The Lesser Bourgeoisie Part 25

"I've heard Madame Katte, her nurse, who also does the cooking, call her so a thousand times, monsieur; though, generally, neither Monsieur Bruneau, the valet, nor Madame Katte say much. It's like talking to the wall to try and get any information out of them. We have been porters here these twenty years and we've never found out anything about Monsieur du Portail yet. More than that, monsieur, he owns the little house alongside; you see the double door from here. Well, he can go out that way and receive his company too, and we know nothing about it. Our owner doesn't know anything more than we do; when people ring at that door, Monsieur Bruneau goes and opens it."

"Then you didn't see the gentleman who is talking with him in the garden go by this way?"

"Bless me! no, that I didn't!"

"Ah!" thought Cerizet as he got into the cabriolet, "she must be the daughter of that uncle of Theodose. I wonder if du Portail can be the secret benefactor who sent money from time to time to that rascal?

Suppose I send an anonymous letter to the old fellow, warning him of the danger the barrister runs from those notes for twenty-five thousand francs?"

An hour later the cot-bed had arrived for Madame Cardinal, to whom the inquisitive portress offered her services to bring her something to eat.

"Do you want to see the rector?" Madame Cardinal inquired of her uncle.

She had noticed that the arrival of the bed seemed to draw him from his somnolence.

"I want wine!" replied the pauper.

"How do you feel now, Pere Toupillier?" asked Madame Perrache, in a coaxing voice.

"I tell you I want wine," repeated the old man, with an energetic insistence scarcely to be expected of his feebleness.

"We must first find out if it is good for you, uncle," said Madame Cardinal, soothingly. "Wait till the doctor comes."

"Doctor! I won't have a doctor!" cried Toupillier; "and you, what are you doing here? I don't want anybody."

"My good uncle, I came to know if you'd like something tasty. I've got some nice fresh soles--hey! a bit of fried sole, with a squeeze of lemon on it?"

"Your fish, indeed!" cried Toupillier; "all rotten! That last you brought me, more than six weeks ago, it is there in the cupboard; you can take it away with you."

"Heavens! how ungrateful sick men are!" whispered the widow Cardinal to Perrache.

Nevertheless, to exhibit solicitude, she arranged the pillow under the patient's head, saying:--

"There! uncle, don't you feel better like that?"

"Let me alone!" shouted Toupillier, angrily; "I want no one here; I want wine; leave me in peace."

"Don't get angry, little uncle; we'll fetch you some wine."

"Number six wine, rue des Canettes," cried the pauper.

"Yes, I know," replied Madame Cardinal; "but let me count out my coppers. I want to get something better for you than that kind of wine; for, don't you see, an uncle, he's a kind of father, and one shouldn't mind what one does for him."

So saying, she sat down, with her legs apart, on one of the dilapidated chairs, and poured into her ap.r.o.n the contents of her pockets, namely: a knife, her snuff-box, two p.a.w.n-tickets, some crusts of bread, and a handful of copper, from which she extracted a few silver bits.

This exhibition, intended to prove her generous and eager devotion, had no result. Toupillier seemed not to notice it. Exhausted by the feverish energy with which he had demanded his favorite remedy, he made an effort to change his position, and, with his back turned to his two nurses, he again muttered: "Wine! wine!" after which nothing more was heard of him but a stentorous breathing, that plainly showed the state of his lungs, which were beginning to congest.

"I suppose I must go and fetch his wine!" said the Cardinal, restoring to her pockets, with some ill-humor, the cargo she had just pulled out of them.

"If you don't want to go--" began Madame Perrache, always ready to offer her services.

The fishwife hesitated for a moment; then, reflecting that something might be got out of a conversation with the wine-merchant, and sure, moreover, that as long as Toupillier lay on his gold she could safely leave him alone with the portress, she said:--

"Thank you, Madame Perrache, but I'd better make acquaintance with his trades-folk."

Then, having spied behind the night-table a dirty bottle which might hold about two quarts,--

"Did he say the rue des Canelles?" she inquired of the portress.

