Balzac - A Bachelor's Establishment
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THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES
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2008
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http://www.archive.org/details/bachelorsestabliOObalz
H.
DE BALZAC
THE COMEDIE HUMAINE
SHE FOUND CHAUDET IN HIS BLUE OVERALL, MODELING HIS LATEST STATUE.
H.
A
DE BALZAC
Bachelor's
Establishment (UN Menage de garcon) AND OTHER STORIES TKANSLATEU BY
CLARA BELL WITH A PKEFACE BY
GEORGE SAINTSBURY
^ PHILADELPHIA
The
(Debbie Publishing Co.,
1898
-
Ltd.
CONTENTS. rAGB ix
PREFACE A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT
.
.
.
.
i
PEACE IN THE HOUSE
S*'
LA GRENADIERE
3^2
704717
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. SHE FOUND CHAUDET IN HIS BLUE OVERALL, MODELING HIS Frtntts^itce. LATEST STATUE (p. 27)
PHILIPPE'S FIRST IDEA
WAS TO SEARCH THE BED
"WHERE DO YOU COME
FROM, LITTLE ONE?
I
...
IT
139
up!" HE
SAID, PAUSING IN
AGaTHE DROPPED THE LETTER Drawn
76
NEVER SAW YOU
BEFORE"
"riCK
rAGK
by D. Murray-Smith,
THE FIGHT
.
,
.
282
3O3
PREFACE.
—
Bachelor's Establishment " the third part of " Les takes very high rank among Celibataires " (The Bachelors) in his best books, Balzac has set As most of its companions. at work divers favorite springs of action, and has introduced
"A
—
personages of licas
whom
—he never did
he has elsewhere given, not exactly rep-
that
—but companion
has not also justified the reproach, such as
And
portraits.
has once more justified the proceeding amply. it is,
he
Whether he of those
who
say that to see the most congenial expression of his fullest genius, you
must go to
his
bad characters and not
to his
good, readers shall determine for themselves after reading the book. It
was the product of the year 1842, when the author was of his powers, and after which, with the exception
at the ripest
of *'Les Parents Pauvres," he produced not
much of
his very
and rehandlings of earlier efforts. He changed his title a good deal, and in that MS. correction of a copy of the " Comedie" which has been taken, perhaps
best save in continuations
absolutely decisive authority, as the basis of the Edition Definitive, he adopted " La Rabouilleuse " as his latest
without
favorite.
This, besides
as fixing the attention
the book, while
its
quaintness, has undoubted merit
on one
at least
of the chief figures of " only obliquely indi-
" Un Menage de gargon
Jean-Jacques Rouget is a most unfortunate creature, who anticipates Baron Hulot as an cates the real purport of the novel.
example of absolute dependence on things of the
flesh,
plus
a kind of cretinism, which Hulot, to do him justice, does not exhibit even in his worst degradation.
But his " bachelor
establishment," though undoubtedly useful for the purposes
of the story, might have been changed for something
else, (ix)
and
PREFACE. his personality
much
have been considerably altered without very
affecting the general drift of the fiction.
Flore Brazier, on the other hand, the Rabouilleuse herself, essential, and with Maxence Gilet and Philippe Bridau form the centre of the action and the passion of the book. is
She ranks, indeed, with those few feminine types, Valerie MarLa Cousine Bette, Eugenie Grandet, Beatrix, Madame de Maufrigneuse, and perhaps Esther Gobseck, whom Balzac has tried to draw at full length. It is to be observed that neffe.
though quite without morals of any kind, she
is not ab initio or intrinsically a she-fiend like Valerie or Lisbeth. She does
not do harm for harm's sake, nor even directly to gratify
spite,
greed, or other purely unsocial and detestable passions. is
a type of feminine sensuality of the
less
She
ambitious and
rest-
less sort. Given a decent education, a fair fortune, a goodlooking and vigorous husband to whom she had taken a fancy, and no special temptation, and she might have been a blame-
merry, " sonsy " commere, and have died in an odor of
less,
very reasonable sanctity.
Poverty, ignorance, the Rougets and son), Maxence Gilet, and Philippe Bridau came in her way, and she lived and died as Balzac has shown her. He has done nothing more " inevitable; " itv,' things more complete and satisfactory. (father
Maxence Gilet it is
is
a not
much
not easy to say that he
man who
of distinct
gifts,
is
less
remarkable sketch, though
on the same
level.
Gilet
is
the
of some virtues, or caricatures of virtues,
goes to the devil through idleness, fullness of bread, and
lack of any worthy occupation.
He
is
extraordinarily uncon-
ventional for a French figure in fiction drawn by such a French genius as Balzac. But he is also hardly to be called a great type,
and
I
do not quite
see
why
he should have succumbed
before Philippe as he did.
Philippe himself questionable.
he
is
He
is
is
more complicated, and, perhaps, more mal
certainly one of Balzac's Jleurs du
,-
studied and personally conducted from beginning to end
;
PREFACE.
XI
with an extraordinary and loving care; but
he quite " of a
is
piece?" That he should have succeeded in defeating the combination against which his virtuous mother and brother
The deis not an undue instance of the irony of life. of such adversaries as Flore and Max has, of course, the merit of poetical justice and the interest of "diamond cut failed feat
But is not the terrible Philippe Bridau, the diamond." " Mephistopheles a chevaV of the latter part of the book, rather inconsistent with the commonplace ne'er-do-weel of the Not only does it require no unusual genius to waste earlier ?
money, when you have it, in the channels of the drinking-shop, the gaming-table, and elsewhere, to sponge for more on your mother and brother, to embezzle when they are squeezed dry, and to take to downright robbery when nothing else is left but a person who, in the various circumstances and opportunities
of Bridau,
nothing better to do than these
finds
ordinary things, can hardly be a person of exceptional intellectual resource.
There
is
sudden and unac-
here, surely, that
counted-for change of character which the second-rate novelist
and dramatist may permit himself, but from which the
first-rate
should abstain.
may be an academic objection, and certainly book is of first-class interest. The minor characters, the mother and brother, the luckless aunt, with her combination at last turning up when the rascal Philippe has stolen her stake-money, the satellites and abettors of Max in the club of This, however,
the
'*La Desoeuvrance," the slightly theatrical Spaniard, and the rest of them, are excellent. characteristic
one
—more
The book
so, indeed,
is
all
an eminently
than more than one of
those in which people are often invited to
make acquaintance
with Balzac.
The
third story of
"Les
Celibataires" has a rather more va-
ried bibliographical history than the others.
