by Eugène Sue
“Pagans, materialists, philosophers!” exclaimed Abbé Ledoux, “who are not able to admit what, in their infernal pride, they are not able to comprehend!”
“Yes, credo quia absurdum. This axiom is as old as the world, my dear abbé, but it does not prevent the world’s progress to the overthrow of your theories of privation and renunciation. Thank God, the world continually seeks welfare! Believe me, it is not necessary to reduce mankind to feeding on roots and drinking water; on the contrary, we ought to work to the end that the largest possible number may live, at least, upon good meats, good poultry, good fruit, good bread, and pure wine. Nature, in her infinite wisdom, has made man insatiable in demands for his body, and in the aspirations of his intelligence, and, if we think only of the wonderful things which man has made to gratify his five senses, for which nature has provided so bountifully, we are struck with admiration. We are then but obeying natural laws to labour with enthusiasm for the comfort and well-being of others, by the consumption and use of these provisions, and, as I told the canon, to do, each in his own sphere, as much as possible; in short, to enjoy without remorse, because — But the clock strikes six; come with me, my lord canon, and write the letter which is to bring your charming niece here. I will take a last look at my laboratory, where two of my best pupils have undertaken duties which I have entrusted to them. The dear abbé will await me in the parlour, for I intend to complete my programme and prove to him, by economic facts, not only the excellence of gluttony, but also of the other passions he calls the deadly sins.”
“Very well, we will see how far you will push your sacrilegious paradoxes,” said Abbé Ledoux, imperturbably. “Besides, all monstrosities are interesting to observe, but, doctor — doctor — three centuries ago, what a magnificient auto da fé they would have made of you!”
“A bad roast, my dear abbé! It would not be worth much more than the result of that hunt that you made in the glorious time of your fanaticism against the Protestants in the mountains of Cévennes. Bad game, abbé. Well, I shall be back soon, my dear guests,” said the doctor, taking his departure.
The canon having written to the mother superior of the convent, a man in the confidence of Doctor Gasterini departed in a carriage to fetch Senora Dolores Salcedo, and at the same time to inform Captain Horace and his faithful Sans-Plume that they could come out of their hiding-place.
A half-hour after the departure of this emissary, the canon, the abbé, as well as the nieces and nephews of Doctor Gasterini, and several other guests, met in the doctor’s parlour.
CHAPTER XV.
DOLORES AND HORACE soon arrived, within a short interval of each other, at the house of Doctor Gasterini. We leave the reader to imagine the joy of the two lovers and the expression of their tender gratitude to the doctor and the canon. The profound pity of the canon, the consciousness of assuring the happiness of his niece, were manifested by a hunger as rapacious as that of a tiger, as he whispered, with a doleful voice, in the doctor’s ear:
“Alas, alas! will your other guests never come, doctor? Some people have such frightful egotism!”
“My guests will not delay much longer, my dear canon; it is half-past six, and at seven o’clock every one knows that I go to the table relentlessly.”
In fact the invited guests of the doctor were not long in assembling, and a valet announced successively the following names:
“The Duke and Duchess of Senneterre-Maillefort!”
“Pride,” whispered the doctor to the canon and abbé, who made a wry face as he recalled the misadventure of his protégé, who pretended to the hand of the rich heiress, Mlle. de Beaumesnil.
“How amiable you are, duchess, to have accepted my invitation!” said the doctor to Herminie, whom he advanced to welcome, kissing her hand respectfully. “If I must tell you, madame, I counted on you to decide on this dear pride, that M. de Maillefort, M. de Senneterre, and I admire so much in you.”
“And how is that, my dear doctor?” said Gerald de Senneterre, affectionately. “I well know that I owe the happiness of my life to my wife’s pride, but—”
“Our dear doctor is right,” replied Herminie, smiling. “I am very proud of the friendship he has for us, and I avail myself of every opportunity to show him how much I appreciate his attachment, without even speaking of the eternal gratitude we owe him for his devoted care of my son and the daughter of Ernestine. I need not tell you, dear doctor, how much she regrets not being here this evening, but her indisposition keeps her at home, and dear Olivier and her uncle, M. de Maillefort, do not leave the interesting invalid one minute.”
