“I felt them this morning, when I made my bed after breakfast,” repeated Madame Descoings.
Agathe, horrified, went down stairs and asked if Philippe had come in during the day. The concierge related the tale of his return and the locksmith. The mother, heart-stricken, went back a changed woman. White as the linen of her chemise, she walked as we might fancy a spectre walks, slowly, noiselessly, moved by some superhuman power, and yet mechanically. She held a candle in her hand, whose light fell full upon her face and showed her eyes, fixed with horror. Unconsciously, her hands by a desperate movement had dishevelled the hair about her brow; and this made her so beautiful with anguish that Joseph stood rooted in awe at the apparition of that remorse, the vision of that statue of terror and despair.
“My aunt,” she said, “take my silver forks and spoons. I have enough to make up the sum; I took your money for Philippe’s sake; I thought I could put it back before you missed it. Oh! I have suffered much.”
She sat down. Her dry, fixed eyes wandered a little.
“It was he who did it,” whispered the old woman to Joseph.
“No, no,” cried Agathe; “take my silver plate, sell it; it is useless to me; we can eat with yours.”
She went to her room, took the box which contained the plate, felt its light weight, opened it, and saw a pawnbroker’s ticket. The poor mother uttered a dreadful cry. Joseph and the Descoings ran to her, saw the empty box, and her noble falsehood was of no avail. All three were silent, and avoided looking at each other; but the next moment, by an almost frantic gesture, Agathe laid her finger on her lips as if to entreat a secrecy no one desired to break. They returned to the salon, and sat beside the fire.
“Ah! my children,” cried Madame Descoings, “I am stabbed to the heart: my trey will turn up, I am certain of it. I am not thinking of myself, but of you two. Philippe is a monster,” she continued, addressing her niece; “he does not love you after all that you have done for him. If you do not protect yourself against him he will bring you to beggary. Promise me to sell out your Funds and buy a life-annuity. Joseph has a good profession and he can live. If you will do this, dear Agathe, you will never be an expense to Joseph. Monsieur Desroches has just started his son as a notary; he would take your twelve thousand francs and pay you an annuity.”
Joseph seized his mother’s candlestick, rushed up to his studio, and came down with three hundred francs.
“Here, Madame Descoings!” he cried, giving her his little store, “it is no business of ours what you do with your money; we owe you what you have lost, and here it is, almost in full.”
“Take your poor little all? — the fruit of those privations that have made me so unhappy! are you mad, Joseph?” cried the old woman, visibly torn between her dogged faith in the coming trey, and the sacrilege of accepting such a sacrifice.
“Oh! take it if you like,” said Agathe, who was moved to tears by this action of her true son.
Madame Descoings took Joseph by the head, and kissed him on the forehead: —
“My child,” she said, “don’t tempt me. I might only lose it. The lottery, you see, is all folly.”
No more heroic words were ever uttered in the hidden dramas of domestic life. It was, indeed, affection triumphant over inveterate vice. At this instant, the clocks struck midnight.
“It is too late now,” said Madame Descoings.
“Oh!” cried Joseph, “here are your cabalistic numbers.”
The artist sprang at the paper, and rushed headlong down the staircase to pay the stakes. When he was no longer present, Agathe and Madame Descoings burst into tears.
“He has gone, the dear love,” cried the old gambler; “but it shall all be his; he pays his own money.”
Unhappily, Joseph did not know the way to any of the lottery-offices, which in those days were as well known to most people as the cigarshops to a smoker in ours. The painter ran along, reading the street names upon the lamps. When he asked the passers-by to show him a lottery-office, he was told they were all closed, except the one under the portico of the Palais-Royal which was sometimes kept open a little later. He flew to the Palais-Royal: the office was shut.
“Two minutes earlier, and you might have paid your stake,” said one of the vendors of tickets, whose beat was under the portico, where he vociferated this singular cry: “Twelve hundred francs for forty sous,” and offered tickets all paid up.
