The Lesser Bourgeoisie Part 41

"His clumsiness could not have been, I think, very unexpected to you,"

replied la Peyrade; "therefore the protection you have deigned to give him is the more cruel to me."

"What a misfortune it would be," said the countess, with charmingly affected satire, "if your marriage with Mademoiselle Celeste were prevented! Do you really care so much, monsieur, for that little school-girl?"

In that last word, especially the intonation with which it was uttered, there was more than contempt, there was hatred. This expression did not escape an observer of la Peyrade's strength, but not being a man to advance very far on a single remark he merely replied:--

"Madame, the vulgar expression, to 'settle down,' explains this situation, in which a man, after many struggles and being at an end of his efforts and his illusions, makes a compromise with the future.

When this compromise takes the form of a young girl with, I admit, more virtue than beauty, but one who brings to a husband the fortune which is indispensable to the comfort of married life, what is there so astonis.h.i.+ng in the fact that his heart yields to grat.i.tude and that he welcomes the prospect of a placid happiness?"

"I have always thought," replied the countess, "that the power of a man's intellect ought to be the measure of his ambition; and I imagined that one so wise as to make himself, at first, the poor man's lawyer, would have in his heart less humble and less pastoral aspirations."

"Ah! madame," returned la Peyrade, "the iron hand of necessity compels us to strange resignations. The question of daily bread is one of those before which all things bend the knee. Apollo was forced to 'get a living,' as the shepherd of Admetus."

"The sheepfold of Admetus," said Madame de G.o.dollo, "was at least a royal fold; I don't think Apollo would have resigned himself to be the shepherd of a--bourgeois."

The hesitation that preceded that last word seemed to convey in place of it a proper name; and la Peyrade understood that Madame de G.o.dollo, out of pure clemency, had suppressed that of Thuillier, had turned her remark upon the species and not the individual.

"I agree, madame, that your distinction is a just one," he replied, "but in this case Apollo has no choice."

"I don't like persons who charge too much," said the countess, "but still less do I like those who sell their merchandise below the market price; I always suspect such persons of trying to dupe me by some clever and complicated trick. You know very well, monsieur, your own value, and your hypocritical humility displeases me immensely. It proves to me that my kindly overtures have not produced even a beginning of confidence between us."

"I a.s.sure you, madame, that up to the present time life has never justified the belief in any dazzling superiority in me."

"Well, really," said the Hungarian, "perhaps I ought to believe in the humility of a man who is willing to accept the pitiable finale of his life which I threw myself into the breach to prevent."

"Just as I, perhaps," said la Peyrade, with a touch of sarcasm, "ought to believe in the reality of a kindness which, in order to save me, has handled me so roughly."

The countess cast a reproachful look upon her visitor; her fingers crumpled the ribbons of her gown; she lowered her eyes, and gave a sigh, so nearly imperceptible, so slight, that it might have pa.s.sed for an accident in the most regular breathing.

"You are rancorous," she said, "and you judge people by one aspect only.

After all," she added, as if on reflection, "you are perhaps right in reminding me that I have taken the longest way round by meddling, rather ridiculously, in interests that do not concern me. Go on, my dear monsieur, in the path of this glorious marriage which offers you so many combined inducements; only, let me hope that you may not repent a course with which I shall no longer interfere."

The Provencal had not been spoilt by an experience of "bonnes fortunes."

The poverty against which he had struggled so long never leads to affairs of gallantry, and since he had thrown off its harsh restraint, his mind being wholly given up to the anxious work of creating his future, the things of the heart had entered but slightly into his life; unless we must except the comedy he had played on Flavie. We can therefore imagine the perplexity of this novice in the matter of adventures when he saw himself placed between the danger of losing what seemed to be a delightful opportunity, and the fear of finding a serpent amid the beautiful flowers that were offered to his grasp. Too marked a reserve, too lukewarm an eagerness, might wound the self-love of that beautiful foreigner, and quench the spring from which he seemed invited to draw. On the other hand, suppose that appearance of interest were only a snare? Suppose this kindness (ill-explained, as it seemed to him), of which he was so suddenly the object, had no other purpose than to entice him into a step which might be used to compromise him with the Thuilliers? What a blow to his reputation for shrewdness, and what a role to play!--that of the dog letting go the meat for the shadow!

