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

prey. But at times he would

rush into the garden with Colleville or Flavie, to laugh and lay off

his mask, and rest himself; or get fresh strength by giving way before

his future mother-in-law to fits of nervous passion which either

terrified or deeply touched her.

 

"Don't you pity me?" he cried to her the evening before the

preparatory sale of the house, when Thuillier was to make the purchase

at seventy-five thousand francs. "Think of a man like me, forced to

creep like a cat, to choke down every pointed word, to swallow my own

gall, and submit to your rebuffs!"

 

"My friend! my child!" Flavie replied, undecided in mind how to take

him.

 

These words are a thermometer which will show the temperature at which

this clever manipulator maintained his intrigue with Flavie. He kept

her floating between her heart and her moral sense, between religious

sentiments and this mysterious passion.

 

During this time Felix Phellion was giving, with a devotion and

constancy worthy of all praise, regular lessons to young Colleville.

He spent much of his time upon these lessons, feeling that he was thus

working for his future family. To acknowledge this service, he was

invited, by advice of Theodose to Flavie, to dine at the Collevilles'

every Thursday, where la Peyrade always met him. Flavie was usually

making either a purse or slippers or a cigar-case for the happy young

man, who would say, deprecatingly:--

 

"I am only too well rewarded, madame, by the happiness I feel in being

useful to you."

 

"We are not rich, monsieur," replied Colleville, "but, God bless me!

we are not ungrateful."

 

Old Phellion would rub his hands as he listened to his son's account

of these evenings, beholding his dear and noble Felix already wedded

to Celeste.

 

But Celeste, the more she loved Felix, the more grave and serious she

became with him; partly because her mother sharply lectured her,

saying to her one evening:--

 

"Don't give any hope whatever to that young Phellion. Neither your

father nor I can arrange your marriage. You have expectations to be

consulted. It is much less important to please a professor without a

penny than to make sure of the affection and good-will of Mademoiselle

Brigitte and your godfather. If you don't want to kill your mother

--yes, my dear, kill her--you must obey me in this affair blindly; and

remember that what we want to secure, above all, is your good."

 

As the date of the final sale was set for the last of July, Theodose

advised Brigitte by the end of June to arrange her affairs in time to

be ready for the payment. Accordingly, she now sold out her own and

her sister-in-law's property in the Funds. The catastrophe of the

treaty of the four powers, an insult to France, is now an established

historical fact; but it is necessary to remind the reader that from

July to the last of August the French funds, alarmed by the prospect

of war, a fear which Monsieur Thiers did much to promote, fell twenty

francs, and the Three-per-cents went down to sixty. That was not all:

this financial fiasco had a most unfortunate influence on the value of

real estate in Paris; and all those who had such property then for

sale suffered loss. These events made Theodose a prophet in the eyes

of Brigitte and Thuillier, to whom the house was now about to be

definitely sold for seventy-five thousand francs. The notary, involved

in the political disaster, and whose practice was already sold,

concealed himself for a time in the country; but he took with him the

ten thousand francs for Claparon. Advised by Theodose, Thuillier made

a contract with Grindot, who supposed he was really working for the

notary in finishing the house; and as, during this period of financial

depression, suspended work left many workmen with their arms folded,

the architect was able to finish off the building in a splendid manner

at a low cost. Theodose insisted that the agreement should be in

writing.

 

This purchase increased Thuillier's importance ten-fold. As for the

notary, he had temporarily lost his head in presence of political

events which came upon him like a waterspout out of cloudless skies.

Theodose, certain now of his supremacy, holding Thuillier fast by his

past services and by the literary work in which they were both

engaged, admired by Brigitte for his modesty and discretion,--for

never had he made the slightest allusion to his own poverty or uttered

one word about money,--Theodose began to assume an air that was rather

less servile than it had been. Brigitte and Thuillier said to him one

day:--

 

"Nothing can deprive you of our esteem; you are here in this house as

if in your own home; the opinion of Minard and Phellion, which you

seem to fear, has no more value for us than a stanza of Victor Hugo.

Therefore, let them talk! Carry your head high!"

 

"But we shall still need them for Thuillier's election to the

Chamber," said Theodose. "Follow my advice; you have found it good so

far, haven't you? When the house is actually yours, you will have got

it for almost nothing; for you can now buy into the Three-per-cents at

sixty in Madame Thuillier's name, and thus replace nearly the whole of

her fortune. Wait only for the expiration of the time allowed to the

nominal creditor to buy it in, and have the fifteen thousand francs

ready for our scoundrels."

 

Brigitte did not wait; she took her whole capital with the exception

of a sum of one hundred and twenty thousand francs, and bought into

the Three-per-cents in Madame Thuillier's name to the amount of twelve

thousand francs a year, and in her own for ten thousand a year,

resolving in her own mind to choose no other kind of investment in

future. She saw her brother secure of forty thousand francs a year

besides his pension, twelve thousand a year for Madame Thuillier and

eighteen thousand a year for herself, besides the house they lived in,

the rental of which she valued at eight thousand.

 

"We are worth quite as much as the Minards," she remarked.

 

"Don't chant victory before you win it," said Theodose. "The right of

redemption doesn't expire for another week. I have attended to your

affairs, but mine have gone terribly to pieces."

