A Start in Life

A Start in Life

by Honore de Balzac

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION

To Laure.

Let the brilliant mind that gave me the subject of this Scene

have the honor of it.

Her brother,

De Balzac

A START IN LIFE

CHAPTER I

THAT WHICH WAS LACKING TO PIERROTIN'S HAPPINESS

Railroads, in a future not far distant, must force certain industries

to disappear forever, and modify several others, more especially those

relating to the different modes of transportation in use around Paris.

Therefore the persons and things which are the elements of this Scene

will soon give to it the character of an archaeological work. Our

nephews ought to be enchanted to learn the social material of an epoch

which they will call the "olden time." The picturesque "coucous" which

stood on the Place de la Concorde, encumbering the Cours-la-Reine,--

coucous which had flourished for a century, and were still numerous in

1830, scarcely exist in 1842, unless on the occasion of some

attractive suburban solemnity, like that of the Grandes Eaux of

Versailles. In 1820, the various celebrated places called the

"Environs of Paris" did not all possess a regular stage-coach service.

Nevertheless, the Touchards, father and son, had acquired a monopoly

of travel and transportation to all the populous towns within a

radius of forty-five miles; and their enterprise constituted a fine

establishment in the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis. In spite of their

long-standing rights, in spite, too, of their efforts, their capital,

and all the advantages of a powerful centralization, the Touchard

coaches ("messageries") found terrible competition in the coucous for

all points with a circumference of fifteen or twenty miles. The

passion of the Parisian for the country is such that local enterprise

could successfully compete with the Lesser Stage company,--Petites

Messageries, the name given to the Touchard enterprise to distinguish

it from that of the Grandes Messageries of the rue Montmartre. At the

time of which we write, the Touchard success was stimulating

speculators. For every small locality in the neighborhood of Paris

there sprang up schemes of beautiful, rapid, and commodious vehicles,

departing and arriving in Paris at fixed hours, which produced,

naturally, a fierce competition. Beaten on the long distances of

twelve to eighteen miles, the coucou came down to shorter trips, and

so lived on for several years. At last, however, it succumbed to

omnibuses, which demonstrated the possibility of carrying eighteen

persons in a vehicle drawn by two horses. To-day the coucous--if by

chance any of those birds of ponderous flight still linger in the

second-hand carriage-shops--might be made, as to its structure and

arrangement, the subject of learned researches comparable to those of

Cuvier on the animals discovered in the chalk pits of Montmartre.

These petty enterprises, which had struggled since 1822 against the

Touchards, usually found a strong foothold in the good-will and

sympathy of the inhabitants of the districts which they served. The

person undertaking the business as proprietor and conductor was nearly

always an inn-keeper along the route, to whom the beings, things, and

interests with which he had to do were all familiar. He could execute

commissions intelligently; he never asked as much for his little

stages, and therefore obtained more custom than the Touchard coaches.

He managed to elude the necessity of a custom-house permit. If need

were, he was willing to infringe the law as to the number of

passengers he might carry. In short, he possessed the affection of the

masses; and thus it happened that whenever a rival came upon the same

route, if his days for running were not the same as those of the

coucou, travellers would put off their journey to make it with their

long-tried coachman, although his vehicle and his horses might be in a

far from reassuring condition.

One of the lines which the Touchards, father and son, endeavored to

monopolize, and the one most stoutly disputed (as indeed it still is),

is that of Paris to Beaumont-sur-Oise,--a line extremely profitable,

for three rival enterprises worked it in 1822. In vain the Touchards

lowered their price; in vain they constructed better coaches and

started oftener. Competition still continued, so productive is a line

on which are little towns like Saint-Denis and Saint-Brice, and

villages like Pierrefitte, Groslay, Ecouen, Poncelles, Moisselles,

Monsoult, Maffliers, Franconville, Presles, Nointel, Nerville, etc.

The Touchard coaches finally extended their route to Chambly; but

competition followed. To-day the Toulouse, a rival enterprise, goes as

far as Beauvais.

Along this route, which is that toward England, there lies a road

which turns off at a place well-named, in view of its topography, The

Cave, and leads through a most delightful valley in the basin of the

Oise to the little town of Isle-Adam, doubly celebrated as the cradle

of the family, now extinct, of Isle-Adam, and also as the former

residence of the Bourbon-Contis. Isle-Adam is a little town flanked by

two large villages, Nogent and Parmain, both remarkable for splendid

quarries, which have furnished material for many of the finest

buildings in modern Paris and in foreign lands,--for the base and

capital of the columns of the Brussels theatre are of Nogent stone.

Though remarkable for its beautiful sites, for the famous chateaux

which princes, monks, and designers have built, such as Cassan, Stors,

Le Val, Nointel, Persan, etc., this region had escaped competition in

1822, and was reached by two coaches only, working more or less in

harmony.

This exception to the rule of rivalry was founded on reasons that are

easy to understand. From the Cave, the point on the route to England

where a paved road (due to the luxury of the Princes of Conti) turned

off to Isle-Adam, the distance is six miles. No speculating enterprise

would make such a detour, for Isle-Adam was the terminus of the road,

which did not go beyond it. Of late years, another road has been made

between the valley of Montmorency and the valley of the Oise; but in

1822 the only road which led to Isle-Adam was the paved highway of the

Princes of Conti. Pierrotin and his colleague reigned, therefore, from

Paris to Isle-Adam, beloved by every one along the way. Pierrotin's

vehicle, together with that of his comrade, and Pierrotin himself,

were so well known that even the inhabitants on the main road as far

as the Cave were in the habit of using them; for there was always

better chance of a seat to be had than in the Beaumont coaches, which

were almost always full. Pierrotin and his competitor were on the best

of terms. When the former started from Isle-Adam, the latter was

returning from Paris, and vice versa.

It is unnecessary to speak of the rival. Pierrotin possessed the

sympathies of his region; besides, he is the only one of the two who

appears in this veracious narrative. Let it suffice you to know that

the two coach proprietors lived under a good understanding, rivalled

each other loyally, and obtained customers by honorable proceedings.

In Paris they used, for economy's sake, the same yard, hotel, and

stable, the same coach-house, office, and clerk. This detail is alone

sufficient to show that Pierrotin and his competitor were, as the

popular saying is, "good dough." The hotel at which they put up in

Paris, at the corner of the rue d'Enghien, is still there, and is

called the "Lion d'Argent." The proprietor of the establishment, which

from time immemorial had lodged coachmen and coaches, drove himself

for the great company of Daumartin, which was so firmly established

that its neighbors, the Touchards, whose place of business was

directly opposite, never dreamed of starting a rival coach on the

Daumartin line.

Though the departures for Isle-Adam professed to take place at a fixed

hour, Pierrotin and his co-rival practised an indulgence in that

respect which won for them the grateful affection of the country-

people, and also violent remonstrances on the part of strangers

accustomed to the regularity of the great lines of public conveyances.

But the two conductors of these vehicles, which were half diligence,

half coucou, were invariably defended by their regular customers. The

afternoon departure at four o'clock usually lagged on till half-past,

while that of the morning, fixed for eight o'clock, was seldom known

to take place before nine. In this respect, however, the system was

elastic. In summer, that golden period for the coaching business, the

rule of departure, rigorous toward strangers, was often relaxed for

country customers. This method not infrequently enabled Pierrotin to

pocket two fares for one place, if a countryman came early and wanted

a seat already booked and paid for by some "bird of passage" who was,

unluckily for himself, a little late. Such elasticity will certainly

not commend itself to purists in morality; but Pierrotin and his

colleague justified it on the varied grounds of "hard times," of their

losses during the winter months, of the necessity of soon getting

better coaches, and of the duty of keeping exactly to the rules

written on the tariff, copies of which were, however, never shown,

unless some chance traveller was obstinate enough to demand it.

Pierrotin, a man about forty years of age, was already the father of a

family. Released from the cavalry on the great disbandment of 1815,

the worthy fellow had succeeded his father, who for many years had

driven a coucou of capricious flight between Paris and Isle-Adam.

Having married the daughter of a small inn-keeper, he enlarged his

business, made it a regular service, and became noted for his

intelligence and a certain military precision. Active and decided in

his ways, Pierrotin (the name seems to have been a sobriquet)

contrived to give, by the vivacity of his countenance, an expression

of sly shrewdness to his ruddy and weather-stained visage which

suggested wit. He was not without that facility of speech which is

acquired chiefly through "seeing life" and other countries. His voice,

by dint of talking to his horses and shouting "Gare!" was rough; but

he managed to tone it down with the bourgeois. His clothing, like that

of all coachmen of the second class, consisted of stout boots, heavy

with nails, made at Isle-Adam, trousers of bottle-green velveteen,

waistcoat of the same, over which he wore, while exercising his

functions, a blue blouse, ornamented on the collar, shoulder-straps

and cuffs, with many-colored embroidery. A cap with a visor covered

his head. His military career had left in Pierrotin's manners and

customs a great respect for all social superiority, and a habit of

obedience to persons of the upper classes; and though he never

willingly mingled with the lesser bourgeoisie, he always respected

women in whatever station of life they belonged. Nevertheless, by dint

of "trundling the world,"--one of his own expressions,--he had come to

look upon those he conveyed as so many walking parcels, who required

less care than the inanimate ones,--the essential object of a coaching

business.

Warned by the general movement which, since the Peace, was

revolutionizing his calling, Pierrotin would not allow himself to be

outdone by the progress of new lights. Since the beginning of the

summer season he had talked much of a certain large coach, ordered

from Farry, Breilmann, and Company, the best makers of diligences,--a

purchase necessitated by an increasing influx of travellers.

Pierrotin's present establishment consisted of two vehicles. One,

which served in winter, and the only one he reported to the tax-

gatherer, was the coucou which he inherited from his father. The

rounded flanks of this vehicle allowed him to put six travellers on

two seats, of metallic hardness in spite of the yellow Utrecht velvet

with which they were covered. These seats were separated by a wooden

bar inserted in the sides of the carriage at the height of the

travellers' shoulders, which could be placed or removed at will. This

bar, specially covered with velvet (Pierrotin called it "a back"), was

the despair of the passengers, from the great difficulty they found in

placing and removing it. If the "back" was difficult and even painful

to handle, that was nothing to the suffering caused to the omoplates

when the bar was in place. But when it was left to lie loose across

the coach, it made both ingress and egress extremely perilous,

especially to women.

Though each seat of this vehicle, with rounded sides like those of a

pregnant woman, could rightfully carry only three passengers, it was

not uncommon to see eight persons on the two seats jammed together

like herrings in a barrel. Pierrotin declared that the travellers were

far more comfortable in a solid, immovable mass; whereas when only

three were on a seat they banged each other perpetually, and ran much

risk of injuring their hats against the roof by the violent jolting of

the roads. In front of the vehicle was a wooden bench where Pierrotin

sat, on which three travellers could perch; when there, they went, as

everybody knows, by the name of "rabbits." On certain trips Pierrotin

placed four rabbits on the bench, and sat himself at the side, on a

sort of box placed below the body of the coach as a foot-rest for the

rabbits, which was always full of straw, or of packages that feared no

damage. The body of this particular coucou was painted yellow,

embellished along the top with a band of barber's blue, on which could

be read, on the sides, in silvery white letters, "Isle-Adam, Paris,"

and across the back, "Line to Isle-Adam."

Our descendants will be mightily mistaken if they fancy that thirteen

persons including Pierrotin were all that this vehicle could carry. On

great occasions it could take three more in a square compartment

covered with an awning, where the trunks, cases, and packages were

piled; but the prudent Pierrotin only allowed his regular customers to

sit there, and even they were not allowed to get in until at some

distance beyond the "barriere." The occupants of the "hen-roost" (the

name given by conductors to this section of their vehicles) were made

to get down outside of every village or town where there was a post of

gendarmerie; the overloading forbidden by law, "for the safety of

passengers," being too obvious to allow the gendarme on duty--always a

friend to Pierrotin--to avoid the necessity of reporting this flagrant

violation of the ordinances. Thus on certain Saturday nights and

Monday mornings, Pierrotin's coucou "trundled" fifteen travellers; but

on such occasions, in order to drag it along, he gave his stout old

horse, called Rougeot, a mate in the person of a little beast no

bigger than a pony, about whose merits he had much to say. This little

horse was a mare named Bichette; she ate little, she was spirited, she

was indefatigable, she was worth her weight in gold.

"My wife wouldn't give her for that fat lazybones of a Rougeot!" cried

Pierrotin, when some traveller would joke him about his epitome of a

horse.

The difference between this vehicle and the other consisted chiefly in

the fact that the other was on four wheels. This coach, of comical

construction, called the "four-wheel-coach," held seventeen

travellers, though it was bound not to carry more than fourteen. It

rumbled so noisily that the inhabitants of Isle-Adam frequently said,

"Here comes Pierrotin!" when he was scarcely out of the forest which

crowns the slope of the valley. It was divided into two lobes, so to

speak: one, called the "interior," contained six passengers on two

seats; the other, a sort of cabriolet constructed in front, was called

the "coupe." This coupe was closed in with very inconvenient and

fantastic glass sashes, a description of which would take too much

space to allow of its being given here. The four-wheeled coach was

surmounted by a hooded "imperial," into which Pierrotin managed to

poke six passengers; this space was inclosed by leather curtains.

Pierrotin himself sat on an almost invisible seat perched just below

the sashes of the coupe.

The master of the establishment paid the tax which was levied upon all

public conveyances on his coucou only, which was rated to carry six

persons; and he took out a special permit each time that he drove the

four-wheeler. This may seem extraordinary in these days, but when the

tax on vehicles was first imposed, it was done very timidly, and such

deceptions were easily practised by the coach proprietors, always

pleased to "faire la queue" (cheat of their dues) the government

officials, to use the argot of their vocabulary. Gradually the greedy

Treasury became severe; it forced all public conveyances not to roll

unless they carried two certificates,--one showing that they had been

weighed, the other that their taxes were duly paid. All things have

their salad days, even the Treasury; and in 1822 those days still

lasted. Often in summer, the "four-wheel-coach," and the coucou

journeyed together, carrying between them thirty-two passengers,

though Pierrotin was only paying a tax on six. On these specially

lucky days the convoy started from the faubourg Saint-Denis at half-

past four o'clock in the afternoon, and arrived gallantly at Isle-Adam

by ten at night. Proud of this service, which necessitated the hire of

an extra horse, Pierrotin was wont to say:--

"We went at a fine pace!"

But in order to do the twenty-seven miles in five hours with his

caravan, he was forced to omit certain stoppages along the road,--at

Saint-Brice, Moisselles, and La Cave.

The hotel du Lion d'Argent occupies a piece of land which is very deep

for its width. Though its frontage has only three or four windows on

the faubourg Saint-Denis, the building extends back through a long

court-yard, at the end of which are the stables, forming a large house

standing close against the division wall of the adjoining property.

The entrance is through a sort of passage-way beneath the floor of the

second story, in which two or three coaches had room to stand. In 1822

the offices of all the lines of coaches which started from the Lion

d'Argent were kept by the wife of the inn-keeper, who had as many

books as there were lines. She received the fares, booked the

passengers, and stowed away, good-naturedly, in her vast kitchen the

various packages and parcels to be transported. Travellers were

satisfied with this easy-going, patriarchal system. If they arrived

too soon, they seated themselves beneath the hood of the huge kitchen

chimney, or stood within the passage-way, or crossed to the Cafe de

l'Echiquier, which forms the corner of the street so named.

In the early days of the autumn of 1822, on a Saturday morning,

Pierrotin was standing, with his hands thrust into his pockets through

the apertures of his blouse, beneath the porte-cochere of the Lion

d'Argent, whence he could see, diagonally, the kitchen of the inn, and

through the long court-yard to the stables, which were defined in

black at the end of it. Daumartin's diligence had just started,

plunging heavily after those of the Touchards. It was past eight

o'clock. Under the enormous porch or passage, above which could be

read on a long sign, "Hotel du Lion d'Argent," stood the stablemen and

porters of the coaching-lines watching the lively start of the

vehicles which deceives so many travellers, making them believe that

the horses will be kept to that vigorous gait.

"Shall I harness up, master?" asked Pierrotin's hostler, when there

was nothing more to be seen along the road.

"It is a quarter-past eight, and I don't see any travellers," replied

Pierrotin. "Where have they poked themselves? Yes, harness up all the

same. And there are no parcels either! Twenty good Gods! a fine day

like this, and I've only four booked! A pretty state of things for a

Saturday! It is always the same when you want money! A dog's life, and

a dog's business!"

"If you had more, where would you put them? There's nothing left but

the cabriolet," said the hostler, intending to soothe Pierrotin.

"You forget the new coach!" cried Pierrotin.

"Have you really got it?" asked the man, laughing, and showing a set

of teeth as white and broad as almonds.

"You old good-for-nothing! It starts to-morrow, I tell you; and I want

at least eighteen passengers for it."

"Ha, ha! a fine affair; it'll warm up the road," said the hostler.

"A coach like that which runs to Beaumont, hey? Flaming! painted red

and gold to make Touchard burst with envy! It takes three horses! I

have bought a mate for Rougeot, and Bichette will go finely in

unicorn. Come, harness up!" added Pierrotin, glancing out towards the

street, and stuffing the tobacco into his clay pipe. "I see a lady and

lad over there with packages under their arms; they are coming to the

Lion d'Argent, for they've turned a deaf ear to the coucous. Tiens,

tiens! seems to me I know that lady for an old customer."

"You've often started empty, and arrived full," said his porter, still

by way of consolation.

"But no parcels! Twenty good Gods! What a fate!"

And Pierrotin sat down on one of the huge stone posts which protected

the walls of the building from the wheels of the coaches; but he did

so with an anxious, reflective air that was not habitual with him.

This conversation, apparently insignificant, had stirred up cruel

anxieties which were slumbering in his breast. What could there be to

trouble the heart of Pierrotin in a fine new coach? To shine upon "the

road," to rival the Touchards, to magnify his own line, to carry

passengers who would compliment him on the conveniences due to the

progress of coach-building, instead of having to listen to perpetual

complaints of his "sabots" (tires of enormous width),--such was

Pierrotin's laudable ambition; but, carried away with the desire to

outstrip his comrade on the line, hoping that the latter might some

day retire and leave to him alone the transportation to Isle-Adam, he

had gone too far. The coach was indeed ordered from Barry, Breilmann,

and Company, coach-builders, who had just substituted square English

springs for those called "swan-necks," and other old-fashioned French

contrivances. But these hard and distrustful manufacturers would only

deliver over the diligence in return for coin. Not particularly

pleased to build a vehicle which would be difficult to sell if it

remained upon their hands, these long-headed dealers declined to

undertake it at all until Pierrotin had made a preliminary payment of

two thousand francs. To satisfy this precautionary demand, Pierrotin

had exhausted all his resources and all his credit. His wife, his

father-in-law, and his friends had bled. This superb diligence he had

been to see the evening before at the painter's; all it needed now was

to be set a-rolling, but to make it roll, payment in full must, alas!

be made.

Now, a thousand francs were lacking to Pierrotin, and where to get

them he did not know. He was in debt to the master of the Lion

d'Argent; he was in danger of his losing his two thousand francs

already paid to the coach-builder, not counting five hundred for the

mate to Rougeot, and three hundred for new harnesses, on which he had

a three-months' credit. Driven by the fury of despair and the madness

of vanity, he had just openly declared that the new coach was to start

on the morrow. By offering fifteen hundred francs, instead of the two

thousand five hundred still due, he was in hopes that the softened

carriage-builders would give him his coach. But after a few moments'

meditation, his feelings led him to cry out aloud:--

"No! they're dogs! harpies! Suppose I appeal to Monsieur Moreau, the

steward at Presles? he is such a kind man," thought Pierrotin, struck

with a new idea. "Perhaps he would take my note for six months."

At this moment a footman in livery, carrying a leather portmanteau and

coming from the Touchard establishment, where he had gone too late to

secure places as far as Chambly, came up and said:--

"Are you Pierrotin?"

"Say on," replied Pierrotin.

"If you would wait a quarter of an hour, you could take my master. If

not, I'll carry back the portmanteau and try to find some other

conveyance."

"I'll wait two, three quarters, and throw a little in besides, my

lad," said Pierrotin, eyeing the pretty leather trunk, well buckled,

and bearing a brass plate with a coat of arms.

"Very good; then take this," said the valet, ridding his shoulder of

the trunk, which Pierrotin lifted, weighed, and examined.

"Here," he said to his porter, "wrap it up carefully in soft hay and

put it in the boot. There's no name upon it," he added.

"Monseigneur's arms are there," replied the valet.

"Monseigneur! Come and take a glass," said Pierrotin, nodding toward

the Cafe de l'Echiquier, whither he conducted the valet. "Waiter, two

absinthes!" he said, as he entered. "Who is your master? and where is

he going? I have never seen you before," said Pierrotin to the valet

as they touched glasses.

"There's a good reason for that," said the footman. "My master only

goes into your parts about once a year, and then in his own carriage.

He prefers the valley d'Orge, where he has the most beautiful park in

the neighborhood of Paris, a perfect Versailles, a family estate of

which he bears the name. Don't you know Monsieur Moreau?"

"The steward of Presles?"

"Yes. Monsieur le Comte is going down to spend a couple of days with

him."

"Ha! then I'm to carry Monsieur le Comte de Serizy!" cried the coach-

proprietor.

"Yes, my land, neither more nor less. But listen! here's a special

order. If you have any of the country neighbors in your coach you are

not to call him Monsieur le comte; he wants to travel 'en cognito,'

and told me to be sure to say he would pay a handsome pourboire if he

was not recognized."

"So! Has this secret journey anything to do with the affair which Pere

Leger, the farmer at the Moulineaux, came to Paris the other day to

settle?"

"I don't know," replied the valet, "but the fat's in the fire. Last

night I was sent to the stable to order the Daumont carriage to be

ready to go to Presles at seven this morning. But when seven o'clock

came, Monsieur le comte countermanded it. Augustin, his valet de

chambre, attributes the change to the visit of a lady who called last

night, and again this morning,--he thought she came from the country."

"Could she have told him anything against Monsieur Moreau?--the best

of men, the most honest of men, a king of men, hey! He might have made

a deal more than he has out of his position, if he'd chosen; I can

tell you that."

"Then he was foolish," answered the valet, sententiously.

"Is Monsieur le Serizy going to live at Presles at last?" asked

Pierrotin; "for you know they have just repaired and refurnished the

chateau. Do you think it is true he has already spent two hundred

thousand francs upon it?"

"If you or I had half what he has spent upon it, you and I would be

rich bourgeois. If Madame la comtesse goes there--ha! I tell you what!

no more ease and comfort for the Moreaus," said the valet, with an air

of mystery.

"He's a worthy man, Monsieur Moreau," remarked Pierrotin, thinking of

the thousand francs he wanted to get from the steward. "He is a man

who makes others work, but he doesn't cheapen what they do; and he

gets all he can out of the land--for his master. Honest man! He often

comes to Paris and gives me a good fee: he has lots of errands for me

to do in Paris; sometimes three or four packages a day,--either from

monsieur or madame. My bill for cartage alone comes to fifty francs a

month, more or less. If madame does set up to be somebody, she's fond

of her children; and it is I who fetch them from school and take them

back; and each time she gives me five francs,--a real great lady

couldn't do better than that. And every time I have any one in the

coach belonging to them or going to see them, I'm allowed to drive up

to the chateau,--that's all right, isn't it?"

"They say Monsieur Moreau wasn't worth three thousand francs when

Monsieur le comte made him steward of Presles," said the valet.

"Well, since 1806, there's seventeen years, and the man ought to have

made something at any rate."

"True," said the valet, nodding. "Anyway, masters are very annoying;

and I hope, for Moreau's sake, that he has made butter for his bread."

"I have often been to your house in the rue de la Chaussee d'Antin to

carry baskets of game," said Pierrotin, "but I've never had the

advantage, so far of seeing either monsieur or madame."

"Monsieur le comte is a good man," said the footman, confidentially.

"But if he insists on your helping to keep up his cognito there's

something in the wind. At any rate, so we think at the house; or else,

why should he countermand the Daumont,--why travel in a coucou? A peer

of France might afford to hire a cabriolet to himself, one would

think."

"A cabriolet would cost him forty francs to go there and back; for let

me tell you, if you don't know it, that road was only made for

squirrels,--up-hill and down, down-hill and up!" said Pierrotin. "Peer

of France or bourgeois, they are all looking after the main chance,

and saving their money. If this journey concerns Monsieur Moreau,

faith, I'd be sorry any harm should come to him! Twenty good Gods!

hadn't I better find some way of warning him?--for he's a truly good

man, a kind man, a king of men, hey!"

"Pooh! Monsieur le comte thinks everything of Monsieur Moreau,"

replied the valet. "But let me give you a bit of good advice. Every

man for himself in this world. We have enough to do to take care of

ourselves. Do what Monsieur le comte asks you to do, and all the more

because there's no trifling with him. Besides, to tell the truth, the

count is generous. If you oblige him so far," said the valet, pointing

half-way down his little finger, "he'll send you on as far as that,"

stretching out his arm to its full length.

This wise reflection, and the action that enforced it, had the effect,

coming from a man who stood as high as second valet to the Comte de

Serizy, of cooling the ardor of Pierrotin for the steward of Presles.

"Well, adieu, Monsieur Pierrotin," said the valet.

A glance rapidly cast on the life of the Comte de Serizy, and on that

of his steward, is here necessary in order to fully understand the

little drama now about to take place in Pierrotin's vehicle.

CHAPTER II

THE STEWARD IN DANGER

Monsieur Huguet de Serisy descends in a direct line from the famous

president Huguet, ennobled under Francois I.

This family bears: party per pale or and sable, an orle counterchanged

and two lozenges counterchanged, with: "i, semper melius eris,"--a

motto which, together with the two distaffs taken as supporters,

proves the modesty of the burgher families in the days when the Orders

held their allotted places in the State; and the naivete of our

ancient customs by the pun on "eris," which word, combined with the

"i" at the beginning and the final "s" in "melius," forms the name

(Serisy) of the estate from which the family take their title.

The father of the present count was president of a parliament before

the Revolution. He himself a councillor of State at the Grand Council

of 1787, when he was only twenty-two years of age, was even then

distinguished for his admirable memoranda on delicate diplomatic

matters. He did not emigrate during the Revolution, and spent that

period on his estate of Serizy near Arpajon, where the respect in

which his father was held protected him from all danger. After

spending several years in taking care of the old president, who died

in 1794, he was elected about that time to the Council of the Five

Hundred, and accepted those legislative functions to divert his mind

from his grief. After the 18th Brumaire, Monsieur de Serizy became,

like so many other of the old parliamentary families, an object of the

First Consul's blandishment. He was appointed to the Council of State,

and received one of the most disorganized departments of the

government to reconstruct. This scion of an old historical family

proved to be a very active wheel in the grand and magnificent

organization which we owe to Napoleon.

The councillor of State was soon called from his particular

administration to a ministry. Created count and senator by the

Emperor, he was made proconsul to two kingdoms in succession. In 1806,

when forty years of age, he married the sister of the ci-devant

Marquis de Ronquerolles, the widow at twenty of Gaubert, one of the

most illustrious of the Republican generals, who left her his whole

property. This marriage, a suitable one in point of rank, doubled the

already considerable fortune of the Comte de Serizy, who became

through his wife the brother-in-law of the ci-devant Marquis de

Rouvre, made count and chamberlain by the Emperor.

In 1814, weary with constant toil, the Comte de Serizy, whose

shattered health required rest, resigned all his posts, left the

department at the head of which the Emperor had placed him, and came

to Paris, where Napoleon was compelled by the evidence of his eyes to

admit that the count's illness was a valid excuse, though at first

that UNFATIGUABLE master, who gave no heed to the fatigue of others,

was disposed to consider Monsieur de Serizy's action as a defection.

Though the senator was never in disgrace, he was supposed to have

reason to complain of Napoleon. Consequently, when the Bourbons

returned, Louis XVIII., whom Monsieur de Serizy held to be his

legitimate sovereign, treated the senator, now a peer of France, with

the utmost confidence, placed him in charge of his private affairs,

and appointed him one of his cabinet ministers. On the 20th of March,

Monsieur de Serizy did not go to Ghent. He informed Napoleon that he

remained faithful to the house of Bourbon; would not accept his

peerage during the Hundred Days, and passed that period on his estate

at Serizy.

After the second fall of the Emperor, he became once more a privy-

councillor, was appointed vice-president of the Council of State, and

liquidator, on behalf of France, of claims and indemnities demanded by

foreign powers. Without personal assumption, without ambition even, he

possessed great influence in public affairs. Nothing of importance was

done without consulting him; but he never went to court, and was

seldom seen in his own salons. This noble life, devoting itself from

its very beginning to work, had ended by becoming a life of incessant

toil. The count rose at all seasons by four o'clock in the morning,

and worked till mid-day, attended to his functions as peer of France

and vice-president of the Council of State in the afternoons, and went

to bed at nine o'clock. In recognition of such labor, the King had

made him a knight of his various Orders. Monsieur de Serizy had long

worn the grand cross of the Legion of honor; he also had the orders of

the Golden Fleece, of Saint-Andrew of Russia, that of the Prussian

Eagle, and nearly all the lesser Orders of the courts of Europe. No

man was less obvious, or more useful in the political world than he.

It is easy to understand that the world's honor, the fuss and feathers

of public favor, the glories of success were indifferent to a man of

this stamp; but no one, unless a priest, ever comes to life of this

kind without some serious underlying reason. His conduct had its

cause, and a cruel one.

In love with his wife before he married her, this passion had lasted

through all the secret unhappiness of his marriage with a widow,--a

woman mistress of herself before as well as after her second marriage,

and who used her liberty all the more freely because her husband

treated her with the indulgence of a mother for a spoilt child. His

constant toil served him as shield and buckler against pangs of heart

which he silenced with the care that diplomatists give to the keeping

of secrets. He knew, moreover, how ridiculous was jealousy in the eyes

of a society that would never have believed in the conjugal passion of

an old statesman. How happened it that from the earliest days of his

marriage his wife so fascinated him? Why did he suffer without

resistance? How was it that he dared not resist? Why did he let the

years go by and still hope on? By what means did this young and pretty

and clever woman hold him in bondage?

The answer to all these questions would require a long history, which

would injure our present tale. Let us only remark here that the

constant toil and grief of the count had unfortunately contributed not

a little to deprive him of personal advantages very necessary to a man

who attempts to struggle against dangerous comparisons. In fact, the

most cruel of the count's secret sorrows was that of causing

repugnance to his wife by a malady of the skin resulting solely from

excessive labor. Kind, and always considerate of the countess, he

allowed her to be mistress of herself and her home. She received all

Paris; she went into the country; she returned from it precisely as

though she were still a widow. He took care of her fortune and

supplied her luxury as a steward might have done. The countess had the

utmost respect for her husband. She even admired his turn of mind; she

knew how to make him happy by approbation; she could do what she

pleased with him by simply going to his study and talking for an hour

with him. Like the great seigneurs of the olden time, the count

protected his wife so loyally that a single word of disrespect said of

her would have been to him an unpardonable injury. The world admired

him for this; and Madame de Serizy owed much to it. Any other woman,

even though she came of a family as distinguished as the Ronquerolles,

might have found herself degraded in public opinion. The countess was

ungrateful, but she mingled a charm with her ingratitude. From time to

time she shed a balm upon the wounds of her husband's heart.

Let us now explain the meaning of this sudden journey, and the

incognito maintained by a minister of State.

A rich farmer of Beaumont-sur-Oise, named Leger, leased and cultivated

a farm, the fields of which projected into and greatly injured the

magnificent estate of the Comte de Serizy, called Presles. This farm

belonged to a burgher of Beaumont-sur-Oise, named Margueron. The lease

made to Leger in 1799, at a time when the great advance of agriculture

was not foreseen, was about to expire, and the owner of the farm

refused all offers from Leger to renew the lease. For some time past,

Monsieur de Serizy, wishing to rid himself of the annoyances and petty

disputes caused by the inclosure of these fields within his land, had

desired to buy the farm, having heard that Monsieur Margueron's chief

ambition was to have his only son, then a mere tax-gatherer, made

special collector of finances at Beaumont. The farmer, who knew he

could sell the fields piecemeal to the count at a high price, was

ready to pay Margueron even more than he expected from the count.

Thus matters stood when, two days earlier than that of which we write,

Monsieur de Serizy, anxious to end the matter, sent for his notary,

Alexandre Crottat, and his lawyer, Derville, to examine into all the

circumstances of the affair. Though Derville and Crottat threw some

doubt on the zeal of the count's steward (a disturbing letter from

whom had led to the consultation), Monsieur de Serizy defended Moreau,

who, he said, had served him faithfully for seventeen years.

"Very well!" said Derville, "then I advise your Excellency to go to

Presles yourself, and invite this Margueron to dinner. Crottat will

send his head-clerk with a deed of sale drawn up, leaving only the

necessary lines for description of property and titles in blank. Your

Excellency should take with you part of the purchase money in a check

on the Bank of France, not forgetting the appointment of the son to

the collectorship. If you don't settle the thing at once that farm

will slip through your fingers. You don't know, Monsieur le comte, the

trickery of these peasants. Peasants against diplomat, and the

diplomat succumbs."

Crottat agreed in this advice, which the count, if we may judge by the

valet's statements to Pierrotin, had adopted. The preceding evening he

had sent Moreau a line by the diligence to Beaumont, telling him to

invite Margueron to dinner in order that they might then and there

close the purchase of the farm of Moulineaux.

Before this matter came up, the count had already ordered the chateau

of Presles to be restored and refurnished, and for the last year,

Grindot, an architect then in fashion, was in the habit of making a

weekly visit. So, while concluding his purchase of the farm, Monsieur

de Serizy also intended to examine the work of restoration and the

effect of the new furniture. He intended all this to be a surprise to

his wife when he brought her to Presles, and with this idea in his

mind, he had put some personal pride and self-love into the work. How

came it therefore that the count, who intended in the evening to drive

to Presles openly in his own carriage, should be starting early the

next morning incognito in Pierrotin's coucou?

Here a few words on the life of the steward Moreau become

indispensable.

Moreau, steward of the state of Presles, was the son of a provincial

attorney who became during the Revolution syndic-attorney at

Versailles. In that position, Moreau the father had been the means of

almost saving both the lives and property of the Serizys, father and

son. Citizen Moreau belonged to the Danton party; Robespierre,

implacable in his hatreds, pursued him, discovered him, and finally

had him executed at Versailles. Moreau the son, heir to the doctrines

and friendships of his father, was concerned in one of the

conspiracies which assailed the First Consul on his accession to

power. At this crisis, Monsieur de Serizy, anxious to pay his debt of

gratitude, enabled Moreau, lying under sentence of death, to make his

escape; in 1804 he asked for his pardon, obtained it, offered him

first a place in his government office, and finally took him as

private secretary for his own affairs.

Some time after the marriage of his patron Moreau fell in love with

the countess's waiting-woman and married her. To avoid the annoyances

of the false position in which this marriage placed him (more than one

example of which could be seen at the imperial court), Moreau asked

the count to give him the management of the Presles estate, where his

wife could play the lady in a country region, and neither of them

would be made to suffer from wounded self-love. The count wanted a

trustworthy man at Presles, for his wife preferred Serizy, an estate

only fifteen miles from Paris. For three or four years Moreau had held

the key of the count's affairs; he was intelligent, and before the

Revolution he had studied law in his father's office; so Monsieur de

Serizy granted his request.

"You can never advance in life," he said to Moreau, "for you have

broken your neck; but you can be happy, and I will take care that you

are so."

He gave Moreau a salary of three thousand francs and his residence in

a charming lodge near the chateau, all the wood he needed from the

timber that was cut on the estate, oats, hay, and straw for two

horses, and a right to whatever he wanted of the produce of the

gardens. A sub-prefect is not as well provided for.

During the first eight years of his stewardship, Moreau managed the

estate conscientiously; he took an interest in it. The count, coming

down now and then to examine the property, pass judgment on what had

been done, and decide on new purchases, was struck with Moreau's

evident loyalty, and showed his satisfaction by liberal gifts.

