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

for, don't you see, an uncle, he's a kind of father, and one

shouldn't mind what one does for him."

 

So saying, she sat down, with her legs apart, on one of the

dilapidated chairs, and poured into her apron the contents of her

pockets, namely: a knife, her snuff-box, two pawn-tickets, some crusts

of bread, and a handful of copper, from which she extracted a few

silver bits.

 

This exhibition, intended to prove her generous and eager devotion,

had no result. Toupillier seemed not to notice it. Exhausted by the

feverish energy with which he had demanded his favorite remedy, he

made an effort to change his position, and, with his back turned to

his two nurses, he again muttered: "Wine! wine!" after which nothing

more was heard of him but a stentorous breathing, that plainly showed

the state of his lungs, which were beginning to congest.

 

"I suppose I must go and fetch his wine!" said the Cardinal, restoring

to her pockets, with some ill-humor, the cargo she had just pulled out

of them.

 

"If you don't want to go--" began Madame Perrache, always ready to

offer her services.

 

The fishwife hesitated for a moment; then, reflecting that something

might be got out of a conversation with the wine-merchant, and sure,

moreover, that as long as Toupillier lay on his gold she could safely

leave him alone with the portress, she said:--

 

"Thank you, Madame Perrache, but I'd better make acquaintance with his

trades-folk."

 

Then, having spied behind the night-table a dirty bottle which might

hold about two quarts,--

 

"Did he say the rue des Canelles?" she inquired of the portress.

 

"Corner of the rue Guisarde," replied Madame Perrache. "Monsieur

Legrelu, a tall, fine man with big whiskers and no hair." Then,

lowering her voice, she added: "His number-six wine, you know, is

Roussillon, and the best, too. However, the wine-merchant knows; it is

enough if you tell him you have come from his customer, the pauper of

Saint-Sulpice."

 

"No need to tell me anything twice," said the Cardinal, opening the

door and making, as they say, a false exit. "Ah ca!" she said, coming

back; "what does he burn in his stove, supposing I want to heat some

remedy for him?"

 

"Goodness!" said the portress, "he doesn't make much provision for

winter, and here we are in the middle of summer!"

 

"And not a saucepan! not a pot, even! Gracious! what a way to live.

I'll have to fetch him some provisions; I hope nobody will see the

things I bring back; I'd be ashamed they should--"

 

"I'll lend you a hand-bag," said the portress, always ready and

officious.

 

"No, I'll buy a basket," replied the fishwife, more anxious about what

she expected to carry away than what she was about to bring home to

the pauper. "There must be some Auvergnat in the neighborhood who

sells wood," she added.

 

"Corner of the rue Ferou; you'll find one there. A fine establishment,

with logs of wood painted in a kind of an arcade all round the shop

--so like, you'd think they were going to speak to you."

 

Before going finally off, Madame Cardinal went through a piece of very

deep hypocrisy. We have seen how she hesitated about leaving the

portress alone with the sick man:--

 

"Madame Perrache," she said to her, "you won't leave him, the poor

darling, will you, till I get back?"

 

It may have been noticed that Cerizet had not decided on any definite

course of action in the new affair he was now undertaking. The part of

doctor, which for a moment he thought of assuming, frightened him, and

he gave himself out, as we have seen, to Madame Perrache as the

business agent of his accomplice. Once alone, he began to see that his

original idea complicated with a doctor, a nurse, and a notary,

presented the most serious difficulties. A regular will drawn in favor

of Madame Cardinal was not a thing to be improvised in a moment. It

would take some time to acclimatize the idea in the surly and

suspicious mind of the old pauper, and death, which was close at hand,

might play them a trick at any moment, and balk the most careful

preparations.

 

It was true that unless a will were made the income of eight thousand

francs on the Grand Livre and the house in the rue Notre-Dame de

Nazareth would go to the heirs-at-law, and Madame Cardinal would get

only her share of the property; but the abandonment of this visible

portion of the inheritance was the surest means of laying hands on the

invisible part of it. Besides, if the latter were secured, what

hindered their returning to the idea of a will?

 

Resolving, therefore, to confine the _operation_ to the simplest terms

at first, Cerizet summed them up in the manoeuvre of the poppy-heads,

already mentioned, and he was making his way back to Toupillier's

abode, armed with that single weapon of war, intending to give Madame

Cardinal further instructions, when he met her, bearing on her arm the

basket she had just bought; and in that basket was the sick man's

panacea.

 

"Upon my word!" cried the usurer, "is this the way you keep your

watch?"

 

"I had to go out and buy him wine," replied the Cardinal; "he is

howling like a soul in hell that he wants to be at peace, and to be

let alone, and get his wine! It is his one idea that Roussillon is

good for his disease. Well, when he has drunk it, I dare say he will

be quieter."

 

"You are right," said Cerizet, sententiously; "never contradict a sick

man. But this wine, you know, ought to be improved; by infusing these"

(and lifting one of the covers of the basket he slipped in the

poppies) "you'll procure the poor man a good, long sleep,--five or six

hours at least. This evening I'll come and see you, and nothing, I

think, need prevent us from examining a little closer those matters of

inheritance."

 

"I see," said Madame Cardinal, winking.

 

"To-night, then," said Cerizet, not wishing to prolong the

conversation.

 

He had a strong sense of the difficulty and danger of the affair, and

was very reluctant to be seen in the street conversing with his

accomplice.

 

Returning to her uncle's garret, Madame Cardinal found him still in a

state of semi-torpor; she relieved Madame Perrache, and bade her

good-bye, going to the door to receive a supply of wood, all sawed,

which she had ordered from the Auvergnat in the rue Ferou.

