The Lesser Bourgeoisie

An obscure organ was about to expire in its native shade when an ambitious person of recent date bethought himself of galvanizing it. His object was to make it a foothold by which to climb from municipal functions to the coveted position of deputy. Happily this object, having come to the surface, will end in failure. Electors will certainly not be inveigled by so wily a manner of advancing self-interests; and when the proper time arrives, if ridicule has not already done justice on this absurd candidacy, we shall ourselves prove to the pretender that to aspire to the distinguished honor of representing the nation something more is required than the money to buy a paper and pay an underling to put into good French the horrible diction of his articles and pamphlets. We confine ourselves to-day to this limited notice, but our readers may be sure that we shall keep them informed about this electoral comedy, if indeed the parties concerned have the melancholy courage to go on with it.

Thuillier read twice over this sudden declaration of war, which was far from leaving him calm and impassible; then, taking la Peyrade aside, he said to him: —

“Read that; it is serious.”

“Well?” said la Peyrade, after reading the article.

“Well? how well?” exclaimed Thuillier.

“I mean, what do you find so serious in that?”

“What do I find so serious?” repeated Thuillier. “I don’t think anything could be more insulting to me.”

“You can’t doubt,” said la Peyrade, “that the virtuous Cerizet is at the bottom of it; he has thrown this firecracker between your legs by way of revenge.”

“Cerizet, or anybody else who wrote that diatribe is an insolent fellow,” cried Thuillier, getting angry, “and the matter shall not rest there.”

“For my part,” said la Peyrade, “I advise you to make no reply. You are not named; though, of course, the attack is aimed at you. But you ought to let our adversary commit himself farther; when the right moment comes, we’ll rap him over the knuckles.”

“No!” said Thuillier, “I won’t stay quiet one minute under such an insult.”

“The devil!” said the barrister; “what a sensitive epidermis! Do reflect, my dear fellow, that you have made yourself a candidate and a journalist, and therefore you really must harden yourself better than that.”

“My good friend, it is a principle of mine not to let anybody step on my toes. Besides, they say themselves they are going on with this thing. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to cut short such impertinence.”

“But do consider,” said la Peyrade. “Certainly in journalism, as in candidacy, a hot temper has its uses; a man makes himself respected, and stops attacks – ”

“Just so,” said Thuillier, “‘principiis obsta.’ Not to-day, because we haven’t the time, but to-morrow I shall carry that paper into court.”

“Into court!” echoed la Peyrade; “you surely wouldn’t go to law in such a matter as this? In the first place, there is nothing to proceed upon; you are not named nor the paper either, and, besides, it is a pitiable business, going to law; you’ll look like a boy who has been fighting, and got the worst of it, and runs to complain to his mamma. Now if you had said that you meant to make Fleury intervene in the matter, I could understand that – though the affair is rather personal to you, and it might be difficult to make it seem – ”

“Ah ca!” said Thuillier, “do you suppose I am going to commit myself with a Cerizet or any other newspaper bully? I pique myself, my dear fellow, on possessing civic courage, which does not give in to prejudices, and which, instead of taking justice into its own hands, has recourse to the means of defence that are provided by law. Besides, with the legal authority the Court of Cassation now has over duelling, I have no desire to put myself in the way of being expatriated, or spending two or three years in prison.”

“Well,” said la Peyrade, “we’ll talk it over later; here’s your sister, and she would think everything lost if this little matter reached her ears.”

When Brigitte appeared Colleville shouted “Full!” and proceeded to sing the chorus of “La Parisienne.”

“Heavens! Colleville, how vulgar you are!” cried the tardy one, hastening to cast a stone in the other’s garden to avoid the throwing of one into hers. “Well, are you all ready?” she added, arranging her mantle before a mirror. “What o’clock is it? it won’t do to get there before the time, like provincials.”

“Ten minutes to two,” said Colleville; “I go by the Tuileries.”

“Well, then we are just right,” said Brigitte; “it will take about that time to get to the rue Caumartin. Josephine,” she cried, going to the door of the salon, “we’ll dine at six, therefore be sure you put the turkey to roast at the right time, and mind you don’t burn it, as you did the other day. Bless me! who’s that?” and with a hasty motion she shut the door, which she had been holding open. “What a nuisance! I hope Henri will have the sense to tell him we are out.”

