The Lesser Bourgeoisie

“The booby!” cried Cerizet, naively; “why, that very caution would make the man want to open it.”

“You are an able casuist,” said du Portail. “Well, an hour later, Charles Crochard, finding that nothing happened to him, returned to the church to obtain his deposit, but Toupillier was no longer there. You can imagine the anxiety with which Charles Crochard attended early mass the next day, and approached the giver of holy water, who was there, sure enough, attending to his functions. But night, they say, brings counsel; the worthy beggar audaciously declared that he had received no package, and did not know what his interlocutor meant.”

“And there was no possibility of arguing with him, for that would be exposure,” remarked Cerizet, who was not far from sympathizing in a trick so boldly played.

“No doubt,” resumed du Portail; “the robbery was already noised about, and Toupillier, who was a very able fellow, had calculated that Charles Crochard would not dare to publicly accuse him, for that would reveal the theft. In fact, on his trial Charles Crochard never said a word of his mishap, and during the six years he spent at the galleys (he was condemned to ten, but four were remitted) he did not open his lips to a single soul about the treachery of which he had been a victim.”

“That was pretty plucky,” said Cerizet; the tale excited him, and he showed openly that he saw the matter as an artist and a connoisseur.

“In that interval,” continued du Portail, “Madame Beaumesnil died, leaving her daughter a few fragments of a once great fortune, and the diamonds which the will expressly stated Lydie was to receive ‘in case they were recovered.’”

“Ha! ha!” exclaimed Cerizet, “bad for Toupillier, because, having to do with a man of your calibre – ”

“Charles Crochard’s first object on being liberated was vengeance on Toupillier, and his first step was to denounce him to the police as receiver of the stolen property. Taken in hand by the law, Toupillier defended himself with such singular good-humor, being able to show that no proof whatever existed against him, that the examining judge let him off. He lost his place, however, as giver of holy water, obtaining, with great difficulty, permission to beg at the door of the church. For my part, I was certain of his guilt; and I managed to have the closest watch kept upon him; though I relied far more upon myself. Being a man of means and leisure, I stuck, as you may say, to the skin of my thief, and did, in order to unmask him, one of the cleverest things of my career. He was living at that time in the rue du Coeur-Volant. I succeeded in becoming the tenant of the room adjoining his; and one night, through a gimlet hole I had drilled in the partition, I saw my man take the case of diamonds from a very cleverly contrived hiding-place. He sat for an hour gazing at them and fondling them; he made them sparkle in the light, he pressed them passionately to his lips. The man actually loved those diamonds for themselves, and had never thought of turning them to money.”

“I understand,” said Cerizet, – “a mania like that of Cardillac, the jeweller, which has now been dramatized.”

“That is just it,” returned du Portail; “the poor wretch was in love with that casket; so that when, shortly after, I entered his room and told him I knew all, he proposed to me to leave him the life use of what he called the consolation of his old age, pledging himself to make Mademoiselle de la Peyrade his sole heir, revealing to me at the same time the existence of a hoard of gold (to which he was adding every day), and also the possession of a house and an investment in the Funds.”

“If he made that proposal in good faith,” said Cerizet, “it was a desirable one. The interest of the capital sunk in the diamonds was more than returned by that from the other property.”

“You now see, my dear sir,” said du Portail, “that I was not mistaken in trusting him. All my precautions were well taken; I exacted that he should occupy a room in the house I lived in, where I could keep a close eye upon him. I assisted him in making that hiding-place, the secret of which you discovered so cleverly; but what you did not find out was that in touching the spring that opened the iron safe you rang a bell in my apartment, which warned me of any attempt that was made to remove our treasure.”

“Poor Madame Cardinal!” cried Cerizet, good-humoredly, “how far she was from suspecting it!”

“Now here’s the situation,” resumed du Portail. “On account of the interest I feel in the nephew of my old friend, and also, on account of the relationship, this marriage seems to me extremely desirable; in short, I unite Theodose to his cousin and her ‘dot.’ As it is possible that, considering the mental state of his future wife, Theodose may object to sharing my views, I have not thought it wise to make this proposal directly to himself. You have suddenly turned up upon my path; I know already that you are clever and wily, and that knowledge induces me to put this little matrimonial negotiation into your hands. Now, I think, you understand the matter thoroughly; speak to him of a fine girl, with one little drawback, but, on the other hand, a comfortable fortune. Do not name her to him; and come here and let me know how the proposal has been taken.”