 

Into an earthen pot, which she had bought of the right size to fit

upon the hole in the stoves of the poor where they put their

soup-kettles, she now threw the poppies, pouring over them two-thirds

of the wine she had brought back with her. Then she lighted a fire

beneath the pot, intending to obtain the decoction agreed upon as

quickly as possible. The crackling of the wood and the heat, which

soon spread about the room, brought Toupillier out of his stupor.

Seeing the stove lighted he called out:--

 

"Who is making a fire here? Do you want to burn the house down?"

 

"Why, uncle," said the Cardinal, "it is wood I bought with my own

money, to warm your wine. The doctor doesn't want you to drink it

cold."

 

"Where is it, that wine?" demanded Toupillier, calming down a little

at the thought that the fire was not burning at his expense.

 

"It must come to a boil," said his nurse; "the doctor insisted upon

that. Still, if you'll be good I'll give you half a glass of it cold,

just to wet your whistle. I'll take that upon myself, but don't you

tell the doctor."

 

"Doctor! I won't have a doctor; they are all scoundrels, invented to

kill people," cried Toupillier, whom the idea of drink had revived.

"Come, give me the wine!" he said, in the tone of a man whose patience

had come to an end.

 

Convinced that though this compliance would do no harm it could do no

good, Madame Cardinal poured out half a glass, and while she gave it

with one hand to the sick man, with the other she raised him to a

sitting posture that he might drink it.

 

With his fleshless, eager fingers Toupillier clutched the glass,

emptied it at a gulp, and exclaimed:--

 

"Ah! that's a fine drop, that is! though you've watered it."

 

"You mustn't say that, uncle; I went and bought it myself of Pere

Legrelu, and I've given it you quite pure. But you let me simmer the

rest; the doctor said I might then give you all you wanted."

 

Toupillier resigned himself with a shrug of the shoulders. At the end

of fifteen minutes, the infusion being in condition to serve, Madame

Cardinal brought him, without further appeal, a full cup of it.

 

The avidity with which the old pauper drank it down prevented him from

noticing at first that the wine was drugged; but as he swallowed the

last drops he tasted the sickly and nauseating flavor, and flinging

the cup on the bed he cried out that some one was trying to poison

him.

 

"Poison! nonsense!" said the fishwife, pouring into her own mouth a

few drops of that which remained in the bottle, declaring to the old

man that if the wine did not seem to him the same as usual, it was

because his mouth had a "bad taste to it."

 

Before the end of the dispute, which lasted some time, the narcotic

began to take effect, and at the end of an hour the sick man was sound

asleep.

 

While idly waiting for Cerizet, an idea took possession of the

Cardinal's mind. She thought that in view of their comings and goings

with the treasure, it would be well if the vigilance of the Perrache

husband and wife could be dulled in some manner. Consequently, after

carefully flinging the refuse poppy-heads into the privy, she called

to the portress:--

 

"Madame Perrache, come up and taste his wine. Wouldn't you have

thought to hear him talk he was ready to drink a cask of it? Well, a

cupful satisfied him."

 

"Your health!" said the portress, touching glasses with the Cardinal,

who was careful to have hers filled with the unboiled wine. Less

accomplished as a gourmet than the old beggar, Madame Perrache

perceived nothing in the insidious liquid (cold by the time she drank

it) to make her suspect its narcotic character; on the contrary, she

declared it was "velvet," and wished that her husband were there to

have a share in the treat. After a rather long gossip, the two women

separated. Then, with the cooked meat she had provided for herself,

and the remains of the Roussillon, Madame Cardinal made a repast which

she finished off with a siesta. Without mentioning the emotions of the

day, the influence of one of the most heady wines of the country would

have sufficed to explain the soundness of her sleep; when she woke

darkness was coming on.

 

Her first care was to give a glance at her patient; his sleep was

restless, and he was dreaming aloud.

 

"Diamonds," he said; "those diamonds? At my death, but not before."

 

"Gracious!" thought Madame Cardinal, "that was the one thing lacking,

--diamonds! that he should have diamonds!"

 

Then, as Toupillier seemed to be in the grasp of a violent nightmare,

she leaned over him so as not to lose a word of his speech, hoping to

gather from it some important revelation. At this moment a slight rap

given to the door, from which the careful nurse had removed the key,

announced the arrival of Cerizet.

 

"Well?" he said, on entering.

 

"He has taken the drug. He's been sound asleep these two hours; just

now, in dreaming, he was talking of diamonds."

 

"Well," said Cerizet, "it wouldn't be surprising if we found some.

These paupers when they set out to be rich, like to pile up

everything."

 

"Ah ca!" cried the Cardinal, suddenly, "what made you go and tell Mere

Perrache that you were my man of business, and that you weren't a

doctor? I thought we agreed this morning that you were coming as a

doctor?"

 

Cerizet did not choose to admit that the usurpation of that title had

seemed to him dangerous; he feared to discourage his accomplice.

 

"I saw that the woman was going to propose a consultation," he

replied, "and I got out of it that way."

 

"Goodness!" exclaimed Madame Cardinal, "they say fine minds come

together; that was my dodge, too. Calling you my man of business

seemed to give that old pilferer a few ideas. Did they see you come

in, those porters?"

 

"I thought, as I went by," replied Cerizet, "that the woman was asleep

in her chair."

 

"And well she might be," said the Cardinal, significantly.

 

"What, really?" said Cerizet.

 

"Parbleu!" replied the fishwife; "what's enough for one is enough for

two; the rest of the stuff went that way."

 

"As for the husband, he was there," said Cerizet; "for he gave me a

gracious sign of recognition, which I could have done