“At that rate,” said Madame de Rastignac, laughing, while Madame de l’Estorade was silent, disdaining to reply, “the political world must be peopled by none but scoundrels.”
“That is so, madame, — ask Lazarille”; and as he made this allusion to a famous stage joke, he laid his hand on the minister’s shoulder.
“My dear fellow,” said Rastignac, “I think your generalities are a little too particular.”
“No, no; but come,” returned Monsieur de Ronquerolles, “let us talk seriously. To my knowledge, this Monsieur de Sallenauve — that is the name I think he has taken in exchange for Dorlange, which he himself called theatrical — has done, within a short time, two fine actions. I, being present and assisting, saw him stand up to be killed by the Duc de Rhetore, on account of certain ill-sounding words said about a friend. Those words, in the first place, he could not help hearing; and having heard them it was, I will not say his duty, but his right to resent them.”
“Ah!” said Madame de Rastignac, “then it was he who fought that duel people said so much about?”
“Yes, madame, and I ought to say — for I understand such matters — that at the meeting he behaved with consummate bravery.”
To avoid the recital of the second fine action, Madame de l’Estorade, at the risk of impolitely cutting short a topic thus begun, rose, and made an almost imperceptible sign to her husband that she wished to go. But Monsieur de l’Estorade took advantage of its faintness to stay where he was.
Monsieur de Ronquerolles continued: —
“His other fine action was to throw himself in front of some runaway horses to save madame’s daughter from imminent death.”
All eyes turned on Madame de l’Estorade, who, this time, blushed deeply; but recovering speech, if only in order to seem composed, she said with feeling, —
“According to your theory of heroism you must think Monsieur de Sallenauve very foolish to have thus risked his life and his future; but I assure you that there is one woman who will never agree with you, and that is — the mother of my child.”
As she said the words, tears were in Madame de l’Estorade’s voice; she pressed Madame de Rastignac’s hand affectionately, and made so decided a movement to leave the room that she finally put in motion her immovable husband.
“Thank you,” said Madame de Rastignac, as she accompanied her to the door, “for having broken a lance with that cynic; Monsieur de Rastignac’s past life has left him with odious acquaintances.”
As she resumed her place, Monsieur de Ronquerolles was saying, —
“Ha! saved her child’s life indeed! The fact is that poor l’Estorade is turning as yellow as a lemon.”
“Ah, monsieur, but that is shocking,” cried Madame de Rastignac. “A woman whom no breath of slander has ever touched; who lives only for her husband and children; whose eyes were full of tears at the mere thought of the danger the child had run! — ”
“Heavens! madame,” retorted Monsieur de Ronquerolles, paying no heed to the rebuke, “all I can say is that newfoundlands are always dangerous. If Madame de l’Estorade becomes too much compromised, she has one resource, — she can marry him to the girl he saved.”
Monsieur de Ronquerolles had no sooner said the words than he perceived the horrible blunder he had committed in making such a speech before Mademoiselle de Nucingen. He colored high, — a most unusual sign in him, — and the solemn silence which seemed to wrap all present completed his discomfiture.
“This clock must be slow,” said the minister, catching at any words that would make a sound and break up an evening that was ending unfortunately.
“True,” said de Ronquerolles, looking at his watch; “it is a quarter to twelve.”
He bowed to Madame de Rastignac ceremoniously, and went away, followed by the rest of the company.
“You saw his embarrassment,” said Rastignac to his wife; “he had no malicious intention in what he said.”
“It is of no consequence. I was saying just now to Madame de l’Estorade’s that your past life had given you a number of detestable acquaintances.”
“But, my dear, the King himself is compelled to smile graciously on men he would fain put in the Bastille, — if we still had a Bastille and the Charter permitted him.”
Madame de Rastignac made no reply, and without bidding her husband good-night, she went up to her room. A few moments later the minister went to the private door which led into it, and not finding the key in the lock, he said, “Augusta!” in the tone of voice a simple bourgeois might have used in such a case.
For all answer, he heard a bolt run hastily on the other side of the door.
“Ah!” he thought to himself with a gesture of vexation, “there are some pasts very different from that door, — they are always wide open to the present.”
Then, after a moment’s silence, he added, to cover his retreat, “Augusta, I wanted to ask you what hour Madame de l’Estorade receives. I ought to call upon her to-morrow, after what happened here to-night.”
“At four o’clock,” said the young wife through the door, — ”on her return from the Tuileries, where she takes the children to walk every day.”
One of the questions that were frequently put by Parisian society after the marriage of Madame de Rastignac was: “Does she love her husband?”
The doubt was permissible. The marriage of Mademoiselle de Nucingen was the unpleasant and scarcely moral product of one of those immoral unions which find their issue in the life of a daughter, after years and satiety have brought them to a condition of dry-rot and paralysis. In such marriages of convenience the husband is satisfied, for he escapes a happiness which has turned rancid to him, and he profits by a speculation like that of the magician in the “Arabian Nights” who exchanges old lamps for new. But the wife, on the contrary, must ever feel a living memory between herself and her husband; a memory which may revive, and while wholly outside of the empire of the senses, has the force of an old authority antagonistic to her young influence. In such a position the wife is a victim.
