The Lesser Bourgeoisie

CHAPTER XVI

DU POR­TAIL

The next day Cer­izet did not fail to ap­pear at the ren­dezvous giv­en to him. Ex­am­ined, at first, through the wick­et of the door, he was ad­mit­ted, af­ter giv­ing his name, in­to the house, and was ush­ered im­me­di­ate­ly to the study of Mon­sieur du Por­tail, whom he found at his desk.

With­out ris­ing, and mere­ly mak­ing a sign to his guest to take a chair, the lit­tle old man con­tin­ued the let­ter he was then writ­ing. Af­ter seal­ing it with wax, with a care and pre­ci­sion that de­not­ed a na­ture ex­treme­ly fas­tid­ious and par­tic­ular, or else a man ac­cus­tomed to dis­charge diplo­mat­ic func­tions, du Por­tail rang for Bruneau, his valet, and said, as he gave him the let­ter:--

“For the jus­tice-​of-​peace of the ar­rondisse­ment.”

Then he care­ful­ly wiped the steel pen he had just used, re­stored to their places, sym­met­ri­cal­ly, all the dis­placed ar­ti­cles on his desk, and it was on­ly when these lit­tle ar­range­ments were com­plet­ed that he turned to Cer­izet, and said:--

“You know, of course, that we lost that poor Mon­sieur Toupil­li­er last night?”

“No, re­al­ly?” said Cer­izet, putting on the most sym­pa­thet­ic air he could man­age. “This is my first knowl­edge of it.”

“But you prob­ably ex­pect­ed it. When one gives a dy­ing man an im­mense bowl of hot wine, which has al­so been nar­co­tized,--for the Per­rache wom­an slept all night in a sort of lethar­gy af­ter drink­ing a small glass of it,--it is ev­ident that the catas­tro­phe has been has­tened.”

“I am ig­no­rant, mon­sieur,” said Cer­izet, with dig­ni­ty, “of what Madame Car­di­nal may have giv­en to her un­cle. I have no doubt com­mit­ted a great piece of thought­less­ness in as­sist­ing this wom­an to ob­tain an in­her­itance to which she as­sured me she had le­gal rights; but as to at­tempt­ing the life of that old pau­per, I am quite in­ca­pable of such a thing; noth­ing of the kind ev­er en­tered my mind.”

“You wrote me this let­ter, I think,” said du Por­tail, abrupt­ly, tak­ing from be­neath a bo­hemi­an glass bowl a pa­per which he of­fered to Cer­izet.

“A let­ter?” replied Cer­izet, with the hes­ita­tion of a man who doesn't know whether to lie or speak the truth.

“I am quite sure of what I say,” con­tin­ued du Por­tail. “I have a ma­nia for au­to­graphs, and I pos­sess one of yours, ob­tained at the pe­ri­od when the Op­po­si­tion ex­alt­ed you to the glo­ri­ous rank of mar­tyr. I have com­pared the two writ­ings, and I find that you cer­tain­ly wrote me, yes­ter­day, the let­ter which you hold in your hand, in­form­ing me of the mon­ey em­bar­rass­ments of young la Peyrade at the present mo­ment.”

“Well,” said Cer­izet, “know­ing that you had giv­en a home to Made­moi­selle de la Peyrade, who is prob­ably cousin of Theo­dose, I thought I rec­og­nized in you the mys­te­ri­ous pro­tec­tor from whom, on more than one oc­ca­sion, my friend has re­ceived the most gen­er­ous as­sis­tance. Now, as I have a sin­cere af­fec­tion for that poor fel­low, it was in his in­ter­ests that I per­mit­ted my­self--”

“You did quite right,” in­ter­rupt­ed du Por­tail. “I am de­light­ed to have fall­en in with a friend of la Peyrade. I ought not to con­ceal from you that it was this par­tic­ular fact which pro­tect­ed you last night. But tell me, what is this about notes for twen­ty-​five thou­sand francs? Is our friend so bad­ly off in his af­fairs? Is he lead­ing a dis­si­pat­ed life?”

“On the con­trary,” replied Cer­izet, “he's a pu­ri­tan. Giv­en to the deep­est piety, he did not choose to take, as a bar­ris­ter, any oth­er cas­es but those of the poor. He is now on the point of mak­ing a rich mar­riage.”

“Ah! is he go­ing to be mar­ried? and to whom?”