“There is nothing like these old sailors, these old soldiers of Africa, and these duellist marquises to make good nurses, without wishing to depreciate the terrible Madame Barbançon,” replied the doctor, gaily. “Only, duchess, permit me to differ from you in the construction you have placed on my words. I wished to say that your own tendency to pride assured me beforehand that you will encourage in me that delightful sin, in making me proud to have you in my house.”
“And I, doctor,” said Gerald de Senneterre, smiling, “I declare that you encourage in us alarmingly the dainty sin of gluttony, because when one has dined at your house, he becomes a gourmand for ever!”
The conversation of the doctor, Herminie, and Gerald, to which the canon was giving close attention, was interrupted by the voice of the valet, who announced:
“M. Yvon Cloarek!”
“Anger,” whispered the doctor to the canon, advancing to meet the old corsair, who, notwithstanding his great age, was still hale and vigorous.
“Long live the railroads! for I come this instant from Havre, my old comrade, to assist at the anniversary of your birthday,” said Yvon, cordially grasping the doctor’s hands, “and to come here I have left Sabine, Sabinon, and Sabinette, — names that the old centenarian, Segoffin, my head artilleryman, has given to my granddaughter and great-granddaughter, for I am a great-grandfather, you know.”
“Zounds! old comrade, and I hope you will not stop at that!”
“And so my son-in-law, Onésime, whom you ushered into life thirty years ago, charged me to remember him to you. And here I am!”
“Could you fail to be at our annual reunions, Yvon, my brave comrade, I should have one of those magnificent attacks of anger which used to possess you.”
Then turning to the canon and the abbé, the doctor presented Yvon, saying:
“This is Captain Cloarek, one of our oldest and most illustrious corsairs, the famous hero of the brig Hellhound, which played wonderful tricks at the end of the Empire.”
“Ah, captain,” said the canon, “in 1812 I was at Gibraltar, and I had the honour of often hearing you and your ship cursed by the English.”
“And do you know, my dear canon, to what admirable sin Captain Cloarek owes his glory, and the services he rendered to France in the victorious cruises he made against the English? I am going to tell you, and my old friend will not contradict me. Glory, success, riches, — he owes all to anger.”
“To anger?” exclaimed the abbé.
“To anger!” said the canon.
“The truth is, gentlemen,” modestly answered Cloarek, “that the little I have done for my country I owe to my naturally tremendous anger.”
“M. and Madame Michel,” announced the valet.
“Indolence,” said the doctor to the canon and the abbé, approaching Florence and her husband, — Michel having married Madame de Lucenay after the death of M. de Lucenay, victim of a balloon ascension he had attempted from Mount Chimborazo, in company with Valentine.
“Ah, madame,” said Doctor Gasterini, gallantly kissing the hand of Florence, “how well I know your good-will when you tear yourself away from your self-indulgent, sweet habits of idleness, to give me the pleasure of having you at my house before your departure for your beautiful retreat in Provence.”
“Why, my good doctor,” replied the young woman, smiling, “do you forget that indolent people are cap
able of everything?”
“Even of making the incredible effort of coming to dine with one of their best friends,” added Michel, grasping the doctor’s hand.
“And to think,” replied Doctor Gasterini, “just to think that several years ago I was consulted for the purpose of curing you of this dreadful sin of indolence. Happily the limitations of science, and especially the profound respect I feel for the gifts of the Creator, prevented my attempt upon the ineffable supineness with which you are endowed.”
And designating Abbé Ledoux by a glance of his eye, the doctor added:
“And, madame, Abbé Ledoux, whom I have the honour of presenting to you, considers me, at this hour even, a pagan, a dreadful idolater. Be good enough to rehabilitate me in his opinion, by informing this saintly man that you and your husband have, in the midst of profound and invincible idleness, exercised an activity without bounds, an inconceivable energy, and a sagacity which have secured for both of you an honourable independence.”
“For the honour of indolence, respected abbé,” replied Florence, smiling, “I am obliged to do violence to my own modesty, as well as that of my husband, by confessing that the dear doctor has spoken the truth.”
“M. Richard!” announced the valet.
