The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac (freenovel24 TXT) 📖

child, then

about twelve years old, being destined for the seminary, was now at

the Barniol institute, where he obtained an elementary education;

Barniol, the son-in-law of the Phellions, was naturally making the

tuition fees light, with a view to the hoped-for alliance between

Felix and Celeste.

 

"Have you done me the honor and favor of thinking over what I said to

you so badly the other day?" asked the lawyer, in a caressing tone,

pressing the lady's arm to his heart with a movement both soft and

strong; for he seemed to wish to restrain himself and appear

respectful, in spite of his evident eagerness. "Do not misunderstand

my intentions," he continued, after receiving from Madame Colleville

one of those looks which women trained to the management of passion

know how to give,--a look that, by mere expression, can convey both

severe rebuke and secret community of sentiment. "I love you as we

love a noble nature struggling against misfortune; Christian charity

enfolds both the strong and the weak; its treasure belongs to both.

Refined, graceful, elegant as you are, made to be an ornament of the

highest society, what man could see you without feeling an immense

compassion in his heart--buried here among these odious bourgeois, who

know nothing of you, not even the aristocratic value of a single one

of your attitudes, or those enchanting inflections of your voice! Ah!

if I were only rich! if I had power! your husband, who is certainly a

good fellow, should be made receiver-general, and you yourself could

get him elected deputy. But, alas! poor ambitious man, my first duty

is to silence my ambition. Knowing myself at the bottom of the bag

like the last number in a family lottery, I can only offer you my arm

and not my heart. I hope all from a good marriage, and, believe me, I

shall make my wife not only happy, but I shall make her one of the

first in the land, receiving from her the means of success. It is so

fine a day, will you not take a turn in the Luxembourg?" he added, as

they reached the rue d'Enfer at the corner of Colleville's house,

opposite to which was a passage leading to the gardens by the stairway

of a little building, the last remains of the famous convent of the

Chartreux.

 

The soft yielding of the arm within his own, indicated a tacit consent

to this proposal, and as Flavie deserved the honor of a sort of

enthusiasm, he drew her vehemently along, exclaiming:--

 

"Come! we may never have so good a moment--But see!" he added, "there

is your husband at the window looking at us; let us walk slowly."

 

"You have nothing to fear from Monsieur Colleville," said Flavie,

smiling; "he leaves me mistress of my own actions."

 

"Ah! here, indeed, is the woman I have dreamed of," cried the

Provencal, with that ecstasy that inflames the soul only, and in tones

that issue only from Southern lips. "Pardon me, madame," he said,

recovering himself, and returning from an upper sphere to the exiled

angel whom he looked at piously,--"pardon me, I abandon what I was

saying; but how can a man help feeling for the sorrows he has known

himself when he sees them the lot of a being to whom life should bring

only joy and happiness? Your sufferings are mine; I am no more in my

right place than you are in yours; the same misfortune has made us

brother and sister. Ah! dear Flavie, the first day it was granted to

me to see you--the last Sunday in September, 1838--you were very

beautiful; I shall often recall you to memory in that pretty little

gown of mousseline-de-laine of the color of some Scottish tartan! That

day I said to myself: 'Why is that woman so often at the Thuilliers';

above all, why did she ever have intimate relations with Thuillier

himself?--'"

 

"Monsieur!" said Flavie, alarmed at the singular course la Peyrade was

giving to the conversation.

 

"Eh! I know all," he cried, accompanying the words with a shrug of his

shoulders. "I explain it all to my own mind, and I do not respect you

less. You now have to gather the fruits of your sin, and I will help

you. Celeste will be very rich, and in that lies your own future. You

can have only one son-in-law; chose him wisely. An ambitious man might

become a minister, but you would humble your daughter and make her

miserable; and if such a man lost his place and fortune he could never

recover it. Yes, I love you," he continued. "I love you with an

unlimited affection; you are far above the mass of petty

considerations in which silly women entangle themselves. Let us

understand each other."

 

Flavie was bewildered; she was, however, awake to the extreme

frankness of such language, and she said to herself, "He is not a

secret manoeuvrer, certainly." Moreover, she admitted to her own mind

that no one had ever so deeply stirred and excited her as this young

man.

 

"Monsieur," she said, "I do not know who could have put into your mind

so great an error as to my life, nor by what right you--"

 

"Ah! pardon me, madame," interrupted the Provencal with a coolness

that smacked of contempt. "I must have dreamed it. I said to myself,

'She is all that!' But I see I was judging from the outside. I know

now why you are living and will always live on a fourth floor in the

rue d'Enfer."

 

And he pointed his speech with an energetic gesture toward the

Colleville windows, which could be seen through the passage from the

alley of the Luxembourg, where they were walking alone, in that

immense tract trodden by so many and various young ambitions.