The
first
part, that
dealing with the early misconduct of Philippe Bridau, was published separately, as
"Les Deux Freres,"
in the Presse
during
PREFACE.
xii
and a year or so later in volumes. It had The volume form also included under the same title the second part, which, as " Un Menage de gar^on en Province," had been published in the same newspaper in the autumn of 1842. This had sixteen chapters one in both issues, and in the volumes two part-headings identical with the newspaper title, and the other "A qui la Succession ? " The whole book then took rank in the *' Comthe spring of 1841,
nine chapters with headings.
—
edie " under the second
"
Un Menage
de gargon," and and long afterwards. In the Edition Definitive, as observed above, he had marked it as "La Rabouilleuse," after also having thought of "Le Bonhomme Rouget." For English use, the better known, though title,
retained this during Balzac's
not
last
or best
lated, while
The
title, is
"La
life
clearly preferable, as
it
can be trans-
Rabouilleuse " cannot.
short story of "
was much twisted about
La Grenadiere," which, by in its author's hands,
the way,
and underwent
transformations too long to be summarized here,
first
appeared
Revue de Paris for October, 1832, was a "Scene de la vie de Province" next year, and was shifted to the "Vie Privee" when the " Comedie " was first arranged. The other short story, " The Peace of the House," formed part of the " Scenes de la vie Privee " from their first appearance in 1830, and entered with the rest into the " Comddie." in the
Then, and then only, was the dedication Balzac's niece, added.
to Valentine Survillc,
G.
S.
—
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. To Monsieur Charles Nodier, the French Academy,
Member of
Chief Librarian at the Arsenal.
my dear
JVodier, you have a book full of which escape the action of the law under the shelter of domestic privacy ; but in which
Here,
those incidents
the finger of God, so often called chance, takes the
human justice, while the moral is not the less and instructive for being uttered by a satirist. The outcome, to my mind, is a great lesson for the We shall perhaps disfamily, and for motherhood. place of striking
cover too late the
That
authority,
effects of diminished paternal power. which formerly ceased only on the
human tribunal at and on great the sovereign would ratify and carry out its However tender and kind the mother may
father's death, constituted the one
which domestic crimes could be occasions decisions. be, she
a
tried,
can no more supply that patriarchal rule than
woman can
fill
a man' s place on the throne ; when
the exception occurs, the creature is a monster.
I
have never, perhaps,
shows more
drawn a
clearly than this
how
picture
which
indispensable the
stability of marriage is to European society, what the sorrows are of woman' s weakness, what dangers are
involved in unbridled self-interest. that a society based solely on the
tremble
when
[Note: This stitutes Balzac's
it sees the
It
is to
be hoped
power of money may
impotence of justice over the
story forms the third part of "
second volume under that
title.
The Celibates" and conPub.]
Ml)
; !
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
2
complications of a system which deifies success
condones every means to achieve it:
have prompt recourse
to the Catholic
That
it
and may
church for purifi'
cation of the masses by religious feeling,
and
by sonic
of a lay University Enough fine characters, enough instances of great and noble devotion will have been seen in my ''Scenes of Military Life ; " so I may be allowed here to show education
what
other
than
depravity results
certain tninds
that
from
which dare
the exigencies of
to act in
private
war
in
as they
life
would on the field of battle. You have studied our times with a sagacious eye, and your philosophy betrays itself by more than one bitter reflection in the course of your elegant pages you, better than any one, have appreciated the mischief
done
to the spirit
of our nation by four different
politi-
cal systems.
I
could not, therefore, place
the protection
this
narrative under
Your
of a more competent authority.
name, perhaps, may defend
this
work against
the out-
Where is there a sufferer 7vho when the surgeon uncovers his most burning wounds ? The pleasure of dedicating this drama to you is enhanced by my pride in betraying your goodwillfor him who here signs himself one ofyour sincere cry
it is
sure to raise.
keeps silence
adtnirers,
De In
Balzac.
1792 the citizens of Issoudun rejoiced in a doctor Some a very deep fox.
named Rouget, who was regarded as bold folks asserted that he made
his wife very
unhappy,
though she was the handsomest woman in the town. Perhaps this wife was rather a simpleton. In spite of the inquisitiveness of friends, the gossip of outsiders,
and the evil-speaking
of the envious, the circumstances of the household were
little
— A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. Doctor Rouget was one of the men of
known.
said that
And
long as he lived,
so, as
whom
it
is
are not easy to get on with."
"they
commonly
3
little
was said about him, and he
was His wife, a Demoiselle Descoings, somewhat sickly as a girl one reason, it was said, why the doctor married her had first a son, and then a daughter, born as it happened ten treated civilly.
—
years after her brother, and not expected
by the doctor,
was always reported, though he was a medical man. late-born daughter was named Agathe.
These
facts are so
simple and commonplace that the histo-
them
rian hardly seems justified in placing his narrative
but
;
if
it
This
in the forefront of
they remained unknown, a
man
of Doc-
tor Rouget's temper would be condemned as a monster, as an unnatural father, whereas he simply obeyed certain evil
promptings which many persons defend under the terrible axiom "A man must know his own mind." This masculine :
motto has wrought misery for many wives. The Descoings, the doctor's father- and mother-in-law, wool brokers, undertook alike the sale for landowners, or the purchase for woolmerchants of the golden fleeces of Le Berry, and took com-
They grew
mission from both parties.
and then avaricious
rich over this business,
— the moral of many
lives.
Their son, Descoings y?/«/^r, a younger brother of Madame He went to seek his fortune Rouget's, did not like Issoudun. in Paris,
and
up as a grocer in the Rue Saint-Honore. But what is to be said ? A grocer is atbusiness by a magnetic force as great as the
set
This was his ruin. tracted to his
repulsion which renders
which make studied.
become
It
had
odious to
artists.
would be curious
to
among
social forces
know what
leads a
when he
is
man
to
no longer
the Egyptians, to succeed to his father's
Love had helped
said to himself,
The
have been insufficiently
a stationer rather than a baker,
compelled, as craft.
it
for this or that vocation
to
"And
He form Descoings' vocation. too, will be a grocer " when
I,
!
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
4
he had also said something
else
whom
beautiful creature, with
on seeing he
fell
his master's wife, a
over head and ears in
With no auxiliary but patience and a him by his father and mother, he married love.
worthy Master Bixiou, was regarded
In 1792 Descoings
his predecessor.
as a prosperous
money sent widow of the
little
the
man.
At that time the parents Descoings were still living. They had retired from wool, and invested their wealth in buying Their son-in-law, government stock another golden fleece almost sure ere long to be in mourning for his wife, sent his
—
!
daughter to his brother-in-law's house
in Paris, partly that
might see the capital, but also with a crafty purpose. ings had no children.