“Your confidence delights me as much as it honors me,” replied Cerizet, “and I will justify it the best I can.”

“We must not expect too much,” said du Portail. “Refusal will be the first impulse of a man who has an affair on hand elsewhere; but we need not consider ourselves beaten. I shall not easily give up a plan which I know to be just, even if I push my zeal so far as to put la Peyrade under lock and key in Clichy. I am resolved not to take no for his answer to a proposal of which, in the end, he cannot fail to see the propriety. Therefore, in any case, buy up those notes from Monsieur Dutocq.”

“At par?” asked Cerizet.

“Yes, at par, if you cannot do better; we are not going to haggle over a few thousand francs; only, when this transaction is arranged, Monsieur Dutocq must pledge us either his assistance, or, at the very least, his neutrality. After what you have said of the other marriage, it is unnecessary for me to warn you that there is not a moment to lose in putting our irons into the fire.”

“Two days hence I have an appointment with la Peyrade,” said Cerizet. “We have a little matter of business of our own to settle. Don’t you think it would be best to wait till then, when I can introduce the proposal incidentally? In case of resistance, I think that arrangement would best conduce to OUR dignity.”

“So be it,” said du Portail; “it isn’t much of a delay. Remember, monsieur, that if you succeed you have, in place of a man able to bring you to a stern account for your imprudent assistance to Madame Cardinal, a greatly obliged person, who will be ready at all times to serve you, and whose influence is greater than is generally supposed.”

After these friendly words, the pair separated with a thoroughly good understanding, and well satisfied with each other.

CHAPTER XVII. IN WHICH THE LAMB DEVOURS THE WOLF

The evening before the day already agreed upon, Theodose received from Cerizet the following note: —

“To-morrow, lease or no lease, Rocher de Cancale, half-past six o’clock.”

As for Dutocq, Cerizet saw him every day, for he was still his copying clerk; he therefore gave him his invitation by word of mouth; but the attentive reader must remark a difference in the hour named: “Quarter-past-six, Rocher de Cancale,” said Cerizet. It was evident, therefore, that he wanted that fifteen minutes with Dutocq before the arrival of la Peyrade.

These minutes the usurer proposed to employ in jockeying Dutocq in the purchase of the notes; he fancied that if the proposition to buy them were suddenly put before him without the slightest preparation it might be more readily received. By not leaving the seller time to bethink himself, perhaps he might lead him to loosen his grasp, and the notes once bought below par, he could consider at his leisure whether to pocket the difference or curry favor with du Portail for the discount he had obtained. Let us say, moreover, that apart from self-interest, Cerizet would still have endeavored to scrape a little profit out of his friend; ‘twas an instinct and a need of his nature. He had as great a horror for straight courses as the lovers of English gardens show in the lines of their paths.

Dutocq, having still a portion of the cost of his practice to pay off, was forced to live very sparingly, so that a dinner at the Rocher de Cancale was something of an event in the economy of his straitened existence. He arrived, therefore, with that punctuality which testifies to an interest in the occasion, and precisely at a quarter past six he entered the private room of the restaurant where Cerizet awaited him.

“It is queer,” he said; “here we are returned to precisely the situation in which we began our business relationship with la Peyrade, – except, to be sure, that this present place of meeting of the three emperors is more comfortable; I prefer the Tilsit of the rue Montgorgeuil to the Tilsit of the Cheval Rouge.”

“Faith!” said Cerizet, “I don’t know that the results justify the change, for, to be frank, where are the profits to us in the scheme of our triumvirate?”

“But,” said Dutocq, “it was a bargain with a long time limit. It can’t be said that la Peyrade has lost much time in getting installed – forgive the pun – at the Thuilleries. The scamp has made his way pretty fast, you must own that.”

“Not so fast but what his marriage,” said Cerizet, “is at the present moment a very doubtful thing.”

“Doubtful!” cried Dutocq; “why doubtful?”

“Well, I am commissioned to propose to him another wife, and I’m not sure that any choice is left to him.”