We know that la Peyrade was trained in the school of Tartuffe, and the frankness with which that great master declares to Elmire that without receiving a few of the favors to which he aspired he could not trust in her tender advances, seemed to the barrister a suitable method to apply to the present case, adding, however, a trifle more softness to the form.

"Madame la comtesse," he said, "you have turned me into a man who is much to be pitied. I was cheerfully advancing to this marriage, and you take all faith in it away from me. Suppose I break it off, what use can I--with that great capacity you see in me--make of the liberty I thus recover?"

"La Bruyere, if I am not mistaken, said that nothing freshens the blood so much as to avoid committing a folly."

"That may be; but it is, you must admit, a negative benefit; and I am of an age and in a position to desire more serious results. The interest that you deign to show to me cannot, I think, stop short at the idea of merely putting an end to my present prospects. I love Mademoiselle Colleville with a love, it is true, which has nothing imperative about it; but I certainly love her, her hand is promised to me, and before renouncing it--"

"So," said the countess, hastily, "in a given case you would not be averse to a rupture? And," she added, in a more decided tone, "there would be some chance of making you see that in taking your first opportunity you cut yourself off from a better future, in which a more suitable marriage may present itself?"

"But, at least, madame, I must be enabled to foresee it definitely."

This persistence in demanding pledges seemed to irritate the countess.

"Faith," she said, "is only a virtue when it believes without seeing.

You doubt yourself, and that is another form of stupidity. I am not happy, it seems, in my selection of those I desire to benefit."

"But, madame, it cannot be indiscreet to ask to know in some remote way at least, what future your kind good-will has imagined for me."

"It is very indiscreet," replied the countess, coldly, "and it shows plainly that you offer me only a conditional confidence. Let us say no more. You are certainly far advanced with Mademoiselle Colleville; she suits you, you say, in many ways; therefore marry her. I say again, you will no longer find me in your way."

"But does Mademoiselle Colleville really suit me?" resumed la Peyrade; "that is the very point on which you have lately raised my doubts.

Do you not think there is something cruel in casting me first in one direction and then in the other without affording me any ground to go upon?"

"Ah!" said the countess, in a tone of impatience, "you want my opinion on the premises! Well, monsieur, there is one very conclusive fact to which I can bring proof: Celeste does not love you."

"So I have thought," said la Peyrade, humbly. "I felt that I was making a marriage of mere convenience."

"And she cannot love you, because," continued Madame de G.o.dollo, with animation, "she cannot comprehend you. Her proper husband is that blond little man, insipid as herself; from the union of those two natures without life or heat will result in that lukewarm existence which, in the opinion of the world where she was born and where she has lived, is the ne plus ultra of conjugal felicity. Try to make that little simpleton understand that when she had a chance to unite herself with true talent she ought to have felt highly honored! But, above all, try to make her miserable, odious family and surroundings understand it!

Enriched bourgeois, parvenus! there's the roof beneath which you think to rest from your cruel labor and your many trials! And do you believe that you will not be made to feel, twenty times a day, that your share in the partners.h.i.+p is distressingly light in the scale against their money? On one side, the Iliad, the Cid, Der Freyschutz, and the frescos of the Vatican; on the other, three hundred thousand francs in good, ringing coin! Tell me which side they will trust and admire! The artist, the man of imagination who falls into the bourgeois atmosphere--shall I tell you to what I compare him? To Daniel cast into the lion's den, less the miracle of Holy Writ."

This invective against the bourgeoisie was uttered in a tone of heated conviction which could scarcely fail to be communicated.

