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

after the interminable dance had lasted one whole

hour it was proposed to carry Brigitte in triumph when she gave the

announcement that supper was served. This circumstance made her see

the necessity of hiding a dozen bottles of old burgundy. In short, the

company had amused themselves so well, the matrons as well as the

young girls, that Thuillier found occasion to say:--

 

"Well, well, this morning we little thought we should have such a fete

to-night."

 

"There's never more pleasure," said the notary Cardot, "than in just

such improvised balls. Don't talk to me of parties where everybody

stands on ceremony."

 

This opinion, we may remark, is a standing axiom among the

bourgeoisie.

 

"Well, for my part," said Madame Minard, "I prefer the dignified old

ways."

 

"We didn't mean that for you, madame; your salon is the chosen haunt

of pleasure," said Dutocq.

 

When "La Boulangere" came to an end, Theodose pulled Dutocq from the

sideboard where he was preparing to eat a slice of tongue, and said to

him:--

 

"Let us go; we must be at Cerizet's very early in the morning; we

ought both of us to think over that affair; it is not so easy to

manage as Cerizet seems to imagine."

 

"Why not?" asked Dutocq, bringing his slice of tongue to eat in the

salon.

 

"Don't you know the law?"

 

"I know enough of it to be aware of the dangers of the affair. If that

notary wants the house and we filch it from him, there are means by

which he can recover it; he can put himself into the skin of a

registered creditor. By the present legal system relating to

mortgages, when a house is sold at the request of creditors, if the

price obtained for it at auction is not enough to pay all debts, the

owners have the right to bid it in and hold it for a higher sum; now

the notary, seeing himself caught, may back out of the sale in that

way."

 

"Well," said la Peyrade, "it needs attention."

 

"Very good," replied Dutocq, "we'll go and see Cerizet."

 

These words, "go and see Cerizet," were overheard by Minard, who was

following the two associates; but they offered no meaning to his mind.

The two men were so outside of his own course and projects that he

heard them without listening to them.

 

"This has been one of the finest days in our lives," said Brigitte to

her brother, when she found herself alone with him in the deserted

salon, at half-past two in the morning. "What a distinction! to be

thus selected by your fellow-citizens!"

 

"Don't be mistaken about it, Brigitte; we owe it all, my child, to one

man."

 

"What man?"

 

"To our friend, la Peyrade." 

CHAPTER IX (THE BANKER OF THE POOR)

It was not on the next day, Monday, but on the following day, Tuesday,

that Dutocq and Theodose went to see Cerizet, the former having called

la Peyrade's attention to the fact that Cerizet always absented

himself on Sundays and Mondays, taking advantage of the total absence

of clients on those days, which are devoted by the populace to

debauch. The house toward which they directed their steps is one of

the striking features in the faubourg Saint-Jacques, and it is quite

as important to study it here as it was to study those of Phellion and

Thuillier. It is not known (true, no commission has yet been appointed

to examine this phenomenon), no one knows why certain quarters become

degraded and vulgarized, morally as well as materially; why, for

instance, the ancient residence of the court and the church, the

Luxembourg and the Latin quarter, have become what they are to-day, in

spite of the presence of the finest palaces in the world, in spite of

the bold cupola of Sainte-Genevieve, that of Mansard on the

Val-de-Grace, and the charms of the Jardin des Plantes. One asks one's

self why the elegance of life has left that region; why the Vauquer

houses, the Phellion and the Thuillier houses now swarm with tenants

and boarders, on the site of so many noble and religious buildings, and

why such mud and dirty trades and poverty should have fastened on a

hilly piece of ground, instead of spreading out upon the flat land

beyond the confines of the ancient city.

 

The angel whose beneficence once hovered above this quarter being

dead, usury, on the lowest scale, rushed in and took his place. To the

old judge, Popinot, succeeded Cerizet; and strange to say,--a fact

which it is well to study,--the effect produced, socially speaking,

was much the same. Popinot loaned money without interest, and was

willing to lose; Cerizet lost nothing, and compelled the poor to work

hard and stay virtuous. The poor adored Popinot, but they did not hate

Cerizet. Here, in this region, revolves the lowest wheel of Parisian

financiering. At the top, Nucingen & Co., the Kellers, du Tillet, and

the Mongenods; a little lower down, the Palmas, Gigonnets, and

Gobsecks; lower still, the Samonons, Chaboisseaus, and Barbets; and

lastly (after the pawn-shops) comes this king of usury, who spreads

his nets at the corners of the streets to entangle all miseries and

miss none,--Cerizet, "money lender by the little week."

 

The frogged frock-coat will have prepared you for the den in which

this convicted stock-broker carried on his present business.

 

The house was humid with saltpetre; the walls, sweating moisture, were

enamelled all over with large slabs of mould. Standing at the corner

of the rue des Postes and rue des Poules, it presented first a

ground-floor, occupied partly by a shop for the sale of the commonest

kind of wine, painted a coarse bright red, decorated with curtains of

red calico, furnished with a leaden counter, and guarded by formidable

iron bars. Above the gate of an odious alley hung a frightful lantern,

on which were the words "Night lodgings here." The outer walls were

covered with iron crossbars, showing, apparently, the insecurity of

the building, which was owned by the wine-merchant, who also inhabited

the entresol. The widow Poiret (nee Michonneau) kept furnished

lodgings on the first, second, and third floors, consisting of single

rooms for workmen and for the poorest class of students.

