Though Marie’s sight and smell were disagreeably affected, Schmucke’s smile and glance disguised these abject miseries by rays of celestial light which actually illuminated their smoky tones and vivified the chaos. The soul of this dear man, which saw and revealed so many things divine, shone like the sun. His laugh, so frank, so guileless at seeing one of his Saint-Cecilias, shed sparkles of youth and gaiety and innocence about him. The treasures he poured from the inner to the outer were like a mantle with which he covered his squalid life. The most supercilious parvenu would have felt it ignoble to care for the frame in which this glorious old apostle of the musical religion lived and moved and had his being.
“Hey! by what good luck do I see you here, dear Madame la comtesse?” he said. “Must I sing the canticle of Simeon at my age?” (This idea so tickled him that he laughed immoderately.) “Truly I’m ‘en bonne fortune.’” (And again he laughed like a merry child.) “But, ah!” he said, changing to melancholy, “you come for the music, and not for a poor old man like me. Yes, I know that; but come for what you will, I am yours, you know, body and soul and all I have!”
This was said in his unspeakable German accent, a rendition of which we spare the reader.
He took the countess’s hand, kissed it and left a tear there, for the worthy soul was always on the morrow of her benefit. Then he seized a bit of chalk, jumped on a chair in front of the piano, and wrote upon the wall in big letters, with the rapidity of a young man, “February 17th, 1835.” This pretty, artless action, done in such a passion of gratitude, touched the countess to tears.
“My sister will come too,” she said.
“The other, too! When? when? God grant it be before I die!”
“She will come to thank you for a great service I am now here to ask of you.”
“Quick! quick! tell me what it is,” cried Schmucke. “What must I do? go to the devil?”
“Nothing more than write the words ‘Accepted for ten thousand francs,’ and sign your name on each of these papers,” she said, taking from her muff four notes prepared for her by Nathan.
“Hey! that’s soon done,” replied the German, with the docility of a lamb; “only I’m sure I don’t know where my pens and ink are — Get away from there, Meinherr Mirr!” he cried to the cat, which looked composedly at him. “That’s my cat,” he said, showing him to the countess. “That’s the poor animal that lives with poor Schmucke. Hasn’t he fine fur?”
“Yes,” said the countess.
“Will you have him?” he cried.
“How can you think of such a thing?” she answered. “Why, he’s your friend!”
The cat, who hid the inkstand behind him, divined that Schmucke wanted it, and jumped to the bed.
“He’s as mischievous as a monkey,” said Schmucke. “I call him Mirr in honor of our great Hoffman of Berlin, whom I knew well.”
The good man signed the papers with the innocence of a child who does what his mother orders without question, so sure is he that all is right. He was thinking much more of presenting the cat to the countess than of the papers by which his liberty might be, according to the laws relating to foreigners, forever sacrificed.
“You assure me that these little papers with the stamps on them — ”
“Don’t be in the least uneasy,” said the countess.
“I am not uneasy,” he said, hastily. “I only meant to ask if these little papers will give pleasure to Madame du Tillet.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, “you are doing her a service, as if you were her father.”
“I am happy, indeed, to be of any good to her — Come and listen to my music!” and leaving the papers on the table, he jumped to his piano.
The hands of this angel ran along the yellowing keys, his glance was rising to heaven, regardless of the roof; already the air of some blessed climate permeated the room and the soul of the old musician; but the countess did not allow the artless interpreter of things celestial to make the strings and the worn wood speak, like Raffaelle’s Saint Cecilia, to the listening angels. She quickly slipped the notes into her muff and recalled her radiant master from the ethereal spheres to which he soared, by laying her hand upon his shoulder.
“My good Schmucke — ” she said.
“Going already?” he cried. “Ah! why did you come?”
He did not murmur, but he sat up like a faithful dog who listens to his mistress.
“My good Schmucke,” she repeated, “this is a matter of life and death; minutes can save tears, perhaps blood.”
“Always the same!” he said. “Go, angel! dry the tears of others. Your poor Schmucke thinks more of your visit than of your gifts.”
“But we must see each other often,” she said. “You must come and dine and play to me every Sunday, or we shall quarrel. Remember, I shall expect you next Sunday.”
“Really and truly?”
“Yes, I entreat you; and my sister will want you, too, for another day.”
“Then my happiness will be complete,” he said; “for I only see you now in the Champs Elysees as you pass in your carriage, and that is very seldom.”
This thought dried the tears in his eyes as he gave his arm to his beautiful pupil, who felt the old man’s heart beat violently.
“You think of us?” she said.
“Always as I eat my food,” he answered, — ”as my benefactresses; but chiefly as the first young girls worthy of love whom I ever knew.”
So respectful, faithful, and religious a solemnity was in this speech that the countess dared say no more. That smoky chamber, full of dirt and rubbish, was the temple of the two divinities.
