The Lesser Bourgeoisie

“And it is no doubt the desire to allow me perfect freedom in the matter that induces you to take flight whenever I have the honor to meet you in the Thuillier salon?”

“Yes,” said the countess, “that ought to be the reason that makes me leave the room; else, why should I be so distant?”

“Ah! madame, there are other reasons that might make a woman avoid a man’s presence. For instance, if he has displeased her; if the advice, given to him with rare wisdom and kindness, was not received with proper eagerness and gratitude.”

“Oh, my dear monsieur,” she replied, “I have no such ardor in proselytizing that I am angry with those who are not docile to my advice. I am, like others, very apt to make mistakes.”

“On the contrary, madame, in the matter of my marriage your judgment was perfectly correct.”

“How so?” said the countess, eagerly. “Has the seizure of the pamphlet, coming directly after the failure to obtain the cross, led to a rupture?”

“No,” said la Peyrade, “my influence in the Thuillier household rests on a solid basis; the services I have rendered Mademoiselle Brigitte and her brother outweigh these checks, which, after all, are not irreparable.”

“Do you really think so?” said the countess.

“Certainly,” replied la Peyrade; “when the Comtesse du Bruel takes it into her head to seriously obtain that bit of red ribbon, she can do so, in spite of all obstacles that are put in her way.”

The countess received this assertion with a smile, and shook her head.

“But, madame, only a day or two ago Madame du Bruel told Madame Colleville that the unexpected opposition she had met with piqued her, and that she meant to go in person to the minister.”

“But you forget that since then this seizure has been made by the police; it is not usual to decorate a man who is summoned before the court of assizes. You seem not to notice that the seizure argues a strong ill-will against Monsieur Thuillier, and, I may add, against yourself, monsieur, for you are known to be the culprit. You have not, I think, taken all this into account. The authorities appear to have acted not wholly from legal causes.”

La Peyrade looked at the countess.

“I must own,” he said, after that rapid glance, “that I have tried in vain to find any passage in that pamphlet which could be made a legal pretext for the seizure.”

“In my opinion,” said the countess, “the king’s servants must have a vivid imagination to persuade themselves they were dealing with a seditious publication. But that only proves the strength of the underground power which is thwarting all your good intentions in favor of Monsieur Thuillier.”

“Madame,” said la Peyrade, “do you know our secret enemies?”

“Perhaps I do,” replied the countess, with another smile.

“May I dare to utter a suspicion, madame?” said la Peyrade, with some agitation.

“Yes, say what you think,” replied Madame de Godollo. “I shall not blame you if you guess right.”

“Well, madame, our enemies, Thuillier’s and mine, are – a woman.”

“Supposing that is so,” said the countess; “do you know how many lines Richelieu required from a man’s hand in order to hang him?”

“Four,” replied la Peyrade.

“You can imagine, then, that a pamphlet of two hundred pages might afford a – slightly intriguing woman sufficient ground for persecution.”

“I see it all, madame, I understand it!” cried la Peyrade, with animation. “I believe that woman to be one of the elite of her sex, with as much mind and malice as Richelieu! Adorable magician! it is she who has set in motion the police and the gendarmes; but, more than that, it is she who withholds that cross the ministers were about to give.”

“If that be so,” said the countess, “why struggle against her?”

“Ah! I struggle no longer,” said la Peyrade. Then, with an assumed air of contrition, he added, “You must, indeed, hate me, madame.”

“Not quite as much as you may think,” replied the countess; “but, after all, suppose that I do hate you?”

“Ah! madame,” cried la Peyrade, ardently, “I should then be the happiest of unhappy men; for that hatred would seem to me sweeter and more precious than your indifference. But you do not hate me; why should you feel to me that most blessed feminine sentiment which Scribe has depicted with such delicacy and wit?”

Madame de Godollo did not answer immediately. She lowered her eyelids, and the deeper breathing of her bosom gave to her voice when she did speak a tremulous tone: —

“The hatred of a woman!” she said. “Is a man of your stoicism able to perceive it?”