Madame
she
Desco-
Descoings, twelve years older
than her husband, was in excellent health, but she was as fat
as a thrush after the vintage
enough medical
skill to foresee
;
and the wily Rouget had Monsieur and Madame
that
Descoings, in contradiction to the philosophy of fairy-tales,
would live happy and have no children. The couple might become devoted to Agathe. Now Doctor Rouget wanted to disinherit his daughter, and flattered himself it might be done if he transplanted her from home. This young person, at that time the handsomest girl in Issoudun, was not in the least like either her father or her mother. Her birth had been the occasion of a mortal feud between Doctor Rouget and his intimate friend, Monsieur Lousteau, formerly a sub-delegate, who had just left Issoudun.
When
a family migrates, the natives of a place so delightful
as Issoudun
have a right to inquire into the reasons of so
unheard-of a
step.
To
believe
some sharp tongues, Monsieur
Rouget, a vindictive man, had sworn that Lousteau should die by his
hand alone.
From
deadly as a cannon-ball. ished delegates, Lousteau
a doctor the speech seemed as
When left,
tlie
and
After the removal of this family,
her days with
Madame Hochon,
National Assembly abol-
iiever returned to Issoudun.
Madame Rouget
spent
all
the ex-sub-delegate's sister,
A BACH FLORAS ESTABLISHMENT.
5
her daughter's godmother, and the only person to
And what
confided her woes. ever this
knew about good
soul,
the beautiful
and not
till
little
whom
she
the citizens of Issoudun
Madame Rouget
was told by
after the doctor's death.
The first thing Madame Rouget said when her husband spoke of sending Agathe to Paris was, " I shall never see my child again
!
"
" And she was sadly right," worthy Madame
Hochon would add. The poor mother
then became as yellow as a quince, and
her condition by no means gave the
lie
to those
who
declared
Rouget was killing her by inches. The ways of her gawky ninny of a son must have contributed to the griefs of the unjustly accused mother. Never checked, or perhaps egged on by his father, the lad, who was altogether stupid, showed his mother none of the attention nor the respect due from a son. Jean-Jacques Rouget was like his father, but even worse; and the doctor was not very admirable, either that
morally or physically.
The advent of charming Agathe Rouget brought no good to her uncle Descoings.
In the course of the
week
—or rather — he was
of the decade, for the Republic had been proclaimed
imprisoned on a hint from Robespierre to Fouqnier-Tinville. Descoings, being rash enough to opine that the famine was unreal,
was fool enough to communicate
imagined that thought was male and female, j
oyenne
Duplay,
as
free
—
his
opinion
— he
to several of his customers,
he served them over the counter. wife of the carpenter with
the
Cit-
whom
Robespierre lodged, and herself the Great Citizen's housekeeper, unhappily for Descoings, honored his shop with her
custom.
This citizeness considered
an insult to Maximilian the
First.
the Ill
grocer's views as
pleased as she was
by the manners of the Descoings couple, this illustrious Club regarded Citoyenne Descoings' She added venom to their beauty as a kind of aristocracy.
knitter of the Jacobin
;
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
6
language while lepeaung
it
and kind-
her benevolent
to
The grocer was
hearted master.
arrested
on the usual charge
of "monopolizing."
Descoings release
;
made
his wife
prison,
in
a
stir
to obtain
his
but her efforts were so ill-judged that any observer
hearing her appeal to the arbiters of his fate might have
supposed that rid of him.
secretaries
right-hand
all
she asked was a decent
Madame
way of
under Roland, minister of the interior, and the man of all who succeeded to that office. She
brought Bridau into the
field to
This really
save the grocer.
incorruptible minister, one of those virtuous dupes
always so admirably disinterested, took good
tamper with the men on tried to explain
had about
getting
Descoings knew Bridau, one of the
as
!
much
Now,
whom
who
men
are
not to
Descoings' fate depended
to explain to the
effect as
restore the Bourbons.
care
;
he
of that time
though they had been asked to
The Girondin
minister, at that time
combating Robespierre, said to Bridau, " What business is " And each man to whom the worthy secretary it of yours? applied made the same ruthless reply, "What business is it. of yours?
"
Bridau very prudently advised quiet
Madame
Descoings to keep
but she instead of conciliating Robespierre's house-
;
keeper, spouted
fire
and flame against the informer; she went
member of the Convention, who was in fear for himand who said, " I will speak of it to Robespierre."
to see a self,
On
this
promise the grocer's wife rested, and her protector
naturally did not speak.
good liquor
A
few sugar-loaves, a few bottles of
offered to Citoyenne
Duplay would have saved
Descoings.
This
little
incident shows that in a revolution
gerous to trust for safety to an honest
one can rely only on one's
Though Descoings
man
it
is
as
dan-
as to a scoundrel
self.
died, he had the honor, at any rate, of
going to the scaffold with Andre de Chenier.
There, no doubt,
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. grocery and poetry embraced for the
first
time
7
in the flesh
;
for
they have alway had, and will always have, their private rela-
made
Descoings' execution
tions.
Andre de
a far greater sensation than
Thirty years elapsed before
Chenier's.
nized that France had
it
was recog-
more by Chenier's death than by
lost
that of Descoings.
Robespierre's sentence had this good result grocers were
still
Descoings' store
The
Robespierre's lodgings. ness
—
until
1830
meddling in politics. was not more than a hundred yards from
afraid of
grocer's successor failed in busi-
Cesar Birotteau, the famous perfumer, established him-
;
self in
the house.
But, as
if
the scaffold
place with disaster, the inventor of the Paste " and " tion of this
Eau Carminative " was
problem
is
had infected the
"Compound
also ruined.
Sultana
The
solu-
a matter for occult science.
In the course of the few visits paid by the head clerk to the luckless Descoings' wife, he
was struck by the calm, cold,
When
beauty of Agathe Rouget.
less
the widow,
who was
art-
he called to console
so far inconsolable as to retire from the
business after her second bereavement, he ended by marrying
"decade," as soon as her and he did not keep them waiting. The
the lovely girl in the course of a father could arrive,
doctor, delighted at seeing things turn out even better than
he had hoped, since his wife was the sole heiress of the Descoings, flew to Paris, not so much to be present at Agathe's marriage as to see that the settlements were drawn to his
mind.
Citizen Bridau,
quite
disinterested
and desperately
in love, left this matter entirely to the perfidious doctor,
took
full
who
advantage of his son-in-law's infatuation, as will be
seen in the course of this history.
Madame all
Rouget,
or,
more
accurately, the doctor, inherited
the estate, real and personal, of old Monsieur and
Descoings,
who died
within two years of each other.
