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

yet," said Minard, "I can assure you he attaches the greatest

importance to that rubbish, and apropos to his anagrams, as, indeed,

about many other things, he is not a little puffed up. Since their

emigration to the Madeleine quarter it seems to me that not only the

Sieur Colleville, but his wife and daughter, and the Thuilliers and

the whole coterie have assumed an air of importance which is rather

difficult to justify."

 

"No wonder!" said Phellion; "one must have a pretty strong head to

stand the fumes of opulence. Our friends have become so very rich by

the purchase of that property where they have gone to live that we

ought to forgive them for a little intoxication; and I must say the

dinner they gave us yesterday for a house-warming was really as well

arranged as it was succulent."

 

"I myself," said Minard, "have given a few remarkable dinners to which

men in high government positions have not disdained to come, yet I am

not puffed up with pride on that account; such as my friends have

always known me, that I have remained."

 

"You, Monsieur le maire, have long been habituated to the splendid

existence you have made for yourself by your high commercial talents;

our friends, on the contrary, so lately embarked on the smiling ship

of Fortune, have not yet found, as the vulgar saying is, their

sea-legs."

 

And then to cut short a conversation in which Phellion began to think

the mayor rather "caustic," he made as if he intended to take leave of

him. In order to reach their respective homes they did not always take

the same way.

 

"Are you going through the Luxembourg?" asked Minard, not allowing

Phellion to give him the slip.

 

"I shall cross it, but I have an appointment to meet Madame Phellion

and the little Barniols at the end of the grand alley."

 

"Then," said Minard, "I'll go with you and have the pleasure of making

my bow to Madame Phellion; and I shall get the fresh air at the same

time, for, in spite of hearing fine things, one's head gets tired at

the business we have just been about."

 

Minard had felt that Phellion gave rather reluctant assent to his

sharp remarks about the new establishment of the Thuilliers, and he

did not attempt to renew the subject; but when he had Madame Phellion

for a listener, he was very sure that his spite would find an echo.

 

"Well, fair lady," he began, "what did you think of yesterday's

dinner?"

 

"It was very fine," replied Madame Phellion; "as I tasted that soup 'a

la bisque' I knew that some caterer, like Chevet, had supplanted the

cook. But the whole affair was dull; it hadn't the gaiety of our old

meetings in the Latin quarter. And then, didn't it strike you, as it

did me, that Madame and Mademoiselle Thuillier no longer seemed

mistresses of their own house? I really felt as if I were the guest of

Madame--what _is_ her name? I never can remember it."

 

"Torna, Comtesse de Godollo," said Phellion, intervening. "The name is

euphonious enough to remember."

 

"Euphonious if you like, my dear; but to me it never seems a name at

all."

 

"It is a Magyar, or to speak more commonly, a Hungarian name. Our own

name, if we wanted to discuss it, might be said to be a loan from the

Greek language."

 

"Very likely; at any rate we have the advantage of being known, not

only in our own quarter, but throughout the tuition world, where we

have earned an honorable position; while this Hungarian countess, who

makes, as they say, the good and the bad weather in the Thuilliers'

home, where does she come from, I'd like to know? How did such a fine

lady,--for she has good manners and a very distinguished air, no one

denies her that,--how came she to fall in love with Brigitte; who,

between ourselves, keeps a sickening odor of the porter's lodge about

her. For my part, I think this devoted friend is an intriguing

creature, who scents money, and is scheming for some future gain."

 

"Ah ca!" said Minard, "then you don't know the original cause of the

intimacy between Madame la Comtesse de Godollo and the Thuilliers?"

 

"She is a tenant in their house; she occupies the entresol beneath

their apartment."

 

"True, but there's something more than that in it. Zelie, my wife,

heard it from Josephine, who wanted, lately, to enter our service; the

matter came to nothing, for Francoise, our woman, who thought of

marrying, changed her mind. You must know, fair lady, that it was

solely Madame de Godollo who brought about the emigration of the

Thuilliers, whose upholsterer, as one might say, she is."

 

"What! their upholsterer?" cried Phellion,--"that distinguished woman,

of whom one may truly say, 'Incessu patuit dea'; which in French we

very inadequately render by the expression, 'bearing of a queen'?"

 

"Excuse me," said Minard. "I did not mean that Madame de Godollo is

actually in the furniture business; but, at the time when Mademoiselle

Thuillier decided, by la Peyrade's advice, to manage the new house

herself, that little fellow, who hasn't all the ascendancy over her

mind he thinks he has, couldn't persuade her to move the family into

the splendid apartment where they received us yesterday. Mademoiselle

Brigitte objected that she should have to change her habits, and that

her friends and relations wouldn't follow her to such a distant

quarter--"

 

"It is quite certain," interrupted Madame Phellion, "that to make up

one's mind to hire a carriage every Sunday, one wants a prospect of

greater pleasure than can be found in that salon. When one thinks

that, except on the day of the famous dance of the candidacy, they

never once opened the piano in the rue Saint-Dominique!"

 

"It would have been, I am sure, most agreeable to the company to have

a talent like yours put in requisition," remarked Minard; "but those

are not ideas that could ever come into the mind of that good

Brigitte. She'd have seen two more candles to light. Five-franc pieces

are her music. So, when la Peyrade and Thuillier insisted that she

should move into the apartment in the Place de la Madeleine, she

thought of nothing but the extra costs entailed by the removal. She

judged, rightly enough, that beneath those gilded ceilings her old

'penates' might have a singular effect."

 

"See how all things link together," remarked Phellion, "and how, from

the summits of society, luxury infiltrates itself, sooner or later,

through the lower classes, leading to the ruin of empires."

