Pierrette by Honoré de Balzac (best novel books to read TXT) 📖

in them."

"Monsieur is writing a great archaeological work to explain these strange constructions," interposed Monsieur Martener, seeing that the deputy-judge was about to mount his hobby.

Rogron came home much comforted to know that his house was in the valley. The crypts of Provins kept him occupied for a week in explorations, and gave a topic of conversation to the unhappy celibates for many evenings.

In the course of these ramblings Rogron picked up various bits of information about Provins, its inhabitants, their marriages, together with stale political news; all of which he narrated to his sister. Scores of times in his walks he would stop and say,--often to the same person on the same day,--"Well, what's the news?" When he reached home he would fling himself on the sofa like a man exhausted with labor, whereas he was only worn out with the burden of his own dulness. Dinner came at last, after he had gone twenty times to the kitchen and back, compared the clocks, and opened and shut all the doors of the house. So long as the brother and sister could spend their evenings in paying visits they managed to get along till bedtime; but after they were compelled to stay at home those evenings became like a parching desert. Sometimes persons passing through the quiet little square would hear unearthly noises as though the brother were throttling the sister; a moment's listening would show that they were only yawning. These two human mechanisms, having nothing to grind between their rusty wheels, were creaking and grating at each other. The brother talked of marrying, but only in despair. He felt old and weary; the thought of a woman frightened him. Sylvie, who began to see the necessity of having a third person in the home, suddenly remembered the little cousin, about whom no one in Provins had yet inquired, the friends of Madame Lorrain probably supposing that mother and child were both dead.

Sylvie Rogron never lost anything; she was too thoroughly an old maid even to mislay the smallest article; but she pretended to have suddenly found the Lorrains' letter, so as to mention Pierrette naturally to her brother, who was greatly pleased at the possibility of having a little girl in the house. Sylvie replied to Madame Lorrain's letter half affectionately, half commercially, as one may say, explaining the delay by their change of abode and the settlement of their affairs. She seemed desirous of receiving her little cousin, and hinted that Pierrette would perhaps inherit twelve thousand francs a year if her brother Jerome did not marry.

Perhaps it is necessary to have been, like Nebuchadnezzar, something of a wild beast, and shut up in a cage at the Jardin des Plantes without other prey than the butcher's meat doled out by the keeper, or a retired merchant deprived of the joys of tormenting his clerks, to understand the impatience with which the brother and sister awaited the arrival of their cousin Lorrain. Three days after the letter had gone, the pair were already asking themselves when she would get there.

Sylvie perceived in her spurious benevolence towards her poor cousin a means of recovering her position in the social world of Provins. She accordingly went to call on Madame Tiphaine, of whose reprobation she was conscious, in order to impart the fact of Pierrette's approaching arrival,--deploring the girl's unfortunate position, and posing herself as being only too happy to succor her and give her a position as daughter and future heiress.

"You have been rather long in discovering her," said Madame Tiphaine, with a touch of sarcasm.

A few words said in a low voice by Madame Garceland, while the cards were being dealt, recalled to the minds of those who heard her the shameful conduct of old Rogron about the Auffray property; the notary explained the iniquity.

"Where is the little girl now?" asked Monsieur Tiphaine, politely.

"In Brittany," said Rogron.

"Brittany is a large place," remarked Monsieur Lesourd.

"Her grandfather and grandmother Lorrain wrote to us--when was that, my dear?" said Rogron addressing his sister.

Sylvie, who was just then asking Madame Garceland where she had bought the stuff for her gown, answered hastily, without thinking of the effect of her words:--

"Before we sold the business."

"And have you only just answered the letter, mademoiselle?" asked the notary.

Sylvie turned as red as a live coal.

"We wrote to the Institution of Saint-Jacques," remarked Rogron.

"That is a sort of hospital or almshouse for old people," said Monsieur Desfondrilles, who knew Nantes. "She can't be there; they receive no one under sixty."

"She is there, with her grandmother Lorrain," said Rogron.

"Her mother had a little fortune, the eight thousand francs which your father--no, I mean of course your grandfather--left to her," said the notary, making the blunder intentionally.

"Ah!" said Rogron, stupidly, not understanding the notary's sarcasm.

"Then you know nothing about your cousin's position or means?" asked Monsieur Tiphaine.

"If Monsieur Rogron had known it," said the deputy-judge, "he would never have left her all this time in an establishment of that kind. I remember now that a house in Nantes belonging to Monsieur and Madame Lorrain was sold under an order of the court, and that Mademoiselle Lorrain's claim was swallowed up. I know this, for I was commissioner at the time."

