The Lesser Bourgeoisie Part 54

"Parbleu! by buying it; it can be had for a song."

"There now, you see," said Thuillier in a discouraged tone; "you never counted in the cost of purchase."

"How you dwell on nothings!" said la Peyrade, hunching his shoulders; "we have other and more important difficulties to solve."

"Other difficulties?" echoed Thuillier.

"Parbleu!" exclaimed la Peyrade; "do you suppose that after all that has taken place between us I should boldly harness myself to your election without knowing exactly what benefit I am to get for it?"

"But," said Thuillier, rather astonished, "I thought that friends.h.i.+p was a good exchange for such services."

"Yes; but when the exchange consists in one side giving all and the other side nothing, friends.h.i.+p gets tired of that sort of sharing, and asks for something a little better balanced."

"But, my dear Theodose, what have I to offer you that you have not already rejected?"

"I rejected it, because it was offered without heartiness, and seasoned with Mademoiselle Brigitte's vinegar; every self-respecting man would have acted as I did. Give and keep don't pa.s.s, as the old legal saying is; but that is precisely what you persist in doing."

"I!--I think you took offence very unreasonably; but the engagement might be renewed."

"So be it," replied la Peyrade; "but I will not put myself at the mercy of either the success of the election or Mademoiselle Celeste's caprices. I claim the right to something positive and certain. Give and take; short accounts make good friends."

"I perfectly agree with you," said Thuillier, "and I have always treated you with too much good faith to fear any of these precautions you now want to take. But what guarantees do you want?"

"I want that the husband of Celeste should manage your election, and not Theodose de la Peyrade."

"By hurrying things as much as possible, so Brigitte said, it would still take fifteen days; and just think, with the elections only eight weeks off, to lose two of them doing nothing!"

"Day after to-morrow," replied la Peyrade, "the banns can be published for the first time at the mayor's office, in the intervals of publication some things could be done, for though the publis.h.i.+ng of the banns is not a step from which there is no retreat, it is at least a public pledge and a long step taken; after that we can get your notary to draw the contract at once. Moreover, if you decide on buying this newspaper, I shouldn't be afraid that you would go back on me, for you don't want a useless horse in your stable, and without me I am certain you can't manage him."

"But, my dear fellow," said Thuillier, going back to his objections, "suppose that affair proves too onerous?"

"There's no need to say that you are the sole judge of the conditions of the purchase. I don't wish any more than you do to buy a pig in a poke.

If to-morrow you authorize me, I won't say to buy, but to let these people know that you may possibly make the purchase, I'll confer with one of them on your behalf, and you may be certain that I'll stand up for your interests as if they were my own."

"Very good, my dear fellow," said Thuillier, "go ahead!"

"And as soon as the paper is purchased we are to fix the day for signing the contract?"

"Yes," replied Thuillier; "but will you bind yourself to use your utmost influence on the election?"

"As if it were my own," replied la Peyrade, "which, by the bye, is not altogether an hypothesis. I have already received suggestions about my own candidacy, and if I were vindictive--"

"Certainly," said Thuillier, with humility, "you would make a better deputy than I; but you are not of the required age, I think."

"There's a better reason than that," said la Peyrade; "you are my friend; I find you again what you once were, and I shall keep the pledges I have given you. As for the election, I prefer that people say of me, 'He makes deputies, but will be none himself.' Now I must leave you and keep my appointment. To-morrow in my own rooms, come and see me; I shall have something to announce."

Whoso has ever been a newspaper man will ever be one; that horoscope is as sure and certain as that of drunkards. Whoever has tasted that feverishly busy and relatively lazy and independent life; whoever has exercised that sovereignty which criticises intellect, art, talent, fame, virtue, absurdity, and even truth; whoever has occupied that tribune erected by his own hands, fulfilled the functions of that magistracy to which he is self-appointed,--in short, whosoever has been, for however brief a span, that proxy of public opinion, looks upon himself when remanded to private life as an exile, and the moment a chance is offered to him puts out an eager hand to s.n.a.t.c.h back his crown.

