Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  “But you know, my dear Vanda, that the boy and I cannot bear that any one should wait upon you but ourselves!”

  Those sentences, which Godefroid heard through the door, or rather divined, for a heavy portiere on the inside smothered the sounds, gave him an inkling of the truth. The sick woman, surrounded by luxury, was evidently kept in ignorance of the real situation of her father and son. The violet silk dressing-gown of Monsieur Bernard, the flowers, his remarks to Cartier, had already roused some suspicion of this in Godefroid’s mind. The young man stood still where he was, bewildered by this prodigy of paternal love. The contrast, such as he imagined it, between the invalid’s room and the rest of that squalid place, — yes, it was bewildering!

  XIV. HOW THE POOR AND HELPLESS ARE PREYED UPON

  Through the door of a third chamber, which the old man had left open, Godefroid beheld two cots of painted wood, like those of the cheapest boarding-schools, each with a straw bed and a thin mattress, on which there was but one blanket. A small iron stove like those that porters cook by, near which lay a few squares of peat, would alone have shown the poverty of the household without the help of other details.

  Advancing a step or two, Godefroid saw utensils such as the poorest persons use, — earthenware jugs, and pans in which potatoes floated in dirty water. Two tables of blackened wood, covered with books and papers, stood before the windows that looked out upon the rue Notre-Dame des Champs, and indicated the nocturnal occupations of father and son. On each of the tables was a flat iron candlestick, such as are used by the very poor, and in them Godefroid noticed tallow-candles of the kind that are sold at eight to the pound.

  On a third table glittered two forks and spoons and another little spoon of silver-gilt, together with plates, bowls, and cups of Sevres china, and a silver-gilt knife and fork in an open case, all evidently for the service of the sick woman.

  The stove was lighted; the water in the copper was steaming slightly. A painted wooden closet or wardrobe contained, no doubt, the linen and clothing of Monsieur Bernard’s daughter. On the old man’s bed Godefroid noticed that the habiliments he had worn the night before lay spread as a covering. The floor, evidently seldom swept, looked like that of a boy’s class-room. A six-pound loaf of bread, from which some slices had been cut, was on a shelf above the table. Here was poverty in its last stages, poverty resolutely accepted with stern endurance, making shift with the lowest and poorest means. A strong and sickening odor came from this room, which was rarely cleaned.

  The antechamber, in which Godefroid stood, was at any rate decent, and he suspected that it served to conceal the horrors of the room in which the grandfather and the grandson lived. This antechamber, hung with a checked paper of Scotch pattern, held four walnut chairs, a small table, a colored engraving of the Emperor after Horace Vernet, also portraits of Louis XVIII., Charles X., and Prince Poniatowski, no doubt the friend of Monsieur Bernard’s father-in-law. The window was draped with white calico curtains edged with red bands and fringe.

  Godefroid watched for Nepomucene, and when the latter made his next trip with wood signed to him to stack it very gently in Monsieur Bernard’s antechamber; then (a perception which proved some progress in our initiate) he closed the door of the inner lair that Madame Vauthier’s slave might not see the old man’s squalor.

  The antechamber was just then encumbered with three plant-stands filled with plants; two were oblong, one round, all three were of a species of ebony and of great elegance; even Nepomucene took notice of them and said as he deposited the wood: —

  “Hey! ain’t they pretty? They must have cost a good bit!”

  “Jean! don’t make so much noise!” called Monsieur Bernard from his daughter’s room.

  “Did you hear that?” whispered Nepomucene to Godefroid. “He’s cracked, for sure, that old fellow.”

  “You don’t know what you may be at his age.”

  “Yes, I do know,” responded Nepomucene, “I shall be in the sugar-bowl.”

  “The sugar-bowl?”

  “Yes, they’ll have made my bones into charcoal by that time; I often see the carts of the refineries coming to Montsouris for charcoal; they tell me they make sugar of it.” And he departed after another load of wood, satisfied with this philosophical reflection.

