The Lesser Bourgeoisie

“I gain a pretty good fee out of this compromise,” is a reason that needs no expression in words: it is visible in the gesture, the tone, the glance; and as attorneys and solicitors meet constantly on this ground, the matter, whatever it is, is arranged. The counterpoise of this fraternal system is found in what we may call professional conscience. The public must believe the physician who says, giving medical testimony, “This body contains arsenic”; nothing is supposed to exceed the integrity of the legislator, the independence of the cabinet minister. In like manner, the attorney of Paris says to his brother lawyer, good-humoredly, “You can’t obtain that; my client is furious,” and the other answers, “Very good; I must do without it.”

Now, la Peyrade, a shrewd man, had worn his legal gown about the Palais long enough to know how these judicial morals might be made to serve his purpose.

“Sit in the carriage,” he said to Thuillier, when they reached the rue Vivienne, where Godeschal was now master of the practice he had formerly served as clerk. “You needn’t show yourself until he undertakes the affair.”

It was eleven o’clock at night; la Peyrade was not mistaken in supposing that he should find a newly fledged master of a practice in his office at that hour.

“To what do I owe this visit, monsieur?” said Godeschal, coming forward to meet the barrister.

Foreigners, provincials, and persons in high society may not be aware that barristers are to attorneys what generals are to marshals. There exists a line of demarcation, strictly maintained, between the order of barristers and the guild of attorneys and solicitors in Paris. However venerable an attorney may be, however capable and strong in his profession, he must go to the barrister. The attorney is the administrator, who maps out the plan of the campaign, collects the munitions of war, and puts the force in motion; the barrister gives battle. It is not known why the law gives a man two men to defend him any more than it is known why an author is forced to have both printer and publisher. The rules of the bar forbid its members to do any act belonging to the guild of attorneys. It is very rare that a barrister puts his foot in an attorney’s office; the two classes meet in the law-courts. In society, there is no barrier between them, and some barristers, those in la Peyrade’s situation particularly, demean themselves by calling occasionally on attorneys, though even these cases are rare, and are usually excused by some special urgency.

“I have come on important business,” replied la Peyrade; “it concerns, especially, a question of delicacy which you and I ought to solve together. Thuillier is below, in a carriage, and I have come up to see you, not as a barrister, but as his friend. You are in a position to do him an immense service; and I have told him that you have too noble a soul (as a worthy successor of our great Derville must have) not to put your utmost capacity at his orders. Here’s the affair.”

After explaining, wholly to his own advantage, the swindling trick which must, he said, be met with caution and ability, the barrister developed his plan of campaign.

“You ought, my dear maitre, to go this very evening to Desroches, explain the whole plot and persuade him to send to-morrow for his client, this Sauvaignou. We’ll confess the fellow between us, and if he wants a note for a thousand francs over and above the amount of his claim, we’ll let him have it; not counting the five hundred for you and as much more for Desroches, provided Thuillier receives the relinquishment of his claim by ten o’clock to-morrow morning. What does this Sauvaignou want? Nothing but money. Well, a haggler like that won’t resist the attraction of an extra thousand francs, especially if he is only the instrument of a cupidity behind him. It is no matter to us how he fights it out with those who prompt him. Now, then, do you think you can get the Thuillier family out of this?”

“I’ll go and see Desroches at once,” said Godeschal.

“Not before Thuillier gives you a power of attorney and five hundred francs. The money should be on the table in a case like this.”

After the interview with Thuillier was over, la Peyrade took Godeschal in the carriage to the rue du Bethizy, where Desroches lived, explaining that it was on their way back to the rue Saint-Dominique d’Enfer. When they stopped at Desroches’s door la Peyrade made an appointment with Godeschal to meet him there the next morning at seven o’clock.

La Peyrade’s whole future and fortune lay in the outcome of this conference. It is therefore not astonishing that he disregarded the customs of the bar and went to Desroches’s office, to study Sauvaignou and take part in the struggle, in spite of the danger he ran in thus placing himself visibly before the eyes of one of the most dreaded attorneys in Paris.

