The Lesser Bourgeoisie

CHAPTER XIII

THE PER­VER­SI­TY OF DOVES

“I am a non-​dis­pos­sess­able prop­er­ty-​own­er!” cried Thuil­li­er, com­ing home af­ter vis­it­ing his no­tary. “No hu­man pow­er can get that house away from me. Car­dot says so.”

The bour­geoisie think much more of what their no­tary tells them than of what their at­tor­ney says. The no­tary is near­er to them than any oth­er min­is­te­ri­al of­fi­cer. The Parisian bour­geois nev­er pays a vis­it to his at­tor­ney with­out a sense of fear; where­as he mounts the stairs with ev­er-​re­newed plea­sure to see his no­tary; he ad­mires that of­fi­cial's virtue and his sound good sense.

“Car­dot, who is look­ing for an apart­ment for one of his clients, wants to know about our sec­ond floor,” con­tin­ued Thuil­li­er. “If I choose he'll in­tro­duce to me on Sun­day a ten­ant who is ready to sign a lease for eigh­teen years at forty thou­sand francs and tax­es! What do you say to that, Brigitte?”

“Bet­ter wait,” she replied. “Ah! that dear Theo­dose, what a fright he gave me!”

“Hey! my dear­est girl, I must tell you that when Car­dot asked who put me in the way of this af­fair he said I owed him a present of at least ten thou­sand francs. The fact is, I owe it all to him.”

“But he is the son of the house,” re­spond­ed Brigitte.

“Poor lad! I'll do him the jus­tice to say that he asks for noth­ing.”

“Well, dear, good friend,” said la Peyrade, com­ing in about three o'clock, “here you are, richissime!”

“And through you, Theo­dose.”

“And you, lit­tle aunt, have you come to life again? Ah! you were not half as fright­ened as I was. I put your in­ter­ests be­fore my own; I haven't breathed freely till this morn­ing at eleven o'clock; and yet I am sure now of hav­ing two mor­tal en­emies at my heels in the two men I have tricked for your sake. As I walked home, just now, I asked my­self what could be your in­flu­ence over me to make me com­mit such a crime, and whether the hap­pi­ness of be­long­ing to your fam­ily and be­com­ing your son could ev­er ef­face the stain I have put up­on my con­science.”

“Bah! you can con­fess it,” said Thuil­li­er, the free-​thinker.

“And now,” said Theo­dose to Brigitte, “you can pay, in all se­cu­ri­ty, the cost of the house,--eighty thou­sand francs, and thir­ty thou­sand to Grindot; in all, with what you have paid in costs, one hun­dred and twen­ty thou­sand; and this last twen­ty thou­sand added make one hun­dred and forty thou­sand. If you let the house out­right to a sin­gle ten­ant ask him for the last year's rent in ad­vance, and re­serve for my wife and me the whole of the first floor above the en­tresol. Make those con­di­tions and you'll still get your forty thou­sand francs a year. If you should want to leave this quar­ter so as to be near­er the Cham­ber, you can al­ways take up your abode with us on that vast first floor, which has sta­bles and coach-​house be­long­ing to it; in fact, ev­ery­thing that is need­ful for a splen­did life. And now, Thuil­li­er, I am go­ing to get the cross of the Le­gion of hon­or for you.”

Hear­ing this last promise, Brigitte cried out in her en­thu­si­asm:--

“Faith! my dear boy, you've done our busi­ness so well that I'll leave you to man­age that of let­ting the house.”

“Don't ab­di­cate, dear aunt,” replied Theo­dose. “God keep me from ev­er tak­ing a step with­out you! You are the good ge­nius of this fam­ily; I think on­ly of the day when Thuil­li­er will take his seat in the Cham­ber. If you let the house you will come in­to pos­ses­sion of your forty thou­sand francs for the last year of the lease in two months from now; and that will not pre­vent Thuil­li­er from draw­ing his quar­ter­ly ten thou­sand of the rental.”

Af­ter cast­ing this hope in­to the mind of the old maid, who was ju­bi­lant, Theo­dose drew Thuil­li­er in­to the gar­den and said to him, with­out beat­ing round the bush:--

“Dear, good friend, find means to get ten thou­sand francs from your sis­ter, and be sure not to let her sus­pect that you pay them to me; tell her that sum is re­quired in the gov­ern­ment of­fice to fa­cil­itate your ap­point­ment as cheva­lier of the Le­gion of hon­or; tell her, too, that you know the per­sons among whom that sum should be dis­tribut­ed.”