Madame Finally,
Rouget got the better of his wife, for she died early in 1799. And he had vineyards, and he bought farmland, and he ac-
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
8
quired iron-works, and he sold wool
never do anything
His beloved son could
!
he intended that the boy should be a
;
landed proprietor, and allowed him to grow up in wealth and learned of them
know
he would
confident that
folly,
so far as that he
all in
as
much
would
live
the most and die like
as
other folks.
From that old
the year
1
799, the calculating heads of Issoudun said
Rouget had
thirty
wife's death the doctor
method, so
The
to speak,
doctor, a
thousand francs a year. led a dissolute
still
and
man
life,
After his
but with
more
in the privacy of home-life.
of strong will, died in
1805.
God
knows what the good people of Issoudun had then to tell of the man's doings, and what stories were current of his horrible private life. Jean-Jacques Rouget, whom his father had of late kept tightly in hand, having discerned him to be a fool, remained unmarried for sufficient reasons, of which the explanation will form
an
important part of this story.
His
celibacy was in part the doctor's fault, as will be fully under-
stood
later.
It is
visited
now
necessary to consider the results of the vengeance
by the
father
on the daughter,
nize as his, though you his
legitimate offspring.
may take Nobody
it
at
whom
he did not recog-
for certain that she
one of those singular coincidences which make heredity a of maze in which science loses herself. Agathe was very Doctor Rouget's mother. to skip a generation,
and
Just as gout to
was
Issoudon had observed
is
sort like
commonly observed
be transmitted from grandfather
to grandson, so, not unfrequently, a likeness
does the same as
the gout.
Thus Agathe's
eldest child,
character resembled
his
who was
like his
mother, in
grandfather, Doctor Rouget.
will leave the solution of this
problem
We
also to the twentieth
century, with that of the nomenclature of microscopic organisms,
and our grandchildren
will
perhaps write as
much more
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
9
nonsense as our learned societies have already produced on this obscure question.
Agathe Rouget was universally admired for one of those Mary, the mother of the Lord, are
faces which, like that of for
ever virginal, even
after
marriage.
Her
portrait,
still
hanging in Bridau's studio, shows a perfectly oval face, spotlessly fair,
More than one
hair.
cate
without even a freckle, notwithstanding her golden artist,
seeing the pure brow, the deli-
nose, the shapely ear, the long
deepest blue, and infinitely mild
embodiment of *'
Is that
placidity
—a
— asks the
lashes
to
eyes of the
face, in short, that is the
great painter to this day,
copied from one of Raphael's heads?
"
No man official
ever made a better choice than did the Republican when he married this girl. Agathe was the ideal
life, and never parted from She was pious without bigotry, and had no And she learning but such as the church allows to women.
housewife, trained by a country
her mother.
was a perfect wife her ignorance of tune.
in the vulgar sense of the life
word
;
indeed,
involved her in more than one misfor-
The epitaph on
the
Roman
needlework, and kept the house,"
is
matron, " She wrought an excellent account of
her pure, simple, and quiet life. At the time of the Consulate, Bridau attached himself fanatically to Napoleon, who made him head of a department Rich with a of state in 1804, a year before Rouget' s death. salary of twelve thousand francs and very handsome presents,
Bridau cared not at
all
for
the disgraceful proceedings
was wound up
by
Issoudun, and Agathe got
which the
estate
nothing.
Six months before his death old Rouget had sold
at
of his estate to his son, to whom he secured the remainder, in part by deed of gift, and in part as his direct An advance on her prospective inheritance of a hunheir. part
dred thousand francs secured under her marriage settlement represented Agathe's share of her father's and mother's fortune.
;
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
10 IJi
He
idau idolized the Emperor.
devoted himself with
the zeal of a fanatic to carrying out the vast conceptions of this
modern demi-god, who, finding everything in France in work to reconstruct everything. His subordinate
ruins, set to
"Stay,
enough."
Schemes,
never
said,
precis,
he undertook the heaviest burdens, so happy was he to
assist the
reports,
drafts,
He loved him as a man, he adored him Emperor. and would never endure the slightest criticism
as a sovereign,
of his deeds or his schemes.
From 1804
to
official resided in a large and handQuai Voltaire, close to his office and cook and a manservant composed the estab-
1808 the
some apartment on the Tuileries.
A
the
lishment in the days of always up the while the Briilau
man
first,
Madame
went
Agathe,
Bridau's splendor.
to market, followed
by her cook
did the rooms she superintended the breakfast.
never went to the
office
before eleven o'clock.
As
long as they both lived his wife found every day the same pleasure in preparing for
him a
perfect breakfast, the only
meal he ate with enjoyment. All the year round, whatever the weather might be, Agathe watched her husband from the
window on
and never drew her head in Rue du Bac. She round the rooms; then herself, and looked the table cleared she dressed and played with the children, or took them for a When walk, or received visitors till her husband returned. the head clerk brought home pressing work she would sit by his table in his study, as mute as a statue, and knitting as she watched him at work, sitting up as long as he did, and going till
his
way
to the office,
he disappeared round the corner of the
bed a few minutes before he went. Sometimes they went to the play, sitting in the official box. On such occasions the pair dined at a restaurant and the scene it presented always afforded Madame Bridau the keen Compelled, delight it gives to persons unfamiliar with Paris. to
;
not unfrequentlyj to accept invitations to the huge formal dinners given to her husband as head of a department and
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
11
chief clerk of a section of the ministry of the interior ners which
Bridau duly returned
expensive fashions of the day
dropped
this
Once
at
home
into
a week, on Thursdays, Bridau
entertained his friends, and on
gave a grand
the
but on coining in she gladly
;
ceremonial splendor, and relapsed
provincial simplicity.
— din-
— Agathe then followed
Shrove-Tuesday he always
ball.
This brief record is the whole history of a married life which saw but three events the birth of two children, one three years younger than the other, and Bridau's death, which
—
in 1808; he was simply killed by night-work, just Emperor was about to promote him in his office, and make him a count and privy councilor. At this time
took place as the to
Napoleon was devoting
his attention to
home
administration
;
he overloaded Bridau with work, and finally undermined this valiant
living
and
Napoleon, of
health.
official's
never asked the
least
his fortune.
had nothing but
thing, had
On
whom
Bridau had
inquired into his style of
hearing that this devoted servant
his salary,
he understood that here was one
of those incorruptible creatures
who gave
dignity and moral
tone to his rule, and he intended to surprise Bridau by some It was his anxiety to finish an immense piece of work before Napoleon should start for Spain that killed this worthy man, by bringing on an attack of acute
magnificent recompense.
fever.
On
the Emperor's return, while in
Paris for a
few days
preparing for the campaign of 1809, on hearing of Bridau's death, he exclaimed,
be replaced
!