As he entered the office and made his salutations, he took note of Sauvaignou. The man was, as the name had already told him, from Marseilles, – the foreman of a master-carpenter, entrusted with the giving out of sub-contracts. The profits of this work consisted of what he could make between the price he paid for the work and that paid to him by the master-carpenter; this agreement being exclusive of material, his contract being only for labor. The master-carpenter had failed. Sauvaignou had thereupon appealed to the court of commerce for recognition as creditor with a lien on the property. He was a stocky little man, dressed in a gray linen blouse, with a cap on his head, and was seated in an armchair. Three banknotes, of a thousand francs each, lying visibly before him on Desroches’s desk, informed la Peyrade that the negotiation had already taken place, and that the lawyers were worsted. Godeschal’s eyes told the rest, and the glance which Desroches cast at the “poor man’s advocate” was like the blow of a pick-axe into the earth of a grave. Stimulated by his danger, the Provencal became magnificent. He coolly took up the bank-notes and folded them, as if to put them in his pocket, saying to Desroches: —

“Thuillier has changed his mind.”

“Very good; then we are all agreed,” said the terrible attorney.

“Yes; your client must now hand over to us the fifty thousand francs we have spent on finishing the house, according to the contract between Thuillier and Grindot. I did not tell you that yesterday,” he added, turning to Godeschal.

“Do you hear that?” said Desroches to Sauvaignou. “That’s a case I shall not touch without proper guarantees.”

“But, messieurs,” said Sauvaignou, “I can’t negotiate this matter until I have seen the worthy man who paid me five hundred francs on account for having signed him that bit of a proxy.”

“Are you from Marseilles?” said la Peyrade, in patois.

“Oh! if he tackles him with patois the fellow is beaten,” said Godeschal to Desroches in a low tone.

“Yes, monsieur,” replied the Marseillais.

“Well, you poor devil,” continued Theodose, “don’t you see that they want to ruin you? Shall I tell you what you ought to do? Pocket these three thousand francs, and when your worthy man comes after you, take your rule and hit him a rap over the knuckles; tell him he’s a rascal who wants you to do his dirty work, and instead of that you revoke your proxy and will pay him his five hundred francs in the week with three Thursdays. Then be off with you to Marseilles with these three thousand francs and your savings in your pocket. If anything happens to you there, let me know through these gentlemen, and I’ll get you out of the scrape; for, don’t you see? I’m not only a Provencal, but I’m also one of the leading lawyers in Paris, and the friend of the poor.”

When the workman found a compatriot sanctioning in a tone of authority the reasons by which he could betray Cerizet, he capitulated, asking, however, for three thousand five hundred francs. That demand having been granted he remarked: —

“It is none too much for a rap over the knuckles; he might put me in prison for assault.”

“Well, you needn’t strike unless he insults you,” replied la Peyrade, “and that’s self-defence.”

When Desroches had assured him that la Peyrade was really a barrister in good standing, Sauvaignou signed the relinquishment, which contained a receipt for the amount, principal and interest, of his claim, made in duplicate between himself and Thuillier, and witnessed by the two attorneys; so that the paper was a final settlement of the whole matter.

“We’ll leave the remaining fifteen hundred between you,” whispered la Peyrade to Desroches and Godeschal, “on condition that you give me the relinquishment, which I will have Thuillier accept and sign before his notary, Cardot. Poor man! he never closed his eyes all night!”

“Very well,” replied Desroches. “You may congratulate yourself,” he added, making Sauvaignou sign the paper, “that you’ve earned that money pretty easily.”

“It is really mine, isn’t it, monsieur?” said the Marseillais, already uneasy.

“Yes, and legally, too,” replied Desroches, “only you must let your man know this morning that you have revoked your proxy under date of yesterday. Go out through my clerk’s office, here, this way.”

Desroches told his head-clerk what the man was to do, and he sent a pupil-clerk with him to see that a sheriff’s officer carried the notice to Cerizet before ten o’clock.

“I thank you, Desroches,” said la Peyrade, pressing the attorney’s hand; “you think of everything; I shall never forget this service.”

“Don’t deposit the deed with Cardot till after twelve o’clock,” returned Desroches.

“Hay! comrade,” cried the barrister, in Provencal, following Sauvaignou into the next room, “take your Margot to walk about Belleville, and be sure you don’t go home.”