“There we are loved — and truly loved,” she thought.
The emotion with which old Schmucke saw the countess get into her carriage and leave him she fully shared, and she sent him from the tips of her fingers one of those pretty kisses which women give each other from afar. Receiving it, the old man stood planted on his feet for a long time after the carriage had disappeared.
A few moments later the countess entered the court-yard of the hotel de Nucingen. Madame de Nucingen was not yet up; but anxious not to keep a woman of the countess’s position waiting, she hastily threw on a shawl and wrapper.
“My visit concerns a charitable action, madame,” said the countess, “or I would not disturb you at so early an hour.”
“But I am only too happy to be disturbed,” said the banker’s wife, taking the notes and the countess’s guarantee. She rang for her maid.
“Therese,” she said, “tell the cashier to bring me up himself, immediately, forty thousand francs.”
Then she locked into a table drawer the guarantee given by Madame de Vandenesse, after sealing it up.
“You have a delightful room,” said the countess.
“Yes, but Monsieur de Nucingen is going to take it from me. He is building a new house.”
“You will doubtless give this one to your daughter, who, I am told, is to marry Monsieur de Rastignac.”
The cashier appeared at this moment with the money. Madame de Nucingen took the bank-bills and gave him the notes of hand.
“That balances,” she said.
“Except the discount,” replied the cashier. “Ha, Schmucke; that’s the musician of Anspach,” he added, examining the signatures in a suspicious manner that made the countess tremble.
“Who is doing this business?” said Madame de Nucingen, with a haughty glance at the cashier. “This is my affair.”
The cashier looked alternately at the two ladies, but he could discover nothing on their impenetrable faces.
“Go, leave us — Have the kindness to wait a few moments that the people in the bank may not connect you with this negotiation,” said Madame de Nucingen to the countess.
“I must ask you to add to all your other kindness that of keeping this matter secret,” said Madame de Vandenesse.
“Most assuredly, since it is for charity,” replied the baroness, smiling. “I will send your carriage
round to the garden gate, so that no one will see you leave the house.”
“You have the thoughtful grace of a person who has suffered,” said the countess.
“I do not know if I have grace,” said the baroness; “but I have suffered much. I hope that your anxieties cost less than mine.”
When a man has laid a plot like that du Tillet was scheming against Nathan, he confides it to no man. Nucingen knew something of it, but his wife knew nothing. The baroness, however, aware that Raoul was embarrassed, was not the dupe of the two sisters; she guessed into whose hands that money was to go, and she was delighted to oblige the countess; moreover, she felt a deep compassion for all such embarrassments. Rastignac, so placed that he was able to fathom the manoeuvres of the two bankers, came to breakfast that morning with Madame de Nucingen.
Delphine and Rastignac had no secrets from each other; and the baroness related to him her scene with the countess. Eugene, who had never supposed that Delphine could be mixed up in the affair, which was only accessory to his eyes, — one means among many others, — opened her eyes to the truth. She had probably, he told her, destroyed du Tillet’s chances of selection, and rendered useless the intrigues and deceptions of the past year. In short, he put her in the secret of the whole affair, advising her to keep absolute silence as to the mistake she had just committed.
“Provided the cashier does not tell Nucingen,” she said.
A few moments after mid-day, while du Tillet was breakfasting, Monsieur Gigonnet was announced.
“Let him come in,” said the banker, though his wife was at table. “Well, my old Shylock, is our man locked up?”
“No.”
“Why not? Didn’t I give you the address, rue du Mail, hotel — ”
“He has paid up,” said Gigonnet, drawing from his wallet a pile of bank-bills. Du Tillet looked furious. “You should never frown at money,” said his impassible associate; “it brings ill-luck.”
“Where did you get that money, madame?” said du Tillet, suddenly turning upon his wife with a look which made her color to the roots of her hair.
“I don’t know what your question means,” she said.
“I will fathom this mystery,” he cried, springing furiously up. “You have upset my most cherished plans.”
“You are upsetting your breakfast,” said Gigonnet, arresting the table-clock, which was dragged by the skirt of du Tillet’s dressing-gown.
Madame du Tillet rose to leave the room, for her husband’s words alarmed her. She rang the bell, and a footman entered.
“The carriage,” she said. “And call Virginie; I wish to dress.”
“Where are you going?” exclaimed du Tillet.
“Well-bred husbands do not question their wives,” she answered. “I believe that you lay claim to be a gentleman.”
“I don’t recognize you ever since you have seen more of your impertinent sister.”
“You ordered me to be impertinent, and I am practising on you,” she replied.
“Your servant, madame,” said Gigonnet, taking leave, not anxious to witness this family scene.
Du Tillet looked fixedly at his wife, who returned the look without lowering her eyes.
“What does all this mean?” he said.