  Godefroid discreetly withdrew to his own rooms, closing Monsieur Bernard’s door behind him. Madame Vauthier, who during this time had been preparing her new lodger’s breakfast, now came up to serve it, attended by Felicite. Godefroid, lost in reflection, stared into his fire. He was absorbed in meditation on this great misery which contained so many different miseries, and yet within which he could see the ineffable joys of the many triumphs of paternal and filial love; they were gems shining in the blackness of the pit.

  “What romances, even those that are most famous, can equal such realities?” he thought. “What a life it will be to relieve the burden of such existences, to seek out causes and effects and remedy them, calming sorrows, helping good; to incarnate one’s own being in misery; to familiarize one’s self with homes like that; to act out constantly in life those dramas which move us so in fiction! I never imagined that good could be more interesting, more piquant than vice.”

  “Is monsieur satisfied with his breakfast?” asked Madame Vauthier, who now, with Felicite’s assistance, brought the table close to Godefroid.

  Godefroid then saw a cup of excellent cafe au lait with a smoking omelet, fresh butter, and little red radishes.

  “Where the devil did you get those radishes?” he asked.

  “They were given me by Monsieur Cartier,” answered Madame Vauthier; “and I make a present of them to monsieur.”

  “And what are you going to ask me for such a breakfast daily?”

  “Well now, monsieur, be fair, — I couldn’t do it for less than thirty sous.”

  “Very good, thirty sous then;” said Godefroid; “but how is it that they ask me only forty-five francs a month for dinner, close by here at Machillot’s? That is the same price you ask me for breakfast.”

  “But what a difference, monsieur, between preparing a dinner for fifteen or twenty persons and going out to get you just what you want for breakfast! See here! there’s a roll, eggs, butter, the cost of lighting a fire, sugar, milk, coffee! — just think! they ask you sixteen sous for a cup of coffee alone on the place de l’Odeon, and then you have to give a sou or two to the waiter. Here you have no trouble; you can breakfast in slippers.”

  “Very well, very well,” said Godefroid.

  “Without Madame Cartier who supplies me with milk and eggs and herbs I couldn’t manage it. You ought to go and see their establishment, monsieur. Ha! it’s fine! They employ five journeymen gardeners, and Nepomucene goes there in summer to draw water for them; they hire him of me as a waterer. They make lots of money out of melons and strawberries. It seems monsieur takes quite an interest in Monsieur Bernard,” continued the widow in dulcet tones; “or he wouldn’t be responsible for his debts. Perhaps he doesn’t know all that family owes. There’s the lady who keeps the circulating library on the place Saint-Michel; she is always coming here after thirty francs they owe her, — and she needs it, God knows! That sick woman in there, she reads, reads, reads! Two sous a volume makes thirty francs in three months.”

  “That means a hundred volumes a month,” said Godefroid.

  “Ah! there’s the old man going now to fetch a roll and cream for his daughter’s tea, — yes, tea! she lives on tea, that lady. She drinks it twice a day. And twice a week she has to have sweet things. Oh! she’s dainty! The old man buys cakes and pates from the pastry cook in the rue de Buci. He don’t care what he spends, if it’s for her. He calls her his daughter! It ain’t often that men of his age do for a daughter what he does for her! He just kills himself, he and Auguste too, for that woman. Monsieur is just like me; I’d give anything to see her. Monsieur Berton says she’s a monster, — something like those they show for money. That’s the reason they’ve come
to live here, in this lonely quarter. Well, so monsieur thinks of dining at Madame Machillot’s, does he?”

  “Yes, I think of making an arrangement there.”

  “Monsieur, it isn’t that I want to interfere, but I must say, comparing food with food, you’d do much better to dine in the rue de Tournon; you needn’t engage by the month, and you’ll find a better table.”

  “Whereabouts in the rue de Tournon?”

  “At the successors to Madame Giraud. That’s where the gentlemen upstairs go; they are satisfied, and more than satisfied.”

  “Well, I’ll take your advice and dine there to-day.”

  “My dear monsieur,” said the woman, emboldened by the good-nature which Godefroid intentionally assumed, “tell me seriously, you are not going to be such a muff as to pay Monsieur Bernard’s debts? It would really trouble me if you did; for just reflect, my kind monsieur Godefroid, he’s nearly seventy, and after him, what then? not a penny of pension! How’ll you get paid? Young men are so imprudent! Do you know that he owes three thousand francs?”