“Ah! yes, madame,” replied la Peyrade, “I do indeed perceive it, but not to revolt against it; on the contrary, I bless the harshness that deigns to hurt me. Now that I know my beautiful and avowed enemy, I shall not despair of touching her heart; for never again will I follow any road but the one that she points out to me, never will I march under any banner but hers. I shall wait – for her inspiration, to think; for her will, to will; for her commands, to act. In all things I will be her auxiliary, – more than that, her slave; and if she still repulses me with that dainty foot, that snowy hand, I will bear it resignedly, asking, in return for such obedience one only favor, – that of kissing the foot that spurns me, of bathing with tears the hand that threatens me.”

During this long cry of the excited heart, which the joy of triumph wrung from a nature so nervous and impressionable as that of the Provencal, he had slidden from his chair, and now knelt with one knee on the ground beside the countess, in the conventional attitude of the stage, which is, however, much more common in real life than people suppose.

“Rise, monsieur,” said the countess, “and be so good as to answer me.” Then, giving him a questioning look from beneath her beautiful frowning brows, she continued: “Have you well-weighed the outcome of the words you have just uttered? Have you measured the full extent of your pledge, and its depth? With your hand on your heart and on your conscience, are you a man to fulfil those words? Or are you one of the falsely humble and perfidious men who throw themselves at our feet only to make us lose the balance of our will and our reason?”

“I!” exclaimed la Peyrade; “never can I react against the fascination you have wielded over me from the moment of our first interview! Ah! madame, the more I have resisted, the more I have struggled, the more you ought to trust in my sincerity and its tardy expression. What I have said, I think; that which I think aloud to-day I have thought in my soul since the hour when I first had the honor of admittance to you; and the many days I have passed in struggling against this allurement have ended in giving me a firm and deliberate will, which understands itself, and is not cast down by your severity.”

“Severity?” said the countess; “possibly. But you ought to think of the kindness too. Question yourself carefully. We foreign women do not understand the careless ease with which a Frenchwoman enters upon a solemn engagement. To us, our yes is sacred; our word is a bond. We do and we will nothing by halves. The arms of my family bear a motto which seems significant under the present circumstances, – ‘All or Nothing’; that is saying much, and yet, perhaps, not enough.”

“That is how I understand my pledge,” replied la Peyrade; “and on leaving this room my first step will be to break with that ignoble past which for an instant I seemed to hold in the balance against the intoxicating future you do not forbid me to expect.”

“No,” said the countess, “do it calmly and advisedly; I do not like rash conduct; you will not please me by taking open steps. These Thuilliers are not really bad at heart; they humiliated you without knowing that they did so; their world is not yours. Is that their fault? Loosen the tie between you, but do not violently break it. And, above all, reflect. Your conversion to my beliefs is of recent date. What man is certain of what his heart will say to him to-morrow?”

“Madame,” said la Peyrade, “I am that man. We men of Southern blood do not love as you say a Frenchwoman loves.”

“But,” said the countess, with a charming smile, “I thought it was hatred we were talking of.”

“Ah, madame,” cried the barrister, “explained and understood as it has been, that word is still a thing that hurts me. Tell me rather, not that you love me, but that the words you deigned to say to me at our first interview were indeed the expression of your thoughts.”

“My friend,” said the countess, dwelling on the word; “one of your moralists has said: ‘There are persons who say, that is or that is not.’ Do me the favor to count me among such persons.”

So saying, she held out her hand to her suitor with a charming gesture of modesty and grace. La Peyrade, quite beside himself, darted upon that beautiful hand and devoured it with kisses.

“Enough, child!” said the countess, gently freeing her imprisoned fingers; “adieu now, soon to meet again! Adieu! My headache, I think, has disappeared.”

La Peyrade picked up his hat, and seemed about to rush from the apartment; but at the door he turned and cast upon the handsome creature a look of tenderness. The countess made him, with her head, a graceful gesture of adieu; then, seeing that la Peyrade was inclined to return to her, she raised her forefinger as a warning to control himself and go.

La Peyrade turned and left the apartment.

CHAPTER VII. HOW TO SHUT THE DOOR IN PEOPLE’S FACES

On the staircase la Peyrade stopped to exhale, if we may so express it, the happiness of which his heart was full. The words of the countess, the ingenious preparation she had made to put him on the track of her sentiments, seemed to him the guarantee of her sincerity, and he left her full of faith.

