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

yesterday it was I who brought about the

seizure."

 

"As for that, it seems to me that if you had written nothing the

police would have found nothing to bite."

 

"My dear Brigitte," said Thuillier, seeing la Peyrade shrug his

shoulders, "your argument is vicious in the sense that the writing was

not incriminating on any side. It is not la Peyrade's fault if persons

of high station have organized a persecution against me. You remember

that little substitute, Monsieur Olivier Vinet, whom Cardot brought to

one of our receptions. It seems that he and his father are furious

that we didn't want him for Celeste, and they've sworn my

destruction."

 

"Well, why did we refuse him," said Brigitte, "if it wasn't for the

fine eyes of monsieur here? For, after all, a substitute in Paris is a

very suitable match."

 

"No doubt," said la Peyrade, nonchalantly. "Only, he did not happen to

bring you a million."

 

"Ah!" cried Brigitte, firing up. "If you are going to talk any more

about that house you helped us to buy, I shall tell you plainly that

if you had had the money to trick the notary you never would have come

after us. You needn't think I have been altogether your dupe. You

spoke just now of a bargain, but you proposed that bargain yourself.

'Give me Celeste and I'll get you that house,'--that's what you said

to us in so many words. Besides which, we had to pay large sums on

which we never counted."

 

"Come, come, Brigitte," said Thuillier, "you are making a great deal

out of nothing."

 

"Nothing! nothing!" exclaimed Brigitte. "Did we, or did we not, have

to pay much more than we expected?"

 

"My dear Thuillier," said la Peyrade, "I think, with you, that the

matter is now settled, and it can only be embittered by discussing it

further. My course was decided on before I came here; all that I have

now heard can only confirm it. I shall not be the husband of Celeste,

but you and I can remain good friends."

 

He rose to leave the room.

 

"One moment, monsieur," said Brigitte, barring his way; "there is one

matter which I do not consider settled; and now that we are no longer

to have interests in common, I should not be sorry if you would be so

good as to tell me what has become of a sum of ten thousand francs

which Thuillier gave you to bribe those rascally government offices in

order to get the cross we have never got."

 

"Brigitte!" cried Thuillier, in anguish, "you have a devil of a

tongue! You ought to be silent about that; I told it to you in a

moment of ill-temper, and you promised me faithfully never to open

your lips about it to any one, no matter who."

 

"So I did; but," replied the implacable Brigitte, "we are parting.

When people part they settle up; they pay their debts. Ten thousand

francs! For my part, I thought the cross itself dear at that; but for

a cross that has melted away, monsieur himself will allow the price is

too high."

 

"Come, la Peyrade, my friend, don't listen to her," said Thuillier,

going up to the barrister, who was pale with anger. "The affection she

has for me blinds her; I know very well what government offices are,

and I shouldn't be surprised if you had had to pay out money of your

own."

 

"Monsieur," said la Peyrade, "I am, unfortunately, not in a position

to return to you, instantly, that money, an accounting for which is so

insolently demanded. Grant me a short delay; and have the goodness to

accept my note, which I am ready to sign, if that will give you

patience."

 

"To the devil with your note!" cried Thuillier; "you owe me nothing;

on the contrary, it is we who owe you; for Cardot told me I ought to

give you at least ten thousand francs for enabling us to buy this

magnificent property."

 

"Cardot! Cardot!" said Brigitte; "he is very generous with other

people's money. We were giving monsieur Celeste, and that's a good

deal more than ten thousand francs."

 

La Peyrade was too great a comedian not to turn the humiliation he had

just endured into a scene finale. With tears in his voice, which

presently fell from his eyes, he turned to Brigitte.

 

"Mademoiselle," he said, "when I had the honor to be received by you I

was poor; you long saw me suffering and ill at ease, knowing, alas!

too well, the indignities that poverty must bear. From the day that I

was able to give you a fortune which I never thought of for myself I

have felt, it is true, more assurance; and your own kindness

encouraged me to rise out of my timidity and depression. To-day, when

I, by frank and loyal conduct, release you from anxiety,--for, if you

chose to be honest, you would acknowledge that you have been thinking

of another husband for Celeste,--we might still remain friends, even

though I renounce a marriage which my delicacy forbids me to pursue.

But you have not chosen to restrain yourself with the limits of social

politeness, of which you have a model beside you in Madame de Godollo,

who, I am persuaded, although she is not at all friendly to me, would

never have approved of your odious behavior. Thank Heaven! I have in

my heart some religious sentiment at least; the Gospel is not to me a

mere dead-letter, and--understand me well, mademoiselle--_I forgive

you_. It is not to Thuillier, who would refuse them, but to you that I

shall, before long, pay the ten thousand francs which you insinuate I

have applied to my own purposes. If, by the time they are returned to

you, you feel regret for your unjust suspicions, and are unwilling to

accept the money, I request that you will turn it over to the bureau

of Benevolence to the poor--"

 

"To the bureau of Benevolence!" cried Brigitte, interrupting him. "No,

I thank you! the idea of all that money being distributed among a

crowd of do-nothings and devotes, who'll spend it in junketing! I've

been poor too, my lad; I made bags for the money of others long before

I had any money of my own; I have some now, and I take care of it. So,

whenever you will, I am ready to receive that ten thousand francs and

keep it. If you didn't know how to do what you undertook to do, and

spent that money in trying to put salt on a sparrow's tail, so much

the worse for you."

