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

twenty-five thousand francs plus two thousand

six hundred and eighty for costs."

 

"Are you acting for Cerizet?" asked the barrister.

 

"Cerizet has put all the papers into the hands of Louchard, and you

know what you have to expect if arrested. Is Cerizet wrong in thinking

you have twenty-five thousand francs in your desk? He says you offered

them to him and he thinks it only natural not to leave them in your

hands."

 

"Thank you for taking the step, my good friend," replied Theodose. "I

have been expecting this attack."

 

"Between ourselves," replied Desroches, "you have made an utter fool

of him, and he is furious. The scamp will stop at nothing to get his

revenge upon you--for he'll lose everything if he forces you to fling

your barrister's gown, as they say, to the nettles and go to prison."

 

"I?" said Theodose. "I'm going to pay him. But even so, there will

still be five notes of mine in his hands, for five thousand francs

each; what does he mean to do with them?"

 

"Oh! after the affair of this morning, I can't tell you; my client is

a crafty, mangy cur, and he is sure to have his little plans."

 

"Look here, Desroches," said Theodose, taking the hard, unyielding

attorney round the waist, "those papers are in your hands, are not

they?"

 

"Will you pay them?"

 

"Yes, in three hours."

 

"Very good, then. Be at my office at nine o'clock; I'll receive the

money and give you your notes; _but_, at half-past nine o'clock, they

will be in the sheriff's hands."

 

"To-night, then, at nine o'clock," said Theodose.

 

"Nine o'clock," repeated Desroches, whose glance had taken in the

whole family, then assembled in the garden.

 

Celeste, with red eyes, was talking to her godmother; Colleville and

Brigitte, Flavie and Thuillier were on the steps of the broad portico

leading to the entrance-hall. Desroches remarked to Theodose, who

followed him to the door:--

 

"You can pay off those notes."

 

At a single glance the shrewd attorney had comprehended the whole

scheme of the barrister. 

CHAPTER XIV( ONE OF CERIZET'S FEMALE CLIENTS)

The next morning, at daybreak, Theodose went to the office of the

banker of the poor, to see the effect produced upon his enemy by the

punctual payment of the night before, and to make another effort to

get rid of his hornet.

 

He found Cerizet standing up, in conference with a woman, and he

received an imperative sign to keep at a distance and not to interrupt

the interview. The barrister was therefore reduced to conjectures as

to the importance of this woman, an importance revealed by the eager

look on the face of the lender "by the little week." Theodose had a

presentiment, though a very vague one, that the upshot of this

conference would have some influence on Cerizet's own arrangements,

for he suddenly beheld on that crafty countenance the change produced

by a dawning hope.

 

"But, my dear mamma Cardinal--"

 

"Yes, my good monsieur--"

 

"What is it you want--?"

 

"It must be decided--"

 

These beginnings, or these ends of sentences were the only gleams of

light that the animated conversation, carried on in the lowest tones

with lip to ear and ear to lip, conveyed to the motionless witness,

whose attention was fixed on Madame Cardinal.

 

Madame Cardinal was one of Cerizet's earliest clients; she peddled

fish. If Parisians know these creations peculiar to their soil,

foreigners have no suspicion of their existence; and Mere Cardinal

--technologically speaking, of course, deserved all the interest she

excited in Theodose. So many women of her species may be met with in

the streets that the passers-by give them no more attention than they

give to the three thousand pictures of the Salon. But as she stood in

Cerizet's office the Cardinal had all the value of an isolated

masterpiece; she was a complete and perfect type of her species.

 

The woman was mounted on muddy sabots; but her feet, carefully wrapped

in gaiters, were still further protected by stout and thick-ribbed

stockings. Her cotton gown, adorned with a glounce of mud, bore the

imprint of the strap which supported the fish-basket. Her principal

garment was a shawl of what was called "rabbit's-hair cashmere," the

two ends of which were knotted behind, above her bustle--for we must

needs employ a fashionable word to express the effect produced by the

transversal pressure of the basket upon her petticoats, which

projected below it, in shape like a cabbage. A printed cotton

neckerchief, of the coarsest description, gave to view a red neck,

ribbed and lined like the surface of a pond where people have skated.

Her head was covered in a yellow silk foulard, twined in a manner that

was rather picturesque. Short and stout, and ruddy of skin, Mere

Cardinal probably drank her little drop of brandy in the morning. She

had once been handsome. The Halle had formerly reproached her, in the

boldness of its figurative speech, for doing "a double day's-work in

the twenty-four." Her voice, in order to reduce itself to the diapason

of ordinary conversation, was obliged to stifle its sound as other

voices do in a sick-room; but at such times it came thick and muffled,

from a throat accustomed to send to the farthest recesses of the

highest garret the names of the fish in their season. Her nose, a la

Roxelane, her well-cut lips, her blue eyes, and all that formerly made

up her beauty, was now buried in folds of vigorous flesh which told of

the habits and occupations of an outdoor life. The stomach and bosom

were distinguished for an amplitude worthy of Rubens.

 

"Do you want to make me lie in the straw?" she said to Cerizet. "What

do I care for the Toupilliers? Ain't I a Toupillier myself? What do

you want to do with them, those Toupilliers?"

 

This savage outburst was hastily repressed by Cerizet, who uttered a

prolonged "Hush-sh!" such as all conspirators obey.