“That's a good idea,” said Thuil­li­er; “be­sides, I'll pay it back to her when I get my rents.”

“Have the mon­ey ready this evening, dear friend. Now I am go­ing out on busi­ness about your cross; to-​mor­row we shall know some­thing def­inite­ly about it.”

“What a man you are!” cried Thuil­li­er.

“The min­istry of the 1st of March is go­ing to fall, and we must get it out of them be­fore­hand,” said Theo­dose, shrewd­ly.

He now hur­ried to Madame Colleville, cry­ing out as he en­tered her room:--

“I've con­quered! We shall have a piece of land­ed prop­er­ty for Ce­leste worth a mil­lion, a life-​in­ter­est in which will be giv­en to her by her mar­riage-​con­tract; but keep the se­cret, or your daugh­ter will be hunt­ed down by peers of France. Be­sides, this set­tle­ment will on­ly be made in my fa­vor. Now dress your­self, and let us go and call on Madame du Bru­el; she can get the cross for Thuil­li­er. While you are get­ting un­der arms I'll do a lit­tle court­ing to Ce­leste; you and I can talk as we drive along.”

La Peyrade had seen, as he passed the door of the sa­lon, Ce­leste and Fe­lix Phel­lion in close con­ver­sa­tion. Flavie had such con­fi­dence in her daugh­ter that she did not fear to leave them to­geth­er. Now that the great suc­cess of the morn­ing was se­cured, Theo­dose felt the ne­ces­si­ty of be­gin­ning his courtship of Ce­leste. It was high time, he thought, to bring about a quar­rel be­tween the lovers. He did not, there­fore, hes­itate to ap­ply his ear to the door of the sa­lon be­fore en­ter­ing it, in or­der to dis­cov­er what let­ters of the al­pha­bet of love they were spelling; he was even in­vit­ed to com­mit this do­mes­tic treach­ery by sounds from with­in, which seemed to say that they were dis­put­ing. Love, ac­cord­ing to one of our po­ets, is a priv­ilege which two per­sons mu­tu­al­ly take ad­van­tage of to cause each oth­er, re­cip­ro­cal­ly, a great deal of sor­row about noth­ing at all.

When Ce­leste knew that Fe­lix was elect­ed by her heart to be the com­pan­ion of her life, she felt a de­sire, not so much to study him as to unite her­self close­ly with him by that com­mu­nion of souls which is the ba­sis of all af­fec­tions, and leads, in youth­ful minds, to in­vol­un­tary ex­am­ina­tion. The dis­pute to which Theo­dose was now to lis­ten took its rise in a dis­agree­ment which had sprung up with­in the last few days be­tween the math­emati­cian and Ce­leste. The young girl's piety was re­al; she be­longed to the flock of the tru­ly faith­ful, and to her, Catholi­cism, tem­pered by that mys­ti­cism which at­tracts young souls, was an in­ward po­em, a life with­in her life. From this point young girls are apt to de­vel­op in­to ei­ther ex­treme­ly high-​mind­ed wom­en or saints. But, dur­ing this beau­ti­ful pe­ri­od of their youth they have in their heart, in their ideas, a sort of ab­so­lutism: be­fore their eyes is the im­age of per­fec­tion, and all must be ce­les­tial, an­gel­ic, or di­vine to sat­is­fy them. Out­side of their ide­al, noth­ing of good can ex­ist; all is stained and soiled. This idea caus­es the re­jec­tion of many a di­amond with a flaw by girls who, as wom­en, fall in love with paste.

Now, Ce­leste had seen in Fe­lix, not ir­re­li­gion, but in­dif­fer­ence to mat­ters of re­li­gion. Like most ge­ome­tri­cians, chemists, math­emati­cians, and great nat­ural­ists, he had sub­ject­ed re­li­gion to rea­son; he rec­og­nized a prob­lem in it as in­sol­uble as the squar­ing of the cir­cle. Deist “in pet­to,” he lived in the re­li­gion of most French­men, not at­tach­ing more im­por­tance to it than he did to the new laws pro­mul­gat­ed in Ju­ly. It was nec­es­sary to have a God in heav­en, just as they set up a bust of the king at the may­or's of­fice. Fe­lix Phel­lion, a wor­thy son of his fa­ther, had nev­er drawn the slight­est veil over his opin­ions or his con­science; he al­lowed Ce­leste to read in­to them with the can­dor and the inat­ten­tion of a stu­dent of prob­lems. The young girl, on her side, pro­fessed a hor­ror for athe­ism, and her con­science as­sured her that a deist was cousin-​ger­main to an athe­ist.