But after the birth of Moreau's third child, a daughter, he felt

himself so securely settled in all his comforts at Presles that he

ceased to attribute to Monsieur de Serizy those enormous advantages.

About the year 1816, the steward, who until then had only taken what

he needed for his own use from the estate, accepted a sum of twenty-

five thousand francs from a wood-merchant as an inducement to lease to

the latter, for twelve years, the cutting of all the timber. Moreau

argued this: he could have no pension; he was the father of a family;

the count really owed him that sum as a gift after ten years'

management; already the legitimate possessor of sixty thousand francs

in savings, if he added this sum to that, he could buy a farm worth a

hundred and twenty-five thousand francs in Champagne, a township just

above Isle-Adam, on the right bank of the Oise. Political events

prevented both the count and the neighboring country-people from

becoming aware of this investment, which was made in the name of

Madame Moreau, who was understood to have inherited property from an

aunt of her father.

As soon as the steward had tasted the delightful fruit of the

possession of the property, he began, all the while maintaining toward

the world an appearance of the utmost integrity, to lose no occasion

of increasing his fortune clandestinely; the interests of his three

children served as a poultice to the wounds of his honor.

Nevertheless, we ought in justice to say that while he accepted casks

of wine, and took care of himself in all the purchases that he made

for the count, yet according to the terms of the Code he remained an

honest man, and no proof could have been found to justify an

accusation against him. According to the jurisprudence of the least

thieving cook in Paris, he shared with the count in the profits due to

his own capable management. This manner of swelling his fortune was

simply a case of conscience, that was all. Alert, and thoroughly

understanding the count's interests, Moreau watched for opportunities

to make good purchases all the more eagerly, because he gained a

larger percentage on them. Presles returned a revenue of seventy

thousand francs net. It was a saying of the country-side for a circuit

of thirty miles:--

"Monsieur de Serizy has a second self in Moreau."

Being a prudent man, Moreau invested yearly, after 1817, both his

profits and his salary on the Grand Livre, piling up his heap with the

utmost secrecy. He often refused proposals on the plea of want of

money; and he played the poor man so successfully with the count that

the latter gave him the means to send both his sons to the school

Henri IV. At the present moment Moreau was worth one hundred and

twenty thousand francs of capital invested in the Consolidated thirds,

now paying five per cent, and quoted at eighty francs. These carefully

hidden one hundred and twenty thousand francs, and his farm at

Champagne, enlarged by subsequent purchases, amounted to a fortune of

about two hundred and eighty thousand francs, giving him an income of

some sixteen thousand.

Such was the position of the steward at the time when the Comte de

Serizy desired to purchase the farm of Moulineaux,--the ownership of

which was indispensable to his comfort. This farm consisted of ninety-

six parcels of land bordering the estate of Presles, and frequently

running into it, producing the most annoying discussions as to the

trimming of hedges and ditches and the cutting of trees. Any other

than a cabinet minister would probably have had scores of lawsuits on

his hands. Pere Leger only wished to buy the property in order to sell

to the count at a handsome advance. In order to secure the exorbitant

sum on which his mind was set, the farmer had long endeavored to come

to an understanding with Moreau. Impelled by circumstances, he had,

only three days before this critical Sunday, had a talk with the

steward in the open field, and proved to him clearly that he (Moreau)

could make the count invest his money at two and a half per cent, and

thus appear to serve his patron's interests, while he himself pocketed

forty thousand francs which Leger offered him to bring about the

transaction.

"I tell you what," said the steward to his wife, as he went to bed

that night, "if I make fifty thousand francs out of the Moulineaux

affair,--and I certainly shall, for the count will give me ten

thousand as a fee,--we'll retire to Isle-Adam and live in the Pavillon

de Nogent."

This "pavillon" was a charming place, originally built by the Prince

de Conti for a mistress, and in it every convenience and luxury had

been placed.

"That will suit me," said his wife. "The Dutchman who lives there has

put it in good order, and now that he is obliged to return to India,

he would probably let us have it for thirty thousand francs."

"We shall be close to Champagne," said Moreau. "I am in hopes of

buying the farm and mill of Mours for a hundred thousand francs. That

would give us ten thousand a year in rentals. Nogent is one of the

most delightful residences in the valley; and we should still have an

income of ten thousand from the Grand-Livre."

"But why don't you ask for the post of juge-de-paix at Isle-Adam? That

would give us influence, and fifteen hundred a year salary."

"Well, I did think of it."

With these plans in mind, Moreau, as soon as he heard from the count

that he was coming to Presles, and wished him to invite Margueron to

dinner on Saturday, sent off an express to the count's head-valet,

inclosing a letter to his master, which the messenger failed to

deliver before Monsieur de Serizy retired at his usually early hour.

Augustin, however, placed it, according to custom in such cases, on

his master's desk. In this letter Moreau begged the count not to

trouble himself to come down, but to trust entirely to him. He added

that Margueron was no longer willing to sell the whole in one block,

and talked of cutting the farm up into a number of smaller lots. It

was necessary to circumvent this plan, and perhaps, added Moreau, it

might be best to employ a third party to make the purchase.

Everybody has enemies in this life. Now the steward and his wife had

wounded the feelings of a retired army officer, Monsieur de Reybert,

and his wife, who were living near Presles. From speeches like pin-

pricks, matters had advanced to dagger-thrusts. Monsieur de Reybert

breathed vengeance. He was determined to make Moreau lose his

situation and gain it himself. The two ideas were twins. Thus the

proceedings of the steward, spied upon for two years, were no secret

to Reybert. The same conveyance that took Moreau's letter to the count

conveyed Madame de Reybert, whom her husband despatched to Paris.

There she asked with such earnestness to see the count that although

she was sent away at nine o'clock, he having then gone to bed, she was

ushered into his study the next morning at seven.

"Monsieur," she said to the cabinet-minister, "we are incapable, my

husband and I, of writing anonymous letters, therefore I have come to

see you in person. I am Madame de Reybert, nee de Corroy. My husband

is a retired officer, with a pension of six hundred francs, and we

live at Presles, where your steward has offered us insult after

insult, although we are persons of good station. Monsieur de Reybert,

who is not an intriguing man, far from it, is a captain of artillery,

retired in 1816, having served twenty years,--always at a distance

from the Emperor, Monsieur le comte. You know of course how difficult

it is for soldiers who are not under the eye of their master to obtain

promotion,--not counting that the integrity and frankness of Monsieur

de Reybert were displeasing to his superiors. My husband has watched

your steward for the last three years, being aware of his dishonesty

and intending to have him lose his place. We are, as you see, quite

frank with you. Moreau has made us his enemies, and we have watched

him. I have come to tell you that you are being tricked in the

purchase of the Moulineaux farm. They mean to get an extra hundred

thousand francs out of you, which are to be divided between the

notary, the farmer Leger, and Moreau. You have written Moreau to

invite Margueron, and you are going to Presles to-day; but Margueron

will be ill, and Leger is so certain of buying the farm that he is now

in Paris to draw the money. If we have enlightened you as to what is

going on, and if you want an upright steward you will take my husband;

though noble, he will serve you as he has served the State. Your

steward has made a fortune of two hundred and fifty thousand francs

out of his place; he is not to be pitied therefore."

The count thanked Madame de Reybert coldly, bestowing upon her the

holy-water of courts, for he despised backbiting; but for all that, he

remembered Derville's doubts, and felt inwardly shaken. Just then he

saw his steward's letter and read it. In its assurances of devotion

and its respectful reproaches for the distrust implied in wishing to

negotiate the purchase for himself, he read the truth.

"Corruption has come to him with fortune,--as it always does!" he said

to himself.

The count then made several inquiries of Madame de Reybert, less to

obtain information than to gain time to observe her; and he wrote a

short note to his notary telling him not to send his head-clerk to

Presles as requested, but to come there himself in time for dinner.

"Though Monsieur le comte," said Madame de Reybert in conclusion, "may

have judged me unfavorably for the step I have taken unknown to my

husband, he ought to be convinced that we have obtained this

information about his steward in a natural and honorable manner; the

most sensitive conscience cannot take exception to it."

So saying, Madame de Reybert, nee de Corroy, stood erect as a pike-

staff. She presented to the rapid investigation of the count a face

seamed with the small-pox like a colander with holes, a flat, spare

figure, two light and eager eyes, fair hair plastered down upon an

anxious forehead, a small drawn-bonnet of faded green taffetas lined

with pink, a white gown with violet spots, and leather shoes. The

count recognized the wife of some poor, half-pay captain, a puritan,

subscribing no doubt to the "Courrier Francais," earnest in virtue,

but aware of the comfort of a good situation and eagerly coveting it.

"You say your husband has a pension of six hundred francs," he said,

replying to his own thoughts, and not to the remark Madame de Reybert

had just made.

"Yes, monsieur."

"You were born a Corroy?"

"Yes, monsieur,--a noble family of Metz, where my husband belongs."

"In what regiment did Monsieur de Reybert serve?"

"The 7th artillery."

"Good!" said the count, writing down the number.

He had thought at one time of giving the management of the estate to

some retired army officer, about whom he could obtain exact

information from the minister of war.

"Madame," he resumed, ringing for his valet, "return to Presles, this

afternoon with my notary, who is going down there for dinner, and to

whom I have recommended you. Here is his address. I am going myself

secretly to Presles, and will send for Monsieur de Reybert to come and

speak to me."

It will thus be seen that Monsieur de Serizy's journey by a public

conveyance, and the injunction conveyed by the valet to conceal his

name and rank had not unnecessarily alarmed Pierrotin. That worthy had

just forebodings of a danger which was about to swoop down upon one of

his best customers.

CHAPTER III

THE TRAVELLERS

As Pierrotin issued from the Cafe de l'Echiquier, after treating the

valet, he saw in the gate-way of the Lion d'Argent the lady and the

young man in whom his perspicacity at once detected customers, for the

lady with outstretched neck and anxious face was evidently looking for

him. She was dressed in a black-silk gown that was dyed, a brown

bonnet, an old French cashmere shawl, raw-silk stockings, and low

shoes; and in her hand she carried a straw bag and a blue umbrella.

This woman, who had once been beautiful, seemed to be about forty

years of age; but her blue eyes, deprived of the fire which happiness

puts there, told plainly that she had long renounced the world. Her

dress, as well as her whole air and demeanor, indicated a mother

wholly devoted to her household and her son. If the strings of her

bonnet were faded, the shape betrayed that it was several years old.

The shawl was fastened by a broken needle converted into a pin by a

bead of sealing-wax. She was waiting impatiently for Pierrotin,

wishing to recommend to his special care her son, who was doubtless

travelling for the first time, and with whom she had come to the

coach-office as much from doubt of his ability as from maternal

affection.

This mother was in every way completed by the son, so that the son

would not be understood without the mother. If the mother condemned

herself to mended gloves, the son wore an olive-green coat with

sleeves too short for him, proving that he had grown, and might grow

still more, like other adults of eighteen or nineteen years of age.

The blue trousers, mended by his mother, presented to the eye a

brighter patch of color when the coat-tails maliciously parted behind

him.

"Don't rub your gloves that way, you'll spoil them," she was saying as

Pierrotin appeared. "Is this the conductor? Ah! Pierrotin, is it you?"

she exclaimed, leaving her son and taking the coachman apart a few

steps.

"I hope you're well, Madame Clapart," he replied, with an air that

expressed both respect and familiarity.

"Yes, Pierrotin, very well. Please take good care of my Oscar; he is

travelling alone for the first time."

"Oh! so he is going alone to Monsieur Moreau!" cried Pierrotin, for

the purpose of finding out whether he were really going there.

"Yes," said the mother.

"Then Madame Moreau is willing?" returned Pierrotin, with a sly look.

"Ah!" said the mother, "it will not be all roses for him, poor child!

But his future absolutely requires that I should send him."

This answer struck Pierrotin, who hesitated to confide his fears for

the steward to Madame Clapart, while she, on her part, was afraid of

injuring her boy if she asked Pierrotin for a care which might have

transformed him into a mentor. During this short deliberation, which

was ostensibly covered by a few phrases as to the weather, the

journey, and the stopping-places along the road, we will ourselves

explain what were the ties that united Madame Clapart with Pierrotin,

and authorized the two confidential remarks which they have just

exchanged.

Often--that is to say, three or four times a month--Pierrotin, on his

way to Paris, would find the steward on the road near La Cave. As soon

as the vehicle came up, Moreau would sign to a gardener, who, with

Pierrotin's help, would put upon the coach either one or two baskets

containing the fruits and vegetables of the season, chickens, eggs,

butter, and game. The steward always paid the carriage and Pierrotin's

fee, adding the money necessary to pay the toll at the barriere, if

the baskets contained anything dutiable. These baskets, hampers, or

packages, were never directed to any one. On the first occasion, which

served for all others, the steward had given Madame Clapart's address

by word of mouth to the discreet Pierrotin, requesting him never to

deliver to others the precious packages. Pierrotin, impressed with the

idea of an intrigue between the steward and some pretty girl, had gone

as directed to number 7 rue de la Cerisaie, in the Arsenal quarter,

and had there found the Madame Clapart just portrayed, instead of the

young and beautiful creature he expected to find.

The drivers of public conveyances and carriers are called by their

business to enter many homes, and to be cognizant of many secrets; but

social accident, that sub-providence, having willed that they be

without education and devoid of the talent of observation, it follows

that they are not dangerous. Nevertheless, at the end of a few months,

Pierrotin was puzzled to explain the exact relations of Monsieur

Moreau and Madame Clapart from what he saw of the household in the rue

de la Cerisaie. Though lodgings were not dear at that time in the

Arsenal quarter, Madame Clapart lived on a third floor at the end of a

court-yard, in a house which was formerly that of a great family, in

the days when the higher nobility of the kingdom lived on the ancient

site of the Palais des Tournelles and the hotel Saint-Paul. Toward the

end of the sixteenth century, the great seigneurs divided among

themselves these vast spaces, once occupied by the gardens of the

kings of France, as indicated by the present names of the streets,--

Cerisaie, Beautreillis, des Lions, etc. Madame Clapart's apartment,

which was panelled throughout with ancient carvings, consisted of

three connecting rooms, a dining-room, salon, and bedroom. Above it

was the kitchen, and a bedroom for Oscar. Opposite to the entrance, on

what is called in Paris "le carre,"--that is, the square landing,--was

the door of a back room, opening, on every floor, into a sort of tower

built of rough stone, in which was also the well for the staircase.

This was the room in which Moreau slept whenever he went to Paris.

Pierrotin had seen in the first room, where he deposited the hampers,

six wooden chairs with straw seats, a table, and a sideboard; at the

windows, discolored curtains. Later, when he entered the salon, he

noticed some old Empire furniture, now shabby; but only as much as all

proprietors exact to secure their rent. Pierrotin judged of the

bedroom by the salon and dining-room. The wood-work, painted coarsely

of a reddish white, which thickened and blurred the mouldings and

figurines, far from being ornamental, was distressing to the eye. The

floors, never waxed, were of that gray tone we see in boarding-

schools. When Pierrotin came upon Monsieur and Madame Clapart at their

meals he saw that their china, glass, and all other little articles

betrayed the utmost poverty; and yet, though the chipped and mended

dishes and tureens were those of the poorest families and provoked

pity, the forks and spoons were of silver.

Monsieur Clapart, clothed in a shabby surtout, his feet in broken

slippers, always wore green spectacles, and exhibited, whenever he

removed his shabby cap of a bygone period, a pointed skull, from the

top of which trailed a few dirty filaments which even a poet could

scarcely call hair. This man, of wan complexion, seemed timorous, but

withal tyrannical.

In this dreary apartment, which faced the north and had no other

outlook than to a vine on the opposite wall and a well in the corner

of the yard, Madame Clapart bore herself with the airs of a queen, and

moved like a woman unaccustomed to go anywhere on foot. Often, while

thanking Pierrotin, she gave him glances which would have touched to

pity an intelligent observer; from time to time she would slip a

twelve-sous piece into his hand, and then her voice was charming.

Pierrotin had never seen Oscar, for the reason that the boy was always

in school at the time his business took him to the house.

Here is the sad story which Pierrotin could never have discovered,

even by asking for information, as he sometimes did, from the portress

of the house; for that individual knew nothing beyond the fact that

the Claparts paid a rent of two hundred and fifty francs a year, had

no servant but a charwoman who came daily for a few hours in the

morning, that Madame Clapart did some of her smaller washing herself,

and paid the postage on her letters daily, being apparently unable to

let the sum accumulate.

There does not exist, or rather, there seldom exists, a criminal who

is wholly criminal. Neither do we ever meet with a dishonest nature

which is completely dishonest. It is possible for a man to cheat his

master to his own advantage, or rake in for himself alone all the hay

in the manger, but, even while laying up capital by actions more or

less illicit, there are few men who never do good ones. If only from

self-love, curiosity, or by way of variety, or by chance, every man

has his moment of beneficence; he may call it his error, he may never

do it again, but he sacrifices to Goodness, as the most surly man

sacrifices to the Graces once or twice in his life. If Moreau's faults

can ever be excused, it might be on the score of his persistent

kindness in succoring a woman of whose favors he had once been proud,

and in whose house he was hidden when in peril of his life.

This woman, celebrated under the Directory for her liaison with one of

the five kings of that reign, married, through that all-powerful

protection, a purveyor who was making his millions out of the

government, and whom Napoleon ruined in 1802. This man, named Husson,

became insane through his sudden fall from opulence to poverty; he

flung himself into the Seine, leaving the beautiful Madame Husson

pregnant. Moreau, very intimately allied with Madame Husson, was at

that time condemned to death; he was unable therefore to marry the

widow, being forced to leave France. Madame Husson, then twenty-two

years old, married in her deep distress a government clerk named

Clapart, aged twenty-seven, who was said to be a rising man. At that

period of our history, government clerks were apt to become persons of

importance; for Napoleon was ever on the lookout for capacity. But

Clapart, though endowed by nature with a certain coarse beauty, proved

to have no intelligence. Thinking Madame Husson very rich, he feigned

a great passion for her, and was simply saddled with the impossibility

of satisfying either then or in the future the wants she had acquired

in a life of opulence. He filled, very poorly, a place in the Treasury

that gave him a salary of eighteen hundred francs; which was all the

new household had to live on. When Moreau returned to France as the

secretary of the Comte de Serizy he heard of Madame Husson's pitiable

condition, and he was able, before his own marriage, to get her an

appointment as head-waiting-woman to Madame Mere, the Emperor's

mother. But in spite of that powerful protection Clapart was never

promoted; his incapacity was too apparent.

Ruined in 1815 by the fall of the Empire, the brilliant Aspasia of the

Directory had no other resources than Clapart's salary of twelve

hundred francs from a clerkship obtained for him through the Comte de

Serizy. Moreau, the only protector of a woman whom he had known in

possession of millions, obtained a half-scholarship for her son, Oscar

Husson, at the school of Henri IV.; and he sent her regularly, by

Pierrotin, such supplies from the estate at Presles as he could

decently offer to a household in distress.

Oscar was the whole life and all the future of his mother. The poor

woman could now be reproached with no other fault than her exaggerated

tenderness for her boy,--the bete-noire of his step-father. Oscar was,

unfortunately, endowed by nature with a foolishness his mother did not

perceive, in spite of the step-father's sarcasms. This foolishness--

or, to speak more specifically, this overweening conceit--so troubled

Monsieur Moreau that he begged Madame Clapart to send the boy down to

him for a month that he might study his character, and find out what

career he was fit for. Moreau was really thinking of some day

proposing Oscar to the count as his successor.

But to give to the devil and to God what respectively belongs to them,

perhaps it would be well to show the causes of Oscar Husson's silly

self-conceit, premising that he was born in the household of Madame

Mere. During his early childhood his eyes were dazzled by imperial

splendors. His pliant imagination retained the impression of those

gorgeous scenes, and nursed the images of a golden time of pleasure in

hopes of recovering them. The natural boastfulness of school-boys

(possessed of a desire to outshine their mates) resting on these

memories of his childhood was developed in him beyond all measure. It

may also have been that his mother at home dwelt too fondly on the

days when she herself was a queen in Directorial Paris. At any rate,

Oscar, who was now leaving school, had been made to bear many

humiliations which the paying pupils put upon those who hold

scholarships, unless the scholars are able to impose respect by

superior physical ability.

This mixture of former splendor now departed, of beauty gone, of blind

maternal love, of sufferings heroically borne, made the mother one of

those pathetic figures which catch the eye of many an observer in

Paris.

Incapable, naturally, of understanding the real attachment of Moreau

to this woman, or that of the woman for the man she had saved in 1797,

now her only friend, Pierrotin did not think it best to communicate

the suspicion that had entered his head as to some danger which was

threatening Moreau. The valet's speech, "We have enough to do in this

world to look after ourselves," returned to his mind, and with it came

that sentiment of obedience to what he called the "chefs de file,"--

the front-rank men in war, and men of rank in peace. Besides, just now

Pierrotin's head was as full of his own stings as there are five-franc

pieces in a thousand francs. So that the "Very good, madame,"

"Certainly, madame," with which he replied to the poor mother, to whom

a trip of twenty miles appeared a journey, showed plainly that he

desired to get away from her useless and prolix instructions.

"You will be sure to place the packages so that they cannot get wet if

the weather should happen to change."

"I've a hood," replied Pierrotin. "Besides, see, madame, with what

care they are being placed."

"Oscar, don't stay more than two weeks, no matter how much they may

ask you," continued Madame Clapart, returning to her son. "You can't

please Madame Moreau, whatever you do; besides, you must be home by

the end of September. We are to go to Belleville, you know, to your

uncle Cardot."

"Yes, mamma."

"Above all," she said, in a low voice, "be sure never to speak about

servants; keep thinking all the time that Madame Moreau was once a

waiting-maid."

"Yes, mamma."

Oscar, like all youths whose vanity is excessively ticklish, seemed

annoyed at being lectured on the threshold of the Lion d'Argent.

"Well, now good-bye, mamma. We shall start soon; there's the horse all

harnessed."

The mother, forgetting that she was in the open street, embraced her

Oscar, and said, smiling, as she took a little roll from her basket:--

"Tiens! you were forgetting your roll and the chocolate! My child,

once more, I repeat, don't take anything at the inns; they'd make you

pay for the slightest thing ten times what it is worth."

Oscar would fain have seen his mother farther off as she stuffed the

bread and chocolate into his pocket. The scene had two witnesses,--two

young men a few years older than Oscar, better dressed than he,

without a mother hanging on to them, whose actions, dress, and ways

all betokened that complete independence which is the one desire of a

lad still tied to his mother's apron-strings.

"He said MAMMA!" cried one of the new-comers, laughing.

The words reached Oscar's ears and drove him to say, "Good-bye,

mother!" in a tone of terrible impatience.

Let us admit that Madame Clapart spoke too loudly, and seemed to wish

to show to those around them her tenderness for the boy.

"What is the matter with you, Oscar?" asked the poor hurt woman. "I

don't know what to make of you," she added in a severe tone, fancying

herself able to inspire him with respect,--a great mistake made by

those who spoil their children. "Listen, my Oscar," she said, resuming

at once her tender voice, "you have a propensity to talk, and to tell

all you know, and all that you don't know; and you do it to show off,

with the foolish vanity of a mere lad. Now, I repeat, endeavor to keep

your tongue in check. You are not sufficiently advanced in life, my

treasure, to be able to judge of the persons with whom you may be

thrown; and there is nothing more dangerous than to talk in public

conveyances. Besides, in a diligence well-bred persons always keep

silence."

The two young men, who seemed to have walked to the farther end of the

establishment, here returned, making their boot-heels tap upon the

paved passage of the porte-cochere. They might have heard the whole of

this maternal homily. So, in order to rid himself of his mother, Oscar

had recourse to an heroic measure, which proved how vanity stimulates

the intellect.

"Mamma," he said, "you are standing in a draught, and you may take

cold. Besides, I am going to get into the coach."

The lad must have touched some tender spot, for his mother caught him

to her bosom, kissed him as if he were starting upon a long journey,

and went with him to the vehicle with tears in her eyes.

"Don't forget to give five francs to the servants when you come away,"

she said; "write me three times at least during the fifteen days;

behave properly, and remember all that I have told you. You have linen

enough; don't send any to the wash. And above all, remember Monsieur

Moreau's kindness; mind him as you would a father, and follow his

advice."

As he got into the coach, Oscar's blue woollen stockings became

visible, through the action of his trousers which drew up suddenly,

also the new patch in the said trousers was seen, through the parting

of his coat-tails. The smiles of the two young men, on whom these

signs of an honorable indigence were not lost, were so many fresh

wounds to the lad's vanity.

"The first place was engaged for Oscar," said the mother to Pierrotin.

"Take the back seat," she said to the boy, looking fondly at him with

a loving smile.

Oh! how Oscar regretted that trouble and sorrow had destroyed his

mother's beauty, and that poverty and self-sacrifice prevented her

from being better dressed! One of the young men, the one who wore top-

boots and spurs, nudged the other to make him take notice of Oscar's

mother, and the other twirled his moustache with a gesture which

signified,--

"Rather pretty figure!"

"How shall I ever get rid of mamma?" thought Oscar.

"What's the matter?" asked Madame Clapart.

Oscar pretended not to hear, the monster! Perhaps Madame Clapart was

lacking in tact under the circumstances; but all absorbing sentiments

have so much egotism!

"Georges, do you like children when travelling?" asked one young man

of the other.

"Yes, my good Amaury, if they are weaned, and are named Oscar, and

have chocolate."

These speeches were uttered in half-tones to allow Oscar to hear them

or not hear them as he chose; his countenance was to be the weather-

gauge by which the other young traveller could judge how much fun he

might be able to get out of the lad during the journey. Oscar chose

not to hear. He looked to see if his mother, who weighed upon him like

a nightmare, was still there, for he felt that she loved him too well

to leave him so quickly. Not only did he involuntarily compare the

dress of his travelling companion with his own, but he felt that his

mother's toilet counted for much in the smiles of the two young men.

"If they would only take themselves off!" he said to himself.

Instead of that, Amaury remarked to Georges, giving a tap with his

cane to the heavy wheel of the coucou:

"And so, my friend, you are really going to trust your future to this

fragile bark?"

"I must," replied Georges, in a tone of fatalism.

Oscar gave a sigh as he remarked the jaunty manner in which his

companion's hat was stuck on one ear for the purpose of showing a

magnificent head of blond hair beautifully brushed and curled; while

he, by order of his step-father, had his black hair cut like a

clothes-brush across the forehead, and clipped, like a soldier's,

close to the head. The face of the vain lad was round and chubby and

bright with the hues of health, while that of his fellow-traveller was

long, and delicate, and pale. The forehead of the latter was broad,

and his chest filled out a waistcoat of cashmere pattern. As Oscar

admired the tight-fitting iron-gray trousers and the overcoat with its

frogs and olives clasping the waist, it seemed to him that this

romantic-looking stranger, gifted with such advantages, insulted him

by his superiority, just as an ugly woman feels injured by the mere

sight of a pretty one. The click of the stranger's boot-heels offended

his taste and echoed in his heart. He felt as hampered by his own

clothes (made no doubt at home out of those of his step-father) as

that envied young man seemed at ease in his.

"That fellow must have heaps of francs in his trousers pocket,"

thought Oscar.

The young man turned round. What were Oscar's feelings on beholding a

gold chain round his neck, at the end of which no doubt was a gold

watch! From that moment the young man assumed, in Oscar's eyes, the

proportions of a personage.

Living in the rue de la Cerisaie since 1815, taken to and from school

by his step-father, Oscar had no other points of comparison since his

adolescence than the poverty-stricken household of his mother. Brought

up strictly, by Moreau's advice, he seldom went to the theatre, and

then to nothing better than the Ambigu-Comique, where his eyes could

see little elegance, if indeed the eyes of a child riveted on a

melodrama were likely to examine the audience. His step-father still

wore, after the fashion of the Empire, his watch in the fob of his

trousers, from which there depended over his abdomen a heavy gold

chain, ending in a bunch of heterogeneous ornaments, seals, and a

watch-key with a round top and flat sides, on which was a landscape in

mosaic. Oscar, who considered that old-fashioned finery as the "ne

plus ultra" of adornment, was bewildered by the present revelation of

superior and negligent elegance. The young man exhibited, offensively,

a pair of spotless gloves, and seemed to wish to dazzle Oscar by

twirling with much grace a gold-headed switch cane.

Oscar had reached that last quarter of adolescence when little things

cause immense joys and immense miseries,--a period when youth prefers

misfortune to a ridiculous suit of clothes, and caring nothing for the

real interests of life, torments itself about frivolities, about

neckcloths, and the passionate desire to appear a man. Then the young

fellow swells himself out; his swagger is all the more portentous

because it is exercised on nothings. Yet if he envies a fool who is

elegantly dressed, he is also capable of enthusiasm over talent, and

of genuine admiration for genius. Such defects as these, when they

have no root in the heart, prove only the exuberance of sap,--the

richness of the youthful imagination. That a lad of nineteen, an only

child, kept severely at home by poverty, adored by a mother who put

upon herself all privations for his sake, should be moved to envy by a

young man of twenty-two in a frogged surtout-coat silk-lined, a waist-

coat of fancy cashmere, and a cravat slipped through a ring of the

worse taste, is nothing more than a peccadillo committed in all ranks

of social life by inferiors who envy those that seem beyond them. Men

of genius themselves succumb to this primitive passion. Did not

Rousseau admire Ventura and Bacle?

But Oscar passed from peccadillo to evil feelings. He felt humiliated;

he was angry with the youth he envied, and there rose in his heart a

secret desire to show openly that he himself was as good as the object

of his envy.

The two young fellows continued to walk up and own from the gate to

the stables, and from the stables to the gate. Each time they turned

they looked at Oscar curled up in his corner of the coucou. Oscar,

persuaded that their jokes and laughter concerned himself, affected

the utmost indifference. He began to hum the chorus of a song lately

brought into vogue by the liberals, which ended with the words, "'Tis

Voltaire's fault, 'tis Rousseau's fault."

"Tiens! perhaps he is one of the chorus at the Opera," said Amaury.

This exasperated Oscar, who bounded up, pulled out the wooden "back,"

and called to Pierrotin:--

"When do we start?"

"Presently," said that functionary, who was standing, whip in hand,

and gazing toward the rue d'Enghien.

At this moment the scene was enlivened by the arrival of a young man

accompanied by a true "gamin," who was followed by a porter dragging a

hand-cart. The young man came up to Pierrotin and spoke to him

confidentially, on which the latter nodded his head, and called to his

own porter. The man ran out and helped to unload the little hand-cart,

which contained, besides two trunks, buckets, brushes, boxes of

singular shape, and an infinity of packages and utensils which the

youngest of the new-comers, who had climbed into the imperial, stowed

away with such celerity that Oscar, who happened to be smiling at his

mother, now standing on the other side of the street, saw none of the

paraphernalia which might have revealed to him the profession of his

new travelling companion.

The gamin, who must have been sixteen years of age, wore a gray blouse

buckled round his waist by a polished leather belt. His cap, jauntily

perched on the side of his head, seemed the sign of a merry nature,

and so did the picturesque disorder of the curly brown hair which fell

upon his shoulders. A black-silk cravat drew a line round his very

white neck, and added to the vivacity of his bright gray eyes. The

animation of his brown and rosy face, the moulding of his rather large

lips, the ears detached from his head, his slightly turned-up nose,--

in fact, all the details of his face proclaimed the lively spirit of a

Figaro, and the careless gayety of youth, while the vivacity of his

gesture and his mocking eye revealed an intellect already developed by

the practice of a profession adopted very early in life. As he had

already some claims to personal value, this child, made man by Art or

by vocation, seemed indifferent to the question of costume; for he

looked at his boots, which had not been polished, with a quizzical

air, and searched for the spots on his brown Holland trousers less to

remove them than to see their effect.

"I'm in style," he said, giving himself a shake and addressing his

companion.

The glance of the latter, showed authority over his adept, in whom a

practised eye would at once have recognized the joyous pupil of a

painter, called in the argot of the studios a "rapin."

"Behave yourself, Mistigris," said his master, giving him the nickname

which the studio had no doubt bestowed upon him.

The master was a slight and pale young man, with extremely thick black

hair, worn in a disorder that was actually fantastic. But this

abundant mass of hair seemed necessary to an enormous head, whose vast

forehead proclaimed a precocious intellect. A strained and harassed

face, too original to be ugly, was hollowed as if this noticeable

young man suffered from some chronic malady, or from privations caused

by poverty (the most terrible of all chronic maladies), or from griefs

too recent to be forgotten. His clothing, analogous, with due

allowance, to that of Mistigris, consisted of a shabby surtout coat,

American-green in color, much worn, but clean and well-brushed; a

black waistcoat buttoned to the throat, which almost concealed a

scarlet neckerchief; and trousers, also black and even more worn than

the coat, flapping his thin legs. In addition, a pair of very muddy

boots indicated that he had come on foot and from some distance to the

coach office. With a rapid look this artist seized the whole scene of

the Lion d'Argent, the stables, the courtyard, the various lights and

shades, and the details; then he looked at Mistigris, whose satirical

glance had followed his own.

"Charming!" said Mistigris.

"Yes, very," replied the other.

"We seem to have got here too early," pursued Mistigris. "Couldn't we

get a mouthful somewhere? My stomach, like Nature, abhors a vacuum."

"Have we time to get a cup of coffee?" said the artist, in a gentle

voice, to Pierrotin.

"Yes, but don't be long," answered the latter.

"Good; that means we have a quarter of an hour," remarked Mistigris,

with the innate genius for observation of the Paris rapin.

The pair disappeared. Nine o'clock was striking in the hotel kitchen.

Georges thought it just and reasonable to remonstrate with Pierrotin.

"Hey! my friend; when a man is blessed with such wheels as these

(striking the clumsy tires with his cane) he ought at least to have

the merit of punctuality. The deuce! one doesn't get into that thing

for pleasure; I have business that is devilishly pressing or I

wouldn't trust my bones to it. And that horse, which you call Rougeot,

he doesn't look likely to make up for lost time."

"We are going to harness Bichette while those gentlemen take their

coffee," replied Pierrotin. "Go and ask, you," he said to his porter,

"if Pere Leger is coming with us--"

"Where is your Pere Leger?" asked Georges.

"Over the way, at number 50. He couldn't get a place in the Beaumont

diligence," said Pierrotin, still speaking to his porter and

apparently making no answer to his customer; then he disappeared

himself in search of Bichette.

Georges, after shaking hands with his friend, got into the coach,

handling with an air of great importance a portfolio which he placed

beneath the cushion of the seat. He took the opposite corner to that

of Oscar, on the same seat.

"This Pere Leger troubles me," he said.

"They can't take away our places," replied Oscar. "I have number one."

"And I number two," said Georges.

Just as Pierrotin reappeared, having harnessed Bichette, the porter

returned with a stout man in tow, whose weight could not have been

less than two hundred and fifty pounds at the very least. Pere Leger

belonged to the species of farmer which has a square back, a

protuberant stomach, a powdered pigtail, and wears a little coat of

blue linen. His white gaiters, coming above the knee, were fastened

round the ends of his velveteen breeches and secured by silver

buckles. His hob-nailed shoes weighed two pounds each. In his hand, he

held a small reddish stick, much polished, with a large knob, which

was fastened round his wrist by a thong of leather.

"And you are called Pere Leger?" asked Georges, very seriously, as the

farmer attempted to put a foot on the step.

"At your service," replied the farmer, looking in and showing a face

like that of Louis XVIII., with fat, rubicund cheeks, from between

which issued a nose that in any other face would have seemed enormous.

His smiling eyes were sunken in rolls of fat. "Come, a helping hand,

my lad!" he said to Pierrotin.

The farmer was hoisted in by the united efforts of Pierrotin and the

porter, to cries of "Houp la! hi! ha! hoist!" uttered by Georges.

"Oh! I'm not going far; only to La Cave," said the farmer, good-

humoredly.

In France everybody takes a joke.

"Take the back seat," said Pierrotin, "there'll be six of you."

"Where's your other horse?" demanded Georges. "Is it as mythical as

the third post-horse."