 

Seeing that he had missed his effect, and had made not the slightest

impression on Brigitte's granite, la Peyrade cast a disdainful look

upon her and left the room majestically. As he did so he noticed a

movement made by Thuillier to follow him, and also the imperious

gesture of Brigitte, always queen and mistress, which nailed her

brother to his chair. 

CHAPTER VIII

At the moment when la Peyrade was preparing to lay at the feet of the

countess the liberty he had recovered in so brutal a manner, he

received a perfumed note, which made his heart beat, for on the seal

was that momentous "All or Nothing" which she had given him as the

rule of the relation now to be inaugurated between them. The contents

of the note were as follows:--

 

Dear Monsieur,--I have heard of the step you have taken; thank

you! But I must now prepare to take my own. I cannot, as you may

well think, continue to live in this house, and among these people

who are so little of our own class and with whom we have nothing

in common. To arrange this transaction, and to avoid explanations

of the fact that the entresol welcomes the voluntary exile from

the first-floor, I need to-day and to-morrow to myself. Do not

therefore come to see me until the day after. By that time I shall

have executed Brigitte, as they say at the Bourse, and have much

to tell you.

 

                                             Tua tota,

                                                   Torna de Godollo.

 

 

That "Wholly thine" in Latin seemed charming to la Peyrade, who was

not, however, astonished, for Latin is a second national language to

the Hungarians. The two days' waiting to which he was thus condemned

only fanned the flame of the ardent passion which possessed him, and

on the third day when reached the house by the Madeleine his love had

risen to a degree of incandescence of which only a few days earlier he

would scarcely have supposed himself capable.

 

This time the porter's wife perceived him; but he was now quite

indifferent as to whether or not the object of his visit should be

known. The ice was broken, his happiness was soon to be official, and

he was more disposed to cry it aloud in the streets than to make a

mystery of it.

 

Running lightly up the stairs, he prepared to ring the bell, when, on

putting out his hand to reach the silken bell-cord he perceived that

the bell-cord had disappeared. La Peyrade's first thought was that one

of those serious illnesses which make all noises intolerable to a

patient would explain its absence; but with the thought came other

observations that weakened it, and which, moreover, were not in

themselves comforting.

 

From the vestibule to the countess's door a stair carpet, held at each

step by a brass rod, made a soft ascent to the feet of visitors; this,

too, had been removed. A screen-door covered with green velvet and

studded with brass nails had hitherto protected the entrance to the

apartment; of that no sign, except the injury to the wall done by the

workmen in taking it away. For a moment the barrister thought, in his

agitation, that he must have mistaken the floor, but, casting his eye

over the baluster he saw that he had not passed the entresol. Madame

de Godollo must, therefore, be in the act of moving away.

 

He then resigned himself to make known his presence at the great

lady's door as he would have done at that of a grisette. He rapped

with his knuckles, but a hollow sonority revealing the void,

"intonuere cavernae," echoed beyond the door which he vainly appealed

to with his fist. He also perceived from beneath that door a ray of

vivid light, the sure sign of an uninhabited apartment where curtains

and carpets and furniture no longer dim the light or deaden sound.

Compelled to believe in a total removal, la Peyrade now supposed that

in the rupture with Brigitte, mentioned as probable by Madame de

Godollo, some brutal insolence of the old maid had necessitated this

abrupt departure. But why had he not been told of it? And what an

idea, to expose him to this ridiculous meeting with what the common

people call, in their picturesque language, "the wooden face"!

 

Before leaving the door finally, and as if some doubt still remained

in his mind, la Peyrade made a last and most thundering assault upon

it.

 

"Who's knocking like that, as if they'd bring the house down?" said

the porter, attracted by the noise to the foot of the staircase.

 

"Doesn't Madame de Godollo still live here?" asked la Peyrade.

 

"Of course she doesn't live here now; she has moved away. If monsieur

had told me he was going to her apartment I would have spared him the

trouble of battering down the door."

 

"I knew that she was going to leave the apartment," said la Peyrade,

not wishing to seem ignorant of the project of departure, "but I had

no idea she was going so soon."

 

"I suppose it was something sudden," said the porter, "for she went

off early this morning with post-horses."

 

"Post-horses!" echoed la Peyrade, stupefied. "Then she has left

Paris?"

 

"That's to be supposed," said the porter; "people don't usually take

post-horses and a postilion to change from one quarter of Paris to

another."

 

"And she did not tell you where she was going?"

 

"Ah! monsieur, what an idea! Do people account to us porters for what

they do?"

 

"No, but her letters--those that come after her departure?"

 

"Her letters? I am ordered to deliver