“Have you thought, Fe­lix, of do­ing what you promised me?” asked Ce­leste, as soon as Madame Colleville had left them alone.

“No, my dear Ce­leste,” replied Fe­lix.

“Oh! to have bro­ken his word!” she cried, soft­ly.

“But to have kept it would have been a pro­fa­na­tion,” said Fe­lix. “I love you so deeply, with a ten­der­ness so lit­tle proof against your wish­es, that I promised a thing con­trary to my con­science. Con­science, Ce­leste, is our trea­sure, our strength, our main­stay. How can you ask me to go in­to a church and kneel at the feet of a priest, in whom I can see on­ly a man? You would de­spise me if I obeyed you.”

“And so, my dear Fe­lix, you refuse to go to church,” said Ce­leste, cast­ing a tear­ful glance at the man she loved. “If I were your wife you would let me go alone? You do not love me as I love you! for, alas! I have a feel­ing in my heart for an athe­ist con­trary to that which God com­mands.”

“An athe­ist!” cried Fe­lix. “Oh, no! Lis­ten to me, Ce­leste. There is cer­tain­ly a God; I be­lieve in that; but I have high­er ideas of Him than those of your priests; I do not wish to bring Him down to my lev­el; I want to rise to Him. I lis­ten to the voice He has put with­in me,--a voice which hon­est men call con­science, and I strive not to dark­en that di­vine ray as it comes to me. For in­stance, I will nev­er harm oth­ers; I will do noth­ing against the com­mand­ments of uni­ver­sal moral­ity, which was that of Con­fu­cius, Moses, Pythago­ras, Socrates, as well as of Je­sus Christ. I will stand in the pres­ence of God; my ac­tions shall be my prayers; I will nev­er be false in word or deed; nev­er will I do a base or shame­ful thing. Those are the pre­cepts I have learned from my vir­tu­ous fa­ther, and which I de­sire to be­queath to my chil­dren. All the good that I can do I shall try to ac­com­plish, even if I have to suf­fer for it. What can you ask more of a man than that?”

This pro­fes­sion of the Phel­lion faith caused Ce­leste to sad­ly shake her head.

“Read at­ten­tive­ly,” she replied, “'The Im­ita­tion of Je­sus Christ.' Strive to con­vert your­self to the holy Catholic, apos­tolic, and Ro­man Church, and you will see how emp­ty your words are. Hear me, Fe­lix; mar­riage is not, the Church says, the af­fair of a day, the mere sat­is­fac­tion of our own de­sires; it is made for eter­ni­ty. What! shall we be unit­ed day and night, shall we form one flesh, one word, and yet have two lan­guages, two faiths in our heart, and a cause of per­pet­ual dis­sen­sion? Would you con­demn me to weep tears over the state of your soul,--tears that I must ev­er con­ceal from you? Could I ad­dress my­self in peace to God when I see his arm stretched out in wrath against you? Must my chil­dren in­her­it the blood of a deist and his con­vic­tions? Oh! God, what mis­ery for a wife! No, no, these ideas are in­tol­er­able. Fe­lix! be of my faith, for I can­not share yours. Do not put a gulf be­tween us. If you loved me, you would al­ready have read 'The Im­ita­tion of Je­sus Christ.'”

The Phel­lion class, sons of the “Con­sti­tu­tion­nel,” dis­like the priest­ly mind. Fe­lix had the im­pru­dence to re­ply to this sort of prayer from the depths of an ar­dent heart:--

“You are re­peat­ing, Ce­leste, the lessons your con­fes­sor teach­es you; noth­ing, be­lieve me, is more fa­tal to hap­pi­ness than the in­ter­fer­ence of priests in a home.”

“Oh!” cried Ce­leste, wound­ed to the quick, for love alone in­spired her, “you do not love! The voice of my heart is not in uni­son with yours! You have not un­der­stood me, be­cause you have not lis­tened to me; but I for­give you, for you know not what you say.”

She wrapped her­self in solemn si­lence, and Fe­lix went to the win­dow and drummed up­on the panes,--mu­sic fa­mil­iar to those who have in­dulged in poignant re­flec­tions. Fe­lix was, in fact, pre­sent­ing the fol­low­ing del­icate and cu­ri­ous ques­tions to the Phel­lion con­science.