 

"My dear child, you have friends," cried Brigitte; "if you should

happen to want five hundred francs or so, you will always find them

here."

 

Theodose exchanged a smile with Thuillier, who hastened to carry him

off, saying:--

 

"Excuse my poor sister; she sees the world through a small hole. But

if you should want twenty-five thousand francs I'll lend them to you

--out of my first rents," he added.

 

"Thuillier," exclaimed Theodose, "the rope is round my neck. Ever

since I have been a barrister I have had notes of hand running. But

say nothing about it," added Theodose, frightened himself at having

let out the secret of his situation. "I'm in the claws of scoundrels,

but I hope to crush them yet."

 

In telling this secret Theodose, though alarmed as he did so, had a

two-fold purpose: first, to test Thuillier; and next, to avert the

consequences of a fatal blow which might be dealt to him any day in a

secret and sinister struggle he had long foreseen. Two words will

explain his horrible position.

CHAPTER XII (DEVILS AGAINST DEVILS)

During the extreme poverty of la Peyrade's first years in Paris, none

but Cerizet had ever gone to see him in the wretched garret where, in

severely cold weather, he stayed in bed for want of clothes. Only one

shirt remained to him. For three days he lived on one loaf of bread,

cutting it into measured morsels, and asking himself, "What am I to

do?" At this moment it was that his former partner came to him, having

just left prison, pardoned. The projects which the two men then formed

before a fire of laths, one wrapped in his landlady's counterpane, the

other in his infamy, it is useless to relate. The next day Cerizet,

who had talked with Dutocq in the course of the morning, returned,

bringing trousers, waistcoat, coat, hat, and boots, bought in the

Temple, and he carried off Theodose to dine with himself and Dutocq.

The hungry Provencal ate at Pinson's, rue de l'Ancienne Comedie, half

of a dinner costing forty-seven francs. At dessert, after Theodose had

drunk freely, Cerizet said to him:--

 

"Will you sign me bills of exchange for fifty thousand francs in your

capacity as a barrister?"

 

"You couldn't get five thousand on them."

 

"That's not your affair, but ours; I mean monsieur's here, who is

giving us this dinner, and mine, in a matter where you risk nothing,

but in which you'll get your title as barrister, a fine practice, and

the hand in marriage of a girl about the age of an old dog, and rich

by twenty or thirty thousand francs a year. Neither Dutocq nor I can

marry her; but we'll equip you, give you the look of a decent man,

feed and lodge you, and set you up generally. Consequently, we want

security. I don't say that on my own account, for I know you, but for

monsieur here, whose proxy I am. We'll equip you as a pirate, hey! to

do the white-slave trade! If we can't capture that 'dot,' we'll try

other plans. Between ourselves, none of us need be particular what we

touch--that's plain enough. We'll give you careful instructions; for

the matter is certain to take time, and there'll probably be some

bother about it. Here, see, I have brought stamped paper."

 

"Waiter, pens and ink!" cried Theodose.

 

"Ha! I like fellows of that kind!" exclaimed Dutocq.

 

"Sign: 'Theodose de la Peyrade,' and after your name put 'Barrister,

rue Saint-Dominique d'Enfer,' under the words 'Accepted for ten

thousand.' We'll date the notes and sue you,--all secretly, of course,

but in order to have a hold upon you; the owners of a privateer ought

to have security when the brig and the captain are at sea."

 

The day after this interview the bailiff of the justice-of-peace did

Cerizet the service of suing la Peyrade secretly. He went to see the

barrister that evening, and the whole affair was done without any

publicity. The Court of commerce has a hundred such cases in the

course of one term. The strict regulations of the council of

barristers of the bar of Paris are well known. This body, and also the

council of attorneys, exercise severe discipline over their members. A

barrister liable to go to Clichy would be disbarred. Consequently,

Cerizet, under Dutocq's advice, had taken against their puppet

measures which were certain to secure to each of them twenty-five

thousand francs out of Celeste's "dot." In signing the notes, Theodose

saw but one thing,--his means of living secured; but as time had gone

on, and the horizon grew clearer, and he mounted, step by step, to a

better position on the social ladder, he began to dream of getting rid

of his associates. And now, on obtaining twenty-five thousand francs

from Thuillier, he hoped to treat on the basis of fifty per cent for

the return of his fatal notes by Cerizet.

 

Unfortunately, this sort of infamous speculation is not an exceptional

fact; it takes place in Paris under various forms too little disguised

for the historian of manners and morals to pass them over unnoticed in

a complete and accurate picture of society in the nineteenth century.

Dutocq, an arrant scoundrel, still owed fifteen thousand francs on his

practice, and lived in hopes of something turning up to keep his head,

as the saying is, above water until the close of 1840. Up to the

present time none of the three confederates had flinched or groaned.

Each felt his strength and knew his danger. Equals they were in

distrust, in watchfulness; equals, too, in apparent confidence; and

equally stolid in silence and look when mutual suspicions rose to the

surface of face or speech. For the last two months the position of

Theodose was acquiring the strength of a detached fort. But Cerizet

and Dutocq held it undermined by a mass of powder,