Not at all; Henri came in to say that an old gentleman, with a very genteel air, had asked to be received on urgent business.

“Why didn’t you say we were all out?”

“That’s what I should have done if mademoiselle had not opened the door of the salon so that the gentleman could see the whole family assembled.”

“Oh, yes!” said Brigitte, “you are never in the wrong, are you?”

“What am I to say to him?” asked the man.

“Say,” replied Thuillier, “that I am very sorry not to be able to receive him, but I am expected at a notary’s office about a marriage contract; but that if he could return two hours hence – ”

“I have told him all that,” said Henri, “and he answered that that contract was precisely what he had come about, and that his business concerned you more than himself.”

“You had better go and see him, Thuillier, and get rid of him in double-quick,” said Brigitte; “that’s shorter than talking to Henri, who is always an orator.”

If la Peyrade had been consulted he might not have joined in that advice, for he had had more than one specimen of the spokes some occult influence was putting into the wheels of his marriage, and the present visit seemed to him ominous.

“Show him into my study,” said Thuillier, following his sister’s advice; and, opening the door which led from the salon to the study, he went to receive his importunate visitor.

Brigitte immediately applied her eye to the keyhole.

“Goodness!” she exclaimed, “there’s my imbecile of a Thuillier offering him a chair! and away in a corner, too, where I can’t hear a word they say!”

La Peyrade was walking about the room with an inward agitation covered by an appearance of great indifference. He even went up to the three women, and made a few lover-like speeches to Celeste, who received them with a smiling, happy air in keeping with the role she was playing. As for Colleville, he was killing the time by composing an anagram on the six words of “le journal ‘l’Echo de la Bievre,’” for which he had found the following version, little reassuring (as far as it went) for the prospects of that newspaper: “O d’Echo, jarni! la bevue reell” – but as the final “e” was lacking to complete the last word, the work was not altogether as satisfactory as it should have been.

“He’s taking snuff!” said Brigitte, her eye still glued to the keyhole; “his gold snuff-box beats Minard’s – though, perhaps, it is only silver-gilt,” she added, reflectively. “He’s doing the talking, and Thuillier is sitting there listening to him like a buzzard. I shall go in and tell them they can’t keep ladies waiting that way.”

But just as she put her hand on the lock she heard Thuillier’s visitor raise his voice, and that made her look through the keyhole again.

“He is standing up; he’s going,” she said with satisfaction.

But a moment later she saw she had made a mistake; the little old man had only left his chair to walk up and down the room and continue the conversation with greater freedom.

“My gracious! I shall certainly go in,” she said, “and tell Thuillier we are going without him, and he can follow us.”

So saying, the old maid gave two little sharp and very imperious raps on the door, after which she resolutely entered the study.

La Peyrade, goaded by anxiety, had the bad taste to look through the keyhole himself at what was happening. Instantly he thought he recognized the small old man he had seen under the name of “the commander” on that memorable morning when he had waited for Madame de Godollo. Then he saw Thuillier addressing his sister with impatience and with gestures of authority altogether out of his usual habits of deference and submission.

“It seems,” said Brigitte, re-entering the salon, “that Thuillier finds some great interest in that creature’s talk, for he ordered me bluntly to leave them, though the little old fellow did say, rather civilly, that they would soon be through. But Jerome added: ‘Mind, you are to wait for me.’ Really, since he has taken to making newspapers I don’t know him; he has set up an air as if he were leading the world with his wand.”

“I am very much afraid he is being entangled by some adventurer,” said la Peyrade. “I am pretty sure I saw that old man at Madame de Godollo’s the day I went to warn her off the premises; he must be of the same stripe.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” cried Brigitte. “I’d have asked him for news of the countess, and let him see we knew what we knew of his Hungarian.”

Just then the sound of moving chairs was heard, and Brigitte darted back to the keyhole.

“Yes,” she said, “he is really going, and Thuillier is bowing him out respectfully!”

As Thuillier did not immediately return, Colleville had time to go to the window and exclaim at seeing the little old gentleman driving away in an elegant coupe, of which the reader has already heard.

