At the corner of one of these gloomy streets in the livelier half of the quarter, there existed from 1815 to 1823, and perhaps later, a public-house kept by a woman commonly called Mere Cognette. The house itself was tolerably well built, in courses of white stone, with the intermediary spaces filled in with ashlar and cement, one storey high with an attic above. Over the door was an enormous branch of pine, looking as though it were cast in Florentine bronze. As if this symbol were not explanatory enough, the eye was arrested by the blue of a poster which was pasted over the doorway, and on which appeared, above the words “Good Beer of Mars,” the picture of a soldier pouring out, in the direction of a very decolletee woman, a jet of foam which spurted in an arched line from the pitcher to the glass which she was holding towards him; the whole of a color to make Delacroix swoon.
The ground-floor was occupied by an immense hall serving both as kitchen and dining-room, from the beams of which hung, suspended by huge nails, the provisions needed for the custom of such a house. Behind this hall a winding staircase led to the upper storey; at the foot of the staircase a door led into a low, long room lighted from one of those little provincial courts, so narrow, dark, and sunken between tall houses, as to seem like the flue of a chimney. Hidden by a shed, and concealed from all eyes by walls, this low room was the place where the Bad Boys of Issoudun held their plenary court. Ostensibly, Pere Cognet boarded and lodged the country-people on market-days; secretly, he was landlord to the Knights of Idleness. This man, who was formerly a groom in a rich household, had ended by marrying La Cognette, a cook in a good family. The suburb of Rome still continues, like Italy and Poland, to follow the Latin custom of putting a feminine termination to the husband’s name and giving it to the wife.
By uniting their savings Pere Cognet and his spouse had managed to buy their present house. La Cognette, a woman of forty, tall and plump, with the nose of a Roxelane, a swarthy skin, jet-black hair, brown eyes that were round and lively, and a general air of mirth and intelligence, was selected by Maxence Gilet, on account of her character and her talent for cookery, as the Leonarde of the Order. Pere Cognet might be about fifty-six years old; he was thick-set, very much under his wife’s rule, and, according to a witticism which she was fond of repeating, he only saw things with a good eye — for he was blind of the other. In the course of seven years, that is, from 1816 to 1823, neither wife nor husband had betrayed what went on nightly at their house, or who they were that shared in the plot; they felt the liveliest regard for the Knights; their devotion was absolute. But this may seem less creditable if we remember that self-interest was the security of their affection and their silence. No matter at what hour of the night the Knights dropped in upon the tavern, the moment they knocked in a certain way Pere Cognet, recognizing the signal, got up, lit the fire and the candles, opened the door, and went to the cellar for a particular wine that was laid in expressly for the Order; while La Cognette cooked an excellent supper, eaten either before or after the expeditions, which were usually planned the previous evening or in the course of the preceding day.
CHAPTER VIII
While Joseph and Madame Bridau were journeying from Orleans to Issoudun, the Knights of Idleness perpetrated one of their best tricks. An old Spaniard, a former prisoner of war, who after the peace had remained in the neighborhood, where he did a small business in grain, came early one morning to market, leaving his empty cart at the foot of the tower of Issoudun. Maxence, who arrived at a rendezvous of the Knights, appointed on that occasion at the foot of the tower, was soon assailed with the whispered question, “What are we to do to-night?”
“Here’s Pere Fario’s cart,” he answered. “I nearly cracked my shins over it. Let us get it up on the embankment of the tower in the first place, and we’ll make up our minds afterwards.”
When Richard Coeur-de-Lion built the tower of Issoudun he raised it, as we have said, on the ruins of the basilica, which itself stood above the Roman temple and the Celtic Dun. These ruins, each of which represents a period of several centuries, form a mound big with the monuments of three distinct ages. The tower is, therefore, the apex of a cone, from which the descent is equally steep on all sides, and which is only approached by a series of steps. To give in a few words an idea of the height of this tower, we may compare it to the obelisk of Luxor on its pedestal. The pedestal of the tower of Issoudun, which hid within its breast such archaeological treasures, was eighty feet high on the side towards the town. In an hour the cart was taken off its wheels and hoisted, piece by piece, to the top of the embankment at the foot of the tower itself, — a work that was somewhat like that of the soldiers who carried the artillery over the pass of the Grand Saint-Bernard. The cart was then remounted on its wheels, and the Knights, by this time hungry and thirsty, returned to Mere Cognette’s, where they were soon seated round the table in the low room, laughing at the grimaces Fario would make when he came after his barrow in the morning.
