The Two Brothers by Honoré de Balzac (best ebook reader under 100 .TXT) 📖

cue of people about the Treasury on the days when the dividends are paid.

"Well, here you are, rolling in wealth!" said old Desroches, coming into the room just as the Descoings was swallowing her last drop of coffee.

"What do you mean?" cried poor Agathe.

"Her trey has turned up," he said, producing the list of numbers written on a bit of paper, such as the officials of the lottery put by hundreds into little wooden bowls on their counters.

Joseph read the list. Agathe read the list. The Descoings read nothing; she was struck down as by a thunderbolt. At the change in her face, at the cry she gave, old Desroches and Joseph carried her to her bed. Agathe went for a doctor. The poor woman was seized with apoplexy, and she only recovered consciousness at four in the afternoon; old Haudry, her doctor, then said that, in spite of this improvement, she ought to settle her worldly affairs and think of her salvation. She herself only uttered two words:--

"Three millions!"

Old Desroches, informed by Joseph, with due reservations, of the state of things, related many instances where lottery-players had seen a fortune escape them on the very day when, by some fatality, they had forgotten to pay their stakes; but he thoroughly understood that such a blow might be fatal when it came after twenty years' perseverance. About five o'clock, as a deep silence reigned in the little _appartement_, and the sick woman, watched by Joseph and his mother, the one sitting at the foot, the other at the head of her bed, was expecting her grandson Bixiou, whom Desroches had gone to fetch, the sound of Philippe's step and cane resounded on the staircase.

"There he is! there he is!" cried the Descoings, sitting up in bed and suddenly able to use her paralyzed tongue.

Agathe and Joseph were deeply impressed by this powerful effect of the horror which violently agitated the old woman. Their painful suspense was soon ended by the sight of Philippe's convulsed and purple face, his staggering walk, and the horrible state of his eyes, which were deeply sunken, dull, and yet haggard; he had a strong chill upon him, and his teeth chattered.

"Starvation in Prussia!" he cried, looking about him. "Nothing to eat or drink?--and my throat on fire! Well, what's the matter? The devil is always meddling in our affairs. There's my old Descoings in bed, looking at me with her eyes as big as saucers."

"Be silent, monsieur!" said Agathe, rising. "At least, respect the sorrows you have caused."

"_Monsieur_, indeed!" he cried, looking at his mother. "My dear little mother, that won't do. Have you ceased to love your son?"

"Are you worthy of love? Have you forgotten what you did yesterday? Go and find yourself another home; you cannot live with us any longer,--that is, after to-morrow," she added; "for in the state you are in now it is difficult--"

"To turn me out,--is that it?" he interrupted. "Ha! are you going to play the melodrama of 'The Banished Son'? Well done! is that how you take things? You are all a pretty set! What harm have I done? I've cleaned out the old woman's mattress. What the devil is the good of money kept in wool? Do you call that a crime? Didn't she take twenty thousand francs from you? We are her creditors, and I've paid myself as much as I could get,--that's all."

"My God! my God!" cried the dying woman, clasping her hands and praying.

"Be silent!" exclaimed Joseph, springing at his brother and putting his hand before his mouth.

"To the right about, march! brat of a painter!" retorted Philippe, laying his strong hand on Joseph's head, and twirling him round, as he flung him on a sofa. "Don't dare to touch the moustache of a commander of a squadron of the dragoons of the Guard!"

"She has paid me back all that she owed me," cried Agathe, rising and turning an angry face to her son; "and besides, that is my affair. You have killed her. Go away, my son," she added, with a gesture that took all her remaining strength, "and never let me see you again. You are a monster."

"I kill her?"

"Her trey has turned up," cried Joseph, "and you stole the money for her stake."

"Well, if she is dying of a lost trey, it isn't I who have killed her," said the drunkard.

"Go, go!" said Agathe. "You fill me with horror; you have every vice. My God! is this my son?"

A hollow rattle sounded in Madame Descoings's throat, increasing Agathe's anger.

"I love you still, my mother,--you who are the cause of all my misfortunes," said Philippe. "You turn me out of doors on Christmas-day. What did you do to grandpa Rouget, to your father, that he should drive you away and disinherit you? If you had not displeased him, we should all be rich now, and I should not be reduced to misery. What did you do to your father,--you who are a good woman? You see by your own self, I may be a good fellow and yet be turned out of house and home,--I, the glory of the family--"

"The disgrace of it!" cried the Descoings.

"You shall leave this room, or you shall kill me!" cried Joseph, springing on his brother with the fury of a lion.

"My God! my God!" cried Agathe, trying to separate the brothers.

At this moment Bixiou and Haudry the doctor entered. Joseph had just knocked his brother over and stretched him on the ground.

"He is a regular wild beast," he cried. "Don't speak another word, or I'll--"

"I'll pay you for this!" roared Philippe.

