Paz by Honoré de Balzac (the little red hen ebook txt) 📖

I'll come and see you sometimes. But you shall be lodged in better rooms, comfortably furnished."

"I shall have furniture!" cried Malaga, looking at Madame Chapuzot.

"And servants," said Paz, "and all you want."

Malaga looked at the stranger suspiciously.

"What countryman is monsieur?"

"I am a Pole."

"Oh! then I accept," she said.

Paz departed, promising to return.

"Well, that's a stiff one!" said Marguerite Turquet, looking at Madame Chapuzot; "I'm half afraid he is wheedling me, to carry out some fancy of his own--Pooh! I'll risk it."

A month after this eccentric interview the circus-rider was living in a comfortable apartment furnished by Comte Adam's own upholsterer, Paz having judged it desirable to have his folly talked about at the hotel Laginski. Malaga, to whom this adventure was like a leaf out of the Arabian Nights, was served by Monsieur and Madame Chapuzot in the double capacity of friends and servants. The Chapuzots and Marguerite were constantly expecting some result of all this; but at the end of three months none of them were able to make out the meaning of the Polish count's caprice. Paz arrived duly and passed about an hour there once a week, during which time he sat in the salon, and never went into Malaga's boudoir nor into her bedroom, in spite of the clever manoeuvring of the Chapuzots and Malaga to get him there. The count would ask questions as to the small events of Marguerite's life, and each time that he came he left two gold pieces of forty francs each on the mantel-piece.

"He looks as if he didn't care to be here," said Madame Chapuzot.

"Yes," said Malaga, "the man's as cold as an icicle."

"But he's a good fellow all the same," cried Chapuzot, who was happy in a new suit of clothes made of blue cloth, in which he looked like the servant of some minister.

The sum which Paz deposited weekly on the mantel-piece, joined to Malaga's meagre salary, gave her the means of sumptuous living compared with her former poverty. Wonderful stories went the rounds of the Circus about Malaga's good-luck. Her vanity increased the six thousand francs which Paz had spent on her furniture to sixty thousand. According to the clowns and the supers, Malaga was squandering money; and she now appeared at the Circus wearing burnous and shawls and elegant scarfs. The Pole, it was agreed on all sides, was the best sort of man a circus-rider had ever encountered, not fault-finding nor jealous, and willing to let Malaga do just what she liked.

"Some women have the luck of it," said Malaga's rival, "and I'm not one of them,--though I do draw a third of the receipts."

Malaga wore pretty things, and occasionally "showed her head" (a term in the lexicon of such characters) in the Bois, where the fashionable young men of the day began to remark her. In fact, before long Malaga was very much talked about in the questionable world of equivocal women, who presently attacked her good fortune by calumnies. They said she was a somnambulist, and the Pole was a magnetizer who was using her to discover the philosopher's stone. Some even more envenomed scandals drove her to a curiosity that was greater than Psyche's. She reported them in tears to Paz.

"When I want to injure a woman," she said in conclusion, "I don't calumniate her; I don't declare that some one magnetizes her to get stones out of her, but I say plainly that she is humpbacked, and I prove it. Why do you compromise me in this way?"

Paz maintained a cruel silence. Madame Chapuzot was not long in discovering the name and title of Comte Paz; then she heard certain positive facts at the hotel Laginski: for instance, that Paz was a bachelor, and had never been known to have a daughter, alive or dead, in Poland or in France. After that Malaga could not control a feeling of terror.

"My dear child," Madame Chapuzot would say, "that monster--" (a man who contented himself with only looking, in a sly way,--not daring to come out and say things,--and such a beautiful creature too, as Malaga,--of course such a man was a monster, according to Madame Chapuzot's ideas) "--that monster is trying to get a hold upon you, and make you do something illegal and criminal. Holy Father, if you should get into the police-courts! it makes me tremble from head to foot; suppose they should put you in the newspapers! I'll tell you what I should do in your place; I'd warn the police."

One particular day, after many foolish notions had fermented for some time in Malaga's mind, Paz having laid his money as usual on the mantel-piece, she seized the bits of gold and flung them in his face, crying out, "I don't want stolen money!"

The captain gave the gold to Chapuzot, went away without a word, and did not return.

Clementine was at this time at her uncle's place in Burgundy.

When the Circus troop discovered that Malaga had lost her Polish count, much excitement was produced among them. Malaga's display of honor was considered folly by some, and shrewdness by others. The conduct of the Pole, however, even when discussed by the cleverest of women, seemed inexplicable. Thaddeus received in the course of the next week thirty-seven letters from women of their kind. Happily for him, his astonishing reserve did not excite the curiosity of the fashionable world, and was only discussed in the demi-mondaine regions.