“Ce­leste is a rich heiress, and, in yield­ing against the voice of nat­ural re­li­gion, to her ideas, I should have in view the mak­ing of what is cer­tain­ly an ad­van­ta­geous mar­riage,--an in­fa­mous act. I ought not, as fa­ther of a fam­ily, to al­low the priest­hood to have an in­flu­ence in my home. If I yield to-​day, I do a weak act, which will be fol­lowed by many oth­ers equal­ly per­ni­cious to the au­thor­ity of a hus­band and fa­ther. All this is un­wor­thy of a philoso­pher.”

Then he re­turned to his beloved.

“Ce­leste, I en­treat you on my knees,” he said, “not to min­gle that which the law, in its wis­dom, has sep­arat­ed. We live in two worlds, --so­ci­ety and heav­en. Each has its own way of sal­va­tion; but as to so­ci­ety, is it not obey­ing God to obey the laws? Christ said: 'Ren­der un­to Cae­sar that which is Cae­sar's.' Cae­sar is the body politic. Dear, let us for­get our lit­tle quar­rel.”

“Lit­tle quar­rel!” cried the young en­thu­si­ast; “I want you to have my whole heart as I want to have the whole of yours; and you make it in­to two parts! Is not that an evil? You for­get that mar­riage is a sacra­ment.”

“Your priest­hood have turned your head,” ex­claimed the math­emati­cian, im­pa­tient­ly.

“Mon­sieur Phel­lion,” said Ce­leste, in­ter­rupt­ing him hasti­ly, “enough of this!”

It was at this point of the quar­rel that Theo­dose con­sid­ered it ju­di­cious to en­ter the room. He found Ce­leste pale, and the young pro­fes­sor as anx­ious as a lover should be who has just ir­ri­tat­ed his mis­tress.

“I heard the word 'enough'; then some­thing is too much?” he said, in­quir­ing­ly, look­ing in turn from Ce­leste to Fe­lix.

“We were talk­ing re­li­gion,” replied Fe­lix, “and I was say­ing to made­moi­selle how dan­ger­ous ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal in­flu­ence is in the bo­som of fam­ilies.”

“That was not the point, mon­sieur,” said Ce­leste, sharply; “it was to know if hus­band and wife could be of one heart when the one is an athe­ist and the oth­er Catholic.”

“Can there be such a thing as athe­ists?” cried Theo­dose, with all the signs of ex­treme won­der­ment. “Could a true Catholic mar­ry a Protes­tant? There is no safe­ty pos­si­ble for a mar­ried pair un­less they have per­fect con­for­mi­ty in the mat­ter of re­li­gious opin­ions. I, who come from the Com­tat, of a fam­ily which counts a pope among its an­ces­tors--for our arms are: gules, a key ar­gent, with sup­port­ers, a monk hold­ing a church, and a pil­grim with a staff, or, and the mot­to, 'I open, I shut'--I am, of course, in­tense­ly dog­mat­ic on such points. But in these days, thanks to our mod­ern sys­tem of ed­uca­tion, it does not seem to me strange that re­li­gion should be called in­to ques­tion. I my­self would nev­er mar­ry a Protes­tant, had she mil­lions, even if I loved her dis­tract­ed­ly. Faith is a thing that can­not be tam­pered with. 'Una fides, un­us Domi­nus,' that is my de­vice in life.”

“You hear that!” cried Ce­leste, tri­umphant­ly, look­ing at Fe­lix Phel­lion.

“I am not open­ly de­vout,” con­tin­ued la Peyrade. “I go to mass at six ev­ery morn­ing, that I may not be ob­served; I fast on Fri­days; I am, in short, a son of the Church, and I would not un­der­take any se­ri­ous en­ter­prise with­out prayer, af­ter the an­cient fash­ion of our an­ces­tors; but no one is able to no­tice my re­li­gion. A sin­gu­lar thing hap­pened to our fam­ily dur­ing the Rev­olu­tion of 1789, which at­tached us more close­ly than ev­er to our holy moth­er the Church. A poor young la­dy of the el­der branch of the Peyrades, who owned the lit­tle es­tate of la Peyrade,--for we our­selves are Peyrades of Can­quoelle, but the two branch­es in­her­it from one an­oth­er,--well, this young la­dy mar­ried, six years be­fore the Rev­olu­tion, a bar­ris­ter who, af­ter the fash­ion of the times, was Voltaire­an, that is to say, an un­be­liev­er, or, if you choose, a deist. He took up all the rev­olu­tion­ary ideas, and prac­tised the charm­ing rites that you know of in the wor­ship of the god­dess Rea­son. He came in­to our part of the coun­try im­bued with the ideas of the Con­ven­tion, and fa­nat­ical about them. His wife was very hand­some; he com­pelled her to play the part of Lib­er­ty; and the poor un­for­tu­nate crea­ture went mad. She died in­sane! Well, as things are go­ing now it looks as if we might have an­oth­er 1793.”