“To a Demoi­selle Colleville, daugh­ter of the sec­re­tary of the may­or of the 12th ar­rondisse­ment. In her­self, the girl has no for­tune, but a cer­tain Mon­sieur Thuil­li­er, her god­fa­ther, mem­ber of the Coun­cil-​gen­er­al of the Seine, has promised her a suit­able 'dot.'”

“Who has han­dled this af­fair?”

“La Peyrade has been de­vot­ed to the Thuil­li­er fam­ily, in­to which he was in­tro­duced by Mon­sieur Du­tocq, clerk of the jus­tice-​of-​peace of their ar­rondisse­ment.”

“But you wrote me that these notes were signed in fa­vor of Mon­sieur Du­tocq. The af­fair is a bit of mat­ri­mo­ni­al bro­ker­age, in short?”

“Well, some­thing of that kind,” replied Cer­izet. “You know, mon­sieur, that in Paris such trans­ac­tions are very com­mon. Even the cler­gy won't dis­dain to have a fin­ger in them.”

“Is the mar­riage a set­tled thing?”

“Yes, and with­in the last few days es­pe­cial­ly.”

“Well, my good sir, I re­ly on you to put an end to it. I have oth­er views for Theo­dose,--an­oth­er mar­riage to pro­pose to him.”

“Ex­cuse me!” said Cer­izet, “to break up this mar­riage would make it im­pos­si­ble for him to pay his notes; and I have the hon­or to call your at­ten­tion to the fact that these par­tic­ular bills of ex­change are se­ri­ous mat­ters. Mon­sieur Du­tocq is in the of­fice of the jus­tice-​of-​peace; in oth­er words, he couldn't be eas­ily de­feat­ed in such a mat­ter.”

“The debt to Mon­sieur Du­tocq you shall buy off your­self,” replied du Por­tail. “Make ar­range­ments with him to that ef­fect. Should Theo­dose prove re­luc­tant to car­ry out my plans, those notes may be­come a use­ful weapon in our hands. You will take up­on your­self to sue him for them, and you shall have no mon­ey re­spon­si­bil­ity in the mat­ter. I will pay you the amount of the notes for Du­tocq, and your costs in su­ing Theo­dose.”

“You are square in busi­ness, mon­sieur,” said Cer­izet. “There's some plea­sure in be­ing your agent. Now, if you think the right mo­ment has come, I should be glad if you would give me some bet­ter light on the mis­sion you are do­ing me the hon­or to place in my hands.”

“You spoke just now,” replied du Por­tail, “of the cousin of Theo­dose, Made­moi­selle Ly­die de la Peyrade. This young wom­an, who is not in her first youth, for she is near­ly thir­ty, is the nat­ural daugh­ter of the cel­ebrat­ed Made­moi­selle Beaumes­nil of the The­atre Fran­cais and Peyrade, the com­mis­sary-​gen­er­al of po­lice un­der the Em­pire, and the un­cle of our friend. Un­til his death, which oc­curred sud­den­ly, leav­ing his daugh­ter, whom he loved ten­der­ly, with­out means of sup­port, I was bound to that ex­cel­lent man with the warmest friend­ship.”

Glad to show that he had some knowl­edge of du Por­tail's in­te­ri­or life, Cer­izet has­tened to re­mark:--

“And you have se­cret­ly ful­filled the du­ties of that friend­ship, mon­sieur; for, in tak­ing in­to your home that in­ter­est­ing or­phan you as­sumed a dif­fi­cult guardian­ship. Made­moi­selle de la Peyrade's state of health re­quires, I am told, a care not on­ly af­fec­tion­ate, but per­se­ver­ing.”

“Yes,” replied du Por­tail, “the poor girl, af­ter the death of her fa­ther, was so cru­el­ly tried that her mind has been some­what af­fect­ed; but a for­tu­nate change has late­ly oc­curred in her con­di­tion, and on­ly yes­ter­day I called in con­sul­ta­tion Doc­tor Bian­chon and the two physi­cians-​in-​charge of Bice­tre and the Salpetriere. These gen­tle­men unan­imous­ly de­clare that mar­riage and the birth of a first child would un­doubt­ed­ly re­store her to per­fect health. You can read­ily un­der­stand that the rem­edy is too easy and agree­able not to be at­tempt­ed.”

“Then,” said Cer­izet, “it is to Made­moi­selle Ly­die de la Peyrade, his cousin, that you wish to mar­ry Theo­dose.”