The Knights, naturally, did not play such capers every night. The genius of Sganarelle, Mascarille, and Scapin combined would not have sufficed to invent three hundred and sixty-five pieces of mischief a year. In the first place, circumstances were not always propitious: sometimes the moon shone clear, or the last prank had greatly irritated their betters; then one or another of their number refused to share in some proposed outrage because a relation was involved. But if the scamps were not at Mere Cognette’s every night, they always met during the day, enjoying together the legitimate pleasures of hunting, or the autumn vintages and the winter skating. Among this assemblage of twenty youths, all of them at war with the social somnolence of the place, there are some who were more closely allied than others to Max, and who made him their idol. A character like his often fascinates other youths. The two grandsons of Madame Hochon — Francois Hochon and Baruch Borniche — were his henchmen. These young fellows, accepting the general opinion of the left-handed parentage of Lousteau, looked upon Max as their cousin. Max, moreover, was liberal in lending them money for their pleasures, which their grandfather Hochon refused; he took them hunting, let them see life, and exercised a much greater influence over them than their own family. They were both orphans, and were kept, although each had attained his majority, under the guardianship of Monsieur Hochon, for reasons which will be explained when Monsieur Hochon himself comes upon the scene.
At this particular moment Francois and Baruch (we will call them by their Christian names for the sake of clearness) were sitting, one on each side of Max, at the middle of a table that was rather ill lighted by the fuliginous gleams of four tallow candles of eight to the pound. A dozen to fifteen bottles of various wines had just been drunk, for only eleven of the Knights were present. Baruch — whose name indicates pretty clearly that Calvinism still kept some hold on Issoudun — said to Max, as the wine was beginning to unloose all tongues, —
“You are threatened in your stronghold.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Max.
“Why, my grandmother has had a letter from Madame Bridau, who is her goddaughter, saying that she and her son are coming here. My grandmother has been getting two rooms ready for them.”
“What’s that to me?” said Max, taking up his glass and swallowing the contents at a gulp with a comic gesture.
Max was then thirty-four years old. A candle standing near him threw a gleam upon his soldierly face, lit up his brow, and brought out admirably his clear skin, his ardent eyes, his black and slightly curling hair, which had the brilliancy of jet. The hair grew vigorously upward from the forehead and temples, sharply defining those five black tongues which our ancestors used to call the “five points.” Notwithstanding this abrupt contrast of black and white, Max’s face was very sweet, owing its charm to an outline like that which Raphael gave to the faces of his Madonnas, and to a well-cut mouth whose lips smiled graciously, giving an expression of countenance which Max had made distinctively his own. The rich coloring which blooms on a Berrichon cheek added still further
to his look of kindly good-humor. When he laughed heartily, he showed thirty-two teeth worthy of the mouth of a pretty woman. In height about five feet six inches, the young man was admirably well-proportioned, — neither too stout nor yet too thin. His hands, carefully kept, were white and rather handsome; but his feet recalled the suburb and the foot-soldier of the Empire. Max would certainly have made a good general of division; he had shoulders that were worth a fortune to a marshal of France, and a breast broad enough to wear all the orders of Europe. Every movement betrayed intelligence; born with grace and charm, like nearly all the children of love, the noble blood of his real father came out in him.
“Don’t you know, Max,” cried the son of a former surgeon-major named Goddet — now the best doctor in the town — from the other end of the table, “that Madame Hochon’s goddaughter is the sister of Rouget? If she is coming here with her son, no doubt she means to make sure of getting the property when he dies, and then — good-by to your harvest!”
Max frowned. Then, with a look which ran from one face to another all round the table, he watched the effect of this announcement on the minds of those present, and again replied, —
“What’s that to me?”
“But,” said Francois, “I should think that if old Rouget revoked his will, — in case he has made one in favor of the Rabouilleuse — ”
Here Max cut short his henchman’s speech. “I’ve stopped the mouths of people who have dared to meddle with you, my dear Francois,” he said; “and this is the way you pay your debts? You use a contemptuous nickname in speaking of a woman to whom I am known to be attached.”
Max had never before said as much as this about his relations with the person to whom Francois had just applied a name under which she was known at Issoudun. The late prisoner at Cabrera — the major of the grenadiers of the Guard — knew enough of what honor was to judge rightly as to the causes of the disesteem in which society held him. He had therefore never allowed any one, no matter who, to speak to him on the subject of Mademoiselle Flore Brazier, the servant-mistress of Jean-Jacques Rouget, so energetically termed a “slut” by the respectable Madame Hochon. Everybody knew it was too ticklish a subject with Max, ever to speak of it unless he began it; and hitherto he had never begun it. To risk his anger or irritate him was altogether too dangerous; so that even his best friends had never joked him about the Rabouilleuse. When they talked of his liaison with the girl before Major Potel and Captain Renard, with whom he lived on intimate terms, Potel would reply, —
“If he is the natural brother of Jean-Jacques Rouget where else would you have him live?”
“Besides, after all,” added Captain Renard, “the girl is a worthless piece, and if Max does live with her where’s the harm?”
After this merited snub, Francois could not at once catch up the thread of his ideas; but he was still less able to do so when Max said to him, gently, —
“Go on.”
“Faith, no!” cried Francois.
“You needn’t get angry, Max,” said young Goddet; “didn’t we agree to talk freely to each other at Mere Cognette’s? Shouldn’t we all be mortal enemies if we remembered outside what is said, or thought, or done here? All the town calls Flore Brazier the Rabouilleuse; and if Francois did happen to let the nickname slip out, is that a crime against the Order of Idleness?”