"There she is," said Pierrotin, pointing to the little mare, who was

coming along alone.

"He calls that insect a horse!" exclaimed Georges.

"Oh! she's good, that little mare," said the farmer, who by this time

was seated. "Your servant, gentlemen. Well, Pierrotin, how soon do you

start?"

"I have two travellers in there after a cup of coffee," replied

Pierrotin.

The hollow-cheeked young man and his page reappeared.

"Come, let's start!" was the general cry.

"We are going to start," replied Pierrotin. "Now, then, make ready,"

he said to the porter, who began thereupon to take away the stones

which stopped the wheels.

Pierrotin took Rougeot by the bridle and gave that guttural cry, "Ket,

ket!" to tell the two animals to collect their energy; on which,

though evidently stiff, they pulled the coach to the door of the Lion

d'Argent. After which manoeuvre, which was purely preparatory,

Pierrotin gazed up the rue d'Enghien and then disappeared, leaving the

coach in charge of the porter.

"Ah ca! is he subject to such attacks,--that master of yours?" said

Mistigris, addressing the porter.

"He has gone to fetch his feed from the stable," replied the porter,

well versed in all the usual tricks to keep passengers quiet.

"Well, after all," said Mistigris, "'art is long, but life is short'

--to Bichette."

At this particular epoch, a fancy for mutilating or transposing

proverbs reigned in the studios. It was thought a triumph to find

changes of letters, and sometimes of words, which still kept the

semblance of the proverb while giving it a fantastic or ridiculous

meaning.[*]

[*] It is plainly impossible to translate many of these proverbs and

put any fun or meaning into them.--Tr.

"Patience, Mistigris!" said his master; "'come wheel, come whoa.'"

Pierrotin here returned, bringing with him the Comte de Serizy, who

had come through the rue de l'Echiquier, and with whom he had

doubtless had a short conversation.

"Pere Leger," said Pierrotin, looking into the coach, "will you give

your place to Monsieur le comte? That will balance the carriage

better."

"We sha'n't be off for an hour if you go on this way," cried Georges.

"We shall have to take down this infernal bar, which cost such trouble

to put up. Why should everybody be made to move for the man who comes

last? We all have a right to the places we took. What place has

monsieur engaged? Come, find that out! Haven't you a way-book, a

register, or something? What place has Monsieur Lecomte engaged?--

count of what, I'd like to know."

"Monsieur le comte," said Pierrotin, visibly troubled, "I am afraid

you will be uncomfortable."

"Why didn't you keep better count of us?" said Mistigris. "'Short

counts make good ends.'"

"Mistigris, behave yourself," said his master.

Monsieur de Serizy was evidently taken by all the persons in the coach

for a bourgeois of the name of Lecomte.

"Don't disturb any one," he said to Pierrotin. "I will sit with you in

front."

"Come, Mistigris," said the master to his rapin, "remember the respect

you owe to age; you don't know how shockingly old you may be yourself

some day. 'Travel deforms youth.' Give your place to monsieur."

Mistigris opened the leathern curtain and jumped out with the agility

of a frog leaping into the water.

"You mustn't be a rabbit, august old man," he said to the count.

"Mistigris, 'ars est celare bonum,'" said his master.

"I thank you very much, monsieur," said the count to Mistigris's

master, next to whom he now sat.

The minister of State cast a sagacious glance round the interior of

the coach, which greatly affronted both Oscar and Georges.

"When persons want to be master of a coach, they should engage all the

places," remarked Georges.

Certain now of his incognito, the Comte de Serizy made no reply to

this observation, but assumed the air of a good-natured bourgeois.

"Suppose you were late, wouldn't you be glad that the coach waited for

you?" said the farmer to the two young men.

Pierrotin still looked up and down the street, whip in hand,

apparently reluctant to mount to the hard seat where Mistigris was

fidgeting.

"If you expect some one else, I am not the last," said the count.

"I agree to that reasoning," said Mistigris.

Georges and Oscar began to laugh impertinently.

"The old fellow doesn't know much," whispered Georges to Oscar, who

was delighted at this apparent union between himself and the object of

his envy.

"Parbleu!" cried Pierrotin, "I shouldn't be sorry for two more

passengers."

"I haven't paid; I'll get out," said Georges, alarmed.

"What are you waiting for, Pierrotin?" asked Pere Leger.

Whereupon Pierrotin shouted a certain "Hi!" in which Bichette and

Rougeot recognized a definitive resolution, and they both sprang

toward the rise of the faubourg at a pace which was soon to slacken.

The count had a red face, of a burning red all over, on which were

certain inflamed portions which his snow-white hair brought out into

full relief. To any but heedless youths, this complexion would have

revealed a constant inflammation of the blood, produced by incessant

labor. These blotches and pimples so injured the naturally noble air

of the count that careful examination was needed to find in his green-

gray eyes the shrewdness of the magistrate, the wisdom of a statesman,

and the knowledge of a legislator. His face was flat, and the nose

seemed to have been depressed into it. The hat hid the grace and

beauty of his forehead. In short, there was enough to amuse those

thoughtless youths in the odd contrasts of the silvery hair, the

burning face, and the thick, tufted eye-brows which were still jet-

black.

The count wore a long blue overcoat, buttoned in military fashion to

the throat, a white cravat around his neck, cotton wool in his ears,

and a shirt-collar high enough to make a large square patch of white

on each cheek. His black trousers covered his boots, the toes of

which were barely seen. He wore no decoration in his button-hole, and

doeskin gloves concealed his hands. Nothing about him betrayed to the

eyes of youth a peer of France, and one of the most useful statesmen

in the kingdom.

Pere Leger had never seen the count, who, on his side, knew the former

only by name. When the count, as he got into the carriage, cast the

glance about him which affronted Georges and Oscar, he was, in

reality, looking for the head-clerk of his notary (in case he had been

forced, like himself, to take Pierrotin's vehicle), intending to

caution him instantly about his own incognito. But feeling reassured

by the appearance of Oscar, and that of Pere Leger, and, above all, by

the quasi-military air, the waxed moustaches, and the general look of

an adventurer that distinguished Georges, he concluded that his note

had reached his notary, Alexandre Crottat, in time to prevent the

departure of the clerk.

"Pere Leger," said Pierrotin, when they reached the steep hill of the

faubourg Saint-Denis by the rue de la Fidelite, "suppose we get out,

hey?"

"I'll get out, too," said the count, hearing Leger's name.

"Goodness! if this is how we are going, we shall do fourteen miles in

fifteen days!" cried Georges.

"It isn't my fault," said Pierrotin, "if a passenger wishes to get

out."

"Ten louis for you if you keep the secret of my being here as I told

you before," said the count in a low voice, taking Pierrotin by the

arm.

"Oh, my thousand francs!" thought Pierrotin as he winked an eye at

Monsieur de Serizy, which meant, "Rely on me."

Oscar and Georges stayed in the coach.

"Look here, Pierrotin, since Pierrotin you are," cried Georges, when

the passengers were once more stowed away in the vehicle, "if you

don't mean to go faster than this, say so! I'll pay my fare and take a

post-horse at Saint-Denis, for I have important business on hand which

can't be delayed."

"Oh! he'll go well enough," said Pere Leger. "Besides, the distance

isn't great."

"I am never more than half an hour late," asserted Pierrotin.

"Well, you are not wheeling the Pope in this old barrow of yours,"

said Georges, "so, get on."

"Perhaps he's afraid of shaking monsieur," said Mistigris looking

round at the count. "But you shouldn't have preferences, Pierrotin, it

isn't right."

"Coucous and the Charter make all Frenchmen equals," said Georges.

"Oh! be easy," said Pere Leger; "we are sure to get to La Chapelle by

mid-day,"--La Chapelle being the village next beyond the Barriere of

Saint-Denis.

CHAPTER IV

THE GRANDSON OF THE FAMOUS CZERNI-GEORGES

Those who travel in public conveyances know that the persons thus

united by chance do not immediately have anything to say to one

another; unless under special circumstances, conversation rarely

begins until they have gone some distance. This period of silence is

employed as much in mutual examination as in settling into their

places. Minds need to get their equilibrium as much as bodies. When

each person thinks he has discovered the age, profession, and

character of his companions, the most talkative member of the company

begins, and the conversation gets under way with all the more vivacity

because those present feel a need of enlivening the journey and

forgetting its tedium.

That is how things happen in French stage-coaches. In other countries

customs are very different. Englishmen pique themselves on never

opening their lips; Germans are melancholy in a vehicle; Italians too

wary to talk; Spaniards have no public conveyances; and Russians no

roads. There is no amusement except in the lumbering diligences of

France, that gabbling and indiscreet country, where every one is in a

hurry to laugh and show his wit, and where jest and epigram enliven

all things, even the poverty of the lower classes and the weightier

cares of the solid bourgeois. In a coach there is no police to check

tongues, and legislative assemblies have set the fashion of public

discussion. When a young man of twenty-two, like the one named

Georges, is clever and lively, he is much tempted, especially under

circumstances like the present, to abuse those qualities.

In the first place, Georges had soon decided that he was the superior

human being of the party there assembled. He saw in the count a

manufacturer of the second-class, whom he took, for some unknown

reason, to be a chandler; in the shabby young man accompanied by

Mistigris, a fellow of no account; in Oscar a ninny, and in Pere

Leger, the fat farmer, an excellent subject to hoax. Having thus

looked over the ground, he resolved to amuse himself at the expense of

such companions.

"Let me see," he thought to himself, as the coucou went down the hill

from La Chapelle to the plain of Saint-Denis, "shall I pass myself off

for Etienne or Beranger? No, these idiots don't know who they are.

Carbonaro? the deuce! I might get myself arrested. Suppose I say I'm

the son of Marshal Ney? Pooh! what could I tell them?--about the

execution of my father? It wouldn't be funny. Better be a disguised

Russian prince and make them swallow a lot of stuff about the Emperor

Alexander. Or I might be Cousin, and talk philosophy; oh, couldn't I

perplex 'em! But no, that shabby fellow with the tousled head looks to

me as if he had jogged his way through the Sorbonne. What a pity! I

can mimic an Englishman so perfectly I might have pretended to be Lord

Byron, travelling incognito. Sapristi! I'll command the troops of Ali,

pacha of Janina!"

During this mental monologue, the coucou rolled through clouds of dust

rising on either side of it from that much travelled road.

"What dust!" cried Mistigris.

"Henry IV. is dead!" retorted his master. "If you'd say it was scented

with vanilla that would be emitting a new opinion."

"You think you're witty," replied Mistigris. "Well, it IS like vanilla

at times."

"In the Levant--" said Georges, with the air of beginning a story.

"'Ex Oriente flux,'" remarked Mistigris's master, interrupting the

speaker.

"I said in the Levant, from which I have just returned," continued

Georges, "the dust smells very good; but here it smells of nothing,

except in some old dust-barrel like this."

"Has monsieur lately returned from the Levant?" said Mistigris,

maliciously. "He isn't much tanned by the sun."

"Oh! I've just left my bed after an illness of three months, from the

germ, so the doctors said, of suppressed plague."

"Have you had the plague?" cried the count, with a gesture of alarm.

"Pierrotin, stop!"

"Go on, Pierrotin," said Mistigris. "Didn't you hear him say it was

inward, his plague?" added the rapin, talking back to Monsieur de

Serizy. "It isn't catching; it only comes out in conversation."

"Mistigris! if you interfere again I'll have you put off into the

road," said his master. "And so," he added, turning to Georges,

"monsieur has been to the East?"

"Yes, monsieur; first to Egypt, then to Greece, where I served under

Ali, pacha of Janina, with whom I had a terrible quarrel. There's no

enduring those climates long; besides, the emotions of all kinds in

Oriental life have disorganized my liver."

"What, have you served as a soldier?" asked the fat farmer. "How old

are you?"

"Twenty-nine," replied Georges, whereupon all the passengers looked at

him. "At eighteen I enlisted as a private for the famous campaign of

1813; but I was present at only one battle, that of Hanau, where I was

promoted sergeant-major. In France, at Montereau, I won the rank of

sub-lieutenant, and was decorated by,--there are no informers here,

I'm sure,--by the Emperor."

"What! are you decorated?" cried Oscar. "Why don't you wear your

cross?"

"The cross of 'ceux-ci'? No, thank you! Besides, what man of any

breeding would wear his decorations in travelling? There's monsieur,"

he said, motioning to the Comte de Serizy. "I'll bet whatever you

like--"

"Betting whatever you like means, in France, betting nothing at all,"

said Mistigris's master.

"I'll bet whatever you like," repeated Georges, incisively, "that

monsieur here is covered with stars."

"Well," said the count, laughing, "I have the grand cross of the

Legion of honor, that of Saint Andrew of Russia, that of the Prussian

Eagle, that of the Annunciation of Sardinia, and the Golden Fleece."

"Beg pardon," said Mistigris, "are they all in the coucou?"

"Hey! that brick-colored old fellow goes it strong!" whispered Georges

to Oscar. "What was I saying?--oh! I know. I don't deny that I adore

the Emperor--"

"I served under him," said the count.

"What a man he was, wasn't he?" cried Georges.

"A man to whom I owe many obligations," replied the count, with a

silly expression that was admirably assumed.

"For all those crosses?" inquired Mistigris.

"And what quantities of snuff he took!" continued Monsieur de Serizy.

"He carried it loose in his pockets," said Georges.

"So I've been told," remarked Pere Leger with an incredulous look.

"Worse than that; he chewed and smoked," continued Georges. "I saw him

smoking, in a queer way, too, at Waterloo, when Marshal Soult took him

round the waist and flung him into his carriage, just as he had seized

a musket and was going to charge the English--"

"You were at Waterloo!" cried Oscar, his eyes stretching wide open.

"Yes, young man, I did the campaign of 1815. I was a captain at Mont-

Saint-Jean, and I retired to the Loire, after we were all disbanded.

Faith! I was disgusted with France; I couldn't stand it. In fact, I

should certainly have got myself arrested; so off I went, with two or

three dashing fellows,--Selves, Besson, and others, who are now in

Egypt,--and we entered the service of pacha Mohammed; a queer sort of

fellow he was, too! Once a tobacco merchant in the bazaars, he is now

on the high-road to be a sovereign prince. You've all seen him in that

picture by Horace Vernet,--'The Massacre of the Mameluks.' What a

handsome fellow he was! But I wouldn't give up the religion of my

fathers and embrace Islamism; all the more because the abjuration

required a surgical operation which I hadn't any fancy for. Besides,

nobody respects a renegade. Now if they had offered me a hundred

thousand francs a year, perhaps--and yet, no! The pacha did give me a

thousand talari as a present."

"How much is that?" asked Oscar, who was listening to Georges with all

his ears.

"Oh! not much. A talaro is, as you might say, a five-franc piece. But

faith! I got no compensation for the vices I contracted in that God-

forsaken country, if country it is. I can't live now without smoking a

narghile twice a-day, and that's very costly."

"How did you find Egypt?" asked the count.

"Egypt? Oh! Egypt is all sand," replied Georges, by no means taken

aback. "There's nothing green but the valley of the Nile. Draw a green

line down a sheet of yellow paper, and you have Egypt. But those

Egyptians--fellahs they are called--have an immense advantage over us.

There are no gendarmes in that country. You may go from end to end of

Egypt, and you won't see one."

"But I suppose there are a good many Egyptians," said Mistigris.

"Not as many as you think for," replied Georges. "There are many more

Abyssinians, and Giaours, and Vechabites, Bedouins, and Cophs. But all

that kind of animal is very uninteresting, and I was glad enough to

embark on a Genoese polacca which was loading for the Ionian Islands

with gunpowder and munitions for Ali de Tebelen. You know, don't you,

that the British sell powder and munitions of war to all the world,--

Turks, Greeks, and the devil, too, if the devil has money? From Zante

we were to skirt the coasts of Greece and tack about, on and off. Now

it happens that my name of Georges is famous in that country. I am,

such as you see me, the grandson of the famous Czerni-Georges who made

war upon the Porte, and, instead of crushing it, as he meant to do,

got crushed himself. His son took refuge in the house of the French

consul at Smyrna, and he afterwards died in Paris, leaving my mother

pregnant with me, his seventh child. Our property was all stolen by

friends of my grandfather; in fact, we were ruined. My mother, who

lived on her diamonds, which she sold one by one, married, in 1799, my

step-father, Monsieur Yung, a purveyor. But my mother is dead, and I

have quarrelled with my step-father, who, between ourselves, is a

blackguard; he is still alive, but I never see him. That's why, in

despair, left all to myself, I went off to the wars as a private in

1813. Well, to go back to the time I returned to Greece; you wouldn't

believe with what joy old Ali Tebelen received the grandson of Czerni-

Georges. Here, of course, I call myself simply Georges. The pacha gave

me a harem--"

"You have had a harem?" said Oscar.

"Were you a pacha with MANY tails?" asked Mistigris.

"How is it that you don't know," replied Georges, "that only the

Sultan makes pachas, and that my friend Tebelen (for we were as

friendly as Bourbons) was in rebellion against the Padishah! You know,

or you don't know, that the true title of the Grand Seignior is

Padishah, and not Sultan or Grand Turk. You needn't think that a harem

is much of a thing; you might as well have a herd of goats. The women

are horribly stupid down there; I much prefer the grisettes of the

Chaumieres at Mont-Parnasse."

"They are nearer, at any rate," said the count.

"The women of the harem couldn't speak a word of French, and that

language is indispensable for talking. Ali gave me five legitimate

wives and ten slaves; that's equivalent to having none at all at

Janina. In the East, you must know, it is thought very bad style to

have wives and women. They have them, just as we have Voltaire and

Rousseau; but who ever opens his Voltaire or his Rousseau? Nobody.

But, for all that, the highest style is to be jealous. They sew a

woman up in a sack and fling her into the water on the slightest

suspicion,--that's according to their Code."

"Did you fling any in?" asked the farmer.

"I, a Frenchman! for shame! I loved them."

Whereupon Georges twirled and twisted his moustache with a dreamy air.

They were now entering Saint-Denis, and Pierrotin presently drew up

before the door of a tavern where were sold the famous cheese-cakes of

that place. All the travellers got out. Puzzled by the apparent truth

mingled with Georges' inventions, the count returned to the coucou

when the others had entered the house, and looked beneath the cushion

for the portfolio which Pierrotin told him that enigmatical youth had

placed there. On it he read the words in gilt letters: "Maitre

Crottat, notary." The count at once opened it, and fearing, with some

reason, that Pere Leger might be seized with the same curiosity, he

took out the deed of sale for the farm at Moulineaux, put it into his

coat pocket, and entered the inn to keep an eye on the travellers.

"This Georges is neither more nor less than Crottat's second clerk,"

thought he. "I shall pay my compliments to his master, whose business

it was to send me his head-clerk."

From the respectful glances of Pere Leger and Oscar, Georges perceived

that he had made for himself two fervent admirers. Accordingly, he now

posed as a great personage; paid for their cheese-cakes, and ordered

for each a glass of Alicante. He offered the same to Mistigris and his

master, who refused with smiles; but the friend of Ali Tebelen

profited by the occasion to ask the pair their names.

"Oh! monsieur," said Mistigris' master, "I am not blessed, like you,

with an illustrious name; and I have not returned from Asia--"

At this moment the count, hastening into the huge inn-kitchen lest his

absence should excite inquiry, entered the place in time to hear the

conclusion of the young man's speech.

"--I am only a poor painter lately returned from Rome, where I went at

the cost of the government, after winning the 'grand prix' five years

ago. My name is Schinner."

"Hey! bourgeois, may I offer you a glass of Alicante and some cheese-

cakes?" said Georges to the count.

"Thank you," replied the latter. "I never leave home without taking my

cup of coffee and cream."

"Don't you eat anything between meals? How bourgeois, Marais, Place

Royale, that is!" cried Georges. "When he 'blagued' just now about his

crosses, I thought there was something in him," whispered the Eastern

hero to the painter. "However, we'll set him going on his decorations,

the old tallow-chandler! Come, my lad," he added, calling to Oscar,

"drink me down the glass poured out for the chandler; that will start

your moustache."

Oscar, anxious to play the man, swallowed the second glass of wine,

and ate three more cheese-cakes.

"Good wine, that!" said Pere Leger, smacking his lips.

"It is all the better," said Georges, "because it comes from Bercy.

I've been to Alicante myself, and I know that this wine no more

resembles what is made there than my arm is like a windmill. Our made-

up wines are a great deal better than the natural ones in their own

country. Come, Pierrotin, take a glass! It is a great pity your horses

can't take one, too; we might go faster."

"Forward, march!" cried Pierrotin, amid a mighty cracking of whips,

after the travellers were again boxed up.

It was now eleven o'clock. The weather, which had been cloudy,

cleared; the breeze swept off the mists, and the blue of the sky

appeared in spots; so that when the coucou trundled along the narrow

strip of road from Saint-Denis to Pierrefitte, the sun had fairly

drunk up the last floating vapors of the diaphanous veil which swathed

the scenery of that famous region.

"Well, now, tell us why you left your friend the pacha," said Pere

Leger, addressing Georges.

"He was a very singular scamp," replied Georges, with an air that hid

a multitude of mysteries. "He put me in command of his cavalry,--so

far, so good--"

"Ah! that's why he wears spurs," thought poor Oscar.

"At that time Ali Tebelen wanted to rid himself of Chosrew pacha,

another queer chap! You call him, here, Chaureff; but the name is

pronounced, in Turkish, Cosserew. You must have read in the newspapers

how old Ali drubbed Chosrew, and soundly, too, faith! Well, if it

hadn't been for me, Ali Tebelen himself would have bit the dust two

days earlier. I was at the right wing, and I saw Chosrew, an old sly-

boots, thinking to force our centre,--ranks closed, stiff, swift, fine

movement a la Murat. Good! I take my time; then I charge, double-

quick, and cut his line in two,--you understand? Ha! ha! after the

affair was over, Ali kissed me--"

"Do they do that in the East?" asked the count, in a joking way.

"Yes, monsieur," said the painter, "that's done all the world over."

"After that," continued Georges, "Ali gave me yataghans, and carbines,

and scimetars, and what-not. But when we got back to his capital he

made me propositions, wanted me to drown a wife, and make a slave of

myself,--Orientals are so queer! But I thought I'd had enough of it;

for, after all, you know, Ali was a rebel against the Porte. So I

concluded I had better get off while I could. But I'll do Monsieur

Tebelen the justice to say that he loaded me with presents,--diamonds,

ten thousand talari, one thousand gold coins, a beautiful Greek girl

for groom, a little Circassian for a mistress, and an Arab horse! Yes,

Ali Tebelen, pacha of Janina, is too little known; he needs an

historian. It is only in the East one meets with such iron souls, who

can nurse a vengeance twenty years and accomplish it some fine

morning. He had the most magnificent white beard that was ever seen,

and a hard, stern face--"

"But what did you do with your treasures?" asked farmer Leger.

"Ha! that's it! you may well ask that! Those fellows down there

haven't any Grand Livre nor any Bank of France. So I was forced to

carry off my windfalls in a felucca, which was captured by the Turkish

High-Admiral himself. Such as you see me here to-day, I came very near

being impaled at Smyrna. Indeed, if it hadn't been for Monsieur de

Riviere, our ambassador, who was there, they'd have taken me for an

accomplice of Ali pacha. I saved my head, but, to tell the honest

truth, all the rest, the ten thousand talari, the thousand gold

pieces, and the fine weapons, were all, yes all, drunk up by the

thirsty treasury of the Turkish admiral. My position was the more

perilous because that very admiral happened to be Chosrew pacha. After

I routed him, the fellow had managed to obtain a position which is

equal to that of our Admiral of the Fleet--"

"But I thought he was in the cavalry?" said Pere Leger, who had

followed the narrative with the deepest attention.

"Dear me! how little the East is understood in the French provinces!"

cried Georges. "Monsieur, I'll explain the Turks to you. You are a

farmer; the Padishah (that's the Sultan) makes you a marshal; if you

don't fulfil your functions to his satisfaction, so much the worse for

you, he cuts your head off; that's his way of dismissing his

functionaries. A gardener is made a prefect; and the prime minister

comes down to be a foot-boy. The Ottomans have no system of promotion

and no hierarchy. From a cavalry officer Chosrew simply became a naval

officer. Sultan Mahmoud ordered him to capture Ali by sea; and he did

get hold of him, assisted by those beggarly English--who put their paw

on most of the treasure. This Chosrew, who had not forgotten the

riding-lesson I gave him, recognized me. You understand, my goose was

cooked, oh, brown! when it suddenly came into my head to claim

protection as a Frenchman and a troubadour from Monsieur de Riviere.

The ambassador, enchanted to find something to show him off, demanded

that I should be set at liberty. The Turks have one good trait in

their nature; they are as willing to let you go as they are to cut

your head off; they are indifferent to everything. The French consul,

charming fellow, friend of Chosrew, made him give back two thousand of

the talari, and, consequently, his name is, as I may say, graven on my

heart--"

"What was his name?" asked Monsieur de Serizy; and a look of some

surprise passed over his face as Georges named, correctly, one of our

most distinguished consul-generals who happened at that time to be

stationed at Smyrna.

"I assisted," added Georges, "at the execution of the Governor of

Smyrna, whom the Sultan had ordered Chosrew to put to death. It was

one of the most curious things I ever saw, though I've seen many,--

I'll tell you about it when we stop for breakfast. From Smyrna I

crossed to Spain, hearing there was a revolution there. I went

straight to Mina, who appointed me as his aide-de-camp with the rank

of colonel. I fought for the constitutional cause, which will

certainly be defeated when we enter Spain--as we undoubtedly shall,

some of these days--"

"You, a French soldier!" said the count, sternly. "You show

extraordinary confidence in the discretion of those who are listening

to you."

"But there are no spies here," said Georges.

"Are you aware, Colonel Georges," continued the count, "that the Court

of Peers is at this very time inquiring into a conspiracy which has

made the government extremely severe in its treatment of French

soldiers who bear arms against France, and who deal in foreign

intrigues for the purpose of overthrowing our legitimate sovereigns."

On hearing this stern admonition the painter turned red to his ears

and looked at Mistigris, who seemed dumfounded.

"Well," said Pere Leger, "what next?"

"If," continued the count, "I were a magistrate, it would be my duty

to order the gendarmes at Pierrefitte to arrest the aide-de-camp of

Mina, and to summon all present in this vehicle to testify to his

words."

This speech stopped Georges' narrative all the more surely, because at

this moment the coucou reached the guard-house of a brigade of

gendarmerie,--the white flag floating, as the orthodox saying is, upon

the breeze.

"You have too many decorations to do such a dastardly thing," said

Oscar.

"Never mind; we'll catch up with him soon," whispered Georges in the

lad's ear.

"Colonel," cried Leger, who was a good deal disturbed by the count's

outburst, and wanted to change the conversation, "in all these

countries where you have been, what sort of farming do they do? How do

they vary the crops?"

"Well, in the first place, my good fellow, you must understand, they

are too busy cropping off each others' heads to think much of cropping

the ground."

The count couldn't help smiling; and that smile reassured the

narrator.

"They have a way of cultivating which you will think very queer. They

don't cultivate at all; that's their style of farming. The Turks and

the Greeks, they eat onions or rise. They get opium from poppies, and

it gives them a fine revenue. Then they have tobacco, which grows of

itself, famous latakiah! and dates! and all kinds of sweet things that

don't need cultivation. It is a country full of resources and

commerce. They make fine rugs at Smyrna, and not dear."

"But," persisted Leger, "if the rugs are made of wool they must come

from sheep; and to have sheep you must have fields, farms, culture--"

"Well, there may be something of that sort," replied Georges. "But

their chief crop, rice, grows in the water. As for me, I have only

been along the coasts and seen the parts that are devastated by war.

Besides, I have the deepest aversion to statistics."

"How about the taxes?" asked the farmer.

"Oh! the taxes are heavy; they take all a man has, and leave him the

rest. The pacha of Egypt was so struck with the advantages of that

system, that, when I came away he was on the point of organizing his

own administration on that footing--"

"But," said Leger, who no longer understood a single word, "how?"

"How?" said Georges. "Why, agents go round and take all the harvests,

and leave the fellahs just enough to live on. That's a system that

does away with stamped papers and bureaucracy, the curse of France,

hein?"

"By virtue of what right?" said Leger.

"Right? why it is a land of despotism. They haven't any rights. Don't

you know the fine definition Montesquieu gives of despotism. 'Like the

savage, it cuts down the tree to gather the fruits.' They don't tax,

they take everything."

"And that's what our rulers are trying to bring us to. 'Tax vobiscum,'

--no, thank you!" said Mistigris.

"But that is what we ARE coming to," said the count. "Therefore, those

who own land will do well to sell it. Monsieur Schinner must have seen

how things are tending in Italy, where the taxes are enormous."

"Corpo di Bacco! the Pope is laying it on heavily," replied Schinner.

"But the people are used to it. Besides, Italians are so good-natured

that if you let 'em murder a few travellers along the highways they're

contented."

"I see, Monsieur Schinner," said the count, "that you are not wearing

the decoration you obtained in 1819; it seems the fashion nowadays not

to wear orders."

Mistigris and the pretended Schinner blushed to their ears.

"Well, with me," said the artist, "the case is different. It isn't on

account of fashion; but I don't want to be recognized. Have the

goodness not to betray me, monsieur; I am supposed to be a little

painter of no consequence,--a mere decorator. I'm on may way to a

chateau where I mustn't rouse the slightest suspicion."

"Ah! I see," said the count, "some intrigue,--a love affair! Youth is

happy!"

Oscar, who was writhing in his skin at being a nobody and having

nothing to say, gazed at Colonel Czerni-Georges and at the famous

painter Schinner, and wondered how he could transform himself into

somebody. But a youth of nineteen, kept at home all his life, and

going for two weeks only into the country, what could he be, or do, or

say? However, the Alicante had got into his head, and his vanity was

boiling in his veins; so when the famous Schinner allowed a romantic

adventure to be guessed at in which the danger seemed as great as the

pleasure, he fastened his eyes, sparkling with wrath and envy, upon

that hero.

"Yes," said the count, with a credulous air, "a man must love a woman

well to make such sacrifices."

"What sacrifices?" demanded Mistigris.

"Don't you know, my little friend, that a ceiling painted by so great

a master as yours is worth its weight in gold?" replied the count. "If

the civil list paid you, as it did, thirty thousand francs for each of

those rooms in the Louvre," he continued, addressing Schinner, "a

bourgeois,--as you call us in the studios--ought certainly to pay you

twenty thousand. Whereas, if you go to this chateau as a humble

decorator, you will not get two thousand."

"The money is not the greatest loss," said Mistigris. "The work is

sure to be a masterpiece, but he can't sign it, you know, for fear of

compromising HER."

"Ah! I'd return all my crosses to the sovereigns who gave them to me

for the devotion that youth can win," said the count.

"That's just it!" said Mistigris, "when one's young, one's loved;

plenty of love, plenty of women; but they do say: 'Where there's wife,

there's mope.'"

"What does Madame Schinner say to all this?" pursued the count; "for I

believe you married, out of love, the beautiful Adelaide de Rouville,

the protegee of old Admiral de Kergarouet; who, by the bye, obtained

for you the order for the Louvre ceilings through his nephew, the

Comte de Fontaine."

"A great painter is never married when he travels," said Mistigris.

"So that's the morality of studios, is it?" cried the count, with an

air of great simplicity.

"Is the morality of courts where you got those decorations of yours

any better?" said Schinner, recovering his self-possession, upset for

the moment by finding out how much the count knew of Schinner's life

as an artist.

"I never asked for any of my orders," said the count. "I believe I

have loyally earned them."

"'A fair yield and no flavor,'" said Mistigris.

The count was resolved not to betray himself; he assumed an air of

good-humored interest in the country, and looked up the valley of

Groslay as the coucou took the road to Saint-Brice, leaving that to

Chantilly on the right.

"Is Rome as fine as they say it is?" said Georges, addressing the

great painter.

"Rome is fine only to those who love it; a man must have a passion for

it to enjoy it. As a city, I prefer Venice,--though I just missed

being murdered there."

"Faith, yes!" cried Mistigris; "if it hadn't been for me you'd have

been gobbled up. It was that mischief-making tom-fool, Lord Byron, who

got you into the scrape. Oh! wasn't he raging, that buffoon of an

Englishman?"

"Hush!" said Schinner. "I don't want my affair with Lord Byron talked

about."

"But you must own, all the same, that you were glad enough I knew how

to box," said Mistigris.

From time to time, Pierrotin exchanged sly glances with the count,

which might have made less inexperienced persons than the five other

travellers uneasy.

"Lords, pachas, and thirty-thousand-franc ceilings!" he cried. "I seem

to be driving sovereigns. What pourboires I'll get!"

"And all the places paid for!" said Mistigris, slyly.

"It is a lucky day for me," continued Pierrotin; "for you know, Pere

Leger, about my beautiful new coach on which I have paid an advance of

two thousand francs? Well, those dogs of carriage-builders, to whom I

have to pay two thousand five hundred francs more, won't take fifteen

hundred down, and my note for a thousand for two months! Those

vultures want it all. Who ever heard of being so stiff with a man in

business these eight years, and the father of a family?--making me run

the risk of losing everything, carriage and money too, if I can't find

before to-morrow night that miserable last thousand! Hue, Bichette!

They won't play that trick on the great coach offices, I'll warrant

you."

"Yes, that's it," said the rapin; "'your money or your strife.'"

"Well, you have only eight hundred now to get," remarked the count,

who considered this moan, addressed to Pere Leger, a sort of letter of

credit drawn upon himself.

"True," said Pierrotin. "Xi! xi! Rougeot!"

"You must have seen many fine ceilings in Venice," resumed the count,

addressing Schinner.

"I was too much in love to take any notice of what seemed to me then

mere trifles," replied Schinner. "But I was soon cured of that folly,

for it was in the Venetian states--in Dalmatia--that I received a

cruel lesson."

"Can it be told?" asked Georges. "I know Dalmatia very well."

"Well, if you have been there, you know that all the people at that

end of the Adriatic are pirates, rovers, corsairs retired from

business, as they haven't been hanged--"

"Uscoques," said Georges.

Hearing the right name given, the count, who had been sent by Napoleon

on one occasion to the Illyrian provinces, turned his head and looked

at Georges, so surprised was he.

"The affair happened in that town where they make maraschino,"

continued Schinner, seeming to search for a name.

"Zara," said Georges. "I've been there; it is on the coast."

"You are right," said the painter. "I had gone there to look at the

country, for I adore scenery. I've longed a score of times to paint

landscape, which no one, as I think, understands but Mistigris, who

will some day reproduce Hobbema, Ruysdael, Claude Lorrain, Poussin,

and others."

"But," exclaimed the count, "if he reproduces one of them won't that

be enough?"

"If you persist in interrupting, monsieur," said Oscar, "we shall

never get on."

"And Monsieur Schinner was not addressing himself to you in

particular," added Georges.

"'Tisn't polite to interrupt," said Mistigris, sententiously, "but we

all do it, and conversation would lose a great deal if we didn't

scatter little condiments while exchanging our reflections. Therefore,

continue, agreeable old gentleman, to lecture us, if you like. It is

done in the best society, and you know the proverb: 'we must 'owl with

the wolves.'"

"I had heard marvellous things of Dalmatia," resumed Schinner, "so I

went there, leaving Mistigris in Venice at an inn--"

"'Locanda,'" interposed Mistigris; "keep to the local color."

"Zara is what is called a country town--"

"Yes," said Georges; "but it is fortified."

"Parbleu!" said Schinner; "the fortifications count for much in my

adventure. At Zara there are a great many apothecaries. I lodged with

one. In foreign countries everybody makes a principal business of

letting lodgings; all other trades are accessory. In the evening,

linen changed, I sat in my balcony. In the opposite balcony I saw a

woman; oh! such a woman! Greek,--THAT TELLS ALL! The most beautiful

creature in the town; almond eyes, lids that dropped like curtains,

lashes like a paint-brush, a face with an oval to drive Raffaelle mad,

a skin of the most delicious coloring, tints well-blended, velvety!

and hands, oh!--"

"They weren't made of butter like those of the David school," put in

Mistigris.