 

Cerizet occupied one room on the ground-floor and another in the

entresol, to which he mounted by an interior staircase; this entresol

looked out upon a horrible paved court, from which arose mephitic

odors. Cerizet paid forty francs a month to the widow Poiret for his

breakfast and dinner; he thus conciliated her by becoming her boarder;

he also made himself acceptable to the wine-merchant by procuring him

an immense sale of wine and liquors among his clients--profits

realized before sunrise; the wine-shop beginning operations about

three in the morning in summer, and five in winter.

 

The hour of the great Market, which so many of his clients, male and

female, attended, was the determining cause of Cerizet's early hours.

The Sieur Cadenet, the wine-merchant, in view of the custom which he

owed to the usurer, had let him the two rooms for the low price of

eighty francs a year, and had given him a lease for twelve years,

which Cerizet alone had a right to break, without paying indemnity, at

three months' notice. Cadenet always carried in a bottle of excellent

wine for the dinner of this useful tenant; and when Cerizet was short

of money he had only to say to his friend, "Cadenet, lend me a few

hundred francs,"--loans which he faithfully repaid.

 

Cadenet, it was said, had proof of the widow Poiret having deposited

in Cerizet's hands some two thousand francs for investment, which may

explain the progress of the latter's affairs since the day when he

first took up his abode in the quarter, supplied with a last note of a

thousand francs and Dutocq's protection. Cadenet, prompted by a

cupidity which success increased, had proposed, early in the year, to

put twenty thousand francs into the hands of his friend Cerizet. But

Cerizet had positively declined them, on the ground that he ran risks

of a nature to become a possible cause of dispute with associates.

 

"I could only," he said to Cadenet, "take them at six per cent

interest, and you can do better than that in your own business. We

will go into partnership later, if you like, in some serious

enterprise, some good opportunity which may require, say, fifty

thousand francs. When you have got that sum to invest, let me know,

and we'll talk about it."

 

Cerizet had only suggested the affair of the house to Theodose after

making sure that among the three, Madame Poiret, Cadenet, and himself,

it was impossible to raise the full sum of one hundred thousand

francs.

 

The "lender by the little week" was thus in perfect safety in his den,

where he could even, if necessity came, appeal to the law. On certain

mornings there might be seen as many as sixty or eighty persons, men

as often as women, either in the wine-shop, or the alley, or sitting

on the staircase, for the distrustful Cerizet would only admit six

persons at a time into his office. The first comers were first served,

and each had to go by his number, which the wine-merchant, or his

shop-boy, affixed to the hats of the man and the backs of the women.

Sometimes the clients would sell to each other (as hackney-coachmen do

on the cabstands), head numbers for tail numbers. On certain days,

when the market business was pressing, a head number was often sold

for a glass of brandy and a sou. The numbers, as they issued from

Cerizet's office, called up the succeeding numbers; and if any

disputes arose Cadenet put a stop to the fray at once my remarking:--

 

"If you get the police here you won't gain anything; _he_'ll shut up

shop."

 

HE was Cerizet's name. When, in the course of the day, some hapless

woman, without an atom of food in her room, and seeing her children

pale with hunger, would come to borrow ten or twenty sous, she would

say to the wine-merchant anxiously:--

 

"Is _he_ there?"

 

Cadenet, a short, stout man, dressed in blue, with outer sleeves of

black stuff and a wine-merchant's apron, and always wearing a cap,

seemed an angel to these mothers when he replied to them:--

 

"_He_ told me that you were an honest woman and I might give you forty

sous. You know what you must do about it--"

 

And, strange to say, _he_ was blessed by these poor people, even as they

had lately blessed Popinot.

 

But Cerizet was cursed on Sunday mornings when accounts were settled;

and they cursed him even more on Saturdays, when it was necessary to

work in order to repay the sum borrowed with interest. But, after all,

he was Providence, he was God from Tuesday to Friday of every week.

 

The room which he made his office, formerly the kitchen of the next

floor, was bare; the beams of the ceiling had been whitewashed, but

still bore marks of smoke. The walls, along which he had put benches,

and the stone floor, retained and gave out dampness. The fireplace,

where the crane remained, was partly filled by an iron stove in which

Cerizet burned sea-coal when the weather was severe. A platform about

half a foot high and eight feet square extended from the edge of the

fireplace; on it was fastened a common table and an armchair with a

round cushion covered with green leather. Behind him, Cerizet had

sheathed the walls with planks; also protecting himself with a little

wooden screen, painted white, from the draught between the window and

door; but this screen, made of two leaves, was so placed that the

warmth from the stove reached him. The window had enormous inside

shutters of cast-iron, held, when closed, by a bar. The door commanded

respect by an armor of the same character.

 

At the farther end of this room, in a corner, was a spiral-staircase,

coming, evidently, from some pulled-down shop, and bought in the rue

Chapon by Cadenet, who had fitted it through the ceiling into the room

in the entresol occupied by Cerizet. In order to prevent all

communication with the upper floors, Cerizet had exacted that the