of the skull. A fleshiness ill-placed, in other words, a pear-shaped
+stomach, altered the once elegant proportions of the ex-young man. Now
+almost ignoble in appearance and bearing, Georges exhibited the traces
+of disasters in love and a life of debauchery in his blotched skin and
+bloated, vinous features. The eyes had lost the brilliancy, the vivacity
+of youth which chaste or studious habits have the virtue to retain.
+Dressed like a man who is careless of his clothes, Georges wore a pair
+of shabby trousers, with straps intended for varnished boots; but his
+were of leather, thick-soled, ill-blacked, and of many months’ wear. A
+faded waistcoat, a cravat, pretentiously tied, although the material was
+a worn-out foulard, bespoke the secret distress to which a former dandy
+sometimes falls a prey. Moreover, Georges appeared at this hour of the
+morning in an evening coat, instead of a surtout; a sure diagnostic of
+actual poverty. This coat, which had seen long service at balls, had
+now, like its master, passed from the opulent ease of former times to
+daily work. The seams of the black cloth showed whitening lines; the
+collar was greasy; long usage had frayed the edges of the sleeves into
+fringes.
+
+And yet, Georges ventured to attract attention by yellow kid gloves,
+rather dirty, it is true, on the outside of which a signet ring
+defined a large dark spot. Round his cravat, which was slipped into a
+pretentious gold ring, was a chain of silk, representing hair, which,
+no doubt, held a watch. His hat, though worn rather jauntily, revealed,
+more than any of the above symptoms, the poverty of a man who was
+totally unable to pay sixteen francs to a hat-maker, being forced to
+live from hand to mouth. The former admirer of Florentine twirled a cane
+with a chased gold knob, which was horribly battered. The blue trousers,
+the waistcoat of a material called “Scotch stuff,” a sky-blue cravat and
+a pink-striped cotton shirt, expressed, in the midst of all this ruin,
+such a latent desire to SHOW-OFF that the contrast was not only a sight
+to see, but a lesson to be learned.
+
+“And that is Georges!” said Oscar, in his own mind,--“a man I left in
+possession of thirty thousand francs a year!”
+
+“Has Monsieur _de_ Pierrotin a place in the coupe?” asked Georges,
+ironically replying to Pierrotin’s rebuff.
+
+“No; my coupe is taken by a peer of France, the son-in-law of Monsieur
+Moreau, Monsieur le Baron de Canalis, his wife, and his mother-in-law. I
+have nothing left but one place in the interieur.”
+
+“The devil! so peers of France still travel in your coach, do they?”
+ said Georges, remembering his adventure with the Comte de Serizy. “Well,
+I’ll take that place in the interieur.”
+
+He cast a glance of examination on Oscar and his mother, but did not
+recognize them.
+
+Oscar’s skin was now bronzed by the sun of Africa; his moustache was
+very thick and his whiskers ample; the hollows in his cheeks and his
+strongly marked features were in keeping with his military bearing.
+The rosette of an officer of the Legion of honor, his missing arm,
+the strict propriety of his dress, would all have diverted Georges
+recollections of his former victim if he had had any. As for Madame
+Clapart, whom Georges had scarcely seen, ten years devoted to the
+exercise of the most severe piety had transformed her. No one would ever
+have imagined that that gray sister concealed the Aspasia of 1797.
+
+An enormous old man, very simply dressed, though his clothes were good
+and substantial, in whom Oscar recognized Pere Leger, here came slowly
+and heavily along. He nodded familiarly to Pierrotin, who appeared by
+his manner to pay him the respect due in all lands to millionaires.
+
+“Ha! ha! why, here’s Pere Leger! more and more preponderant!” cried
+Georges.
+
+“To whom have I the honor of speaking?” asked old Leger, curtly.
+
+“What! you don’t recognize Colonel Georges, the friend of Ali pacha?
+We travelled together once upon a time, in company with the Comte de
+Serizy.”
+
+One of the habitual follies of those who have fallen in the world is to
+recognize and desire the recognition of others.
+
+“You are much changed,” said the ex-farmer, now twice a millionaire.
+
+“All things change,” said Georges. “Look at the Lion d’Argent and
+Pierrotin’s coach; they are not a bit like what they were fourteen years
+ago.”
+
+“Pierrotin now controls the whole service of the Valley of the Oise,”
+ replied Monsieur Leger, “and sends out five coaches. He is the bourgeois
+of Beaumont, where he keeps a hotel, at which all the diligences stop,
+and he has a wife and daughter who are not a bad help to him.”