By the glimmer of the street lamp and the lights of the cafe de la Rotonde, Joseph examined these tickets to see if, by chance, any of them bore the Descoings’s numbers. He found none, and returned home grieved at having done his best in vain for the old woman, to whom he related his ill-luck. Agathe and her aunt went together to the midnight mass at Saint-Germain-des-Pres. Joseph went to bed. The collation did not take place. Madame Descoings had lost her head; and in Agathe’s heart was eternal mourning.
The two rose late on Christmas morning. Ten o’clock had struck before Madame Descoings began to bestir herself about the breakfast, which was only ready at half-past eleven. At that hour, the oblong frames containing the winning numbers are hung over the doors of the lottery-offices. If Madame Descoings had paid her stake and held her ticket, she would have gone by half-past nine o’clock to learn her fate at a building close to the ministry of Finance, in the rue Neuve-des-Petits Champs, a situation now occupied by the Theatre Ventadour in the place of the same name. On the days when the drawings took place, an observer might watch with curiosity the crowd of old women, cooks, and old men assembled about the door of this building; a sight as remarkable as the cue of people about the Treasury on the days when the dividends are paid.
“Well, here you are, rolling in wealth!” said old Desroches, coming into the room just as the Descoings was swallowing her last drop of coffee.
“What do you mean?” cried poor Agathe.
“Her trey has turned up,” he said, producing the list of numbers written on a bit of paper, such as the officials of the lottery put by hundreds into little wooden bowls on their counters.
Joseph read the list. Agathe read the list. The Descoings read nothing; she was struck down as by a thunderbolt. At the change in her face, at the cry she gave, old Desroches and Joseph carried her to her bed. Agathe went for a doctor. The poor woman was seized with apoplexy, and she only recovered consciousness at four in the afternoon; old Haudry, her doctor, then said that, in spite of this improvement, she ought to settle her worldly affairs and think of her salvation. She herself only uttered two words: —
“Three millions!”
Old Desroches, informed by Joseph, with due reservations, of the state of things, related many instances where lottery-players had seen a fortune escape them on the very day when, by some fatality, they had forgotten to pay their stakes; but he thoroughly understood that such a blow might be fatal when it came after twenty years’ perseverance. About five o’clock, as a deep silence reigned in the little appartement, and the sick woman, watched by Joseph and his mother, the one sitting at the foot, the other at the head of her bed, was expecting her grandson Bixiou, whom Desroches had gone to fetch, the sound of Philippe’s step and cane resounded on the staircase.
“There he is! there he is!” cried the Descoings, sitting up in bed and suddenly able to use her paralyzed tongue.
Agathe and Joseph were deeply impressed by this powerful effect of the horror which violently agitated the old woman. Their painful suspense was soon ended by the sight of Philippe’s convulsed and purple face, his staggering walk, and the horrible state of his eyes, which were deeply sunken, dull, and yet haggard; he had a strong chill upon him, and his teeth chattered.
“Starvation in Prussia!” he cried, looking about him. “Nothing to eat or drink? — and my throat on fire! Well, what’s the matter? The devil is always meddling in our affairs. There’s my old Descoings in bed, looking at me with her eyes as big as saucers.”
“Be silent, monsieur!” said Agathe, rising. “At least, respect the sorrows you
have caused.”
“Monsieur, indeed!” he cried, looking at his mother. “My dear little mother, that won’t do. Have you ceased to love your son?”
“Are you worthy of love? Have you forgotten what you did yesterday? Go and find yourself another home; you cannot live with us any longer, — that is, after to-morrow,” she added; “for in the state you are in now it is difficult — ”
“To turn me out, — is that it?” he interrupted. “Ha! are you going to play the melodrama of ‘The Banished Son’? Well done! is that how you take things? You are all a pretty set! What harm have I done? I’ve cleaned out the old woman’s mattress. What the devil is the good of money kept in wool? Do you call that a crime? Didn’t she take twenty thousand francs from you? We are her creditors, and I’ve paid myself as much as I could get, — that’s all.”
“My God! my God!” cried the dying woman, clasping her hands and praying.
“Be silent!” exclaimed Joseph, springing at his brother and putting his hand before his mouth.