“What the devil are you about, my dear fellow, lending your hand in this way to another marriage when you know we have a mortgage on the first?”

“One isn’t always master of circumstances, my friend; I saw at once when the new affair was laid before me that the one we had settled on must infallibly go by the board. Consequently, I’ve tried to work it round in our interests, yours and mine.”

“Ah ca! do you mean they are pulling caps for this Theodose? Who is the new match? Has she money?”

“The ‘dot’ is pretty good; quite as much as Mademoiselle Colleville’s.”

“Then I wouldn’t give a fig for it. La Peyrade has signed those notes and he will pay them.”

“Will he pay them? that’s the question. You are not a business man, neither is Theodose; it may come into his head to dispute the validity of those notes. What security have we that if the facts about their origin should come out, and the Thuillier marriage shouldn’t come off, the court of commerce mightn’t annul them as ‘obligations without cause.’ For my part, I should laugh at such a decision; I can stand it; and, moreover, my precautions are taken; but you, as clerk to a justice-of-peace, don’t you see that such an affair would give the chancellor a bone to pick with you?”

“But, my good fellow,” said Dutocq, with the ill-humor of a man who sees himself face to face with an argument he can’t refute, “you seem to have a mania for stirring up matters and meddling with – ”

“I tell you again,” said Cerizet, “this came to me; I didn’t seek it; but I saw at once that there was no use struggling against the influence that is opposing us; so I chose the course of saving ourselves by a sacrifice.”

“A sacrifice! what sort of sacrifice?”

“Parbleu! I’ve sold my share of those notes, leaving those who bought them to fight it out with Master barrister.”

“Who is the purchaser?”

“Who do you suppose would step into my shoes unless it were the persons who have an interest in this other marriage, and who want to hold a power over Theodose, and control him by force if necessary.”

“Then my share of the notes is equally important to them?”

“No doubt; but I couldn’t speak for you until I had consulted you.”

“What do they offer?”

“Hang it! my dear fellow, the same that I accepted. Knowing better than you the danger of their competition I sold out to them on very bad terms.”

“Well, but what are they, those terms?”

“I gave up my shares for fifteen thousand francs.”

“Come, come!” said Dutocq, shrugging his shoulders, “what you are after is to recover a loss (if you made it) by a commission on my share – and perhaps, after all, the whole thing is only a plot between you and la Peyrade – ”

“At any rate, my good friend, you don’t mince your words; an infamous thought comes into your head and you state it with charming frankness. Luckily you shall presently hear me make the proposal to Theodose, and you are clever enough to know by his manner if there has been any connivance between us.”

“So be it!” said Dutocq. “I withdraw the insinuation; but I must say your employers are pirates; I call their proposal throttling people. I have not, like you, something to fall back upon.”

“Well, you poor fellow, this is how I reasoned: I said to myself, That good Dutocq is terribly pressed for the last payment on his practice; this will give him enough to pay it off at one stroke; events have proved that there are great uncertainties about our Theodose-and-Thuillier scheme; here’s money down, live money, and therefore it won’t be so bad a bargain after all.”

“It is a loss of two-fifths!”

“Come,” said Cerizet, “you were talking just now of commissions. I see a means of getting one for you if you’ll engage to batter down this Colleville marriage. If you will cry it down as you have lately cried it up I shouldn’t despair of getting you a round twenty thousand out of the affair.”

“Then you think that this new proposal will not be agreeable to la Peyrade, – that he’ll reject it? Is it some heiress on whom he has already taken a mortgage?”

“All that I can tell you is that these people expect some difficulty in bringing the matter to a conclusion.”

“Well, I don’t desire better than to follow your lead and do what is disagreeable to la Peyrade; but five thousand francs – think of it! – it is too much to lose.”

At this moment the door opened, and a waiter ushered in the expected guest.

“You can serve dinner,” said Cerizet to the waiter; “we are all here.”

It was plain that Theodose was beginning to take wing toward higher social spheres; elegance was becoming a constant thought in his mind. He appeared in a dress suit and varnished shoes, whereas his two associates received him in frock-coats and muddy boots.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I think I am a little late, but that devil of a Thuillier is the most intolerable of human beings about a pamphlet I am concocting for him. I was unlucky enough to agree to correct the proofs with him, and over every paragraph there’s a fight. ‘What I can’t understand,’ he says, ‘the public can’t, either. I’m not a man of letters, but I’m a practical man’; and that’s the way we battle it, page after page. I thought the sitting this afternoon would never end.”

