XI
From that morning war was declared.
From that day commenced in the Rue St. Gilles one of those domesticdramas which are still awaiting their Moliere,--a drama ofdistressing vulgarity and sickening realism, but poignant,nevertheless; for it brought into action tears, blood, and a savageenergy.
M. Favoral thought himself sure to win; for did he not have the keyof the cash, and is not the key of the cash the most formidableweapon in an age where every thing begins and ends with money?
Nevertheless, he was filled with irritating anxieties.
He who had just discovered so many things which he did not evensuspect a few days before, he could not discover the source whencehis son drew the money which flowed like water from his prodigalhands.
He had made sure that Maxence had no debts; and yet it could not bewith M. Chapelain's monthly twenty francs that he fed his frolics.
Mme. Favoral and Gilberte, subjected separately to a skillfulinterrogatory, had managed to keep inviolate the secret of theirmercenary labor. The servant, shrewdly questioned, had said nothingthat could in any way cause the truth to be suspected.
Here was, then, a mystery; and M. Favoral's constant anxiety couldbe read upon his knitted brows during his brief visits to the house;that is, during dinner.
From the manner in which he tasted his soup, it was easy to see thathe was asking himself whether that was real soup, and whether he wasnot being imposed upon. From the expression of his eyes, it waseasy to guess this question constantly present to his mind.
"They are robbing me evidently; but how do they do it?"
And he became distrustful, fussy, and suspicious, to an extent thathe had never been before. It was with the most insulting precautionsthat he examined every Sunday his wife's accounts. He took a look atthe grocer's, and settled it himself every month: he had the butcher'sbills sent to him in duplicate. He would inquire the price of anapple as he peeled it over his plate, and never failed to stop at thefruiterer's and ascertain that he had not been deceived.
But it was all in vain.
And yet he knew that Maxence always had in his pocket two or threefive-franc pieces.
"Where do you steal them?" he asked him one day.
"I save them out of my salary," boldly answered the young man.
Exasperated, M. Favoral wished to make the whole world take aninterest in his investigations. And one Saturday evening, as hewas talking with his friends, M. Chapelain, the worthy Desclavettes,and old man Desormeaux, pointing to his wife and daughter:
"Those d---d women rob me," he said, "for the benefit of my son;and they do it so cleverly that I can't find out how. They havean understanding with the shop-keepers, who are but licensed thieves;and nothing is eaten here that they don't make me pay double itsvalue."
M. Chapelain made an ill-concealed grimace; whilst M. Desclavettessincerely admired a man who had courage enough to confess hismeanness.
But M. Desormeaux never minced things.
"Do you know, friend Vincent," he said, "that it requires a strongstomach to take dinner with a man who spends his time calculatingthe cost of every mouthful that his guests swallow?"
M. Favoral turned red in the face.
"It is not the expense that I deplore," he replied, "but theduplicity. I am rich enough, thank Heaven! not to begrudge a fewfrancs; and I would gladly give to my wife twice as much as she takes,if she would only ask it frankly."
But that was a lesson.
Hereafter he was careful to dissimulate, and seemed exclusivelyoccupied in subjecting his son to a system of his invention, theexcessive rigor of which would have upset a steadier one than he.
He demanded of him daily written attestations of his attendance bothat the law-school and at the lawyer's office. He marked out theitinerary of his walks for him, and measured the time they required,within a few minutes. Immediately after dinner he shut him up inhis room, under lock and key, and never failed, when he came homeat ten o'clock to make sure of his presence.
He could not have taken steps better calculated to exalt still moreMme. Favoral's blind tenderness.
When she heard that Maxence had a mistress, she had been rudelyshocked in her most cherished feelings. It is never without a secretjealousy that a mother discovers that a woman has robbed her of herson's heart. She had retained a certain amount of spite against himon account of disorders, which, in her candor, she had neversuspected. She forgave him every thing when she saw of whattreatment he was the object.