During the short time we have taken to give this brief analysis of a situation too frequently existing, Rastignac lingered at the door.
“Well,” he said at last, deciding to retire, “good-night, Augusta.”
As he said the words, rather piteously, the door opened suddenly, and his wife, throwing herself into his arms, laid her head upon his shoulder sobbing.
The question was answered: Madame de Rastignac loved her husband; but for all that, the distant muttering of a subterranean fire might be heard beneath the flowers of their garden.
III. A MINISTER’S MORNING
The next day, when Rastignac entered his office, the adjoining waiting-room was already occupied by eleven persons waiting with letters of introduction to solicit favors, also two peers of France and several deputies.
Presently a bell rang. The usher, with an eagerness which communicated itself to all present, entered the sanctum; an instant later he came out, bearing this stereotyped message: —
“The minister is obliged to attend a Council. He will, however, have the honor to receive the gentlemen of the two Chambers. As for the others, they can call again at another time.”
“What other time?” asked one of the postponed; “this is the third time in three days that I have come here uselessly.”
The usher made a gesture which meant, “It is not my affair; I follow my orders.” But hearing certain murmurs as to the privilege granted to honorable members, he said, with a certain solemnity, —
“The honorable gentlemen came to discuss affairs of public interest with his Excellency.”
The office-seekers, being compelled to accept this fib, departed. After which the bell rang again. The usher then assumed his most gracious expression of face. By natural affinity, the lucky ones had gathered in a group at one end of the room. Though they had never seen one another before, most of them being the offspring of the late national lying-in, they seemed to
recognize a certain representative air which is very difficult to define, though it can never be mistaken. The usher, not venturing to choose among so many eminent personages, turned a mute, caressing glance on all, as if to say, —
“Whom shall I have the honor of first announcing?”
“Gentlemen,” said Colonel Franchessini, “I believe I have seen you all arrive.”
And he walked to the closed door, which the usher threw open, announcing in a loud, clear voice, —
“Monsieur le Colonel Franchessini!”
“Ha! so you are the first this morning,” said the minister, making a few steps towards the colonel, and giving him his hand. “What have you come for, my dear fellow? — a railroad, a canal, a suspension bridge?”
“I have come, my good-natured minister, on private business in which you are more interested than I.”
“That is not a judicious way of urging it, for I warn you I pay little or no attention to my own business.”
“I had a visit from Maxime this morning, on his return from Arcis-sur-Aube,” said the colonel, coming to the point. “He gave me all the particulars of that election. He thinks a spoke might be put in the wheel of it. Now, if you have time to let me make a few explanations — ”
The minister, who was sitting before his desk with his back to the fireplace, turned round to look at the clock.
“Look here, my dear fellow,” he said, “I’m afraid you will be long, and I have a hungry pack outside there waiting for me. I shouldn’t listen to you comfortably. Do me the favor to go and take a walk and come back at twelve o’clock to breakfast. I’ll present you to Madame de Rastignac, whom you don’t know, I think, and after breakfast we will take a few turns in the garden; then I can listen to you in peace.”
“Very good, I accept that arrangement,” said the colonel, rising.
As he crossed the waiting-room, he said, —
“Messieurs, I have not delayed you long, I hope.”
Then, after distributing a few grasps of the hand, he departed.
Three hours later, when the colonel entered the salon where he was presented to Madame de Rastignac, he found there the Baron de Nucingen, who came nearly every day to breakfast with his son-in-law before the Bourse hour, Emile Blondet of the “Debats,” Messieurs Moreau (de l’Oise), Dionis, and Camusot, three deputies madly loquacious, and two newly elected deputies whose names it is doubtful if Rastignac knew himself. Franchessini also recognized Martial de la Roche-Hugon, the minister’s brother-in-law, and the inevitable des Lupeaulx, peer of France. As for another figure, who stood talking with the minister for some time in the recess of a window, the colonel learned, after inquiring of Emile Blondet, that it was that of a former functionary of the upper police, who continued, as an amateur, to do part of his former business, going daily to each minister under all administrations with as much zeal and regularity as if he were still charged with his official duties.
Madame de Rastignac seen at close quarters seemed to the colonel a handsome blonde, not at all languishing. She was strikingly like her mother, but with that shade of greater distinction which in the descendants of parvenus increases from generation to generation as they advance from their source. The last drop of the primitive Goriot blood had evaporated in this charming young woman, who was particularly remarkable for the high-bred delicacy of all her extremities, the absence of which in Madame de Nucingen had shown the daughter of Pere Goriot.
As the colonel wished to retain a footing in the house he now entered for the first time, he talked about his wife.
“She lived,” he said, “in the old English fashion, in her home; but he should be most glad to bring her out of her retreat in order to present her to Madame de Rastignac if the latter would graciously consent.”
“Now,” said the minister, dropping the arm of Emile Blondet, with whom he had been conversing, “let us go into the garden,” — adding, as soon as they were alone, “We want no ears about us in this matter.”
