So saying, he looked fixedly at la Peyrade.
“Parbleu!” said the latter in a natural tone of voice, “it was seized because they chose to seize it. They wanted to find, and they found, because they always find the things they want, what the king’s adherents call ‘subversive doctrine.’”
“No, you are wrong,” said Thuillier; “the seizure was planned, concocted, and agreed upon before publication.”
“Between whom?” asked la Peyrade.
“Between those who wanted to kill the pamphlet, and the wretches who were paid to betray it.”
“Well, in any case, those who paid,” said la Peyrade, “got mighty little for their money; for, persecuted though it was, I don’t see that your pamphlet made much of a stir.”
“Those who sold may have done better?” said Thuillier with redoubled irony.
“Those who sold,” returned la Peyrade, “were the cleverer of the two.”
“Ah, I know,” said Thuillier, “that you think a great deal of cleverness; but allow me to tell you that the police, whose hand I see in all this, doesn’t usually throw its money away.”
And again he looked fixedly at la Peyrade.
“So,” said the barrister, without winking, “you have discovered that the police had plotted in advance the smothering of your pamphlet?”
“Yes, my dear fellow; and what is more, I know the actual sum paid to the person who agreed to carry out this honorable plot.”
“The person,” said la Peyrade, thinking a moment, — ”perhaps I know the person; but as for the money, I don’t know a word about that.”
“Well, I can tell you the amount. It was twenty-five — thousand — francs,” said Thuillier, dwelling on each word; “that was the sum paid to Judas.”
“Oh! excuse me, my dear fellow, but twenty-five thousand francs is a good deal of money. I don’t deny that you have become an important man; but you are not such a bugbear to the government as to lead it to make such sacrifices. Twenty-five thousand francs is as much as would ever be given for the suppression of one of those annoying pamphlets about the Civil list. But our financial lucubrations didn’t annoy in that way; and such a sum borrowed from the secret-service money for the mere pleasure of plaguing you, seems to me rather fabulous.”
“Apparently,” said Thuillier, acrimoniously, “this honest go-between had some interest in exaggerating my value. One thing is very sure; this monsieur had a debt of twenty-five thousand francs which harassed him much; and a short time before the seizure this same monsieur, who had no means of his own, paid off that debt; and unless you can tell me where else he got the money, the inference I think is not difficult to draw.”
It was la Peyrade’s turn to look fixedly at Thuillier.
“Monsieur Thuillier,” he said, raising his voice, “let us get out of enigmas and generalities; will you do me the favor to name that person?”
“Well, no,” replied Thuillier, striking his hand upon the table, “I shall not name him, because of the sentiments of esteem and affection which formerly united us; but you have understood me, Monsieur la Peyrade.”
“I ought to have known,” said the Provencal, in a voice changed by emotion, “that in bringing a serpent to this place I should soon be soiled by his venom. Poor fool! do you not see that you have made yourself the echo of Cerizet’s calumny?”
“Cerizet has nothing to do with it; on the contrary, he has told me the highest good of you. How was it, not having a penny the night before, — and I had reason to know it, — that you were able to pay Dutocq the round sum of twenty-five thousand francs the next day?”
La Peyrade reflected for a moment.
“No,” he said, “it was not Dutocq who told you that. He is not a man to wrestle with an enemy of my strength without a strong interest in it. It was Cerizet; he’s the infamous calumniator, from whose hands I wrenched the lease of your house near the Madeleine, — Cerizet, whom in kindness, I went to seek on his dunghill that I might give him the chance of honorable employment; that is the wretch, to whom a benefit is only an encouragement to treachery. Tiens! if I were to tell you what that man is I should turn you sick with disgust; in the sphere of infamy he has discovered worlds.”
This time Thuillier made an able reply.
“I don’t know anything about Cerizet except through you,” he said; “you introduced him to me as a manager, offering every guarantee; but, allowing him to be blacker than the devil, and supposing that this communication comes from him, I don’t see, my friend, that all that makes YOU any the whiter.”
“No doubt I was to blame,” said la Peyrade, “for putting such a man into relations with you; but we wanted some one who understood journalism, and that value he really had for us. But who can ever sound the depths of souls like his? I thought him reformed. A manager, I said to myself, is only a machine; he can do no harm. I expected to find him a man of straw; well, I was mistaken, he will never be anything but a man of mud.”
“All that is very fine,” said Thuillier, “but those twenty-five thousand francs found so conveniently in your possession, where did you get them? That is the point you are forgetting to explain.”
“But to reason about it,” said la Peyrade; “a man of my character in the pay of the police and yet so poor that I could not pay the ten thousand francs your harpy of a sister demanded with an insolence which you yourself witnessed — ”
“But,” said Thuillier, “if the origin of this money is honest, as I sincerely desire it may be, what hinders you from telling me how you got it?”
“I cannot,” said la Peyrade; “the history of that money is a secret entrusted to me professionally.”
“Come, come, you told me yourself that the statutes of your order forbid all barristers from doing business of any kind.”
“Let us suppose,” said la Peyrade, “that I have done something not absolutely regular; it would be strange indeed after what I risked, as you know, for you, if you should have the face to reproach me with it.”
