The Alkahest by Honoré de Balzac (best way to read e books txt) 📖

me!" cried Marguerite, running into her mother's room. "He seems so joyous, so happy!"

"My child, your father is a great man; for three years he has toiled for the fame and fortune of his family: he thinks he has attained the object of his search. This day is a festival for us all."

"My dear mamma," replied Marguerite, "we shall not be alone in our joy, for the servants have been so grieved to see him unlike himself. Oh! put on another sash, this is faded."

"So be it; but make haste, I want to speak to Pierquin. Where is he?"

"In the parlor, playing with Jean."

"Where are Gabriel and Felicie?"

"I hear them in the garden."

"Run down quickly and see that they do not pick the tulips; your father has not seen them in flower this year, and he may take a fancy to look at them after dinner. Tell Mulquinier to go up and assist your father in dressing."


CHAPTER V

As Marguerite left the room, Madame Claes glanced at the children through the windows of her chamber, which looked on the garden, and saw that they were watching one of those insects with shining wings spotted with gold, commonly called "darning-needles."

"Be good, my darlings," she said, raising the lower sash of the window and leaving it up to air the room. Then she knocked gently on the door of communication, to assure herself that Balthazar had not fallen into abstraction. He opened it, and seeing him half-dressed, she said in joyous tones:--

"You won't leave me long with Pierquin, will you? Come as soon as you can."

Her step was so light as she descended that a listener would never have supposed her lame.

"When monsieur carried madame upstairs," said the old valet, whom she met on the staircase, "he tore this bit out of her dress, and he broke the jaw of that griffin; I'm sure I don't know who can put it on again. There's our staircase ruined--and it used to be so handsome!"

"Never mind, my poor Mulquinier; don't have it mended at all--it is not a misfortune," said his mistress.

"What can have happened?" thought Lemulquinier; "why isn't it a misfortune, I should like to know? has the master found the Absolute?"

"Good-evening, Monsieur Pierquin," said Madame Claes, opening the parlor door.

The notary rushed forward to give her his arm; as she never took any but that of her husband she thanked him with a smile and said,--

"Have you come for the thirty thousand francs?"

"Yes, madame; when I reached home I found a letter of advice from Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, who have drawn six letters of exchange upon Monsieur Claes for five thousand francs each."

"Well, say nothing to Balthazar to-day," she replied. "Stay and dine with us. If he happens to ask why you came, find some plausible pretext, I entreat you. Give me the letter. I will speak to him myself about it. All is well," she added, noticing the lawyer's surprise. "In a few months my husband will probably pay off all the sums he has borrowed."

Hearing these words, which were said in a low voice, the notary looked at Mademoiselle Claes, who was entering the room from the garden followed by Gabriel and Felicie, and remarked,--

"I have never seen Mademoiselle Marguerite as pretty as she is at this moment."

Madame Claes, who was sitting in her armchair with little Jean upon her lap, raised her head and looked at her daughter, and then at the notary, with a pretended air of indifference.

Pierquin was a man of middle height, neither stout nor thin, with vulgar good looks, a face that expressed vexation rather than melancholy, and a pensive habit in which there was more of indecision than thought. People called him a misanthrope, but he was too eager after his own interests, and too extortionate towards others to have set up a genuine divorce from the world. His indifferent demeanor, his affected silence, his habitual custom of looking, as it were, into the void, seemed to indicate depth of character, while in fact they merely concealed the shallow insignificance of a notary busied exclusively with earthly interests; though he was still young enough to feel envy. To marry into the family of Claes would have been to him an object of extreme desire, if an instinct of avarice had not underlain it. He could seem generous, but for all that he was a keen reckoner. And thus, without explaining to himself the motive for his change of manner, his behavior was harsh, peremptory, and surly, like that of an ordinary business man, when he thought the Claes were ruined; accommodating, affectionate, and almost servile, when he saw reason to believe in a happy issue to his cousin's labors. Sometimes he beheld an infanta in Margeurite Claes, to whom no provincial notary might aspire; then he regarded her as any poor girl too happy if he deigned to make her his wife. He was a true provincial, and a Fleming; without malevolence, not devoid of devotion and kindheartedness, but led by a naive selfishness which rendered all his better qualities incomplete, while certain absurdities of manner spoiled his personal appearance.

Madame Claes recollected the curt tone in which the notary had spoken to her that afternoon in the porch of the church, and she took note of the change which her present reply had wrought in his demeanor; she guessed its meaning and tried to read her daughter's mind by a penetrating glance, seeking to discover if she thought of her cousin; but the young girl's manner showed complete indifference.