"
"There
are
some men who can never
Struck by a devotion that could never have
expected such dazzling rewards as he reserved for his soldiers,
Napoleon determined
to create
an order, with handsome pen-
sions attached, for his civil servants, as he
of the Legion of
Honor
for the military.
had founded that
The impression
made on him by
Bridau's death suggested the formation of
the Order of the
Reunion
;
but he never had time to complete
:
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
12
the organization of this aristocratic class, which
is
now
so
on meeting with the name of this ephemeral order, most readers will wonder what was its badge
utterly
forgotten
that,
was worn with a blue ribbon. The Emperor styled it the Order of the Reunion, with the intention of combining the Order of the Golden Fleece of Spain with that of the Golden But Providence, as a Prussian diplomat Fleece of Austria. it
said,
was able
to hinder such profanation.
The Emperor inquired into Madame Bridau's circumstances. The two boys had each a full scholarship at the Lycee Imperial, and the Emperor charged all the cost of their education to his privy purse. He then entered Madame Bridau's name on the pension
no doubt, also and Joseph.
list
for four
thousand francs a year, intending,
to provide ultimately for her
After her marriage
till
two sons, Philippe
her husband's death,
Madame
had no correspondence whatever with Issoudun.
Bridau
Immediately
before the birth of her second boy she heard of her mother's death.
When
her but
little
—
she knew that he had loved Emperor's coronation was imminent, and the ceremony gave her husband so much to do tliat she would
her father died
— the
not leave him. written her a
Jean-Jacques Rouget, her brother, had never
word
since she had quitted Issoudun.
Though
grieved by this tacit repudiation by her family, Agathe at last
thought but seldom of
She received a
letter
Madame Hochon, and
tliose
who never thought
once a year from her answered
it
of her at
commonplace
in
all.
godmother, phrases,
never heeding the warnings which the worthy and pious
woman gave her in veiled hints. Some time before Doctor Rouget's had written
to her
death,
Madame Hochon
goddaughter that she would get nothing
from her father, unless she armed Monsieur Hochon with a power of attorney. Agathe hated the idea of worrying her brother.
was
in
Whether Bridau supposed conformity with the
common
that
this appropriation
law of the province of
— A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
13
clean-handed and upright husband
Berry, or whether the
shared his wife's magnanimity and indifference to pecuniary
he would not listen to Roguin, his attorney,
interests,
who
advised him to take advantage of his high position to dispute the will by which the father had succeeded in robbing his
Husband and
daughter of her legal share.
wife thus sanc-
However, Roguin had on the damage to his wife's fortune.
tioned what was done at Issoudun. led the official to reflect
The worthy man perceived
that in
the event of his death
Agathe would have nothing to depend into his affairs, and found that between his wife had been obliged to draw out francs of the fifty thousand which old
He now
his daughter.
invested the
sand in the funds, which then stood about two thousand francs a year
Madame
a widow,
Still
He
about thirty thousand
Rouget had given
friend,
of rooms
set
who
;
at forty, so
live
Agathe had Thus, as
very decently on six
very provincial, she was about
Madame
but
and move
live
to
Descoings, her intimate
persisted in calling herself her aunt, gave
apartment and came to
to
remaming twenty thou-
to dismiss the manservant, keep only the cook,
another
then looked
1793 and 1805 he and
in state securities.
Bridau could
thousand francs a year.
on.
up her
with Agathe, taking the departed
The two widows joined and foimd themselves possessed of twelve thou-
Bridau's study for her bedroom. their incomes,
sand francs a year.
Such an arrangement seemed simple and natural. nothing in
life
demands
But
greater circumspection than arrange-
we are always on our guard ments which seem natural against what appears extraordinary ; and so we see that men of great experience lawyers, judges, physicians, and priests and they attach immense importance to such simple matters ;
—
;
are thought
the finest
warning
captious.
The
emblems bequeathed for our
conduct.
claim, as an excuse in his
is one of by the ancients as a
serpent under flowers to us
How own
often does a simpleton ex-
eyes and those of others,
"
It
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
14
was such a simple matter, that any one would have been "
caught
!
In 1809
Madame
who never
Descoings,
told her age, was
Spoken of in her day as "La Belle Epiciere," she was one of those rare women whom time spares, and owed to an excellent constitution the privilege of
sixty-five years old.
preserving her beauty, though, of course,
Of middle
it
could no longer
plump and and a warmly fair skin. Her light hair, tending to chestnut, showed no change of hue in spite of Descoings' disastrous end. She was extremely dainty, and liked cooking rich little dishes for her own eating but though she seemed devoted to the kitchen, she was also very
bear serious
examination.
height,
fresh-colored, she had fine shoulders,
;
fond
of
the theatre, and,
which she wrapped lottery.
Is
moreover, she indulged a vice
in the deepest
mystery
—she put into the
not the lottery, perhaps, the gulf which mythology
has figured under the bottomless vat of the Danaids
This lottery
woman
—spent
women who years
;
— we
may
rather too
speak so of one
much
are so lucky as
in dress,
no doubt,
remain youthful
to
but with the exception of these
the easiest creature to live with.
?
who gambles in
advancing
little failings,
Ready
in the
like all
she was
to agree with every-
body, never contradictory, she was attractive by her gentle
and contagious cheerfulness. She had especially one Parisian characteristic which bewitches retired clerks and traders she If she did not marry a third husband, understood a joke. During the wars that, no doubt, was the fault of the times. of the Empire, marrying men found handsome and wealthy
—
girls too readily to trouble their
Madame made
woman of Madame Bridau
heads about a
Descoings tried to cheer
her go often to the play, or out driving
her with capital
little
to her son Bixiou.
dinners
Alas
!
;
;
sixty. ;
she
she provided
she even tried to marry her
she was forced to confess to her
the terrible secret that had been so jealously kept, by herself,
by the departed Descoings, and by her lawyer.
The youth-
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. ful,
dressy
Madame
Descoings,
had a son of
thirty-six,
and major of the Dresden,
21st
as a colonel,
who never saw
mother,
16
who owned to no more than named Bixiou, a widower, who was afterwards killed at
thirty-five
foot,
leaving an only child, a boy.
His
her grandson but in secret, spoke of
the colonel as a son of her husband's by his confession was an act of expediency
;
first
wife.
the colonel's boy,
Her who
Lycee Imperial with the two Bridaus, This youth, very sharp and knowing held a half-scholarship. even in his school-days, made a great reputation later as an was
at school at the
and a wit. Agathe cared for nothing on earth but her children, and would live only for them she refused to marry again, alike from good sense and from faithful attachment. But a woman artist
;
finds
A
it
easier to
be a good wife than to be a good mother.
widoA^ has two duties of a contradictory nature
mother, and she ought to exert a father's power. are strong
And
enough
to understand
so poor Agathe, with
all
and play
this
cause of
many
trustfulness habitual to lofty natures,
victim of
whelming
Madame disaster.