“My poor friend, you are trying to shake off the hounds; but you can’t make me lose the scent. You wish to keep your secret; then keep it. I am master of my own confidence and my own esteem; by paying you the forfeit stipulated in our deed I take the newspaper into my own hands.”
“Do you mean that you dismiss me?” cried la Peyrade. “The money that you have put into the affair, all your chances of election, sacrificed to the calumnies of such a being as Cerizet!”
“In the first place,” said Thuillier, “another editor-in-chief can be found; it is a true saying that no man is indispensable. As for election to the Chamber I would rather never receive it than owe it to the help of one who — ”
“Go on,” said la Peyrade, seeing that Thuillier hesitated, “or rather, no, be silent, for you will presently blush for your suspicions and ask my pardon humbly.”
By this time la Peyrade saw that without a confession to which he must compel himself, the influence and the future he had just recovered would be cut from under his feet. Resuming his speech he said, solemnly: —
“You will remember, my friend, that you were pitiless, and, by subjecting me to a species of moral torture, you have forced me to reveal to you a secret that is not mine.”
“Go on,” said Thuillier, “I take the whole responsibility upon myself. Make me see the truth clearly in this darkness, and if I have done wrong I will be the first to say so.”
“Well,” said la Peyrade, “those twenty-five thousand francs are the savings of a servant-woman who came to me and asked me to take them and to pay her interest.”
“A servant with twenty-five thousand francs of savings! Nonsense; she must serve in monstrously rich households.”
“On the contrary, she is the one servant of an infirm old savant; and it was on account of the discrepancy which strikes your mind that she wanted to put her money in my hands as a sort of trustee.”
“Bless me! my friend,” said Thuillier, flippantly, “you said we were i
n want of a romance-feuilletonist; but really, after this, I sha’n’t be uneasy. Here’s imagination for you!”
“What?” said la Peyrade, angrily, “you don’t believe me?”
“No, I do not believe you. Twenty-five thousand francs savings in the service of an old savant! that is about as believable as the officer of La Dame Blanche buying a chateau with his pay.”
“But if I prove to you the truth of my words; if I let you put your finger upon it?”
“In that case, like Saint Thomas, I shall lower my flag before the evidence. Meanwhile you must permit me, my noble friend, to wait until you offer me that proof.”
Thuillier felt really superb.
“I’d give a hundred francs,” he said to himself, “if Brigitte could have been here and heard me impeach him.”
“Well,” said la Peyrade, “suppose that without leaving this office, and by means of a note which you shall read, I bring into your presence the person from whom I received the money; if she confirms what I say will you believe me?”
This proposal and the assurance with which it was made rather staggered Thuillier.
“I shall know what to do when the time comes,” he replied, changing his tone. “But this must be done at once, now, here.”
“I said, without leaving this office. I should think that was clear enough.”
“And who will carry the note you write?” asked Thuillier, believing that by thus examining every detail he was giving proofs of amazing perspicacity.
“Carry the note! why, your own porter of course,” replied la Peyrade; “you can send him yourself.”
“Then write it,” said Thuillier, determined to push him to the wall.
La Peyrade took a sheet of paper with the new heading and wrote as follows, reading the note aloud: —
Madame Lambert is requested to call at once, on urgent business,
at the office of the “Echo de la Bievre,” rue Saint-Dominique
d’Enfer. The bearer of this note will conduct her. She is awaited
impatiently by her devoted servant,
Theodose de la Peyrade.
“There, will that suit you?” said the barrister, passing the paper to Thuillier.
“Perfectly,” replied Thuillier, taking the precaution to fold the letter himself and seal it. “Put the address,” he added.
Then he rang the bell for the porter.
“You will carry this letter to its address,” he said to the man, “and bring back with you the person named. But will she be there?” he asked, on reflection.
“It is more than probable,” replied la Peyrade; “in any case, neither you nor I will leave this room until she comes. This matter must be cleared up.”
“Then go!” said Thuillier to the porter, in a theatrical tone.
When they were alone, la Peyrade took up a newspaper and appeared to be absorbed in its perusal.
Thuillier, beginning to get uneasy as to the upshot of the affair, regretted that he had not done something the idea of which had come to him just too late.
“Yes, I ought,” he said to himself, “to have torn up that letter, and not driven him to prove his words.”
Wishing to do something that might look like retaining la Peyrade in the position of which he had threatened to deprive him, he remarked presently: —
“By the bye, I have just come from the printing-office; the new type has arrived, and I think we might make our first appearance to-morrow.”
La Peyrade did not answer; but he got up and took his paper nearer to the window.
“He is sulky,” thought Thuillier, “and if he is innocent, he may well be. But, after all, why did he ever bring a man like that Cerizet here?”
Then to hide his embarrassment and the preoccupation of his mind, he sat down before the editor’s table, took a sheet of the head-lined paper and made himself write a letter.
Presently la Peyrade returned to the table and sitting down, took another sheet and with the feverish rapidity of a man stirred by some emotion he drove his pen over the paper.