She took sides with him, believing him to be the victim of a mostunjust persecution. In the evening, after her husband had gone out,Gilberte and herself would take their sewing, sit in the hall outsidehis room, and converse with him through the door. Never had theyworked so hard for the shop-keeper in the Rue St. Denis. Some weeksthey earned as much as twenty-five or thirty francs.
But Maxence's patience was exhausted; and one morning he declaredresolutely that he would no longer attend the law-school, that hehad been mistaken in his vocation, and that there was no human powercapable to make him return to M. Chapelain's.
"And where will you go?" exclaimed his father. "Do you expect meeternally to supply your wants?"
He answered that it was precisely in order to support himself, andconquer his independence, that he had resolved to abandon aprofession, which, after two years, yielded him twenty francs a month.
"I want some business where I have a chance to get rich," he replied."I would like to enter a banking-house, or some great financialestablishment."
Mme. Favoral jumped at the idea.
"That's a fact," she said to her husband. "Why couldn't you finda place for our son at the Mutual Credit? There he would be underyour own eyes. Intelligent as he is, backed by M. de Thaller andyourself, he would soon earn a good salary."
M. Favoral knit his brows.
"That I shall never do," he uttered. "I have not sufficientconfidence in my son. I cannot expose myself to have him compromisethe consideration which I have acquired for myself."
And, revealing to a certain extent the secret of his conduct:
"A cashier," he added, "who like me handles immense sums cannot betoo careful of his reputation. Confidence is a delicate thing inthese times, when there are so many cashiers constantly on the roadto Belgium. Who knows what would be thought of me, if I was knownto have such a son as mine?"
Mme. Favoral was insisting, nevertheless, when he seemed to make uphis mind suddenly.
"Enough," he said. "Maxence is free. I allow him two years toestablish himself in some position. That delay over, good-by: hecan find board and lodging where he please. That's all. I don'twant to hear any thing more about it."
It was with a sort of frenzy that Maxence abused that freedom; andin less than two weeks he had dissipated three months' earnings ofhis mother and sister.
That time over, he succeeded, thanks to M. Chapelain, in finding aplace with an architect.
This was not a very brilliant opening; and the chances were, thathe might remain a clerk all his life. But the future did not troublehim much. For the present, he was delighted with this inferiorposition, which assured him each month one hundred and seventy-fivefrancs.
One hundred and seventy-five francs! A fortune. And so he rushedinto that life of questionable pleasures, where so many wretches haveleft not only the money which they had, which is nothing, but themoney which they had not, which leads straight to the police-court.
He made friends with those shabby fellows who walk up and down infront of the Cafe Riche, with an empty stomach, and a tooth-pickbetween their teeth. He became a regular customer at those low cafesof the Boulevards, where plastered girls smile to the men. Hefrequented those suspicious table d'hotes where they play baccaratafter dinner on a wine-stained table-cloth, and where the police makeperiodical raids. He ate suppers in those night restaurants wherepeople throw the bottles at each other's heads after drinking theircontents.
Often he re
mained twenty-four hours without coming to the Rue St.Gilles; and then Mme. Favoral spent the night in the most fearfulanxiety. Then, suddenly, at some hour when he knew his father to beabsent, he would appear, and, taking his mother to one side:
"I very much want a few louis," he would say in a sheepish tone.
She gave them to him; and she kept giving them so long as she hadany, not, however, without observing timidly to him that Gilberteand herself could not earn very much.
Until finally one evening, and to a last demand:
"Alas!" she answered sorrowfully, "I have nothing left, and it isonly on Monday that we are to take our work back. Couldn't youwait until then?"
He could not wait: he was expected for a game. Blind devotion begetsferocious egotism. He wanted his mother to go out and borrow themoney from the grocer or the butcher. She was hesitating. He spokelouder.
Then Mlle. Gilberte appeared.
"Have you, then, really no heart?" she said. "It seems to me, that,if I were a man, I would not ask my mother and sister to work for me."
Other People's Money Page 11