For this reason when Etienne Lousteau went to la Peyrade, a former journalist, with an offer of the weapon ent.i.tled the "Echo de la Bievre," all the latter's instincts as a newspaper man were aroused, in spite of the very inferior quality of the blade. The paper had failed; la Peyrade believed he could revive it. The subscribers, on the vendor's own showing, were few and far between, but he would exercise upon them a "compelle intrare" both powerful and irresistible. In the circ.u.mstances under which the affair was presented to him it might surely be considered provincial. Threatened with the loss of his position at the bar, he was thus acquiring, as we said before, a new position and that of a "detached fort"; compelled, as he might be, to defend himself, he could from that vantage-ground take the offensive and oblige his enemies to reckon with him.

On the Thuillier side, the newspaper would undoubtedly make him a personage of considerable importance; he would have more power on the election; and by involving their capital in an enterprise which, without him, they would feel a gulf and a snare, he bound them to him by self-interests so firmly that there was nothing to fear from their caprice or ingrat.i.tude.

This horizon, rapidly taken in during Etienne Lousteau's visit, had fairly dazzled the Provencal, and we have seen the peremptory manner in which Thuillier was forced into accepting with some enthusiasm the discovery of this philosopher's-stone.

The cost of the purchase was ridiculously insignificant. A bank-note for five hundred francs, for which Etienne Lousteau never clearly accounted to the share-holders, put Thuillier in possession of the name, property, furniture, and good-will of the newspaper, which he and la Peyrade at once busied themselves in reorganizing.

CHAPTER X. IN WHICH CERIZET PRACTISES THE HEALING ART AND

THE ART OF POISONING ON THE SAME DAY

While this regeneration was going on, Cerizet went one morning to see du Portail, with whom la Peyrade was now more than ever determined to hold no communication.

"Well," said the little old man to the poor man's banker, "what effect did the news we gave to the president of the bar produce on our man? Did the affair get wind at the Palais?"

"Phew!" said Cerizet, whose intercourse, no doubt pretty frequent, with du Portail had put him on a footing of some familiarity with the old man, "there's no question of that now. The eel has wriggled out of our hands; neither softness nor violence has any effect upon that devil of a man. He has quarrelled with the bar, and is in better odor than ever with Thuillier. 'Necessity,' says Figaro, 'obliterates distance.'

Thuillier needs him to push his candidacy in the quartier Saint-Jacques, so they kissed and made up."

"And no doubt," said du Portail, without much appearance of feeling, "the marriage is fixed for an early day?"

"Yes," replied Cerizet, "but there's another piece of work on hand. That crazy fellow has persuaded Thuillier to buy a newspaper, and he'll make him sink forty thousand francs in it. Thuillier, once involved, will want to get his money back, and in my opinion they are bound together for the rest of their days."

"What paper is it?"

"Oh, a cabbage-leaf that calls itself the 'Echo de la Bievre'!" replied Cerizet with great scorn; "a paper which an old hack of a journalist on his last legs managed to set up in the Mouffetard quarter by the help of a lot of tanners--that, you know, is the industry of the quarter. From a political and literary point of view the affair is nothing at all, but Thuillier has been made to think it a masterly stroke."

"Well, for local service to the election the instrument isn't so bad,"

remarked du Portail. "La Peyrade has talent, activity, and much resource of mind; he may make something out of that 'Echo.' Under what political banner will Thuillier present himself?"

"Thuillier," replied the beggars' banker, "is an oyster; he hasn't any opinions. Until the publication of his pamphlet he was, like all those bourgeois, a rabid conservative; but since the seizure he has gone over to the Opposition. His first stage will probably be the Left-centre; but if the election wind should blow from another quarter, he'll go straight before it to the extreme left. Self-interest, for those bourgeois, that's the measure of their convictions."

"Dear, dear!" said du Portail, "this new combination of la Peyrade's may a.s.sume the importance of a political danger from the point of view of my opinions, which are extremely conservative and governmental." Then, after a moment's reflection, he added, "I think you did newspaper work once upon a time; I remember 'the courageous Cerizet.'"

"Yes," replied the usurer, "I even managed one with la Peyrade,--an evening paper; and a pretty piece of work we did, for which we were finely recompensed."

"Well," said du Portail, "why don't you do it again,--journalism, I mean,--with la Peyrade."

Cerizet looked at du Portail in amazement.

"Ah ca!" he cried, "are you the devil, monsieur? Can nothing ever be hidden from you?"

"Yes," said du Portail, "I know a good many things. But what has been settled between you and la Peyrade?"

"Well, remembering my experience in the business, and not knowing whom else to get, he offered to make me manager of the paper."

"I did not know that," said du Portail, "but it was quite probable. Did you accept?"