“The deuce!” cried Colleville; “what an ornate livery! If he is an adventurer he is a number one.”

At last Thuillier re-entered the room, his face full of care, his manner extremely grave.

“My dear la Peyrade,” he said, “you did not tell us that another proposal of marriage had been seriously considered by you.”

“Yes, I did; I told you that a very rich heiress had been offered to me, but that my inclinations were here, and that I had not given any encouragement to the affair; consequently, of course, there was no serious engagement.”

“Well, I think you do wrong to treat that proposal so lightly.”

“What! do you mean to say, in presence of these ladies, that you blame me for remaining faithful to my first desires and our old engagement?”

“My friend, the conversation that I have just had has been a most instructive one to me; and when you know what I know, with other details personal to yourself, which will be confided to you, I think that you will enter into my ideas. One thing is certain; we shall not go to the notary to-day; and as for you, the best thing that you can do is to go, without delay, to Monsieur du Portail.”

“That name again! it pursues me like a remorse,” exclaimed la Peyrade.

“Yes; go at once; he is awaiting you. It is an indispensable preliminary before we can go any farther. When you have seen that excellent man and heard what he has to say to you – well, then if you persist in claiming Celeste’s hand, we might perhaps carry out our plans. Until then we shall take no steps in the matter.”

“But, my poor Thuillier,” said Brigitte, “you have let yourself be gammoned by a rascal; that man belongs to the Godollo set.”

“Madame de Godollo,” replied Thuillier, “is not at all what you suppose her to be, and the best thing this house can do is never to say one word about her, either good or evil. As for la Peyrade, as this is not the first time he has been requested to go and see Monsieur du Portail, I am surprised that he hesitates to do so.”

“Ah ca!” said Brigitte, “that little old man has completely befooled you.”

“I tell you that that little old man is all that he appears to be. He wears seven crosses, he drives in a splendid equipage, and he has told me things that have overwhelmed me with astonishment.”

“Well, perhaps he’s a fortune-teller like Madame Fontaine, who managed once upon a time to upset me when Madame Minard and I, just to amuse ourselves, went to consult her.”

“Well, if he is not a sorcerer he certainly has a very long arm,” said Thuillier, “and I think a man would suffer for it if he didn’t respect his advice. As for you, Brigitte, he saw you only for a minute, but he told me your whole character; he said you were a masterful woman, born to command.”

“The fact is,” said Brigitte, licking her chops at this compliment, like a cat drinking cream, “he has a very well-bred air, that little old fellow. You take my advice, my dear,” she said, turning to la Peyrade; “if such a very big-wig as that wants you to do so, go and see this du Portail, whoever he is. That, it seems to me, won’t bind you to anything.”

“You are right, Brigitte,” said Colleville; “as for me, I’d follow up all the Portails, or Porters, or Portents for the matter of that, if they asked me to.”

The scene was beginning to resemble that in the “Barber of Seville,” where everybody tells Basil to go to bed, for he certainly has a fever. La Peyrade, thus prodded, picked up his hat in some ill-humor, and went where his destiny called him, – “quo sua fata vocabant.”

CHAPTER XV. AT DU PORTAIL’S

On reaching the rue Honore-Chevalier la Peyrade felt a doubt; the dilapidated appearance of the house to which he was summoned made him think he had mistaken the number. It seemed to him that a person of Monsieur du Portail’s evident importance could not inhabit such a place. It was therefore with some hesitation that he accosted Sieur Perrache, the porter. But no sooner had he entered the antechamber of the apartment pointed out to him than the excellent deportment of Bruneau, the old valet, and the extremely comfortable appearance of the furniture and other appointments made him see that he was probably in the right place. Introduced at once, as soon as he had given his name, into the study of the master of the house, his surprise was great when he found himself in presence of the commander, so called, the friend of Madame de Godollo, and the little old man he had seen half an hour earlier with Thuillier.

“At last!” said du Portail, rising, and offering la Peyrade a chair, “at last we meet, my refractory friend; it has taken a good deal to bring you here.”