Two weeks later the handsome circus-rider, crippled by debt, wrote the following letter to Comte Paz, which, having fallen into the hands of Comte Adam, was read by several of the dandies of the day, who pronounced it a masterpiece:--

"You, whom I still dare to call my friend, will you not pity me
after all that has passed,--which you have so ill understood? My
heart disavows whatever may have wounded your feelings. If I was
fortunate enough to charm you and keep you beside me in the past,
return to me; otherwise, I shall fall into despair. Poverty has
overtaken me, and you do not know what _horrid things_ it brings
with it. Yesterday I lived on a herring at two sous, and one sou
of bread. Is that a breakfast for the woman you loved? The
Chapuzots have left me, though they seemed so devoted. Your
desertion has caused me to see to the bottom of all human
attachments. The dog we feed does not leave us, but the Chapuzots
have gone. A sheriff has seized everything on behalf of the
landlord, who has no heart, and the jeweller, who refused to wait
even ten days,--for when we lose the confidence of such as you,
credit goes too. What a position for women who have nothing to
reproach themselves with but the happiness they have given! My
friend, I have taken all I have of any value to _my uncle's_; I have
nothing but the memory of you left, and here is the winter coming
on. I shall be fireless when it turns cold; for the boulevards are
to play only melodramas, in which I have nothing but little bits
of parts which don't _pose_ a woman. How could you misunderstand the
nobleness of my feelings for you?--for there are two ways of
expressing gratitude. You who seemed so happy in seeing me
well-off, how can you leave me in poverty? Oh, my sole friend on
earth, before I go back to the country fairs with Bouthor's circus,
where I can at least make a living, forgive me if I wish to know
whether I have lost you forever. If I were to let myself think of
you when I jump through the hoops, I should be sure to break my legs
by losing _a time_. Whatever may be the result, I am yours for life.

"Marguerite Turquet."

"That letter," thought Thaddeus, shouting with laughter, "is worth the ten thousand francs I have spent upon her."


III

Clementine came home the next day, and the day after that Paz beheld her again, more beautiful and graceful than ever. After dinner, during which the countess treated Paz with an air of perfect indifference, a little scene took place in the salon between the count and his wife when Thaddeus had left them. On pretence of asking Adam's advice, Thaddeus had left Malaga's letter with him, as if by mistake.

"Poor Thaddeus!" said Adam, as Paz disappeared, "what a misfortune for a man of his distinction to be the plaything of the lowest kind of circus-rider. He will lose everything, and get lower and lower, and won't be recognizable before long. Here, read that," added the count, giving Malaga's letter to his wife.

Clementine read the letter, which smelt of tobacco, and threw it from her with a look of disgust.

"Thick as the bandage is over his eyes," continued Adam, "he must have found out something; Malaga tricked him, no doubt."

"But he goes back to her," said Clementine, "and he will forgive her! It is for such horrible women as that that you men have indulgence."

"Well, they need it," said Adam.

"Thaddeus used to show some decency--in living apart from us," she remarked. "He had better go altogether."

"Oh, my dear angel, that's going too far," said the count, who did not want the death of the sinner.

Paz, who knew Adam thoroughly, had enjoined him to secrecy, pretending to excuse his dissipations, and had asked his friend to lend him a few thousand francs for Malaga.

"He is a very firm fellow," said Adam.

"How so?" asked Clementine.

"Why, for having spent no more than ten thousand francs on her, and letting her send him that letter before he would ask me for enough to pay her debts. For a Pole, I call that firm."

"He will ruin you," said Clementine, in the sharp tone of a Parisian woman, when she shows her feline distrusts.

"Oh, I know him," said Adam; "he will sacrifice Malaga, if I ask him."

"We shall see," remarked the countess.

"If it is best for his own happiness, I sha'n't hesitate to ask him to leave her. Constantin says that since Paz has been with her he, sober as he is, has sometimes come home quite excited. If he takes to intoxication I shall be just as grieved as if he were my own son."

"Don't tell me anything more about it," cried the countess, with a gesture of disgust.

Two days later the captain perceived in the manner, the tones of voice, but, above all, in the eyes of the countess, the terrible results of Adam's confidences. Contempt had opened a gulf between the beloved woman and himself. He was suddenly plunged into the deepest distress of mind, for the thought gnawed him, "I have myself made her despise me!" His own folly stared him in the face. Life then became a burden to him, the very sun turned gray. And yet, amid all these bitter thoughts, he found again some moments of pure joy. There were times when he could give himself up wholly to his admiration for his mistress, who paid not the slightest attention to him. Hanging about in corners at