+
+An old man of seventy here came out of the hotel and joined the group of
+travellers who were waiting to get into the coach.
+
+“Come along, Papa Reybert,” said Leger, “we are only waiting now for
+your great man.”
+
+“Here he comes,” said the steward of Presles, pointing to Joseph Bridau.
+
+Neither Georges nor Oscar recognized the illustrious artist, for his
+face had the worn and haggard lines that were now famous, and his
+bearing was that which is given by success. The ribbon of the Legion
+of honor adorned his black coat, and the rest of his dress, which was
+extremely elegant, seemed to denote an expedition to some rural fete.
+
+At this moment a clerk, with a paper in his hand, came out of the office
+(which was now in the former kitchen of the Lion d’Argent), and stood
+before the empty coupe.
+
+“Monsieur and Madame de Canalis, three places,” he said. Then, moving
+to the door of the interieur, he named, consecutively, “Monsieur
+Bellejambe, two places; Monsieur de Reybert, three places;
+Monsieur--your name, if you please?” he said to Georges.
+
+“Georges Marest,” said the fallen man, in a low voice.
+
+The clerk then moved to the rotunde, before which were grouped a number
+of nurses, country-people, and petty shopkeepers, who were bidding each
+other adieu. Then, after bundling in the six passengers, he called
+to four young men who mounted to the imperial; after which he cried:
+“Start!” Pierrotin got up beside his driver, a young man in a blouse,
+who called out: “Pull!” to his animals, and the vehicle, drawn by four
+horses brought at Roye, mounted the rise of the faubourg Saint-Denis at
+a slow trot.
+
+But no sooner had it got above Saint-Laurent than it raced like a
+mail-cart to Saint-Denis, which it reached in forty minutes. No stop
+was made at the cheese-cake inn, and the coach took the road through the
+valley of Montmorency.
+
+It was at the turn into this road that Georges broke the silence which
+the travellers had so far maintained while observing each other.
+
+“We go a little faster than we did fifteen years ago, hey, Pere Leger?”
+ he said, pulling out a silver watch.
+
+“Persons are usually good enough to call me Monsieur Leger,” said the
+millionaire.
+
+“Why, here’s our blagueur of the famous journey to Presles,” cried
+Joseph Bridau. “Have you made any new campaigns in Asia, Africa, or
+America?”
+
+“Sacrebleu! I’ve made the revolution of July, and that’s enough for me,
+for it ruined me.”
+
+“Ah! you made the revolution of July!” cried the painter, laughing.
+“Well, I always said it never made itself.”
+
+“How people meet again!” said Monsieur Leger, turning to Monsieur de
+Reybert. “This, papa Reybert, is the clerk of the notary to whom you
+undoubtedly owe the stewardship of Presles.”
+
+“We lack Mistigris, now famous under his own name of Leon de Lora,” said
+Joseph Bridau, “and the little young man who was stupid enough to talk
+to the count about those skin diseases which are now cured, and about
+his wife, whom he has recently left that he may die in peace.”
+
+“And the count himself, you lack him,” said old Reybert.
+
+“I’m afraid,” said Joseph Bridau, sadly, “that the last journey the
+count will ever take will be from Presles to Isle-Adam, to be present at
+my marriage.”
+
+“He still drives about the park,” said Reybert.
+
+“Does his wife come to see him?” asked Leger.
+
+“Once a month,” replied Reybert. “She is never happy out of Paris. Last
+September she married her niece, Mademoiselle du Rouvre, on whom, since
+the death of her son, she spends all her affection, to a very rich young
+Pole, the Comte Laginski.”
+
+“To whom,” asked Madame Clapart, “will Monsieur de Serizy’s property
+go?”
+
+“To his wife, who will bury him,” replied Georges. “The countess is
+still fine-looking for a woman of fifty-four years of age. She is very
+elegant, and, at a little distance, gives one the illusion--”
+
+“She will always be an illusion to you,” said Leger, who seemed inclined
+to revenge himself on his former hoaxer.
+
+“I respect her,” said Georges. “But, by the bye, what became of that
+steward whom the count turned off?”
+
+“Moreau?” said Leger; “why, he’s the deputy from the Oise.”
+
+“Ha! the famous Centre man; Moreau de l’Oise?” cried Georges.
+
+“Yes,” returned Leger, “Moreau de l’Oise. He did more than you for the
+revolution of July, and he has since then bought the beautiful estate of
+Pointel, between Presles and Beaumont.”
+
+“Next to the count’s,” said Georges. “I call that very bad taste.”