  “To whom?” inquired Godefroid.

  “Oh! to whom? that’s not my affair,” said the widow, mysteriously; “it is enough that he does owe them. Between ourselves I’ll tell you this: somebody will soon be down on him for that money, and he can’t get a penny of credit now in the quarter just on that account.”

  “Three thousand francs!” repeated Godefroid; “oh, you needn’t be afraid I’ll lend him that. If I had three thousand francs to dispose of I shouldn’t be your lodger. But I can’t bear to see others suffer, and just for a hundred or so of francs I sha’n’t let my neighbor, a man with white hair too, lack for bread or wood; why, one often loses as much as that at cards. But three thousand francs! good heavens! what are you thinking of?”

  Madame Vauthier, deceived by Godefroid’s apparent frankness, let a smile of satisfaction appear on her specious face, which confirmed all her lodger’s suspicions. Godefroid was convinced that the old woman was an accomplice in some plot that was brewing against the unfortunate old man.

  “It is strange, monsieur,” she went on, “what fancies one takes into one’s head! You’ll think me very curious, but yesterday, when I saw you talking with Monsieur Bernard I said to myself that you were the clerk of some publisher; for this, you know, is a publisher’s quarter. I once lodged the foreman of a printing-house in the rue de Vaugirard, and his name was the same as yours — ”

  “What does my business signify to you?” interrupted Godefroid.

  “Oh, pooh! you can tell me, or you needn’t tell me; I shall know it all the same,” retorted Vauthier. “There’s Monsieur Bernard, for instance, for eighteen months he concealed everything from me, but on the nineteenth I discovered that he had been a magistrate, a judge somewhere or other, I forget where, and was writing a book on law matters. What did he gain by concealing it, I ask you. If he had told me I’d have said nothing about it — so there!”

  “I am not yet a publisher’s clerk, but I expect to be,” said Godefroid.

  “I thought so!” exclaimed Madame Vauthier, turning round from the bed she had been making as a pretext for staying in the room. “You have come here to cut the ground from under the feet of — Good! a man warned is a man armed.”

  “Stop!” cried Godefroid, placing himself between the Vauthier and the door. “Look here, what interest have you in the matter?”

  “Gracious!” said the old woman, eyeing Godefroid cautiously, “you’re a bold one, anyhow.”

  She went to the door of the outer room and bolted it; then she came back and sat down on a chair beside the fire.

  “On my word of honor, and as sure as my name is Vauthier, I took you for a student until I saw you giving your wood to that old Bernard. Ha! you’re a sly one; and what a play-actor! I was so certain you were a ninny! Look here, will you guarantee me a thousand francs? As sure as the sun shines, my old Barbet and Monsieur Metivier have promised me five hundred to keep my eyes open for them.”

  “They! five hundred francs! nonsense!” cried Godefroid. “I know their ways; two hundred is the very most, my good woman, and even that is only promised; you can’t assign it. But I will say this: if you will put me in the way to do the business they want to do with Monsieur Bernard I will pay you four hundred francs. Now, then, how does the matter stand?”

  “They have advanced fifteen hundred francs upon the work,” said Madame Vauthier, making no further effort at deception, “and the old man has signed an acknowledgment for three thousand. They wouldn’t do it under a hundred per cent. He thought he could easily pay them out of his book, but they have arranged to get the better of him there. It was they who sent Cartier here, and the other creditors.”

  Here Godefroid gave the old woman a glance of ironical intelligence, which showed her that he saw through the role she was playing in the interest of her proprietor. Her words were, in fact, a double illumination to Godefroid; the curious scene between himself and the gardener was now explained.

  “Well,” she resumed, “they have got him now. Where is he to find three thousand francs? They intend to offer him five hundred the day he puts the first volume of his book into their hands, and five hundred for each succeeding volume. The affair isn’t in their names; they have put it into the hands of a publisher whom Barbet set up on the quai des Augustins.”

  “What, that little fellow?”

  “Yes, that little Morand, who was formerly Barbet’s clerk. It seems they expect a good bit of money out of the affair.”