 

"You are broaching there, my dear commander," said Minard, "one of the

most knotty questions of political economy. Many good minds think, on

the contrary, that luxury is absolutely demanded in the interests of

commerce, which is certainly the life of States. In any case, this

view, which isn't yours, appears to have been that of Madame de

Godollo, for, they tell me, her apartment is very coquettishly

furnished; and to coax Mademoiselle Brigitte into the same path of

elegance she made a proposal to her as follows: 'A friend of mine,'

she said, 'a Russian princess for whom one of the first upholsterers

has just made splendid furniture, is suddenly recalled to Russia by

the czar, a gentleman with whom no one dares to trifle. The poor woman

is therefore obliged to turn everything she owns here into money as

fast as possible; and I feel sure she would sell this furniture for

ready money at a quarter of the price it cost her. All of it is nearly

new, and some things have never been used at all.'"

 

"So," cried Madame Phellion, "all that magnificence displayed before

our eyes last night was a magnificent economical bargain?"

 

"Just so," replied Minard; "and the thing that decided Mademoiselle

Brigitte to take that splendid chance was not so much the desire to

renew her shabby furniture as the idea of doing an excellent stroke of

business. In that old maid there's always something of Madame la

Ressource in Moliere's 'Miser.'"

 

"I think, Monsieur le maire, that you are mistaken," said Phellion.

"Madame la Ressource is a character in 'Turcaret,' a very immoral play

by the late Le Sage."

 

"Do you think so?" said Minard. "Well, very likely. But what is

certain is that, though the barrister ingratiated himself with

Brigitte in helping her to buy the house, it was by this clever

jockeying about the furniture that the foreign countess got upon the

footing with Brigitte that you now see. You may have remarked,

perhaps, that a struggle is going on between those two influences;

which we may designate as the house, and its furniture."

 

"Yes, certainly," said Madame Phellion, with a beaming expression that

bore witness to the interest she took in the conversation, "it did

seem to me that the great lady allowed herself to contradict the

barrister, and did it, too, with a certain sharpness."

 

"Very marked sharpness," resumed Minard, "and that intriguing fellow

perceives it. It strikes me that the lady's hostility makes him

uneasy. The Thuilliers he got cheaply; for, between ourselves you

know, there's not much in Thuillier himself; but he feels now that he

has met a tough adversary, and he is looking anxiously for a weak spot

on which to attack her."

 

"Well, that's justice," said Madame Phellion. "For some time past that

man, who used to make himself so small and humble, has been taking

airs of authority in the house which are quite intolerable; he behaves

openly as the son-in-law; and you know very well, in that affair of

Thuillier's election he jockeyed us all, and made us the

stepping-stone for his matrimonial ambition."

 

"Yes; but I can assure you," said Minard, "that at the present time

his influence is waning. In the first place, he won't find every day

for his dear, good friend, as he calls him, a fine property worth a

million to be bought for a bit of bread."

 

"Then they did get that house very cheap?" said Madame Phellion,

interrogatively.

 

"They got it for nothing, as the result of a dirty intrigue which the

lawyer Desroches related to me the other day. If it ever became known

to the council of the bar, that little barrister would be badly

compromised. The next thing is the coming election to the Chamber.

Eating gives appetite, as they say, and our good Thuillier is hungry;

but he begins to perceive that Monsieur de la Peyrade, when it becomes

a question of getting him that mouthful, hasn't his former opportunity

to make dupes of us. That is why the family is turning more and more

to Madame de Godollo, who seems to have some very high acquaintances

in the political world. Besides all this, in fact, without dwelling on

the election business, which is still a distant matter, this Hungarian

countess is becoming, every day, more and more a necessity to

Brigitte; for it must be owned that without the help of the great

lady, the poor soul would look in the midst of her gilded salon like a

ragged gown in a bride's trousseau."

 

"Oh, Monsieur le maire, you are cruel," said Madame Phellion,

affecting compunction.

 

"No, but say," returned Minard, "with your hand on your conscience,

whether Brigitte, whether Madame Thuillier could preside in such a

salon? No, it is the Hungarian countess who does it all. She furnished

the rooms; she selected the male domestic, whose excellent training

and intelligence you must have observed; it was she who arranged the

menu of that dinner; in short, she is the providence of the parvenu

colony, which, without her intervention, would have made the whole

quarter laugh at it. And--now this is a very noticeable thing--instead

of being a parasite like la Peyrade, this Hungarian lady, who seems to

have a fortune of her own, proves to be not only disinterested, but

generous. The two gowns that you saw Brigitte and Madame Thuillier

wear last night were a present from her, and it was because she came

herself to superintend the toilet of our two 'amphitryonesses' that

you were so surprised last night not to find them rigged in their

usual dowdy fashion."

 

"But what can be the motive," asked Madame Phellion, "of this maternal

and devoted guardianship?"

 

"My dear wife," said Phellion, solemnly, "the motives of human actions

are not always, thank God! selfishness and the consideration of vile

interests. There are hearts in this world that find pleasure in doing

good for its own sake. This lady may have seen in our good friends a

set of people about to enter blindly into a sphere they knew nothing

about, and having encouraged their first steps by the purchase of this

furniture, she may, like a nurse attached to her nursling, find

pleasure in giving them the milk of her social knowledge and her

counsels."

 

"He seems to keep aloof from our strictures, the dear husband!" cried

Minard; "but just see how he goes beyond them!"

 

"I!" said Phellion; "it is neither my intention nor my habit to do

so."

 

"All