"A family explanation," remarked Bixiou.

"Lift him up," said the doctor, looking at him. "He is as ill as Madame Descoings; undress him and put him to bed; get off his boots."

"That's easy to say," cried Bixiou, "but they must be cut off; his legs are swollen."

Agathe took a pair of scissors. When she had cut down the boots, which in those days were worn outside the clinging trousers, ten pieces of gold rolled on the floor.

"There it is,--her money," murmured Philippe. "Cursed fool that I was, I forgot it. I too have missed a fortune."

He was seized with a horrible delirium of fever, and began to rave. Joseph, assisted by old Desroches, who had come back, and by Bixiou, carried him to his room. Doctor Haudry was obliged to write a line to the Hopital de la Charite and borrow a strait-waistcoat; for the delirium ran so high as to make him fear that Philippe might kill himself,--he was raving. At nine o'clock calm was restored. The Abbe Loraux and Desroches endeavored to comfort Agathe, who never ceased to weep at her aunt's bedside. She listened to them in silence, and obstinately shook her head; Joseph and the Descoings alone knew the extent and depth of her inward wound.

"He will learn to do better, mother," said Joseph, when Desroches and Bixiou had left.

"Oh!" cried the widow, "Philippe is right,--my father cursed me: I have no right to--Here, here is your money," she said to Madame Descoings, adding Joseph's three hundred francs to the two hundred found on Philippe. "Go and see if your brother does not need something," she said to Joseph.

"Will you keep a promise made to a dying woman?" asked Madame Descoings, who felt that her mind was failing her.

"Yes, aunt."

"Then swear to me to give your property to young Desroches for a life annuity. My income ceases at my death; and from what you have just said, I know you will let that wretch wring the last farthing out of you."

"I swear it, aunt."

The old woman died on the 31st of December, five days after the terrible blow which old Desroches had so innocently given her. The five hundred francs--the only money in the household--were barely enough to pay for her funeral. She left a small amount of silver and some furniture, the value of which Madame Bixiou paid over to her grandson Bixiou. Reduced to eight hundred francs' annuity paid to her by young Desroches, who had bought a business without clients, and himself took the capital of twelve thousand francs, Agathe gave up her _appartement_ on the third floor, and sold all her superfluous furniture. When, at the end of a month, Philippe seemed to be convalescent, his mother coldly explained to him that the costs of his illness had taken all her ready money, that she should be obliged in future to work for her living, and she urged him, with the utmost kindness, to re-enter the army and support himself.

"You might have spared me that sermon," said Philippe, looking at his mother with an eye that was cold from utter indifference. "I have seen all along that neither you nor my brother love me. I am alone in the world; I like it best!"

"Make yourself worthy of our affection," answered the poor mother, struck to the very heart, "and we will give it back to you--"

"Nonsense!" he cried, interrupting her.

He took his old hat, rubbed white at the edges, stuck it over one ear, and went downstairs, whistling.

"Philippe! where are you going without any money?" cried his mother, who could not repress her tears. "Here, take this--"

She held out to him a hundred francs in gold, wrapped up in paper. Philippe came up the stairs he had just descended, and took the money.

"Well; won't you kiss me?" she said, bursting into tears.

He pressed his mother in his arms, but without the warmth of feeling which was all that could give value to the embrace.

"Where shall you go?" asked Agathe.

"To Florentine, Girodeau's mistress. Ah! they are real friends!" he answered brutally.

He went away. Agathe turned back with trembling limbs, and failing eyes, and aching heart. She fell upon her knees, prayed God to take her unnatural child into His own keeping, and abdicated her woeful motherhood.


CHAPTER VI

By February, 1822, Madame Bridau had settled into the attic room recently occupied by Philippe, which was over the kitchen of her former _appartement_. The painter's studio and bedroom was opposite, on the other side of the staircase. When Joseph saw his mother thus reduced, he was determined to make her as comfortable as possible. After his brother's departure he assisted in the re-arrangement of the garret room, to which he gave an artist's touch. He added a rug; the bed, simple in character but exquisite in taste, had something monastic about it; the walls, hung with a cheap glazed cotton selected with taste, of a color which harmonized with the furniture and was newly covered, gave the room an air of elegance and nicety. In the hallway he added a double door, with a "portiere" to the inner one. The window was shaded by a blind which gave soft tones to the light. If the poor mother's life was reduced to the plainest circumstances that the life of any woman could have in Paris, Agathe was at least better off than all others in a like case, thanks to her son.

To save his mother from the cruel cares of such reduced housekeeping, Joseph took her every day to dine at a table-d'hote in the rue de Beaune, frequented by well-bred women, deputies, and titled people, where each person's dinner cost ninety francs a month. Having nothing but the breakfast