“We remained over two hours talking,” said the good and simple maestro, “and I believe that he has excellent dispositions. Unfortunately, he can only take two lessons a week. Although a nobleman, he works; and, when he took off his glove to hand me a month in advance, I noticed that one of his hands was blackened, as if burnt by some acid. But never mind, signora, sixty francs, together with what your father gives me, it’s a fortune. The end of my career will be spared the privations of its beginning. This young man will help making me known. The morning has been dark; but the sunset will be glorious.”
The young girl could no longer have any doubts: M. de Tregars had found the means of hearing from her, and letting her hear from him.
The impression she felt contributed no little to give her the patience to endure the obstinate persecution of her father, who, twice a day, never failed to repeat to her:
“Get ready to properly receive my protege on Saturday. I have not invited him to dinner: he will only spend the evening with us.”
And he mistook for a disposition to yield the cold tone in which she answered:
“I beg you to believe that this introduction is wholly unnecessary.”
Thus, the famous day having come, he told his usual Saturday guests, M. and Mme. Desclavettes, M. Chapelain, and old man Desormeaux:
“Eh, eh! I guess you are going to see a future son-in-law!”
At nine o’clock, just as they had passed into the parlor, the sound of carriage-wheels startled the Rue St. Gilles.
“There he is!” exclaimed the cashier of the Mutual Credit.
And, throwing open a window:
“Come, Gilberte,” he added, “come and see his carriage and horses.”
She never stirred; but M. Desclavettes and M. Chapelain ran. It was night, unfortunately; and of the whole equipage nothing was visible but the two lanterns that shone like stars. Almost at the same time the parlor-door flew open; and the servant, who had been properly trained in advance, announced:
“Monsieur Costeclar.”
Leaning toward Mme. Favoral, who was seated by her side on the sofa,
“A nice-looking man, isn’t he? a really nice-looking man,” whispered Mme. Desclavettes.
And indeed he really thought so himself. Gesture, attitude, smile, every thing in M. Costeclar, betrayed the satisfaction of self, and the assurance of a man accustomed to success. His head, which was very small, had but little hair left; but it was artistically drawn towards the temples, parted in the middle, and cut short around the forehead. His leaden complexion, his pale lips, and his dull eye, did not certainly betray a very rich blood; he had a great long nose, sharp and curved like a sickle; and his beard, of undecided color, trimmed in the Victor Emmanuel style, did the greatest honor to the barber who cultivated it. Even when seen for the first time, one might fancy that he recognized him, so exactly was he like three or four hundred others who are seen daily in the neighborhood of the Café Riche, who are met everywhere where people run who pretend to amuse themselves,—at the bourse or in the bois; at the first representations, where they are just enough hidden to be perfectly well seen at the back of boxes filled with young ladies with astonishing chignons; at the races; in carriages, where they drink champagne to the health of the winner.
He had on this occasion hoisted his best looks, and the full dressde rigueur—dress-coat with wide sleeves, shirt cut low in the neck, and open vest, fastened below the waist by a single button.
“Quite the man of the world,” again remarked Mme. Desclavettes.
M. Favoral rushed toward him; and the latter, hastening, met him half way, and, taking both his hands into his—“I cannot tell you, dear friend,” he commenced, “how deeply I feel the honor you do me in receiving me in the midst of your charming family and your respectable friends.”
And he bowed all around during this speech, which he delivered in the condescending tone of a lord visiting his inferiors.
“Let me introduce you to my wife,” interrupted the cashier. And, leading him towards Mme. Favoral—“Monsieur Costeclar, my dear,” said he: “the friend of whom we have spoken so often.”
M. Costeclar bowed, rounding his shoulders, bending his lean form in a half-circle, and letting his arms hang forward.
“I am too much the friend of our dear Favoral, madame,” he uttered, “not to have heard of you long since, nor to know your merits, and the fact that he owes to you that peaceful happiness which he enjoys, and which we all envy him.”
Standing by the mantel-piece, the usual Saturday evening guests followed with the liveliest interest the evolutions of the pretender. Two of them, M. Chapelain and old Desormeaux, were perfectly able to appreciate him at his just value; but, in affirming that he made half a million a year, M. Favoral had, as it were, thrown over his shoulders that famous ducal cloak which concealed all deformities.
Without waiting for his wife’s answer, M. Favoral brought his protege in front of Mlle. Gilberte.
“Dear daughter,” said he, “Monsieur Costeclar, the friend of whom I have spoken.”
M. Costeclar bowed still lower, and rounded off his shoulders again; but the young lady looked at him from head to foot with such a freezing glance, that his tongue remained as if paralyzed in his mouth, and he could only stammer out:
“Mademoiselle! the honor, the humblest of your admirers.”
Fortunately Maxence was standing three steps off—he fell back in good order upon him, and seizing his hand, which he shook vigorously:
“I hope, my dear sir, that we shall soon be quite intimate friends. Your excellent father, whose special concern you are, has often spoken to me of you. Events, so he has confided to me, have not hitherto responded to your expectations. At your age, this is not a very grave matter. People, now-a-days, do not always find at the first attempt the road that leads to fortune. You will find yours. From this time forth I place at your command my influence and my experience; and, if you will consent to take me for your guide—”
Maxence had withdrawn his hand.
“I am very much obliged to you, sir,” he answered coldly; “but I am content with my lot, and I believe myself old enough to walk alone.”
Almost any one would have lost countenance. But M. Costeclar was so little put out, that it seemed as though he had expected just such a reception. He turned upon his heels, and advanced towards M. Favoral’s friends with a smile so engaging as to make it evident that he was anxious to conquer their suffrages.
