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

as to do you a good turn, I am really

only obeying the law of self-interest. Our friend Thuillier is in

despair at being a nobody; he has taken it into his head that he wants

to become a personage in this arrondissement--"

 

"Ah! ah!" exclaimed Minard.

 

"Oh! nothing very exalted; he wants to be elected to the municipal

council. Now, I know that Phellion, seeing the influence such a

service would have on his family interests, intends to propose your

poor friend as candidate. Well, perhaps you might think it wise, in

your own interests, to be beforehand with him. Thuillier's nomination

could only be favorable for you--I mean agreeable; and he'll fill his

place in the council very well; there are some there who are not as

strong as he. Besides, owing to his place to your support, he will see

with your eyes; he already looks to you as one of the lights of the

town."

 

"My dear fellow, I thank you very much," replied Minard. "You are

doing me a service I cannot sufficiently acknowledge, and which proves

to me--"

 

"That I don't like those Phellions," said la Peyrade, taking advantage

of a slight hesitation on the part of the mayor, who feared to express

an idea in which the lawyer might see contempt. "I hate people who

make capital out of their honesty and coin money from fine

sentiments."

 

"You know them well," said Minard; "they are sycophants. That man's

whole life for the last ten years is explained by this bit of red

ribbon," added the mayor, pointing to his own buttonhole.

 

"Take care!" said the lawyer, "his son is in love with Celeste, and

he's fairly in the heart of the family."

 

"Yes, but my son has twelve thousand a year in his own right."

 

"Oh!" said Theodose, with a start, "Mademoiselle Brigitte was saying

the other day that she wanted at least as much as that in Celeste's

suitor. Moreover, six months hence you'll probably hear that Thuillier

has a property worth forty thousand francs a year."

 

"The devil! well, I thought as much. Yes, certainly, he shall be made

a member of the municipal council."

 

"In any case, don't say anything about me to him," said the advocate

of the poor, who now hastened away to speak to Madame Phellion. "Well,

my fair lady," he said, when he reached her, "have you succeeded?"

 

"I waited till four o'clock, and then that worthy and excellent man

would not let me finish what I had to say. He is much to busy to

accept such an office, and he sent a letter which Monsieur Phellion

has read, saying that he, Doctor Bianchon, thanked him for his good

intentions, and assured him that his own candidate was Monsieur

Thuillier. He said that he should use all his influence in his favor,

and begged my husband to do the same."

 

"And what did your excellent husband say?"

 

"'I have done my duty,' he said. 'I have not been false to my

conscience, and now I am all for Thuillier.'"

 

"Well, then, the thing is settled," said la Peyrade. "Ignore my visit,

and take all the credit of the idea to yourselves."

 

Then he went to Madame Colleville, composing himself in the attitude

and manner of the deepest respect.

 

"Madame," he said, "have the goodness to send out to me here that

kindly papa Colleville. A surprise is to be given to Monsieur

Thuillier, and I want Monsieur Colleville to be in the secret."

 

While la Peyrade played the part of man of the world with Colleville,

and allowed himself various witty sarcasms when explaining to him

Thuillier's candidacy, telling him he ought to support it, if only to

exhibit his incapacity, Flavie was listening in the salon to the

following conversation, which bewildered her for the moment and made

her ears ring.

 

"I should like to know what Monsieur Colleville and Monsieur de la

Peyrade can be saying to each other to make them laugh like that,"

said Madame Thuillier, foolishly, looking out of the window.

 

"A lot of improper things, as men always do when they talk together,"

replied Mademoiselle Thuillier, who often attacked men with the sort

of instinct natural to old maids.

 

"No, they are incapable of that," said Phellion, gravely. "Monsieur de

la Peyrade is one of the most virtuous young men I have ever met.

People know what I think of Felix; well, I put the two on the same

line; indeed, I wish my son had a little more of Monsieur de la

Peyrade's beautiful piety."

 

"You are right; he is a man of great merit, who is sure to succeed,"

said Minard. "As for me, my suffrages--for I really ought not to say

protection--are his."

 

"He pays more for oil than for bread," said Dutocq. "I know that."

 

"His mother, if he has the happiness to still possess her, must be

proud of him," remarked Madame Thuillier, sententiously.

 

"He is a real treasure for us," said Thuillier. "If you only knew how

modest he is! He doesn't do himself justice."

 

"I can answer for one thing," added Dutocq; "no young man ever

maintained a nobler attitude in poverty; he triumphed over it; but he

suffered--it is easy to see that."

 

"Poor young man!" cried Zelie. "Such things make my heart ache!"

 

"Any one could safely trust both secrets and fortune to him," said

Thuillier; "and in these days that is the finest thing that can be

said of a man."

 

"It is Colleville who is making him laugh," cried Dutocq.

 

Just then Colleville and la Peyrade returned from the garden the very

best friends in the world.

 

"Messieurs," said Brigitte, "the soup and the King must never be kept

waiting; give your hand to the ladies."

 

Five minutes after this little pleasantry (issuing from the lodge of

her father the porter) Brigitte had the satisfaction of seeing her

table surrounded by the principal personages of this drama; the rest,

with the one exception of the odious Cerizet, arrived later.

 

The portrait of the former maker of canvas money-bags would be

incomplete if we omitted to give a description of one of her best

dinners. The physiognomy of the bourgeois cook of 1840 is, moreover,

one of those details essentially necessary to a history of manners and

customs, and clever housewives may find some lessons in it. A woman

doesn't make empty bags for twenty years without looking out for the

means to fill a few of them. Now Brigitte had one peculiar

characteristic. She united the economy to which she owed her fortune

with a full understanding of necessary expenses. Her relative

prodigality, when it concerned her brother or Celeste, was the

antipodes of avarice. In fact, she often bemoaned herself that she

couldn't be miserly. At her last dinner she had related how, after

struggling ten minute and enduring martyrdom, she had ended by giving

ten francs to a poor workwoman whom she knew, positively, had been

without food for two days.

