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

that," cried Brigitte. "Do you attend to that affair

and carry it through if it is feasible, and leave your interests in my

hands."

 

"Thuillier, member of the municipal council, owner of an estate with a

rental of forty thousand francs a year, with the cross of the Legion

of honor and the author of a political work, grave, serious,

important, will be deputy at the forthcoming general election. But,

between ourselves, little aunt, one couldn't devote one's self so

utterly except for a father-in-law."

 

"You are right."

 

"Though I have no fortune I shall have doubled yours; and if this

affair goes through discreetly, others will turn up."

 

"Until I have seen the house," said Mademoiselle Thuillier again, "I

can decide on nothing."

 

"Well then, send for a carriage to-morrow and let us go there. I will

get a ticket early in the morning to view the premises."

 

"To-morrow, then, about mid-day," responded Brigitte, holding out her

hand to Theodose that he might shake it, but instead of that he laid

upon it the most respectful and the most tender kiss that Brigitte had

ever in her life received.

 

"Adieu, my child," she said, as he reached the door.

 

She rang the bell hurriedly and when the servant came:--

 

"Josephine," she cried, "go at once to Madame Colleville, and ask her

to come over and speak to me."

 

Fifteen minutes later Flavie entered the salon, where Brigitte was

walking up and down, in a state of extreme agitation.

 

"My dear," she cried on seeing Flavie, "you can do me a great service,

which concerns our dear Celeste. You know Tullia, don't you?--a

danseuse at the opera; my brother was always dinning her into my ears

at one time."

 

"Yes, I know her; but she is no longer a danseuse; she is Madame la

Comtesse du Bruel. Her husband is peer of France!"

 

"Does she still like you?"

 

"We never see each other now."

 

"Well, I know that Chaffaroux, the rich contractor, is her uncle,"

said Brigitte. "He is old and wealthy. Go and see your former friend,

and get her to give you a line of introduction to him, saying he would

do her an eminent favor if he would give a piece of friendly advice to

the bearer of the note, and then you and I will take it to him

to-morrow about one o'clock. But tell Tullia she must request her

uncle to keep secret about it. Go, my dear. Celeste, our dear child,

will be a millionaire! I can't say more; but she'll have, from me, a

husband who will put her on a pinnacle."

 

"Do you want me to tell you the first letters of his name?"

 

"Yes."

 

"T. P.,--Theodose de la Peyrade. You are right. That's a man who may,

if supported by a woman like you, become a minister."

 

"It is God himself who has placed him in our house!" cried the old

maid.

 

At this moment Monsieur and Madame Thuillier returned home.

 

Five days later, in the month of April, the ordinance which convoked

the electors to appoint a member of the municipal council on the 20th

of the same month was inserted in the "Moniteur," and placarded about

Paris. For several weeks the ministry, called that of March 1st, had

been in power. Brigitte was in a charming humor. She had been

convinced of the truth of all la Peyrade's assertions. The house,

visited from garret to cellar by old Chaffaroux, was admitted by him

to be an admirable construction; poor Grindot, the architect, who was

interested with the notary and Claparon in the affair, thought the old

man was employed in the interests of the contractor; the old fellow

himself thought he was acting in the interests of his niece, and he

gave it as his opinion that thirty thousand francs would finish the

house. Thus, in the course of one week la Peyrade became Brigitte's

god; and she proved to him by the most naively nefarious arguments

that fortune should be seized when it offered itself.

 

"Well, if there _is_ any sin in the business," she said to him in the

middle of the garden, "you can confess it."

 

"The devil!" cried Thuillier, "a man owes himself to his relatives,

and you are one of us now."

 

"Then I decide to do it," replied la Peyrade, in a voice of emotion;

"but on conditions that I must now distinctly state. I will not, in

marrying Celeste, be accused of greed and mercenary motives. If you

lay remorse upon me, at least you must consent that I shall remain as

I am for the present. Do not settle upon Celeste, my old Thuillier,

the future possession of the property I am about to obtain for you--"

 

"You are right."

 

"Don't rob yourself; and let my dear little aunt here act in the same

way in relation to the marriage contract. Put the remainder of the

capital in Madame Thuillier's name, on the Grand Livre, and she can do

what she likes with it. We shall all live together as one family, and

I'll undertake to make my own fortune, now that I am free from anxiety

about the future."

 

"That suits me," said Thuillier; "that's the talk of an honest man."

 

"Let me kiss you on the forehead, my son," said the old maid; "but,

inasmuch as Celeste cannot be allowed to go without a 'dot,' we shall

give her sixty thousand francs."

 

"For her dress," said la Peyrade.

 

"We are all three persons of honor," cried Thuillier. "It is now

settled, isn't it? You are to manage the purchase of the house; we are

to write together, you and I, my political work; and you'll bestir

yourself to get me the decoration?"

 

"You will have that as soon as you are made a municipal councillor on

the 1st of May. Only, my good friend, I must beg you, and you, too,

dear aunt, to keep the most profound secrecy about me in this affair;

and do not listen to the calumnies which all the men I am about to

trick will spread about me. I shall become, you'll see, a vagabond, a

swindler, a dangerous man, a Jesuit, an ambitious fortune-hunter. Can

you hear those accusations against me with composure?"

