Works of Honore De Balzac, page 844
The amusing part of it was that Brigitte herself, after driving every one at the point of the bayonet, came very near being late herself. Under pretext of aiding others, independently of minding her own business, which, for worlds, she would never have spared herself, she had put her fingers and eyes into so many things that they ended by overwhelming her. However, she ascribed the delay in which she was almost caught to the hairdresser, whom she had sent for to make, on this extraordinary occasion, what she called her “part.” That artist having, unadvisedly, dressed her hair in the fashion, he was compelled, after she had looked at herself in the glass, to do his work over again, and conform to the usual style of his client, which consisted chiefly in never being “done” at all, a method that gave her head a general air of what is vulgarly called “a cross cat.”
About half-past one o’clock la Peyrade, Thuillier, Colleville, Madame Thuillier, and Celeste were assembled in the salon. Flavie joined them soon after, fastening her bracelets as she came along to avoid a rebuff, and having the satisfaction of knowing that she was ready before Brigitte. As for the latter, already furious at finding herself late, she had another cause for exasperation. The event of the day seemed to require a corset, a refinement which she usually discarded. The unfortunate maid, whose duty it was to lace her and to discover the exact point to which she was willing to be drawn in, alone knew the terrors and storms of a corset day.
“I’d rather,” said the girl, “lace the obelisk; I know it would lend itself to being laced better than she does; and, anyhow, it couldn’t be bad-tongued.”
While the party in the salon were amusing themselves, under their breaths, at the “flagrante delicto” of unpunctuality in which Queen Elizabeth was caught, the porter entered, and gave to Thuillier a sealed package, addressed to “Monsieur Thuillier, director of the ‘Echo de la Bievre.’ In haste.”
Thuillier opened the envelope, and found within a copy of a ministerial journal which had hitherto shown itself discourteous to the new paper by refusing the exchange which all periodicals usually make very willingly with one another.
Puzzled by the fact of this missive being sent to his own house and not to the office of the “Echo,” Thuillier hastily opened the sheet, and read, with what emotion the reader may conceive, the following article, commended to his notice by a circle in red ink: —
An obscure organ was about to expire in its native shade when an
ambitious person of recent date bethought himself of galvanizing
it. His object was to make it a foothold by which to climb from
municipal functions to the coveted position of deputy. Happily
this object, having come to the surface, will end in failure.
Electors will certainly not be inveigled by so wily a manner of
advancing self-interests; and when the proper time arrives, if
ridicule has not already done justice on this absurd candidacy, we
shall ourselves prove to the pretender that to aspire to the
distinguished honor of representing the nation something more is
required than the money to buy a paper and pay an underling to put
into good French the horrible diction of his articles and
pamphlets. We confine ourselves to-day to this limited notice, but
our readers may be sure that we shall keep them informed about
this electoral comedy, if indeed the parties concerned have the
melancholy courage to go on with it.
Thuillier read twice over this sudden declaration of war, which was far from leaving him calm and impassible; then, taking la Peyrade aside, he said to him: —
“Read that; it is serious.”
“Well?” said la Peyrade, after reading the article.
“Well? how well?” exclaimed Thuillier.
“I mean, what do you find so serious in that?”
“What do I find so serious?” repeated Thuillier. “I don’t think anything could be more insulting to me.”
“You can’t doubt,” said la Peyrade, “that the virtuous Cerizet is at the bottom of it; he has thrown this firecracker between your legs by way of revenge.”
“Cerizet, or anybody else who wrote that diatribe is an insolent fellow,” cried Thuillier, getting angry, “and the matter shall not rest there.”
“For my part,” said la Peyrade, “I advise you to make no reply. You are not named; though, of course, the attack is aimed at you. But you ought to let our adversary commit himself farther; when the right moment comes, we’ll rap him over the knuckles.”
“No!” said Thuillier, “I won’t stay quiet one minute under such an insult.”
“The devil!” said the barrister; “what a sensitive epidermis! Do reflect, my dear fellow, that you have made yourself a candidate and a journalist, and therefore you really must harden yourself better than that.”
“My good friend, it is a principle of mine not to let anybody step on my toes. Besides, they say themselves they are going on with this thing. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to cut short such impertinence.”
“But do consider,” said la Peyrade. “Certainly in journalism, as in candidacy, a hot temper has its uses; a man makes himself respected, and stops attacks — ”
“Just so,” said Thuillier, “‘principiis obsta.’ Not to-day, because we haven’t the time, but to-morrow I shall carry that paper into court.”
“Into court!” echoed la Peyrade; “you surely wouldn’t go to law in such a matter as this? In the first place, there is nothing to proceed upon; you are not named nor the paper either, and, besides, it is a pitiable business, going to law; you’ll look like a boy who has been fighting, and got the worst of it, and runs to complain to his mamma. Now if you had said that you meant to make Fleury intervene in the matter, I could understand that — though the affair is rather personal to you, and it might be difficult to make it seem — ”
“Ah ca!” said Thuillier, “do you suppose I am going to commit myself with a Cerizet or any other newspaper bully? I pique myself, my dear fellow, on possessing civic courage, which does not give in to prejudices, and which, instead of taking justice into its own hands, has recourse to the means of defence that are provided by law. Besides, with the legal authority the Court of Cassation now has over duelling, I have no desire to put myself in the way of being expatriated, or spending two or three years in prison.”
