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

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seal with religious care, he was forced to press his hand on his

heart, which seemed to burst from his bosom, before he could summon

calmness to read the following letter:--

 

Dear Monsieur,--I disappear forever, because my play is played

out. I thank you for having made it both attractive and easy. By

setting against you the Thuilliers and Collevilles (who are fully

informed of your sentiments towards them), and by relating in a

manner most mortifying to their bourgeois self-love the true

reason of your sudden and pitiless rupture with them, I am proud

and happy to believe that I have done you a signal service. The

girl does not love you, and you love nothing but the eyes of her

"dot"; I have therefore saved you both from a species of hell.

But, in exchange for the bride you have so curtly rejected,

another charming girl is proposed to you; she is richer and more

beautiful than Mademoiselle Colleville, and--to speak of myself

--more at liberty than

 

                                 Your unworthy servant,

                                     Torna "Comtesse de Godollo."

 

P.S. For further information apply, without delay, to Monsieur du

Portail, householder, rue Honore-Chevalier, near the rue de la

Cassette, quartier Saint-Sulpice, by whom you are expected.

 

 

When he had read this letter the advocate of the poor took his head in

his hands; he saw nothing, heard nothing, thought nothing; he was

annihilated.

 

Several days were necessary to la Peyrade before he could even begin

to recover from the crushing blow which had struck him down. The shock

was terrible. Coming out of that golden dream which had shown him a

perspective of the future in so smiling an aspect, he found himself

fooled under conditions most cruel to his self-love, and to his

pretensions to depth and cleverness; irrevocably parted from the

Thuilliers; saddled with a hopeless debt of twenty-five thousand

francs to Madame Lambert, together with another of ten thousand to

Brigitte, which his dignity required him to pay with the least delay

possible; and, worst of all,--to complete his humiliation and his

sense of failure,--he felt that he was not cured of the passionate

emotion he had felt for this woman, the author of his great disaster,

and the instrument of his ruin.

 

Either this Delilah was a very great lady, sufficiently high in

station to allow herself such compromising caprices,--but even so, she

would scarcely have cared to play the role of a coquette in a

vaudeville where he himself played the part of ninny,--_or_ she was some

noted adventuress who was in the pay of this du Portail and the agent

of his singular matrimonial designs. Evil life or evil heart, these

were the only two verdicts to be pronounced on this dangerous siren,

and in either case, it would seem, she was not very deserving of the

regrets of her victim; nevertheless, he was conscious of feeling them.

We must put ourselves in the place of this son of Provence, this

region of hot blood and ardent heads, who, for the first time in his

life finding himself face to face with jewelled love in laces,

believed he was to drink that passion from a wrought-gold cup. Just as

our minds on waking keep the impression of a vivid dream and continue

in love with what we know was but a shadow, la Peyrade had need of all

his mental energy to drive away the memory of that treacherous

countess. We might go further and say that he never ceased to long for

her, though he was careful to drape with an honest pretext the intense

desire that he had to find her. That desire he called curiosity, ardor

for revenge; and here follow the ingenious deductions which he drew

for himself:--

 

"Cerizet talked to me about a rich heiress; the countess, in her

letter, intimates that the whole intrigue she wound about me was to

lead to a rich marriage; rich marriages flung at a man's head are not

so plentiful that two such chances should come to me within a few

weeks; therefore the match offered by Cerizet and that proposed by the

countess must be the crazy girl they are so frantic to make me marry;

therefore Cerizet, being in the plot, must know the countess;

therefore, through him I shall get upon her traces. In any case, I am

sure of information about this extraordinary choice that has fallen

upon me; evidently, these people, whoever they are, who can pull the

wires of such puppets to reach their ends must be persons of

considerable position; therefore, I'll go and see Cerizet."

 

And he went to see Cerizet.

 

Since the dinner at the Rocher de Cancale, the pair had not met. Once

or twice la Peyrade had asked Dutocq at the Thuilliers' (where the

latter seldom went now, on account of the distance to their new abode)

what had become of his copying clerk.

 

"He never speaks of you," Dutocq had answered.

 

Hence it might be inferred that resentment, the "manet alta mente

repostum" was still living in the breast of the vindictive usurer. La

Peyrade, however, was not stopped by that consideration. After all, he

was not going to ask for anything; he went under the pretext of

renewing an affair in which Cerizet had taken part, and Cerizet never

took part in anything unless he had a personal interest in it. The

chances were, therefore, that he would be received with affectionate

eagerness rather than unpleasant acerbity. Moreover, he decided to go

and see the copying clerk at Dutocq's office; it would look, he

thought, less like a visit than if he went to his den in the rue des

Poules. It was nearly two o'clock when la Peyrade made his entrance

into the precincts of the justice-of-peace of the 12th arrondissement.

He crossed the first room, in which were a crowd of persons whom civil

suits of one kind or another summoned before the magistrate. Without

pausing in that waiting-room, la Peyrade pushed on to the office

adjoining that of Dutocq. There he found Cerizet at a shabby desk of

blackened wood, at which another clerk, then absent, occupied the

opposite seat.

 

Seeing his visitor, Cerizet cast a savage look at him and said,

without rising, or suspending the copy of the judgment he was then

engrossing:--

 

"You here, Sieur la Peyrade? You have been doing fine things for your

friend Thuillier!"

 

"How are you?" asked la Peyrade, in a tone both resolute and friendly.

 

"I?" replied Cerizet. "As you see, still rowing my galley; and, to

follow out the nautical metaphor, allow me to ask what wind has blown

you hither; is it, perchance, the wind of adversity?"

