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

am very unwilling

to make it. If I do so, it is only to oblige a person whose piety and

the charitable use she intends to make of the proceeds of her little

fortune entitle her to my good-will."

 

"If monsieur thinks that the matter cannot be otherwise arranged--"

 

"This appears to me the only possible way," said la Peyrade. "I shall

hope to get you six per cent interest, and you may rely that it will

be paid with the utmost regularity. But remember, six months, or even

a year, may elapse before the notary will be in a position to repay

this money, because notaries invest such trust funds chiefly in

mortgages which require a certain time to mature. Now, when you have

obtained the prize for virtue, which, according to all appearance, I

can readily do for you, there will be no reason to hide your little

property any longer,--a reason which I fully understand; but you will

not be able to withdraw it from the notary's hands immediately; and in

case of any difficulty arising, I should be forced to explain the

situation, the manner in which you have concealed your prosperity from

your master, to whom you have been supposed to be wholly devoted.

This, as you will see, would put you in the position of falsely

professing virtue, and would do great harm to your reputation for

piety."

 

"Oh! monsieur," said the saintly woman, "can it be that any one would

think me a person who did not speak the truth?"

 

"Bless you! my good creature, in business it is necessary to foresee

everything. Money embroils the best friends, and leads to actions they

never foresaw. Therefore reflect; you can come and see me again in a

few days. It is possible that between now and then you will find some

better investment; and I myself, who am doing at this moment a thing I

don't altogether like, may have found other difficulties which I do

not now expect."

 

This threat, adroitly thrown out as an afterthought, was intended to

immediately clinch the matter.

 

"I have reflected carefully," said the pious woman, "and I feel sure

that in the hands of so religious a man as monsieur I run no risks."

 

Taking from her bosom a little pocket-book, she pulled out twenty-five

bank notes. The rapid manner in which she counted them was a

revelation to la Peyrade. The woman was evidently accustomed to handle

money, and a singular idea darted through his mind.

 

"Can it be that she is making me a receiver of stolen property? No,"

he said aloud, "in order to draw up the memorial for the Academy, I

must, as I told you, make a few inquiries; and that will give me

occasion to call upon you. At what hour can I see you alone?"

 

"At four o'clock, when monsieur goes to take his walk in the

Luxembourg."

 

"And where do you live?"

 

"Rue du Val-de-Grace, No. 9."

 

"Very good; at four o'clock; and if, as I doubt not, the result of my

inquiry is favorable, I will take your money then. Otherwise, if there

are not good grounds for your application for the prize of virtue

there will be no reason why you should make a mystery of your legacy.

You could then invest it in some more normal manner than that I have

suggested to you."

 

"Oh! how cautious monsieur is!" she said, with evident disappointment,

having thought the affair settled. "This money, God be thanked! I have

not stolen, and monsieur can make what inquiries he likes about me in

the quarter."

 

"It is quite indispensable that I should do so," said la Peyrade,

dryly, for he did not at all like, under this mask of simplicity, the

quick intelligence that penetrated his thoughts. "Without being a

thief, a woman may very well not be a Sister of Charity; there's a

wide margin between the two extremes."

 

"As monsieur chooses," she replied; "he is doing me so great a service

that I ought to let him take all precautions."

 

Then, with a piously humble bow, she went away, taking her money with

her.

 

"The devil!" thought la Peyrade; "that woman is stronger than I; she

swallows insults with gratitude and without the sign of a grimace! I

have never yet been able to master myself like that."

 

He began now to fear that he had been too timid, and to think that his

would-be creditor might change her mind before he could pay her the

visit he had promised. But the harm was done, and, although consumed

with anxiety lest he had lost a rare chance, he would have cut off a

leg sooner than yield to his impulse to go to her one minute before

the hour he had fixed. The information he obtained about her in the

quarter was rather contradictory. Some said his client was a saint;

otherwise declared her to be a sly creature; but, on the whole,

nothing was said against her morality that deterred la Peyrade from

taking the piece of luck she had offered him.

 

When he met her at four o'clock he found her in the same mind.

 

With the money in his pocket he went to dine with Cerizet and Dutocq

at the Rocher de Cancale; and it is to the various emotions he had

passed through during the day that we must attribute the sharp and

ill-considered manner in which he conducted his rupture with his two

associates. This behavior was neither that of his natural disposition

nor of his acquired temperament; but the money that was burning in his

pockets had slightly intoxicated him; its very touch had conveyed to

him an excitement and an impatience for emancipation of which he was

not wholly master. He flung Cerizet over in the matter of the lease

without so much as consulting Brigitte; and yet, he had not had the

full courage of his duplicity; for he had laid to the charge of the

old woman a refusal which was merely the act of his own will, prompted

by bitter recollections of his fruitless struggles with the man who

had so long oppressed him.

