The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac (freenovel24 TXT) 📖
- Author: Honore de Balzac
Book online «The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac (freenovel24 TXT) 📖». Author Honore de Balzac
admits no brother unless he has a suitable study, a legal library, and
can thus, as it were, verify his claims,--Theodose de la Peyrade began
to practise as a barrister before the Royal Court of Paris.
The whole of the year 1838 was employed in making this change in his
condition, and he led a most regular life. He studied at home in the
mornings till dinner-time, going sometimes to the Palais for important
cases. Having become very intimate with Dutocq (so Dutocq said), he
did certain services to the poor of the faubourg Saint-Jacques who
were brought to his notice by that official. He pleaded their cases
before the court, after bringing them to the notice of the attorneys,
who, according to the statutes of their order, are obliged to take
turns in doing business for the poor. As Theodose was careful to plead
only safe cases, he won them all. Those persons whom he thus obliged
expressed their gratitude and their admiration, in spite of the young
lawyer's admonitions, among their own class, and to the porters of
private houses, through whom many anecdotes rose to the ears of the
proprietors. Delighted to have in their house a tenant so worthy and
so charitable, the Thuilliers wished to attract him to their salon,
and they questioned Dutocq about him. The mayor's clerk replied as the
envious reply; while doing justice to the young man he dwelt on his
remarkable avarice, which might, however, be the effect of poverty.
"I have had other information about him. He belongs to the Peyrades,
an old family of the 'comtat' of Avignon; he came here toward the end
of 1829, to inquire about an uncle whose fortune was said to be
considerable; he discovered the address of the old man only three days
before his death; and the furniture of the deceased merely sufficed to
bury him and pay his debts. A friend of this useless uncle gave a
couple of hundred louis to the poor fortune-hunter, advising him to
finish his legal studies and enter the judiciary career. Those two
hundred louis supported him for three years in Paris, where he lived
like an anchorite. But being unable to discover his unknown friend and
benefactor, the poor student was in abject distress in 1833. He worked
then, like so many other licentiates, in politics and literature, by
which he kept himself for a time above want--for he had nothing to
expect from his family. His father, the youngest brother of the dead
uncle, has eleven other children, who live on a small estate called
Les Canquoelles. He finally obtained a place on a ministerial
newspaper, the manager of which was the famous Cerizet, so celebrated
for the persecutions he met with, under the Restoration, on account of
his attachment to the liberals,--a man whom the new Left will never
forgive for having made his paper ministerial. As the government of
these days does very little to protect even its most devoted servants
(witness the Gisquet affair), the republicans have ended by ruining
Cerizet. I tell you this to explain how it is that Cerizet is now a
copying clerk in my office. Well, in the days when he flourished as
managing editor of a paper directed by the Perier ministry against the
incendiary journals, the 'Tribune' and others, Cerizet, who is a
worthy fellow after all, though he is too fond of women, pleasure, and
good living, was very useful to Theodose, who edited the political
department of the paper; and if it hadn't been for the death of
Casimir Perier that young man would certainly have received an
appointment as substitute judge in Paris. As it was, he dropped back
in 1834-35, in spite of his talent; for his connection with a
ministerial journal of course did him harm. 'If it had not been for my
religious principles,' he said to me, 'I should have thrown myself
into the Seine.' However, it seems that the friend of his uncle must
have heard of his distress, for again he sent him a sum of money;
enough to complete his terms for the bar; but, strange to say, he has
never known the name or the address of this mysterious benefactor.
After all, perhaps, under such circumstances, his economy is
excusable, and he must have great strength of mind to refuse what the
poor devils whose cases he wins by his devotion offer him. He is
indignant at the way other lawyers speculate on the possibility or
impossibility of poor creatures, unjustly sued, paying for the costs
of their defence. Oh! he'll succeed in the end. I shouldn't be
surprised to see that fellow in some very brilliant position; he has
tenacity, honesty, and courage. He studies, he delves."
Notwithstanding the favor with which he was greeted, la Peyrade went
discreetly to the Thuilliers'. When reproached for this reserve he
went oftener, and ended by appearing every Sunday; he was invited to
all dinner-parties, and became at last so familiar in the house that
whenever he came to see Thuillier about four o'clock he was always
requested to take "pot-luck" without ceremony. Mademoiselle Thuillier
used to say:--
"Then we know that he will get a good dinner, poor fellow!"
A social phenomenon which has certainly been observed, but never, as
yet, formulated, or, if you like it better, published, though it fully
deserves to be recorded, is the return of habits, mind, and manners to
primitive conditions in certain persons who, between youth and old
age, have raised themselves above their first estate. Thus Thuillier
had become, once more, morally speaking, the son of a concierge. He
now made use of many of his father's jokes, and a little of the slime
of early days was beginning to appear on the surface of his declining
life. About five or six times a month, when the soup was rich and good
he would deposit his spoon in his empty plate and say, as if the
proposition were entirely novel:--
"That's better than a kick on the shin-bone!"
On hearing that witticism for the first time Theodose, to whom it was
really new, laughed so heartily that the handsome Thuillier was
tickled in his vanity as he had never been before. After that,
Theodose greeted the same speech with a knowing little smile. This
slight detail will explain how it was that on the morning of the day
when Theodose had his passage at arms with Vinet he had said to
Thuillier, as they were walking in the garden to see the effect of a
frost:--
"You have much more wit than you give yourself credit for."