“How unreasonable you are, my dear fellow,” said Dutocq; “when a man wants to succeed he must have the courage to make sacrifices. Once married, you can lift your head.”

“Ah, yes!” said la Peyrade with a sigh, “I’ll lift it; for since the day you made me eat this bread of anguish I’ve become terribly sick of it.”

“Cerizet,” said Dutocq, “has a plan that will feed you more succulently.”

Nothing more was said at the moment, for justice had to be done to the excellent fare ordered by Cerizet in honor of his coming lease. As usually happens at dinners where affairs are likely to be discussed, each man, with his mind full of them, took pains not to approach those topics, fearing to compromise his advantages by seeming eager; the conversation, therefore, continued for a long time on general subjects, and it was not until the dessert was served that Cerizet brought himself to ask la Peyrade what had been settled about the terms of his lease.

“Nothing, my friend,” replied Theodose.

“What! nothing? I certainly allowed you time enough to decide the matter.”

“Well, as to that, something is decided. There will not be any principal tenant at all; Mademoiselle Brigitte is going to let the house herself.”

“That’s a singular thing,” said Cerizet, stiffly. “After your agreement with me, I certainly did not expect such a result as this.”

“How can I help it, my dear fellow? I agreed with you, barring amendments on the other side; I wasn’t able to give another turn to the affair. In her natural character as a managing woman and a sample of perpetual motion, Brigitte has reflected that she might as well manage that house herself and put into her own pocket the profits you proposed to make. I said all I could about the cares and annoyances which she would certainly saddle upon herself. ‘Oh! nonsense!’ she said; ‘they’ll stir my blood and do my health good!’”

“It is pitiable!” said Cerizet. “That poor old maid will never know which end to take hold of; she doesn’t imagine what it is to have an empty house, and which must be filled with tenants from garret to cellar.”

“I plied her with all those arguments,” replied la Peyrade; “but I couldn’t move her resolution. Don’t you see, my dear democrats, you stirred up the revolution of ‘89; you thought to make a fine speculation in dethroning the noble by the bourgeois, and the end of it is you are shoved out yourselves. This looks like paradox; but you’ve found out now that the peasant and clodhopper isn’t malleable; he can’t be forced down and kept under like the noble. The aristocracy, on behalf of its dignity, would not condescend to common cares, and was therefore dependent on a crowd of plebeian servitors to whom it had to trust for three-fourths of the actions of its own life. That was the reign of stewards and bailiffs, wily fellows, into whose hands the interests of the great families passed, and who fed and grew fat on the parings of the great fortunes they managed. But now-a-days, utilitarian theories, as they call them, have come to the fore, – ‘We are never so well served as by ourselves,’ ‘There’s no shame in attending to one’s own business,’ and many other bourgeois maxims which have suppressed the role of intermediaries. Why shouldn’t Mademoiselle Brigitte Thuillier manage her own house when dukes and peers go in person to the Bourse, where such men sign their own leases and read the deeds before they sign them, and go themselves to the notary, whom, in former days, they considered a servant.”

During this time Cerizet had time to recover from the blow he had just received squarely in the face, and to think of the transition he had to make from one set of interests to the other, of which he was now the agent.

“What you are declaiming there is all very clever,” he said, carelessly, “but the thing that proves to me our defeat is the fact that you are not on the terms with Mademoiselle Thuillier you would have us believe you are. She is slipping through your fingers; and I don’t think that marriage is anything like as certain as Dutocq and I have been fancying it was.”

“Well, no doubt,” said la Peyrade, “there are still some touches to be given to our sketch, but I believe it is well under way.”

“And I think, on the contrary, that you have lost ground; and the reason is simple: you have done those people an immense service; and that’s a thing never forgiven.”

“Well, we shall see,” said la Peyrade. “I have more than one hold upon them.”

“No, you are mistaken. You thought you did a brilliant thing in putting them on a pinnacle, but the fact is you emancipated them; they’ll keep you now at heel. The human heart, particularly the bourgeois heart, is made that way. If I were in your place I shouldn’t feel so sure of being on solid ground, and if something else turned up that offered me a good chance – ”

“What! just because I couldn’t get you the lease of that house do you want to knock everything to pieces?”