“To the right about, march! brat of a painter!” retorted Philippe, laying his strong hand on Joseph’s head, and twirling him round, as he flung him on a sofa. “Don’t dare to touch the moustache of a commander of a squadron of the dragoons of the Guard!”
“She has paid me back all that she owed me,” cried Agathe, rising and turning an angry face to her son; “and besides, that is my affair. You have killed her. Go away, my son,” she added, with a gesture that took all her remaining strength, “and never let me see you again. You are a monster.”
“I kill her?”
“Her trey has turned up,” cried Joseph, “and you stole the money for her stake.”
“Well, if she is dying of a lost trey, it isn’t I who have killed her,” said the drunkard.
“Go, go!” said Agathe. “You fill me with horror; you have every vice. My God! is this my son?”
A hollow rattle sounded in Madame Descoings’s throat, increasing Agathe’s anger.
“I love you still, my mother, — you who are the cause of all my misfortunes,” said Philippe. “You turn me out of doors on Christmas-day. What did you do to grandpa Rouget, to your father, that he should drive you away and disinherit you? If you had not displeased him, we should all be rich now, and I should not be reduced to misery. What did you do to your father, — you who are a good woman? You see by your own self, I may be a good fellow and yet be turned out of house and home, — I, the glory of the family — ”
“The disgrace of it!” cried the Descoings.
“You shall leave this room, or you shall kill me!” cried Joseph, springing on his brother with the fury of a lion.
“My God! my God!” cried Agathe, trying to separate the brothers.
At this moment Bixiou and Haudry the doctor entered. Joseph had just knocked his brother over and stretched him on the ground.
“He is a regular wild beast,” he cried. “Don’t speak another word, or I’ll — ”
“I’ll pay you for this!” roared Philippe.
“A family explanation,” remarked Bixiou.
“Lift him up,” said the doctor, looking at him. “He is as ill as Madame Descoings; undress him and put him to bed; get off his boots.”
“That’s easy to say,” cried Bixiou, “but they must be cut off; his legs are swollen.”
Agathe took a pair of scissors. When she had cut down the boots, which in those days were worn outside the clinging trousers, ten pieces of gold rolled on the floor.
“There it is, — her money,” murmured Philippe. “Cursed fool that I was, I forgot it. I too have missed a fortune.”
He was seized with a horrible delirium of fever, and began to rave. Joseph, assisted by old Desroches, who had come back, and by Bixiou, carried him to his room. Doctor Haudry was obliged to write a line to the Hopital de la Charite and borrow a strait-waistcoat; for the delirium ran so high as to make him fear that Philippe might kill himself, — he was raving. At nine o’clock calm was restored. The Abbe Loraux and Desroches endeavored to comfort Agathe, who never ceased to weep at her aunt’s bedside. She listened to them in silence, and obstinately shook her head; Joseph and the Descoings alone knew the extent and depth of her inward wound.
“He will learn to do better, mother,” said Joseph, when Desroches and Bixiou had left.
“Oh!” cried the widow, “Philippe is right, — my father cursed me: I have no right to — Here, here is your money,” she said to Madame Descoings, adding Joseph’s three hundred francs to the two hundred found on Philippe. “Go and see if your brother does not need something,” she said to Joseph.
“Will you keep a promise made to a dying woman?” asked Madame Descoings, who felt that her mind was failing her.
“Yes, aunt.”
“Then swear to me to give your property to young Desroches for a life annuity. My income ceases at my death; and from what you have just said, I know you will let that wretch wring the last farthing out of you.”
“I swear it, aunt.”
The old woman died on the 31st of December, five days after the terrible blow which old Desroches had so innocently given her. The five hundred francs — the only money in the household — were barely enough to pay for her funeral. She left a small amount of silver and some furniture, the value of which Madame Bixiou paid over to her grandson Bixiou. Reduced to eight hundred francs’ annuity paid to her by young Desroches, who had bought a business without clients, and himself took the capital of twelve thousand francs, Agathe gave up her appartement on the third floor, and sold all her superfluous furniture. When, at the end of a month, Philippe seemed to be convalescent, his mother coldly explained to him that the costs of his illness had taken all her ready money, that she should be obliged in future to work for her living, and she urged him, with the utmost kindness, to re-enter the army and support himself.