This his­to­ry, in­vent­ed on the spot, made such an im­pres­sion on Ce­leste's fresh and youth­ful imag­ina­tion that she rose, bowed to the young men and has­tened to her cham­ber.

“Ah! mon­sieur, why did you tell her that?” cried Fe­lix, struck to the heart by the cold look the young girl, af­fect­ing pro­found in­dif­fer­ence, cast up­on him. She fan­cied her­self trans­formed in­to a god­dess of Rea­son.

“Why not? What were you talk­ing about?” asked Theo­dose.

“About my in­dif­fer­ence to re­li­gion.”

“The great sore of this cen­tu­ry,” replied Theo­dose, grave­ly.

“I am ready,” said Madame Colleville, ap­pear­ing in a toi­let of much taste. “But what is the mat­ter with my poor daugh­ter? She is cry­ing!”

“Cry­ing? madame,” ex­claimed Fe­lix; “please tell her that I will study 'The Im­ita­tion of Christ' at once.”

Fe­lix left the house with Theo­dose and Flavie, whose arm the bar­ris­ter pressed to let her know he would ex­plain in the car­riage the ap­par­ent de­men­tia of the young pro­fes­sor.

An hour lat­er, Madame Colleville and Ce­leste, Colleville and Theo­dose were en­ter­ing the Thuil­liers' apart­ment to dine there. Theo­dose and Flavie took Thuil­li­er in­to the gar­den, where the for­mer said to him:--

“Dear, good friend! you will have the cross with­in a week. Our charm­ing friend here will tell you about our vis­it to the Comtesse du Bru­el.”

And Theo­dose left Thuil­li­er, hav­ing caught sight of Desroches in the act of be­ing brought by Made­moi­selle Thuil­li­er in­to the gar­den; he went, driv­en by a ter­ri­ble and glacial pre­sen­ti­ment, to meet him.

“My good friend,” said Desroches in his ear, “I have come to see if you can pro­cure at once twen­ty-​five thou­sand francs plus two thou­sand six hun­dred and eighty for costs.”

“Are you act­ing for Cer­izet?” asked the bar­ris­ter.

“Cer­izet has put all the pa­pers in­to the hands of Louchard, and you know what you have to ex­pect if ar­rest­ed. Is Cer­izet wrong in think­ing you have twen­ty-​five thou­sand francs in your desk? He says you of­fered them to him and he thinks it on­ly nat­ural not to leave them in your hands.”

“Thank you for tak­ing the step, my good friend,” replied Theo­dose. “I have been ex­pect­ing this at­tack.”

“Be­tween our­selves,” replied Desroches, “you have made an ut­ter fool of him, and he is fu­ri­ous. The scamp will stop at noth­ing to get his re­venge up­on you--for he'll lose ev­ery­thing if he forces you to fling your bar­ris­ter's gown, as they say, to the net­tles and go to prison.”

“I?” said Theo­dose. “I'm go­ing to pay him. But even so, there will still be five notes of mine in his hands, for five thou­sand francs each; what does he mean to do with them?”

“Oh! af­ter the af­fair of this morn­ing, I can't tell you; my client is a crafty, mangy cur, and he is sure to have his lit­tle plans.”

“Look here, Desroches,” said Theo­dose, tak­ing the hard, un­yield­ing at­tor­ney round the waist, “those pa­pers are in your hands, are not they?”

“Will you pay them?”

“Yes, in three hours.”

“Very good, then. Be at my of­fice at nine o'clock; I'll re­ceive the mon­ey and give you your notes; _but_, at half-​past nine o'clock, they will be in the sher­iff's hands.”

“To-​night, then, at nine o'clock,” said Theo­dose.

“Nine o'clock,” re­peat­ed Desroches, whose glance had tak­en in the whole fam­ily, then as­sem­bled in the gar­den.

Ce­leste, with red eyes, was talk­ing to her god­moth­er; Colleville and Brigitte, Flavie and Thuil­li­er were on the steps of the broad por­ti­co lead­ing to the en­trance-​hall. Desroches re­marked to Theo­dose, who fol­lowed him to the door:--

“You can pay off those notes.”

At a sin­gle glance the shrewd at­tor­ney had com­pre­hend­ed the whole scheme of the bar­ris­ter.