The False Chevalier Part 12

"Yes," she exclaimed, angry tears rolling down her cheeks. "Your wife will sell her wardrobe and her dowry--little enough it was--for my son shall not want while he has a mother, and that mother owns a st.i.tch."

It was when it came to meeting clap-trap sentiment that trader's inferior grain showed, and he faltered.

"I will go as far as a thousand. It is all it is worth."

By that word he exposed the small side of an otherwise worthy nature.

She sprang to the attack.

"_Diable!_ am I linked to a skinflint?"

"A skinflint, forsooth, at a thousand livres!"

"Yes," she cried in a fresh flood of tears. "A wretch, a miser. You are unworthy, sir, to be linked to a family from whom Germain takes his gentlemanly qualities. Had he nothing but you in him, he would be a grovelling clod-hopper to-day instead of a favourite of kings."

Lecour laid down his wooden spoon in his pea-soup-bowl. He phlegmatically took his clasp knife from its pouch, hung round his neck by a string, struck his blade into the piece of cold pork upon the table and cut off a large corner, in defiant silence. But his heart was heavy.

It was no pleasure to wrangle with so able a wife. He had no wish to quarrel. Only, he knew the value of a livre. Germain was really becoming a shocking expense. He felt that his wife would in the end persuade him against his better judgment. In truth he liked to hear of his son's successes, but it went against his prudence. There was to him something out of joint in the son of a man of his condition attempting to figure among the long-lined contemptuous elegants who had commanded him in the army during his youth. The gulf, he felt, was not pa.s.sable with security nor credit.

Just as he was hacking off the piece of pork, a high-spirited black pony dashed into the courtyard, attached to a calash driven by a very stout, merry-eyed priest, who pulled up at the doorstep.

Lecour and Madame at once rose and hurried out to welcome him. At the same time an Indian dwarf in Lecour's service moved up silently and took the reins out of the Cure's hands. The latter came joyously in and sat down.

"Oho," he cried, surveying the preparations on the table. "My good Madame Lecour, I was right when I said an hour ago I knew where to stop at noon in my parish of Repentigny."

"Father, I have something extra for you this time," she replied laughing, and crossing to her cupboard, exhibited triumphantly a fine cold roast duck.

"You shall have absolution without confession," he cried. "Let me prepare for that with some of the magnificent pea-soup a la Lecour. Oh, day of days!"

She went to the crane at the fireplace, uncovered the hanging pot, and ladled out a deep bowl of steaming soup. At the same time she told him excitedly of Germain's presentation at Court.

"What! what! these are fine proceedings. The Lecours are always going up, up, up. Our Germain's distinction is a glory for the whole parish.

Lecour here ought to be proud of it."

Flattery from his Cure weighed more with Lecour _pere_ than bushels of argument. The wife saw her accidental advantage and took it.

"He does not like to pay for it," she remarked demurely.

"What! what! my rich friend Lecour. The owner of seventeen good farms, of three great warehouses, of four hundred cattle, of untold merchandise, and a credit of 500,000 livres in London, the best payer of t.i.thes in the country, the father of the most brilliant son in the province, the husband of the finest wife, a woman fit to adorn the castle of the governor," cried the ecclesiastic, finis.h.i.+ng his soup and attacking the duck.

Lecour thawed fast. But he reserved a doubt for the consideration of his confessor.

"Is it honest to pa.s.s for a n.o.ble when one is not one?"

"I do not see that he has done so. It is not his fault, in the manner that he has explained it. Let the young man enjoy himself a little and see a little of life. We are only young once, and you laics must not be too severely impeccable, otherwise what would become of us granters of absolution. Furthermore, we must not be too old-fas.h.i.+oned. Our people here are getting out of the strictness of the old social distinctions.

It may be so too in France. On my advice, dear Lecour, accept every honour to your family your son may bring, and pay for it in the station fitted to your great means, that I may be proud of all the Lecour family when I go to Quebec and boast about my parish at the dinner-table of the Bishop. Come," exclaimed he, at length, pus.h.i.+ng aside his plate with the ruins of the duck, "bring out that game of draughts, and let us see if the honours of Germain have not put new skill into the play of a proud father."

Madame brought out the checkerboard. She brought besides for the Cure a little gla.s.s of imported _eau de vie_, and her husband, taking out his bladder tobacco pouch, commenced to fill his pipe, and that of his Reverence, and to smoke himself into a condition of bliss.

CHAPTER XIV

THE OLD-IRON SHOP

An enormous yellow and black coach lumbered and strained along by the aid of six lean horses, and many elaborate springs, chains and straps, from Brittany towards Paris. The autumn roads were execrable, for the rains had been heavy, and the ruts made by the harvest-waggons were deep. The lateness of the season intensified the deserted look of rural France. Little else was to be seen along most of the route than rows of polled trees lining the highway, and here and there an old castle on a hill, or a _commune_ of a few whitewashed cottages, where the coach would pull up at the inn and perhaps change horses. The driver and guard remained the same; but various postillions took charge and then gave up their charges to others. Travellers of a.s.sorted ranks and occupations got in and out. Of the twelve for whom there were places in the coach some remained during long distances, some shorter, but only one was faithful from Brittany to the end. He was a short-statured, country _bourgeois_, whose woollen stockings and faded hat gave to him a certain look of non-importance. Moreover, he was always wrapped unsociably in a brown cloak, of which he kept a fold over his lower face, and in which he snored in his corner even when all the others jumped up to escape an upset.