+
+“Don’t speak so loud,” said Monsieur de Reybert, “for Madame Moreau and
+her daughter, the Baronne de Canalis, and the Baron himself, the former
+minister, are in the coupe.”
+
+“What ‘dot’ could he have given his daughter to induce our great orator
+to marry her?” said Georges.
+
+“Something like two millions,” replied old Leger.
+
+“He always had a taste for millions,” remarked Georges. “He began his
+pile surreptitiously at Presles--”
+
+“Say nothing against Monsieur Moreau,” cried Oscar, hastily. “You ought
+to have learned before now to hold your tongue in public conveyances.”
+
+Joseph Bridau looked at the one-armed officer for several seconds; then
+he said, smiling:--
+
+“Monsieur is not an ambassador, but his rosette tells us he has made his
+way nobly; my brother and General Giroudeau have repeatedly named him in
+their reports.”
+
+“Oscar Husson!” cried Georges. “Faith! if it hadn’t been for your voice
+I should never have known you.”
+
+“Ah! it was monsieur who so bravely rescued the Vicomte Jules de Serizy
+from the Arabs?” said Reybert, “and for whom the count has obtained the
+collectorship of Beaumont while awaiting that of Pontoise?”
+
+“Yes, monsieur,” said Oscar.
+
+“I hope you will give me the pleasure, monsieur,” said the great
+painter, “of being present at my marriage at Isle-Adam.”
+
+“Whom do you marry?” asked Oscar, after accepting the invitation.
+
+“Mademoiselle Leger,” replied Joseph Bridau, “the granddaughter of
+Monsieur de Reybert. Monsieur le comte was kind enough to arrange the
+marriage for me. As an artist I owe him a great deal, and he wished,
+before his death, to secure my future, about which I did not think,
+myself.”
+
+“Whom did Pere Leger marry?” asked Georges.
+
+“My daughter,” replied Monsieur de Reybert, “and without a ‘dot.’”
+
+“Ah!” said Georges, assuming a more respectful manner toward Monsieur
+Leger, “I am fortunate in having chosen this particular day to do the
+valley of the Oise. You can all be useful to me, gentlemen.”
+
+“How so?” asked Monsieur Leger.
+
+“In this way,” replied Georges. “I am employed by the ‘Esperance,’ a
+company just formed, the statutes of which have been approved by an
+ordinance of the King. This institution gives, at the end of ten years,
+dowries to young girls, annuities to old men; it pays the education of
+children, and takes charge, in short, of the fortunes of everybody.”
+
+“I can well believe it,” said Pere Leger, smiling. “In a word, you are a
+runner for an insurance company.”
+
+“No, monsieur. I am the inspector-general; charged with the duty of
+establishing correspondents and appointing the agents of the company
+throughout France. I am only operating until the agents are selected;
+for it is a matter as delicate as it is difficult to find honest
+agents.”
+
+“But how did you lose your thirty thousand a year?” asked Oscar.
+
+“As you lost your arm,” replied the son of Czerni-Georges, curtly.
+
+“Then you must have shared in some brilliant action,” remarked Oscar,
+with a sarcasm not unmixed with bitterness.
+
+“Parbleu! I’ve too many--shares! that’s just what I wanted to sell.”
+
+By this time they had arrived at Saint-Leu-Taverny, where all the
+passengers got out while the coach changed horses. Oscar admired the
+liveliness which Pierrotin displayed in unhooking the traces from the
+whiffle-trees, while his driver cleared the reins from the leaders.
+
+“Poor Pierrotin,” thought he; “he has stuck like me,--not far advanced
+in the world. Georges has fallen low. All the others, thanks to
+speculation and to talent, have made their fortune. Do we breakfast
+here, Pierrotin?” he said, aloud, slapping that worthy on the shoulder.
+
+“I am not the driver,” said Pierrotin.
+
+“What are you, then?” asked Colonel Husson.
+
+“The proprietor,” replied Pierrotin.
+
+“Come, don’t be vexed with an old acquaintance,” said Oscar, motioning
+to his mother, but still retaining his patronizing manner. “Don’t you
+recognize Madame Clapart?”
+
+It was all the nobler of Oscar to present his mother to Pierrotin,
+because, at that moment, Madame Moreau de l’Oise, getting out of the
+coupe, overheard the name, and stared disdainfully at Oscar and his
+mother.
+
+“My faith! madame,” said Pierrotin, “I should never have known you; nor
+you, either, monsieur; the sun burns black in Africa, doesn’t it?”