This was at the beginning of the month of June, 1870. No one as yet could foresee the frightful disasters which were to mark the end of that fatal year. And yet there was everywhere in France that indefinable anxiety which precedes great social convulsions. The plebiscitum had not succeeded in restoring confidence. Every day the most alarming rumors were put in circulation and it was with a sort of passion that people went in quest of news.
Now, M. Costeclar was a wonderfully well-posted man. He had, doubtless, on his way, stopped on the Boulevard des Italiens, that blessed ground where nightly the street-brokers labor for the financial prosperity of the country. He had gone through the Passage de l’Opera, which is, as is well known, the best market for the most correct and the most reliable news. Therefore he might safely be believed.
Placing his back to the chimney, he had taken the lead in the conversation; and he was talking, talking, talking. Being a “bull,” he took a favorable view of every thing. He believed in the eternity of the second empire. He sang the praise of the new cabinet: he was ready to pour out his blood for Emile Ollivier. True, some people complained that business was dull and slow; but those people, he thought, were merely “bears.” Business had never been so brilliant. At no time had prosperity been greater. Capital was abundant. The institutions of credit were flourishing. Securities were rising. Everybody’s pockets were full to bursting. And the others listened in astonishment to this inexhaustible prattle, this “gab,” more filled with gold spangles than Dantzig cordial, with which the commercial travelers of the bourse catch their customers.
Suddenly:
“But you must excuse me,” he said, rushing towards the other end of the parlor.
Mme. Favoral had just left the room to order tea to be brought in; and, the seat by Mlle. Gilberte being vacant, M. Costeclar occupied it promptly.
“He understands his business,” growled M. Desormeaux.
“Surely,” said M. Desclavettes, “if I had some funds to dispose of just now.”
“I would be most happy to have him for my son-in-law,” declared M. Favoral.
He was doing his best. Somewhat intimidated by Mlle. Gilberte’s first look, he had now fully recovered his wits.
He commenced by sketching his own portrait.
He had just turned thirty, and had experienced the strong and the weak side of life. He had had “successes,” but had tired of them. Having gauged the emptiness of what is called pleasure, he only wished now to find a partner for life, whose graces and virtues would secure his domestic happiness.
He could not help noticing the absent look of the young girl; but he had, thought he, other means of compelling her attention. And he went on, saying that he felt himself cast of the metal of which model husbands are made. His plans were all made in advance. His wife would be free to do as she pleased. She would have her own carriage and horses, her box at the Italiens and at the Opera, and an open account at Worth’s and Van Klopen’s. As to diamonds, he would take care of that. He meant that his wife’s display of wealth should be noticed; and even spoken of in the newspapers.
Was this the terms of a bargain that he was offering?
If so, it was so coarsely, that Mlle. Gilberte, ignorant of life as she was, wondered in what world it might be that he had met with so many “successes.” And, somewhat indignantly:
“Unfortunately,” she said, “the bourse is perfidious; and the man who drives his own carriage to-day, to-morrow may have no shoes to wear.”
M. Costeclar nodded with a smile.
“Exactly so,” said he. “A marriage protects one against such reverses.
“Every man in active business, when he marries, settles upon his wife reasonable fortune. I expect to settle six hundred thousand francs upon mine.”
“So that, if you were to meet with an—accident?”
“We should enjoy our thirty thousand a year under the very nose of the creditors.”
Blushing with shame, Mlle. Gilberte rose.
“But then,” said she, “it isn’t a wife that you are looking for: it is an accomplice.”
He was spared the embarrassment of an answer, by the servant, who came in, bringing in tea. He accepted a cup; and after two or three anecdotes, judging that he had done enough for a first visit, he withdrew, and a moment later they heard his carriage driving off at full gallop.
It was not without mature thought that M. Costeclar had determined to withdraw, despite M. Favoral’s pressing overtures. However infatuated he might be with his own merits, he had been compelled to surrender to evidence, and to acknowledge that he had not exactly succeeded with Mlle. Gilberte. But he also knew that he had the head of the house on his side; and he flattered himself that he had produced an excellent impression upon the guests of the house.
“Therefore,” had he said to himself, “if I leave first, they will sing my praise, lecture the young person, and make her listen to reason.”
He was not far from being right. Mme. Desclavettes had been completely subjugated by the grand manners of this pretender; and M. Desclavettes did not hesitate to affirm that he had rarely met any one who pleased him more.
The others, M. Chapelain and old Desormeaux, did not, doubtless, share this optimism; but M. Costeclar’s annual half-million obscured singularly their clear-sightedness.
They thought perhaps, they had discovered in him some alarming features; but they had full and entire confidence in their friend Favoral’s prudent sagacity.
The particular and methodic cashier of the Mutual Credit was not apt to be enthusiastic; and, if he opened the doors of his house to a young man, if he was so anxious to have him for his son-in-law, he must evidently have taken ample information.
Finally there are certain family matters from which sensible people keep away as they would from the plague; and, on the question of marriage especially, he is a bold man who would take side for or against.
Thus Mme. Desclavettes was the only one to raise her voice. Taking Mlle. Gilberte’s hands within hers:
“Let me scold you, my dear,” said she, “for having received thus a poor young man who was only trying to please you.”
Excepting her mother, too weak to take her defence, and her brother, who was debarred from interfering, the young girl understood readily, that, in that parlor, every one, overtly or tacitly, was against her. The idea came to her mind to repeat there boldly what she had already told her father that she was resolved not to marry, and that she would not marry, not being one of those weak girls, without energy, whom they dress in white, and drag to church against their will.
Such a bold declaration would be in keeping with her character. But she feared a terrible, and perhaps degrading scene. The most intimate friends of the family were ignorant of its most painful sores. In presence of his friends, M. Favoral dissembled, speaking in a mild voice, and assuming a kindly smile. Should she suddenly reveal the truth?