“I hear,” said Sauvaignou. “I’m off to-morrow; adieu!”

“Adieu,” returned la Peyrade, with a Provencal cry.

“There is something behind all this,” said Desroches in an undertone to Godeschal, as la Peyrade followed Sauvaignou into the clerk’s office.

“The Thuilliers get a splendid piece of property for next to nothing,” replied Godeschal; “that’s all.”

“La Peyrade and Cerizet look to me like two divers who are fighting under water,” replied Desroches. “What am I to say to Cerizet, who put the matter into my hands?” he added, as the barrister returned to them.

“Tell him that Sauvaignou forced your hand,” replied la Peyrade.

“And you fear nothing?” said Desroches, in a sudden manner.

“I? oh no! I want to give Cerizet a lesson.”

“To-morrow, I shall know the truth,” said Desroches, in a low tone, to Godeschal; “no one chatters like a beaten man.”

La Peyrade departed, carrying with him the deed of relinquishment. At eleven o’clock he was in the courtroom of the justice-of-peace, perfectly calm, and firm. When he saw Cerizet come in, pale with rage, his eyes full of venom, he said in his ear: —

“My dear friend, I’m a pretty good fellow myself, and I hold that twenty-five thousand francs in good bank-bills at your disposal, whenever you will return to me those notes of mine which you hold.”

Cerizet looked at the advocate of the poor, without being able to say one word in reply; he was green; the bile had struck in.

CHAPTER XIII. THE PERVERSITY OF DOVES

“I am a non-dispossessable property-owner!” cried Thuillier, coming home after visiting his notary. “No human power can get that house away from me. Cardot says so.”

The bourgeoisie think much more of what their notary tells them than of what their attorney says. The notary is nearer to them than any other ministerial officer. The Parisian bourgeois never pays a visit to his attorney without a sense of fear; whereas he mounts the stairs with ever-renewed pleasure to see his notary; he admires that official’s virtue and his sound good sense.

“Cardot, who is looking for an apartment for one of his clients, wants to know about our second floor,” continued Thuillier. “If I choose he’ll introduce to me on Sunday a tenant who is ready to sign a lease for eighteen years at forty thousand francs and taxes! What do you say to that, Brigitte?”

“Better wait,” she replied. “Ah! that dear Theodose, what a fright he gave me!”

“Hey! my dearest girl, I must tell you that when Cardot asked who put me in the way of this affair he said I owed him a present of at least ten thousand francs. The fact is, I owe it all to him.”

“But he is the son of the house,” responded Brigitte.

“Poor lad! I’ll do him the justice to say that he asks for nothing.”

“Well, dear, good friend,” said la Peyrade, coming in about three o’clock, “here you are, richissime!”

“And through you, Theodose.”

“And you, little aunt, have you come to life again? Ah! you were not half as frightened as I was. I put your interests before my own; I haven’t breathed freely till this morning at eleven o’clock; and yet I am sure now of having two mortal enemies at my heels in the two men I have tricked for your sake. As I walked home, just now, I asked myself what could be your influence over me to make me commit such a crime, and whether the happiness of belonging to your family and becoming your son could ever efface the stain I have put upon my conscience.”

“Bah! you can confess it,” said Thuillier, the free-thinker.

“And now,” said Theodose to Brigitte, “you can pay, in all security, the cost of the house, – eighty thousand francs, and thirty thousand to Grindot; in all, with what you have paid in costs, one hundred and twenty thousand; and this last twenty thousand added make one hundred and forty thousand. If you let the house outright to a single tenant ask him for the last year’s rent in advance, and reserve for my wife and me the whole of the first floor above the entresol. Make those conditions and you’ll still get your forty thousand francs a year. If you should want to leave this quarter so as to be nearer the Chamber, you can always take up your abode with us on that vast first floor, which has stables and coach-house belonging to it; in fact, everything that is needful for a splendid life. And now, Thuillier, I am going to get the cross of the Legion of honor for you.”

Hearing this last promise, Brigitte cried out in her enthusiasm: —

“Faith! my dear boy, you’ve done our business so well that I’ll leave you to manage that of letting the house.”