"You are always lugging in your painting," cried Georges.

"La, la!" retorted Mistigris; "'an ounce o' paint is worth a pound of

swagger.'"

"And such a costume! pure Greek!" continued Schinner. "Conflagration

of soul! you understand? Well, I questioned my Diafoirus; and he told

me that my neighbor was named Zena. Changed my linen. The husband, an

old villain, in order to marry Zena, paid three hundred thousand

francs to her father and mother, so celebrated was the beauty of that

beautiful creature, who was truly the most beautiful girl in all

Dalmatia, Illyria, Adriatica, and other places. In those parts they

buy their wives without seeing them--"

"I shall not go THERE," said Pere Leger.

"There are nights when my sleep is still illuminated by the eyes of

Zena," continued Schinner. "The husband was sixty-nine years of age,

and jealous! not as a tiger, for they say of a tiger, 'jealous as a

Dalmatian'; and my man was worse than A Dalmatian, one Dalmatian,--he

was three and a half Dalmatians at the very least; he was an Uscoque,

tricoque, archicoque in a bicoque of a paltry little place like

Zara--"

"Horrid fellow, and 'horrider bellow,'" put in Mistigris.

"Ha! good," said Georges, laughing.

"After being a corsair, and probably a pirate, he thought no more of

spitting a Christian on his dagger than I did of spitting on the

ground," continued Schinner. "So that was how the land lay. The old

wretch had millions, and was hideous with the loss of an ear some

pacha had cut off, and the want of an eye left I don't know where.

'Never,' said the little Diafoirus, 'never does he leave his wife,

never for a second.' 'Perhaps she'll want your services, and I could

go in your clothes; that's a trick that has great success in our

theatres,' I told him. Well, it would take too long to tell you all

the delicious moments of that lifetime--to wit, three days--which I

passed exchanging looks with Zena, and changing linen every day. It

was all the more violently titillating because the slightest motion

was significant and dangerous. At last it must have dawned upon Zena's

mind that none but a Frenchman and an artist was daring enough to make

eyes at her in the midst of the perils by which she was surrounded;

and as she hated her hideous pirate, she answered my glances with

delightful ogles fit to raise a man to the summit of Paradise without

pulleys. I attained to the height of Don Quixote; I rose to

exaltation! and I cried: 'The monster may kill me, but I'll go, I'll

go!' I gave up landscape and studied the ignoble dwelling of the

Uscoque. That night, changed linen, and put on the most perfumed shirt

I had; then I crossed the street, and entered--"

"The house?" cried Oscar.

"The house?" echoed Georges.

"The house," said Schinner.

"Well, you're a bold dog," cried farmer Leger. "I should have kept out

of it myself."

"Especially as you could never have got through the doorway," replied

Schinner. "So in I went," he resumed, "and I found two hands stretched

out to meet mine. I said nothing, for those hands, soft as the peel of

an onion, enjoined me to silence. A whisper breathed into my ear, 'He

sleeps!' Then, as we were sure that nobody would see us, we went to

walk, Zena and I, upon the ramparts, but accompanied, if you please,

by a duenna, as hideous as an old portress, who didn't leave us any

more than our shadow; and I couldn't persuade Madame Pirate to send

her away. The next night we did the same thing, and again I wanted to

get rid of the old woman, but Zena resisted. As my sweet love spoke

only Greek, and I Venetian, we couldn't understand each other, and so

we quarrelled. I said to myself, in changing linen, 'As sure as fate,

the next time there'll be no old woman, and we can make it all up with

the language of love.' Instead of which, fate willed that that old

woman should save my life! You'll hear how. The weather was fine, and,

not to create suspicion, I took a turn at landscape,--this was after

our quarrel was made up, you understand. After walking along the

ramparts for some time, I was coming tranquilly home with my hands in

my pockets, when I saw the street crowded with people. Such a crowd!

like that for an execution. It fell upon me; I was seized, garroted,

gagged, and guarded by the police. Ah! you don't know--and I hope you

never may know--what it is to be taken for a murderer by a maddened

populace which stones you and howls after you from end to end of the

principal street of a town, shouting for your death! Ah! those eyes

were so many flames, all mouths were a single curse, while from the

volume of that burning hatred rose the fearful cry: 'To death! to

death! down with the murderer!'"

"So those Dalmatians spoke our language, did they?" said the count. "I

observe you relate the scene as if it happened yesterday."

Schinner was nonplussed.

"Riot has but one language," said the astute statesman Mistigris.

"Well," continued Schinner, "when I was brought into court in presence

of the magistrates, I learned that the cursed corsair was dead,

poisoned by Zena. I'd liked to have changed linen then. Give you my

word, I knew nothing of THAT melodrama. It seems the Greek girl put

opium (a great many poppies, as monsieur told us, grow about there) in

the pirate's grog, just to make him sleep soundly and leave her free

for a little walk with me, and the old duenna, unfortunate creature,

made a mistake and trebled the dose. The immense fortune of that

cursed pirate was really the cause of all my Zena's troubles. But she

explained matters so ingenuously that I, for one, was released with an

injunction from the mayor and the Austrian commissary of police to go

back to Rome. Zena, who let the heirs of the Uscoque and the judges

get most of the old villain's wealth, was let off with two years'

seclusion in a convent, where she still is. I am going back there some

day to paint her portrait; for in a few years, you know, all this will

be forgotten. Such are the follies one commits at eighteen!"

"And you left me without a sou in the locanda at Venice," said

Mistigris. "And I had to get from Venice to Rome by painting portraits

for five francs apiece, which they didn't pay me. However, that was my

halcyon time. I don't regret it."

"You can imagine the reflections that came to me in that Dalmatian

prison, thrown there without protection, having to answer to Austrians

and Dalmatians, and in danger of losing my head because I went twice

to walk with a woman. There's ill-luck, with a vengeance!"

"Did all that really happen to you?" said Oscar, naively.

"Why shouldn't it happen to him, inasmuch as it had already happened

during the French occupation of Illyria to one of our most gallant

officers of artillery?" said the count, slyly.

"And you believed that artillery officer?" said Mistigris, as slyly to

the count.

"Is that all?" asked Oscar.

"Of course he can't tell you that they cut his head off,--how could

he?" said Mistigris. "'Dead schinners tell no tales.'"

"Monsieur, are there farms in that country?" asked Pere Leger. "What

do they cultivate?"

"Maraschino," replied Mistigris,--"a plant that grows to the height of

the lips, and produces a liqueur which goes by that name."

"Ah!" said Pere Leger.

"I only stayed three days in the town and fifteen in prison," said

Schinner, "so I saw nothing; not even the fields where they grow the

maraschino."

"They are fooling you," said Georges to the farmer. "Maraschino comes

in cases."

"'Romances alter cases,'" remarked Mistigris.

CHAPTER V

THE DRAMA BEGINS

Pierrotin's vehicle was now going down the steep incline of the valley

of Saint-Brice to the inn which stands in the middle of the large

village of that name, where Pierrotin was in the habit of stopping an

hour to breathe his horses, give them their oats, and water them. It

was now about half-past one o'clock.

"Ha! here's Pere Leger," cried the inn-keeper, when the coach pulled

up before the door. "Do you breakfast?"

"Always once a day," said the fat farmer; "and I'll break a crust here

and now."

"Give us a good breakfast," cried Georges, twirling his cane in a

cavalier manner which excited the admiration of poor Oscar.

But that admiration was turned to jealousy when he saw the gay

adventurer pull out from a side-pocket a small straw case, from which

he selected a light-colored cigar, which he proceeded to smoke on the

threshold of the inn door while waiting for breakfast.

"Do you smoke?" he asked of Oscar.

"Sometimes," replied the ex-schoolboy, swelling out his little chest

and assuming a jaunty air.

Georges presented the open case to Oscar and Schinner.

"Phew!" said the great painter; "ten-sous cigars!"

"The remains of those I brought back from Spain," said the adventurer.

"Do you breakfast here?"

"No," said the artist. "I am expected at the chateau. Besides, I took

something at the Lion d'Argent just before starting."

"And you?" said Georges to Oscar.

"I have breakfasted," replied Oscar.

Oscar would have given ten years of his life for boots and straps to

his trousers. He sneezed, he coughed, he spat, and swallowed the smoke

with ill-disguised grimaces.

"You don't know how to smoke," said Schinner; "look at me!"

With a motionless face Schinner breathed in the smoke of his cigar and

let it out through his nose without the slightest contraction of

feature. Then he took another whiff, kept the smoke in his throat,

removed the cigar from his lips, and allowed the smoke slowly and

gracefully to escape them.

"There, young man," said the great painter.

"Here, young man, here's another way; watch this," said Georges,

imitating Schinner, but swallowing the smoke and exhaling none.

"And my parents believed they had educated me!" thought Oscar,

endeavoring to smoke with better grace.

But his nausea was so strong that he was thankful when Mistigris

filched his cigar, remarking, as he smoked it with evident

satisfaction, "You haven't any contagious diseases, I hope."

Oscar in reply would fain have punched his head.

"How he does spend money!" he said, looking at Colonel Georges. "Eight

francs for Alicante and the cheese-cakes; forty sous for cigars; and

his breakfast will cost him--"

"Ten francs at least," replied Mistigris; "but that's how things are.

'Sharp stomachs make short purses.'"

"Come, Pere Leger, let us drink a bottle of Bordeaux together," said

Georges to the farmer.

"Twenty francs for his breakfast!" cried Oscar; "in all, more than

thirty-odd francs since we started!"

Killed by a sense of his inferiority, Oscar sat down on a stone post,

lost in a revery which did not allow him to perceive that his

trousers, drawn up by the effect of his position, showed the point of

junction between the old top of his stocking and the new "footing,"--

his mother's handiwork.

"We are brothers in socks," said Mistigris, pulling up his own

trousers sufficiently to show an effect of the same kind,--"'By the

footing, Hercules.'"

The count, who overheard this, laughed as he stood with folded arms

under the porte-cochere, a little behind the other travellers. However

nonsensical these lads might be, the grave statesman envied their very

follies; he liked their bragging and enjoyed the fun of their lively

chatter.

"Well, are you to have Les Moulineaux? for I know you went to Paris to

get the money for the purchase," said the inn-keeper to Pere Leger,

whom he had just taken to the stables to see a horse he wanted to sell

to him. "It will be queer if you manage to fleece a peer of France and

a minister of State like the Comte de Serizy."

The person thus alluded to showed no sign upon his face as he turned

to look at the farmer.

"I've done for him," replied Pere Leger, in a low voice.

"Good! I like to see those nobles fooled. If you should want twenty

thousand francs or so, I'll lend them to you-- But Francois, the

conductor of Touchard's six o'clock coach, told me that Monsieur

Margueron was invited by the Comte de Serizy to dine with him to-day

at Presles."

"That was the plan of his Excellency, but we had our own little ways

of thwarting it," said the farmer, laughing.

"The count could appoint Monsieur Margueron's son, and you haven't any

place to give,--remember that," said the inn-keeper.

"Of course I do; but if the count has the ministry on his side, I have

King Louis XVIII.," said Pere Leger, in a low voice. "Forty thousand

of his pictures on coin of the realm given to Moreau will enable me to

buy Les Moulineaux for two hundred and sixty thousand, money down,

before Monsieur de Serizy can do so. When he finds the sale is made,

he'll be glad enough to buy the farm for three hundred and sixty

thousand, instead of letting me cut it up in small lots right in the

heart of his property."

"Well done, bourgeois!" cried the inn-keeper.

"Don't you think that's good play?" said Leger.

"Besides," said the inn-keeper, "the farm is really worth that to

him."

"Yes; Les Moulineaux brings in to-day six thousand francs in rental.

I'll take another lease of it at seven thousand five hundred for

eighteen years. Therefore it is really an investment at more than two

and a half per cent. The count can't complain of that. In order not to

involve Moreau, he is himself to propose me as tenant and farmer; it

gives him a look of acting for his master's interests by finding him

nearly three per cent for his money, and a tenant who will pay well."

"How much will Moreau make, in all?"

"Well, if the count gives him ten thousand francs for the transaction

the matter will bring him fifty thousand,--and well-earned, too."

"After all, the count, so they tell me, doesn't like Presles. And then

he is so rich, what does it matter what it costs him?" said the inn-

keeper. "I have never seen him, myself."

"Nor I," said Pere Leger. "But he must be intending to live there, or

why should he spend two hundred thousand francs in restoring the

chateau? It is as fine now as the King's own palace."

"Well, well," said the inn-keeper, "it was high time for Moreau to

feather his nest."

"Yes, for if the masters come there," replied Leger, "they won't keep

their eyes in their pockets."

The count lost not a word of this conversation, which was held in a

low voice, but not in a whisper.

"Here I have actually found the proofs I was going down there to

seek," he thought, looking at the fat farmer as he entered the

kitchen. "But perhaps," he added, "it is only a scheme; Moreau may not

have listened to it."

So unwilling was he to believe that his steward could lend himself to

such a conspiracy.

Pierrotin here came out to water his horses. The count, thinking that

the driver would probably breakfast with the farmer and the inn-

keeper, feared some thoughtless indiscretion.

"All these people combine against us," he thought; "it is allowable to

baffle them-- Pierrotin," he said in a low voice as the man passed

him, "I promised you ten louis to keep my secret; but if you continue

to conceal my name (and remember, I shall know if you pronounce it, or

make the slightest sign that reveals it to any one, no matter who,

here or at Isle-Adam, before to-night), I will give you to-morrow

morning, on your return trip, the thousand francs you need to pay for

your new coach. Therefore, by way of precaution," added the count,

striking Pierrotin, who was pale with happiness, on the shoulder,

"don't go in there to breakfast; stay with your horses."

"Monsieur le comte, I understand you; don't be afraid! it relates to

Pere Leger, of course."

"It relates to every one," replied the count.

"Make yourself easy.--Come, hurry," said Pierrotin, a few moments

later, putting his head into the kitchen. "We are late. Pere Leger,

you know there's a hill to climb; I'm not hungry, and I'll drive on

slowly; you can soon overtake me,--it will do you good to walk a bit."

"What a hurry you are in, Pierrotin!" said the inn-keeper. "Can't you

stay and breakfast? The colonel here pays for the wine at fifty sous,

and has ordered a bottle of champagne."

"I can't. I've got a fish I must deliver by three o'clock for a great

dinner at Stors; there's no fooling with customers, or fishes,

either."

"Very good," said Pere Leger to the inn-keeper. "You can harness that

horse you want to sell me into the cabriolet; we'll breakfast in peace

and overtake Pierrotin, and I can judge of the beast as we go along.

We can go three in your jolter."

To the count's surprise, Pierrotin himself rebridled the horses.

Schinner and Mistigris had walked on. Scarcely had Pierrotin overtaken

the two artists and was mounting the hill from which Ecouen, the

steeple of Mesnil, and the forests that surround that most beautiful

region, came in sight, when the gallop of a horse and the jingling of

a vehicle announced the coming of Pere Leger and the grandson of

Czerni-Georges, who were soon restored to their places in the coucou.

As Pierrotin drove down the narrow road to Moisselles, Georges, who

had so far not ceased to talk with the farmer of the beauty of the

hostess at Saint-Brice, suddenly exclaimed: "Upon my word, this

landscape is not so bad, great painter, is it?"

"Pooh! you who have seen the East and Spain can't really admire it."

"I've two cigars left! If no one objects, will you help me finish

them, Schinner? the little young man there seems to have found a whiff

or two enough for him."

Pere Leger and the count kept silence, which passed for consent.

Oscar, furious at being called a "little young man," remarked, as the

other two were lighting their cigars:

"I am not the aide-de-camp of Mina, monsieur, and I have not yet been

to the East, but I shall probably go there. The career to which my

family destine me will spare me, I trust, the annoyances of travelling

in a coucou before I reach your present age. When I once become a

personage I shall know how to maintain my station."

"'Et caetera punctum!'" crowed Mistigris, imitating the hoarse voice

of a young cock; which made Oscar's deliverance all the more absurd,

because he had just reached the age when the beard sprouts and the

voice breaks. "'What a chit for chat!'" added the rapin.

"Your family, young man, destine you to some career, do they?" said

Georges. "Might I ask what it is?"

"Diplomacy," replied Oscar.

Three bursts of laughter came from Mistigris, the great painter, and

the farmer. The count himself could not help smiling. Georges was

perfectly grave.

"By Allah!" he exclaimed, "I see nothing to laugh at in that. Though

it seems to me, young man, that your respectable mother is, at the

present moment, not exactly in the social sphere of an ambassadress.

She carried a handbag worthy of the utmost respect, and wore shoe-

strings which--"

"My mother, monsieur!" exclaimed Oscar, in a tone of indignation.

"That was the person in charge of our household."

"'Our household' is a very aristocratic term," remarked the count.

"Kings have households," replied Oscar, proudly.

A look from Georges repressed the desire to laugh which took

possession of everybody; he contrived to make Mistigris and the

painter understand that it was necessary to manage Oscar cleverly in

order to work this new mine of amusement.

"Monsieur is right," said the great Schinner to the count, motioning

towards Oscar. "Well-bred people always talk of their 'households'; it

is only common persons like ourselves who say 'home.' For a man so

covered with decorations--"

"'Nunc my eye, nunc alii,'" whispered Mistigris.

"--you seem to know little of the language of the courts. I ask your

future protection, Excellency," added Schinner, turning to Oscar.

"I congratulate myself on having travelled with three such

distinguished men," said the count,--"a painter already famous, a

future general, and a young diplomatist who may some day recover

Belgium for France."

Having committed the odious crime of repudiating his mother, Oscar,

furious from a sense that his companions were laughing at him, now

resolved, at any cost, to make them pay attention to him.

"'All is not gold that glitters,'" he began, his eyes flaming.

"That's not it," said Mistigris. "'All is not old that titters.'

You'll never get on in diplomacy if you don't know your proverbs

better than that."

"I may not know proverbs, but I know my way--"

"It must be far," said Georges, "for I saw that person in charge of

your household give you provisions enough for an ocean voyage: rolls,

chocolate--"

"A special kind of bread and chocolate, yes, monsieur," returned

Oscar; "my stomach is much too delicate to digest the victuals of a

tavern."

"'Victuals' is a word as delicate and refined as your stomach," said

Georges.

"Ah! I like that word 'victuals,'" cried the great painter.

"The word is all the fashion in the best society," said Mistigris. "I

use it myself at the cafe of the Black Hen."

"Your tutor is, doubtless, some celebrated professor, isn't he?--

Monsieur Andrieux of the Academie Francaise, or Monsieur Royer-

Collard?" asked Schinner.

"My tutor is or was the Abbe Loraux, now vicar of Saint-Sulpice,"

replied Oscar, recollecting the name of the confessor at his school.

"Well, you were right to take a private tutor," said Mistigris.

"'Tuto, tutor, celeritus, and jocund.' Of course, you will reward him

well, your abbe?"

"Undoubtedly he will be made a bishop some day," said Oscar.

"By your family influence?" inquired Georges gravely.

"We shall probably contribute to his rise, for the Abbe Frayssinous is

constantly at our house."

"Ah! you know the Abbe Frayssinous?" asked the count.

"He is under obligations to my father," answered Oscar.

"Are you on your way to your estate?" asked Georges.

"No, monsieur; but I am able to say where I am going, if others are

not. I am going to the Chateau de Presles, to the Comte de Serizy."

"The devil! are you going to Presles?" cried Schinner, turning as red

as a cherry.

"So you know his Excellency the Comte de Serizy?" said Georges.

Pere Leger turned round to look at Oscar with a stupefied air.

"Is Monsieur de Serizy at Presles?" he said.

"Apparently, as I am going there," replied Oscar.

"Do you often see the count," asked Monsieur de Serizy.

"Often," replied Oscar. "I am a comrade of his son, who is about my

age, nineteen; we ride together on horseback nearly every day."

"'Aut Caesar, aut Serizy,'" said Mistigris, sententiously.

Pierrotin and Pere Leger exchanged winks on hearing this statement.

"Really," said the count to Oscar, "I am delighted to meet with a

young man who can tell me about that personage. I want his influence

on a rather serious matter, although it would cost him nothing to

oblige me. It concerns a claim I wish to press on the American

government. I should be glad to obtain information about Monsieur de

Serizy."

"Oh! if you want to succeed," replied Oscar, with a knowing look,

"don't go to him, but go to his wife; he is madly in love with her; no

one knows more than I do about that; but she can't endure him."

"Why not?" said Georges.

"The count has a skin disease which makes him hideous. Doctor Albert

has tried in vain to cure it. The count would give half his fortune if

he had a chest like mine," said Oscar, swelling himself out. "He lives

a lonely life in his own house; gets up very early in the morning and

works from three to eight o'clock; after eight he takes his remedies,

--sulphur-baths, steam-baths, and such things. His valet bakes him in

a sort of iron box--for he is always in hopes of getting cured."

"If he is such a friend of the King as they say he is, why doesn't he

get his Majesty to touch him?" asked Georges.

"The count has lately promised thirty thousand francs to a celebrated

Scotch doctor who is coming over to treat him," continued Oscar.

"Then his wife can't be blamed if she finds better--" said Schinner,

but he did not finish his sentence.

"I should say so!" resumed Oscar. "The poor man is so shrivelled and

old you would take him for eighty! He's as dry as parchment, and,

unluckily for him, he feels his position."

"Most men would," said Pere Leger.

"He adores his wife and dares not find fault with her," pursued Oscar,

rejoicing to have found a topic to which they listened. "He plays

scenes with her which would make you die of laughing,--exactly like

Arnolphe in Moliere's comedy."

The count, horror-stricken, looked at Pierrotin, who, finding that the

count said nothing, concluded that Madame Clapart's son was telling

falsehoods.

"So, monsieur," continued Oscar, "if you want the count's influence, I

advise you to apply to the Marquis d'Aiglemont. If you get that former

adorer of Madame de Serizy on your side, you will win husband and wife

at one stroke."

"Look here!" said the painter, "you seem to have seen the count

without his clothes; are you his valet?"

"His valet!" cried Oscar.

"Hang it! people don't tell such things about their friends in public

conveyances," exclaimed Mistigris. "As for me, I'm not listening to

you; I'm deaf: 'discretion plays the better part of adder.'"

"'A poet is nasty and not fit,' and so is a tale-bearer," cried

Schinner.

"Great painter," said Georges, sententiously, "learn this: you can't

say harm of people you don't know. Now the little one here has proved,

indubitably, that he knows his Serizy by heart. If he had told us

about the countess, perhaps--?"

"Stop! not a word about the Comtesse de Serizy, young men," cried the

count. "I am a friend of her brother, the Marquis de Ronquerolles, and

whoever attempts to speak disparagingly of the countess must answer to

me."

"Monsieur is right," cried the painter; "no man should blaguer women."

"God, Honor, and the Ladies! I believe in that melodrama," said

Mistigris.

"I don't know the guerrilla chieftain, Mina, but I know the Keeper of

the Seals," continued the count, looking at Georges; "and though I

don't wear my decorations," he added, looking at the painter, "I

prevent those who do not deserve them from obtaining any. And finally,

let me say that I know so many persons that I even know Monsieur

Grindot, the architect of Presles. Pierrotin, stop at the next inn; I

want to get out a moment."

Pierrotin hurried his horses through the village street of Moisselles,

at the end of which was the inn where all travellers stopped. This

short distance was done in silence.

"Where is that young fool going?" asked the count, drawing Pierrotin

into the inn-yard.

"To your steward. He is the son of a poor lady who lives in the rue de

la Cerisaie, to whom I often carry fruit, and game, and poultry from

Presles. She is a Madame Husson."

"Who is that man?" inquired Pere Leger of Pierrotin when the count had

left him.

"Faith, I don't know," replied Pierrotin; "this is the first time I

have driven him. I shouldn't be surprised if he was that prince who

owns Maffliers. He has just told me to leave him on the road near

there; he doesn't want to go on to Isle-Adam."

"Pierrotin thinks he is the master of Maffliers," said Pere Leger,

addressing Georges when he got back into the coach.

The three young fellows were now as dull as thieves caught in the act;

they dared not look at each other, and were evidently considering the

consequences of their fibs.

"This is what is called 'suffering for license sake,'" said Mistigris.

"You see I did know the count," said Oscar.

"Possibly. But you'll never be an ambassador," replied Georges. "When

people want to talk in public conveyances, they ought to be careful,

like me, to talk without saying anything."

"That's what speech is for," remarked Mistigris, by way of conclusion.

The count returned to his seat and the coucou rolled on amid the

deepest silence.

"Well, my friends," said the count, when they reached the Carreau

woods, "here we all are, as silent as if we were going to the

scaffold."

"'Silence gives content,'" muttered Mistigris.

"The weather is fine," said Georges.

"What place is that?" said Oscar, pointing to the chateau de

Franconville, which produces a fine effect at that particular spot,

backed, as it is, by the noble forest of Saint-Martin.

"How is it," cried the count, "that you, who say you go so often to

Presles, do not know Franconville?"

"Monsieur knows men, not castles," said Mistigris.

"Budding diplomatists have so much else to take their minds," remarked

Georges.

"Be so good as to remember my name," replied Oscar, furious. "I am

Oscar Husson, and ten years hence I shall be famous."

After that speech, uttered with bombastic assumption, Oscar flung

himself back in his corner.

"Husson of what, of where?" asked Mistigris.

"It is a great family," replied the count. "Husson de la Cerisaie;

monsieur was born beneath the steps of the Imperial throne."

Oscar colored crimson to the roots of his hair, and was penetrated

through and through with a dreadful foreboding.

They were now about to descend the steep hill of La Cave, at the foot

of which, in a narrow valley, flanked by the forest of Saint-Martin,

stands the magnificent chateau of Presles.

"Messieurs," said the count, "I wish you every good fortune in your

various careers. Monsieur le colonel, make your peace with the King of

France; the Czerni-Georges ought not to snub the Bourbons. I have

nothing to wish for you, my dear Monsieur Schinner; your fame is

already won, and nobly won by splendid work. But you are much to be

feared in domestic life, and I, being a married man, dare not invite

you to my house. As for Monsieur Husson, he needs no protection; he

possesses the secrets of statesmen and can make them tremble. Monsieur

Leger is about to pluck the Comte de Serizy, and I can only exhort him

to do it with a firm hand. Pierrotin, put me out here, and pick me up

at the same place to-morrow," added the count, who then left the coach

and took a path through the woods, leaving his late companions

confused and bewildered.

"He must be that count who has hired Franconville; that's the path to

it," said Leger.

"If ever again," said the false Schinner, "I am caught blague-ing in a

public coach, I'll fight a duel with myself. It was your fault,

Mistigris," giving his rapin a tap on the head.

"All I did was to help you out, and follow you to Venice," said

Mistigris; "but that's always the way, 'Fortune belabors the slave.'"

"Let me tell you," said Georges to his neighbor Oscar, "that if, by

chance, that was the Comte de Serizy, I wouldn't be in your skin for a

good deal, healthy as you think it."

Oscar, remembering his mother's injunctions, which these words

recalled to his mind, turned pale and came to his senses.

"Here you are, messieurs!" cried Pierrotin, pulling up at a fine iron

gate.

"Here we are--where?" said the painter, and Georges, and Oscar all at

once.

"Well, well!" exclaimed Pierrotin, "if that doesn't beat all! Ah ca,

monsieurs, have none of you been here before? Why, this is the chateau

de Presles."

"Oh, yes; all right, friend," said Georges, recovering his audacity.

"But I happen to be going on to Les Moulineaux," he added, not wishing

his companions to know that he was really going to the chateau.

"You don't say so? Then you are coming to me," said Pere Leger.

"How so?"

"Why, I'm the farmer at Moulineaux. Hey, colonel, what brings you

there?"

"To taste your butter," said Georges, pulling out his portfolio.

"Pierrotin," said Oscar, "leave my things at the steward's. I am going

straight to the chateau."

Whereupon Oscar plunged into a narrow path, not knowing, in the least,

where he was going.

"Hi! Monsieur l'ambassadeur," cried Pere Leger, "that's the way to the

forest; if you really want to get to the chateau, go through the

little gate."

Thus compelled to enter, Oscar disappeared into the grand court-yard.

While Pere Leger stood watching Oscar, Georges, utterly confounded by

the discovery that the farmer was the present occupant of Les

Moulineaux, has slipped away so adroitly that when the fat countryman

looked round for his colonel there was no sign of him.

The iron gates opened at Pierrotin's demand, and he proudly drove in

to deposit with the concierge the thousand and one utensils belonging

to the great Schinner. Oscar was thunderstruck when he became aware

that Mistigris and his master, the witnesses of his bravado, were to

be installed in the chateau itself. In ten minutes Pierrotin had

discharged the various packages of the painter, the bundles of Oscar

Husson, and the pretty little leather portmanteau, which he took from

its nest of hay and confided mysteriously to the wife of the

concierge. Then he drove out of the courtyard, cracking his whip, and

took the road that led through the forest to Isle-Adam, his face

beaming with the sly expression of a peasant who calculates his

profits. Nothing was lacking now to his happiness; on the morrow he

would have his thousand francs, and, as a consequence, his magnificent

new coach.

CHAPTER VI

THE MOREAU INTERIOR

Oscar, somewhat abashed, was skulking behind a clump of trees in the

centre of the court-yard, and watching to see what became of his two

road-companions, when Monsieur Moreau suddenly came out upon the

portico from what was called the guard-room. He was dressed in a long

blue overcoat which came to his heels, breeches of yellowish leather

and top-boots, and in his hand he carried a riding-whip.

"Ah! my boy, so here you are? How is the dear mamma?" he said, taking

Oscar by the hand. "Good-day, messieurs," he added to Mistigris and

his master, who then came forward. "You are, no doubt, the two

painters whom Monsieur Grindot, the architect, told me to expect."

He whistled twice at the end of his whip; the concierge came.

"Take these gentlemen to rooms 14 and 15. Madame Moreau will give you

the keys. Go with them to show the way; make fires there, if

necessary, and take up all their things. I have orders from Monsieur

le comte," he added, addressing the two young men, "to invite you to

my table, messieurs; we dine at five, as in Paris. If you like

hunting, you will find plenty to amuse you; I have a license from the

Eaux et Forets; and we hunt over twelve thousand acres of forest, not

counting our own domain."

Oscar, the painter, and Mistigris, all more or less subdued, exchanged

glances, but Mistigris, faithful to himself, remarked in a low tone,

"'Veni, vidi, cecidi,--I came, I saw, I slaughtered.'"

Oscar followed the steward, who led him along at a rapid pace through

the park.

"Jacques," said Moreau to one of his children whom they met, "run in

and tell your mother that little Husson has come, and say to her that

I am obliged to go to Les Moulineaux for a moment."

The steward, then about fifty years old, was a dark man of medium

height, and seemed stern. His bilious complexion, to which country

habits had added a certain violent coloring, conveyed, at first sight,

the impression of a nature which was other than his own. His blue eyes

and a large crow-beaked nose gave him an air that was the more

threatening because his eyes were placed too close together. But his

large lips, the outline of his face, and the easy good-humor of his

manner soon showed that his nature was a kindly one. Abrupt in speech

and decided in tone, he impressed Oscar immensely by the force of his

penetration, inspired, no doubt, by the affection which he felt for

the boy. Trained by his mother to magnify the steward, Oscar had

always felt himself very small in Moreau's presence; but on reaching

Presles a new sensation came over him, as if he expected some harm

from this fatherly figure, his only protector.

"Well, my Oscar, you don't look pleased at getting here," said the

steward. "And yet you'll find plenty of amusement; you shall learn to

ride on horseback, and shoot, and hunt."

"I don't know any of those things," said Oscar, stupidly.

"But I brought you here to learn them."

"Mamma told me only to stay two weeks because of Madame Moreau."

"Oh! we'll see about that," replied Moreau, rather wounded that his

conjugal authority was doubted.

Moreau's youngest son, an active, strapping lad of twelve, here ran

up.

"Come," said his father, "take Oscar to your mother."

He himself went rapidly along the shortest path to the gamekeeper's

house, which was situated between the park and the forest.

The pavilion, or lodge, in which the count had established his

steward, was built a few years before the Revolution. It stood in the

centre of a large garden, one wall of which adjoined the court-yard of

the stables and offices of the chateau itself. Formerly its chief

entrance was on the main road to the village. But after the count's

father bought the building, he closed that entrance and united the

place with his own property.

The house, built of freestone, in the style of the period of Louis XV.

(it is enough to say that its exterior decoration consisted of a stone

drapery beneath the windows, as in the colonnades of the Place Louis

XV., the flutings of which were stiff and ungainly), had on the

ground-floor a fine salon opening into a bedroom, and a dining-room

connected with a billiard-room. These rooms, lying parallel to one

another, were separated by a staircase, in front of which was a sort

of peristyle which formed an entrance-hall, on which the two suits of

rooms on either side opened. The kitchen was beneath the dining-room,

for the whole building was raised ten steps from the ground level.

By placing her own bedroom on the first floor above the ground-floor,

Madame Moreau was able to transform the chamber adjoining the salon

into a boudoir. These two rooms were richly furnished with beautiful

pieces culled from the rare old furniture of the chateau. The salon,

hung with blue and white damask, formerly the curtains of the state-

bed, was draped with ample portieres and window curtains lined with

white silk. Pictures, evidently from old panels, plant-stands, various

pretty articles of modern upholstery, handsome lamps, and a rare old

cut-glass chandelier, gave a grandiose appearance to the room. The

carpet was a Persian rug. The boudoir, wholly modern, and furnished

entirely after Madame Moreau's own taste, was arranged in imitation of

a tent, with ropes of blue silk on a gray background. The classic

divan was there, of course, with its pillows and footstools. The

plant-stands, taken care of by the head-gardener of Presles, rejoiced

the eye with their pyramids of bloom. The dining-room and billiard-

room were furnished in mahogany.

Around the house the steward's wife had laid out a beautiful garden,

carefully cultivated, which opened into the great park. Groups of

choice parks hid the offices and stables. To improve the entrance by

which visitors came to see her, she had substituted a handsome iron

gateway for the shabby railing, which she discarded.

The dependence in which the situation of their dwelling placed the

Moreaus, was thus adroitly concealed, and they seemed all the more

like rich and independent persons taking care of the property of a

friend, because neither the count nor the countess ever came to

Presles to take down their pretensions. Moreover, the perquisites

granted by Monsieur de Serizy allowed them to live in the midst of

that abundance which is the luxury of country life. Milk, eggs,

poultry, game, fruits, flowers, forage, vegetables, wood, the steward

and his wife used in profusion, buying absolutely nothing but

butcher's-meat, wines, and the colonial supplies required by their

life of luxury. The poultry-maid baked their bread; and of late years

Moreau had paid his butcher with pigs from the farm, after reserving

those he needed for his own use.

On one occasion, the countess, always kind and good to her former

maid, gave her, as a souvenir perhaps, a little travelling-carriage,

the fashion of which was out of date. Moreau had it repainted, and now

drove his wife about the country with two good horses which belonged

to the farm. Besides these horses, Moreau had his own saddle-horse. He

did enough farming on the count's property to keep the horses and

maintain his servants. He stacked three hundred tons of excellent hay,

but accounted for only one hundred, making use of a vague permission

once granted by the count. He kept his poultry-yard, pigeon-cotes, and

cattle at the cost of the estate, but the manure of the stables was

used by the count's gardeners. All these little stealings had some

ostensible excuse.

Madame Moreau had taken into her service a daughter of one of the

gardeners, who was first her maid and afterwards her cook. The

poultry-game, also the dairy-maid, assisted in the work of the

household; and the steward had hired a discharged soldier to groom the

horses and do the heavy labor.

At Nerville, Chaumont, Maffliers, Nointel, and other places of the

neighborhood, the handsome wife of the steward was received by persons

who either did not know, or pretended not to know her previous

condition. Moreau did services to many persons. He induced his master

to agree to certain things which seem trifles in Paris, but are really

of immense importance in the country. After bringing about the

appointment of a certain "juge de paix" at Beaumont and also at Isle-

Adam, he had, in the same year, prevented the dismissal of a keeper-

general of the Forests, and obtained the cross of the Legion of honor

for the first cavalry-sergeant at Beaumont. Consequently, no festivity

was ever given among the bourgeoisie to which Monsieur and Madame

Moreau were not invited. The rector of Presles and the mayor of

Presles came every evening to play cards with them. It is difficult

for a man not to be kind and hospitable after feathering his nest so

comfortably.