“Avarice,” whispered the doctor to the canon and the abbé, while the father of Louis Richard, the happy husband of Marietta, advanced to meet him.
“Is this M. Richard?” said the abbé, in a low voice to Doctor Gasterini, “the founder of those schools and houses of retreat established at Chaillot, and so admirably organised?”
“It is he, himself,” replied the doctor, extending his hand to the old man, as he said, “Welcome, good Richard, the abbé was just speaking to me of you.”
“Of me, dear doctor?”
“Or, if you prefer it, of your wonderful endowments at Chaillot.”
“Ah, doctor,” said the old man, “you must render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, — my son is the founder of those charitable institutions.”
“Let us see, my good Richard,” replied the doctor, “if you had not been as thorough a miser as your friend, Ramon, your worthy son would not have been able to make your name blessed everywhere as he has done.”
“As to that, doctor, it is the pure truth, and, too, I confess to you that there is not a day I do not thank God, from this fact, for having made me the most avaricious of men.”
“And how is your son’s friend, the Marquis of Saint-Hérem?”
“He came to visit us yesterday with his wife. His household is the very pearl of establishments. He invited us to visit his castle just erected in the valley of Chevreuse. They say that no palace in Paris equals it in splendour. It seems that for three years fifteen hundred artisans have been at work on it, without counting the terraces of the park, which alone have employed the force of four villages, and, as the marquis pays handsomely, you can conceive what comfort has been spread abroad through the neighbourhoods around his castle.”
“Well, then, my good Richard, you confess that, if the uncle of the marquis had not had the same avarice which you possessed, this generous fellow would not have been able to give work to so many families.”
“That is true, my dear doctor, so, under the name of Saint-Ramon, as the marquis has jestingly christened his uncle, the memory of this famous miser is blessed by everybody.”
“It is inconceivable, abbé,” said the canon, “the doctor must be right. I am confounded with what I hear and with what I see. We are actually going to dine with the seven deadly sins.”
“M. Henri David!” said the valet.
At this name the countenance of the doctor became grave; he walked up to David, took both his hands with effusive tenderness, and said:
“Pardon me for having insisted upon your acceptance of this invitation, my dear David, but I promised my excellent friend and pupil, Doctor Dufour, who recommended you to me, to try to divert you during your short sojourn in Paris.”
“And I feel the need of these diversions, I assure you, sir. Down there our life is so calm, so regular, that hours slip away unperceived; but here, lost in the turmoil of this great city to which I have become a stranger, I feel these paroxysms of painful sadness, and I thank you a thousand times for having provided for me such an agreeable distraction.”
Henri David was talking thus to the doctor when seven o’clock sounded.
The canon uttered a profound sigh of satisfaction as he saw the steward open the folding doors of the dining-room.
CONCLUSION.
At the moment the guests of the doctor were about to enter the dining-room, the valet announced:
“Madame the Marquise de Miranda.”
“Luxury,” whispered the doctor to the abbé. “I feared she might fail us.”
Then offering his arm to Madeleine, more beautiful, more bewitching than ever, the doctor said, as he conducted her to the dining-room:
“I had just begun to despair of the good fortune you had promised me, madame. Listen to me, at my age the happiness of seeing you here again you must know is inexpressible. Ah, if I were only fifty years younger!”
“I would take you for my cavalier, my dear doctor,” said the marquise, laughing extravagantly; “I think we have been friends, at the least estimate, for fifty years.”
We will not undertake to enumerate the wonders of the doctor’s elegant dining-room. We will limit ourselves to the menu of this dinner, — a menu which each guest, thanks to a delicate forethought, found under his napkin, between two dozen oysters, one from Ostend and the other from Marennes. This menu was written on white vellum, and encased in a little framework of carved silver leaves enamelled with green. Each guest thus knew how to reserve his appetite for such dishes as he preferred. Let us add only that the size of the table and the dining-room was such that, instead of the narrow and inconvenient chairs which force you to eat, so to speak, with the elbows close to the body, each guest, seated in a large and comfortable chair, the feet on a soft carpet, had all the latitude necessary for the evolutions of his knife and fork. Here is the menu which the canon took with a hand trembling with emotion and read religiously.