“It is childish of you to run the risk of discouraging a clever fellow who makes half a million a year,” continued the wife of the old bronze-merchant, to whom such conduct seemed an abominable crime oflese-money. Mlle. Gilberte had withdrawn her hands.
“You did not hear what he said, madame.”
“I beg your pardon: I was quite near, and involuntarily—”
“You have heard his—propositions?”
“Perfectly. He was promising you a carriage, a box at the opera, diamonds, freedom. Isn’t that the dream of all young ladies?”
“It is not mine, madame!”
“Dear me! What better can you wish? You must not expect more from a husband than he can possibly give.”
“That is not what I shall expect of him.”
In a tone of paternal indulgence, which his looks belied:
“She is mad,” suggested M. Favoral.
Tears of indignation filled Mlle. Gilberte’s eyes.
“Mme. Desclavettes,” she exclaimed, “forgets something. She forgets that this gentleman dared to tell me that he proposed to settle upon the woman he marries a large fortune, of which his creditors would thus be cheated in case of his failure in business.”
She thought, in her simplicity, that a cry of indignation would rise at these words. Instead of which:
“Well, isn’t it perfectly natural?” said M. Desclavettes.
“It seems to me more than natural,” insisted Mme. Desclavettes, “that a man should be anxious to preserve from ruin his wife and children.”
“Of course,” put in M. Favoral.
Stepping resolutely toward her father:
“Have you, then, taken such precautions yourself?” demanded Mlle. Gilberte.
“No,” answered the cashier of the Mutual Credit. And, after a moment of hesitation:
“But I am running no risks,” he added. “In business, and when a man may be ruined by a mere rise or fall in stocks, he would be insane indeed who did not secure bread for his family, and, above all, means for himself, wherewith to commence again. The Baron de Thaller did not act otherwise; and, should he meet with a disaster, Mme. de Thaller would still have a handsome fortune.”
M. Desormeaux was, perhaps, the only one not to admit freely that theory, and not to accept that ever-decisive reason, “Others do it.”
But he was a philosopher, and thought it silly not to be of his time. He therefore contented himself with saying:
“Hum! M. de Thaller’s creditors might not think that mode of proceeding entirely regular.”
“Then they might sue,” said M. Chapelain, laughing. “People can always sue; only when the papers are well drawn—”
Mlle. Gilberte stood dismayed. She thought of Marius de Tregars giving up his mother’s fortune to pay his father’s debts.
“What would he say,” thought she, “should he hear such opinions!”
The cashier of the Mutual Credit resumed:
“Surely I blame every species of fraud. But I pretend, and I maintain, that a man who has worked twenty years to give a handsome dowry to his daughter has the right to demand of his son-in-law certain conservative measures to guarantee the money, which, after all, is his own, and which is to benefit no one but his own family.”
This declaration closed the evening. It was getting late. The Saturday guests put on their overcoats; and, as they were walking home,
“Can you understand that little Gilberte?” said Mme. Desclavettes. “I’d like to see a daughter of mine have such fancies! But her poor mother is so weak!”
“Yes; but friend Favoral is firm enough for both,” interrupted M. Desormeaux; “and it is more than probable that at this very moment he is correcting his daughter of the sin of sloth.”
Well, not at all. Extremely angry as M. Favoral must have been, neither that evening, nor the next day, did he make the remotest allusion to what had taken place.
The following Monday only, before leaving for his office, casting upon his wife and daughter one of his ugliest looks:
“M. Costeclar owes us a visit,” said he; “and it is possible that he may call in my absence. I wish him to be admitted; and I forbid you to go out, so that you can have no pretext to refuse him the door. I presume there will not be found in my house any one bold enough to ill receive a man whom I like, and whom I have selected for my son-in-law.”
But was it probable, was it even possible, that M. Costeclar could venture upon such a step after Mlle. Gilberte’s treatment of him on the previous Saturday evening?
“No, a thousand times no!” affirmed Maxence to his mother and sister. “So you may rest easy.”
Indeed they tried to be, until that very afternoon the sound of rapidly-rolling wheels attracted Mme. Favoral to the window. A coupe, drawn by two gray horses, had just stopped at the door.
“It must be he,” she said to her daughter.
Mlle. Gilberte had turned slightly pale.
“There is no help for it, mother,” she said: “You must receive him.”
“And you?”
“I shall remain in my room.”
“Do you suppose he won’t ask for you?”
“You will answer that I am unwell. He will understand.”
“But your father, unhappy child, your father?”
“I do not acknowledge to my father the right of disposing of my person against my wishes. I detest that man to whom he wishes to marry me. Would you like to see me his wife, to know me given up to the most intolerable torture? No, there is no violence in the world that will ever wring my consent from me. So, mother dear, do what I ask you. My father can say what he pleases: I take the whole responsibility upon myself.”
There was no time to argue: the bell rang. Mlle. Gilberte had barely time to escape through one of the doors of the parlor, whilst M. Costeclar was entering at the other.
If he did have enough perspicacity to guess what had just taken place, he did not in any way show it. He sat down; and it was only after conversing for a few moments upon indifferent subjects, that he asked how Mlle. Gilberte was.
“She is somewhat—unwell,” stammered Mme. Favoral.
He did not appear surprised; only,
“Our dear Favoral,” he said, “will be still more pained than I am when he hears of this mishap.”
Better than any other mother, Mme. Favoral must have understood and approved Mlle. Gilberte’s invincible repugnance. To her also, when she was young, her father had come one day, and said, “I have discovered a husband for you.” She had accepted him blindly. Bruised and wounded by daily outrages, she had sought refuge in marriage as in a haven of safety.