A pretty woman, and an affected one, as all retired waiting-maids of

great ladies are, for after they are married they imitate their

mistresses, Madame Moreau imported from Paris all the new fashions.

She wore expensive boots, and never was seen on foot, except,

occasionally, in the finest weather. Though her husband allowed but

five hundred francs a year for her toilet, that sum is immense in the

provinces, especially if well laid out. So that Madame Moreau, fair,

rosy, and fresh, about thirty-six years of age, still slender and

delicate in shape in spite of her three children, played the young

girl and gave herself the airs of a princess. If, when she drove by in

her caleche, some stranger had asked, "Who is she?" Madame Moreau

would have been furious had she heard the reply: "The wife of the

steward at Presles." She wished to be taken for the mistress of the

chateau. In the villages, she patronized the people in the tone of a

great lady. The influence of her husband over the count, proved in so

many years, prevented the small bourgeoisie from laughing at Madame

Moreau, who, in the eyes of the peasants, was really a personage.

Estelle (her name was Estelle) took no more part in the affairs of the

stewardship then the wife of a broker does in her husband's affairs at

the Bourse. She even depended on Moreau for the care of the household

and their own fortune. Confident of his MEANS, she was a thousand

leagues from dreaming that this comfortable existence, which had

lasted for seventeen years, could ever be endangered. And yet, when

she heard of the count's determination to restore the magnificent

chateau, she felt that her enjoyments were threatened, and she urged

her husband to come to the arrangement with Leger about Les

Moulineaux, so that they might retire from Presles and live at Isle-

Adam. She had no intention of returning to a position that was more or

less that of a servant in presence of her former mistress, who,

indeed, would have laughed to see her established in the lodge with

all the airs and graces of a woman of the world.

The rancorous enmity which existed between the Reyberts and the

Moreaus came from a wound inflicted by Madame de Reybert upon Madame

Moreau on the first occasion when the latter assumed precedence over

the former on her first arrival at Presles, the wife of the steward

being determined not to allow her supremacy to be undermined by a

woman nee de Corroy. Madame de Reybert thereupon reminded, or,

perhaps, informed the whole country-side of Madame Moreau's former

station. The words "waiting-maid" flew from lip to lip. The envious

acquaintances of the Moreaus throughout the neighborhood from Beaumont

to Moisselles, began to carp and criticize with such eagerness that a

few sparks of the conflagration fell into the Moreau household. For

four years the Reyberts, cut dead by the handsome Estelle, found

themselves the objects of so much animadversion on the part of the

adherents of the Moreaus that their position at Presles would not have

been endurable without the thought of vengeance which had, so far,

supported them.

The Moreaus, who were very friendly with Grindot the architect, had

received notice from him of the early arrival of the two painters sent

down to finish the decorations of the chateau, the principal paintings

for which were just completed by Schinner. The great painter had

recommended for this work the artist who was accompanied by Mistigris.

For two days past Madame Moreau had been on the tiptoe of expectation,

and had put herself under arms to receive him. An artist, who was to

be her guest and companion for weeks, demanded some effort. Schinner

and his wife had their own apartment at the chateau, where, by the

count's express orders, they were treated with all the consideration

due to himself. Grindot, who stayed at the steward's house, showed

such respect for the great artist that neither the steward nor his

wife had attempted to put themselves on familiar terms with him.

Moreover, the noblest and richest people in the surrounding country

had vied with each other in paying attention to Schinner and his wife.

So, very well pleased to have, as it were, a little revenge of her

own, Madame Moreau was determined to cry up the artist she was now

expecting, and to present him to her social circle as equal in talent

to the great Schinner.

Though for two days past Moreau's pretty wife had arrayed herself

coquettishly, the prettiest of her toilets had been reserved for this

very Saturday, when, as she felt no doubt, the artist would arrive for

dinner. A pink gown in very narrow stripes, a pink belt with a richly

chased gold buckle, a velvet ribbon and cross at her throat, and

velvet bracelets on her bare arms (Madame de Serizy had handsome arms

and showed them much), together with bronze kid shoes and thread

stockings, gave Madame Moreau all the appearance of an elegant

Parisian. She wore, also, a superb bonnet of Leghorn straw, trimmed

with a bunch of moss roses from Nattier's, beneath the spreading sides

of which rippled the curls of her beautiful blond hair.

After ordering a very choice dinner and reviewing the condition of her

rooms, she walked about the grounds, so as to be seen standing near a

flower-bed in the court-yard of the chateau, like the mistress of the

house, on the arrival of the coach from Paris. She held above her head

a charming rose-colored parasol lined with white silk and fringed.

Seeing that Pierrotin merely left Mistigris's queer packages with the

concierge, having, apparently, brought no passengers, Estelle retired

disappointed and regretting the trouble of making her useless toilet.

Like many persons who are dressed in their best, she felt incapable of

any other occupation than that of sitting idly in her salon awaiting

the coach from Beaumont, which usually passed about an hour after that

of Pierrotin, though it did not leave Paris till mid-day. She was,

therefore, in her own apartment when the two artists walked up to the

chateau, and were sent by Moreau himself to their rooms where they

made their regulation toilet for dinner. The pair had asked questions

of their guide, the gardener, who told them so much of Moreau's beauty

that they felt the necessity of "rigging themselves up" (studio

slang). They, therefore, put on their most superlative suits and then

walked over to the steward's lodge, piloted by Jacques Moreau, the

eldest son, a hardy youth, dressed like an English boy in a handsome

jacket with a turned-over collar, who was spending his vacation like a

fish in water on the estate where his father and mother reigned as

aristocrats.

"Mamma," he said, "here are the two artists sent down by Monsieur

Schinner."

Madame Moreau, agreeably surprised, rose, told her son to place

chairs, and began to display her graces.

"Mamma, the Husson boy is with papa," added the lad; "shall I fetch

him?"

"You need not hurry; go and play with him," said his mother.

The remark "you need not hurry" proved to the two artists the

unimportance of their late travelling companion in the eyes of their

hostess; but it also showed, what they did not know, the feeling of a

step-mother against a step-son. Madame Moreau, after seventeen years

of married life, could not be ignorant of the steward's attachment to

Madame Clapart and the little Husson, and she hated both mother and

child so vehemently that it is not surprising that Moreau had never

before risked bringing Oscar to Presles.

"We are requested, my husband and myself," she said to the two

artists, "to do you the honors of the chateau. We both love art, and,

above all, artists," she added in a mincing tone; "and I beg you to

make yourselves at home here. In the country, you know, every one

should be at their ease; one must feel wholly at liberty, or life is

TOO insipid. We have already had Monsieur Schinner with us."

Mistigris gave a sly glance at his companion.

"You know him, of course?" continued Estelle, after a slight pause.

"Who does not know him, madame?" said the painter.

"Knows him like his double," remarked Mistigris.

"Monsieur Grindot told me your name," said Madame Moreau to the

painter. "But--"

"Joseph Bridau," he replied, wondering with what sort of woman he had

to do.

Mistigris began to rebel internally against the patronizing manner of

the steward's wife; but he waited, like Bridau, for some word which

might give him his cue; one of those words "de singe a dauphin" which

artists, cruel, born-observers of the ridiculous--the pabulum of their

pencils--seize with such avidity. Meantime Estelle's clumsy hands and

feet struck their eyes, and presently a word, or phrase or two,

betrayed her past, and quite out of keeping with the elegance of her

dress, made the two young fellows aware of their prey. A single glance

at each other was enough to arrange a scheme that they should take

Estelle seriously on her own ground, and thus find amusement enough

during the time of their stay.

"You say you love art, madame; perhaps you cultivate it successfully,"

said Joseph Bridau.

"No. Without being neglected, my education was purely commercial; but

I have so profound and delicate a sense of art that Monsieur Schinner

always asked me, when he had finished a piece of work, to give him my

opinion on it."

"Just as Moliere consulted La Foret," said Mistigris.

Not knowing that La Foret was Moliere's servant-woman, Madame Moreau

inclined her head graciously, showing that in her ignorance she

accepted the speech as a compliment.

"Didn't he propose to 'croquer' you?" asked Bridau. "Painters are

eager enough after handsome women."

"What may you mean by such language?"

"In the studios we say croquer, craunch, nibble, for sketching,"

interposed Mistigris, with an insinuating air, "and we are always

wanting to croquer beautiful heads. That's the origin of the

expression, 'She is pretty enough to eat.'"

"I was not aware of the origin of the term," she replied, with the

sweetest glance at Mistigris.

"My pupil here," said Bridau, "Monsieur Leon de Lora, shows a

remarkable talent for portraiture. He would be too happy, I know, to

leave you a souvenir of our stay by painting your charming head,

madame."

Joseph Bridau made a sign to Mistigris which meant: "Come, sail in,

and push the matter; she is not so bad in looks, this woman."

Accepting the glance, Leon de Lora slid down upon the sofa beside

Estelle and took her hand, which she permitted.

"Oh! madame, if you would like to offer a surprise to your husband,

and will give me a few secret sittings I would endeavor to surpass

myself. You are so beautiful, so fresh, so charming! A man without any

talent might become a genius in painting you. He would draw from your

eyes--"

"We must paint your dear children in the arabesques," said Bridau,

interrupting Mistigris.

"I would rather have them in the salon; but perhaps I am indiscreet in

asking it," she replied, looking at Bridau coquettishly.

"Beauty, madame, is a sovereign whom all painters worship; it has

unlimited claims upon them."

"They are both charming," thought Madame Moreau. "Do you enjoy

driving? Shall I take you through the woods, after dinner, in my

carriage?"

"Oh! oh! oh!" cried Mistigris, in three ecstatic tones. "Why, Presles

will prove our terrestrial paradise."

"With an Eve, a fair, young, fascinating woman," added Bridau.

Just as Madame Moreau was bridling, and soaring to the seventh heaven,

she was recalled like a kite by a twitch at its line.

"Madame!" cried her maid-servant, bursting into the room.

"Rosalie," said her mistress, "who allowed you to come here without

being sent for?"

Rosalie paid no heed to the rebuke, but whispered in her mistress's

ear:--

"The count is at the chateau."

"Has he asked for me?" said the steward's wife.

"No, madame; but he wants his trunk and the key of his apartment."

"Then give them to him," she replied, making an impatient gesture to

hide her real trouble.

"Mamma! here's Oscar Husson," said her youngest son, bringing in

Oscar, who turned as red as a poppy on seeing the two artists in

evening dress.

"Oh! so you have come, my little Oscar," said Estelle, stiffly. "I

hope you will now go and dress," she added, after looking at him

contemptuously from head to foot. "Your mother, I presume, has not

accustomed you to dine in such clothes as those."

"Oh!" cried the cruel Mistigris, "a future diplomatist knows the

saying that 'two coats are better than none.'"

"How do you mean, a future diplomatist?" exclaimed Madame Moreau.

Poor Oscar had tears in his eyes as he looked in turn from Joseph to

Leon.

"Merely a joke made in travelling," replied Joseph, who wanted to save

Oscar's feelings out of pity.

"The boy just wanted to be funny like the rest of us, and he blagued,

that's all," said Mistigris.

"Madame," said Rosalie, returning to the door of the salon, "his

Excellency has ordered dinner for eight, and wants it served at six

o'clock. What are we to do?"

During Estelle's conference with her head-woman the two artists and

Oscar looked at each other in consternation; their glances were

expressive of terrible apprehension.

"His Excellency! who is he?" said Joseph Bridau.

"Why, Monsieur le Comte de Serizy, of course," replied little Moreau.

"Could it have been the count in the coucou?" said Leon de Lora.

"Oh!" exclaimed Oscar, "the Comte de Serizy always travels in his own

carriage with four horses."

"How did the Comte de Serizy get here?" said the painter to Madame

Moreau, when she returned, much discomfited, to the salon.

"I am sure I do not know," she said. "I cannot explain to myself this

sudden arrival; nor do I know what has brought him-- And Moreau not

here!"

"His Excellency wishes Monsieur Schinner to come over to the chateau,"

said the gardener, coming to the door of the salon. "And he begs

Monsieur Schinner to give him the pleasure to dine with him; also

Monsieur Mistigris."

"Done for!" cried the rapin, laughing. "He whom we took for a

bourgeois in the coucou was the count. You may well say: 'Sour are the

curses of perversity.'"

Oscar was very nearly changed to a pillar of salt; for, at this

revelation, his throat felt saltier than the sea.

"And you, who talked to him about his wife's lovers and his skin

diseases!" said Mistigris, turning on Oscar.

"What does he mean?" exclaimed the steward's wife, gazing after the

two artists, who went away laughing at the expression of Oscar's face.

Oscar remained dumb, confounded, stupefied, hearing nothing, though

Madame Moreau questioned him and shook him violently by his arm, which

she caught and squeezed. She gained nothing, however, and was forced

to leave him in the salon without an answer, for Rosalie appeared

again, to ask for linen and silver, and to beg she would go herself

and see that the multiplied orders of the count were executed. All the

household, together with the gardeners and the concierge and his wife,

were going and coming in a confusion that may readily be imagined. The

master had fallen upon his own house like a bombshell.

From the top of the hill near La Cave, where he left the coach, the

count had gone, by the path through the woods well-known to him, to

the house of his gamekeeper. The keeper was amazed when he saw his

real master.

"Is Moreau here?" said the count. "I see his horse."

"No, monseigneur; he means to go to Moulineaux before dinner, and he

has left his horse here while he went to the chateau to give a few

orders."

"If you value your place," said the count, "you will take that horse

and ride at once to Beaumont, where you will deliver to Monsieur

Margueron the note that I shall now write."

So saying the count entered the keeper's lodge and wrote a line,

folding it in a way impossible to open without detection, and gave it

to the man as soon as he saw him in the saddle.

"Not a word to any one," he said, "and as for you, madame," he added

to the gamekeeper's wife, "if Moreau comes back for his horse, tell

him merely that I have taken it."

The count then crossed the park and entered the court-yard of the

chateau through the iron gates. However worn-out a man may be by the

wear and tear of public life, by his own emotions, by his own mistakes

and disappointments, the soul of any man able to love deeply at the

count's age is still young and sensitive to treachery. Monsieur de

Serizy had felt such pain at the thought that Moreau had deceived him,

that even after hearing the conversation at Saint-Brice he thought him

less an accomplice of Leger and the notary than their tool. On the

threshold of the inn, and while that conversation was still going on,

he thought of pardoning his steward after giving him a good reproof.

Strange to say, the dishonesty of his confidential agent occupied his

mind as a mere episode from the moment when Oscar revealed his

infirmities. Secrets so carefully guarded could only have been

revealed by Moreau, who had, no doubt, laughed over the hidden

troubles of his benefactor with either Madame de Serizy's former maid

or with the Aspasia of the Directory.

As he walked along the wood-path, this peer of France, this statesman,

wept as young men weep; he wept his last tears. All human feelings

were so cruelly hurt by one stroke that the usually calm man staggered

through his park like a wounded deer.

When Moreau arrived at the gamekeeper's lodge and asked for his horse,

the keeper's wife replied:--

"Monsieur le comte has just taken it."

"Monsieur le comte!" cried Moreau. "Whom do you mean?"

"Why, the Comte de Serizy, our master," she replied. "He is probably

at the chateau by this time," she added, anxious to be rid of the

steward, who, unable to understand the meaning of her words, turned

back towards the chateau.

But he presently turned again and came back to the lodge, intending to

question the woman more closely; for he began to see something serious

in this secret arrival, and the apparently strange method of his

master's return. But the wife of the gamekeeper, alarmed to find

herself caught in a vise between the count and his steward, had locked

herself into the house, resolved not to open to any but her husband.

Moreau, more and more uneasy, ran rapidly, in spite of his boots and

spurs, to the chateau, where he was told that the count was dressing.

"Seven persons invited to dinner!" cried Rosalie as soon as she saw

him.

Moreau then went through the offices to his own house. On his way he

met the poultry-girl, who was having an altercation with a handsome

young man.

"Monsieur le comte particularly told me a colonel, an aide-de-camp of

Mina," insisted the girl.

"I am not a colonel," replied Georges.

"But isn't your name Georges?"

"What's all this?" said the steward, intervening.

"Monsieur, my name is Georges Marest; I am the son of a rich wholesale

ironmonger in the rue Saint-Martin; I come on business to Monsieur le

Comte de Serizy from Maitre Crottat, a notary, whose second clerk I

am."

"And I," said the girl, "am telling him that monseigneur said to me:

'There'll come a colonel named Czerni-Georges, aide-de-camp to Mina;

he'll come by Pierrotin's coach; if he asks for me show him into the

waiting-room.'"

"Evidently," said the clerk, "the count is a traveller who came down

with us in Pierrotin's coucou; if it hadn't been for the politeness of

a young man he'd have come as a rabbit."

"A rabbit! in Pierrotin's coucou!" exclaimed Moreau and the poultry-

girl together.

"I am sure of it, from what this girl is now saying," said Georges.

"How so?" asked the steward.

"Ah! that's the point," cried the clerk. "To hoax the travellers and

have a bit of fun I told them a lot of stuff about Egypt and Greece

and Spain. As I happened to be wearing spurs I have myself out for a

colonel of cavalry: pure nonsense!"

"Tell me," said Moreau, "what did this traveller you take to be

Monsieur le comte look like?"

"Face like a brick," said Georges, "hair snow-white, and black

eyebrows."

"That is he!"

"Then I'm lost!" exclaimed Georges.

"Why?"

"Oh, I chaffed him about his decorations."

"Pooh! he's a good fellow; you probably amused him. Come at once to

the chateau. I'll go in and see his Excellency. Where did you say he

left the coach?"

"At the top of the mountain."

"I don't know what to make of it!"

"After all," thought Georges, "though I did blague him, I didn't say

anything insulting."

"Why have you come here?" asked the steward.

"I have brought the deed of sale for the farm at Moulineaux, all ready

for signature."

"Good heavens!" exclaimed the steward, "I don't understand one word of

all this!"

Moreau felt his heart beat painfully when, after giving two raps on

his master's door, he heard the words:--

"Is that you, MONSIEUR Moreau?"

"Yes, monseigneur."

"Come in."

The count was now wearing a pair of white trousers and thin boots, a

white waistcoat and a black coat on which shone the grand cross of the

Legion upon the right breast, and fastened to a buttonhole on the left

was the order of the Golden Fleece hanging by a short gold chain. He

had arranged his hair himself, and had, no doubt, put himself in full

dress to do the honors of Presles to Monsieur Margueron; and,

possibly, to impress the good man's mind with a prestige of grandeur.

"Well, monsieur," said the count, who remained seated, leaving Moreau

to stand before him. "We have not concluded that purchase from

Margueron."

"He asks too much for the farm at the present moment."

"But why is he not coming to dinner as I requested?"

"Monseigneur, he is ill."

"Are you sure?"

"I have just come from there."

"Monsieur," said the count, with a stern air which was really

terrible, "what would you do with a man whom you trusted, if, after

seeing you dress wounds which you desired to keep secret from all the

world, he should reveal your misfortunes and laugh at your malady with

a strumpet?"

"I would thrash him for it."

"And if you discovered that he was also betraying your confidence and

robbing you?"

"I should endeavor to detect him, and send him to the galleys."

"Monsieur Moreau, listen to me. You have undoubtedly spoken of my

infirmities to Madame Clapart; you have laughed at her house, and with

her, over my attachment to the Comtesse de Serizy; for her son, little

Husson, told a number of circumstances relating to my medical

treatment, to travellers by a public conveyance in my presence, and

Heaven knows in what language! He dared to calumniate my wife. Besides

this, I learned from the lips of Pere Leger himself, who was in the

coach, of the plan laid by the notary at Beaumont and by you and by

himself in relation to Les Moulineaux. If you have been, as you say,

to Monsieur Margueron, it was to tell him to feign illness. He is so

little ill that he is coming here to dinner this evening. Now,

monsieur, I could pardon you having made two hundred and fifty

thousand francs out of your situation in seventeen years,--I can

understand that. You might each time have asked me for what you took,

and I would have given it to you; but let that pass. You have been,

notwithstanding this disloyalty, better than others, as I believe. But

that you, who knew my toil for our country, for France, you have seen

me giving night after night to the Emperor's service, and working

eighteen hours of each twenty-four for months together, you who knew

my love for Madame de Serizy,--that you should have gossiped about me

before a boy! holding up my secrets and my affections to the ridicule

of a Madame Husson!--"

"Monseigneur!"

"It is unpardonable. To injure a man's interest, why, that is nothing;

but to stab his heart!--Oh! you do not know what you have done!"

The count put his head in his hands and was silent for some moments.

"I leave you what you have gained," he said after a time, "and I shall

forget you. For my sake, for my dignity, and for your honor, we will

part decently; for I cannot but remember even now what your father did

for mine. You will explain the duties of the stewardship in a proper

manner to Monsieur de Reybert, who succeeds you. Be calm, as I am.

Give no opportunity for fools to talk. Above all, let there be no

recrimination or petty meanness. Though you no longer possess my

confidence, endeavor to behave with the decorum of well-bred persons.

As for that miserable boy who has wounded me to death, I will not have

him sleep at Presles; send him to the inn; I will not answer for my

own temper if I see him."

"I do not deserve such gentleness, monseigneur," said Moreau, with

tears in his eyes. "Yes, you are right; if I had been utterly

dishonest I should now be worth five hundred thousand francs instead

of half that sum. I offer to give you an account of my fortune, with

all its details. But let me tell you, monseigneur, that in talking of

you with Madame Clapart, it was never in derision; but, on the

contrary, to deplore your state, and to ask her for certain remedies,

not used by physicians, but known to the common people. I spoke of

your feelings before the boy, who was in his bed and, as I supposed,

asleep (it seems he must have been awake and listening to us), with

the utmost affection and respect. Alas! fate wills that indiscretions

be punished like crimes. But while accepting the results of your just

anger, I wish you to know what actually took place. It was, indeed,

from heart to heart that I spoke of you to Madame Clapart. As for my

wife, I have never said one word of these things--"

"Enough," said the count, whose conviction was now complete; "we are

not children. All is now irrevocable. Put your affairs and mine in

order. You can stay in the pavilion until October. Monsieur and Madame

de Reybert will lodge for the present in the chateau; endeavor to keep

on terms with them, like well-bred persons who hate each other, but

still keep up appearances."

The count and Moreau went downstairs; Moreau white as the count's

hair, the count himself calm and dignified.

During the time this interview lasted the Beaumont coach, which left

Paris at one o'clock, had stopped before the gates of the chateau, and

deposited Maitre Crottat, the notary, who was shown, according to the

count's orders, into the salon, where he found his clerk, extremely

subdued in manner, and the two painters, all three of them painfully

self-conscious and embarrassed. Monsieur de Reybert, a man of fifty,

with a crabbed expression of face, was also there, accompanied by old

Margueron and the notary of Beaumont, who held in his hand a bundle of

deeds and other papers.

When these various personages saw the count in evening dress, and

wearing his orders, Georges Marest had a slight sensation of colic,

Joseph Bridau quivered, but Mistigris, who was conscious of being in

his Sunday clothes, and had, moreover, nothing on his conscience,

remarked, in a sufficiently loud tone:--

"Well, he looks a great deal better like that."

"Little scamp," said the count, catching him by the ear, "we are both

in the decoration business. I hope you recognize your own work, my

dear Schinner," he added, pointing to the ceiling of the salon.

"Monseigneur," replied the artist, "I did wrong to take such a

celebrated name out of mere bravado; but this day will oblige me to do

fine things for you, and so bring credit on my own name of Joseph

Bridau."

"You took up my defence," said the count, hastily; "and I hope you

will give me the pleasure of dining with me, as well as my lively

friend Mistigris."

"Your Excellency doesn't know to what you expose yourself," said the

saucy rapin; "'facilis descensus victuali,' as we say at the Black

Hen."

"Bridau!" exclaimed the minister, struck by a sudden thought. "Are you

any relation to one of the most devoted toilers under the Empire, the

head of a bureau, who fell a victim to his zeal?"

"His son, monseigneur," replied Joseph, bowing.

"Then you are most welcome here," said the count, taking Bridau's hand

in both of his. "I knew your father, and you can count on me as on--on

an uncle in America," added the count, laughing. "But you are too

young to have pupils of your own; to whom does Mistigris really

belong?"

"To my friend Schinner, who lent him to me," said Joseph. "Mistigris'

name is Leon de Lora. Monseigneur, if you knew my father, will you

deign to think of his other son, who is now accused of plotting

against the State, and is soon to be tried before the Court of Peers?"

"Ah! that's true," said the count. "Yes, I will think about it, be

sure of that. As for Colonel Czerni-Georges, the friend of Ali Pacha,

and Mina's aide-de-camp--" he continued, walking up to Georges.

"He! why that's my second clerk!" cried Crottat.

"You are quite mistaken, Maitre Crottat," said the count, assuming a

stern air. "A clerk who intends to be a notary does not leave

important deeds in a diligence at the mercy of other travellers;

neither does he spend twenty francs between Paris and Moisselles; or

expose himself to be arrested as a deserter--"

"Monseigneur," said Georges Marest, "I may have amused myself with the

bourgeois in the diligence, but--"

"Let his Excellency finish what he was saying," said the notary,

digging his elbow into his clerk's ribs.

"A notary," continued the count, "ought to practise discretion,

shrewdness, caution from the start; he should be incapable of such a

blunder as taking a peer of France for a tallow-chandler--"

"I am willing to be blamed for my faults," said Georges; "but I never

left my deeds at the mercy of--"

"Now you are committing the fault of contradicting the word of a

minister of State, a gentleman, an old man, and a client," said the

count. "Give me that deed of sale."

Georges turned over and over the papers in his portfolio.

"That will do; don't disarrange those papers," said the count, taking

the deed from his pocket. "Here is what you are looking for."

Crottat turned the paper back and forth, so astonished was he at

receiving it from the hands of his client.

"What does this mean, monsieur?" he said, finally, to Georges.

"If I had not taken it," said the count, "Pere Leger,--who is by no

means such a ninny as you thought him from his questions about

agriculture, by which he showed that he attended to his own business,

--Pere Leger might have seized that paper and guessed my purpose. You

must give me the pleasure of dining with me, but one on condition,--

that of describing, as you promised, the execution of the Muslim of

Smyrna, and you must also finish the memoirs of some client which you

have certainly read to be so well informed."

"Schlague for blague!" said Leon de Lora, in a whisper, to Joseph

Bridau.

"Gentlemen," said the count to the two notaries and Messieurs

Margueron and de Reybert, "let us go into the next room and conclude

this business before dinner, because, as my friend Mistigris would

say: 'Qui esurit constentit.'"

"Well, he is very good-natured," said Leon de Lora to Georges Marest,

when the count had left the room.

"Yes, HE may be, but my master isn't," said Georges, "and he will

request me to go and blaguer somewhere else."

"Never mind, you like travel," said Bridau.

"What a dressing that boy will get from Monsieur and Madame Moreau!"

cried Mistigris.

"Little idiot!" said Georges. "If it hadn't been for him the count

would have been amused. Well, anyhow, the lesson is a good one; and if

ever again I am caught bragging in a public coach--"

"It is a stupid thing to do," said Joseph Bridau.

"And common," added Mistigris. "'Vulgarity is the brother of

pretension.'"

While the matter of the sale was being settled between Monsieur

Margueron and the Comte de Serizy, assisted by their respective

notaries in presence of Monsieur de Reybert, the ex-steward walked

with slow steps to his own house. There he entered the salon and sat

down without noticing anything. Little Husson, who was present,

slipped into a corner, out of sight, so much did the livid face of his

mother's friend alarm him.

"Eh! my friend!" said Estelle, coming into the room, somewhat tired

with what she had been doing. "What is the matter?"

"My dear, we are lost,--lost beyond recovery. I am no longer steward

of Presles, no longer in the count's confidence."

"Why not?"

"Pere Leger, who was in Pierrotin's coach, told the count all about

the affair of Les Moulineaux. But that is not the thing that has cost

me his favor."

"What then?"

"Oscar spoke ill of the countess, and he told about the count's

diseases."

"Oscar!" cried Madame Moreau. "Ah! my dear, your sin has found you

out. It was well worth while to warm that young serpent in your bosom.

How often I have told you--"

"Enough!" said Moreau, in a strained voice.

At this moment Estelle and her husband discovered Oscar cowering in

his corner. Moreau swooped down on the luckless lad like a hawk on its

prey, took him by the collar of the coat and dragged him to the light

of a window. "Speak! what did you say to monseigneur in that coach?

What demon let loose your tongue, you who keep a doltish silence

whenever I speak to you? What did you do it for?" cried the steward,

with frightful violence.

Too bewildered to weep, Oscar was dumb and motionless as a statue.

"Come with me and beg his Excellency's pardon," said Moreau.

"As if his Excellency cares for a little toad like that!" cried the

furious Estelle.

"Come, I say, to the chateau," repeated Moreau.

Oscar dropped like an inert mass to the ground.

"Come!" cried Moreau, his anger increasing at every instant.

"No! no! mercy!" cried Oscar, who could not bring himself to submit to

a torture that seemed to him worse than death.

Moreau then took the lad by his coat, and dragged him, as he might a

dead body, through the yards, which rang with the boy's outcries and

sobs. He pulled him up the portico, and, with an arm that fury made

powerful, he flung him, bellowing, and rigid as a pole, into the

salon, at the very feet of the count, who, having completed the

purchase of Les Moulineaux, was about to leave the salon for the

dining-room with his guests.

"On your knees, wretched boy! and ask pardon of him who gave food to

your mind by obtaining your scholarship."

Oscar, his face to the ground, was foaming with rage, and did not say

a word. The spectators of the scene were shocked. Moreau seemed no

longer in his senses; his face was crimson with injected blood.

"This young man is a mere lump of vanity," said the count, after

waiting a moment for Oscar's excuses. "A proud man humiliates himself

because he sees there is grandeur in a certain self-abasement. I am

afraid that you will never make much of that lad."

So saying, his Excellency passed on. Moreau took Oscar home with him;

and on the way gave orders that the horses should immediately be put

to Madame Moreau's caleche.

CHAPTER VII

A MOTHER'S TRIALS

While the horses were being harnessed, Moreau wrote the following

letter to Madame Clapart:--

My dear,--Oscar has ruined me. During his journey in Pierrotin's

coach, he spoke of Madame de Serizy's behavior to his Excellency,

who was travelling incognito, and actually told, to himself, the

secret of his terrible malady. After dismissing me from my

stewardship, the count told me not to let Oscar sleep at Presles,

but to send him away immediately. Therefore, to obey his orders,

the horses are being harnessed at this moment to my wife's

carriage, and Brochon, my stable-man, will take the miserable

child to you to-night.

We are, my wife and I, in a distress of mind which you may perhaps

imagine, though I cannot describe it to you. I will see you in a

few days, for I must take another course. I have three children,

and I ought to consider their future. At present I do not know

what to do; but I shall certainly endeavor to make the count aware

of what seventeen years of the life of a man like myself is worth.

Owning at the present moment about two hundred and fifty thousand

francs, I want to raise myself to a fortune which may some day

make me the equal of his Excellency. At this moment I feel within

me the power to move mountains and vanquish insurmountable

difficulties. What a lever is such a scene of bitter humiliation

as I have just passed through! Whose blood has Oscar in his veins?

His conduct has been that of a blockhead; up to this moment when I

write to you, he has not said a word nor answered, even by a sign,

the questions my wife and I have put to him. Will he become an

idiot? or is he one already? Dear friend, why did you not instruct

him as to his behavior before you sent him to me? How many

misfortunes you would have spared me, had you brought him here

yourself as I begged you to do. If Estelle alarmed you, you might

have stayed at Moisselles. However, the thing is done, and there

is no use talking about it.

Adieu; I shall see you soon.

Your devoted servant and friend,

Moreau

At eight o'clock that evening, Madame Clapart, just returned from a

walk she had taken with her husband, was knitting winter socks for

Oscar, by the light of a single candle. Monsieur Clapart was expecting

a friend named Poiret, who often came in to play dominoes, for never

did he allow himself to spend an evening at a cafe. In spite of the

prudent economy to which his small means forced him, Clapart would not

have answered for his temperance amid a luxury of food and in presence

of the usual guests of a cafe whose inquisitive observation would have

piqued him.

"I'm afraid Poiret came while we were out," said Clapart to his wife.

"Why, no, my friend; the portress would have told us so when we came

in," replied Madame Clapart.

"She may have forgotten it."

"What makes you think so?"

"It wouldn't be the first time she has forgotten things for us,--for

God knows how people without means are treated."

"Well," said the poor woman, to change the conversation and escape

Clapart's cavilling, "Oscar must be at Presles by this time. How he

will enjoy that fine house and the beautiful park."

"Oh! yes," snarled Clapart, "you expect fine things of him; but, mark

my words, there'll be squabbles wherever he goes."

"Will you never cease to find fault with that poor child?" said the

mother. "What has he done to you? If some day we should live at our

ease, we may owe it all to him; he has such a good heart--"

"Our bones will be jelly long before that fellow makes his way in the

world," cried Clapart. "You don't know your own child; he is

conceited, boastful, deceitful, lazy, incapable of--"

"Why don't you go to meet Poiret?" said the poor mother, struck to the

heart by the diatribe she had brought upon herself.

"A boy who has never won a prize at school!" continued Clapart.

To bourgeois eyes, the obtaining of school prizes means the certainty

of a fine future for the fortunate child.

"Did you win any?" asked his wife. "Oscar stood second in philosophy."

This remark imposed silence for a moment on Clapart; but presently he

began again.

"Besides, Madame Moreau hates him like poison, you know why. She'll

try to set her husband against him. Oscar to step into his shoes as

steward of Presles! Why he'd have to learn agriculture, and know how

to survey."

"He can learn."

"He--that pussy cat! I'll bet that if he does get a place down there,

it won't be a week before he does some doltish thing which will make

the count dismiss him."

"Good God! how can you be so bitter against a poor child who is full

of good qualities, sweet-tempered as an angel, incapable of doing harm

to any one, no matter who."

Just then the cracking of a postilion's whip and the noise of a

carriage stopping before the house was heard, this arrival having

apparently put the whole street into a commotion. Clapart, who heard

the opening of many windows, looked out himself to see what was

happening.

"They have sent Oscar back to you in a post-chaise," he cried, in a

tone of satisfaction, though in truth he felt inwardly uneasy.

"Good heavens! what can have happened to him?" cried the poor mother,

trembling like a leaf shaken by the autumn wind.

Brochon here came up, followed by Oscar and Poiret.

"What has happened?" repeated the mother, addressing the stable-man.

"I don't know, but Monsieur Moreau is no longer steward of Presles,

and they say your son has caused it. His Excellency ordered that he

should be sent home to you. Here's a letter from poor Monsieur Moreau,

madame, which will tell you all. You never saw a man so changed in a

single day."

"Clapart, two glasses of wine for the postilion and for monsieur!"

cried the mother, flinging herself into a chair that she might read

the fatal letter. "Oscar," she said, staggering towards her bed, "do

you want to kill your mother? After all the cautions I gave you this

morning--"

She did not end her sentence, for she fainted from distress of mind.

When she came to herself she heard her husband saying to Oscar, as he

shook him by the arm:--

"Will you answer me?"

"Go to bed, monsieur," she said to her son. "Let him alone, Monsieur

Clapart. Don't drive him out of his senses; he is frightfully

changed."

Oscar did not hear his mother's last words; he had slipped away to bed

the instant that he got the order.