  “There’s a good bit to spend,” said Godefroid, with a significant grimace.

  Just then a gentle rap was heard at the door of the outer room. Godefroid, glad of the interruption, having got all he wanted to know out of Madame Vauthier, went to open it.

  “What is said, is said, Madame Vauthier,” he remarked as he did so. The visitor was Monsieur Bernard.

  “Ah! Monsieur Bernard,” cried the widow when she saw him, “I’ve got a letter downstairs for you.”

  The old man followed her down a few steps. When they were out of hearing from Godefroid’s room she stopped.

  “No,” she said, “I haven’t any letter; I only wanted to tell you to beware of that young man; he belongs to a publishing house.”

  “That explains everything,” thought the old man.

  He went back to his neighbor with a very different expression of countenance.

  The look of calm coldness with which Monsieur Bernard now entered the room contrasted so strongly with the frank and cordial air he had worn not an instant earlier that Godefroid was forcibly struck by it.

  “Pardon me, monsieur,” said the old man, stiffly, “but you have shown me many favors, and a benefactor creates certain rights in those he benefits.”

  Godefroid bowed.

  “I, who for the last five years have endured a passion like that of our Lord, I, who for thirty-six years represented social welfare, government, public vengeance, have, as you may well believe, no illusions — no, I have nothing left but anguish. Well, monsieur, I was about to say that your little act in closing the door of my wretched lair, that simple little thing, was to me the glass of water Bossuet tells of. Yes, I did find in my heart, that exhausted heart which cannot weep, just as my withered body cannot sweat, I did find a last drop of the elixir which makes us fancy in our youth that all human beings are noble, and I came to offer you my hand; I came to bring you that celestial flower of belief in good — ”

  “Monsieur Bernard,” said Godefroid, remembering the kind old Alain’s lessons. “I have done nothing to obtain your gratitude. You are quite mistaken.”

  “Ah, that is frankness indeed!” said the former magistrate. “Well, it pleases me. I was about to reproach you; pardon me, I now esteem you. So you are a publisher, and you have come here to get my work away from Barbet, Metivier, and Morand? All is now explained. You are making me advances in money as they did, only you do it with some grace.”

  “Did Madame Va
uthier just tell you that I was employed by a publisher?” asked Godefroid.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then, Monsieur Bernard, before I can say how much I can give over what those other gentlemen offer, I must know the terms on which you stand with them.”

  “That is fair,” said Monsieur Bernard, who seemed rather pleased to find himself the object of a competition by which he might profit. “Do you know what my work is?”

  “No; I only know it is a good enterprise from a business point of view.”

  “It is only half-past nine, my daughter has breakfasted, and Cartier will not bring the flowers for an hour or more; we have time to talk, Monsieur — Monsieur who?”

  “Godefroid.”

  “Monsieur Godefroid, the work in question was projected by me in 1825, at the time when the ministry, being alarmed by the persistent destruction of landed estates, proposed that law of primogeniture which was, you will remember, defeated. I had remarked certain imperfections in our codes and in the fundamental institutions of France. Our codes have often been the subject of important works, but those works were all from the point of view of jurisprudence. No one had even ventured to consider the work of the Revolution, or (if you prefer it) of Napoleon, as a whole; no one had studied the spirit of those laws, and judged them in their application. That is the main purpose of my work; it is entitled, provisionally, ‘The Spirit of the New Laws;’ it includes organic laws as well as codes, all codes; for we have many more than five codes. Consequently, my work is in several volumes; six in all, the last being a volume of citations, notes, and references. It will take me now about three months to finish it. The proprietor of this house, a former publisher, of whom I made a few inquiries, perceived, scented I may say, the chance of a speculation. I, in the first instance, thought only of doing a service to my country, and not of my own profit. Well, this Barbet has circumvented me. You will ask me how it was possible for a publisher to get the better of a magistrate, a man who knows the laws. Well, it was in this way: You know my history; Barbet is an usurer; he has the keen glance and the shrewd action of that breed of men. His money was always at my heels to help me over my worst needs. Strange to say, on the days I was most defenceless against despair he happened to appear.”