“Maxime came to see me, as I told you,” said the colonel, “on his return from Arcis-sur-Aube, and he is full of an idea of discovering something about the pretended parentage of this sculptor by which to oust him — ”
“I know,” interrupted Rastignac; “he spoke to me about that idea, and there’s neither rhyme nor reason in it. Either this Sallenauve has some value, or he is a mere cipher. If the latter, it is useless to employ such a dangerous instrument as the man Maxime proposes to neutralize a power that does not exist. If, on the other hand, this new deputy proves really an orator, we can deal with him in the tribune and in the newspapers without the help of such underground measures. General rule: in a land of unbridled publicity like ours, wherever the hand of the police appears, if even to lay bare the most shameful villany, there’s always a hue and cry against the government. Public opinion behaves like the man to whom another man sang an air of Mozart to prove that Mozart was a great musician. Was he vanquished by evidence? ‘Mozart,’ he replied to the singer, ‘may have been a great musician, but you, my dear fellow, have a cold in your head.’”
“There’s a great deal of truth in what you say,” replied Franchessini; “but the man whom Maxime wants to unmask may be one of those honest mediocrities who make themselves a thorn in the side of all administrations; your most dangerous adversaries are not the giants of oratory.”
“I expect to find out the real weight of the man before long,” replied Rastignac, “from a source I have more confidence in than I have in Monsieur de Trailles. On this very occasion he has allowed himself to be tripped up, and now wants to compensate by heroic measures for his own lack of ability. As for your other man, I shall not employ him for the purpose Maxime suggests, but you may tell him from me — ”
“Yes!” said Franchessini, with redoubled attention.
“ — that if he meddles in politics, as he shows an inclination to do, there are certain deplorable memories in his life — ”
“But they are only memories now; he has made himself a new skin.”
“I know all about him,” replied Rastignac; “do you suppose there are no other detectives in Paris? I know that since 1830, when he took Bibi-Lupin’s place as chief of the detective police, he has given his life a most respectable bourgeois character; the only fault I find is that he overdoes it.”
“And yet — ” said the colonel.
“He is rich,” continued Rastignac, not heeding the interruption. “His salary is twelve thousand francs, and he has the three hundred thousand Lucien de Rubempre left him, — also the proceeds of a manufactory of varnished leather which he started at Gentilly; it pays him a large profit. His aunt, Jacqueline Collin, who lives with him, still does a shady business secretly, which of course brings in large fees, and I have the best of reasons for believing that they both gamble at the Bourse. He is so anxious to keep out of the mud that he has gone to the other extreme. Every evening he plays dominoes, like any bourgeois, in a cafe near the Prefecture, and Sundays he goes out to a little box of a place he has bought near the forest of Romainville, in the Saint-Gervais meadows; there he cultivates blue dahlias, and talked, last year, of crowning a Rosiere. All that, my dear colonel, is too bucolic to allow of my employing him on any political police-work.”
“I think myself,” said Franchessini, “that in order not to attract attention, he rolls himself too much into a ball.”
“Make him unwind, and then, if he wants to return to active life and take a hand in politics, he may find some honest way of doing so. He’ll never make a Saint Vincent de Paul, — though the saint was at the galleys once upon a time; but there are plenty of ways in which he could get a third or fourth class reputation. If Monsieur de Saint-Esteve, as he now calls himself, takes that course, and I am still in power, tell him to come and see me; I might employ him then.”
“That is something, certainly,” said Franchessini, aloud; but he thought to himself that since the days of the pension Vauquer the minister had taken long strides and that ro
les had changed between himself and Vautrin.
“You can tell him what I say,” continued Rastignac, going up the steps of the portico, “but be cautious how you word it.”
“Don’t be uneasy,” replied the colonel. “I will speak to him judiciously, for he’s a man who must not be pushed too far; there are some old scores in life one can’t wipe out.”
The minister, by making no reply to this remark, seemed to admit the truth of it.
“You must be in the Chamber when the king opens it; we shall want all the enthusiasm we can muster,” said Rastignac to the colonel, as they parted.
The latter, when he took leave of Madame de Rastignac, asked on what day he might have the honor of presenting his wife.
“Why, any day,” replied the countess, “but particularly on Fridays.”
IV. A CATECHISM
Rastignac called on Madame de l’Estorade the next day at the hour named to him by his wife. Like all those present at the scene produced by Monsieur de Ronquerolles, the minister had been struck by the emotion shown by the countess, and, without stopping to analyze the nature of the sentiment she might feel for the man who had saved her child, he was convinced of her serious interest in him.
By the suddenness and the masterly stroke of his election, Sallenauve had become an object of strong interest to the minister, — all the more because up to the last moment his candidacy was not seriously considered. It was now known that in the preparatory meeting he had given proofs of talent. To his active and dangerous party, which had but few representatives in the Chamber, he might become an organ that would echo far. By his peculiar position of birth and fortune, whatever might be the truth of it, he was one who could do without the favors of government; and all information obtained about him went to show that he was a man of grave character and opinions, who could not be turned from his chosen way.
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 923