“You have said it,” re­turned du Por­tail, “and you must not think that our young friend, if he ac­cepts the mar­riage, will be called up­on to show a gra­tu­itous de­vo­tion. Ly­die is very agree­able in per­son; she has tal­ents, a charm­ing dis­po­si­tion, and she can bring to bear, in her hus­band's in­ter­est, a strong in­flu­ence in pub­lic life. She has, more­over, a pret­ty for­tune, con­sist­ing of what her moth­er left her, and of my en­tire prop­er­ty, which, hav­ing no heirs my­self, I in­tend to se­cure to her in the mar­riage con­tract. Be­sides all this, she has this very night ac­quired a not in­con­sid­er­able lega­cy.”

“What!” ex­claimed Cer­izet, “do you mean that old Toupil­li­er--”

“By a will in his own hand­writ­ing, which I have here, that old pau­per con­sti­tutes her his sole lega­tee. You see, there­fore, that I showed some kind­ness in not pro­ceed­ing against you and Madame Car­di­nal for your lit­tle at­tempt last night; it was sim­ply our prop­er­ty that you were try­ing to pil­lage.”

“Heav­ens!” cried Cer­izet, “I won't pre­tend to ex­cuse Madame Car­di­nal's mis­con­duct; and yet, as one of the le­gal heirs, dis­pos­sessed by a stranger, she had, it seems to me, some right to the in­dul­gence which you cer­tain­ly showed to her.”

“In that you are mis­tak­en,” said du Por­tail; “the ap­par­ent lib­er­al­ity of the old beg­gar to Made­moi­selle de la Peyrade hap­pens to be on­ly a resti­tu­tion.”

“A resti­tu­tion!” ex­claimed Cer­izet, in a tone of cu­rios­ity.

“A resti­tu­tion,” re­peat­ed du Por­tail, “and noth­ing is eas­ier than to prove it. Do you re­mem­ber the rob­bery of some di­amonds from one of our dra­mat­ic celebri­ties about ten years ago?”

“Yes,” replied Cer­izet. “I was man­ag­er of one of my news­pa­pers at the time, and I used to write the 'Paris items.' But stay, I re­mem­ber, the ac­tress who lost them was Made­moi­selle Beaumes­nil.”

“Pre­cise­ly; the moth­er of Made­moi­selle de la Peyrade.”

“Con­se­quent­ly, this mis­er­able old Toupil­li­er--no, I re­mem­ber that the thief was con­vict­ed; his name was Charles Crochard. It was said, un­der the rose, that he was the nat­ural son of a great per­son­age, the Comte de Granville, at­tor­ney-​gen­er­al un­der the Restora­tion.” [See “A Dou­ble Life.”]

“Well,” said du Por­tail, “this is how it hap­pened. The rob­bery was com­mit­ted in a house in the rue de Tournon, oc­cu­pied by Made­moi­selle Beaumes­nil. Charles Crochard, who was a hand­some fel­low, was said to have the run of it--”

“Yes, yes,” cried Cer­izet, “I re­mem­ber Made­moi­selle Beaumes­nil's em­bar­rass­ment when she gave her tes­ti­mo­ny--and al­so the to­tal ex­tinc­tion of voice that at­tacked her when the judge asked her age.”

“The rob­bery,” con­tin­ued du Por­tail, “was au­da­cious­ly com­mit­ted in the day­time; and no soon­er did Charles Crochard get pos­ses­sion of the cas­ket than he went to the church of Saint-​Sulpice, where he had an ap­point­ment with an ac­com­plice, who, be­ing sup­plied with a pass­port, was to start im­me­di­ate­ly with the di­amonds for for­eign parts. It so chanced that on en­ter­ing the church, in­stead of meet­ing the man he ex­pect­ed, who was a tri­fle late, Charles Crochard came face to face with a cel­ebrat­ed agent of the de­tec­tive force, who was well known to him, inas­much as the young ras­cal was not at his first scrim­mage with the po­lice. The ab­sence of his ac­com­plice, this en­counter with the de­tec­tive, and, last­ly, a rapid move­ment made by the lat­ter, by the mer­est chance, to­ward the door, in­duced the rob­ber to fan­cy he was be­ing watched. Los­ing his head un­der this idea, he want­ed, at any cost, to put the cas­ket out of his pos­ses­sion, know­ing that if ar­rest­ed, as he ex­pect­ed, at the door of the church, it would be a damn­ing proof against him. Catch­ing sight at that mo­ment of Toupil­li­er, who was then the giv­er of holy wa­ter, 'My man,' said he, mak­ing sure that no one over­heard their col­lo­quy, 'will you take care of this lit­tle pack­age for me? It is a box of lace. I am go­ing near by to a count­ess who is slow to pay her bill; and if I have the lace with me she'll want to see it, for it is a new style, and she'll ask me to leave it with her on cred­it, in­stead of pay­ing the bill; there­fore I don't want to take it. But,' he added, 'be sure not to touch the pa­per that wraps the box, for there's noth­ing hard­er than to do up a pack­age in the same folds--'”