 

"Fear nothing," replied Brigitte. 

CHAPTER XI (THE REIGN OF THEODOSE)

  

From that day forth Thuillier became a dear, good friend. "My dear,

good friend," was the name given to him by Theodose, with voice

inflections of varieties of tenderness which astonished Flavie. But

"little aunt," a name that flattered Brigitte deeply, was only given

in family secrecy, and occasionally before Flavie. The activity of

Theodose and Dutocq, Cerizet, Barbet, Metivier, Minard, Phellion,

Colleville, and others of the Thuillier circle was extreme. Great and

small, they all put their hands to the work. Cadenet procured thirty

votes in his section. On the 30th of April Thuillier was proclaimed

member of the Council-general of the department of the Seine by an

imposing majority; in fact, he only needed sixty more votes to make

his election unanimous. May 1st Thuillier joined the municipal body

and went to the Tuileries to congratulate the King on his fete-day,

and returned home radiant. He had gone where Minard went!

 

Ten days later a yellow poster announced the sale of the house, after

due publication; the price named being seventy-five thousand francs;

the final purchase to take place about the last of July. On this point

Cerizet and Claparon had an agreement by which Cerizet pledged the sum

of fifteen thousand francs (in words only, be it understood) to

Claparon in case the latter could deceive the notary and keep him

quiet until the time expired during which he might withdraw the

property by bidding it in. Mademoiselle Thuillier, notified by

Theodose, agreed entirely to this secret clause, understanding

perfectly the necessity of paying the culprits guilty of the

treachery. The money was to pass through la Peyrade's hands. Claparon

met his accomplice, the notary, on the Place de l'Observatoire by

midnight. This young man, the successor of Leopold Hannequin, was one

of those who run after fortune instead of following it leisurely. He

now saw another future before him, and he managed his present affairs

in order to be free to take hold of it. In this midnight interview, he

offered Claparon ten thousand francs to secure himself in this dirty

business,--a sum which was only to be paid on receipt, through

Claparon, of a counter-deed from the nominal purchaser of the

property. The notary was aware that that sum was all-important to

Claparon to extricate him from present difficulties, and he felt

secure of him.

 

"Who but you, in all Paris, would give me such a fee for such an

affair?" Claparon said to him, with a false show of naivete. "You can

sleep in peace; my ostensible purchaser is one of those men of honor

who are too stupid to have ideas of your kind; he is a retired

government employee; give him the money to make the purchase and he'll

sign the counter-deed at once."

 

When the notary had made Claparon clearly understand that he could not

get more than the ten thousand francs from him, Cerizet offered the

latter twelve thousand down, and asked Theodose for fifteen thousand,

intending to keep the balance for himself. All these scenes between

the four men were seasoned with the finest speeches about feelings,

integrity, and the honor that men owed to one another in doing

business. While these submarine performances were going on, apparently

in the interests of Thuillier, to whom Theodose related them with the

deepest manifestations of disgust at being implicated therein, the

pair were meditating the great political work which "my dear good

friend" was to publish. Thus the new municipal councillor naturally

acquired a conviction that he could never do or be anything without

the help of this man of genius; whose mind so amazed him, and whose

ability was now so important to him, that every day he became more and

more convinced of the necessity of marrying him to Celeste, and of

taking the young couple to live with him. In fact, after May the 1st,

Theodose had already dined four times a week with "my dear, good

friend."

 

This was the period when Theodose reigned without a dissenting voice

in the bosom of that household, and all the friends of the family

approved of him--for the following reason: The Phellions, hearing his

praises sung by Brigitte and Thuillier, feared to displease the two

powers and chorussed their words, even when such perpetual laudation

seemed to them exaggerated. The same may be said of the Minards.

Moreover la Peyrade's behavior, as "friend of the family" was perfect.

He disarmed distrust by the manner in which he effaced himself; he was

there like a new piece of furniture; and he contrived to make both the

Phellions and Minards believe that Brigitte and Thuillier had weighed

him, and found him too light in the scales to be anything more in the

family than a young man whose services were useful to them.

 

"He may think," said Thuillier one day to Minard, "that my sister will

put him in her will; he doesn't know her."

 

This speech, inspired by Theodose himself, calmed the uneasiness of

Minard "pere."

 

"He is devoted to us," said Brigitte to Madame Phellion; "but he

certainly owes us a great deal of gratitude. We have given him his

lodging rent-free, and he dines with us almost every day."

 

This speech of the old maid, also instigated by Theodose, went from

ear to ear among the families who frequented the Thuillier salon, and

dissipated all fears. The young man called attention to the remarks of

Thuillier and his sister with the servility of a parasite; when he

played whist he justified the blunders of his dear, good friend, and

he kept upon his countenance a smile, fixed and benign, like that of

Madame Thuillier, ready to bestow upon all the bourgeois sillinesses

of the brother and sister.

 

He obtained, what he wanted above all, the contempt of his true

antagonists; and he used it as a cloak to hide his real power. For

four consecutive months his face wore a torpid expression, like that

of a snake as it gulps and digests its