"Corner of the rue Guisarde," replied Madame Perrache. "Monsieur Legrelu, a tall, fine man with big whiskers and no hair." Then, lowering her voice, she added: "His number-six wine, you know, is Roussillon, and the best, too. However, the wine-merchant knows; it is enough if you tell him you have come from his customer, the pauper of Saint-Sulpice."

"No need to tell me anything twice," said the Cardinal, opening the door and making, as they say, a false exit. "Ah ca!" she said, coming back; "what does he burn in his stove, supposing I want to heat some remedy for him?"

"Goodness!" said the portress, "he doesn't make much provision for winter, and here we are in the middle of summer!"

"And not a saucepan! not a pot, even! Gracious! what a way to live. I'll have to fetch him some provisions; I hope n.o.body will see the things I bring back; I'd be ashamed they should--"

"I'll lend you a hand-bag," said the portress, always ready and officious.

"No, I'll buy a basket," replied the fishwife, more anxious about what she expected to carry away than what she was about to bring home to the pauper. "There must be some Auvergnat in the neighborhood who sells wood," she added.

"Corner of the rue Ferou; you'll find one there. A fine establishment, with logs of wood painted in a kind of an arcade all round the shop--so like, you'd think they were going to speak to you."

Before going finally off, Madame Cardinal went through a piece of very deep hypocrisy. We have seen how she hesitated about leaving the portress alone with the sick man:--

"Madame Perrache," she said to her, "you won't leave him, the poor darling, will you, till I get back?"

It may have been noticed that Cerizet had not decided on any definite course of action in the new affair he was now undertaking. The part of doctor, which for a moment he thought of a.s.suming, frightened him, and he gave himself out, as we have seen, to Madame Perrache as the business agent of his accomplice. Once alone, he began to see that his original idea complicated with a doctor, a nurse, and a notary, presented the most serious difficulties. A regular will drawn in favor of Madame Cardinal was not a thing to be improvised in a moment. It would take some time to acclimatize the idea in the surly and suspicious mind of the old pauper, and death, which was close at hand, might play them a trick at any moment, and balk the most careful preparations.

It was true that unless a will were made the income of eight thousand francs on the Grand Livre and the house in the rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth would go to the heirs-at-law, and Madame Cardinal would get only her share of the property; but the abandonment of this visible portion of the inheritance was the surest means of laying hands on the invisible part of it. Besides, if the latter were secured, what hindered their returning to the idea of a will?

Resolving, therefore, to confine the _operation_ to the simplest terms at first, Cerizet summed them up in the manoeuvre of the poppy-heads, already mentioned, and he was making his way back to Toupillier's abode, armed with that single weapon of war, intending to give Madame Cardinal further instructions, when he met her, bearing on her arm the basket she had just bought; and in that basket was the sick man's panacea.

"Upon my word!" cried the usurer, "is this the way you keep your watch?"

"I had to go out and buy him wine," replied the Cardinal; "he is howling like a soul in h.e.l.l that he wants to be at peace, and to be let alone, and get his wine! It is his one idea that Roussillon is good for his disease. Well, when he has drunk it, I dare say he will be quieter."

"You are right," said Cerizet, sententiously; "never contradict a sick man. But this wine, you know, ought to be improved; by infusing these"

(and lifting one of the covers of the basket he slipped in the poppies) "you'll procure the poor man a good, long sleep,--five or six hours at least. This evening I'll come and see you, and nothing, I think, need prevent us from examining a little closer those matters of inheritance."

"I see," said Madame Cardinal, winking.

"To-night, then," said Cerizet, not wis.h.i.+ng to prolong the conversation.

He had a strong sense of the difficulty and danger of the affair, and was very reluctant to be seen in the street conversing with his accomplice.

Returning to her uncle's garret, Madame Cardinal found him still in a state of semi-torpor; she relieved Madame Perrache, and bade her good-bye, going to the door to receive a supply of wood, all sawed, which she had ordered from the Auvergnat in the rue Ferou.

Into an earthen pot, which she had bought of the right size to fit upon the hole in the stoves of the poor where they put their soup-kettles, she now threw the poppies, pouring over them two-thirds of the wine she had brought back with her. Then she lighted a fire beneath the pot, intending to obtain the decoction agreed upon as quickly as possible.