After a few moments spent in general conversation on the current topics of the day, the master of the house came down from his bedroom, where his wife had heard with inexpressible delight the creaking sound of his boots as he trod the floor. The step was that of a young and active man, and foretold so complete a transformation, that the mere expectation of his appearance made Madame Claes quiver as he descended the stairs. Balthazar entered, dressed in the fashion of the period. He wore highly polished top-boots, which allowed the upper part of the white silk stockings to appear, blue kerseymere small-clothes with gold buttons, a flowered white waistcoat, and a blue frock-coat. He had trimmed his beard, combed and perfumed his hair, pared his nails, and washed his hands, all with such care that he was scarcely recognizable to those who had seen him lately. Instead of an old man almost decrepit, his children, his wife, and the notary saw a Balthazar Claes who was forty years old, and whose courteous and affable presence was full of its former attractions. The weariness and suffering betrayed by the thin face and the clinging of the skin to the bones, had in themselves a sort of charm.

"Good-evening, Pierquin," said Monsieur Claes.

Once more a husband and a father, he took his youngest child from his wife's lap and tossed him in the air.

"See that little fellow!" he exclaimed to the notary. "Doesn't such a pretty creature make you long to marry? Take my word for it, my dear Pierquin, family happiness consoles a man for everything. Up, up!" he cried, tossing Jean into the air; "down, down! up! down!"

The child laughed with all his heart as he went alternately to the ceiling and down to the carpet. The mother turned away her eyes that she might not betray the emotion which the simple play caused her,--simple apparently, but to her a domestic revolution.

"Let me see how you can walk," said Balthazar, putting his son on the floor and throwing himself on a sofa near his wife.

The child ran to its father, attracted by the glitter of the gold buttons which fastened the breeches just above the slashed tops of his boots.

"You are a darling!" cried Balthazar, kissing him; "you are a Claes, you walk straight. Well, Gabriel, how is Pere Morillon?" he said to his eldest son, taking him by the ear and twisting it. "Are you struggling valiantly with your themes and your construing? have you taken sharp hold of mathematics?"

Then he rose, and went up to the notary with the affectionate courtesy that characterized him.

"My dear Pierquin," he said, "perhaps you have something to say to me." He took his arm to lead him to the garden, adding, "Come and see my tulips."

Madame Claes looked at her husband as he left the room, unable to repress the joy she felt in seeing him once more so young, so affable, so truly himself. She rose, took her daughter round the waist and kissed her, exclaiming:--

"My dear Marguerite, my darling child! I love you better than ever to-day."

"It is long since I have seen my father so kind," answered the young girl.

Lemulquinier announced dinner. To prevent Pierquin from offering her his arm, Madame Claes took that of her husband and led the way into the next room, the whole family following.

The dining-room, whose ceiling was supported by beams and decorated with paintings cleaned and restored every year, was furnished with tall oaken side-boards and buffets, on whose shelves stood many a curious piece of family china. The walls were hung with violet leather, on which designs of game and other hunting objects were stamped in gold. Carefully arranged here and there above the shelves, shone the brilliant plumage of strange birds, and the lustre of rare shells. The chairs, which evidently had not been changed since the beginning of the sixteenth century, showed the square shape with twisted columns and the low back covered with a fringed stuff, common to that period, and glorified by Raphael in his picture of the Madonna della Sedia. The wood of these chairs was now black, but the gilt nails shone as if new, and the stuff, carefully renewed from time to time, was of an admirable shade of red.

The whole life of Flanders with its Spanish innovations was in this room. The decanters and flasks on the dinner-table, with their graceful antique lines and swelling curves, had an air of respectability. The glasses were those old goblets with stems and feet which may be seen in the pictures of the Dutch or Flemish school. The dinner-service of faience, decorated with raised colored figures, in the manner of Bernard Palissy, came from the English manufactory of Wedgwood. The silver-ware was massive, with square sides and designs in high relief,--genuine family plate, whose pieces, in every variety of form, fashion, and chasing, showed the beginnings of prosperity and the progress towards fortune of the Claes family. The napkins were fringed, a fashion altogether Spanish; and as for the linen, it will readily be supposed that the Claes's household made it a point of honor to possess the best.

All this service of the table, silver, linen, and glass, were for the daily use of the family. The front house, where the social entertainments were given, had its own especial luxury, whose marvels, being reserved for great occasions, wore an air of dignity often lost to things which are, as it were, made common by daily use. Here, in the home quarter, everything bore the impress of patriarchal use and simplicity. And--for a final and delightful detail--a vine grew outside the house between the windows, whose tendrilled branches twined about the casements.

"You are faithful to the old traditions, madame," said Pierquin, as he received a plate of that celebrated thyme soup in which the Dutch and Flemish cooks put little force-meat balls and dice of