As a
a
double part.
result of her lack of insight,
who dragged This woman had a fancy
Descoings,
is
her virtues, was the innocent
and the
misfortunes.
—she
Few women
Agathe was the her into overfor sets of three
numbers, and the lottery grants no credit to ticket-holders. As housekeeper, she could spend the money allotted to the in such ventures, and gradually increased the debt hope of enriching her grandson, her dear Agathe, and the young Bridaus. When it amounted to ten thousand francs she staked higher sums, always hoping that the favorite combination, which had not yet come out in ten years, would
marketing in the
cover the
loss.
Then
the debt swelled rapidly.
It
reached
sum of twenty thousand francs ; Madame Descoings her head, and her numbers did not come out. the
Then
lost
she wished to pledge her fortune in order to repay
her niece, but her lawyer Roguin showed her that this honest
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
16
The
scheme was impossible.
elder Rouget, at the death of
had taken over his liabilities and assets, indemnifying the widow by a life annuity, charged on Jean-Jacques Rouget's estate. No usurer would consent to lend twenty thousand francs to a woman of sixty-five on a life interest worth about four thousand, at a time when ten One morning Madame per cent, could be gotten anywhere. Descoings threw herself at her niece's feet, and v/ith many his brother-in-law Descoings,
Madame Bridau did not She sent away the manservant and the cook ;
sobs confessed the state of affairs
reproach her. sold
all
;
but the most indispensable furniture
sold out three-
;
and gave up
quarters of her state securities, paid everything,
her apartment.
One the
of the most hideous corners of Paris
Rue Mazarine, between
gaud, to where
it
opens
Rue de
in the
The
Palais de I'lnstitut.
beyond doubt, Rue Guene-
is,
the crossing of the la
Seine behind the
gray walls of the college and
tall,
library presented to the city of Paris
by Cardinal Mazarin
cast chilling
shadows over
shines on
the northerly blast sweeps through
it,
this strip of street
the sun rarely
;
The poor
it.
ruined widow went to lodge on the third floor of a house in this
damp, dark, cold
spot.
Facing the house were the buildings of the at that lime,
townsfolk as students.
and
artists,
A man
to artists as
might go
where,
not affected without
rapins
— daubers,
art
and might come out This transformation was
in a rapin,
with the prize scholarship at Rome.
when
institute,
were the dens of the wild beasts known to the
much amazing uproar
at the
time of year
the competitors were shut up in these cages.
To
take
the prize, the aspiring sculptor had to execute, within a given time, a clay tures
model of a
you may behold
statue
at the
;
the painter, one of the pic-
Ecole des Beaux-arts
;
the musi-
compose a cantata tlie architect, a design for a public building. At the time when these lines are penned, cian had to
;
a
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
17
the menagerie has been transferred from those cold and
gloomy
buildings to the elegant Palace of the Fine Arts, a few yards
from
there.
Madame barred
dome
Bridau's windows
cells, a singularly
commanded
of the Institute closes in the prospect
only delectation for the eye
street, the
cabs on the stand at the top of the the
a view of these
To
dreary lookout.
widow
windows,
at
is
the line of hackney
Rue Mazarine.
Indeed,
placed three boxes of earth outside her
last
which she cultivated one of those
in
the north the
looking up the
;
aerial gardens,
so obnoxious to the regulations of the police, which
somewhat
purify the light and air.
The
house, backing against one in the
necessarily shallow floor
is
the top
room, and a
;
three
;
little
Rue de
Seine,
The
the staircase turns in a spiral.
is
third
—
windows and three rooms a diningand a bedroom; at the back,
sitting-room,
;
under the
roof two boys' rooms, and a vast unused garret.
Madame
on the other
side of the landing, a small kitchen
Bridau chose
this
apartment for three reasons
the low rent,
:
only four hundred francs, so she agreed for a nine years' the nearness of her boys' school, for it was not far
lease
;
from the Lycee Imperial
;
and, finally,
it
was
in the quarter
where she was accustomed to live. The interior of the rooms The dining-room, hung was in harmony with the building. with cheap flowered paper in yellow and green, with an unpolished tiled table,
two
little
floor,
had the barest necessary furniture
—
sideboards, and six chairs brought from her
The drawing-room was graced by an Aubusson when his office was last refurnished. The widow placed in it that common mahogany furniture, old home.
carpet, given to Bridau
by the gross
finished with Egyptian heads, manufactured
1806 by Jacob Desmalter, and covered with
silk
in
damask with
white conventional roses.
Above
the sofa, a portrait of Bridau in pastel, the
a friend, attracted the eye at once. %
Though
work of
the art was not
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
18
above criticism, the brow plainly showed the firmness of the unknown great citizen. The calm look of his eyes, at once proud and mild, was happily rendered ; the sagacity to which
and the honest
the prudent lips bore witness,
of the
tone
man
of
whom
tenacem, had been caught,
not with talent, at
if
whole
smile, the
Emperor spoke
the
Justum et any rate with as
As you looked at this portrait, you could see that this man had always done his duty. His countenance expressed truth.
many
the incorruptibility which must be granted to
men employed during
of the
the Republic.
was the brilliantly colored in which Napoleon is seen Agathe swiftly riding past, and followed by his escort. one full bird-cages allowed herself the luxury of two large Opposite, over a card-table,
picture of the
Emperor by Vernet,
—
of canaries, and one of exotic birds childlike fancy since her loss
;
she had taken up this
— irreparable
to her
and
many
to
others.
As
to
Agathe's bedroom, by the end of three months
become, what
remained
it
till
the luckless day
—a chaos which
obliged to leave
it
duce to order.
Cats were at
birds,
sometimes
The
furniture.
them
for
set
left
in
had
the armchairs
their traces
on
re-
;
the
all
the
poor, kind soul strewed millet and groundsel
in all parts of the
broken saucers.
no description could
home
liberty,
at
it
when she was
room
;
the cats found titbits in
Clothes lay about.
of provincialism and
fidelity.
It
was an atmosphere
Everything that had belonged
to Bridau was carefully treasured there
;
his writing apparatus
was kept with the care which the widow of a knight would have devoted to his armor. This woman's touching worship
may be understood from pen
by
in a sealed
my
dear husband."
for the last
a single fact
packet and written on
—she
it,
had wrapped a " The last pen used
The cup from which he had drunk
time was under glass on the chimney-shelf.
later date caps
and " fronts" crowned the
covered these treasured
relics.