“Well,” said la Peyrade, “we’ll talk it over later; here’s your sister, and she would think everything lost if this little matter reached her ears.”
When Brigitte appeared Colleville shouted “Full!” and proceeded to sing the chorus of “La Parisienne.”
“Heavens! Colleville, how vulgar you are!” cried the tardy one, hastening to cast a stone in the other’s garden to avoid the throwing of one into hers. “Well, are you all ready?” she added, arranging her mantle before a mirror. “What o’clock is it? it won’t do to get there before the time, like provincials.”
“Ten minutes to two,” said Colleville; “I go by the Tuileries.”
“Well, then we are just right,” said Brigitte; “it will take about that time to get to the rue Caumartin. Josephine,” she cried, going to the door of the salon, “we’ll dine at six, therefore be sure you put the turkey to roast at the right time, and mind you don’t burn it, as you did the other day. Bless me! who’s that?” and with a hasty motion she shut the door, which she had been holding open. “What a nuisance! I hope Henri will have the sense to tell him we are out.”
Not at all; Henri came in to say that an old gentleman, with a very genteel air, had asked to be received on urgent business.
“Why didn’t you say we were all out?”
“That’s what I should have done if mademoiselle had not opened the door of the salon so that the gentleman could see the whole family assembled.”
“Oh, yes!” said Brigitte, “you are never in the wrong, are you?”
“What am I to say to him?” asked the man.
“Say,” replied Thuillier, “that I am very sorry not to be able to receive him, but I am expected at a notary’s office about a marriage contract; but that if he could return two hours hence — ”
“I have told him all that,” said Henri, “and he answered that that contract was precisely what he had come about, and that his business concerned you more than himself.”
“You had better go and see him, Thuillier, and get rid of him in double-quick,” said Brigitte; “that’s shorter than talking to Henri, who is always an orator.”
If la Peyrade had been consulted he might not have joined in that advice, for he had had more than one specimen of the spokes some occult influence was putting into the wheels of his marriage, and the present visit seemed to him ominous.
“Show him into my study,” said Thuillier, following his sister’s advice; and, opening the door which led from the salon to the study, he went to receive his importunate visitor.
Brigitte immediately applied her eye to the keyhole.
“Goodness!” she exclaimed, “there’s my imbecile of a Thuillier offering him a chair! and away in a corner, too, where I can’t hear a word they say!”
La Peyrade was walking about the room with an inward agitation covered by an appearance of great indifference. He even went up to the three women, and made a few lover-like speeches to Celeste, who received them with a smiling, happy air in keeping with the role she was playing. As for Colleville, he was killing the time by composing an anagram on the six words of “le journal ‘l’Echo de la Bievre,’“ for which he had found the following version, little reassuring (as far as it went) for the prospects of that newspaper: “O d’Echo, jarni! la bevue reell” — but as the final “e” was lacking to complete the last word, the work was not altogether as satisfactory as it should have been.
“He’s taking snuff!” said Brigitte, her eye still glued to the keyhole; “his gold snuff-box beats Minard’s — though, perhaps, it is only silver-gilt,” she added, reflectively. “He’s doing the talking, and Thuillier is sitting there listening to him like a buzzard. I shall go in and tell them they can’t keep ladies waiting that way.”
But just as she put her hand on the lock she heard Thuillier’s visitor raise his voice, and that made her look through the keyhole again.
“He is standing up; he’s going,” she said with satisfaction.
But a moment later she saw she had made a mistake; the little old man had only left his chair to walk up and down the room and continue the conversation with greater freedom.
“My gracious! I shall certainly go in,” she said, “and tell Thuillier we are going without him, and he can follow us.”
So saying, the old maid gave two little sharp and very imperious raps on the door, after which she resolutely entered the study.
La Peyrade, goaded by anxiety, had the bad taste to look through the keyhole himself at what was happening. Instantly he thought he recognized the small old man he had seen under the name of “the commander” on that memorable morning when he had waited for Madame de Godollo. Then he saw Thuillier addressing his sister with impatience and with gestures of authority altogether out of his usual habits of deference and submission.
“It seems,” said Brigitte, re-entering the salon, “that Thuillier finds some great interest in that creature’s talk, for he ordered me bluntly to leave them, though the little old fellow did say, rather civilly, that they would soon be through. But Jerome added: ‘Mind, you are to wait for me.’ Really, since he has taken to making newspapers I don’t know him; he has set up an air as if he were leading the world with his wand.”
“I am very much afraid he is being entangled by some adventurer,” said la Peyrade. “I am pretty sure I saw that old man at Madame de Godollo’s the day I went to warn her off the premises; he must be of the same stripe.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” cried Brigitte. “I’d have asked him for news of the countess, and let him see we knew what we knew of his Hungarian.”
Just then the sound of moving chairs was heard, and Brigitte darted back to the keyhole.