“May I know, monsieur,” said la Peyrade, haughtily, not taking the chair which was offered to him, “what interest you have in meddling with my affairs? I do not know you, and I may add that the place where I once saw you did not create an unconquerable desire in me to make your acquaintance.”

“Where have you seen me?” asked du Portail.

“In the apartment of a strumpet who called herself Madame de Godollo.”

“Where monsieur, consequently, went himself,” said the little old man, “and for a purpose much less disinterested than mine.”

“I have not come here,” said la Peyrade, “to bandy words with any one. I have the right, monsieur, to a full explanation as to the meaning of your proceedings towards me. I therefore request you not to delay them by a facetiousness to which, I assure you, I am not in the humor to listen.”

“Then, my dear fellow,” said du Portail, “sit down, for I am not in the humor to twist my neck by talking up at you.”

The words were reasonable, and they were said in a tone that showed the old gentleman was not likely to be frightened by grand airs. La Peyrade therefore deferred to the wishes of his host, but he took care to do so with the worst grace possible.

“Monsieur Cerizet,” said du Portail, “a man of excellent standing in the world, and who has the honor to be one of your friends – ”

“I have nothing to do with that man now,” said la Peyrade, sharply, understanding the malicious meaning of the old man’s speech.

“Well, the time has been,” said du Portail, “when you saw him, at least, occasionally: for instance, when you paid for his dinner at the Rocher de Cancale. As I was saying, I charged the virtuous Monsieur Cerizet to sound you as to a marriage – ”

“Which I refused,” interrupted la Peyrade, “and which I now refuse again, more vehemently than ever.”

“That’s the question,” said the old man. “I think, on the contrary, that you will accept it; and it is to talk over this affair with you that I have so long desired a meeting.”

“But this crazy girl that you are flinging at my head,” said la Peyrade, “what is she to you? She can’t be your daughter, or you would put more decency into your hunt for a husband.”

“This young girl,” replied du Portail, “is the daughter of one of my friends who died about ten years ago; at his death I took her to live with me, and have given her all the care her sad condition needed. Her fortune, which I have greatly increased, added to my own, which I intend to leave to her, will make her a very rich heiress. I know that you are no enemy to handsome ‘dots,’ for you have sought them in various places, – Thuillier’s house, for instance, or, to use your own expression, that of a strumpet whom you scarcely knew. I have therefore supposed you would accept at my hands a very rich young woman, especially as her infirmity is declared by the best physicians to be curable; whereas you can never cure Monsieur and Mademoiselle Thuillier, the one of being a fool, the other of being a fury, any more than you could cure Madame Komorn of being a woman of very medium virtue and extremely giddy.”

“It may suit me,” replied la Peyrade, “to marry the daughter of a fool and a fury if I choose her, or I might become the husband of a clever coquette, if passion seized me, but the Queen of Sheba herself, if imposed upon me, neither you, monsieur, nor the ablest and most powerful man living could force me to accept.”

“Precisely; therefore it is to your own good sense and intelligence that I now address myself; but we have to come face to face with people in order to speak to them, you know. Now, then, let us look into your present situation, and don’t get angry if, like a surgeon who wants to cure his patient, I lay my hand mercilessly on wounds which have long tormented and harassed you. The first point to state is that the Celeste Colleville affair is at an end for you.”

“Why so?” demanded la Peyrade.

“Because I have just seen Thuillier and terrified him with the history of the misfortunes he has incurred, and those he will incur if he persists in the idea of giving you his goddaughter in marriage. He knows now that it was I who paralyzed Madame du Bruel’s kind offices in the matter of the cross; that I had his pamphlet seized; that I sent that Hungarian woman into his house to handle you all, as she did; and that my hand is opening fire in the ministerial journals, which will only increase from bad to worse, – not to speak of other machinations which will be directed against his candidacy. Therefore you see, my good friend, that not only have you no longer the credit in Thuillier’s eyes of being his great helper to that election, but that you actually block the way to his ambition. That is enough to prove to you that the side by which you have imposed yourself on that family – who have never sincerely liked or desired you – is now completely battered down and dismantled.”

“But to have done all that which you claim with such pretension, who are you?” demanded la Peyrade.