MENU FOR DINNER.
Four Soups. — Soup à la Condé, rich crab soup with white meat of fowl, soup with kouskoussou, consommé with toast.
Four Relevés of Fish. — Head of sturgeon à la Godard, pieces of eel à l’Italienne, salmon à la Chambord, turbot à la Hollandaise.
Four By-plates. — Croquettes à la royale, morsels of baked lobster tail, soft roe of carps à la Orly, little pies à la reine.
Four Large Dishes. — Quarter of pickled wild boar, ragout of beef from salt meadows, quarter of veal à la Monglas, roast beef from salt meadows.
Sixteen Entrées. — Scalloped roebuck à l’Espagnole, fillet of lamb à la Toulouse, slices of duck with orange, sweetbreads with jelly, sweetmeats of beccaficos à la d’Uxelle, meat pie à la Nesle, macaroni à la Parisienne, hot ortolan pie, fillets of pullet from Mans, woodcocks with choicest seasoning, quails on toast, rabbit cutlets à la maréchale, veal liver with rice, partridge with black pudding à la Richelieu, foie gras à la Provençal, fillet of plover à la Lyonnaise.
Intermediate. — Punch à la Romaine.
Birds. — Pheasants sauced and stuffed with truffles, fowl dressed with slices of bacon, turkey stuffed with truffles from Périgord, grouse.
Ten Side-dishes. — Cardoons with marrow, artichokes à la Napolitaine, broiled mushrooms, Périgord truffles with champagne wine, white truffles of Piedmont with olive oil, celery à la Française, lobster stewed with Madeira wine, shrimps stewed with kari from the Indies, lettuce with essence of ham, asparagus and peas.
Two Large Confections. — Candy ship in rose-coloured cream, temple of sugar candy with pistachios.
Chestnuts with frozen apricots, pineapple jelly with fruits, Bavarian cheese frozen with raspberries, whipped cream with cherry jelly, French cream with black coffee, preserved strawberries.
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After reading this menu, the canon, carried away with enthusiasm, and forgetting, we must confess, all conventionalities, rose from his chair, took his knife in one hand and his fork in the other, and, stretching out his arm, said, in a solemn voice:
“Doctor, I swear I will eat it all!”
And in fact the canon did eat all.
And still he had an appetite.
It is useless to say that the exquisite wines, whose delicious ambrosia the canon had already tested, circulated in profusion.
At dessert, Doctor Gasterini rose, holding in his hand a little glass of iced wine of Constance, and said:
“Ladies, I am going to offer an infernal toast, — a toast as diabolical as if we were joyously banqueting among the damned in the lowest depth of the dining-room in the kingdom of Satan.”
“Oh, oh, dear, amiable doctor!” exclaimed all with one voice, “pray what is this infernal toast?”
“To the seven deadly sins!” replied the doctor. “And now, ladies, permit me to express to you the thought which this toast inspires in me. I promised Abbé Ledoux, who has the honour of being seated by the Marquise de Miranda, — I promised the abbé, I repeat, this man of mind, of experience, and learning, but incredulous, — to prove to him by positive, incontrovertible facts, the good that can be achieved in certain instances, and in a certain measure by these tendencies, instincts, and passions which we name the seven deadly sins. The whole problem is to regulate them wisely, and to draw from them the best that is possible. Now, as the Duchess of Senneterre-Maillefort, Madame Florence Michel, and the Marquise de Miranda have for a long time honoured me with their friendship, — as MM. Richard, Yvon Cloarek, and Henri David are my good old friends, I hope that, for the triumph of sound ideas, my amiable guests will have the grace to aid me in rehabilitating these capital sins, that by their excess, owing to the absence of proper control, have been absolutely condemned, and in converting this poor abbé to their possible utility. He sins only through ignorance and obstinacy, it is true, but he does not the less blaspheme these admirable means and sources of energy, happiness, and wealth, which the inexhaustible munificence of the Creator has bestowed upon his creatures. Now, as nothing is more charming than a conversation at dessert, among men of mind, I beg that, in the interest of our unfortunate brother, Abbé Ledoux, the representatives of these various sins will tell us all that they owe to them, both in their own careers and in the success of others.”