+
+The species of pity which Oscar thus felt for Pierrotin was the last
+blunder that vanity ever led our hero to commit, and, like his other
+faults, it was punished, but very gently, thus:--
+
+Two months after his official installation at Beaumont-sur-Oise, Oscar
+was paying his addresses to Mademoiselle Georgette Pierrotin, whose
+‘dot’ amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand francs, and he married
+the pretty daughter of the proprietor of the stage-coaches of the Oise,
+toward the close of the winter of 1838.
+
+The adventure of the journey to Presles was a lesson to Oscar Husson in
+discretion; his disaster at Florentine’s card-party strengthened him in
+honesty and uprightness; the hardships of his military career taught him
+to understand the social hierarchy and to yield obedience to his lot.
+Becoming wise and capable, he was happy. The Comte de Serizy, before his
+death, obtained for him the collectorship at Pontoise. The influence
+of Monsieur Moreau de l’Oise and that of the Comtesse de Serizy and the
+Baron de Canalis secured, in after years, a receiver-generalship for
+Monsieur Husson, in whom the Camusot family now recognize a relation.
+
+Oscar is a commonplace man, gentle, without assumption, modest, and
+always keeping, like his government, to a middle course. He excites
+neither envy nor contempt. In short, he is the modern bourgeois.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+     Beaupre, Fanny
+       Modest Mignon
+       The Muse of the Department
+       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+
+     Bridau, Joseph
+       The Purse
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Modeste Mignon
+       Another Study of Woman
+       Pierre Grassou
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       Cousin Betty
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Bruel, Jean Francois du
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+       The Government Clerks
+       A Prince of Bohemia
+       The Middle Classes
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       A Daughter of Eve
+
+     Cabirolle, Madame
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+
+     Cabirolle, Agathe-Florentine
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+
+     Canalis, Constant-Cyr-Melchior, Baron de
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Modeste Mignon
+       The Magic Skin
+       Another Study of Woman
+       Beatrix
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Cardot, Jean-Jerome-Severin
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+       At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
+       Cesar Birotteau
+
+     Coralie, Mademoiselle
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+
+     Crottat, Alexandre
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Colonel Chabert
+       A Woman of Thirty
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Derville
+       Gobseck
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       Father Goriot
+       Colonel Chabert
+       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+
+     Desroches (son)
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+       Colonel Chabert
+       A Woman of Thirty
+       The Commission in Lunacy
+       The Government Clerks
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       A Man of Business
+       The Middle Classes
+
+     Finot, Andoche
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+       The Government Clerks
+       Gaudissart the Great
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+
+     Gaudron, Abbe
+       The Government Clerks
+       Honorine
+
+     Giroudeau
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+
+     Godeschal, Francois-Claude-Marie
+       Colonel Chabert
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+       The Commission in Lunacy
+       The Middle Classes
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Godeschal, Marie
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Gondreville, Malin, Comte de
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       Domestic Peace
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Grevin
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Grindot
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+       Beatrix
+       The Middle Classes
+       Cousin Betty
+
+     Lora, Leon de
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+       Pierre Grassou
+       Honorine
+       Cousin Betty
+       Beatrix
+
+     Loraux, Abbe
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Honorine
+
+     Lupin, Amaury
+       The Peasantry
+
+     Marest, Frederic
+       The Seamy Side of History
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Marest, Georges
+       The Peasantry
+
+     Maufrigneuse, Duc de
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+
+     Poiret, the elder
+       The Government Clerks
+       Father Goriot
+       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+       The Middle Classes
+
+     Rouvre, Marquis du
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+       Ursule Mirouet
+
+     Schinner, Hippolyte
+       The Purse
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+       Pierre Grassou
+       Albert Savarus
+       The Government Clerks
+       Modeste Mignon
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+     Serizy, Comte Hugret de
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+       Honorine
+       Modeste Mignon
+       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+
+     Serizy, Comtesse de
+       The Thirteen
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       A Woman of Thirty
+       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+
+     Serizy, Vicomte de
+       Modeste Mignon
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+
+     Vandenesse, Marquis Charles de
+       A Woman of Thirty
+       A Daughter of Eve
+
+     Vandenesse, Comte Felix de
+       The Lily of the Valley
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       The Marriage Settlement
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       A Daughter of Eve
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Start in Life, by Honore de Balzac
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A START IN LIFE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 1403-0.txt or 1403-0.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/0/1403/
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
+Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation”
+ or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project
+Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+“Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+“Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
+of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’ WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm’s
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
+
+The Foundation’s principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation’s web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.