“No,” said Max, “but against our personal friendship. However, I thought better of it; I recollected we were in session, and that was why I said, ‘Go on.’”
A deep silence followed. The pause became so embarrassing for the whole company that Max broke it by exclaiming: —
“I’ll go on for him,” (sensation) “ — for all of you,” (amazement) “ — and tell you what you are thinking” (profound sensation). “You think that Flore, the Rabouilleuse, La Brazier, the housekeeper of Pere Rouget, — for they call him so, that old bachelor, who can never have any children! — you think, I say, that that woman supplies all my wants ever since I came back to Issoudun. If I am able to throw three hundred francs a month to the dogs, and treat you to suppers, — as I do to-night, — and lend money to all of you, you think I get the gold out of Mademoiselle Flore Brazier’s purse? Well, yes” (profound sensation). “Yes, ten thousand times yes! Yes, Mademoiselle Brazier is aiming straight for the old man’s property.”
“She gets it from father to son,” observed Goddet, in his corner.
“You think,” continued Max, smiling at Goddet’s speech, “that I intend to marry Flore when Pere Rouget dies, and so this sister and her son, of whom I hear to-night for the first time, will endanger my future?”
“That’s just it,” cried Francois.
“That is what every one thinks who is sitting round this table,” said Baruch.
“Well, don’t be uneasy, friends,” answered Max. “Forewarned is forearmed! Now then, I address the Knights of Idleness. If, to get rid of these Parisians I need the help of the Order, will you lend me a hand? Oh! within the limits we have marked out for our fooleries,” he added hastily, perceiving a general hesitation. “Do you suppose I want to kill them, — poison them? Thank God I’m not an idiot. Besides, if the Bridaus succeed, and Flore has nothing but what she stands in, I should be satisfied; do you understand that? I love her enough to prefer her to Mademoiselle Fichet, — if Mademoiselle Fichet would have me.”
Mademoiselle Fichet was the richest heiress in Issoudun, and the hand of the daughter counted for much in the reported passion of the younger Goddet for the mother. Frankness of speech is a pearl of such price that all the Knights rose to their feet as one man.
“You are a fine fellow, Max!”
“Well said, Max; we’ll stand by you!”
“A fig for the Bridaus!”
“We’ll bridle them!”
“After all, it is only three swains to a shepherdess.”
“The deuce! Pere Lousteau loved Madame Rouget; isn’t it better to love a housekeeper who is not yoked?”
“If the defunct Rouget was Max’s father, the affair is in the family.”
“Liberty of opinion now-a-days!”
“Hurrah for Max!”
“Down with all hypocrites!”
“Here’s a health to the beautiful Flore!”
Such were the eleven responses, acclamations, and toasts shouted forth by the Knights of Idleness, and characteristic, we may remark, of their excessively relaxed morality. It is now easy to see what interest Max had in becoming their grand master. By leading the young men of the best families in their follies and amusements, and by doing them services, he meant to create a support for himself when the day for recovering his position came. He rose gracefully and waved his glass of claret, while all the others waited eagerly for the coming allocution.
“As a mark of the ill-will I bear you, I wish you all a mistress who is equal to the beautiful Flore! As to this irruption of relations, I don’t feel any present uneasiness; and as to the future, we’ll see what comes — ”
“Don’t let us forget Fario’s cart!”
“Hang it! that’s safe enough!” said Goddet.
“Oh! I’ll engage to settle that business,” cried Max. “Be in the market-place early, all of you, and let me know when the old fellow goes for his cart.”
It was striking half-past three in the morning as the Knights slipped out in silence to go to their homes; gliding close to the walls of the houses without making the least noise, shod as they were in list shoes. Max slowly returned to the place Saint-Jean, situated in the upper part of the town, between the port Saint-Jean and the port Vilatte, the quarter of the rich bourgeoisie. Maxence Gilet had concealed his fears, but the news had struck home. His experience on the hulks at Cabrera had taught him a dissimulation as deep and thorough as his corruption. First, and above all else, the forty thousand francs a year from landed property which old Rouget owned was, let it be clearly understood, the constituent element of Max’s passion for Flore Brazier. By his present bearing it is easy to see
how much confidence the woman had given him in the financial future she expected to obtain through the infatuation of the old bachelor. Nevertheless, the news of the arrival of the legitimate heirs was of a nature to shake Max’s faith in Flore’s influence. Rouget’s savings, accumulating during the last seventeen years, still stood in his own name; and even if the will, which Flore declared had long been made in her favor, were revoked, these savings at least might be secured by putting them in the name of Mademoiselle Brazier.
“That fool of a girl never told me, in all these seven years, a word about the sister and nephews!” cried Max, turning from the rue de la Marmouse into the rue l’Avenier. “Seven hundred and fifty thousand francs placed with different notaries at Bourges, and Vierzon, and Chateauroux, can’t be turned into money and put into the Funds in a week, without everybody knowing it in this gossiping place! The most important thing is to get rid of these relations; as soon as they are driven away we ought to make haste to secure the property. I must think it over.”
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 377