 

"Well, go and find out all you can about it, and come back to me,"

said Cerizet, pushing the woman toward the door, and whispering, as he

did so, a few words in her ear.

 

"Well, my dear friend," said Theodose to Cerizet, "you have got your

money?"

 

"Yes," returned Cerizet "we have measured our claws, they are the same

length, the same strength, and the same sharpness. What next?"

 

"Am I to tell Dutocq that you received, last night, twenty-five

thousand francs?"

 

"Oh! my dear friend, not a word, if you love me!" cried Cerizet.

 

"Listen," said Theodose. "I must know, once for all, what you want. I

am positively determined not to remain twenty-four hours longer on the

gridiron where you have got me. Cheat Dutocq if you will; I am utterly

indifferent to that; but I intend that you and I shall come to an

understanding. It is a fortune that I have paid you, twenty-five

thousand francs, and you must have earned ten thousand more in your

business; it is enough to make you an honest man. Cerizet, if you will

leave me in peace, if you won't prevent my marriage with Mademoiselle

Colleville, I shall certainly be king's attorney-general, or something

of that kind in Paris. You can't do better than make sure of an

influence in that sphere."

 

"Here are my conditions; and they won't allow of discussion; you can

take them or leave them. You will obtain for me the lease of

Thuillier's new house for eighteen years, and I'll hand you back one

of your five notes cancelled, and you shall not find me any longer in

your way. But you will have to settle with Dutocq for the remaining

four notes. You got the better of _me_, and I know Dutocq hasn't the

force to stand against you."

 

"I'll agree to that, provided you'll pay a rent of forty-eight

thousand francs for the house, the last year in advance, and begin the

lease in October."

 

"Yes; but I shall not give for the last year's rent more than

forty-three thousand francs; your note will pay the remainder. I have

seen the house, and examined it. It suits me very well."

 

"One last condition," said Theodose; "you'll help me against Dutocq?"

 

"No," said Cerizet, "you'll cook him brown yourself; he doesn't need

any basting from me; he'll give out his gravy fast enough. But you

ought to be reasonable. The poor fellow can't pay off the last fifteen

thousand francs due on his practice, and you should reflect that

fifteen thousand francs would certainly buy back your notes."

 

"Well; give me two weeks to get your lease--"

 

"No, not a day later than Monday next! Tuesday your notes will be in

Louchard's hands; unless you pay them Monday, or Thuillier signs the

lease."

 

"Well, Monday, so be it!" said Theodose; "are we friends?"

 

"We shall be Monday," responded Cerizet.

 

"Well, then, Monday you'll pay for my dinner," said Theodose,

laughing.

 

"Yes, at the Rocher de Cancale, if I have the lease. Dutocq shall be

there--we'll all be there--ah! it is long since I've had a good

laugh."

 

Theodose and Cerizet shook hands, saying, reciprocally:--

 

"We'll meet soon."

 

Cerizet had not calmed down so suddenly without reasons. In the first

place, as Desroches once said, "Bile does not facilitate business,"

and the usurer had too well seen the justice of that remark not to

coolly resolve to get something out of his position, and to squeeze

the jugular vein of the crafty Provencal until he strangled him.

 

"It is a fair revenge," Desroches said to him; "mind you extract its

quintessence. You hold that fellow."

 

For ten years past Cerizet had seen men growing rich by practising the

trade of principal tenant. The principal tenant is, in Paris, to the

owners of houses what farmers are to country landlords. All Paris has

seen one of its great tailors, building at his own cost, on the famous

site of Frascati, one of the most sumptuous of houses, and paying, as

principal tenant, fifty thousand francs a year for the ground rent of

the house, which, at the end of nineteen years' lease, was to become

the property of the owner of the land. In spite of the costs of

construction, which were something like seven hundred thousand francs,

the profits of those nineteen years proved, in the end, very large.

 

Cerizet, always on the watch for business, had examined the chances

for gain offered by the situation of the house which Thuillier had

_stolen_,--as he said to Desroches,--and he had seen the possibility of

letting it for sixty thousand at the end of six years. There were four

shops, two on each side, for it stood on a boulevard corner. Cerizet

expected, therefore, to get clear ten thousand a year for a dozen

years, allowing for eventualities and sundries attendant on renewal of

leases. He therefore proposed to himself to sell his money-lending

business to the widow Poiret and Cadenet for ten thousand francs; he

already possessed thirty thousand; and the two together would enable

him to pay the last year's rent in advance, which house-owners in

Paris usually demand as a guarantee from a principal tenant on a long

lease. Cerizet had spent a happy night; he fell asleep in a glorious

dream; he saw himself in a fair way to do an honest business, and to

become a bourgeois like Thuillier, like Minard, and so many others.

 

But he had a waking of which he did not dream. He found Fortune

standing before him, and emptying her gilded horns of plenty at his

feet in the person of Madame Cardinal. He had always had a liking for

the woman, and had promised her for a year past the necessary sum to

buy a donkey and a little cart, so that she could carry on her

business on a large scale, and go from Paris to the suburbs. Madame

Cardinal, widow of a porter in the corn-market, had an only daughter,

whose beauty Cerizet had heard of from some of the mother's cronies.

Olympe Cardinal was about thirteen years of age at the time, 1837,

when Cerizet began his system of loans in the quarter; and with a view

to an infamous libertinism, he had paid great attention to the mother,

whom he rescued from utter misery, hoping to make Olympe his