From the corner of his eye, Thuillier tried hard to see what la Peyrade was writing, and noticing that his sentences were separated by numbers placed between brackets, he said: —
“Tiens! are you drawing up a parliamentary law?”
“Yes,” replied la Peyrade, “the law of the vanquished.”
Soon after this, the porter opened the door and introduced Madame Lambert, whom he had found at home, and who arrived looking rather frightened.
“You are Madame Lambert?” asked Thuillier, magisterially.
“Yes, monsieur,” said the woman, in an anxious voice.
After requesting her to be seated and noticing that the porter was still there as if awaiting further orders he said to the man: —
“That will do; you may go; and don’t let any one disturb us.”
The gravity and the lordly tone assumed by Thuillier only increased Madame Lambert’s uneasiness. She came expecting to see only la Peyrade, and she found herself received by an unknown man with a haughty manner, while the barrister, who had merely bowed to her, said not a word; moreover, the scene took place in a newspaper office, and it is a well-known fact that to pious persons especially all that relates to the press is infernal and diabolical.
“Well,” said Thuillier to the barrister, “it seems to me that nothing hinders you from explaining to madame why you have sent for her.”
In order to leave no loophole for suspicion in Thuillier’s mind la Peyrade knew that he must put his question bluntly and without the slightest preparation; he therefore said to her “ex abrupto”: —
“We wish to ask you, madame, if it is not true that about two and a half months ago you placed in my hands, subject to interest, the sum, in round numbers, of twenty-five thousand francs.”
Though she felt the eyes of Thuillier and those of la Peyrade upon her, Madame Lambert, under the shock of this question fired at her point-blank, could not restrain a start.
“Heavens!” she exclaimed, “twenty-five thousand francs! and where should I get such a sum as that?”
La Peyrade gave no sign on his face of the vexation he might be supposed to feel. As for Thuillier, who now looked at him with sorrowful commiseration, he merely said: —
“You see, my friend!”
“So,” resumed la Peyrade, “you are very certain that you did not place in my hands the sum of twenty-five thousand francs; you declare this, you affirm it?”
“Why, monsieur! did you ever hear of such a sum as that in the pocket of a poor woman like me? The little that I had, as everybody knows, has gone to eke out the housekeeping of that poor dear gentleman whose servant I have been for more than twenty years.”
“This,” said Thuillier, pompously, “seems to me categorical.”
La Peyrade still did not show the slightest sign of annoyance; on the contrary, he seemed to be playing into Thuillier’s hand.
“You hear, my dear Thuillier,” he said, “and if necessary I shall call for your testimony, that madame here declares that she did not possess twenty-five thousand francs and could not therefore have placed them in my hands. Now, as the notary Dupuis, in whose hands I fancied I had placed them, left Paris this morning for Brussels carrying with him the money of all his clients, I have no account with madame, by her own showing, and the absconding of the notary — ”
“Has the notary Dupuis absconded?” screamed Madame Lambert, driven by this dreadful news entirely out of her usual tones of dulcet sweetness and Christian resignation. “Ah, the villain! it was only this morning that he was taking the sacrament at Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas.”
“To pray for a safe journey, probably,” said la Peyrade.
“Monsieur talks lightly enough,” continued Madame Lambert, “though that brigand has carried off my savings. But I gave them to monsieur, and monsieur is answerable to me for them; he is the only one I know in this transaction.”
“Hey?” said la Peyrade to Thuillier
, pointing to Madame Lambert, whose whole demeanor had something of the mother-wolf suddenly bereft of her cubs; “is that nature? tell me! Do you think now that madame and I are playing a comedy for your benefit?”
“I am thunderstruck at Cerizet’s audacity,” said Thuillier. “I am overwhelmed with my own stupidity; there is nothing for me to do but to submit myself entirely to your discretion.”
“Madame,” said la Peyrade, gaily, “excuse me for thus frightening you; the notary Dupuis is still a very saintly man, and quite incapable of doing an injury to his clients. As for monsieur here, it was necessary that I should prove to him that you had really placed that money in my hands; he is, however, another myself, and your secret, though known to him, is as safe as it is with me.”
“Oh, very good, monsieur!” said Madame Lambert. “I suppose these gentlemen have no further need of me?”
“No, my dear madame, and I beg you to pardon me for the little terror I was compelled to occasion you.”
Madame Lambert turned to leave the room with all the appearance of respectful humility, but when she reached the door, she retraced her steps, and coming close to la Peyrade said, in her smoothest tones: —
“When does monsieur expect to be able to refund me that money?”
“But I told you,” said la Peyrade, stiffly, “that notaries never return on demand the money placed in their hands.”
“Does monsieur think that if I went to see Monsieur Dupuis himself and asked him — ”
“I think,” said la Peyrade, interrupting her, “that you would do a most ridiculous thing. He received the money from me in my own name, as you requested, and he knows only me in the matter.”
“Then monsieur will be so kind, will he not, as to get back that money for me as soon as possible? I am sure I would not wish to press monsieur, but in two or three months from now I may want it; I have heard of a little property it would suit me to buy.”
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 837