“I shall not say that you are very inquisitive, for I intend to answer your question later; but for the present let us continue, if you please, the autopsy of your existence, dead to-day, but which I propose to resuscitate gloriously. You are twenty-eight years old, and you have begun a career in which I shall not allow you to make another step. A few days hence the Council of the order of barristers will assemble and will censure, more or less severely, your conduct in the matter of the property you placed with such candor in Thuillier’s hands. Do not deceive yourself; censure from that quarter (and I mention only your least danger) is as fatal to a barrister as being actually disbarred.”

“And it is to your kind offices, no doubt,” said la Peyrade, “that I shall owe that precious result?”

“Yes, I may boast of it,” replied du Portail, “for, in order to tow you into port it has been necessary to strip you of your rigging; unless that were done, you would always have tried to navigate under your own sails the bourgeois shoals that you are now among.”

Seeing that he, undoubtedly, had to do with a strong hand, la Peyrade thought best to modify his tone; and so, with a more circumspect air, he said: —

“You will allow me, monsieur, to reserve my acknowledgments until I receive some fuller explanation.”

“Here you are, then,” continued du Portail, “at twenty-eight years of age, without a penny, virtually without a profession; with antecedents that are very – middling; with associates like Monsieur Dutocq and the courageous Cerizet; owing to Mademoiselle Thuillier ten thousand francs, and to Madame Lambert twenty-five thousand, which you are no doubt extremely desirous to return to her; and finally, this marriage, your last hope, your sheet-anchor, has just become an utter impossibility. Between ourselves, if I have something reasonable to propose to you, do you not think that you had much better place yourself at my disposal?”

“I have time enough to prove that your opinion is mistaken,” returned la Peyrade; “and I shall not form any resolutions so long as the designs you choose to have upon me are not more fully explained.”

“You were spoken to, at my instigation, about a marriage,” resumed du Portail. “This marriage, as I think, is closely connected with a past existence from which a certain hereditary or family duty has devolved upon you. Do you know what that uncle of yours, to whom you applied in 1829, was doing in Paris? In your family he was thought to be a millionaire; and, dying suddenly, you remember, before you got to him, he did not leave enough for his burial; a pauper’s grave was all that remained to him.”

“Did you know him?” asked la Peyrade.

“He was my oldest and dearest friend,” replied du Portail.

“If that is so,” said la Peyrade, hastily, “a sum of two thousand francs, which I received on my arrival in Paris from some unknown source – ”

“Came from me,” replied du Portail. “Unfortunately, engaged at the time in a rush of important affairs, which you shall hear of later, I could not immediately follow up the benevolent interest I felt in you for your uncle’s sake; this explains why I left you in the straw of a garret, where you came, like a medlar, to that maturity of ruin which brought you under the hand of a Dutocq and a Cerizet.”

“I am none the less grateful to you, monsieur,” said la Peyrade; “and if I had known you were that generous protector, whom I was never able to discover, I should have been the first to seek occasion to meet you and to thank you.”

“A truce to compliments,” said du Portail; “and, to come at once to the serious side of our present conference, what should you say if I told you that this uncle, whose protection and assistance you came to Paris to obtain, was an agent of that occult power which has always been the theme of feeble ridicule and the object of silly prejudice?”

“I do not seize your meaning,” said la Peyrade, with uneasy curiosity; “may I ask you to be more precise?”

“For example, I will suppose,” continued du Portail, “that your uncle, if still living, were to say to you to-day: ‘You are seeking fortune and influence, my good nephew; you want to rise above the crowd and to play your part in all the great events of your time; you want employment for a keen, active mind, full of resources, and slightly inclined to intrigue; in short, you long to exert in some upper and elegant sphere that force of will and subtlety which at present you are wasting in the silly and useless manipulation of the most barren and tough-skinned animal on earth, to wit: a bourgeois. Well, then, lower your head, my fine nephew; enter with me through the little door which I will open to you; it gives admittance to a great house, often maligned, but better far than its reputation. That threshold once crossed, you can rise to the height of your natural genius, whatever its spark may be. Statesmen, kings even, will admit you to their most secret thoughts; you will be their occult collaborator, and none of the joys which money and the highest powers can bestow upon a man will be lacking to you.”