At a
glass shades that
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
19
After Bridau's death, his young widow of five-and-thirty Parted never betrayed a trace of vanity or womanly pride. from the only man she had really known, esteemed, and loved,
who had never caused felt herself a woman ;
her the smallest pang, she no longer she cared for nothing
;
she ceased to
Nothing could be more unaffected or more complete than this surrender of married happiness and personal care. Some souls are endowed by love with the power of merging
dress.
their individuality in another; life is
no longer
possible.
only for her children,
felt
many privations they must From
the day
and when
that other
Agathe, who could
is
the deepest grief at seeing suffer in
when she moved
gone,
henceforth live
how
consequence of her ruin.
Rue Mazarine
to the
there was
a tinge of melancholy in her expression that was very touching.
She did indeed count a little on the Emperor, but he could do no more than he was already doing he allowed each boy, besides his scholarship, six hundred francs a year out of his \
privy purse.
As ment
to the
dashing
Madame
Descoings, she had an apart-
on the second floor. She had assigned to Madame Bridau a sum of a thousand crowns to be Roguin had taken care taken as a first charge on her annuity similar to her niece's
;
Madame
would be seven years before Roguin, inthis slow repayment could undo the mischief. structed to replace the fifteen hundred francs in dividends, of this for
Bridau, but
it
banked the sums he retained on this account. Madame Descoings, reduced to twelve hundred francs a year, lived poorly enough with her niece. The two honest, helpless creatures had a woman in for the morning's work only. The aunt, who liked cooking, managed the dinner. In the evening, a few friends, clerks in the office for whom Bridau had found places, would come to play a game with the two widows. Madame Descoings still clung to her three numbers, which She still obstinately refused, as she said, ever to come out. hoped, by one turn of luck, to repay all that she had surrep-
;
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
20 titiously
borrowed from her
She loved the two
niece.
little
Bridaus better than her grandson Bixiou, so strongly did she feel that
she had wronged them, and so greatly did she admire
who,
the sweetness of her niece,
at
the very worst,
And
spoke the lightest word of blame.
so
never
may be
it
sup-
posed that she spoiled Joseph and Philippe. Like all persons who have a vice to be forgiven, this old gambler in the imlottery would them with damties.
perial
them
treat
A
to little dinners,
little later
cramming
Joseph and Philippe could,
with the greatest ease, extract from her
of
little gifts
money
the younger to buy stumps, chalk, paper,
elder for apple-puffs, marbles, balls
and prints the of string, and knives.
Ker
being content with
down
passion had brought her
francs a
month
to
for all expenses, that she
;
fifty
might gamble with
the remainder.
Madame
Bridau on her part, out of motherly affection, did
not allow her expenses to exceed that sum.
now
self for her foolish confidence, she
her
little
narrow
enjoyments.
intellect
It
Emperor might battle
— her
it
to such an extreme
calculations,
development
acquires the consistency of a virtue.
forget, she told herself; he
pension would die with him.
Incompetent
when he
as
and
experience of crushed feelings
The
might be killed in She shuddered as
she saw such probabilities of her children being penniless.
punish her-
often happens to a timid soul
that a single
and aroused suspicions leads of a failing that
To
heroically cut off all
left
absolutely
she was to understand Roguin's
tried to
prove to her that
a charge of three thousand francs a year on
seven years
in
Madame
Des-
coings' annuity would replace the securities she had sold, she
put no trust in the lawyer, or her aunt, or the state
;
only on herself and her own
a thousand
thrift.
By saving
she relied
crowns a year out of her pension, in ten years she would have thirty thousand francs, which would at any rate secure her children fifteen hundred francs a year.
had
a right to
hope that she might
live
At six-and-thirty she twenty years, and by
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
21
carrying out this system she might leave each of them enough for the bare necessities of life.
widows had sunk from unreal opulence to voluntary penury one under the influence of a vice, the None of all other under the promptings of the purest virtue. to be delesson deep the foreign to are these trivial things of cominterests sordid on the founded this story, rived from
Thus
the two
—
mon
life,
but with a scope
perhaps in con-
the wider
all
sequence.
The view over
the schools, the scampering art students in if only to turn
the street, the need for looking at the sky,
from the hideous outlook on every side of that mouldy street; the countenance of the portrait, full of soul spite of the amateurish
handling
;
and dignity
in
the association of the rich
by age, of this quiet and peaceful home, the greenery of its hanging gardens, the poverty of the household, the mother's preference for her elder son, and her dis-
coloring, harmonized
like to the
younger boy's
taste
—
in short, the sum-total of the
incidents and circumstances which form the prologue to the story, constituted perhaps the active causes to
which we owe
Joseph Bridau, one of the great painters of
the
modern
French school. Philippe, the
elder
ingly like his mother.
of Bridau's two children, was strik-
Though
fair-haired
and blue-eyed, he
had a daring look which was often mistaken for high spirit and courage. Old Claparon, who had entered the office at the same time with Bridau, and was one of the faithful friends who came in the evening to play a game with the two widows, would say of Philippe two or three times in a month, as he patted his cheek, " Here is a brave little man, who can always say bo to a goose!"
assumed a
The
child, thus encouraged,
sort of pluck out of bravado.
taken this bent, he became skilled in
By
all
His temper having physical exercises.
dint of fighting at school, he acquired the hardihood and
;
A BACHELOR'S F.STABLTSHMENT.
22
scorn of pain which give rise lo military courage, but, of course, he also acquired the greatest aversion for study
;
for a
public school can never solve the difficult problem of develop-
ing equally and simultaneously the powers of the body and of
Agathe inferred from
the mind.
his purely
superficial
re-
semblance to her that they must agree in mind, and firmly believed that she should some day find in fined feeling, ennobled
him her own re
by a man's force of nature.
At the time when Madame Bridau moved
to the
apartment in the Rue Mazarine, Philippe was
fifteen,
engaging ways of a youth belief.
Joseph,
who was
likeness of his father.
at that
gloomy and the
age confirmed his mother'a
three years younger, was an ugly
In the
first
place, his bushy black hair
was always ill-kempt whatever was done to it ; while hir brother, though he was never quiet, was always trim ; then^
by some, inscrutable
fatality
grows into a habit
— Joseph
clean
new
;
dressed in a
The
once.
elder, out
— but
suit,
a
too
persistent
fatality
could never keep his clothee he made old clothes of them a^
of personal vanity, took care of
\\\i
mother accustomed herself tc scold Joseph and hold up the example of his brother. So Agathe did not always show the same face to her two boys and when she went to fetch them from school, she would say of Joseph, " I wonder wliat state his things will be in " All things.
Unconsciously,
the
!
these
trifles
No one
drove her heart into the gulf of favoritism. of
all
the very
commonplace people who formed
the two widows' visiting circle
— neither old du Brnei,
Claparon, nor Desroches senior, nor even the
Agathe's director tion.