To which he received this answer:--
"In any other career, my dear Theodose, I should have made my way
nobly; but the fall of the Emperor broke my neck."
"There is still time," said the young lawyer. "In the first place,
what did that mountebank, Colleville, ever do to get the cross?"
There la Peyrade laid his finger on a sore wound which Thuillier hid
from every eye so carefully that even his sister did not know of it;
but the young man, interested in studying these bourgeois, had divined
the secret envy that gnawed at the heart of the ex-official.
"If you, experienced as you are, will do the honor to follow my
advice," added the philanthropist, "and, above all, not mention our
compact to any one, I will undertake to have you decorated with the
Legion of honor, to the applause of the whole quarter."
"Oh! if we succeed in that," cried Thuillier, "you don't know what I
would do for you."
This explains why Thuillier carried his head high when Theodose had
the audacity that evening to put opinions into his mouth.
In art--and perhaps Moliere had placed hypocrisy in the rank of art by
classing Tartuffe forever among comedians--there exists a point of
perfection to which genius alone attains; mere talent falls below it.
There is so little difference between a work of genius and a work of
talent, that only men of genius can appreciate the distance that
separates Raffaelle from Correggio, Titian from Rubens. More than
that; common minds are easily deceived on this point. The sign of
genius is a certain appearance of facility. In fact, its work must
appear, at first sight, ordinary, so natural is it, even on the
highest subjects. Many peasant-women hold their children as the famous
Madonna in the Dresden gallery holds hers. Well, the height of art in
a man of la Peyrade's force was to oblige others to say of him later:
"Everybody would have been taken in by him."
Now, in the salon Thuillier, he noted a dawning opposition; he
perceived in Colleville the somewhat clear-sighted and criticising
nature of an artist who has missed his vocation. The barrister felt
himself displeasing to Colleville, who (as the result of circumstances
not necessary to here report) considered himself justified in
believing in the science of anagrams. None of this anagrams had ever
failed. The clerks in the government office had laughed at him when,
demanding an anagram on the name of the poor helpless
Auguste-Jean-Francois Minard, he had produced, "J'amassai une si
grande fortune"; and the event had justified him after the lapse of
ten years! Theodose, on several occasions, had made advances to the
jovial secretary of the mayor's office, and had felt himself rebuffed
by a coldness which was not natural in so sociable a man. When the
game of bouillotte came to an end, Colleville seized the moment to
draw Thuillier into the recess of a window and say to him:--
"You are letting that lawyer get too much foothold in your house; he
kept the ball in his own hands all the evening."
"Thank you, my friend; forewarned is forearmed," replied Thuillier,
inwardly scoffing at Colleville.
Theodose, who was talking at the moment to Madame Colleville, had his
eye on the two men, and, with the same prescience by which women know
when and how they are spoken of, he perceived that Colleville was
trying to injure him in the mind of the weak and silly Thuillier.
"Madame," he said in Flavie's ear, "if any one here is capable of
appreciating you it is certainly I. You seem to me a pearl dropped
into the mire. You say you are forty-two, but a woman is no older than
she looks, and many women of thirty would be thankful to have your
figure and that noble countenance, where love has passed without ever
filling the void in your heart. You have given yourself to God, I
know, and I have too much religion myself to regret it, but I also
know that you have done so because no human being has proved worthy of
you. You have been loved, but you have never been adored--I have
divined that. There is your husband, who has not known how to please
you in a position in keeping with your deserts. He dislikes me, as if
he thought I loved you; and he prevents me from telling you of a way
that I think I have found to place you in the sphere for which you
were destined. No, madame," he continued, rising, "the Abbe Gondrin
will not preach this year through Lent at our humble Saint-Jacques du
Haut-Pas; the preacher will be Monsieur d'Estival, a compatriot of
mine, and you will hear in him one of the most impressive speakers
that I have ever known,--a priest whose outward appearance is not
agreeable, but, oh! what a soul!"
"Then my desire will be gratified," said poor Madame Thuillier. "I
have never yet been able to understand a famous preacher."
A smile flickered on the lips of Mademoiselle Thuillier and several
others who heard the remark.
"They devote themselves too much to theological demonstration," said
Theodose. "I have long thought so myself--but I never talk religion;
if it had not been for Madame _de_ Colleville, I--"
"Are there demonstrations in theology?" asked the professor of
mathematics, naively, plunging headlong into the conversation.
"I think, monsieur," replied Theodose, looking straight at Felix
Phellion, "that you cannot be serious in asking me such a question."
"Felix," said old Phellion, coming heavily to the rescue of his son,
and catching a distressed look on the pale face of Madame Thuillier,
--"Felix separates religion into two categories; he considers it from
the human point of view and the divine point of view,--tradition and
reason."
"That is heresy, monsieur," replied Theodose. "Religion is one; it
requires, above all things, faith."
Old Phellion, nonplussed by that remark, nodded to his wife:--
"It is getting late, my dear," and he pointed to the clock.
"Oh, Monsieur Felix," said Celeste in a whisper to the candid
mathematician, "Couldn't you be, like Pascal and Bossuet, learned and
pious both?"
The Phellions, on departing, carried the Collevilles with them. Soon
no one remained in the salon but Dutocq, Theodose, and the Thuilliers.
The flattery administered by Theodose to Flavie seems at the first
sight coarsely commonplace, but we must here remark, in the interests
of this history, that the
Comments (0)