And since, hardly a day had elapsed that she had not thought it would have been better for her to have died rather then to have riveted to her neck those fetters that death alone can remove. She thought, therefore, that her daughter was perfectly right. And yet twenty years of slavery had so weakened the springs of her energy, that under the glance of Costeclar, threatening her with her husband’s name, she felt embarrassed, and could scarcely stammer some timid excuses. And she allowed him to prolong his visit, and consequently her torment, for over an half an hour; then, when he had gone,
“He and your father understand each other,” said she to her daughter, “that is but too evident. What is the use of struggling?”
A fugitive blush colored the pale cheeks of Mlle. Gilberte. For the past forty-eight hours she had been exhausting herself, seeking an issue to an impossible situation; and she had accustomed her mind to the worst eventualities.
“Do you wish me, then, to desert the paternal roof?” she exclaimed.
Mme. Favoral almost dropped on the floor.
“You would run away,” she stammered, “you!”
“Rather than become that man’s wife, yes!”
“And where would you go, unfortunate child? what would you do?”
“I can earn my living.”
Mme. Favoral shook her head sadly. The same suspicions were reviving within her that she had felt once before.
“Gilberte,” she said in a beseeching tone, “am I, then, no longer your best friend? and will you not tell me from what sources you draw your courage and your resolution?”
And, as her daughter said nothing:
“God alone knows what may happen!” sighed the poor woman.
Nothing happened, but what could have been easily foreseen. When M. Favoral came home to dinner, he was whistling a perfect storm on the stairs. He abstained at first from all recrimination; but towards the end of the meal, with the most sarcastic look he could assume:
“It seems,” he said to his daughter, “that you were unwell this afternoon?”
Bravely, and without flinching, she sustained his look; and, in a firm voice:
“I shall always be indisposed,” she replied, “when M. Costeclar calls. You hear me, don’t you, father—always!”
But the cashier of the Credit Mutual was not one of those men whose wrath finds vent in mere sarcasms. Rising suddenly to his feet:
“By the holy heavens!” he screamed forth, “you are wrong to trifle thus with my will; for, all of you here, I shall crush you as I do this glass.”
And, with a frenzied gesture, he dashed the glass he held in his hand against the wall, where it broke in a thousand pieces. Trembling like a leaf, Mme. Favoral staggered upon her chair.
“Better kill her at once,” said Mlle. Gilberte coldly. “She would suffer less.”
It was by a torrent of invective that M. Favoral replied. His rage, dammed up for the past four days, finding at last an outlet, flowed in gross insults and insane threats. He spoke of throwing out in the street his wife and children, or starving them out, or shutting up his daughter in a house of correction; until at last, language failing his fury, beside himself, he left, swearing that he would bring M. Costeclar home himself, and then they would see.
“Very well, we shall see,” said Mlle. Gilberte.
Motionless in his place, and white as a plaster cast, Maxence had witnessed this lamentable scene. A gleam of common-sense had enabled him to control his indignation, and to remain silent. He had understood, that, at the first word, his father’s fury would have turned against him; and then what might have happened? The most frightful dramas of the criminal courts have often had no other origin.
“No, this is no longer bearable!” he exclaimed.
Even at the time of his greatest follies, Maxence had always had for his sister a fraternal affection. He admired her from the day she had stood up before him to reproach him for his misconduct. He envied her her quiet determination, her patient tenacity, and that calm energy that never failed her.
“Have patience, my poor Gilberte,” he added: “the day is not far, I hope, when I may commence to repay you all you have done for me. I have not lost my time since you restored me my reason. I have arranged with my creditors. I have found a situation, which, if not brilliant, is at least sufficiently lucrative to enable me before long to offer you, as well as to our mother, a peaceful retreat.”
“But it is to-morrow,” interrupted Mme. Favoral, “to-morrow that your father is to bring M. Costeclar. He has said so, and he will do it.”
And so he did. About two o’clock in the afternoon M. Favoral and his protege arrived in the Rue St. Gilles, in that famous coupe with the two horses, which excited the wonder of the neighbors.
But Mlle. Gilberte had her plan ready. She was on the lookout; and, as soon as she heard the carriage stop, she ran to her room, undressed in a twinkling, and went to bed.
When her father came for her, and saw her in bed, he remained surprised and puzzled on the threshold of the door.
“And yet I’ll make you come into the parlor!” he said in a hoarse voice.
“Then you must carry me there as I am,” she said in a tone of defiance; “for I shall certainly not get up.”
For the first time since his marriage, M. Favoral met in his own house a more inflexible will than his own, and a more unyielding obstinacy. He was baffled. He threatened his daughter with his clinched fists, but could discover no means of making her obey. He was compelled to surrender, to yield.
“This will be settled with the rest,” he growled, as he went out.
“I fear nothing in the world, father,” said the girl.
It was almost true, so much did the thought of Marius de Tregars inflame her courage. Twice already she had heard from him through the Signor Gismondo Pulei, who never tired talking of this new pupil, to whom he had already given two lessons.
“He is the most gallant man in the world,” he said, his eye sparkling with enthusiasm, “and the bravest, and the most generous, and the best; and no quality that can adorn one of God’s creatures shall be wanting in him when I have taught him the divine art. It is not with a little contemptible gold that he means to reward my zeal. To him I am as a second father; and it is with the confidence of a son that he explains to me his labors and his hopes.”
Thus Mlle. Gilberte learned through the old maestro, that the newspaper article she had read was almost exactly true, and that M. de Tregars and M. Marcolet had become associated for the purpose of working, in joint account, certain recent discoveries, which bid fair to yield large profits in a near future.
“And yet it is for my sake alone that he has thus thrown himself into the turmoil of business, and has become as eager for gain as that M. Marcolet himself.”
And, at the height of her father’s persecutions, she felt glad of what she had done, and of her boldness in placing her destiny in the hands of a stranger. The memory of Marius had become her refuge, the element of all her dreams and of all her hopes; in a word, her life.