Possessed by that intoxication of happy persons which shows itself in their gestures, their looks, their very gait, and sometimes in actions not authorized by their common-sense, after pausing a moment, as we have said, on the staircase, he ran up a few steps till he could see the door of the Thuilliers’ apartment.

“At last!” he cried, “fame, fortune, happiness have come to me; but, above all, I can now give myself the joy of vengeance. After Dutocq and Cerizet, I will crush you, vile bourgeois brood!”

So saying, he shook his fist at the innocent door. Then he turned and ran out; the popular saying that the earth could not hold him, was true at that moment of his being.

The next day, for he could not restrain any longer the tempest that was swelling within him, la Peyrade went to see Thuillier in the bitterest and most hostile of moods. What was therefore his amazement when, before he had time to put himself on guard and stop the demonstration of union and oblivion, Thuillier flung himself into his arms.

“My friend,” cried the municipal councillor, as he loosened his clasp, “my political fortune is made; this morning all the newspapers, without exception, have spoken of the seizure of my pamphlet; and you ought to see how the opposition sheets have mauled the government.”

“Simple enough,” said la Peyrade, not moved by this enthusiasm; “you are a topic for them, that’s all. But this does not alter the situation; the prosecution will be only the more determined to have you condemned.”

“Well, then,” said Thuillier, proudly raising his head, “I will go to prison, like Beranger, like Lamennais, like Armand Carrel.”

“My good fellow, persecution is charming at a distance; but when you hear the big bolts run upon you, you may be sure you won’t like it as well.”

“But,” objected Thuillier, “prisoners condemned for political offences are always allowed to do their time in hospital if they like. Besides, I’m not yet convicted. You said yourself you expected to get me acquitted.”

“Yes, but since then I have heard things which make that result very doubtful; the same hand that withheld your cross has seized your pamphlet; you are being murdered with premeditation.”

“If you know who that dangerous enemy is,” said Thuillier, “you can’t refuse to point him out to me.”

“I don’t know him,” replied la Peyrade; “I only suspect him. This is what you get by playing too shrewd a game.”

“Playing a shrewd game!” said Thuillier, with the curiosity of a man who is perfectly aware that he has nothing of that kind on his conscience.

“Yes,” said la Peyrade, “you made a sort of decoy of Celeste to attract young bloods to your salon. All the world has not the forbearance of Monsieur Godeschal, who forgave his rejection and generously managed that affair about the house.”

“Explain yourself better,” said Thuillier, “for I don’t see what you mean.”

“Nothing is easier to understand. Without counting me, how many suitors have you had for Mademoiselle Colleville? Godeschal, Minard junior, Phellion junior, Olivier Vinet, the substitute judge, – all men who have been sent about their business, as I am.”

“Olivier Vinet, the substitute judge!” cried Thuillier, struck with a flash of light. “Of course; the blow must have come from him. His father, they say, has a long arm. But it can’t be truly said that we sent him about his business, – to use your expression, which strikes me as indecorous, – for he never came to the house but once, and made no offer; neither did Minard junior or Phellion junior, for that matter. Godeschal is the only one who risked a direct proposal, and he was refused at once, before he dipped his beak in the water.”

“It is always so!” said la Peyrade, still looking for a ground of quarrel. “Straightforward and outspoken persons are always those that sly men boast of fooling.”

“Ah ca! what’s all this?” said Thuillier; “what are you insinuating? Didn’t you settle everything with Brigitte the other day? You take a pretty time to come and talk to me about your love-affairs, when the sword of justice is hanging over my head.”

“Oh!” said la Peyrade, ironically; “so now you are going to make the most of your interesting position of accused person! I knew very well how it would be; I was certain that as soon as your pamphlet appeared the old cry of not getting what you expected out of me would come up.”

“Parbleu! your pamphlet!” cried Thuillier. “I think you are a fine fellow to boast of that when, on the contrary, it has caused the most deplorable complications.”

“Deplorable? how so? you have just said your political fortune was made.”

“Well, truly, my dear Theodose,” said Thuillier, with feeling, “I should never have thought that you would choose the hour of adversity to come and put your pistol at our throats and make me the object of your sneers and innuendoes.”

“Well done!” said la Peyrade; “now it is the hour of adversity! A minute ago you were flinging yourself into my arms as a man to whom some signal piece of luck had happened. You ought really to choose decidedly between being a man who needs pity and a glorious victor.”