“Don’t abdicate, dear aunt,” replied Theodose. “God keep me from ever taking a step without you! You are the good genius of this family; I think only of the day when Thuillier will take his seat in the Chamber. If you let the house you will come into possession of your forty thousand francs for the last year of the lease in two months from now; and that will not prevent Thuillier from drawing his quarterly ten thousand of the rental.”

After casting this hope into the mind of the old maid, who was jubilant, Theodose drew Thuillier into the garden and said to him, without beating round the bush: —

“Dear, good friend, find means to get ten thousand francs from your sister, and be sure not to let her suspect that you pay them to me; tell her that sum is required in the government office to facilitate your appointment as chevalier of the Legion of honor; tell her, too, that you know the persons among whom that sum should be distributed.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Thuillier; “besides, I’ll pay it back to her when I get my rents.”

“Have the money ready this evening, dear friend. Now I am going out on business about your cross; to-morrow we shall know something definitely about it.”

“What a man you are!” cried Thuillier.

“The ministry of the 1st of March is going to fall, and we must get it out of them beforehand,” said Theodose, shrewdly.

He now hurried to Madame Colleville, crying out as he entered her room: —

“I’ve conquered! We shall have a piece of landed property for Celeste worth a million, a life-interest in which will be given to her by her marriage-contract; but keep the secret, or your daughter will be hunted down by peers of France. Besides, this settlement will only be made in my favor. Now dress yourself, and let us go and call on Madame du Bruel; she can get the cross for Thuillier. While you are getting under arms I’ll do a little courting to Celeste; you and I can talk as we drive along.”

La Peyrade had seen, as he passed the door of the salon, Celeste and Felix Phellion in close conversation. Flavie had such confidence in her daughter that she did not fear to leave them together. Now that the great success of the morning was secured, Theodose felt the necessity of beginning his courtship of Celeste. It was high time, he thought, to bring about a quarrel between the lovers. He did not, therefore, hesitate to apply his ear to the door of the salon before entering it, in order to discover what letters of the alphabet of love they were spelling; he was even invited to commit this domestic treachery by sounds from within, which seemed to say that they were disputing. Love, according to one of our poets, is a privilege which two persons mutually take advantage of to cause each other, reciprocally, a great deal of sorrow about nothing at all.

When Celeste knew that Felix was elected by her heart to be the companion of her life, she felt a desire, not so much to study him as to unite herself closely with him by that communion of souls which is the basis of all affections, and leads, in youthful minds, to involuntary examination. The dispute to which Theodose was now to listen took its rise in a disagreement which had sprung up within the last few days between the mathematician and Celeste. The young girl’s piety was real; she belonged to the flock of the truly faithful, and to her, Catholicism, tempered by that mysticism which attracts young souls, was an inward poem, a life within her life. From this point young girls are apt to develop into either extremely high-minded women or saints. But, during this beautiful period of their youth they have in their heart, in their ideas, a sort of absolutism: before their eyes is the image of perfection, and all must be celestial, angelic, or divine to satisfy them. Outside of their ideal, nothing of good can exist; all is stained and soiled. This idea causes the rejection of many a diamond with a flaw by girls who, as women, fall in love with paste.

Now, Celeste had seen in Felix, not irreligion, but indifference to matters of religion. Like most geometricians, chemists, mathematicians, and great naturalists, he had subjected religion to reason; he recognized a problem in it as insoluble as the squaring of the circle. Deist “in petto,” he lived in the religion of most Frenchmen, not attaching more importance to it than he did to the new laws promulgated in July. It was necessary to have a God in heaven, just as they set up a bust of the king at the mayor’s office. Felix Phellion, a worthy son of his father, had never drawn the slightest veil over his opinions or his conscience; he allowed Celeste to read into them with the candor and the inattention of a student of problems. The young girl, on her side, professed a horror for atheism, and her conscience assured her that a deist was cousin-germain to an atheist.

“Have you thought, Felix, of doing what you promised me?” asked Celeste, as soon as Madame Colleville had left them alone.

“No, my dear Celeste,” replied Felix.

“Oh! to have broken his word!” she cried, softly.

“But to have kept it would have been a profanation,” said Felix. “I love you so deeply, with a tenderness so little proof against your wishes, that I promised a thing contrary to my conscience. Conscience, Celeste, is our treasure, our strength, our mainstay. How can you ask me to go into a church and kneel at the feet of a priest, in whom I can see only a man? You would despise me if I obeyed you.”