Those who remember their youth will not be surprised to learn that

after a day so filled with events and emotions, Oscar, in spite of the

enormity of his offences, slept the sleep of the just. The next day he

did not find the world so changed as he thought it; he was surprised

to be very hungry,--he who the night before had regarded himself as

unworthy to live. He had only suffered mentally. At his age mental

impressions succeed each other so rapidly that the last weakens its

predecessor, however deeply the first may have been cut in. For this

reason corporal punishment, though philanthropists are deeply opposed

to it in these days, becomes necessary in certain cases for certain

children. It is, moreover, the most natural form of retribution, for

Nature herself employs it; she uses pain to impress a lasting memory

of her precepts. If to the shame of the preceding evening, unhappily

too transient, the steward had joined some personal chastisement,

perhaps the lesson might have been complete. The discernment with

which such punishment needs to be administered is the greatest

argument against it. Nature is never mistaken; but the teacher is, and

frequently.

Madame Clapart took pains to send her husband out, so that she might

be alone with her son the next morning. She was in a state to excite

pity. Her eyes, worn with tears; her face, weary with the fatigue of a

sleepless night; her feeble voice,--in short, everything about her

proved an excess of suffering she could not have borne a second time,

and appealed to sympathy.

When Oscar entered the room she signed to him to sit down beside her,

and reminded him in a gentle but grieved voice of the benefits they

had so constantly received from the steward of Presles. She told him

that they had lived, especially for the last six years, on the

delicate charity of Monsieur Moreau; and that Monsieur Clapart's

salary, also the "demi-bourse," or scholarship, by which he (Oscar)

had obtained an education, was due to the Comte de Serizy. Most of

this would now cease. Monsieur Clapart, she said, had no claim to a

pension,--his period of service not being long enough to obtain one.

On the day when he was no longer able to keep his place, what would

become of them?

"For myself," she said, "by nursing the sick, or living as a

housekeeper in some great family, I could support myself and Monsieur

Clapart; but you, Oscar, what could you do? You have no means, and you

must earn some, for you must live. There are but four careers for a

young man like you,--commerce, government employment, the licensed

professions, or military service. All forms of commerce need capital,

and we have none to give you. In place of capital, a young man can

only give devotion and his capacity. But commerce also demands the

utmost discretion, and your conduct yesterday proves that you lack it.

To enter a government office, you must go through a long probation by

the help of influence, and you have just alienated the only protector

that we had,--a most powerful one. Besides, suppose you were to meet

with some extraordinary help, by which a young man makes his way

promptly either in business or in the public employ, where could you

find the money to live and clothe yourself during the time that you

are learning your employment?"

Here the mother wandered, like other women, into wordy lamentation:

What should she do now to feed the family, deprived of the benefits

Moreau's stewardship had enabled him to send her from Presles? Oscar

had overthrown his benefactor's prosperity! As commerce and a

government clerkship were now impossible, there remained only the

professions of notary and lawyer, either barristers or solicitors, and

sheriffs. But for those he must study at least three years, and pay

considerable sums for entrance fees, examinations, certificates, and

diplomas; and here again the question of maintenance presented itself.

"Oscar," she said, in conclusion, "in you I had put all my pride, all

my life. In accepting for myself an unhappy old age, I fastened my

eyes on you; I saw you with the prospect of a fine career, and I

imagined you succeeding in it. That thought, that hope, gave me

courage to face the privations I have endured for six years in order

to carry you through school, where you have cost me, in spite of the

scholarship, between seven and eight hundred francs a year. Now that

my hope is vanishing, your future terrifies me. I cannot take one

penny from Monsieur Clapart's salary for my son. What can you do? You

are not strong enough to mathematics to enter any of the technical

schools; and, besides, where could I get the three thousand francs

board-money which they extract? This is life as it is, my child. You

are eighteen, you are strong. Enlist in the army; it is your only

means, that I can see, to earn your bread."

Oscar knew as yet nothing whatever of life. Like all children who have

been kept from a knowledge of the trials and poverty of the home, he

was ignorant of the necessity of earning his living. The word

"commerce" presented no idea whatever to his mind; "public employment"

said almost as little, for he saw no results of it. He listened,

therefore, with a submissive air, which he tried to make humble, to

his mother's exhortations, but they were lost in the void, and did not

reach his mind. Nevertheless, the word "army," the thought of being a

soldier, and the sight of his mother's tears did at last make him cry.

No sooner did Madame Clapart see the drops coursing down his cheeks

than she felt herself helpless, and, like most mothers in such cases,

she began the peroration which terminates these scenes,--scenes in

which they suffer their own anguish and that of their children also.

"Well, Oscar, PROMISE me that you will be more discreet in future,--

that you will not talk heedlessly any more, but will strive to repress

your silly vanity," et cetera, et cetera.

Oscar of course promised all his mother asked him to promise, and

then, after gently drawing him to her, Madame Clapart ended by kissing

him to console him for being scolded.

"In future," she said, "you will listen to your mother, and will

follow her advice; for a mother can give nothing but good counsel to

her child. We will go and see your uncle Cardot; that is our last

hope. Cardot owed a great deal to your father, who gave him his

sister, Mademoiselle Husson, with an enormous dowry for those days,

which enabled him to make a large fortune in the silk trade. I think

he might, perhaps, place you with Monsieur Camusot, his successor and

son-in-law, in the rue des Bourdonnais. But, you see, your uncle

Cardot has four children. He gave his establishment, the Cocon d'Or,

to his eldest daughter, Madame Camusot; and though Camusot has

millions, he has also four children by two wives; and, besides, he

scarcely knows of our existence. Cardot has married his second

daughter, Mariane, to Monsieur Protez, of the firm of Protez and

Chiffreville. The practice of his eldest son, the notary, cost him

four hundred thousand francs; and he has just put his second son,

Joseph, into the drug business of Matifat. So you see, your uncle

Cardot has many reasons not to take an interest in you, whom he sees

only four times a year. He has never come to call upon me here, though

he was ready enough to visit me at Madame Mere's when he wanted to

sell his silks to the Emperor, the imperial highnesses, and all the

great people at court. But now the Camusots have turned ultras. The

eldest son of Camusot's first wife married a daughter of one of the

king's ushers. The world is mighty hump-backed when it stoops!

However, it was a clever thing to do, for the Cocon d'Or has the

custom of the present court as it had that of the Emperor. But to-

morrow we will go and see your uncle Cardot, and I hope that you will

endeavor to behave properly; for, as I said before, and I repeat it,

that is our last hope."

Monsieur Jean-Jerome-Severin Cardot had been a widower six years. As

head-clerk of the Cocon d'Or, one of the oldest firms in Paris, he had

bought the establishment in 1793, at a time when the heads of the

house were ruined by the maximum; and the money of Mademoiselle

Husson's dowry had enabled him to do this, and so make a fortune that

was almost colossal in ten years. To establish his children richly

during his lifetime, he had conceived the idea of buying an annuity

for himself and his wife with three hundred thousand francs, which

gave him an income of thirty thousand francs a year. He then divided

his capital into three shares of four hundred thousand francs each,

which he gave to three of his children,--the Cocon d'Or, given to his

eldest daughter on her marriage, being the equivalent of a fourth

share. Thus the worthy man, who was now nearly seventy years old,

could spend his thirty thousand a year as he pleased, without feeling

that he injured the prospects of his children, all finely provided

for, whose attentions and proofs of affection were, moreover, not

prompted by self-interest.

Uncle Cardot lived at Belleville, in one of the first houses above the

Courtille. He there occupied, on the first floor, an apartment

overlooking the valley of the Seine, with a southern exposure, and the

exclusive enjoyment of a large garden, for the sum of a thousand

francs a year. He troubled himself not at all about the three or four

other tenants of the same vast country-house. Certain, through a long

lease, of ending his days there, he lived rather plainly, served by an

old cook and the former maid of the late Madame Cardot,--both of whom

expected to reap an annuity of some six hundred francs apiece on the

old man's death. These two women took the utmost care of him, and were

all the more interested in doing so because no one was ever less fussy

or less fault-finding than he. The apartment, furnished by the late

Madame Cardot, had remained in the same condition for the last six

years,--the old man being perfectly contented with it. He spent in all

not more than three thousand francs a year there; for he dined in

Paris five days in the week, and returned home at midnight in a

hackney-coach, which belonged to an establishment at Courtille. The

cook had only her master's breakfast to provide on those days. This

was served at eleven o'clock; after that he dressed and perfumed

himself, and departed for Paris. Usually, a bourgeois gives notice in

the household if he dines out; old Cardot, on the contrary, gave

notice when he dined at home.

This little old man--fat, rosy, squat, and strong--always looked, in

popular speech, as if he had stepped from a bandbox. He appeared in

black silk stockings, breeches of "pou-de-soie" (paduasoy), a white

pique waistcoat, dazzling shirt-front, a blue-bottle coat, violet silk

gloves, gold buckles to his shoes and his breeches, and, lastly, a

touch of powder and a little queue tied with black ribbon. His face

was remarkable for a pair of eyebrows as thick as bushes, beneath

which sparkled his gray eyes; and for a square nose, thick and long,

which gave him somewhat the air of the abbes of former times. His

countenance did not belie him. Pere Cardot belonged to that race of

lively Gerontes which is now disappearing rapidly, though it once

served as Turcarets to the comedies and tales of the eighteenth

century. Uncle Cardot always said "Fair lady," and he placed in their

carriages, and otherwise paid attention to those women whom he saw

without protectors; he "placed himself at their disposition," as he

said, in his chivalrous way.

But beneath his calm air and his snowy poll he concealed an old age

almost wholly given up to mere pleasure. Among men he openly professed

epicureanism, and gave himself the license of free talk. He had seen

no harm in the devotion of his son-in-law, Camusot, to Mademoiselle

Coralie, for he himself was secretly the Mecaenas of Mademoiselle

Florentine, the first danseuse at the Gaiete. But this life and these

opinions never appeared in his own home, nor in his external conduct

before the world. Uncle Cardot, grave and polite, was thought to be

somewhat cold, so much did he affect decorum; a "devote" would have

called him a hypocrite.

The worthy old gentleman hated priests; he belonged to that great

flock of ninnies who subscribed to the "Constitutionnel," and was much

concerned about "refusals to bury." He adored Voltaire, though his

preferences were really for Piron, Vade, and Colle. Naturally, he

admired Beranger, whom he wittily called the "grandfather of the

religion of Lisette." His daughters, Madame Camusot and Madame Protez,

and his two sons would, to use a popular expression, have been

flabbergasted if any one had explained to them what their father meant

by "singing la Mere Godichon."

This long-headed parent had never mentioned his income to his

children, who, seeing that he lived in a cheap way, reflected that he

had deprived himself of his property for their sakes, and, therefore,

redoubled their attentions and tenderness. In fact, he would sometimes

say to his sons:--

"Don't lose your property; remember, I have none to leave you."

Camusot, in whom he recognized a certain likeness to his own nature,

and whom he liked enough to make a sharer in his secret pleasures,

alone knew of the thirty thousand a year annuity. But Camusot approved

of the old man's ethics, and thought that, having made the happiness

of his children and nobly fulfilled his duty by them, he now had a

right to end his life jovially.

"Don't you see, my friend," said the former master of the Cocon d'Or,

"I might re-marry. A young woman would give me more children. Well,

Florentine doesn't cost me what a wife would; neither does she bore

me; and she won't give me children to lessen your property."

Camusot considered that Pere Cardot gave expression to a high sense of

family duty in these words; he regarded him as an admirable father-in-

law.

"He knows," thought he, "how to unite the interests of his children

with the pleasures which old age naturally desires after the worries

of business life."

Neither the Cardots, nor the Camusots, nor the Protez knew anything of

the ways of life of their aunt Clapart. The family intercourse was

restricted to the sending of notes of "faire part" on the occasion of

deaths and marriages, and cards at the New Year. The proud Madame

Clapart would never have brought herself to seek them were it not for

Oscar's interests, and because of her friendship for Moreau, the only

person who had been faithful to her in misfortune. She had never

annoyed old Cardot by her visits, or her importunities, but she held

to him as to a hope, and always went to see him once every three

months and talked to him of Oscar, the nephew of the late respectable

Madame Cardot; and she took the boy to call upon him three times

during each vacation. At each of these visits the old gentleman had

given Oscar a dinner at the Cadran-Bleu, taking him, afterwards, to

the Gaiete, and returning him safely to the rue de la Cerisaie. On one

occasion, having given the boy an entirely new suit of clothes, he

added the silver cup and fork and spoon required for his school

outfit.

Oscar's mother endeavored to impress the old gentleman with the idea

that his nephew cherished him, and she constantly referred to the cup

and the fork and spoon and to the beautiful suit of clothes, though

nothing was then left of the latter but the waistcoat. But such little

arts did Oscar more harm than good when practised on so sly an old fox

as uncle Cardot. The latter had never much liked his departed wife, a

tall, spare, red-haired woman; he was also aware of the circumstances

of the late Husson's marriage with Oscar's mother, and without in the

least condemning her, he knew very well that Oscar was a posthumous

child. His nephew, therefore, seemed to him to have no claims on the

Cardot family. But Madame Clapart, like all women who concentrate

their whole being into the sentiment of motherhood, did not put

herself in Cardot's place and see the matter from his point of view;

she thought he must certainly be interested in so sweet a child, who

bore the maiden name of his late wife.

"Monsieur," said old Cardot's maid-servant, coming out to him as he

walked about the garden while awaiting his breakfast, after his

hairdresser had duly shaved him and powdered his queue, "the mother of

your nephew, Oscar, is here."

"Good-day, fair lady," said the old man, bowing to Madame Clapart, and

wrapping his white pique dressing-gown about him. "Hey, hey! how this

little fellow grows," he added, taking Oscar by the ear.

"He has finished school, and he regretted so much that his dear uncle

was not present at the distribution of the Henri IV. prizes, at which

he was named. The name of Husson, which, let us hope, he will bear

worthily, was proclaimed--"

"The deuce it was!" exclaimed the little old man, stopping short.

Madame Clapart, Oscar, and he were walking along a terrace flanked by

oranges, myrtles, and pomegranates. "And what did he get?"

"The fourth rank in philosophy," replied the mother proudly.

"Oh! oh!" cried uncle Cardot, "the rascal has a good deal to do to

make up for lost time; for the fourth rank in philosophy, well, IT

ISN'T PERU, you know! You will stay and breakfast with me?" he added.

"We are at your orders," replied Madame Clapart. "Ah! my dear Monsieur

Cardot, what happiness it is for fathers and mothers when their

children make a good start in life! In this respect--indeed, in all

others," she added, catching herself up, "you are one of the most

fortunate fathers I have ever known. Under your virtuous son-in-law

and your amiable daughter, the Cocon d'Or continues to be the greatest

establishment of its kind in Paris. And here's your eldest son, for

the last ten years at the head of a fine practice and married to

wealth. And you have such charming little granddaughters! You are, as

it were, the head of four great families. Leave us, Oscar; go and look

at the garden, but don't touch the flowers."

"Why, he's eighteen years old!" said uncle Cardot, smiling at this

injunction, which made an infant of Oscar.

"Alas, yes, he is eighteen, my good Monsieur Cardot; and after

bringing him so far, sound and healthy in mind and body, neither bow-

legged nor crooked, after sacrificing everything to give him an

education, it would be hard if I could not see him on the road to

fortune."

"That Monsieur Moreau who got him the scholarship will be sure to look

after his career," said uncle Cardot, concealing his hypocrisy under

an air of friendly good-humor.

"Monsieur Moreau may die," she said. "And besides, he has quarrelled

irrevocably with the Comte de Serizy, his patron."

"The deuce he has! Listen, madame; I see you are about to--"

"No, monsieur," said Oscar's mother, interrupting the old man, who,

out of courtesy to the "fair lady," repressed his annoyance at being

interrupted. "Alas, you do not know the miseries of a mother who, for

seven years past, has been forced to take a sum of six hundred francs

a year for her son's education from the miserable eighteen hundred

francs of her husband's salary. Yes, monsieur, that is all we have had

to live upon. Therefore, what more can I do for my poor Oscar?

Monsieur Clapart so hates the child that it is impossible for me to

keep him in the house. A poor woman, alone in the world, am I not

right to come and consult the only relation my Oscar has under

heaven?"

"Yes, you are right," said uncle Cardot. "You never told me of all

this before."

"Ah, monsieur!" replied Madame Clapart, proudly, "you were the last to

whom I would have told my wretchedness. It is all my own fault; I

married a man whose incapacity is almost beyond belief. Yes, I am,

indeed, most unhappy."

"Listen to me, madame," said the little old man, "and don't weep; it

is most painful to me to see a fair lady cry. After all, your son

bears the name of Husson, and if my dear deceased wife were living she

would wish to do something for the name of her father and of her

brother--"

"She loved her brother," said Oscar's mother.

"But all my fortune is given to my children, who expect nothing from

me at my death," continued the old man. "I have divided among them the

millions that I had, because I wanted to see them happy and enjoying

their wealth during my lifetime. I have nothing now except an annuity;

and at my age one clings to old habits. Do you know the path on which

you ought to start this young fellow?" he went on, after calling to

Oscar and taking him by the arm. "Let him study law; I'll pay the

costs. Put him in a lawyer's office and let him learn the business of

pettifogging; if he does well, if he distinguishes himself, if he

likes his profession and I am still alive, each of my children shall,

when the proper time comes, lend him a quarter of the cost of a

practice; and I will be security for him. You will only have to feed

and clothe him. Of course he'll sow a few wild oats, but he'll learn

life. Look at me: I left Lyon with two double louis which my

grandmother gave me, and walked to Paris; and what am I now? Fasting

is good for the health. Discretion, honesty, and work, young man, and

you'll succeed. There's a great deal of pleasure in earning one's

fortune; and if a man keeps his teeth he eats what he likes in his old

age, and sings, as I do, 'La Mere Godichon.' Remember my words:

Honesty, work, discretion."

"Do you hear that, Oscar?" said his mother. "Your uncle sums up in

three words all that I have been saying to you. You ought to carve the

last word in letters of fire on your memory."

"Oh, I have," said Oscar.

"Very good,--then thank your uncle; didn't you hear him say he would

take charge of your future? You will be a lawyer in Paris."

"He doesn't see the grandeur of his destiny," said the little old man,

observing Oscar's apathetic air. "Well, he's just out of school.

Listen, I'm no talker," he continued; "but I have this to say:

Remember that at your age honesty and uprightness are maintained only

by resisting temptations; of which, in a great city like Paris, there

are many at every step. Live in your mother's home, in the garret; go

straight to the law-school; from there to your lawyer's office; drudge

night and day, and study at home. Become, by the time you are twenty-

two, a second clerk; by the time you are twenty-four, head-clerk; be

steady, and you will win all. If, moreover, you shouldn't like the

profession, you might enter the office of my son the notary, and

eventually succeed him. Therefore, work, patience, discretion,

honesty,--those are your landmarks."

"God grant that you may live thirty years longer to see your fifth

child realizing all we expect from him," cried Madame Clapart, seizing

uncle Cardot's hand and pressing it with a gesture that recalled her

youth.

"Now come to breakfast," replied the kind old man, leading Oscar by

the ear.

During the meal uncle Cardot observed his nephew without appearing to

do so, and soon saw that the lad knew nothing of life.

"Send him here to me now and then," he said to Madame Clapart, as he

bade her good-bye, "and I'll form him for you."

This visit calmed the anxieties of the poor mother, who had not hoped

for such brilliant success. For the next fortnight she took Oscar to

walk daily, and watched him tyrannically. This brought matters to the

end of October. One morning as the poor household was breakfasting on

a salad of herring and lettuce, with milk for a dessert, Oscar beheld

with terror the formidable ex-steward, who entered the room and

surprised this scene of poverty.

"We are now living in Paris--but not as we lived at Presles," said

Moreau, wishing to make known to Madame Clapart the change in their

relations caused by Oscar's folly. "I shall seldom be here myself; for

I have gone into partnership with Pere Leger and Pere Margueron of

Beaumont. We are speculating in land, and we have begun by purchasing

the estate of Persan. I am the head of the concern, which has a

capital of a million; part of which I have borrowed on my own

securities. When I find a good thing, Pere Leger and I examine it; my

partners have each a quarter and I a half in the profits; but I do

nearly all the work, and for that reason I shall be constantly on the

road. My wife lives here, in the faubourg du Roule, very plainly. When

we see how the business turns out, if we risk only the profits, and if

Oscar behaves himself, we may, perhaps, employ him."

"Ah! my friend, the catastrophe caused by my poor boy's heedlessness

may prove to be the cause of your making a brilliant fortune; for,

really and truly, you were burying your energy and your capacity at

Presles."

Madame Clapart then went on to relate her visit to uncle Cardot, in

order to show Moreau that neither she nor her son need any longer be a

burden on him.

"He is right, that old fellow," said the ex-steward. "We must hold

Oscar in that path with an iron hand, and he will end as a barrister

or a notary. But he mustn't leave the track; he must go straight

through with it. Ha! I know how to help you. The legal business of

land-agents is quite important, and I have heard of a lawyer who has

just bought what is called a "titre nu"; that means a practice without

clients. He is a young man, hard as an iron bar, eager for work,

ferociously active. His name is Desroches. I'll offer him our business

on condition that he takes Oscar as a pupil; and I'll ask him to let

the boy live with him at nine hundred francs a year, of which I will

pay three, so that your son will cost you only six hundred francs,

without his living, in future. If the boy ever means to become a man

it can only be under a discipline like that. He'll come out of that

office, notary, solicitor, or barrister, as he may elect."

"Come, Oscar; thank our kind Monsieur Moreau, and don't stand there

like a stone post. All young men who commit follies have not the good

fortune to meet with friends who still take an interest in their

career, even after they have been injured by them."

"The best way to make your peace with me," said Moreau, pressing

Oscar's hand, "is to work now with steady application, and to conduct

yourself in future properly."

CHAPTER VIII

TRICKS AND FARCES OF THE EMBRYO LONG ROBE

Ten days later, Oscar was taken by Monsieur Moreau to Maitre

Desroches, solicitor, recently established in the rue de Bethisy, in a

vast apartment at the end of a narrow court-yard, for which he was

paying a relatively low price.

Desroches, a young man twenty-six years of age, born of poor parents,

and brought up with extreme severity by a stern father, had himself

known the condition in which Oscar now was. Accordingly, he felt an

interest in him, but the sort of interest which alone he could take,

checked by the apparent harshness that characterized him. The aspect

of this gaunt young man, with a muddy skin and hair cropped like a

clothes-brush, who was curt of speech and possessed a piercing eye and

a gloomy vivaciousness, terrified the unhappy Oscar.

"We work here day and night," said the lawyer, from the depths of his

armchair, and behind a table on which were papers, piled up like Alps.

"Monsieur Moreau, we won't kill him; but he'll have to go at our pace.

Monsieur Godeschal!" he called out.

Though the day was Sunday, the head-clerk appeared, pen in hand.

"Monsieur Godeschal, here's the pupil of whom I spoke to you. Monsieur

Moreau takes the liveliest interest in him. He will dine with us and

sleep in the small attic next to your chamber. You will allot the

exact time it takes to go to the law-school and back, so that he does

not lose five minutes on the way. You will see that he learns the Code

and is proficient in his classes; that is to say, after he has done

his work here, you will give him authors to read. In short, he is to

be under your immediate direction, and I shall keep an eye on it. They

want to make him what you have made yourself, a capable head-clerk,

against the time when he can take such a place himself. Go with

Monsieur Godeschal, my young friend; he'll show you your lodging, and

you can settle down in it. Did you notice Godeschal?" continued

Desroches, speaking to Moreau. "There's a fellow who, like me, has

nothing. His sister Mariette, the famous danseuse, is laying up her

money to buy him a practice in ten years. My clerks are young blades

who have nothing but their ten fingers to rely upon. So we all, my

five clerks and I, work as hard as a dozen ordinary fellows. But in

ten years I'll have the finest practice in Paris. In my office,

business and clients are a passion, and that's beginning to make

itself felt. I took Godeschal from Derville, where he was only just

made second clerk. He gets a thousand francs a year from me, and food

and lodging. But he's worth it; he is indefatigable. I love him, that

fellow! He has managed to live, as I did when a clerk, on six hundred

francs a year. What I care for above all is honesty, spotless

integrity; and when it is practised in such poverty as that, a man's a

man. For the slightest fault of that kind a clerk leaves my office."

"The lad is in a good school," thought Moreau.

For two whole years Oscar lived in the rue de Bethisy, a den of

pettifogging; for if ever that superannuated expression was applicable

to a lawyer's office, it was so in this case. Under this supervision,

both petty and able, he was kept to his regular hours and to his work

with such rigidity that his life in the midst of Paris was that of a

monk.

At five in the morning, in all weathers, Godeschal woke up. He went

down with Oscar to the office, where they always found their master up

and working. Oscar then did the errands of the office and prepared his

lessons for the law-school,--and prepared them elaborately; for

Godeschal, and frequently Desroches himself, pointed out to their

pupil authors to be looked through and difficulties to overcome. He

was not allowed to leave a single section of the Code until he had

thoroughly mastered it to the satisfaction of his chief and Godeschal,

who put him through preliminary examinations more searching and longer

than those of the law-school. On his return from his classes, where he

was kept but a short time, he went to his work in the office;

occasionally he was sent to the Palais, but always under the thumb of

the rigid Godeschal, till dinner. The dinner was that of his master,--

one dish of meat, one of vegetables, and a salad. The dessert

consisted of a piece of Gruyere cheese. After dinner, Godeschal and

Oscar returned to the office and worked till night. Once a month Oscar

went to breakfast with his uncle Cardot, and he spent the Sundays with

his mother. From time to time Moreau, when he came to the office about

his own affairs, would take Oscar to dine in the Palais-Royal, and to

some theatre in the evening. Oscar had been so snubbed by Godeschal

and by Desroches for his attempts at elegance that he no longer gave a

thought to his clothes.

"A good clerk," Godeschal told him, "should have two black coats, one

new, one old, a pair of black trousers, black stockings, and shoes.

Boots cost too much. You can't have boots till you are called to the

bar. A clerk should never spend more than seven hundred francs a year.

Good stout shirts of strong linen are what you want. Ha! when a man

starts from nothing to reach fortune, he has to keep down to bare

necessities. Look at Monsieur Desroches; he did what we are doing, and

see where he is now."

Godeschal preached by example. If he professed the strictest

principles of honor, discretion, and honesty, he practised them

without assumption, as he walked, as he breathed; such action was the

natural play of his soul, as walking and breathing were the natural

play of his organs. Eighteen months after Oscar's installation into

the office, the second clerk was, for the second time, slightly wrong

in his accounts, which were comparatively unimportant. Godeschal said

to him in presence of all the other clerks:

"My dear Gaudet, go away from here of your own free will, that it may

not be said that Monsieur Desroches has dismissed you. You have been

careless or absent-minded, and neither of those defects can pass here.

The master shall know nothing about the matter; that is all that I can

do for a comrade."

At twenty years of age, Oscar became third clerk in the office. Though

he earned no salary, he was lodged and fed, for he did the work of the

second clerk. Desroches employed two chief clerks, and the work of the

second was unremitting toil. By the end of his second year in the law-

school Oscar knew more than most licensed graduates; he did the work

at the Palais intelligently, and argued some cases in chambers.

Godeschal and Desroches were satisfied with him. And yet, though he

now seemed a sensible man, he showed, from time to time, a hankering

after pleasure and a desire to shine, repressed, though it was, by the

stern discipline and continual toil of his life.

Moreau, satisfied with Oscar's progress, relaxed, in some degree, his

watchfulness; and when, in July, 1825, Oscar passed his examinations

with a spotless record, the land-agent gave him the money to dress

himself elegantly. Madame Clapart, proud and happy in her son,

prepared the outfit splendidly for the rising lawyer.

In the month of November, when the courts reopened, Oscar Husson

occupied the chamber of the second clerk, whose work he now did

wholly. He had a salary of eight hundred francs with board and

lodging. Consequently, uncle Cardot, who went privately to Desroches

and made inquiries about his nephew, promised Madame Clapart to be on

the lookout for a practice for Oscar, if he continued to do as well in

the future.

In spite of these virtuous appearances, Oscar Husson was undergoing a

great strife in his inmost being. At times he thought of quitting a

life so directly against his tastes and his nature. He felt that

galley-slaves were happier than he. Galled by the collar of this iron

system, wild desires seized him to fly when he compared himself in the

street with the well-dressed young men whom he met. Sometimes he was

driven by a sort of madness towards women; then, again, he resigned

himself, but only to fall into a deeper disgust for life. Impelled by

the example of Godeschal, he was forced, rather than led of himself,

to remain in that rugged way.

Godeschal, who watched and took note of Oscar, made it a matter of

principle not to allow his pupil to be exposed to temptation.

Generally the young clerk was without money, or had so little that he

could not, if he would, give way to excess. During the last year, the

worthy Godeschal had made five or six parties of pleasure with Oscar,

defraying the expenses, for he felt that the rope by which he tethered

the young kid must be slackened. These "pranks," as he called them,

helped Oscar to endure existence, for there was little amusement in

breakfasting with his uncle Cardot, and still less in going to see his

mother, who lived even more penuriously than Desroches. Moreau could

not make himself familiar with Oscar as Godeschal could; and perhaps

that sincere friend to young Husson was behind Godeschal in these

efforts to initiate the poor youth safely into the mysteries of life.

Oscar, grown prudent, had come, through contact with others, to see

the extent and the character of the fault he had committed on that

luckless journey; but the volume of his repressed fancies and the

follies of youth might still get the better of him. Nevertheless, the

more knowledge he could get of the world and its laws, the better his

mind would form itself, and, provided Godeschal never lost sight of

him, Moreau flattered himself that between them they could bring the

son of Madame Clapart through in safety.

"How is he getting on?" asked the land-agent of Godeschal on his

return from one of his journeys which had kept him some months out of

Paris.

"Always too much vanity," replied Godeschal. "You give him fine

clothes and fine linen, he wears the shirt-fronts of a stockbroker,

and so my dainty coxcomb spends his Sundays in the Tuileries, looking

out for adventures. What else can you expect? That's youth. He

torments me to present him to my sister, where he would see a pretty

sort of society!--actresses, ballet-dancers, elegant young fops,

spendthrifts who are wasting their fortunes! His mind, I'm afraid, is

not fitted for law. He can talk well, though; and if we could make him

a barrister he might plead cases that were carefully prepared for

him."

In the month of November, 1825, soon after Oscar Husson had taken

possession of his new clerkship, and at the moment when he was about

to pass his examination for the licentiate's degree, a new clerk

arrived to take the place made vacant by Oscar's promotion.

This fourth clerk, named Frederic Marest, intended to enter the

magistracy, and was now in his third year at the law school. He was a

fine young man of twenty-three, enriched to the amount of some twelve

thousand francs a year by the death of a bachelor uncle, and the son

of Madame Marest, widow of the wealthy wood-merchant. This future

magistrate, actuated by a laudable desire to understand his vocation

in its smallest details, had put himself in Desroches' office for the

purpose of studying legal procedure, and of training himself to take a

place as head-clerk in two years. He hoped to do his "stage" (the

period between the admission as licentiate and the call to the bar) in

Paris, in order to be fully prepared for the functions of a post which

would surely not be refused to a rich young man. To see himself, by

the time he was thirty, "procureur du roi" in any court, no matter

where, was his sole ambition. Though Frederic Marest was cousin-german

to Georges Marest, the latter not having told his surname in

Pierrotin's coucou, Oscar Husson did not connect the present Marest

with the grandson of Czerni-Georges.

"Messieurs," said Godeschal at breakfast time, addressing all the

clerks, "I announce to you the arrival of a new jurisconsult; and as

he is rich, rishissime, we will make him, I hope, pay a glorious

entrance-fee."

"Forward, the book!" cried Oscar, nodding to the youngest clerk, "and

pray let us be serious."

The youngest clerk climbed like a squirrel along the shelves which

lined the room, until he could reach a register placed on the top

shelf, where a thick layer of dust had settled on it.

"It is getting colored," said the little clerk, exhibiting the volume.

We must explain the perennial joke of this book, then much in vogue in

legal offices. In a clerical life where work is the rule, amusement is

all the more treasured because it is rare; but, above all, a hoax or a

practical joke is enjoyed with delight. This fancy or custom does, to

a certain extent, explain Georges Marest's behavior in the coucou. The

gravest and most gloomy clerk is possessed, at times, with a craving

for fun and quizzing. The instinct with which a set of young clerks

will seize and develop a hoax or a practical joke is really

marvellous. The denizens of a studio and of a lawyer's office are, in

this line, superior to comedians.

In buying a practice without clients, Desroches began, as it were, a

new dynasty. This circumstance made a break in the usages relative to

the reception of new-comers. Moreover, Desroches having taken an

office where legal documents had never yet been scribbled, had bought

new tables, and white boxes edged with blue, also new. His staff was

made up of clerks coming from other officers, without mutual ties, and

surprised, as one may say, to find themselves together. Godeschal, who

had served his apprenticeship under Maitre Derville, was not the sort

of clerk to allow the precious tradition of the "welcome" to be lost.

This "welcome" is a breakfast which every neophyte must give to the

"ancients" of the office into which he enters.

Now, about the time when Oscar came to the office, during the first

six months of Desroches' installation, on a winter evening when the

work had been got through more quickly than usual, and the clerks were

warming themselves before the fire preparatory to departure, it came

into Godeschal's head to construct and compose a Register

"architriclino-basochien," of the utmost antiquity, saved from the

fires of the Revolution, and derived through the procureur of the

Chatelet-Bordin, the immediate predecessor of Sauvaguest, the

attorney, from whom Desroches had bought his practice. The work, which

was highly approved by the other clerks, was begun by a search through

all the dealers in old paper for a register, made of paper with the

mark of the eighteenth century, duly bound in parchment, on which

should be the stamp of an order in council. Having found such a volume

it was left about in the dust, on the stove, on the ground, in the

kitchen, and even in what the clerks called the "chamber of

deliberations"; and thus it obtained a mouldiness to delight an

antiquary, cracks of aged dilapidation, and broken corners that looked

as though the rats had gnawed them; also, the gilt edges were

tarnished with surprising perfection. As soon as the book was duly

prepared, the entries were made. The following extracts will show to

the most obtuse mind the purpose to which the office of Maitre

Desroches devoted this register, the first sixty pages of which were

filled with reports of fictitious cases. On the first page appeared as

follows, in the legal spelling of the eighteenth century:--

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, so be it. This

day, the feast of our lady Saincte-Geneviesve, patron saint of

Paris, under whose protection have existed, since the year 1525

the clerks of this Practice, we the under-signed, clerks and sub-

clerks of Maistre Jerosme-Sebastien Bordin, successor to the late

Guerbet, in his lifetime procureur at the Chastelet, do hereby

recognize the obligation under which we lie to renew and continue

the register and the archives of installation of the clerks of

this noble Practice, a glorious member of the Kingdom of Basoche,

the which register, being now full in consequence of the many acts

and deeds of our well-beloved predecessors, we have consigned to

the Keeper of the Archives of the Palais for safe-keeping, with

the registers of other ancient Practices; and we have ourselves

gone, each and all, to hear mass at the parish church of Saint-

Severin to solemnize the inauguration of this our new register.

In witness whereof we have hereunto signed our names: Malin, head-

clerk; Grevin, second-clerk; Athanase Feret, clerk; Jacques Heret,

clerk; Regnault de Saint-Jean-d'Angely, clerk; Bedeau, youngest

clerk and gutter-jumper.

In the year of our Lord 1787.

After the mass aforesaid was heard, we conveyed ourselves to

Courtille, where, at the common charge, we ordered a fine

breakfast; which did not end till seven o'clock the next morning.

This was marvellously well engrossed. An expert would have said that

it was written in the eighteenth century. Twenty-seven reports of

receptions of neophytes followed, the last in the fatal year of 1792.

Then came a blank of fourteen years; after which the register began

again, in 1806, with the appointment of Bordin as attorney before the

first Court of the Seine. And here follows the deed which proclaimed

the reconstitution of the kingdom of Basoche:--

God in his mercy willed that, in spite of the fearful storms which

have cruelly ravaged the land of France, now become a great

Empire, the archives of the very celebrated Practice of Maitre

Bordin should be preserved; and we, the undersigned, clerks of the

very virtuous and very worthy Maitre Bordin, do not hesitate to

attribute this unheard-of preservation, when all titles,

privileges, and charters were lost, to the protection of Sainte-

Genevieve, patron Saint of this office, and also to the reverence

which the last of the procureurs of noble race had for all that

belonged to ancient usages and customs. In the uncertainty of

knowing the exact part of Sainte-Genevieve and Maitre Bordin in

this miracle, we have resolved, each of us, to go to Saint-Etienne

du Mont and there hear mass, which will be said before the altar

of that Holy-Shepherdess who sends us sheep to shear, and also to

offer a breakfast to our master Bordin, hoping that he will pay

the costs.