“The boo­by!” cried Cer­izet, naive­ly; “why, that very cau­tion would make the man want to open it.”

“You are an able ca­su­ist,” said du Por­tail. “Well, an hour lat­er, Charles Crochard, find­ing that noth­ing hap­pened to him, re­turned to the church to ob­tain his de­posit, but Toupil­li­er was no longer there. You can imag­ine the anx­iety with which Charles Crochard at­tend­ed ear­ly mass the next day, and ap­proached the giv­er of holy wa­ter, who was there, sure enough, at­tend­ing to his func­tions. But night, they say, brings coun­sel; the wor­thy beg­gar au­da­cious­ly de­clared that he had re­ceived no pack­age, and did not know what his in­ter­locu­tor meant.”

“And there was no pos­si­bil­ity of ar­gu­ing with him, for that would be ex­po­sure,” re­marked Cer­izet, who was not far from sym­pa­thiz­ing in a trick so bold­ly played.

“No doubt,” re­sumed du Por­tail; “the rob­bery was al­ready noised about, and Toupil­li­er, who was a very able fel­low, had cal­cu­lat­ed that Charles Crochard would not dare to pub­licly ac­cuse him, for that would re­veal the theft. In fact, on his tri­al Charles Crochard nev­er said a word of his mishap, and dur­ing the six years he spent at the gal­leys (he was con­demned to ten, but four were re­mit­ted) he did not open his lips to a sin­gle soul about the treach­ery of which he had been a vic­tim.”

“That was pret­ty plucky,” said Cer­izet; the tale ex­cit­ed him, and he showed open­ly that he saw the mat­ter as an artist and a con­nois­seur.

“In that in­ter­val,” con­tin­ued du Por­tail, “Madame Beaumes­nil died, leav­ing her daugh­ter a few frag­ments of a once great for­tune, and the di­amonds which the will ex­press­ly stat­ed Ly­die was to re­ceive 'in case they were re­cov­ered.'”

“Ha! ha!” ex­claimed Cer­izet, “bad for Toupil­li­er, be­cause, hav­ing to do with a man of your cal­ibre--”

“Charles Crochard's first ob­ject on be­ing lib­er­at­ed was vengeance on Toupil­li­er, and his first step was to de­nounce him to the po­lice as re­ceiv­er of the stolen prop­er­ty. Tak­en in hand by the law, Toupil­li­er de­fend­ed him­self with such sin­gu­lar good-​hu­mor, be­ing able to show that no proof what­ev­er ex­ist­ed against him, that the ex­am­in­ing judge let him off. He lost his place, how­ev­er, as giv­er of holy wa­ter, ob­tain­ing, with great dif­fi­cul­ty, per­mis­sion to beg at the door of the church. For my part, I was cer­tain of his guilt; and I man­aged to have the clos­est watch kept up­on him; though I re­lied far more up­on my­self. Be­ing a man of means and leisure, I stuck, as you may say, to the skin of my thief, and did, in or­der to un­mask him, one of the clever­est things of my ca­reer. He was liv­ing at that time in the rue du Coeur-​Volant. I suc­ceed­ed in be­com­ing the ten­ant of the room ad­join­ing his; and one night, through a gim­let hole I had drilled in the par­ti­tion, I saw my man take the case of di­amonds from a very clev­er­ly con­trived hid­ing-​place. He sat for an hour gaz­ing at them and fondling them; he made them sparkle in the light, he pressed them pas­sion­ate­ly to his lips. The man ac­tu­al­ly loved those di­amonds for them­selves, and had nev­er thought of turn­ing them to mon­ey.”

“I un­der­stand,” said Cer­izet,--“a ma­nia like that of Cardil­lac, the jew­eller, which has now been dra­ma­tized.”