“It is all very well to be witty,” returned Thuillier; “but you can’t controvert what I say. I am logical, if I am not brilliant. It is very natural that I should console myself by seeing that public opinion decides in my favor, and by reading in its organs the most honorable assurances of sympathy; but do you suppose I wouldn’t rather that things had taken their natural course? Besides, when I see myself the object of unworthy vengeance on the part of persons as influential as the Vinets, how can I help measuring the extent of the dangers to which I am exposed?”

“Well,” said la Peyrade, with pitiless persistency, “I see that you prefer to play the part of Jeremiah.”

“Yes,” said Thuillier, in a solemn tone. “Jeremiah laments over a friendship I did think true and devoted, but which I find has only sarcasms to give me when I looked for services.”

“What services?” asked la Peyrade. “Did you not tell me positively, no later than yesterday, that you would not accept my help under any form whatever? I offered to plead your case, and you answered that you would take a better lawyer.”

“Yes; in the first shock of surprise at such an unexpected blow, I did say that foolish thing; but, on reflection, who can explain as well as you can the intention of the words you wrote with your own pen? Yesterday I was almost out of my mind; but you, with your wounded self-love, which can’t forgive a momentary impatience, you are very caustic and cruel.”

“So,” said la Peyrade, “you formally request me to defend you before the jury?”

“Yes, my dear fellow; and I don’t know any other hands in which I could better place my case. I should have to pay a monstrous sum to some great legal luminary, and he wouldn’t defend me as ably as you.”

“Well, I refuse. Roles have changed, as you see, diametrically. Yesterday, I thought, as you do, that I was the man to defend you. To-day, I see that you had better take the legal luminary, because, with Vinet’s antagonism against you the affair is taking such proportions that whoever defends it assumes a fearful responsibility.”

“I understand,” said Thuillier, sarcastically. “Monsieur has his eye on the magistracy, and he doesn’t want to quarrel with a man who is already talked of for Keeper of the Seals. It is prudent, but I don’t know that it is going to help on your marriage.”

“You mean,” said la Peyrade, seizing the ball in its bound, “that to get you out of the claws of that jury is a thirteenth labor of Hercules, imposed upon me to earn the hand of Mademoiselle Colleville? I expected that demands would multiply in proportion to the proofs of my devotion. But that is the very thing that has worn me out, and I have come here to-day to put an end to this slave labor by giving back to you your pledges. You may dispose of Celeste’s hand; for my part, I am no longer a suitor for it.”

The unexpectedness and squareness of this declaration left Thuillier without words or voice, all the more because at this moment entered Brigitte. The temper of the old maid had also greatly moderated since the previous evening, and her greeting was full of the most amicable familiarity.

“Ah! so here you are, you good old barrister,” she said.

“Mademoiselle, your servant,” he replied, gravely.

“Well,” she continued, paying no attention to the stiffness of his manner, “the government has got itself into a pretty mess by seizing your pamphlet. You ought to see how the morning papers lash it! Here,” she added, giving Thuillier a small sheet printed on sugar-paper, in coarse type, and almost illegible, – “here’s another, you didn’t read; the porter has just brought it up. It is a paper from our old quarter, ‘L’Echo de la Bievre.’ I don’t know, gentlemen, if you’ll be of my opinion, but I think nothing could be better written. It is droll, though, how inattentive these journalists are! most of them write your name without the H; I think you ought to complain of it.”

Thuillier took the paper, and read the article inspired to the reviewer of the tanner’s organ by stomach gratitude. Never in her life had Brigitte paid the slightest attention to a newspaper, except to know if it was the right size for the packages she wrapped up in it; but now, suddenly, converted to a worship of the press by the ardor of her sisterly love, she stood behind Thuillier and re-read, over his shoulder, the more striking passages of the page she thought so eloquent, pointing her finger to them.

“Yes,” said Thuillier, folding up the paper, “that’s warm, and very flattering to me. But here’s another matter! Monsieur has come to tell me that he refuses to plead for me, and renounces all claim to Celeste’s hand.”