“You might have spared me that sermon,” said Philippe, looking at his mother with an eye that was cold from utter indifference. “I have seen all along that neither you nor my brother love me. I am alone in the world; I like it best!”
“Make yourself worthy of our affection,” answered the poor mother, struck to the very heart, “and we will give it back to you — ”
“Nonsense!” he cried, interrupting her.
He took his old hat, rubbed white at the edges, stuck it over one ear, and went downstairs, whistling.
“Philippe! where are you going without any money?” cried his mother, who could not repress her tears. “Here, take this — ”
She held out to him a hundred francs in gold, wrapped up in paper. Philippe came up the stairs he had just descended, and took the money.
“Well; won’t you kiss me?” she said, bursting into tears.
He pressed his mother in his arms, but without the warmth of feeling which was all that could give value to the embrace.
“Where shall you go?” asked Agathe.
“To Florentine, Girodeau’s mistress. Ah! they are real friends!” he answered brutally.
He went away. Agathe turned back with trembling limbs, and failing eyes, and aching heart. She fell upon her knees, prayed God to take her unnatural child into His own keeping, and abdicated her woeful motherhood.
CHAPTER VI
By February, 1822, Madame Bridau had settled into the attic room recently occupied by Philippe, which was over the kitchen of her former appartement. The painter’s studio and bedroom was opposite, on the other side of the staircase. When Joseph saw his mother thus reduced, he was determined to make her as comfortable as possible. After his brother’s departure he assisted in the re-arrangement of the garret room, to which he gave an artist’s touch. He added a rug; the bed, simple in character but exquisite in taste, had something monastic about it; the walls, hung with a cheap glazed cotton selected with taste, of a color which harmonized with the furniture and was newly covered, gave the room an air of elegance and nicety. In the hallway he added a double door, with a “portiere” to the inner one
. The window was shaded by a blind which gave soft tones to the light. If the poor mother’s life was reduced to the plainest circumstances that the life of any woman could have in Paris, Agathe was at least better off than all others in a like case, thanks to her son.
To save his mother from the cruel cares of such reduced housekeeping, Joseph took her every day to dine at a table-d’hote in the rue de Beaune, frequented by well-bred women, deputies, and titled people, where each person’s dinner cost ninety francs a month. Having nothing but the breakfast to provide, Agathe took up for her son the old habits she had formerly had with the father. But in spite of Joseph’s pious lies, she discovered the fact that her dinner was costing him nearly a hundred francs a month. Alarmed at such enormous expense, and not imaging that her son could earn much money by painting naked women, she obtained, thanks to her confessor, the Abbe Loraux, a place worth seven hundred francs a year in a lottery-office belonging to the Comtesse de Bauvan, the widow of a Chouan leader. The lottery-offices of the government, the lot, as one might say, of privileged widows, ordinarily sufficed for the support of the family of each person who managed them. But after the Restoration the difficulty of rewarding, within the limits of constitutional government, all the services rendered to the cause, led to the custom of giving to reduced women of title not only one but two lottery-offices, worth, usually, from six to ten thousand a year. In such cases, the widow of a general or nobleman thus “protected” did not keep the lottery-office herself; she employed a paid manager. When these managers were young men they were obliged to employ an assistant; for, according to law, the offices had to be kept open till midnight; moreover, the reports required by the minister of finance involved considerable writing. The Comtesse de Bauvan, to whom the Abbe Loraux explained the circumstances of the widow Bridau, promised, in case her manager should leave, to give the place to Agathe; meantime she stipulated that the widow should be taken as assistant, and receive a salary of six hundred francs. Poor Agathe, who was obliged to be at the office by ten in the morning, had scarcely time to get her dinner. She returned to her work at seven in the evening, remaining there till midnight. Joseph never, for two years, failed to fetch his mother at night, and bring her back to the rue Mazarin; and often he went to take her to dinner; his friends frequently saw him leave the opera or some brilliant salon to be punctually at midnight at the office in the rue Vivienne.
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 372