“And so, my dear Felix, you refuse to go to church,” said Celeste, casting a tearful glance at the man she loved. “If I were your wife you would let me go alone? You do not love me as I love you! for, alas! I have a feeling in my heart for an atheist contrary to that which God commands.”

“An atheist!” cried Felix. “Oh, no! Listen to me, Celeste. There is certainly a God; I believe in that; but I have higher ideas of Him than those of your priests; I do not wish to bring Him down to my level; I want to rise to Him. I listen to the voice He has put within me, – a voice which honest men call conscience, and I strive not to darken that divine ray as it comes to me. For instance, I will never harm others; I will do nothing against the commandments of universal morality, which was that of Confucius, Moses, Pythagoras, Socrates, as well as of Jesus Christ. I will stand in the presence of God; my actions shall be my prayers; I will never be false in word or deed; never will I do a base or shameful thing. Those are the precepts I have learned from my virtuous father, and which I desire to bequeath to my children. All the good that I can do I shall try to accomplish, even if I have to suffer for it. What can you ask more of a man than that?”

This profession of the Phellion faith caused Celeste to sadly shake her head.

“Read attentively,” she replied, “‘The Imitation of Jesus Christ.’ Strive to convert yourself to the holy Catholic, apostolic, and Roman Church, and you will see how empty your words are. Hear me, Felix; marriage is not, the Church says, the affair of a day, the mere satisfaction of our own desires; it is made for eternity. What! shall we be united day and night, shall we form one flesh, one word, and yet have two languages, two faiths in our heart, and a cause of perpetual dissension? Would you condemn me to weep tears over the state of your soul, – tears that I must ever conceal from you? Could I address myself in peace to God when I see his arm stretched out in wrath against you? Must my children inherit the blood of a deist and his convictions? Oh! God, what misery for a wife! No, no, these ideas are intolerable. Felix! be of my faith, for I cannot share yours. Do not put a gulf between us. If you loved me, you would already have read ‘The Imitation of Jesus Christ.’”

The Phellion class, sons of the “Constitutionnel,” dislike the priestly mind. Felix had the imprudence to reply to this sort of prayer from the depths of an ardent heart: —

“You are repeating, Celeste, the lessons your confessor teaches you; nothing, believe me, is more fatal to happiness than the interference of priests in a home.”

“Oh!” cried Celeste, wounded to the quick, for love alone inspired her, “you do not love! The voice of my heart is not in unison with yours! You have not understood me, because you have not listened to me; but I forgive you, for you know not what you say.”

She wrapped herself in solemn silence, and Felix went to the window and drummed upon the panes, – music familiar to those who have indulged in poignant reflections. Felix was, in fact, presenting the following delicate and curious questions to the Phellion conscience.

“Celeste is a rich heiress, and, in yielding against the voice of natural religion, to her ideas, I should have in view the making of what is certainly an advantageous marriage, – an infamous act. I ought not, as father of a family, to allow the priesthood to have an influence in my home. If I yield to-day, I do a weak act, which will be followed by many others equally pernicious to the authority of a husband and father. All this is unworthy of a philosopher.”

Then he returned to his beloved.

“Celeste, I entreat you on my knees,” he said, “not to mingle that which the law, in its wisdom, has separated. We live in two worlds, – society and heaven. Each has its own way of salvation; but as to society, is it not obeying God to obey the laws? Christ said: ‘Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.’ Caesar is the body politic. Dear, let us forget our little quarrel.”

“Little quarrel!” cried the young enthusiast; “I want you to have my whole heart as I want to have the whole of yours; and you make it into two parts! Is not that an evil? You forget that marriage is a sacrament.”

“Your priesthood have turned your head,” exclaimed the mathematician, impatiently.

“Monsieur Phellion,” said Celeste, interrupting him hastily, “enough of this!”

It was at this point of the quarrel that Theodose considered it judicious to enter the room. He found Celeste pale, and the young professor as anxious as a lover should be who has just irritated his mistress.

“I heard the word ‘enough’; then something is too much?” he said, inquiringly, looking in turn from Celeste to Felix.