It was of Marius she was thinking, when her mother, surprising her gazing into vacancy, would ask her, “What are you thinking of?” And, at every new vexation she had to endure, her imagination decked him with a new quality, and she clung to him with a more desperate grasp.
“How much he would grieve,” thought she, “if he knew of what persecution I am the object!”
And very careful was she not to allow the Signor Gismondo Pulei to suspect any thing of it, affecting, on the contrary, in his presence, the most cheerful serenity.
And yet she was a prey to the most cruel anxiety, since she observed a new and most incredible transformation in her father.
That man so violent and so harsh, who flattered himself never to have been bent, who boasted never to have forgotten or forgiven any thing, that domestic tyrant, had become quite a debonair personage. He had referred to the expedient imagined by Mlle. Gilberte only to laugh at it, saying that it was a good trick, and he deserved it; for he repented bitterly, he protested, his past brutalities.
He owned that he had at heart his daughter’s marriage with M. Costeclar; but he acknowledged that he had made use of the surest means for making it fail. He should, he humbly confessed, have expected every thing of time and circumstances, of M. Costeclar’s excellent qualities, and of his beautiful, darling daughter’s good sense.
More than of all his violence, Mme. Favoral was terrified at this affected good nature.
“Dear me!” she sighed, “what does it all mean?”
But the cashier of the Mutual Credit was not preparing any new surprise to his family. If the means were different, it was still the same object that he was pursuing with the tenacity of an insect. When severity had failed, he hoped to succeed by gentleness, that’s all. Only this assumption of hypocritical meekness was too new to him to deceive any one. At every moment the mask fell off, the claws showed, and his voice trembled with ill-suppressed rage in the midst of his most honeyed phrases.
Moreover, he entertained the strangest illusions. Because for forty-eight hours he had acted the part of a good-natured man, because one Sunday he had taken his wife and daughter out riding in the Bois de Vincennes, because he had given Maxence a hundred-franc note, he imagined that it was all over, that the past was obliterated, forgotten, and forgiven.
And, drawing Gilberte upon his knees,
“Well, daughter,” he said, “you see that I don’t importune you any more, and I leave you quite free. I am more reasonable than you are.”
But on the other hand, and according to an expression which escaped him later, he tried to turn the enemy.
He did every thing in his power to spread in the neighborhood the rumor of Mlle. Gilberte’s marriage with a financier of colossal wealth,—that elegant young man who came in a coupe with two horses. Mme. Favoral could not enter a shop without being covertly complimented upon having found such a magnificent establishment for her daughter.
Loud, indeed, must have been the gossip; for its echo reached even the inattentive ears of the Signor Gismondo Pulei.
One day, suddenly interrupting his lesson,—“You are going to be married, signora?” he inquired.
Mlle. Gilberte started.
What the old Italian had heard, he would surely ere long repeat to Marius. It was therefore urgent to undeceive him.
“It is true,” she replied, “that something has been said about a marriage, dear maestro.”
“Ah, ah!”
“Only my father had not consulted me. That marriage will never take place: I swear it.”
She expressed herself in a tone of such ardent conviction, that the old gentleman was quite astonished, little dreaming that it was not to him that this energetic denial was addressed.
“My destiny is irrevocably fixed,” added Mlle. Gilberte. “When I marry, I will consult the inspirations of my heart only.”
In the mean time, it was a veritable conspiracy against her. M. Favoral had succeeded in interesting in the success of his designs his habitual guests, not M. and Mme. Desclavettes, who had been seduced from the first, but M. Chapelain and old Desormeaux himself. So that they all vied with each other in their efforts to bring the “dear child” to reason, and to enlighten her with their counsels.
“Father must have a still more considerable interest in this alliance than he has allowed us to think,” she remarked to her brother. Maxence was also absolutely of the same opinion.
“And then,” he added, “our father must be terribly rich; for, do not deceive yourself, it isn’t solely for your pretty blue eyes that this Costeclar persists in coming here twice a week to pocket a new mortification. What enormous dowry can he be hoping for? I am going to speak to him myself, and try to find out what he is after.”
But Mlle. Gilberte had but slight confidence in her brother’s diplomacy.
“I beg of you,” she said, “don’t meddle with that business!”
“Yes, yes, I will! Fear nothing, I’ll be prudent.”
Having taken his resolution, Maxence placed himself on the lookout; and the very next day, as M. Costeclar was stepping out of his carriage at the door, he walked straight up to him.
“I wish to speak to you, sir,” he said. Self-possessed as he was, the brilliant financier succeeded but poorly in concealing a surprise that looked very much like fright.
“I am going in to call on your parents, sir,” he replied; “and whilst waiting for your father, with whom I have an appointment, I shall be at your command.”
“No, no!” interrupted Maxence. “What I have to say must be heard by you alone. Come along this way, and we shall not be interrupted.”
And he led M. Costeclar away as far as the Place Royal. Once there,
“You are very anxious to marry my sister, sir,” he commenced.
During their short walk M. Costeclar had recovered himself. He had resumed all his impertinent assurance. Looking at Maxence from head to foot with any thing but a friendly look,
“It is my dearest and my most ardent wish, sir,” he replied.
“Very well. But you must have noticed the very slight success, to use no harsher word, of your assiduities.”
“Alas!”
“And, perhaps, you will judge, like myself, that it would be the act of a gentleman to withdraw in presence of such positive repugnance?”
An ugly smile was wandering upon M. Costeclar’s pale lips.
“Is it at the request of your sister, sir, that you make me this communication?”
“No, sir.”
“Are you aware whether your sister has some inclination that may be an obstacle to the realization of my hopes?”
“Sir!”
“Excuse me! What I say has nothing to offend. It might very well be that your sister, before I had the honor of being introduced to her, had already fixed her choice.”