 

La Peyrade, without replying, took a chair beside his questioner,

after which he said in a grave tone:--

 

"My dear fellow, we have something to say to each other."

 

"I suppose," said Cerizet, spitefully, "the Thuilliers have grown cold

since the seizure of the pamphlet."

 

"The Thuilliers are ungrateful people; I have broken with them,"

replied la Peyrade.

 

"Rupture or dismissal," said Cerizet, "their door is shut against you;

and from what Dutocq tells me, I judge that Brigitte is handling you

without gloves. You see, my friend, what it is to try and manage

affairs alone; complications come, and there's no one to smooth the

angles. If you had got me that lease, I should have had a footing at

the Thuilliers', Dutocq would not have abandoned you, and together we

could have brought you gently into port."

 

"But suppose I don't want to re-enter that port?" said la Peyrade,

with some sharpness. "I tell you I've had enough of those Thuilliers,

and I broke with them myself; I warned them to get out of my sun; and

if Dutocq told you anything else you may tell him from me that he

lies. Is that clear enough? It seems to me I've made it plain."

 

"Well, exactly, my good fellow, if you are so savage against your

Thuilliers you ought to have put me among them, and then you'd have

seen me avenge you."

 

"There you are right," said la Peyrade; "I wish I could have set you

at their legs--but as for that matter of the lease I tell you again, I

was not master of it."

 

"Of course," said Cerizet, "it was your conscience which obliged you

to tell Brigitte that the twelve thousand francs a year I expected to

make out of it were better in her pocket than in mine."

 

"It seems that Dutocq continues the honorable profession of spy which

he formerly practised at the ministry of finance," said la Peyrade,

"and, like others who do that dirty business, he makes his reports

more witty than truthful--"

 

"Take care!" said Cerizet; "you are talking of my patron in his own

lair."

 

"Look here!" said la Peyrade. "I have come to talk to you on serious

matters. Will you do me the favor to drop the Thuilliers and all their

belongings, and give me your attention?"

 

"Say on, my friend," said Cerizet, laying down his pen, which had

never ceased to run, up to this moment, "I am listening."

 

"You talked to me some time ago," said la Peyrade, "about marrying a

girl who was rich, fully of age, and slightly hysterical, as you were

pleased to put it euphemistically."

 

"Well done!" cried Cerizet. "I expected this; but you've been some

time coming to it."

 

"In offering me this heiress, what did you have in your mind?" asked

la Peyrade.

 

"Parbleu! to help you to a splendid stroke of business. You had only

to stoop and take it. I was formally charged to propose it to you;

and, as there wasn't any brokerage, I should have relied wholly on

your generosity."

 

"But you are not the only person who was commissioned to make me that

offer. A woman had the same order."

 

"A woman!" cried Cerizet in a perfectly natural tone of surprise. "Not

that I know of."

 

"Yes, a foreigner, young and pretty, whom you must have met in the

family of the bride, to whom she seems to be ardently devoted."

 

"Never," said Cerizet, "never has there been the slightest question of

a woman in this negotiation. I have every reason to believe that I am

exclusively charged with it."

 

"What!" said la Peyrade, fixing upon Cerizet a scrutinizing eye, "did

you never hear of the Comtesse Torna de Godollo?"

 

"Never, in all my life; this is the first time I ever heard that

name."

 

"Then," said la Peyrade, "it must really have been another match; for

that woman, after many singular preliminaries, too long to explain to

you, made me a formal offer of the hand of a young woman much richer

than Mademoiselle Colleville--"

 

"And hysterical?" asked Cerizet.

 

"No, she did not embellish the proposal with that accessory; but

there's another detail which may put you on the track of her. Madame

de Godollo exhorted me, if I wished to push the matter, to go and see

a certain Monsieur du Portail--"

 

"Rue Honore-Chevalier?" exclaimed Cerizet, quickly.

 

"Precisely."

 

"Then it is the same marriage which is offered to you through two

different mediums. It is strange I was not informed of this

collaboration!"

 

"In short," said la Peyrade, "you not only didn't have wind of the

countess's intervention, but you don't know her, and you can't give me

any information about her--is that so?"

 

"At present I can't," replied Cerizet, "but I'll find out about her;

for the whole proceeding is rather cavalier towards me; but this

employment of two agents only shows you how desirable you are to the

family."

 

At this moment the door of the room was opened cautiously, a woman's

head appeared, and a voice, which was instantly recognized by la

Peyrade, said, addressing the copying-clerk:--

 

"Ah! excuse me! I see monsieur is busy. Could I say a word to monsieur

when he is alone?"

 

Cerizet, who had an eye as nimble as a hand, instantly noticed a

certain fact. La Peyrade, who was so placed as to be plainly seen by

the new-comer, no sooner heard that drawling, honeyed voice, than he

turned his head in a manner to conceal his features. Instead therefore

of being roughly sent away, as usually happened to petitioners who

addressed the most surly of official clerks, the modest visitor heard

herself greeted in a very surprising manner.

 

"Come in, come in, Madame Lambert," said Cerizet; "you won't be kept

waiting long; come in."

 

The visitor advanced, and then came face to face with la Peyrade.

 

"Ah! monsieur!" cried his creditor, whom the reader has no doubt

recognized, "how fortunate I am to meet monsieur! I have been several

times to his office to ask if he had had time to attend to my little

affair."

 

"I have had many engagements which have kept me away from my office

lately; but I attended to that matter; everything has been done right,

and is now in the hands of the secretary."

 

"Oh! how good monsieur is! I pray God to bless him," said the pious

woman, clasping her hands.

 

"Bless me! do you have business with Madame Lambert?" said Cerizet;

"you never told me