“It means that I am no longer a little girl whom you can frighten,” she replied. “I am, and shall be, all my life, a good and loyal wife to you; you may be my master if you choose, my tyrant, never!”
Du Tillet left the room. After this effort Marie-Eugenie broke down.
“If it were not for my sister’s danger,” she said to herself, “I should never have dared to brave him thus; but, as the proverb says, ‘There’s some good in every evil.’”
CHAPTER IX. THE HUSBAND’S TRIUMPH
During the preceding night Madame du Tillet had gone over in her mind her sister’s revelations. Sure, now, of Nathan’s safety, she was no longer influenced by the thought of an imminent danger in that direction. But she remembered the vehement energy with which the countess had declared that she would fly with Nathan if that would save him. She saw that the man might determine her sister in some paroxysm of gratitude and love to take a step which was nothing short of madness. There were recent examples in the highest society of just such flights which paid for doubtful pleasures by lasting remorse and the disrepute of a false position. Du Tillet’s speech brought her fears to a point; she dreaded lest all should be discovered; she knew her sister’s signature was in Nucingen’s hands, and she resolved to entreat Marie to save herself by confessing all to Felix.
She drove to her sister’s house, but Marie was not at home. Felix was there. A voice within her cried aloud to Eugenie to save her sister; the morrow might be too late. She took a vast responsibility upon herself, but she resolved to tell all to the count. Surely he would be indulgent when he knew that his honor was still safe. The countess was deluded rather than sinful. Eugenie feared to be treacherous and base in revealing secrets that society (agreeing on this point) holds to be inviolable; but — she saw her sister’s future, she trembled lest she should some day be deserted, ruined by Nathan, poor, suffering, disgraced, wretched, and she hesitated no longer; she sent in her name and asked to see the count.
Felix, astonished at the visit, had a long conversation with his sister-in-law, in which he seemed so calm, so completely master of himself, that she feared he might have taken some terrible resolution.
“Do not be uneasy,” he said, seeing her anxiety. “I will act in a manner which shall make your sister bless you. However much you may dislike to keep the fact that you have spoken to me from her knowledge, I must entreat you to do so. I need a few days to search into mysteries which you don’t perceive; and, above all, I must act cautiously. Perhaps I can learn all in a day. I, alone, my dear sister, am the guilty person. All lovers play their game, and it is not every woman who is able, unassisted, to see life as it is.”
Madame du Tillet returned home comforted. Felix de Vandenesse drew forty thousand francs from the Bank of France, and went direct to Madame de Nucingen He found her at home, thanked her for the confidence she had placed in his wife, and returned the money, explaining that the countess had obtained this mysterious loan for her charities, which were so profuse that he was trying to put a limit to them.
“Give me no explanations, monsieur, since Madame de Vandenesse has told you all,” said the Baronne de Nucingen.
“She knows the truth,” thought Vandenesse.
Madame de Nucingen returned to him Marie’s letter of guarantee, and sent to the bank for the four notes. Vandenesse, during the short time that these arrangements kept him waiting, watched the baroness with the eye of a statesman, and he thought the moment propitious for further negotiation.
“We live in an age, madame, when nothing is sure,” he said. “Even thrones rise and fall in France with fearful rapidity. Fifteen years have wreaked their will on a great empire, a monarchy, and a revolution. No one can now dare to count upon the future. You know my attachment to the cause of legitimacy. Suppose some catastrophe; would you not be glad to have a friend in the conquering party?”
“Undoubtedly,” she said, smiling.
“Very good; then, will you have in me, secretly, an obliged friend who could be of use to Monsieur de Nucingen in such a case, by supporting his claim to the peerage he is seeking?”
“What do you want of me?” she asked.
“Very little,” he replied. “All that you know about Nathan’s affairs.”
The baroness repeated to him her conversation with Rastignac, and said, as she gave him the four notes, which the cashier had meantime brought to her:
“Don’t forget your promise.”
So little did Vandenesse forget this illusive promise that he used it again on Baron Eugene de Rastignac to obtain from him certain other information. Leaving Rastignac’s apartments, he dictated to a street amanuensis the following note to Florine.
“If Mademoiselle Florine wishes to know of a pa
rt she may play she
is requested to come to the masked opera at the Opera next Sunday
night, accompanied by Monsieur Nathan.”
To this ball he determined to take his wife and let her own eyes enlighten her as to the relations between Nathan and Florine. He knew the jealous pride of the countess; he wanted to make her renounce her love of her own will, without causing her to blush before him, and then to return to her her own letters, sold by Florine, from whom he expected to be able to buy them. This judicious plan, rapidly conceived and partly executed, might fail through some trick of chance which meddles with all things here below.
After dinner that evening, Felix brought the conversation round to the masked balls of the Opera, remarking that Marie had never been to one, and proposing that she should accompany him the following evening.
“I’ll find you some one to ‘intriguer,’” he said.
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 143