He spoke so loud, that Maxence looked sharply around to see whether there was not some one within hearing. He saw no one but a young man, who seemed quite absorbed reading a newspaper.
“But, sir,” he resumed, “what would you answer, if I, the brother of the young lady whom you wish to marry against her wishes,—I called upon you to cease your assiduities?”
M. Costeclar bowed ceremoniously,
“I would answer you, sir,” he uttered, “that your father’s assent is sufficient for me. My suit has nothing but is honorable. Your sister may not like me: that is a misfortune; but it is not irreparable. When she knows me better, I venture to hope that she will overcome her unjust prejudices. Therefore I shall persist.”
Maxence insisted no more. He was irritated at M. Costeclar’s coolness; but it was not his intention to push things further.
“There will always be time,” he thought, “to resort to violent measures.”
But when he reported this conversation to his sister,
“It is clear,” he said, “that, between our father and that man, there is a community of interests which I am unable to discover. What business have they together? In what respect can your marriage either help or injure them? I must see, try and find out exactly who is this Costeclar: the deuse take him!”
He started out the same day, and had not far to go.
M. Costeclar was one of those personalities which only bloom in Paris, and are only met in Paris,—the same as cab-horses, and young ladies with yellow chignons.
He knew everybody, and everybody knew him.
He was well known at the bourse, in all the principal restaurants, where he called the waiters by their first names, at the box-office of the theatres, at all the pool-rooms, and at the European Club, otherwise called the Nomadic Club, of which he was a member.
He operated at the bourse: that was sure. He was said to own a third interest in a stock-broker’s office. He had a good deal of business with M. Jottras, of the house of Jottras and Brother, and M. Saint Pavin, the manager of a very popular journal, “The Financial Pilot.”
It was further known that he had on Rue Vivienne, a magnificent apartment, and that he had successively honored with his liberal protection Mlle. Sidney of the Varieties, and Mme. Jenny Fancy, a lady of a certain age already, but so situated as to return to her lovers in notoriety what they gave her in good money. So much did Maxence learn without difficulty. As to any more precise details, it was impossible to obtain them. To his pressing questions upon M. Costeclar’s antecedents,
“He is a perfectly honest man,” answered some.
“He is simply a speculator,” affirmed others.
But all agreed that he was a sharp one; who would surely make his fortune, and without passing through the police-courts, either.
“How can our father and such a man be so intimately connected?” wondered Maxence and his sister.
And they were lost in conjectures, when suddenly, at an hour when he never set his foot in the house, M. Favoral appeared.
Throwing a letter upon his daughter’s lap,
“See what I have just received from Costeclar,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Read.”
She read, “Allow me, dear friend, to release you from your engagement. Owing to circumstances absolutely beyond my control, I find myself compelled to give up the honor of becoming a member of your family.”
What could have happened?
Standing in the middle of the parlor, the cashier of the Mutual Credit held, bowed down beneath his glance, his wife and children, Mme. Favoral trembling, Maxence starting in mute surprise, and Mlle. Gilberte, who needed all the strength of her will to control the explosion of her immense joy.
Every thing in M. Favoral betrayed, nevertheless, much more the excitement of a disaster than the rage of a deception.
Never had his family seen him thus,—livid, his cravat undone, his hair wet with perspiration, and clinging to his temples.
“Will you please explain this letter?” he asked at last.
And, as no one answered him, he took up that letter again from the table where Mlle. Gilberte had laid it, and commenced reading it again, scanning each syllable, as if in hopes of discovering in each word some hidden meaning.
“What did you say to Costeclar?” he resumed, “what did you do to him to make him take such a determination?”
“Nothing,” answered Maxence and Mlle. Gilberte.
The hope of being at last rid of that man inspired Mme. Favoral with something like courage.
“He has doubtless understood,” she meekly suggested, “that he could not triumph over our daughter’s repugnance.”
But her husband interrupted her,
“No,” he uttered, “Costeclar is not the man to trouble himself about the ridiculous caprices of a little girl. There is something else. But what is it? Come, if you know it, any of you, if you suspect it even, speak, say it. You must see that I am in a state of fearful anxiety.”
It was the first time that he thus allowed something to appear of what was passing within him, the first time that he ever complained.
“M. Costeclar alone, father, can give you the explanation you ask of us,” said Mlle. Gilberte.
The cashier of the Mutual Credit shook his head. “Do you suppose, then, that I have not questioned him? I found his letter this morning at the office. At once I ran to his apartments, Rue Vivienne. He had just gone out; and it is in vain that I called for him at Jottras’, and at the office of ‘The Financial Pilot.’ I found him at last at the bourse, after running three hours. But I could only get from him evasive answers and vague explanations. Of course he did not fail to say, that, if he does withdraw, it is because he despairs of ever succeeding in pleasing Gilberte. But it isn’t so: I know it; I am sure of it; I read it in his eyes. Twice his lips moved as if he were about to confess all; and then he said nothing. And the more I insisted, the more he seemed ill at ease, embarrassed, uneasy, troubled, the more he appeared to me like a man who has been threatened, and dares not brave the threat.”
He directed upon his children one of those obstinate looks which search the inmost depths of the conscience.
“If you have done any thing to drive him off,” he resumed, “confess it frankly, and I swear I will not reproach you.”
“We did not.”
“You did not threaten him?”
“No!”
M. Favoral seemed appalled.
“Doubtless you deceive me,” he said, “and I hope you do. Unhappy children! you do not know what this rupture may cost you.”
And, instead of returning to his office, he shut himself up in that little room which he called his study, and only came out of it at about five o’clock, holding under his arm an enormous bundle of papers, and saying that it was useless to wait for him for dinner, as he would not come home until late in the night, if he came home at all, being compelled to make up for his lost day.