 

"Nature," she said naively, "is stronger than reason."

 

The soup was a rather pale bouillon; for, even on an occasion like

this, the cook had been enjoined to make a great deal of bouillon out

of the beef supplied. Then, as the said beef was to feed the family on

the next day and the day after that, the less juice it expended in the

bouillon, the more substantial were the subsequent dinners. The beef,

little cooked, was always taken away at the following speech from

Brigitte, uttered as soon as Thuillier put his knife into it:--

 

"I think it is rather tough; send it away, Thuillier, nobody will eat

it; we have other things."

 

The soup was, in fact, flanked by four viands mounted on old hot-water

chafing-dishes, with the plating worn off. At this particular dinner

(afterwards called that of the candidacy) the first course consisted

of a pair of ducks with olives, opposite to which was a large pie with

forcemeat balls, while a dish of eels "a la tartare" corresponded in

like manner with a fricandeau on chicory. The second course had for

its central dish a most dignified goose stuffed with chestnuts, a

salad of vegetables garnished with rounds of beetroot opposite to

custards in cups, while lower down a dish of turnips "au sucre" faced

a timbale of macaroni. This gala dinner of the concierge type cost, at

the utmost, twenty francs, and the remains of the feast provided the

household for a couple of days; nevertheless, Brigitte would say:--

 

"Pest! when one has to have company how the money goes! It is

fearful!"

 

The table was lighted by two hideous candlesticks of plated silver

with four branches each, in which shone eight of those thrifty

wax-candles that go by the name of Aurora. The linen was dazzling

in whiteness, and the silver, with beaded edges, was the fruit,

evidently, of some purchase made during the Revolution by Thuillier's

father. Thus the fare and the service were in keeping with the house,

the dining-room, and the Thuilliers themselves, who could never, under

any circumstances, get themselves above this style of living. The

Minards, Collevilles, and la Peyrade exchanged now and then a smile

which betrayed their mutually satirical but repressed thoughts. La

Peyrade, seated beside Flavie, whispered in her ear:--

 

"You must admit that they ought to be taught how to live. But those

Minards are no better in their way. What cupidity! they've come here

solely after Celeste. Your daughter will be lost to you if you let

them have her. These parvenus have all the vices of the great lords of

other days without their elegance. Minard's son, who has twelve

thousand francs a year of his own, could very well find a wife

elsewhere, instead of pushing his speculating rake in here. What fun

it would be to play upon those people as one would on a bass-viol or a

clarionet!"

 

While the dishes of the second course were being removed, Minard,

afraid that Phellion would precede him, said to Thuillier with a grave

air:--

 

"My dear Thuillier, in accepting your dinner, I did so for the purpose

of making an important communication, which does you so much honor

that all here present ought to be made participants in it."

 

Thuillier turned pale.

 

"Have you obtained the cross for me?" he cried, on receiving a glance

from Theodose, and wishing to prove that he was not without craft.

 

"You will doubtless receive it ere long," replied the mayor. "But the

matter now relates to something better than that. The cross is a favor

due to the good opinion of a minister, whereas the present question

concerns an election due to the consent of your fellow citizens. In a

word, a sufficiently large number of electors in your arrondissement

have cast their eyes upon you, and wish to honor you with their

confidence by making you the representative of this arrondissement in

the municipal council of Paris; which, as everybody knows, is the

Council-general of the Seine."

 

"Bravo!" cried Dutocq.

 

Phellion rose.

 

"Monsieur le maire has forestalled me," he said in an agitated voice,

"but it is so flattering for our friend to be the object of eagerness

on the part of all good citizens, and to obtain the public vote of

high and low, that I cannot complain of being obliged to come second

only; therefore, all honor to the initiatory authority!" (Here he

bowed respectfully to Minard.) "Yes, Monsieur Thuillier, many electors

think of giving you their votes in that portion of the arrondissement

where I keep my humble penates; and you have the special advantage of

being suggested to their minds by a distinguished man." (Sensation.)

"By a man in whose person we desired to honor one of the most virtuous

inhabitants of the arrondissement, who for twenty years, I may say,

was the father of it. I allude to the late Monsieur Popinot,

counsellor, during his lifetime, to the Royal court, and our delegate

in the municipal council of Paris. But his nephew, of whom I speak,

Doctor Bianchon, one of our glories, has, in view of his absorbing

duties, declined the responsibility with which we sought to invest

him. While thanking us for our compliment he has--take note of

this--indicated for our suffrages the candidate of Monsieur le maire

as being, in his opinion, capable, owing to the position he formerly

occupied, of exercising the magisterial functions of the aedileship."

 

And Phellion sat down amid approving murmurs.

 

"Thuillier, you can count on me, your old friend," said Colleville.

 

At this moment the guests were sincerely touched by the sight

presented of old Mademoiselle Brigitte and Madame Thuillier. Brigitte,

pale as though she were fainting, was letting the slow tears run,

unheeded, down her cheeks, tears of deepest joy; while Madame

Thuillier sat, as if struck by lightning, with her eyes fixed.

Suddenly the old maid darted into the kitchen, crying out to Josephine

the cook:--

 

"Come into the cellar my girl, we must get out the wine behind the

wood!"

 

"My friends," said Thuillier, in a shaking voice, "this is the finest

moment of my life, finer than even