 

In short, during the whole day, la Peyrade had not shown himself the

able and infallible man that we have hitherto seen him. Once before,

when he carried the fifteen thousand francs entrusted to him by

Thuillier, he had been led by Cerizet into an insurrectionary

proceeding which necessitated the affair of Sauvaignou. Perhaps, on

the whole, it is more difficult to be strong under good than under

evil fortune. The Farnese Hercules, calm and in still repose,

expresses more energetically the plenitude of muscular power than a

violent and agitated Hercules represented in the over-excited energy

of his labors. 

PART II THE PARVENUSN CHAPTER I (PHELLION, UNDER A NEW ASPECT)

Between the first and second parts of this history an immense event

had taken place in the life of Phellion.

 

There is no one who has not heard of the misfortunes of the Odeon,

that fatal theatre which, for years, ruined all its directors. Right

or wrong, the quarter in which this dramatic impossibility stands is

convinced that its prosperity depends upon it; so that more than once

the mayor and other authorities of the arrondissement have, with a

courage that honors them, taken part in the most desperate efforts to

galvanize the corpse.

 

Now to meddle with theatrical matters is one of the eternally

perennial ambitions of the lesser bourgeoisie. Always, therefore, the

successive saviours of the Odeon feel themselves magnificently

rewarded if they are given ever so small a share in the administration

of that enterprise. It was at some crisis in its affairs that Minard,

in his capacity as mayor of the 11th arrondissement, had been called

to the chairmanship of the committee for reading plays, with the power

to join unto himself as assistants a certain number of the notables of

the Latin quarter,--the selection being left to him.

 

We shall soon know exactly how near was the realization of la

Peyrade's projects for the possession of Celeste's "dot"; let us

merely say now that these projects in approaching maturity had

inevitably become noised abroad; and as this condition of things

pointed, of course, to the exclusion of Minard junior and also of

Felix the professor, the prejudice hitherto manifested by Minard pere

against old Phellion was transformed into an unequivocal disposition

towards friendly cordiality; there is nothing that binds and soothes

like the feeling of a checkmate shared in common. Judged without the

evil eye of paternal rivalry, Phellion became to Minard a Roman of

incorruptible integrity and a man whose little treatises had been

adopted by the University,--in other words, a man of sound and tested

intellect.

 

So that when it became the duty of the mayor to select the members of

the dramatic custom-house, of which he was now the head, he

immediately thought of Phellion. As for the great citizen, he felt, on

the day when a post was offered to him in that august tribunal, that a

crown of gold had been placed upon his brow.

 

It will be well understood that it was not lightly, nor without having

deeply meditated, that a man of Phellion's solemnity had accepted the

high and sacred mission which was offered to him. He said within

himself that he was called upon to exercise the functions of a

magistracy, a priestly office.

 

"To judge of men," he replied to Minard, who was much surprised at his

hesitation, "is an alarming task, but to judge of minds!--who can

believe himself equal to such a mission?"

 

Once more the family--that rock on which the firmest resolutions split

--had threatened to infringe on the domain of his conscience. The

thought of boxes and tickets of which the future member of the

committee could dispose in favor of his own kin had excited in the

household so eager a ferment that his freedom of decision seemed for a

moment in danger. But, happily, Brutus was able to decide himself in

the same direction along which a positive uprising of the whole

Phellionian tribe intended to push him. From the observations of

Barniol, his son-in-law, and also by his own personal inspiration, he

became persuaded that by his vote, always given to works of

irreproachable morality, and by his firm determination to bar the way

to all plays that mothers of families could not take their daughters

to witness, he was called upon to render the most signal services to

morals and public order. Phellion, to use his own expression, had

therefore become a member of the areopagus presided over by Minard,

and--still speaking as he spoke--he was issuing from the exercise of

his functions, which were both delicate and interesting, when the

conversation we are about to report took place. A knowledge of this

conversation is necessary to an understanding of the ulterior events

of this history, and it will also serve to put into relief the envious

insight which is one of the most marked traits of the bourgeois

character.

 

The session of the committee had been extremely stormy. On the subject

of a tragedy entitled, "The Death of Hercules," the classic party and

the romantic party, whom the mayor had carefully balanced in the

composition of his committee, had nearly approached the point of

tearing each other's hair out. Twice Phellion had risen to speak, and

his hearers were astonished at the quantity of metaphors the speech of

a major of the National Guard could contain when his literary

convictions were imperilled. As the result of a vote, victory remained

with the opinions of which Phellion was the eloquent organ. It was

while descending the stairway of the theatre with Minard that he

remarked:--

 

"We have done a good work this day. 'The Death of Hercules' reminded

me of 'The Death of Hector,' by the late Luce de Lancival; the work we

have just accepted sparkles with sublime verses."

 

"Yes," said Minard, "the versification has taste; there are some

really fine lines in it, and I admit to you that I think this sort of

literature rather above the anagrams of Master Colleville."

 

"Oh!" replied Minard, "Colleville's anagrams are mere witticisms,

which have nothing in common with the sterner accents of Melpomene."

 

"And