"Ah! madame," cried la Peyrade, "how eloquently you say things which again and again have entered my troubled and anxious mind! But I have felt myself lashed to that most cruel fate, the necessity of gaining a position--"

"Necessity! position!" interrupted the countess, again raising the temperature of her speech,--"words void of meaning! which have not even sound to able men, though they drive back fools as though they were formidable barriers. Necessity! does that exist for n.o.ble natures, for those who know how to will? A Gascon minister uttered a saying which ought to be engraved on the doors of all careers: 'All things come to him who knows how to wait.' Are you ignorant that marriage, to men of a high stamp, is either a chain which binds them to the lowest vulgarities of existence, or a wing on which to rise to the highest summits of the social world? The wife you need, monsieur,--and she would not be long wanting to your career if you had not, with such incredible haste, accepted the first 'dot' that was offered you,--the wife you should have chosen is a woman capable of understanding you, able to divine your intellect; one who could be to you a fellow-worker, an intellectual confidant, and not a mere embodiment of the 'pot-au-feu'; a woman capable of being now your secretary, but soon the wife of a deputy, a minister, an amba.s.sador; one, in short, who could offer you her heart as a mainspring, her salon for a stage, her connections for a ladder, and who, in return for all she would give you of ardor and strength, asks only to s.h.i.+ne beside your throne in the rays of the glory she predicts for you!"

Intoxicated, as it were, with the flow of her own words, the countess was really magnificent; her eyes sparkled, her nostrils dilated; the prospect her vivid eloquence thus unrolled she seemed to see, and touch with her quivering fingers. For a moment, la Peyrade was dazzled by this sunrise which suddenly burst upon his life.

However, as he was a man most eminently prudent, who had made it his rule of life never to lend except on sound and solvent security, he was still impelled to weigh the situation.

"Madame la comtesse," he said, "you reproached me just now for speaking like a bourgeois, and I, in return, am afraid that you are talking like a G.o.ddess. I admire you, I listen to you, but I am not convinced. Such devotions, such sublime abnegations may be met with in heaven, but in this low world who can hope to be the object of them?"

"You are mistaken, monsieur," replied the countess, with solemnity; "such devotions are rare, but they are neither impossible nor incredible; only, it is necessary to have the heart to find them, and, above all, the hand to take them when they are offered to you."

So saying, the countess rose majestically.

La Peyrade saw that he had ended by displeasing her, and he felt that she dismissed him. He rose himself, bowed respectfully, and asked to be received again.

"Monsieur," said Madame de G.o.dollo, "we Hungarians, primitive people and almost savages that we are, have a saying that when our door is open both sides of it are opened wide; when we close it it is double-locked and bolted."

That dignified and ambiguous speech was accompanied by a slight inclination of the head. Bewildered, confounded by this behavior, to him so new, which bore but little resemblance to that of Flavie, Brigitte, and Madame Minard, la Peyrade left the house, asking himself again and again whether he had played his game properly.

CHAPTER V. SHOWING HOW NEAR THE TARPEIAN ROCK IS TO THE CAPITOL

On leaving Madame de G.o.dollo, la Peyrade felt the necessity of gathering himself together. Beneath the conversation he had just maintained with this strange woman, what could he see,--a trap, or a rich and distinguished marriage offered to him. Under such a doubt as this, to press Celeste for an immediate answer was neither clever nor prudent; it was simply to bind himself, and close the door to the changes, still very ill-defined, which seemed offered to him. The result of the consultation which Theodose held with himself as he walked along the boulevard was that he ought, for the moment, to think only of gaining time. Consequently, instead of going to the Thuilliers' to learn Celeste's decision, he went home, and wrote the following little note to Thuillier:--

My dear Thuillier,--You will certainly not think it extraordinary that I should not present myself at your house to-day,--partly because I fear the sentence which will be p.r.o.nounced upon me, and partly because I do not wish to seem an impatient and unmannerly creditor. A few days, more or less, will matter little under such circ.u.mstances, and yet Mademoiselle Colleville may find them desirable for the absolute freedom of her choice. I shall, therefore, not go to see you until you write for me.

I am now more calm, and I have added a few more pages to our ma.n.u.script; it will take but little time to hand in the whole to the printer.