 

"I have been frank, and I expected reciprocity," resumed Theodose. "I

myself have had days without food, madame; I have managed to live,

pursue my studies, obtain my degree, with two thousand francs for my

sole dependence; and I entered Paris through the Barriere d'Italie,

with five hundred francs in my pocket, firmly resolved, like one of my

compatriots, to become, some day, one of the foremost men of our

country. The man who has often picked his food from baskets of scraps

where the restaurateurs put their refuse, which are emptied at six

o'clock every morning--that man is not likely to recoil before any

means,--avowable, of course. Well, do you think me the friend of the

people?" he said, smiling. "One has to have a speaking-trumpet to

reach the ear of Fame; she doesn't listen if you speak with your lips;

and without fame of what use is talent? The poor man's advocate means

to be some day the advocate of the rich. Is that plain speaking? Don't

I open my inmost being to you? Then open your heart to me. Say to me,

'Let us be friends,' and the day will come when we shall both be

happy."

 

"Good heavens! why did I ever come here? Why did I ever take your

arm?" cried Flavie.

 

"Because it is in your destiny," he replied. "Ah! my dear, beloved

Flavie," he added, again pressing her arm upon his heart, "did you

expect to hear the vulgarities of love from me? We are brother and

sister; that is all."

 

And he led her towards the passage to return to the rue d'Enfer.

 

Flavie felt a sort of terror in the depths of the contentment which

all women find in violent emotions; and she took that terror for the

sort of fear which a new passion always excites; but for all that, she

felt she was fascinated, and she walked along in absolute silence.

 

"What are you thinking of?" asked Theodose, when they reached the

middle of the passage.

 

"Of what you have just said to me," she answered.

 

"At our age," he said, "it is best to suppress preliminaries; we are

not children; we both belong to a sphere in which we should understand

each other. Remember this," he added, as they reached the rue d'Enfer.

--"I am wholly yours."

 

So saying, he bowed low to her.

 

"The iron's in the fire now!" he thought to himself as he watched his

giddy prey on her way home.

CHAPTER VI (A KEYNOTE)

When Theodose reached home he found, waiting for him on the landing, a

personage who is, as it were, the submarine current of this history;

he will be found within it like some buried church on which has risen

the facade of a palace. The sight of this man, who, after vainly

ringing at la Peyrade's door, was now trying that of Dutocq, made the

Provencal barrister tremble--but secretly, within himself, not

betraying externally his inward emotion. This man was Cerizet, whom

Dutocq had mentioned to Thuillier as his copying-clerk.

 

Cerizet was only thirty-eight years old, but he looked a man of fifty,

so aged had he become from causes which age all men. His hairless head

had a yellow skull, ill-covered by a rusty, discolored wig; the mask

of his face, pale, flabby, and unnaturally rough, seemed the more

horrible because the nose was eaten away, though not sufficiently to

admit of its being replaced by a false one. From the spring of this

nose at the forehead, down to the nostrils, it remained as nature had

made it; but disease, after gnawing away the sides near the

extremities, had left two holes of fantastic shape, which vitiated

pronunciation and hampered speech. The eyes, originally handsome, but

weakened by misery of all kinds and by sleepless nights, were red

around the edges, and deeply sunken; the glance of those eyes, when

the soul sent into them an expression of malignancy, would have

frightened both judges and criminals, or any others whom nothing

usually affrights.

 

The mouth, toothless except for a few black fangs, was threatening;

the saliva made a foam within it, which did not, however, pass the

pale thin lips. Cerizet, a short man, less spare than shrunken,

endeavored to remedy the defects of his person by his clothes, and

although his garments were not those of opulence, he kept them in a

condition of neatness which may even have increased his forlorn

appearance. Everything about him seemed dubious; his age, his nose,

his glance inspired doubt. It was impossible to know if he were

thirty-eight or sixty; if his faded blue trousers, which fitted him

well, were of a coming or a past fashion. His boots, worn at the

heels, but scrupulously blacked, resoled for the third time, and very

choice, originally, may have trodden in their day a ministerial

carpet. The frock coat, soaked by many a down-pour, with its

brandebourgs, the frogs of which were indiscreet enough to show their

skeletons, testified by its cut to departed elegance. The satin

stock-cravat fortunately concealed the shirt, but the tongue of the

buckle behind the neck had frayed the satin, which was re-satined,

that is, re-polished, by a species of oil distilled from the wig. In

the days of its youth the waistcoat was not, of course, without

freshness, but it was one of those waistcoats, bought for four francs,

which come from the hooks of the ready-made clothing dealer. All these

things were carefully brushed, and so was the shiny and misshapen hat.

They harmonized with each other, even to the black gloves which covered

the hands of this subaltern Mephistopheles, whose whole anterior life

may be summed up in a single phrase:--

 

He was an artist in evil, with whom, from the first, evil had

succeeded; a man misled by these early successes to continue the

plotting of infamous deeds within the lines of strict legality.

Becoming the head of a printing-office by betraying his master [see

"Lost Illusions"], he had afterwards been condemned to imprisonment as

editor of a liberal newspaper. In the provinces, under the

Restoration, he became the bete noire of the government, and was

called "that unfortunate Cerizet" by some, as people spoke of "the

unfortunate Chauvet" and "the heroic Mercier." He owed to this

reputation of persecuted patriotism a place as sub-prefect in 1830.

Six months later he was dismissed; but he insisted that he was judged

without being heard; and