After several days the aspect of the country suddenly changed. Immense woods and parks rendered it even more solitary, yet strange to say the increased solitude was evidence that the hugest capital in Europe was near, for these were the hunting domains of the princes of the blood and great courtiers, which encircled Paris.

During the night there was another sudden change. The forest solitudes disappeared, the horses sped forward on fine broad roads; and soon the coach dashed with a triumphant blast into the lights and stir of Versailles, crossed its Place d'Armes and turned again into darkness along the Avenue of Paris.

At length, in the first grey of morning, it rumbled loudly over a stretch of cobbled pave, and pulled up at an iron railing inside the City wall. Here the officers of the munic.i.p.al customs came out. One of the first pa.s.sengers visited was the _bourgeois_, and his dingy black box and sleepy expression received exceptionally contemptuous usage.

"Haste, beast, open it! Dost thou think I have to wait all day? Take that," and the gendarme struck him a tap on the side with the flat of his sword.

For a second the _bourgeois_ seemed another man. He drew up with such an inhuman gleam in his cadaverous eyes that the customs man drew back.

"Quick, then, a little," said the latter in something of an apologetic tone. The short man as rapidly recovered his self-possession. He leered in a conciliatory way upon the official and pressed a livre into his palm. The official pa.s.sed the box through the gate. The coach proceeded into the City until it arrived at its heart and stopped at the entrance of that great and wide bridge, the Pont Neuf, the main artery of Paris, where most of the pa.s.sengers alighted. They found themselves engulfed in a yelling mult.i.tude of porters, who scrambled for pa.s.sengers and baggage as if they would tear both to pieces, which indeed they had no great aversion to doing.

The _bourgeois_ singled out a tall man who had mingled in the scrimmage as if only for his amus.e.m.e.nt. Cuffing the others aside like puppies with his long arms, the latter lifted the black box out of the tussle and started away, followed by its owner. They plunged into that maze of tall, narrow, medieval streets of older Paris which Meryon loved to picture before they disappeared in the improvements of Napoleon. They crossed the Latin Quarter and thence wending eastward, entered finally the Quarter of St. Marcel, the wretchedest of the city, and came into a lane named the Street of the Hanged Man; where dilapidated rookeries leaned across at each other, their upper floors occupied by swarms of human beings. The _bourgeois_ here stopped alongside his porter and spoke to him in the tone of an intimate.

"Is it far now, Hache? It is already some distance from the old place."

"Here we are; come in quick," replied Hache. He was a bold-looking, black-haired man, red-faced, unshaven, and battered with the effects of brandy-drinking.

They turned into a grimy old-iron shop. A woman sitting in a corner fixed her eyes upon them like a watch-dog. They stumbled through, climbed a dark stair, and entered a room where the traveller, without speaking to a man who lay there on a bench, locked the door, and Hache dropped the box on the table with a thud, shaking off a cap and bottle which were on it.

The man on the bench started at the noise, and got up on his elbow, his eyes opening with an effort.

"Great G.o.d, the Admiral!" he exclaimed.

The _bourgeois_ had thrown off his hat, wig, and cloak. He was the visitor to the cavern of Fontainebleau.

"It is I, Gougeon," he returned, his death's-head face smiling.

Gougeon wore the garb of an old-iron gatherer. His countenance was unkempt, pale, scowling, with black eyes embedded in it, his hair coa.r.s.e and long, his mouth hard and drooping. He pushed back the grey _tuque_ with which his head had been covered, and without readdressing the Admiral, got up, slowly unwound the cords which bound the black box, and raised the lid. Hache looked on.

Gougeon first took out a couple of coa.r.s.e articles of clothing, and uttered a grunt. His next grasp brought up a brilliant article of apparel. He raised it to examine it at the window. The garment shone even in the meagre light. It was a waistcoat of flowered silk, sown with seed-pearls. The Admiral stood by, smiling.

With the other hand Gougeon pulled out and lifted a magnificent rose-coloured dress-coat with silver b.u.t.tons.

Having gazed at them all round and grunted to his own satisfaction and to that of Hache, he dived again into the box, where he fumbled around a large lump covered with linen, and at length drew out a s.h.i.+ning article--a golden _soleil_, or sun-shaped stand for displaying the Host at the ma.s.s. Beside it was a finely embossed chalice of silver. His eyes and those of Hache were lost in wonder.

There came just then a tap at the door.

The articles were whipped back into their box and covered. The woman of the shop below walked in. All recovered self-possession. She bolted the door herself.

Gougeon's mate, who thus appeared among them, was a small woman of about forty, with the sharp grey eyes of a wild animal.