“Yes,” she said, “he is really going, and Thuillier is bowing him out respectfully!”
As Thuillier did not immediately return, Colleville had time to go to the window and exclaim at seeing the little old gentleman driving away in an elegant coupe, of which the reader has already heard.
“The deuce!” cried Colleville; “what an ornate livery! If he is an adventurer he is a number one.”
At last Thuillier re-entered the room, his face full of care, his manner extremely grave.
“My dear la Peyrade,” he said, “you did not tell us that another proposal of marriage had been seriously considered by you.”
“Yes, I did; I told you that a very rich heiress had been offered to me, but that my inclinations were here, and that I had not given any encouragement to the affair; consequently, of course, there was no serious engagement.”
“Well, I think you do wrong to treat that proposal so lightly.”
“What! do you mean to say, in presence of these ladies, that you blame me for remaining faithful to my first desires and our old engagement?”
“My friend, the conversation that I have just had has been a most instructive one to me; and when you know what I know, with other details personal to yourself, which will be confided to you, I think that you will enter into my ideas. One thing is certain; we shall not go to the notary to-day; and as for you, the best thing that you can do is to go, without delay, to Monsieur du Portail.”
“That name again! it pursues me like a remorse,” exclaimed la Peyrade.
“Yes; go at once; he is awaiting you. It is an indispensable preliminary before we can go any farther. When you have seen that excellent man and heard what he has to say to you — well, then if you persist in claiming Celeste’s hand, we might perhaps carry out our plans. Until then we shall take no steps in the matter.”
“But, my poor Thuillier,” said Brigitte, “you have let yourself be gammoned by a rascal; that man belongs to the Godollo set.”
“Madame de Godollo,” replied Thuillier, “is not at all what you suppose her to be, and the best thing this house can do is never to say one word about her, either good or evil. As for la Peyrade, as this is not the first time he has been requested to go and see Monsieur du Portail, I am surprised that he hesitates to do so.”
“Ah ca!” said Brigitte, “that little old man has completely befooled you.”
“I tell you that that little old man is all that he appears to be. He wears seven crosses, he drives in a splendid equipage, and he has told me things that have overwhelmed me with astonishment.”
“Well, perhaps he’s a fortune-teller like Madame Fontaine, who managed once upon a time to upset me when Madame Minard and I, just to amuse ourselves, went to consult her.”
“Well, if he is not a sorcerer he certainly has a very long arm,” said Thuillier, “and I think a man would suffer for it if he didn’t respect his advice. As for you, Brigitte, he saw you only for a minute, but he told me your whole character; he said you were a masterful woman, born to command.”
“The fact is,” said Brigitte, licking her chops at this compliment, like a cat drinking cream, “he has a very well-bred air, that little old fellow. You take my advice, my dear,” she said, turning to la Peyrade; “if such a very big-wig as that wants you to do so, go and see this du Portail, whoever he is. That, it seems to me, won’t bind you to anything.”
“You are right, Brigitte,” said Colleville; “as for me, I’d follow up all the Portails, or Porters, or Portents for the matter of that, if they asked me to.”
The scene was beginning to resemble that in the “Barber of Seville,” where everybody tells Basil to go to bed, for he certainly has a fever. La Peyrade, thus prodded, picked up his hat in some ill-humor, and went where his destiny called him, — ”quo sua fata vocabant.”
CHAPTER XV. AT DU PORTAIL’S
On reaching the rue Honore-Chevalier la Peyrade felt a doubt; the dilapidated appearance of the house to which he was summoned made him think he had mistaken the number. It seemed to him that a person of Monsieur du Portail’s evident importance could not inhabit such a place. It was therefore with some hesitation that he accosted Sieur Perrache, the porter. But no sooner had he entered the antechamber of the apartment pointed out to him than the excellent deportment of Bruneau, the old valet, and the extremely comfortable appearance of the furniture and other appointments made him see that he was probably in the right place. Introduced at once, as soon as he had given his name, into the study of the master of the house, his surprise was great when he found himself in presence of the commander, so called, the friend of Madame de Godollo, and the little old man he had seen half an hour earlier with Thuillier.
“At last!” said du Portail, rising, and offering la Peyrade a chair, “at last we meet, my refractory friend; it has taken a good deal to bring you here.”
“May I know, monsieur,” said la Peyrade, haughtily, not taking the chair which was offered to him, “what interest you have in meddling with my affairs? I do not know you, and I may add that the place where I once saw you did not create an unconquerable desire in me to make your acquaintance.”
“Where have you seen me?” asked du Portail.
“In the apartment of a strumpet who called herself Madame de Godollo.”
“Where monsieur, consequently, went himself,” said the little old man, “and for a purpose much less disinterested than mine.”
“I have not come here,” said la Peyrade, “to bandy words with any one. I have the right, monsieur, to a full explanation as to the meaning of your proceedings towards me. I therefore request you not to delay them by a facetiousness to which, I assure you, I am not in the humor to listen.”
“Then, my dear fellow,” said du Portail, “sit down, for I am not in the humor to twist my neck by talking up at you.”