“That is to say,” said Brigitte, “he renounces her if, after having pleaded, the marriage does not take place ‘subito.’ Well, poor fellow, I think that’s a reasonable demand. When he has done that for us there ought to be no further delay; and whether Mademoiselle Celeste likes it or not, she must accept him, because, you know, there’s an end to all things.”

“Do you hear that, my good fellow?” said la Peyrade, seizing upon Brigitte’s speech. “When I have pleaded, the marriage is to take place. Your sister is frankness itself; she, at least, doesn’t practise diplomacy.”

“Diplomacy!” echoed Brigitte. “I’d like to see myself creeping underground in matters. I say things as I think them. The workman has worked, and he ought to have his pay.”

“Do be silent,” cried Thuillier, stamping his foot; “you don’t say a word that doesn’t turn the knife in the wound.”

“The knife in the wound?” said Brigitte, inquiringly. “Ah ca! are you two quarrelling?”

“I told you,” said Thuillier, “that la Peyrade had returned our promises; and the reason he gives is that we are asking him another service for Celeste’s hand. He thinks he has done us enough without it.”

“He has done us some services, no doubt,” said Brigitte; “but it seems to me that we have not been ungrateful to him. Besides, it was he who made the blunder, and I think it rather odd he should now wish to leave us in the lurch.”

“Your reasoning, mademoiselle,” said la Peyrade, “might have some appearance of justice if I were the only barrister in Paris; but as the streets are black with them, and as, only yesterday, Thuillier himself spoke of engaging some more important lawyer than myself, I have not the slightest scruple in refusing to defend him. Now, as to the marriage, in order that it may not be made the object of another brutal and forcible demand upon me, I here renounce it in the most formal manner, and nothing now prevents Mademoiselle Colleville from accepting Monsieur Felix Phellion and all his advantages.”

“As you please, my dear monsieur,” said Brigitte, “if that’s your last word. We shall not be at a loss to find a husband for Celeste, – Felix Phellion or another. But you must permit me to tell you that the reason you give is not the true one. We can’t go faster than the fiddles. If the marriage were settled to-day, there are the banns to publish; you have sense enough to know that Monsieur le maire can’t marry you before the formalities are complied with, and before then Thuillier’s case will have been tried.”

“Yes,” said la Peyrade, “and if I lose the case it will be I who have sent him to prison, – just as yesterday it was I who brought about the seizure.”

“As for that, it seems to me that if you had written nothing the police would have found nothing to bite.”

“My dear Brigitte,” said Thuillier, seeing la Peyrade shrug his shoulders, “your argument is vicious in the sense that the writing was not incriminating on any side. It is not la Peyrade’s fault if persons of high station have organized a persecution against me. You remember that little substitute, Monsieur Olivier Vinet, whom Cardot brought to one of our receptions. It seems that he and his father are furious that we didn’t want him for Celeste, and they’ve sworn my destruction.”

“Well, why did we refuse him,” said Brigitte, “if it wasn’t for the fine eyes of monsieur here? For, after all, a substitute in Paris is a very suitable match.”

“No doubt,” said la Peyrade, nonchalantly. “Only, he did not happen to bring you a million.”

“Ah!” cried Brigitte, firing up. “If you are going to talk any more about that house you helped us to buy, I shall tell you plainly that if you had had the money to trick the notary you never would have come after us. You needn’t think I have been altogether your dupe. You spoke just now of a bargain, but you proposed that bargain yourself. ‘Give me Celeste and I’ll get you that house,’ – that’s what you said to us in so many words. Besides which, we had to pay large sums on which we never counted.”

“Come, come, Brigitte,” said Thuillier, “you are making a great deal out of nothing.”

“Nothing! nothing!” exclaimed Brigitte. “Did we, or did we not, have to pay much more than we expected?”

“My dear Thuillier,” said la Peyrade, “I think, with you, that the matter is now settled, and it can only be embittered by discussing it further. My course was decided on before I came here; all that I have now heard can only confirm it. I shall not be the husband of Celeste, but you and I can remain good friends.”

He rose to leave the room.

“One moment, monsieur,” said Brigitte, barring his way; “there is one matter which I do not consider settled; and now that we are no longer to have interests in common, I should not be sorry if you would be so good as to tell me what has become of a sum of ten thousand francs which Thuillier gave you to bribe those rascally government offices in order to get the cross we have never got.”