“No,” said Cerizet, “I am not looking at the matter in the light of my own interests; I don’t doubt that as a trustworthy friend you have done every imaginable thing to promote them; but I think the manner in which you have been shoved aside a very disturbing symptom. It even decides me to tell you something I did not intend to speak of; because, in my opinion, when persons start a course they ought to keep on steadily, looking neither forward nor back, and not allowing themselves to be diverted to other aspirations.”

“Ah ca!” cried la Peyrade, “what does all this verbiage mean? Have you anything to propose to me? What’s the price of it?”

“My dear Theodose,” said Cerizet, paying no attention to the impertinence, “you yourself can judge of the value of discovering a young girl, well brought-up, adorned with beauty and talents and a ‘dot’ equal to that of Celeste, which she has in her own right, plus fifty thousand francs’ worth of diamonds (as Mademoiselle Georges says on her posters in the provinces), and, moreover, – a fact which ought to strike the mind of an ambitious man, – a strong political influence, which she can use for a husband.”

“And this treasure you hold in your hand?” said la Peyrade, in a tone of incredulity.

“Better still, I am authorized to offer it to you; in fact, I might say that I am charged to do so.”

“My friend, you are poking fun at me; unless, indeed, this phoenix has some hideous or prohibitory defect.”

“Well, I’ll admit,” said Cerizet, “that there is a slight objection, not on the score of family, for, to tell the truth, the young woman has none – ”

“Ah!” said la Peyrade, “a natural child – Well, what next?”

“Next, she is not so very young, – something like twenty-nine or so; but there’s nothing easier than to turn an elderly girl into a young widow if you have imagination.”

“Is that all the venom in it?”

“Yes, all that is irreparable.”

“What do you mean by that? Is it a case of rhinoplasty?”

Addressed to Cerizet the word had an aggressive air, which, in fact, was noticeable since the beginning of the dinner in the whole manner and conversation of the barrister. But it did not suit the purpose of the negotiator to resent it.

“No,” he replied, “our nose is as well made as our foot and our waist; but we may, perhaps, have a slight touch of hysteria.”

“Oh! very good,” said la Peyrade; “and as from hysteria to insanity there is but a step – ”

“Well, yes,” interrupted Cerizet, hastily, “sorrows have affected our brain slightly; but the doctors are unanimous in their diagnosis; they all say that after the birth of the first child not a trace will remain of this little trouble.”

“I am willing to admit that doctors are infallible,” replied la Peyrade; “but, in spite of your discouragement, you must allow me, my friend, to persist in my suit to Mademoiselle Colleville. Perhaps it is ridiculous to confess it, but the truth is I am gradually falling in love with that little girl. It isn’t that her beauty is resplendent, or that the glitter of her ‘dot’ has dazzled me, but I find in that child a great fund of sound sense joined to simplicity; and, what to mind is of greater consequence, her sincere and solid piety attracts me; I think a husband ought to be very happy with her.”

“Yes,” said Cerizet, who, having been on the stage, may very well have known his Moliere, “this marriage will crown your wishes with all good; it will be filled with sweetness and with pleasures.”

The allusion to Tartuffe was keenly felt by la Peyrade, who took it up and said, hotly: —

“The contact with innocence will disinfect me of the vile atmosphere in which I have lived too long.”

“And you will pay your notes of hand,” added Cerizet, “which I advise you to do with the least possible delay; for Dutocq here was saying to me just now that he would like to see the color of your money.”

“I? not at all,” interposed Dutocq. “I think, on the contrary, that our friend has a right to the delay.”

“Well,” said la Peyrade, “I agree with Cerizet. I hold that the less a debt is due, and therefore the more insecure and open to contention it is, the sooner one ought to free one’s self by paying it.”

“But, my dear la Peyrade,” said Dutocq, “why take this bitter tone?”

Pulling from his pocket a portfolio, la Peyrade said: —

“Have you those notes with you, Dutocq?”

“Faith! no, my dear fellow,” replied Dutocq, “I don’t carry them about with me; besides, they are in Cerizet’s hands.”