“What is the matter with your father, my poor children?” exclaimed Mme. Favoral. “I have never seen him in such a state.”
“Doubtless,” replied Maxence, “the rupture with Costeclar is going to break up some combination.”
But that explanation did not satisfy him any more than it did his mother. He, too, felt a vague apprehension of some impending misfortune. But what? He had nothing upon which to base his conjectures. He knew nothing, any more than his mother, of his father’s affairs, of his relations, of his interests, or even of his life, outside the house.
And mother and son lost themselves in suppositions as vain as if they had tried to find the solution of a problem, without possessing its terms.
With a single word Mlle. Gilberte thought she might have enlightened them.
In the unerring certainty of the blow, in the crushing promptness of the result, she thought she could recognize the hand of Marius de Tregars.
She recognized the hand of the man who acts, and does not talk. And the girl’s pride felt flattered by this victory, by this proof of the powerful energy of the man whom, unknown to all, she had selected. She liked to imagine Marius de Tregars and M. Costeclar in presence of each other,—the one as imperious and haughty as she had seen him meek and trembling; the other more humble still than he was arrogant with her.
“One thing is certain,” she repeated to herself; “and that is, I am saved.”
And she wished the morrow to come, that she might announce her happiness to the very involuntary and very unconscious accomplice of Marius, the worthy Maestro Gismondo Pulei.
The next day M. Favoral seemed to have resigned himself to the failure of his projects; and, the following Saturday, he told as a pleasant joke, how Mlle. Gilberte had carried the day, and had managed to dismiss her lover.
But a close observer could discover in him symptoms of devouring cares. Deep wrinkles showed along his temples; his eyes were sunken; a continued tension of mind contracted his features. Often during the dinner he would remain motionless for several minutes, his fork aloft; and then he would murmur, “How is it all going to end?”
Sometimes in the morning, before his departure for his office, M. Jottras, of the house of Jottras and Brother, and M. Saint Pavin, the manager of “The Financial Pilot,” came to see him. They closeted themselves together, and remained for hours in conference, speaking so low, that not even a vague murmur could be heard outside the door.
“Your father has grave subjects of anxiety, my children,” said Mme. Favoral: “you may believe me,—me, who for twenty years have been trying to guess our fate upon his countenance.”
But the political events were sufficient to explain any amount of anxiety. It was the second week of July, 1870; and the destinies of France trembled, as upon a cast of the dice, in the hands of a few presumptuous incapables. Was it war with Prussia, or was it peace, that was to issue from the complications of a childishly astute policy?
The most contradictory rumors caused daily at the bourse the most violent oscillations, which endangered the safest fortunes. A few words uttered in a corridor by Emile Ollivier had made a dozen heavy operators rich, but had ruined five hundred small ones. On all hands, credit was trembling.
Until one evening when he came home,
“War is declared,” said M. Favoral.
It was but too true; and no one then had any fears of the result for France. They had so much exalted the French army, they had so often said that it was invincible, that every one among the public expected a series of crushing victories.
Alas! the first telegram announced a defeat. People refused to believe it at first. But there was the evidence. The soldiers had died bravely; but the chiefs had been incapable of leading them.
From that time, and with a vertiginous rapidity, from day to day, from hour to hour, the fatal news came crowding on. Like a river that overflows its banks, Prussia was overrunning France. Bazaine was surrounded at Metz; and the capitulation of Sedan capped the climax of so many disasters.
At last, on the 4th of September, the republic was proclaimed.
On the 5th, when the Signor Gismondo Pulei presented himself at Rue St. Gilles, his face bore such an expression of anguish, that Mlle. Gilberte could not help asking what was the matter.
He rose on that question, and, threatening heaven with his clinched fist,
“Implacable fate does not tire to persecute me,” he replied. “I had overcome all obstacles: I was happy: I was looking forward to a future of fortune and glory. No, the dreadful war must break out.”
For the worthy maestro, this terrible catastrophe was but a new caprice of his own destiny.
“What has happened to you?” inquired the young girl, repressing a smile.
“It happens to me, signora, that I am about to lose my beloved pupil. He leaves me; he forsakes me. In vain have I thrown myself at his feet. My tears have not been able to detain him. He is going to fight; he leaves; he is a soldier!”
Then it was given to Mlle. Gilberte to see clearly within her soul. Then she understood how absolutely she had given herself up, and to what extent she had ceased to belong to herself.
Her sensation was terrible, such as if her whole blood had suddenly escaped through her open arteries. She turned pale, her teeth chattered; and she seemed so near fainting, that the Signor Gismondo sprang to the door, crying, “Help, help! she is dying.”
Mme. Favoral, frightened, came running in. But already, thanks to an all-powerful projection of will, Mlle. Gilberte had recovered, and, smiling a pale smile,
“It’s nothing, mamma,” she said. “A sudden pain in the head; but it’s gone already.”
The worthy maestro was in perfect agony. Taking Mme. Favoral aside,
“It is my fault,” he said. “It is the story of my unheard-of misfortunes that has upset her thus. Monstrous egotist that I am! I should have been careful of her exquisite sensibility.”
She insisted, nevertheless, upon taking her lesson as usual, and recovered enough presence of mind to extract from the Signor Gismondo everything that his much-regretted pupil had confided to him.
That was not much. He knew that his pupil had gone, like anyone else, to Rue de Cherche Midi; that he had signed an engagement; and had been ordered to join a regiment in process of formation near Tours. And, as he went out,
“That is nothing,” said the kind maestro to Mme. Favoral. “The signora has quite recovered, and is as gay as a lark.”