“That is just it,” re­turned du Por­tail; “the poor wretch was in love with that cas­ket; so that when, short­ly af­ter, I en­tered his room and told him I knew all, he pro­posed to me to leave him the life use of what he called the con­so­la­tion of his old age, pledg­ing him­self to make Made­moi­selle de la Peyrade his sole heir, re­veal­ing to me at the same time the ex­is­tence of a hoard of gold (to which he was adding ev­ery day), and al­so the pos­ses­sion of a house and an in­vest­ment in the Funds.”

“If he made that pro­pos­al in good faith,” said Cer­izet, “it was a de­sir­able one. The in­ter­est of the cap­ital sunk in the di­amonds was more than re­turned by that from the oth­er prop­er­ty.”

“You now see, my dear sir,” said du Por­tail, “that I was not mis­tak­en in trust­ing him. All my pre­cau­tions were well tak­en; I ex­act­ed that he should oc­cu­py a room in the house I lived in, where I could keep a close eye up­on him. I as­sist­ed him in mak­ing that hid­ing-​place, the se­cret of which you dis­cov­ered so clev­er­ly; but what you did not find out was that in touch­ing the spring that opened the iron safe you rang a bell in my apart­ment, which warned me of any at­tempt that was made to re­move our trea­sure.”

“Poor Madame Car­di­nal!” cried Cer­izet, good-​hu­mored­ly, “how far she was from sus­pect­ing it!”

“Now here's the sit­ua­tion,” re­sumed du Por­tail. “On ac­count of the in­ter­est I feel in the nephew of my old friend, and al­so, on ac­count of the re­la­tion­ship, this mar­riage seems to me ex­treme­ly de­sir­able; in short, I unite Theo­dose to his cousin and her 'dot.' As it is pos­si­ble that, con­sid­er­ing the men­tal state of his fu­ture wife, Theo­dose may ob­ject to shar­ing my views, I have not thought it wise to make this pro­pos­al di­rect­ly to him­self. You have sud­den­ly turned up up­on my path; I know al­ready that you are clever and wily, and that knowl­edge in­duces me to put this lit­tle mat­ri­mo­ni­al ne­go­ti­ation in­to your hands. Now, I think, you un­der­stand the mat­ter thor­ough­ly; speak to him of a fine girl, with one lit­tle draw­back, but, on the oth­er hand, a com­fort­able for­tune. Do not name her to him; and come here and let me know how the pro­pos­al has been tak­en.”

“Your con­fi­dence de­lights me as much as it hon­ors me,” replied Cer­izet, “and I will jus­ti­fy it the best I can.”

“We must not ex­pect too much,” said du Por­tail. “Re­fusal will be the first im­pulse of a man who has an af­fair on hand else­where; but we need not con­sid­er our­selves beat­en. I shall not eas­ily give up a plan which I know to be just, even if I push my zeal so far as to put la Peyrade un­der lock and key in Clichy. I am re­solved not to take no for his an­swer to a pro­pos­al of which, in the end, he can­not fail to see the pro­pri­ety. There­fore, in any case, buy up those notes from Mon­sieur Du­tocq.”

“At par?” asked Cer­izet.

“Yes, at par, if you can­not do bet­ter; we are not go­ing to hag­gle over a few thou­sand francs; on­ly, when this trans­ac­tion is ar­ranged, Mon­sieur Du­tocq must pledge us ei­ther his as­sis­tance, or, at the very least, his neu­tral­ity. Af­ter what you have said of the oth­er mar­riage, it is un­nec­es­sary for me to warn you that there is not a mo­ment to lose in putting our irons in­to the fire.”

“Two days hence I have an ap­point­ment with la Peyrade,” said Cer­izet. “We have a lit­tle mat­ter of busi­ness of our own to set­tle. Don't you think it would be best to wait till then, when I can in­tro­duce the pro­pos­al in­ci­den­tal­ly? In case of re­sis­tance, I think that ar­range­ment would best con­duce to OUR dig­ni­ty.”

“So be it,” said du Por­tail; “it isn't much of a de­lay. Re­mem­ber, mon­sieur, that if you suc­ceed you have, in place of a man able to bring you to a stern ac­count for your _im­pru­dent as­sis­tance_ to Madame Car­di­nal, a great­ly obliged per­son, who will be ready at all times to serve you, and whose in­flu­ence is greater than is gen­er­al­ly sup­posed.”

Af­ter these friend­ly words, the pair sep­arat­ed with a thor­ough­ly good un­der­stand­ing, and well sat­is­fied with each oth­er.