Signed: Oignard, first clerk; Poidevin, second clerk; Proust,

clerk; Augustin Coret, sub-clerk.

At the office.

November, 1806.

At three in the afternoon, the above-named clerks hereby return

their grateful thanks to their excellent master, who regaled them

at the establishment of the Sieur Rolland restaurateur, rue du

Hasard, with exquisite wines of three regions, to wit: Bordeaux,

Champagne, and Burgundy, also with dishes most carefully chosen,

between the hours of four in the afternoon to half-past seven in

the evening. Coffee, ices, and liqueurs were in abundance. But

the presence of the master himself forbade the chanting of hymns

of praise in clerical stanzas. No clerk exceeded the bounds of

amiable gayety, for the worthy, respectable, and generous patron

had promised to take his clerks to see Talma in "Brittanicus," at

the Theatre-Francais. Long life to Maitre Bordin! May God shed

favors on his venerable pow! May he sell dear so glorious a

practice! May the rich clients for whom he prays arrive! May his

bills of costs and charges be paid in a trice! May our masters to

come be like him! May he ever be loved by clerks in other worlds

than this!

Here followed thirty-three reports of various receptions of new

clerks, distinguished from one another by different writing and

different inks, also by quotations, signatures, and praises of good

cheer and wines, which seemed to show that each report was written and

signed on the spot, "inter pocula."

Finally, under date of the month of June, 1822, the period when

Desroches took the oath, appears this constitutional declaration:--

I, the undersigned, Francois-Claude-Marie Godeschal, called by

Maitre Desroches to perform the difficult functions of head-clerk

in a Practice where the clients have to be created, having learned

through Maitre Derville, from whose office I come, of the

existence of the famous archives architriclino-basochien, so

celebrated at the Palais, have implored our gracious master to

obtain them from his predecessor; for it has become of the highest

importance to recover a document bearing date of the year 1786,

which is connected with other documents deposited for safe-keeping

at the Palais, the existence of which has been certified to by

Messrs. Terrasse and Duclos, keepers of records, by the help of

which we may go back to the year 1525, and find historical

indications of the utmost value on the manners, customs, and

cookery of the clerical race.

Having received a favorable answer to this request, the present

office has this day been put in possession of these proofs of the

worship in which our predecessors held the Goddess Bottle and good

living.

In consequence thereof, for the edification of our successors, and

to renew the chain of years and goblets, I, the said Godeschal,

have invited Messieurs Doublet, second clerk; Vassal, third clerk;

Herisson and Grandemain, clerks; and Dumets, sub-clerk, to

breakfast, Sunday next, at the "Cheval Rouge," on the Quai Saint-

Bernard, where we will celebrate the victory of obtaining this

volume which contains the Charter of our gullets.

This day, Sunday, June 27th, were imbibed twelve bottles of twelve

different wines, regarded as exquisite; also were devoured melons,

"pates au jus romanum," and a fillet of beef with mushroom sauce.

Mademoiselle Mariette, the illustrious sister of our head-clerk

and leading lady of the Royal Academy of music and dancing, having

obligingly put at the disposition of this Practice orchestra seats

for the performance of this evening, it is proper to make this

record of her generosity. Moreover, it is hereby decreed that the

aforesaid clerks shall convey themselves in a body to that noble

demoiselle to thank her in person, and declare to her that on the

occasion of her first lawsuit, if the devil sends her one, she

shall pay the money laid out upon it, and no more.

And our head-clerk Godeschal has been and is hereby proclaimed a

flower of Basoche, and, more especially, a good fellow. May a man

who treats so well be soon in treaty for a Practice of his own!

On this record were stains of wine, pates, and candle-grease. To

exhibit the stamp of truth that the writers had managed to put upon

these records, we may here give the report of Oscar's own pretended

reception:--

This day, Monday, November 25th, 1822, after a session held

yesterday at the rue de la Cerisaie, Arsenal quarter, at the house

of Madame Clapart, mother of the candidate-basochien Oscar Husson,

we, the undersigned, declare that the repast of admission

surpassed our expectations. It was composed of radishes, pink and

black, gherkins, anchovies, butter and olives for hors-d'oeuvre; a

succulent soup of rice, bearing testimony to maternal solicitude,

for we recognized therein a delicious taste of poultry; indeed, by

acknowledgment of the new member, we learned that the gibbets of a

fine stew prepared by the hands of Madame Clapart herself had been

judiciously inserted into the family soup-pot with a care that is

never taken except in such households.

Item: the said gibbets inclosed in a sea of jelly.

Item: a tongue of beef with tomatoes, which rendered us all

tongue-tied automatoes.

Item: a compote of pigeons with caused us to think the angels had

had a finger in it.

Item: a timbale of macaroni surrounded by chocolate custards.

Item: a dessert composed of eleven delicate dishes, among which we

remarked (in spite of the tipsiness caused by sixteen bottles of

the choicest wines) a compote of peaches of august and mirobolant

delicacy.

The wines of Roussillon and those of the banks of the Rhone

completely effaced those of Champagne and Burgundy. A bottle of

maraschino and another of kirsch did, in spite of the exquisite

coffee, plunge us into so marked an oenological ecstasy that we

found ourselves at a late hour in the Bois de Boulogne instead of

our domicile, where we thought we were.

In the statutes of our Order there is one rule which is rigidly

enforced; namely, to allow all candidates for the privilege of

Basoche to limit the magnificence of their feast of welcome to the

length of their purse; for it is publicly notorious that no one

delivers himself up to Themis if he has a fortune, and every clerk

is, alas, sternly curtailed by his parents. Consequently, we

hereby record with the highest praise the liberal conduct of

Madame Clapart, widow, by her first marriage, of Monsieur Husson,

father of the candidate, who is worthy of the hurrahs which we

gave for her at dessert.

To all of which we hereby set our hands.

[Signed by all the clerks.]

Three clerks had already been deceived by the Book, and three real

"receptions of welcome," were recorded on this imposing register.

The day after the arrival of each neophyte, the little sub-clerk (the

errand-boy and "gutter-jumper") laid upon the new-comer's desk the

"Archives Architriclino-Basochiennes," and the clerks enjoyed the

sight of his countenance as he studied its facetious pages. Inter

pocula each candidate had learned the secret of the farce, and the

revelation inspired him with the desire to hoax his successor.

We see now why Oscar, become in his turn participator in the hoax,

called out to the little clerk, "Forward, the book!"

Ten minutes later a handsome young man, with a fine figure and

pleasant face, presented himself, asked for Monsieur Desroches, and

gave his name without hesitation to Godeschal.

"I am Frederic Marest," he said, "and I come to take the place of

third clerk."

"Monsieur Husson," said Godeschal to Oscar, "show monsieur his seat

and tell him about the customs of the office."

The next day the new clerk found the register lying on his desk. He

took it up, but after reading a few pages he began to laugh, said

nothing to the assembled clerks, and laid the book down again.

"Messieurs," he said, when the hour of departure came at five o'clock,

"I have a cousin who is head clerk of the notary Maitre Leopold

Hannequin; I will ask his advice as to what I ought to do for my

welcome."

"That looks ill," cried Godeschal, when Frederic had gone, "he hasn't

the cut of a novice, that fellow!"

"We'll get some fun out of him yet," said Oscar.

CHAPTER IX

LA MARQUISE DE LAS FLORENTINAS Y CABIROLOS

The following day, at two o'clock, a young man entered the office,

whom Oscar recognized as Georges Marest, now head-clerk of the notary

Hannequin.

"Ha! here's the friend of Ali pacha!" he exclaimed in a flippant way.

"Hey! you here, Monsieur l'ambassadeur!" returned Georges,

recollecting Oscar.

"So you know each other?" said Godeschal, addressing Georges.

"I should think so! We got into a scrape together," replied Georges,

"about two years ago. Yes, I had to leave Crottat and go to Hannequin

in consequence of that affair."

"What was it?" asked Godeschal.

"Oh, nothing!" replied Georges, at a sign from Oscar. "We tried to

hoax a peer of France, and he bowled us over. Ah ca! so you want to

jockey my cousin, do you?"

"We jockey no one," replied Oscar, with dignity; "there's our

charter."

And he presented the famous register, pointing to a place where

sentence of banishment was passed on a refractory who was stated to

have been forced, for acts of dishonesty, to leave the office in 1788.

Georges laughed as he looked through the archives.

"Well, well," he said, "my cousin and I are rich, and we'll give you a

fete such as you never had before,--something to stimulate your

imaginations for that register. To-morrow (Sunday) you are bidden to

the Rocher de Cancale at two o'clock. Afterwards, I'll take you to

spend the evening with Madame la Marquise de las Florentinas y

Cabirolos, where we shall play cards, and you'll see the elite of the

women of fashion. Therefore, gentleman of the lower courts," he added,

with notarial assumption, "you will have to behave yourselves, and

carry your wine like the seigneurs of the Regency."

"Hurrah!" cried the office like one man. "Bravo! very well! vivat!

Long live the Marests!"

"What's all this about?" asked Desroches, coming out from his private

office. "Ah! is that you, Georges? I know what you are after; you want

to demoralize my clerks."

So saying, he withdrew into his own room, calling Oscar after him.

"Here," he said, opening his cash-box, "are five hundred francs. Go to

the Palais, and get from the registrar a copy of the decision in

Vandernesse against Vandernesse; it must be served to-night if

possible. I have promised a PROD of twenty francs to Simon. Wait for

the copy if it is not ready. Above all, don't let yourself be fooled;

for Derville is capable, in the interest of his clients, to stick a

spoke in our wheel. Count Felix de Vandernesse is more powerful than

his brother, our client, the ambassador. Therefore keep your eyes

open, and if there's the slightest hitch come back to me at once."

Oscar departed with the full intention of distinguishing himself in

this little skirmish,--the first affair entrusted to him since his

installation as second clerk.

After the departure of Georges and Oscar, Godeschal sounded the new

clerk to discover the joke which, as he thought, lay behind this

Marquise de las Florentinas y Cabirolos. But Frederic, with the

coolness and gravity of a king's attorney, continued his cousin's

hoax, and by his way of answering, and his manner generally, he

succeeded in making the office believe that the marquise might really

be the widow of a Spanish grandee, to whom his cousin Georges was

paying his addresses. Born in Mexico, and the daughter of Creole

parents, this young and wealthy widow was noted for the easy manners

and habits of the women of those climates.

"She loves to laugh, she loves to sing, she loves to drink like me!"

he said in a low voice, quoting the well-known song of Beranger.

"Georges," he added, "is very rich; he has inherited from his father

(who was a widower) eighteen thousand francs a year, and with the

twelve thousand which an uncle has just left to each of us, he has an

income of thirty thousand. So he pays his debts, and gives up the law.

He hopes to be Marquis de las Florentinas, for the young widow is

marquise in her own right, and has the privilege of giving her titles

to her husband."

Though the clerks were still a good deal undecided in mind as to the

marquise, the double perspective of a breakfast at the Rocher de

Cancale and a fashionable festivity put them into a state of joyous

expectation. They reserved all points as to the Spanish lady,

intending to judge her without appeal after the meeting.

The Marquise de las Florentinas y Cabirolos was neither more nor less

than Mademoiselle Agathe-Florentine Cabirolle, first danseuse at the

Gaiete, with whom uncle Cardot was in the habit of singing "Mere

Godichon." A year after the very reparable loss of Madame Cardot, the

successful merchant encountered Florentine as she was leaving Coulon's

dancing-class. Attracted by the beauty of that choregraphic flower

(Florentine was then about thirteen years of age), he followed her to

the rue Pastourel, where he found that the future star of the ballet

was the daughter of a portress. Two weeks later, the mother and

daughter, established in the rue de Crussol, were enjoying a modest

competence. It was to this protector of the arts--to use the

consecrated phrase--that the theatre owed the brilliant danseuse. The

generous Maecenas made two beings almost beside themselves with joy in

the possession of mahogany furniture, hangings, carpets, and a regular

kitchen; he allowed them a woman-of-all-work, and gave them two

hundred and fifty francs a month for their living. Pere Cardot, with

his hair in "pigeon-wings," seemed like an angel, and was treated with

the attention due to a benefactor. To him this was the age of gold.

For three years the warbler of "Mere Godichon" had the wise policy to

keep Mademoiselle Cabirolle and her mother in this little apartment,

which was only ten steps from the theatre; but he gave the girl, out

of love for the choregraphic art, the great Vestris for a master. In

1820 he had the pleasure of seeing Florentine dance her first "pas" in

the ballet of a melodrama entitled "The Ruins of Babylon." Florentine

was then about sixteen. Shortly after this debut Pere Cardot became an

"old screw" in the eyes of his protegee; but as he had the sense to

see that a danseuse at the Gaiete had a certain rank to maintain, he

raised the monthly stipend to five hundred francs, for which, although

he did not again become an angel, he was, at least, a "friend for

life," a second father. This was his silver age.

From 1820 to 1823, Florentine had the experience of every danseuse of

nineteen to twenty years of age. Her friends were the illustrious

Mariette and Tullia, leading ladies of the Opera, Florine, and also

poor Coralie, torn too early from the arts, and love, and Camusot. As

old Cardot had by this time acquired five additional years, he had

fallen into the indulgence of a semi-paternity, which is the way with

old men towards the young talents they have trained, and which owe

their success to them. Besides, where could he have found another

Florentine who knew all his habits and likings, and with whom he and

his friends could sing "Mere Godichon"? So the little old man remained

under a yoke that was semi-conjugal and also irresistibly strong. This

was the brass age for the old fellow.

During the five years of silver and gold Pere Cardot had laid by

eighty thousand francs. The old gentleman, wise from experience,

foresaw that by the time he was seventy Florentine would be of age,

probably engaged at the Opera, and, consequently, wanting all the

luxury of a theatrical star. Some days before the party mentioned by

Georges, Pere Cardot had spent the sum of forty-five thousand francs

in fitting up for his Florentine the former apartment of the late

Coralie. In Paris there are suites of rooms as well as houses and

streets that have their predestinations. Enriched with a magnificent

service of plate, the "prima danseuse" of the Gaiete began to give

dinners, spent three hundred francs a month on her dress, never went

out except in a hired carriage, and had a maid for herself, a cook,

and a little footman.

In fact, an engagement at the Opera was already in the wind. The Cocon

d'Or did homage to its first master by sending its most splendid

products for the gratification of Mademoiselle Cabirolle, now called

Florentine. The magnificence which suddenly burst upon her apartment

in the rue de Vendome would have satisfied the most ambitious

supernumerary. After being the master of the ship for seven years,

Cardot now found himself towed along by a force of unlimited caprice.

But the luckless old gentleman was fond of his tyrant. Florentine was

to close his eyes; he meant to leave her a hundred thousand francs.

The iron age had now begun.

Georges Marest, with thirty thousand francs a year, and a handsome

face, courted Florentine. Every danseuse makes a point of having some

young man who will take her to drive, and arrange the gay excursions

into the country which all such women delight in. However

disinterested she may be, the courtship of such a star is a passion

which costs some trifles to the favored mortal. There are dinners at

restaurants, boxes at the theatres, carriages to go to the environs

and return, choice wines consumed in profusion,--for an opera danseuse

eats and drinks like an athlete. Georges amused himself like other

young men who pass at a jump from paternal discipline to a rich

independence, and the death of his uncle, nearly doubling his means,

had still further enlarged his ideas. As long as he had only his

patrimony of eighteen thousand francs a year, his intention was to

become a notary, but (as his cousin remarked to the clerks of

Desroches) a man must be stupid who begins a profession with the

fortune most men hope to acquire in order to leave it. Wiser then

Georges, Frederic persisted in following the career of public office,

and of putting himself, as we have seen, in training for it.

A young man as handsome and attractive as Georges might very well

aspire to the hand of a rich creole; and the clerks in Desroches'

office, all of them the sons of poor parents, having never frequented

the great world, or, indeed, known anything about it, put themselves

into their best clothes on the following day, impatient enough to

behold, and be presented to the Mexican Marquise de las Florentinas y

Cabirolos.

"What luck," said Oscar to Godeschal, as they were getting up in the

morning, "that I had just ordered a new coat and trousers and

waistcoat, and that my dear mother had made me that fine outfit! I

have six frilled shirts of fine linen in the dozen she made for me. We

shall make an appearance! Ha! ha! suppose one of us were to carry off

the Creole marchioness from that Georges Marest!"

"Fine occupation that, for a clerk in our office!" cried Godeschal.

"Will you never control your vanity, popinjay?"

"Ah! monsieur," said Madame Clapart, who entered the room at that

moment to bring her son some cravats, and overhead the last words of

the head-clerk, "would to God that my Oscar might always follow your

advice. It is what I tell him all the time: 'Imitate Monsieur

Godeschal; listen to what he tells you.'"

"He'll go all right, madame," interposed Godeschal, "but he mustn't

commit any more blunders like one he was guilty of last night, or

he'll lose the confidence of the master. Monsieur Desroches won't

stand any one not succeeding in what he tells them to do. He ordered

your son, for a first employment in his new clerkship, to get a copy

of a judgment which ought to have been served last evening, and Oscar,

instead of doing so, allowed himself to be fooled. The master was

furious. It's a chance if I have been able to repair the mischief by

going this morning, at six o'clock, to see the head-clerk at the

Palais, who has promised me to have a copy ready by seven o'clock to-

morrow morning."

"Ah, Godeschal!" cried Oscar, going up to him and pressing his hand.

"You are, indeed, a true friend."

"Ah, monsieur!" said Madame Clapart, "a mother is happy, indeed, in

knowing that her son has a friend like you; you may rely upon a

gratitude which can end only with my life. Oscar, one thing I want to

say to you now. Distrust that Georges Marest. I wish you had never met

him again, for he was the cause of your first great misfortune in

life."

"Was he? How so?" asked Godeschal.

The too devoted mother explained succinctly the adventure of her poor

Oscar in Pierrotin's coucou.

"I am certain," said Godeschal, "that that blagueur is preparing some

trick against us for this evening. As for me, I can't go to the

Marquise de las Florentinas' party, for my sister wants me to draw up

the terms of her new engagement; I shall have to leave after the

dessert. But, Oscar, be on your guard. They will ask you to play, and,

of course, the Desroches office mustn't draw back; but be careful. You

shall play for both of us; here's a hundred francs," said the good

fellow, knowing that Oscar's purse was dry from the demands of his

tailor and bootmaker. "Be prudent; remember not to play beyond that

sum; and don't let yourself get tipsy, either with play or libations.

Saperlotte! a second clerk is already a man of weight, and shouldn't

gamble on notes, or go beyond a certain limit in anything. His

business is to get himself admitted to the bar. Therefore don't drink

too much, don't play too long, and maintain a proper dignity,--that's

your rule of conduct. Above all, get home by midnight; for, remember,

you must be at the Palais to-morrow morning by seven to get that

judgment. A man is not forbidden to amuse himself, but business first,

my boy."

"Do you hear that, Oscar?" said Madame Clapart. "Monsieur Godeschal is

indulgent; see how well he knows how to combine the pleasures of youth

and the duties of his calling."

Madame Clapart, on the arrival of the tailor and the bootmaker with

Oscar's new clothes, remained alone with Godeschal, in order to return

him the hundred francs he had just given her son.

"Ah, monsieur!" she said, "the blessings of a mother will follow you

wherever you go, and in all your enterprises."

Poor woman! she now had the supreme delight of seeing her son well-

dressed, and she gave him a gold watch, the price of which she had

saved by economy, as the reward of his good conduct.

"You draw for the conscription next week," she said, "and to prepare,

in case you get a bad number, I have been to see your uncle Cardot. He

is very much pleased with you; and so delighted to know you are a

second clerk at twenty, and to hear of your successful examination at

the law-school, that he promised me the money for a substitute. Are

not you glad to think that your own good conduct has brought such

reward? Though you have some privations to bear, remember the

happiness of being able, five years from now, to buy a practice. And

think, too, my dear little kitten, how happy you make your mother."

Oscar's face, somewhat thinned by study, had acquired, through habits

of business, a serious expression. He had reached his full growth, his

beard was thriving; adolescence had given place to virility. The

mother could not refrain from admiring her son and kissing him, as she

said:--

"Amuse yourself, my dear boy, but remember the advice of our good

Monsieur Godeschal. Ah! by the bye, I was nearly forgetting! Here's a

present our friend Moreau sends you. See! what a pretty pocket-book."

"And I want it, too; for the master gave me five hundred francs to get

that cursed judgment of Vandernesse versus Vandernesse, and I don't

want to leave that sum of money in my room."

"But, surely, you are not going to carry it with you!" exclaimed his

mother, in alarm. "Suppose you should lose a sum like that! Hadn't you

better give it to Monsieur Godeschal for safe keeping?"

"Godeschal!" cried Oscar, who thought his mother's suggestion

excellent.

But Godeschal, who, like all clerks, has his time to himself on

Sundays, from ten to two o'clock, had already departed.

When his mother left him, Oscar went to lounge upon the boulevards

until it was time to go to Georges Marest's breakfast. Why not display

those beautiful clothes which he wore with a pride and joy which all

young fellows who have been pinched for means in their youth will

remember. A pretty waistcoat with a blue ground and a palm-leaf

pattern, a pair of black cashmere trousers pleated, a black coat very

well fitting, and a cane with a gilt top, the cost of which he had

saved himself, caused a natural joy to the poor lad, who thought of

his manner of dress on the day of that journey to Presles, as the

effect that Georges had then produced upon him came back to his mind.

Oscar had before him the perspective of a day of happiness; he was to

see the gay world at last! Let us admit that a clerk deprived of

enjoyments, though longing for dissipation, was likely to let his

unchained senses drive the wise counsels of his mother and Godeschal

completely out of his mind. To the shame of youth let it be added that

good advice is never lacking to it. In the matter of Georges, Oscar

himself had a feeling of aversion for him; he felt humiliated before a

witness of that scene in the salon at Presles when Moreau had flung

him at the count's feet. The moral senses have their laws, which are

implacable, and we are always punished for disregarding them. There is

one in particular, which the animals themselves obey without

discussion, and invariably; it is that which tells us to avoid those

who have once injured us, with or without intention, voluntarily or

involuntarily. The creature from whom we receive either damage or

annoyance will always be displeasing to us. Whatever may be his rank

or the degree of affection in which he stands to us, it is best to

break away from him; for our evil genius has sent him to us. Though

the Christian sentiment is opposed to it, obedience to this terrible

law is essentially social and conservative. The daughter of James II.,

who seated herself upon her father's throne, must have caused him many

a wound before that usurpation. Judas had certainly given some

murderous blow to Jesus before he betrayed him. We have within us an

inward power of sight, an eye of the soul which foresees catastrophes;

and the repugnance that comes over us against the fateful being is the

result of that foresight. Though religion orders us to conquer it,

distrust remains, and its voice is forever heard. Would Oscar, at

twenty years of age, have the wisdom to listen to it?

Alas! when, at half-past two o'clock, Oscar entered the salon of the

Rocher de Cancale,--where were three invited persons besides the

clerks, to wit: an old captain of dragoons, named Giroudeau; Finot, a

journalist who might procure an engagement for Florentine at the

Opera, and du Bruel, an author, the friend of Tullia, one of

Mariette's rivals,--the second clerk felt his secret hostility vanish

at the first handshaking, the first dashes of conversation as they sat

around a table luxuriously served. Georges, moreover, made himself

charming to Oscar.

"You've taken to private diplomacy," he said; "for what difference is

there between a lawyer and an ambassador? only that between a nation

and an individual. Ambassadors are the attorneys of Peoples. If I can

ever be useful to you, let me know."

"Well," said Oscar, "I'll admit to you now that you once did me a very

great harm."

"Pooh!" said Georges, after listening to the explanation for which he

asked; "it was Monsieur de Serizy who behaved badly. His wife! I

wouldn't have her at any price; neither would I like to be in the

count's red skin, minister of State and peer of France as he is. He

has a small mind, and I don't care a fig for him now."

Oscar listened with true pleasure to these slurs on the count, for

they diminished, in a way, the importance of his fault; and he echoed

the spiteful language of the ex-notary, who amused himself by

predicting the blows to the nobility of which the bourgeoisie were

already dreaming,--blows which were destined to become a reality in

At half-past three the solid eating of the feast began; the dessert

did not appear till eight o'clock,--each course having taken two hours

to serve. None but clerks can eat like that! The stomachs of eighteen

and twenty are inexplicable to the medical art. The wines were worthy

of Borrel, who in those days had superseded the illustrious Balaine,

the creator of the first restaurant for delicate and perfectly

prepared food in Paris,--that is to say, the whole world.

The report of this Belshazzar's feast for the architriclino-basochien

register was duly drawn up, beginning, "Inter pocula aurea

restauranti, qui vulgo dicitur Rupes Cancali." Every one can imagine

the fine page now added to the Golden Book of jurisprudential

festivals.

Godeschal disappeared after signing the report, leaving the eleven

guests, stimulated by the old captain of the Imperial Guard, to the

wines, toasts, and liqueurs of a dessert composed of choice and early

fruits, in pyramids that rivalled the obelisk of Thebes. By half-past

ten the little sub-clerk was in such a state that Georges packed him

into a coach, paid his fare, and gave the address of his mother to the

driver. The remaining ten, all as drunk as Pitt and Dundas, talked of

going on foot along the boulevards, considering the fine evening, to

the house of the Marquise de las Florentinas y Cabirolos, where, about

midnight, they might expect to find the most brilliant society of

Paris. They felt the need of breathing the pure air into their lungs;

but, with the exception of Georges, Giroudeau, du Bruel, and Finot,

all four accustomed to Parisian orgies, not one of the party could

walk. Consequently, Georges sent to a livery-stable for three open

carriages, in which he drove his company for an hour round the

exterior boulevards from Monmartre to the Barriere du Trone. They

returned by Bercy, the quays, and the boulevards to the rue de

Vendome.

The clerks were fluttering still in the skies of fancy to which youth

is lifted by intoxication, when their amphitryon introduced them into

Florentine's salon. There sparkled a bevy of stage princesses, who,

having been informed, no doubt, of Frederic's joke, were amusing

themselves by imitating the women of good society. They were then

engaged in eating ices. The wax-candles flamed in the candelabra.

Tullia's footmen and those of Madame du Val-Noble and Florine, all in

full livery, where serving the dainties on silver salvers. The

hangings, a marvel of Lyonnaise workmanship, fastened by gold cords,

dazzled all eyes. The flowers of the carpet were like a garden. The

richest "bibelots" and curiosities danced before the eyes of the new-

comers.

At first, and in the state to which Georges had brought them, the

clerks, and more particularly Oscar, believed in the Marquise de las

Florentinas y Cabirolos. Gold glittered on four card-tables in the

bed-chamber. In the salon, the women were playing at vingt-et-un, kept

by Nathan, the celebrated author.

After wandering, tipsy and half asleep, through the dark exterior

boulevards, the clerks now felt that they had wakened in the palace of

Armida. Oscar, presented to the marquise by Georges, was quite

stupefied, and did not recognize the danseuse he had seen at the

Gaiete, in this lady, aristocratically decolletee and swathed in

laces, till she looked like the vignette of a keepsake, who received

him with manners and graces the like of which was neither in the

memory nor the imagination of a young clerk rigidly brought up. After

admiring the splendors of the apartment and the beautiful women there

displayed, who had all outdone each other in their dress for this

occasion, Oscar was taken by the hand and led by Florentine to a

vingt-et-un table.

"Let me present you," she said, "to the beautiful Marquise d'Anglade,

one of my nearest friends."

And she took Oscar to the pretty Fanny Beaupre, who had just made

herself a reputation at the Porte-Saint-Martin, in a melodrama

entitled "La Famille d'Anglade."

"My dear," said Florentine, "allow me to present to you a charming

youth, whom you can take as a partner in the game."

"Ah! that will be delightful," replied the actress, smiling, as she

looked at Oscar. "I am losing. Shall we go shares, monsieur?"

"Madame la marquise, I am at your orders," said Oscar, sitting down

beside her.

"Put down the money; I'll play; you shall being me luck! See, here are

my last hundred francs."

And the "marquise" took out from her purse, the rings of which were

adorned with diamonds, five gold pieces. Oscar pulled out his hundred

in silver five-franc pieces, much ashamed at having to mingle such

ignoble coins with gold. In ten throws the actress lost the two

hundred francs.

"Oh! how stupid!" she cried. "I'm banker now. But we'll play together

still, won't we?"

Fanny Beaupre rose to take her place as banker, and Oscar, finding

himself observed by the whole table, dared not retire on the ground

that he had no money. Speech failed him, and his tongue clove to the

roof of his mouth.

"Lend me five hundred francs," said the actress to the danseuse.

Florentine brought the money, which she obtained from Georges, who had

just passed eight times at ecarte.

"Nathan has won twelve hundred francs," said the actress to Oscar.

"Bankers always win; we won't let them fool us, will we?" she

whispered in his ear.

Persons of nerve, imagination, and dash will understand how it was

that poor Oscar opened his pocket-book and took out the note of five

hundred francs which Desroches had given him. He looked at Nathan, the

distinguished author, who now began, with Florine, to play a heavy

game against the bank.

"Come, my little man, take 'em up," cried Fanny Beaupre, signing to

Oscar to rake in the two hundred francs which Nathan and Florine had

punted.

The actress did not spare taunts or jests on those who lost. She

enlivened the game with jokes which Oscar thought singular; but

reflection was stifled by joy; for the first two throws produced a

gain of two thousand francs. Oscar then thought of feigning illness

and making his escape, leaving his partner behind him; but "honor"

kept him there. Three more turns and the gains were lost. Oscar felt a

cold sweat running down his back, and he was sobered completely.

The next two throws carried off the thousand francs of their mutual

stake. Oscar was consumed with thirst, and drank three glasses of iced

punch one after the other. The actress now led him into the bed-

chamber, where the rest of the company were playing, talking

frivolities with an easy air. But by this time the sense of his wrong-

doing overcame him; the figure of Desroches appeared to him like a

vision. He turned aside to a dark corner and sat down, putting his

handkerchief to his eyes, and wept. Florentine noticed the attitude of

true grief, which, because it is sincere, is certain to strike the eye

of one who acts. She ran to him, took the handkerchief from his hand,

and saw his tears; then she led him into a boudoir alone.

"What is it, my child?" she said.

At the tone and accent of that voice Oscar recognized a motherly

kindness which is often found in women of her kind, and he answered

openly:--

"I have lost five hundred francs which my employer gave me to obtain a

document to-morrow morning; there's nothing for me but to fling myself

into the river; I am dishonored."

"How silly you are!" she said. "Stay where you are; I'll get you a

thousand francs and you can win back what you've lost; but don't risk

more than five hundred, so that you may be sure of your master's

money. Georges plays a fine game at ecarte; bet on him."

Oscar, frightened by his position, accepted the offer of the mistress

of the house.

"Ah!" he thought, "it is only women of rank who are capable of such

kindness. Beautiful, noble, rich! how lucky Georges is!"

He received the thousand francs from Florentine and returned to bet on

his hoaxer. Georges had just passed for the fourth time when Oscar sat

down beside him. The other players saw with satisfaction the arrival

of a new better; for all, with the instinct of gamblers, took the side

of Giroudeau, the old officer of the Empire.

"Messieurs," said Georges, "you'll be punished for deserting me; I

feel in the vein. Come, Oscar, we'll make an end of them!"

Georges and his partner lost five games running. After losing the

thousand francs Oscar was seized with the fury of play and insisted on

taking the cards himself. By the result of a chance not at all

uncommon with those who play for the first time, he won. But Georges

bewildered him with advice; told him when to throw the cards, and even

snatched them from his hand; so that this conflict of wills and

intuitions injured his vein. By three o'clock in the morning, after

various changes of fortune, and still drinking punch, Oscar came down

to his last hundred francs. He rose with a heavy head, completely

stupefied, took a few steps forward, and fell upon a sofa in the

boudoir, his eyes closing in a leaden sleep.

"Mariette," said Fanny Beaupre to Godeschal's sister, who had come in

about two o'clock, "do you dine here to-morrow? Camusot and Pere

Cardot are coming, and we'll have some fun."

"What!" cried Florentine, "and my old fellow never told me!"

"He said he'd tell you to-morrow morning," remarked Fanny Beaupre.

"The devil take him and his orgies!" exclaimed Florentine. "He and

Camusot are worse than magistrates or stage-managers. But we have very

good dinners here, Mariette," she continued. "Cardot always orders

them from Chevet's; bring your Duc de Maufrigneuse and we'll make them

dance like Tritons."

Hearing the names of Cardot and Camusot, Oscar made an effort to throw

off his sleep; but he could only mutter a few words which were not

understood, and then he fell back upon the silken cushions.

"You'll have to keep him here all night," said Fanny Beaupre,

laughing, to Florentine.

"Oh! poor boy! he is drunk with punch and despair both. It is the

second clerk in your brother's office," she said to Mariette. "He has

lost the money his master gave him for some legal affair. He wanted to

drown himself; so I lent him a thousand francs, but those brigands

Finot and Giroudeau won them from him. Poor innocent!"

"But we ought to wake him," said Mariette. "My brother won't make

light of it, nor his master either."

"Oh, wake him if you can, and carry him off with you!" said

Florentine, returning to the salon to receive the adieux of some

departing guests.

Presently those who remained began what was called "character

dancing," and by the time it was broad daylight, Florentine, tired

out, went to bed, oblivious to Oscar, who was still in the boudoir

sound asleep.

CHAPTER X

ANOTHER CATASTROPHE

About eleven the next morning, a terrible sound awoke the unfortunate

clerk. Recognizing the voice of his uncle Cardot, he thought it wise

to feign sleep, and so turned his face into the yellow velvet cushions

on which he had passed the night.

"Really, my little Florentine," said the old gentleman, "this is

neither right nor sensible; you danced last evening in 'Les Ruines,'

and you have spent the night in an orgy. That's deliberately going to

work to lose your freshness. Besides which, it was ungrateful to

inaugurate this beautiful apartment without even letting me know. Who

knows what has been going on here?"

"Old monster!" cried Florentine, "haven't you a key that lets you in

at all hours? My ball lasted till five in the morning, and you have

the cruelty to come and wake me up at eleven!"

"Half-past eleven, Titine," observed Cardot, humbly. "I came out early

to order a dinner fit for an archbishop at Chevet's. Just see how the

carpets are stained! What sort of people did you have here?"

"You needn't complain, for Fanny Beaupre told me you were coming to

dinner with Camusot, and to please you I've invited Tullia, du Bruel,

Mariette, the Duc de Maufrigneuse, Florine, and Nathan. So you'll have

the four loveliest creatures ever seen behind the foot-lights; we'll

dance you a 'pas de Zephire.'"

"It is enough to kill you to lead such a life!" cried old Cardot; "and

look at the broken glasses! What pillage! The antechamber actually

makes me shudder--"

At this instant the wrathful old gentleman stopped short as if

magnetized, like a bird which a snake is charming. He saw the outline

of a form in a black coat through the door of the boudoir.

"Ah, Mademoiselle Cabirolle!" he said at last.

"Well, what?" she asked.

The eyes of the danseuse followed those of the little old man; and

when she recognized the presence of the clerk she went off into such

fits of laughter that not only was the old gentleman nonplussed, but

Oscar was compelled to appear; for Florentine took him by the arm,

still pealing with laughter at the conscience-stricken faces of the

uncle and nephew.

"You here, nephew?"

"Nephew! so he's your nephew?" cried Florentine, with another burst of

laughter. "You never told me about him. Why didn't Mariette carry you

off?" she said to Oscar, who stood there petrified. "What can he do

now, poor boy?"

"Whatever he pleases!" said Cardot, sharply, marching to the door as

if to go away.