The signora, shut up in her room, was shedding bitter tears. She tried to reason with herself, and could not succeed. Never had the strangeness of her situation so clearly appeared to her. She repeated to herself that she must be mad to have thus become attached to a stranger. She wondered how she could have allowed that love, which was now her very life, to take possession of her soul. But to what end? It no longer rested with her to undo what had been done.
When she thought that Marius de Tregars was about to leave Paris to become a soldier, to fight, to die perhaps, she felt her head whirl; she saw nothing around her but despair and chaos.
And, the more she thought, the more certain she felt that Marius could not have trusted solely to the chance gossip of the Signor Pulei to communicate to her his determination.
“It is perfectly inadmissible,” she thought. “It is impossible that he will not make an effort to see me before going.”
Thoroughly imbued with the idea, she wiped her eyes, took a seat by an open window; and, whilst apparently busy with her work, she concentrated her whole attention upon the street.
There were more people out than usual. The recent events had stirred Paris to its lowest depths, and, as from the crater of a volcano in labor, all the social scoriae rose to the surface. Men of sinister appearance left their haunts, and wandered through the city. The workshops were all deserted; and people strolled at random, stupor or terror painted on their countenance. But in vain did Mlle. Gilberte seek in all this crowd the one she hoped to see. The hours went by, and she was getting discouraged, when suddenly, towards dusk, at the corner of the Rue Turenne,
“‘Tis he,” cried a voice within her.
It was, in fact, M. de Tregars. He was walking towards the Boulevard, slowly, and his eyes raised.
Palpitating, the girl rose to her feet. She was in one of those moments of crisis when the blood, rushing to the brain, smothers all judgment. Unconscious, as it were, of her acts, she leaned over the window, and made a sign to Marius, which he understood very well, and which meant, “Wait, I am coming down.”
“Where are you going, dear?” asked Mme. Favoral, seeing Gilberte putting on her bonnet.
“To the shop, mamma, to get a shade of worsted I need.”
Mlle. Gilberte was not in the habit of going out alone; but it happened quite often that she would go down in the neighborhood on some little errand.
“Do you wish the girl to go out with you?” asked Mme. Favoral.
“Oh, it isn’t worth while!”
She ran down the stairs; and once out, regardless of the looks that might be watching her, she walked straight to M. de Tregars, who was waiting on the corner of the Rue des Minimes.
“You are going away?” she said, too much agitated to notice his own emotion, which was, however, quite evident.
“I must,” he answered.
“Oh!”
“When France is invaded, the place for a man who bears my name is where the fighting is.”
“But there will be fighting in Paris too.”
“Paris has four times as many defenders as it needs. It is outside that soldiers will be wanted.”
They walked slowly, as they spoke thus, along the Rue des Minimes, one of the least frequented in Paris; and there were only to be seen at this hour five or six soldiers talking in front of the barracks gate.
“Suppose I were to beg you not to go,” resumed Mlle. Gilberte. “Suppose I beseeched you, Marius!”
“I should remain then,” he answered in a troubled voice; “but I would be betraying my duty, and failing to my honor; and remorse would weigh upon our whole life. Command now, and I will obey.”
They had stopped; and no one seeing them standing there side by side affectionate and familiar could have believed that they were speaking to each other for the first time. They themselves did not notice it, so much had they come, with the help of all-powerful imagination, and in spite of separation, to the understanding of intimacy. After a moment of painful reflection,
“I do not ask you any longer to stay,” uttered the young girl. He took her hand, and raised it to his lips.
“I expected no less of your courage,” he said, his voice vibrating with love. But he controlled himself, and, in a more quiet tone,
“Thanks to the indiscretion of Pulei,” he added, “I was in hopes of seeing you, but not to have the happiness of speaking to you. I had written—”
He drew from his pocket a large envelope, and, handing it to Mlle. Gilberte,
“Here is the letter,” he continued, “which I intended for you. It contains another, which I beg you to preserve carefully, and not to open unless I do not return. I leave you in Paris a devoted friend, the Count de Villegre. Whatever may happen to you, apply to him with all confidence, as you would to myself.”
Mlle. Gilberte, staggering, leaned against the wall.
“When do you expect to leave?” she inquired.
“This very night. Communications may be cut off at any moment.”
Admirable in her sorrow, but also full of energy, the poor girl looked up, and held out her hand to him.
“Go then,” she said, “O my only friend! go, since honor commands. But do not forget that it is not your life alone that you are going to risk.”
And, fearing to burst into sobs, she fled, and reached the Rue St. Gilles a few moments before her father, who had gone out in quest of news.
Those he brought home were of the most sinister kind.
Like the rising tide, the Prussians spread and advanced, slowly, but steadily. Their marches were numbered; and the day and hour could be named when their flood would come and strike the walls of Paris.
And so, at all the railroad stations, there was a prodigious rush of people who wished to leave at any cost, in any way, in the baggage-car if needs be, and who certainly were not, like Marius, rushing to meet the enemy.
One after another, M. Favoral had seen nearly every one he knew take flight.
The Baron and Baroness de Thaller and their daughter had gone to Switzerland; M. Costeclar was traveling in Belgium; the elder Jottras was in England, buying guns and cartridge; and if the younger Jottras, with M. Saint Pavin of “The Financial Pilot,” remained in Paris, it was because, through the gallant influence of a lady whose name was not mentioned, they had obtained some valuable contracts from the government.
The perplexities of the cashier of the Mutual Credit were great. The day that the Baron and the Baroness de Thaller had left,
“Pack up our trunks,” he ordered his wife. “The bourse is going to close; and the Mutual Credit can very well get along without me.”
But the next day he became undecided again. What Mlle. Gilberte thought she could guess, was, that he was dying to start alone, and leave his family, but dared not do it. He hesitated so long, that at last, one evening,
“You may unpack the trunks,” he said to his wife. “Paris is invested; and no one can now leave.”