The notary spoke of Colonel Lorrain, who, had he lived, would have been much amazed to know that his daughter was in such an institution. The Rogrons beat a retreat, saying to each other that the world was very malicious. Sylvie perceived that the news of her benevolence had missed its effect,--in fact, she had lost ground in all minds; and she felt that henceforth she was forbidden to attempt an intimacy with the upper class of Provins. After this evening the Rogrons no longer concealed their hatred of that class and all its adherents. The brother told the sister the scandals that Colonel Gouraud and the lawyer Vinet had put into his head about the Tiphaines, the Guenees, the Garcelands, the Julliards, and others:--

"I declare, Sylvie, I don't see why Madame Tiphaine should turn up her nose at shopkeeping in the rue Saint-Denis; it is more honest than what she comes from. Madame Roguin, her mother, is cousin to those Guillaumes of the 'Cat-playing-ball' who gave up the business to Joseph Lebas, their son-in-law. Her father is that Roguin who failed in 1819, and ruined the house of Cesar Birotteau. Madame Tiphaine's fortune was stolen,--for what else are you to call it when a notary's wife who is very rich lets her husband make a fraudulent bankruptcy? Fine doings! and she marries her daughter in Provins to get her out of the way,--all on account of her own relations with du Tillet. And such people set up to be proud! Well, well, that's the world!"

On the day when Jerome Rogron and his sister began to declaim against "the clique" they were, without being aware of it, on the road to having a society of their own; their house was to become a rendezvous for other interests seeking a centre,--those of the hitherto floating elements of the liberal party in Provins. And this is how it came about: The launch of the Rogrons in society had been watched with great curiosity by Colonel Gouraud and the lawyer Vinet, two men drawn together, first by their ostracism, next by their opinions. They both professed patriotism and for the same reason,--they wished to become of consequence. The Liberals in Provins were, so far, confined to one old soldier who kept a cafe, an innkeeper, Monsieur Cournant a notary, Doctor Neraud, and a few stray persons, mostly farmers or those who had bought lands of the public domain.

The colonel and the lawyer, delighted to lay hands on a fool whose money would be useful to their schemes, and who might himself, in certain cases, be made to bell the cat, while his house would serve as a meeting-ground for the scattered elements of the party, made the most of the Rogrons' ill-will against the upper classes of the place. The three had already a slight tie in their united subscription to the "Constitutionnel"; it would certainly not be difficult for the colonel to make a Liberal of the ex-mercer, though Rogron knew so little of politics that he was capable of regarding the exploits of Sergeant Mercier as those of a brother shopkeeper.

The expected arrival of Pierrette brought to sudden fruition the selfish ideas of the two men, inspired as they were by the folly and ignorance of the celibates. Seeing that Sylvie had lost all chance of establishing herself in the good society of the place, an afterthought came to the colonel. Old soldiers have seen so many horrors in all lands, so many grinning corpses on battle-fields, that no physiognomies repel them; and Gouraud began to cast his eyes on the old maid's fortune. This imperial colonel, a short, fat man, wore enormous rings in ears that were bushy with tufts of hair. His sparse and grizzled whiskers were called in 1799 "fins." His jolly red face was rather discolored, like those of all who had lived to tell of the Beresina. The lower half of his big, pointed stomach marked the straight line which characterizes a cavalry officer. Gouraud had commanded the Second Hussars. His gray moustache hid a huge blustering mouth,--if we may use a term which alone describes that gulf. He did not eat his food, he engulfed it. A sabre cut had slit his nose, by which his speech was made thick and very nasal, like that attributed to Capuchins. His hands, which were short and broad, were of the kind that make women say: "You have the hands of a rascal." His legs seemed slender for his torso. In that fat and active body an absolutely lawless spirit disported itself, and a thorough experience of the things of life, together with a profound contempt for social convention, lay hidden beneath the apparent indifference of a soldier. Colonel Gouraud wore the cross of an officer of the Legion of honor, and his emoluments from that, together with his salary as a retired officer, gave him in all about three thousand francs a year.

The lawyer, tall and thin, had liberal opinions in place of talent, and his only revenue was the meagre profits of his office. In Provins lawyers plead their own cases. The court was unfavorable to Vinet on account of his opinions; consequently, even the farmers who were Liberals, when it came to lawsuits preferred to employ some lawyer who was more congenial to the judges. Vinet was regarded with disfavor in other ways. He was said to have seduced a rich girl in the neighborhood of Coulommiers, and thus have forced her parents to marry her to him. Madame Vinet was a Chargeboeuf, an old and noble family of La Brie, whose name comes from the exploit of a squire during the expedition of Saint Louis to Egypt. She incurred the displeasure of her father and mother, who arranged, unknown to Vinet, to leave their entire fortune to their son, doubtless charging him privately, to pay over a portion of it to his sister's children.

Thus the first bold effort of the ambitious man was a failure. Pursued by poverty, and ashamed not to give his wife the means of making a suitable appearance, he had made desperate efforts to enter public life, but the Chargeboeuf family refused him their influence. These Royalists disapproved, on moral grounds, of his forced marriage; besides, he was named Vinet, and how could they be expected to protect a plebian? Thus he was driven from branch to