"One moment, papa Cardot. You will be so good as to get your nephew

out of a scrape into which I led him; for he played the money of his

master and lost it, and I lend him a thousand francs to win it back,

and he lost that too."

"Miserable boy! you lost fifteen hundred francs at play at your age?"

"Oh, uncle, uncle!" cried poor Oscar, plunged by these words into all

the horrors of his position, and falling on his knees before his

uncle, with clasped hands, "It is twelve o'clock! I am lost,

dishonored! Monsieur Desroches will have no pity! He gave me the money

for an important affair, in which his pride was concerned. I was to

get a paper at the Palais in the case of Vandernesse versus

Vandernesse! What will become of me? Oh, save me for the sake of my

father and aunt! Come with me to Monsieur Desroches, and explain it to

him; make some excuse,--anything!"

These sentences were jerked out through sobs and tears that might have

moved the sphinx of Luxor.

"Old skinflint!" said the danseuse, who was crying, "will you let your

own nephew be dishonored,--the son of the man to whom you owe your

fortune?--for his name is Oscar Husson. Save him, or Titine will deny

you forever!"

"But how did he come here?" asked Cardot.

"Don't you see that the reason he forgot to go for those papers was

because he was drunk and overslept himself. Georges and his cousin

Frederic took all the clerks in his office to a feast at the Rocher de

Cancale."

Pere Cardot looked at Florentine and hesitated.

"Come, come," she said, "you old monkey, shouldn't I have hid him

better if there had been anything else in it?"

"There, take your five hundred francs, you scamp!" said Cardot to his

nephew, "and remember, that's the last penny you'll ever get from me.

Go and make it up with your master if you can. I'll return the

thousand francs which you borrowed of mademoiselle; but I'll never

hear another word about you."

Oscar disappeared, not wishing to hear more. Once in the street,

however, he knew not where to go.

Chance which destroys men and chance which saves them were both making

equal efforts for and against Oscar during that fateful morning. But

he was doomed to fall before a master who forgave no failure in any

affair he had once undertaken. When Mariette reached home that night,

she felt alarmed at what might happen to the youth in whom her brother

took interest and she wrote a hasty note to Godeschal, telling him

what had happened to Oscar and inclosing a bank bill for five hundred

francs to repair his loss. The kind-hearted creature went to sleep

after charging her maid to carry the little note to Desroches' office

before seven o'clock in the morning. Godeschal, on his side, getting

up at six and finding that Oscar had not returned, guessed what had

happened. He took the five hundred francs from his own little hoard

and rushed to the Palais, where he obtained a copy of the judgment and

returned in time to lay it before Desroches by eight o'clock.

Meantime Desroches, who always rose at four, was in his office by

seven. Mariette's maid, not finding the brother of her mistress in his

bedroom, came down to the office and there met Desroches, to whom she

very naturally offered the note.

"Is it about business?" he said; "I am Monsieur Desroches."

"You can see, monsieur," replied the maid.

Desroches opened the letter and read it. Finding the five-hundred-

franc note, he went into his private office furiously angry with his

second clerk. About half-past seven he heard Godeschal dictating to

the second head-clerk a copy of the document in question, and a few

moments later the good fellow entered his master's office with an air

of triumph in his heart.

"Did Oscar Husson fetch the paper this morning from Simon?" inquired

Desroches.

"Yes, monsieur."

"Who gave him the money?"

"Why, you did, Saturday," replied Godeschal.

"Then it rains five-hundred-franc notes," cried Desroches. "Look here,

Godeschal, you are a fine fellow, but that little Husson does not

deserve such generosity. I hate idiots, but I hate still more the men

who will go wrong in spite of the fatherly care which watches over

them." He gave Godeschal Mariette's letter and the five-hundred-franc

note which she had sent. "You must excuse my having opened it," he

said, "but your sister's maid told me it was on business. Dismiss

Husson."

"Poor unhappy boy! what grief he has caused me! " said Godeschal,

"that tall ne'er-do-well of a Georges Marest is his evil genius; he

ought to flee him like the plague; if not, he'll bring him to some

third disgrace."

"What do you mean by that?" asked Desroches.

Godeschal then related briefly the affair of the journey to Presles.

"Ah! yes," said the lawyer, "I remember Joseph Bridau told me that

story about the time it happened. It is to that meeting that we owe

the favor Monsieur de Serizy has since shown in the matter of Joseph's

brother, Philippe Bridau."

At this moment Moreau, to whom the case of the Vandernesse estate was

of much importance, entered the office. The marquis wished to sell the

land in parcels and the count was opposed to such a sale. The land-

agent received therefore the first fire of Desroches' wrath against

his ex-second clerk and all the threatening prophecies which he

fulminated against him. The result was that this most sincere friend

and protector of the unhappy youth came to the conclusion that his

vanity was incorrigible.

"Make him a barrister," said Desroches. "He has only his last

examination to pass. In that line, his defects might prove virtues,

for self-love and vanity give tongues to half the attorneys."

At this time Clapart, who was ill, was being nursed by his wife,--a

painful task, a duty without reward. The sick man tormented the poor

creature, who was now doomed to learn what venomous and spiteful

teasing a half-imbecile man, whom poverty had rendered craftily

savage, could be capable of in the weary tete-a-tete of each endless

day. Delighted to turn a sharpened arrow in the sensitive heart of the

mother, he had, in a measure, studied the fears that Oscar's behavior

and defects inspired in the poor woman. When a mother receives from

her child a shock like that of the affair at Presles, she continues in

a state of constant fear, and, by the manner in which his wife boasted

of Oscar every time he obtained the slightest success, Clapart knew

the extent of her secret uneasiness, and he took pains to rouse it on

every occasion.

"Well, Madame," Clapart would say, "Oscar is doing better than I even

hoped. That journey to Presles was only a heedlessness of youth. Where

can you find young lads who do not commit just such faults? Poor

child! he bears his privations heroically! If his father had lived, he

would never have had any. God grant he may know how to control his

passions!" etc., etc.

While all these catastrophes were happening in the rue de Vendome and

the rue de Bethisy, Clapart, sitting in the chimney corner, wrapped in

an old dressing-gown, watched his wife, who was engaged over the fire

in their bedroom in simultaneously making the family broth, Clapart's

"tisane," and her own breakfast.

"Mon Dieu! I wish I knew how the affair of yesterday ended. Oscar was

to breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale and spend the evening with a

marquise--"

"Don't trouble yourself! Sooner or later you'll find out about your

swan," said her husband. "Do you really believe in that marquise?

Pooh! A young man who has senses and a taste for extravagance like

Oscar can find such ladies as that on every bush--if he pays for them.

Some fine morning you'll find yourself with a load of debt on your

back."

"You are always trying to put me in despair!" cried Madame Clapart.

"You complained that my son lived on your salary, and never has he

cost you a penny. For two years you haven't had the slightest cause of

complaint against him; here he is second clerk, his uncle and Monsieur

Moreau pay all expenses, and he earns, himself, a salary of eight

hundred francs. If we have bread to eat in our old age we may owe it

all to that dear boy. You are really too unjust--"

"You call my foresight unjust, do you?" replied the invalid, crossly.

Just then the bell rang loudly. Madame Clapart ran to open the door,

and remained in the outer room with Moreau, who had come to soften the

blow which Oscar's new folly would deal to the heart of his poor

mother.

"What! he gambled with the money of the office?" she cried, bursting

into tears.

"Didn't I tell you so, hey?" said Clapart, appearing like a spectre at

the door of the salon whither his curiosity had brought him.

"Oh! what shall we do with him?" said Madame Clapart, whose grief made

her impervious to Clapart's taunt.

"If he bore my name," replied Moreau, "I should wait composedly till

he draws for the conscription, and if he gets a fatal number I should

not provide him with a substitute. This is the second time your son

has committed a folly out of sheer vanity. Well, vanity may inspire

fine deeds in war and may advance him in the career of a soldier.

Besides, six years of military service will put some lead into his

head; and as he has only his last legal examination to pass, it won't

be much ill-luck for him if he doesn't become a lawyer till he is

twenty-six; that is, if he wants to continue in the law after paying,

as they say, his tax of blood. By that time, at any rate, he will have

been severely punished, he will have learned experience, and

contracted habits of subordination. Before making his probation at the

bar he will have gone through his probations in life."

"If that is your decision for a son," said Madame Clapart, "I see that

the heart of a father is not like that of a mother. My poor Oscar a

common soldier!--"

"Would you rather he flung himself headforemost into the Seine after

committing a dishonorable action? He cannot now become a solicitor; do

you think him steady and wise enough to be a barrister? No. While his

reason is maturing, what will he become? A dissipated fellow. The

discipline of the army will, at least, preserve him from that."

"Could he not go into some other office? His uncle Cardot has promised

to pay for his substitute; Oscar is to dedicate his graduating thesis

to him."

At this moment carriage-wheels were heard, and a hackney-coach

containing Oscar and all his worldly belongings stopped before the

door. The luckless young man came up at once.

"Ah! here you are, Monsieur Joli-Coeur!" cried Clapart.

Oscar kissed his mother, and held out to Moreau a hand which the

latter refused to take. To this rebuff Oscar replied by a reproachful

look, the boldness of which he had never shown before. Then he turned

on Clapart.

"Listen to me, monsieur," said the youth, transformed into a man. "You

worry my poor mother devilishly, and that's your right, for she is,

unfortunately, your wife. But as for me, it is another thing. I shall

be of age in a few months; and you have no rights over me even as a

minor. I have never asked anything of you. Thanks to Monsieur Moreau,

I have never cost you one penny, and I owe you no gratitude.

Therefore, I say, let me alone!"

Clapart, hearing this apostrophe, slunk back to his sofa in the

chimney corner. The reasoning and the inward fury of the young man,

who had just received a lecture from his friend Godeschal, silenced

the imbecile mind of the sick man.

"A momentary temptation, such as you yourself would have yielded to at

my age," said Oscar to Moreau, "has made me commit a fault which

Desroches thinks serious, though it is only a peccadillo. I am more

provoked with myself for taking Florentine of the Gaiete for a

marquise than I am for losing fifteen hundred francs after a little

debauch in which everybody, even Godeschal, was half-seas over. This

time, at any rate, I've hurt no one by myself. I'm cured of such

things forever. If you are willing to help me, Monsieur Moreau, I

swear to you that the six years I must still stay a clerk before I can

get a practice shall be spent without--"

"Stop there!" said Moreau. "I have three children, and I can make no

promises."

"Never mind, never mind," said Madame Clapart to her son, casting a

reproachful glance at Moreau. "Your uncle Cardot--"

"I have no longer an uncle Cardot," replied Oscar, who related the

scene at the rue de Vendome.

Madame Clapart, feeling her legs give way under the weight of her

body, staggered to a chair in the dining-room, where she fell as if

struck by lightning.

"All the miseries together!" she said, as she fainted.

Moreau took the poor mother in his arms, and carried her to the bed in

her chamber. Oscar remained motionless, as if crushed.

"There is nothing left for you," said Moreau, coming back to him, "but

to make yourself a soldier. That idiot of a Clapart looks to me as

though he couldn't live three months, and then your mother will be

without a penny. Ought I not, therefore, to reserve for her the little

money I am able to give? It was impossible to tell you this before

her. As a soldier, you'll eat plain bread and reflect on life such as

it is to those who are born into it without fortune."

"I may get a lucky number," said Oscar.

"Suppose you do, what then? Your mother has well fulfilled her duty

towards you. She gave you an education; she placed you on the right

road, and secured you a career. You have left it. Now, what can you

do? Without money, nothing; as you know by this time. You are not a

man who can begin a new career by taking off your coat and going to

work in your shirt-sleeves with the tools of an artisan. Besides, your

mother loves you, and she would die to see you come to that."

Oscar sat down and no longer restrained his tears, which flowed

copiously. At last he understood this language, so completely

unintelligible to him ever since his first fault.

"Men without means ought to be perfect," added Moreau, not suspecting

the profundity of that cruel sentence.

"My fate will soon be decided," said Oscar. "I draw my number the day

after to-morrow. Between now and then I will decide upon my future."

Moreau, deeply distressed in spite of his stern bearing, left the

household in the rue de la Cerisaie to its despair.

Three days later Oscar drew the number twenty-seven. In the interests

of the poor lad the former steward of Presles had the courage to go to

the Comte de Serizy and ask for his influence to get Oscar into the

cavalry. It happened that the count's son, having left the Ecole

Polytechnique rather low in his class, was appointed, as a favor, sub-

lieutenant in a regiment of cavalry commanded by the Duc de

Maufrigneuse. Oscar had, therefore, in his great misfortune, the small

luck of being, at the Comte de Serizy's instigation, drafted into that

noble regiment, with the promise of promotion to quartermaster within

a year. Chance had thus placed the ex-clerk under the command of the

son of the Comte de Serizy.

Madame Clapart, after languishing for some days, so keenly was she

affected by these catastrophes, became a victim to the remorse which

seizes upon many a mother whose conduct has been frail in her youth,

and who, in her old age, turns to repentance. She now considered

herself under a curse. She attributed the sorrows of her second

marriage and the misfortunes of her son to a just retribution by which

God was compelling her to expiate the errors and pleasures of her

youth. This opinion soon became a certainty in her mind. The poor

woman went, for the first time in forty years, to confess herself to

the Abbe Gaudron, vicar of Saint-Paul's, who led her into the practice

of devotion. But so ill-used and loving a soul as that of Madame

Clapart's could never be anything but simply pious. The Aspasia of the

Directory wanted to expiate her sins in order to draw down the

blessing of God on the head of her poor Oscar, and she henceforth

vowed herself to works and deeds of the purest piety. She believed she

had won the attention of heaven when she saved the life of Monsieur

Clapart, who, thanks to her devotion, lived on to torture her; but she

chose to see, in the tyranny of that imbecile mind, a trial inflicted

by the hand of one who loveth while he chasteneth.

Oscar, meantime, behaved so well that in 1830 he was first sergeant of

the company of the Vicomte de Serizy, which gave him the rank of sub-

lieutenant of the line. Oscar Husson was by that time twenty-five

years old. As the Royal Guard, to which his regiment was attached, was

always in garrison in Paris, or within a circumference of thirty miles

around the capital, he came to see his mother from time to time, and

tell her his griefs; for he had the sense to see that he could never

become an officer as matters then were. At that time the cavalry

grades were all being taken up by the younger sons of noble families,

and men without the article to their names found promotion difficult.

Oscar's sole ambition was to leave the Guards and be appointed sub-

lieutenant in a regiment of the cavalry of the line. In the month of

February, 1830, Madame Clapart obtained this promotion for her son

through the influence of Madame la Dauphine, granted to the Abbe

Gaudron, now rector of Saint-Pauls.

Although Oscar outwardly professed to be devoted to the Bourbons, in

the depths of his heart he was a liberal. Therefore, in the struggle

of 1830, he went over to the side of the people. This desertion, which

had an importance due to the crisis in which it took place, brought

him before the eyes of the public. During the excitement of triumph in

the month of August he was promoted lieutenant, received the cross of

the Legion of honor, and was attached as aide-de-camp to La Fayette,

who gave him the rank of captain in 1832. When the amateur of the best

of all possible republics was removed from the command of the National

guard, Oscar Husson, whose devotion to the new dynasty amounted to

fanaticism, was appointed major of a regiment sent to Africa at the

time of the first expedition undertaken by the Prince-royal. The

Vicomte de Serizy chanced to be the lieutenant-colonel of this

regiment. At the affair of the Makta, where the field had to be

abandoned to the Arabs, Monsieur de Serizy was left wounded under a

dead horse. Oscar, discovering this, called out to the squadron:

"Messieurs, it is going to death, but we cannot abandon our colonel."

He dashed upon the enemy, and his electrified soldiers followed him.

The Arabs, in their first astonishment at this furious and unlooked-

for return, allowed Oscar to seize the viscount, whom he flung across

his horse, and carried off at full gallop,--receiving, as he did so,

two slashes from yataghans on his left arm.

Oscar's conduct on this occasion was rewarded with the officer's cross

of the Legion of honor, and by his promotion to the rank of

lieutenant-colonel. He took the most affectionate care of the Vicomte

de Serizy, whose mother came to meet him on the arrival of the

regiment at Toulon, where, as we know, the young man died of his

wounds.

The Comtesse de Serizy had not separated her son from the man who had

shown him such devotion. Oscar himself was so seriously wounded that

the surgeons whom the countess had brought with her from Paris thought

best to amputate his left arm.

Thus the Comte de Serizy was led not only to forgive Oscar for his

painful remarks on the journey to Presles, but to feel himself his

debtor on behalf of his son, now buried in the chapel of the chateau

de Serizy.

CHAPTER XI

OSCAR'S LAST BLUNDER

Some years after the affair at Makta, an old lady, dressed in black,

leaning on the arm of a man about thirty-four years of age, in whom

observers would recognize a retired officer, from the loss of an arm

and the rosette of the Legion of honor in his button-hole, was

standing, at eight o'clock, one morning in the month of May, under the

porte-cochere of the Lion d'Argent, rue de Faubourg Saint-Denis,

waiting, apparently, for the departure of a diligence. Undoubtedly

Pierrotin, the master of the line of coaches running through the

valley of the Oise (despatching one through Saint-Leu-Taverny and

Isle-Adam to Beaumont), would scarcely have recognized in this bronzed

and maimed officer the little Oscar Husson he had formerly taken to

Presles. Madame Husson, at last a widow, was as little recognizable as

her son. Clapart, a victim of Fieschi's machine, had served his wife

better by death than by all his previous life. The idle lounger was

hanging about, as usual, on the boulevard du Temple, gazing at the

show, when the explosion came. The poor widow was put upon the pension

list, made expressly for the families of the victim, at fifteen

hundred francs a year.

The coach, to which were harnessed four iron-gray horses that would

have done honor to the Messageries-royales, was divided into three

compartments, coupe, interieur, and rotonde, with an imperiale above.

It resembled those diligences called "Gondoles," which now ply, in

rivalry with the railroad, between Paris and Versailles. Both solid

and light, well-painted and well-kept, lined with fine blue cloth, and

furnished with blinds of a Moorish pattern and cushions of red

morocco, the "Swallow of the Oise" could carry, comfortably, nineteen

passengers. Pierrotin, now about fifty-six years old, was little

changed. Still dressed in a blue blouse, beneath which he wore a black

suit, he smoked his pipe, and superintended the two porters in livery,

who were stowing away the luggage in the great imperiale.

"Are your places taken?" he said to Madame Clapart and Oscar, eyeing

them like a man who is trying to recall a likeness to his memory.

"Yes, two places for the interieur in the name of my servant,

Bellejambe," replied Oscar; "he must have taken them last evening."

"Ah! monsieur is the new collector of Beaumont," said Pierrotin. "You

take the place of Monsieur Margueron's nephew?"

"Yes," replied Oscar, pressing the arm of his mother, who was about to

speak.

The officer wished to remain unknown for a time.

Just then Oscar thrilled at hearing the well-remembered voice of

Georges Marest calling out from the street: "Pierrotin, have you one

seat left?"

"It seems to me you could say 'monsieur' without cracking your

throat," replied the master of the line of coaches of the Valley of

the Oise, sharply.

Unless by the sound of the voice, Oscar could never have recognized

the individual whose jokes had been so fatal to him. Georges, almost

bald, retained only three or four tufts of hair above his ears; but

these were elaborately frizzed out to conceal, as best they could, the

nakedness of the skull. A fleshiness ill-placed, in other words, a

pear-shaped stomach, altered the once elegant proportions of the ex-

young man. Now almost ignoble in appearance and bearing, Georges

exhibited the traces of disasters in love and a life of debauchery in

his blotched skin and bloated, vinous features. The eyes had lost the

brilliancy, the vivacity of youth which chaste or studious habits have

the virtue to retain. Dressed like a man who is careless of his

clothes, Georges wore a pair of shabby trousers, with straps intended

for varnished boots; but his were of leather, thick-soled, ill-

blacked, and of many months' wear. A faded waistcoat, a cravat,

pretentiously tied, although the material was a worn-out foulard,

bespoke the secret distress to which a former dandy sometimes falls a

prey. Moreover, Georges appeared at this hour of the morning in an

evening coat, instead of a surtout; a sure diagnostic of actual

poverty. This coat, which had seen long service at balls, had now,

like its master, passed from the opulent ease of former times to daily

work. The seams of the black cloth showed whitening lines; the collar

was greasy; long usage had frayed the edges of the sleeves into

fringes.

And yet, Georges ventured to attract attention by yellow kid gloves,

rather dirty, it is true, on the outside of which a signet ring

defined a large dark spot. Round his cravat, which was slipped into a

pretentious gold ring, was a chain of silk, representing hair, which,

no doubt, held a watch. His hat, though worn rather jauntily,

revealed, more than any of the above symptoms, the poverty of a man

who was totally unable to pay sixteen francs to a hat-maker, being

forced to live from hand to mouth. The former admirer of Florentine

twirled a cane with a chased gold knob, which was horribly battered.

The blue trousers, the waistcoat of a material called "Scotch stuff,"

a sky-blue cravat and a pink-striped cotton shirt, expressed, in the

midst of all this ruin, such a latent desire to SHOW-OFF that the

contrast was not only a sight to see, but a lesson to be learned.

"And that is Georges!" said Oscar, in his own mind,--"a man I left in

possession of thirty thousand francs a year!"

"Has Monsieur DE Pierrotin a place in the coupe?" asked Georges,

ironically replying to Pierrotin's rebuff.

"No; my coupe is taken by a peer of France, the son-in-law of Monsieur

Moreau, Monsieur le Baron de Canalis, his wife, and his mother-in-law.

I have nothing left but one place in the interieur."

"The devil! so peers of France still travel in your coach, do they?"

said Georges, remembering his adventure with the Comte de Serizy.

"Well, I'll take that place in the interieur."

He cast a glance of examination on Oscar and his mother, but did not

recognize them.

Oscar's skin was now bronzed by the sun of Africa; his moustache was

very thick and his whiskers ample; the hollows in his cheeks and his

strongly marked features were in keeping with his military bearing.

The rosette of an officer of the Legion of honor, his missing arm, the

strict propriety of his dress, would all have diverted Georges

recollections of his former victim if he had had any. As for Madame

Clapart, whom Georges had scarcely seen, ten years devoted to the

exercise of the most severe piety had transformed her. No one would

ever have imagined that that gray sister concealed the Aspasia of

An enormous old man, very simply dressed, though his clothes were good

and substantial, in whom Oscar recognized Pere Leger, here came slowly

and heavily along. He nodded familiarly to Pierrotin, who appeared by

his manner to pay him the respect due in all lands to millionaires.

"Ha! ha! why, here's Pere Leger! more and more preponderant!" cried

Georges.

"To whom have I the honor of speaking?" asked old Leger, curtly.

"What! you don't recognize Colonel Georges, the friend of Ali pacha?

We travelled together once upon a time, in company with the Comte de

Serizy."

One of the habitual follies of those who have fallen in the world is

to recognize and desire the recognition of others.

"You are much changed," said the ex-farmer, now twice a millionaire.

"All things change," said Georges. "Look at the Lion d'Argent and

Pierrotin's coach; they are not a bit like what they were fourteen

years ago."

"Pierrotin now controls the whole service of the Valley of the Oise,"

replied Monsieur Leger, "and sends out five coaches. He is the

bourgeois of Beaumont, where he keeps a hotel, at which all the

diligences stop, and he has a wife and daughter who are not a bad help

to him."

An old man of seventy here came out of the hotel and joined the group

of travellers who were waiting to get into the coach.

"Come along, Papa Reybert," said Leger, "we are only waiting now for

your great man."

"Here he comes," said the steward of Presles, pointing to Joseph

Bridau.

Neither Georges nor Oscar recognized the illustrious artist, for his

face had the worn and haggard lines that were now famous, and his

bearing was that which is given by success. The ribbon of the Legion

of honor adorned his black coat, and the rest of his dress, which was

extremely elegant, seemed to denote an expedition to some rural fete.

At this moment a clerk, with a paper in his hand, came out of the

office (which was now in the former kitchen of the Lion d'Argent), and

stood before the empty coupe.

"Monsieur and Madame de Canalis, three places," he said. Then, moving

to the door of the interieur, he named, consecutively, "Monsieur

Bellejambe, two places; Monsieur de Reybert, three places; Monsieur--

your name, if you please?" he said to Georges.

"Georges Marest," said the fallen man, in a low voice.

The clerk then moved to the rotunde, before which were grouped a

number of nurses, country-people, and petty shopkeepers, who were

bidding each other adieu. Then, after bundling in the six passengers,

he called to four young men who mounted to the imperial; after which

he cried: "Start!" Pierrotin got up beside his driver, a young man in

a blouse, who called out: "Pull!" to his animals, and the vehicle,

drawn by four horses brought at Roye, mounted the rise of the faubourg

Saint-Denis at a slow trot.

But no sooner had it got above Saint-Laurent than it raced like a

mail-cart to Saint-Denis, which it reached in forty minutes. No stop

was made at the cheese-cake inn, and the coach took the road through

the valley of Montmorency.

It was at the turn into this road that Georges broke the silence which

the travellers had so far maintained while observing each other.

"We go a little faster than we did fifteen years ago, hey, Pere

Leger?" he said, pulling out a silver watch.

"Persons are usually good enough to call me Monsieur Leger," said the

millionaire.

"Why, here's our blagueur of the famous journey to Presles," cried

Joseph Bridau. "Have you made any new campaigns in Asia, Africa, or

America?"

"Sacrebleu! I've made the revolution of July, and that's enough for

me, for it ruined me."

"Ah! you made the revolution of July!" cried the painter, laughing.

"Well, I always said it never made itself."

"How people meet again!" said Monsieur Leger, turning to Monsieur de

Reybert. "This, papa Reybert, is the clerk of the notary to whom you

undoubtedly owe the stewardship of Presles."

"We lack Mistigris, now famous under his own name of Leon de Lora,"

said Joseph Bridau, "and the little young man who was stupid enough to

talk to the count about those skin diseases which are now cured, and

about his wife, whom he has recently left that he may die in peace."

"And the count himself, you lack him," said old Reybert.

"I'm afraid," said Joseph Bridau, sadly, "that the last journey the

count will ever take will be from Presles to Isle-Adam, to be present

at my marriage."

"He still drives about the park," said Reybert.

"Does his wife come to see him?" asked Leger.

"Once a month," replied Reybert. "She is never happy out of Paris.

Last September she married her niece, Mademoiselle du Rouvre, on whom,

since the death of her son, she spends all her affection, to a very

rich young Pole, the Comte Laginski."

"To whom," asked Madame Clapart, "will Monsieur de Serizy's property

go?"

"To his wife, who will bury him," replied Georges. "The countess is

still fine-looking for a woman of fifty-four years of age. She is very

elegant, and, at a little distance, gives one the illusion--"

"She will always be an illusion to you," said Leger, who seemed

inclined to revenge himself on his former hoaxer.

"I respect her," said Georges. "But, by the bye, what became of that

steward whom the count turned off?"

"Moreau?" said Leger; "why, he's the deputy from the Oise."

"Ha! the famous Centre man; Moreau de l'Oise?" cried Georges.

"Yes," returned Leger, "Moreau de l'Oise. He did more than you for the

revolution of July, and he has since then bought the beautiful estate

of Pointel, between Presles and Beaumont."

"Next to the count's," said Georges. "I call that very bad taste."

"Don't speak so loud," said Monsieur de Reybert, "for Madame Moreau

and her daughter, the Baronne de Canalis, and the Baron himself, the

former minister, are in the coupe."

"What 'dot' could he have given his daughter to induce our great

orator to marry her?" said Georges.

"Something like two millions," replied old Leger.

"He always had a taste for millions," remarked Georges. "He began his

pile surreptitiously at Presles--"

"Say nothing against Monsieur Moreau," cried Oscar, hastily. "You

ought to have learned before now to hold your tongue in public

conveyances."

Joseph Bridau looked at the one-armed officer for several seconds;

then he said, smiling:--

"Monsieur is not an ambassador, but his rosette tells us he has made

his way nobly; my brother and General Giroudeau have repeatedly named

him in their reports."

"Oscar Husson!" cried Georges. "Faith! if it hadn't been for your

voice I should never have known you."

"Ah! it was monsieur who so bravely rescued the Vicomte Jules de

Serizy from the Arabs?" said Reybert, "and for whom the count has

obtained the collectorship of Beaumont while awaiting that of

Pontoise?"

"Yes, monsieur," said Oscar.

"I hope you will give me the pleasure, monsieur," said the great

painter, "of being present at my marriage at Isle-Adam."

"Whom do you marry?" asked Oscar, after accepting the invitation.

"Mademoiselle Leger," replied Joseph Bridau, "the granddaughter of

Monsieur de Reybert. Monsieur le comte was kind enough to arrange the

marriage for me. As an artist I owe him a great deal, and he wished,

before his death, to secure my future, about which I did not think,

myself."

"Whom did Pere Leger marry?" asked Georges.

"My daughter," replied Monsieur de Reybert, "and without a 'dot.'"

"Ah!" said Georges, assuming a more respectful manner toward Monsieur

Leger, "I am fortunate in having chosen this particular day to do the

valley of the Oise. You can all be useful to me, gentlemen."

"How so?" asked Monsieur Leger.

"In this way," replied Georges. "I am employed by the 'Esperance,' a

company just formed, the statutes of which have been approved by an

ordinance of the King. This institution gives, at the end of ten

years, dowries to young girls, annuities to old men; it pays the

education of children, and takes charge, in short, of the fortunes of

everybody."

"I can well believe it," said Pere Leger, smiling. "In a word, you are

a runner for an insurance company."

"No, monsieur. I am the inspector-general; charged with the duty of

establishing correspondents and appointing the agents of the company

throughout France. I am only operating until the agents are selected;

for it is a matter as delicate as it is difficult to find honest

agents."

"But how did you lose your thirty thousand a year?" asked Oscar.

"As you lost your arm," replied the son of Czerni-Georges, curtly.

"Then you must have shared in some brilliant action," remarked Oscar,

with a sarcasm not unmixed with bitterness.

"Parbleu! I've too many--shares! that's just what I wanted to sell."

By this time they had arrived at Saint-Leu-Taverny, where all the

passengers got out while the coach changed horses. Oscar admired the

liveliness which Pierrotin displayed in unhooking the traces from the

whiffle-trees, while his driver cleared the reins from the leaders.

"Poor Pierrotin," thought he; "he has stuck like me,--not far advanced

in the world. Georges has fallen low. All the others, thanks to

speculation and to talent, have made their fortune. Do we breakfast

here, Pierrotin?" he said, aloud, slapping that worthy on the

shoulder.

"I am not the driver," said Pierrotin.

"What are you, then?" asked Colonel Husson.

"The proprietor," replied Pierrotin.

"Come, don't be vexed with an old acquaintance," said Oscar, motioning

to his mother, but still retaining his patronizing manner. "Don't you

recognize Madame Clapart?"

It was all the nobler of Oscar to present his mother to Pierrotin,

because, at that moment, Madame Moreau de l'Oise, getting out of the

coupe, overheard the name, and stared disdainfully at Oscar and his

mother.

"My faith! madame," said Pierrotin, "I should never have known you;

nor you, either, monsieur; the sun burns black in Africa, doesn't it?"

The species of pity which Oscar thus felt for Pierrotin was the last

blunder that vanity ever led our hero to commit, and, like his other

faults, it was punished, but very gently, thus:--

Two months after his official installation at Beaumont-sur-Oise, Oscar

was paying his addresses to Mademoiselle Georgette Pierrotin, whose

'dot' amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand francs, and he

married the pretty daughter of the proprietor of the stage-coaches of

the Oise, toward the close of the winter of 1838.

The adventure of the journey to Presles was a lesson to Oscar Husson

in discretion; his disaster at Florentine's card-party strengthened

him in honesty and uprightness; the hardships of his military career

taught him to understand the social hierarchy and to yield obedience

to his lot. Becoming wise and capable, he was happy. The Comte de

Serizy, before his death, obtained for him the collectorship at

Pontoise. The influence of Monsieur Moreau de l'Oise and that of the

Comtesse de Serizy and the Baron de Canalis secured, in after years, a

receiver-generalship for Monsieur Husson, in whom the Camusot family

now recognize a relation.

Oscar is a commonplace man, gentle, without assumption, modest, and

always keeping, like his government, to a middle course. He excites

neither envy nor contempt. In short, he is the modern bourgeois.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Beaupre, Fanny

Modest Mignon

The Muse of the Department

Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Bridau, Joseph

The Purse

A Bachelor's Establishment

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Modeste Mignon

Another Study of Woman

Pierre Grassou

Letters of Two Brides

Cousin Betty

The Member for Arcis

Bruel, Jean Francois du

A Bachelor's Establishment

The Government Clerks

A Prince of Bohemia

The Middle Classes

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

A Daughter of Eve

Cabirolle, Madame

A Bachelor's Establishment

Cabirolle, Agathe-Florentine

Lost Illusions

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

A Bachelor's Establishment

Canalis, Constant-Cyr-Melchior, Baron de

Letters of Two Brides

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Modeste Mignon

The Magic Skin

Another Study of Woman

Beatrix

The Unconscious Humorists

The Member for Arcis

Cardot, Jean-Jerome-Severin

Lost Illusions

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

A Bachelor's Establishment

At the Sign of the Cat and Racket

Cesar Birotteau

Coralie, Mademoiselle

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

A Bachelor's Establishment

Crottat, Alexandre

Cesar Birotteau

Colonel Chabert

A Woman of Thirty

Cousin Pons

Derville

Gobseck

The Gondreville Mystery

Father Goriot

Colonel Chabert

Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Desroches (son)

A Bachelor's Establishment

Colonel Chabert

A Woman of Thirty

The Commission in Lunacy

The Government Clerks

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

The Firm of Nucingen

A Man of Business

The Middle Classes

Finot, Andoche

Cesar Birotteau

A Bachelor's Establishment

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

The Government Clerks

Gaudissart the Great

The Firm of Nucingen

Gaudron, Abbe

The Government Clerks

Honorine

Giroudeau

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

A Bachelor's Establishment

Godeschal, Francois-Claude-Marie

Colonel Chabert

A Bachelor's Establishment

The Commission in Lunacy

The Middle Classes

Cousin Pons

Godeschal, Marie

A Bachelor's Establishment

Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Cousin Pons

Gondreville, Malin, Comte de

The Gondreville Mystery

Domestic Peace

The Member for Arcis

Grevin

The Gondreville Mystery

The Member for Arcis

Grindot

Cesar Birotteau

Lost Illusions

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Beatrix

The Middle Classes

Cousin Betty

Lora, Leon de

The Unconscious Humorists

A Bachelor's Establishment

Pierre Grassou

Honorine

Cousin Betty

Beatrix

Loraux, Abbe

A Bachelor's Establishment

Cesar Birotteau

Honorine

Lupin, Amaury

The Peasantry

Marest, Frederic

The Seamy Side of History

The Member for Arcis

Marest, Georges

The Peasantry

Maufrigneuse, Duc de

The Secrets of a Princess

A Bachelor's Establishment

Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Poiret, the elder

The Government Clerks

Father Goriot

Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

The Middle Classes

Rouvre, Marquis du

The Imaginary Mistress

Ursule Mirouet

Schinner, Hippolyte

The Purse

A Bachelor's Establishment

Pierre Grassou

Albert Savarus

The Government Clerks

Modeste Mignon

The Imaginary Mistress

The Unconscious Humorists

Serizy, Comte Hugret de

A Bachelor's Establishment

Honorine

Modeste Mignon

Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Serizy, Comtesse de

The Thirteen

Ursule Mirouet

A Woman of Thirty

Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Another Study of Woman

The Imaginary Mistress

Serizy, Vicomte de

Modeste Mignon

The Imaginary Mistress

Vandenesse, Marquis Charles de

A Woman of Thirty

A Daughter of Eve

Vandenesse, Comte Felix de

The Lily of the Valley

Lost Illusions

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Cesar Birotteau

Letters of Two Brides

The Marriage Settlement

The Secrets of a Princess

Another Study of Woman

The Gondreville Mystery

A Daughter of Eve

End