—ever
Possessed by this
nor old
Abbe Loraux,
noticed Joseph's powers of observataste,
the future colorist paid
no heed
concerned him ; and so long as he was a child, instinct looked so like stupidity that his father had been
to anything that this
somewhat uneasy about him. The extraordinary size of his skull and the brcadtli of his forehead had at first led them His face, still to fear that the child had water on the brain.
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. SO rugged, and
odd enough
to be
23
thought ugly by those
who
cannot see the intellectual purpose of a countenance, was,
boyhood, rather pinched. The features, which seemed crushed together, and the intensity with which the child studied everything puckered them still Tims Philippe soothed all his mother's vanities, while more. never won her a compliment. While Joseph was silent Joseph
during
his
developed
later,
and dreamy, Philippe could bring out those clever speeches and repartees which tempt parents to believe that their children will be remarkable men. The mother looked for wonders from Philippe, she founded no hopes on Joseph. Joseph's predisposition to art v/as brought to light by a most commonplace incident. In 1S12, during the Easter holidays, as he was returning from a walk in the Tuileries
Madame
gardens with his brother and student scrawl
some
a caricature of
admiration of this chalk sketch,
On
full
Descoings, he saw a
professor on a wall,
and
of sparkling fun, riveted
boy placed himby the door self at a window slipped into downstairs, and stole Mazarine he in the Rue the long courtyard of the Institute, where he saw a number
him
to the spot.
the following day the
to watch the students going in ;
of statues and busts, marble rough-hewn, terra-cotta figures, studies in plaster
;
he gazed
at
them
in a fever
of excitement,
was roused, his vocation seethed within him. He went into a large low room, the door standing open, and he was at there saw a dozen or so of lads drawing a statue for his instinct
;
once the butt of their ''
Pretty Dick
flinging
!
tricks.
pretty
Dick " said the !
some bread-crumbs
" Whose brat is that ? " " Heavens, how ugly he
at
is
first
to spy him,
him.
" !
In short, for a quarter of an hour Joseph stood the horse-
—
that of the great sculptor Chaudet ; but making game of him, the pupils were struck by his tenacity and his expression, and asked him what he wanted.
play of the studio after
— ;
^
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
Joseph replied that he very much wished to learn to draw and thereupon everybody was by way of encouraging him. The boy, taken in by this friendly tone, explained that he was
Madame
Bridau's son.
then, indeed! If you are Madame Bridau's son," they sang out from every corner of the studio, " you may be-
"Oh!
come
Hurrah
a great man.
your mother pretty
To
?
for
Madame
Bridau's son
Is
!
judge from your pumpkin head as a
specimen, she ought to be a sweet one to look at."
"So you want
to
be an artist," said the eldest student,
him some " But you must be plucky, you know, and put up with Yes, there are trials, tests that are enough dreadful things. leaving his place, and coming to Joseph to play trick.
to break your legs well, every
for instance,
Come,
He up
and arms.
All these fellows that you see
one of them has passed the he went
tests.
Now,
become an artist? " took one of the boy's arms and placed it let's see if
that one,
seven days and nights without food.
for
you are
fit
to
straight
in the air, then he set the other at an angle as if about
to strike out.
"
We
call that the ordeal
you stand
of the telegraph," said he.
like that without letting
ing your attitude
for a quarter of
"
If
your arms sink or chang-
an hour "
have shown that you have good pluck
—
well,
you
will
!
"Now, little chap, show your mettle," said the others. " By Jove, you must go through something to become an artist."
Joseph, in
all
the good faith of a boy of thirteen, remained
motionless for about
him " " "
five
minutes, and
all
the pupils looked at
very gravely.
Oh
your arm is sinking," said one. Come, steady " said another. By Jove, the Emperor Napoleon stood for at least a month, just as you see him there," added a third, pointing to !
Chaudet's
!
fine statue.
A BACHELOR'S FSTABLISTIMENT.
25
The Emperor was standing holding the imperial sceptre and this work was thrown down in 1S14 from the column it ;
finished so nobly.
In about ten minutes the pers})iration was standing on
At
Joseph's brow.
and
pale,
"
Now
fragile
;
moment
this
a
little
man came
in,
bald,
respectful silence reigned in the studio.
about?" he asked,
then, you scamps, what are you
looking at the studio victim.
"The
little
chap
sitting to us," said the tall student
is
who
in position.
had placed Joseph '* Are you not ashamed of torturing a poor child so?" said " How long have Chaudet, putting down Joseph's arms.
you been standing there
?
" he asked, with a friendly pat on
the boy's cheek.
"About a quarter of an hour." " And what brings you here ? " "I want to be an artist." "And whence have you come; to whom, then, do you belong?" " From mamma's." " Oh, ho from mamma's " cried the pupils. " Who is "Silence among the easels " cried Chaudet. !
!
!
your mother?
"She
is
"
Madame
Bridau.
My
And
friend of. the Emperor's.
if
papa,
you
who
will
is
dead, was a
only teach
me
to
draw, the Emperor will pay whatever you ask."
" His the
father was head of a department in the ministry of
interior,"
Chaudet, struck by a " to be an artist?
cried
reminiscence.
" And you want already "Yes, sir."
"Come self.
you may play here. and chalk, and leave him to him-
here as often as you like;
Give him an
easel, paper,
Remember, you
pickles,
buy something nice
—
that
his
father
did
me
a
"Here, you, Well-rope, go and some cakes and sugar-plums," he added,
service," said the sculptor.
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
26
giving some silver to the lad
soon see
shall
if
who had
you are an
artist
"
bullied Joseph.
We
by the way you munch
cabbage," he went on, stroking Joseph's chin. Then he went the round of his pupils. Joseph followed Tiie treat was him, listening and trying to understand. brought
all
;
the lads, the sculptor himself, and the child had
Then Joseph was made much of, as he had bebeen made game of. This scene, in which the rough fun and good heart of the artist tribe were revealed to him, as he understood by instinct, made a prodigious impression on the their share. fore
This glimpse of Chaudet the sculptor, snatched away by a too early death while the Emperor's patronage promised him glory, was like a vision to Joseph. The child said nothing to his mother of this escapade, but every Sunday and Thursday he spent three hours in Chaudet's Madame Descoings, always ready to humor the studio. boy.
cherubs' fancies, henceforth gave Joseph charcoal, red chalk, At the Lycee Imperial the lithographs, and drawing-paper.
budding
artist
the
sketched
on the dormitory
school-fellows, scrawled
astonishingly diligent
masters, took portraits of his
in
the
and was
walls,
drawing-class.
Lemire,
his
master there, astounded not merely by his talent, but by the progress he made, came to speak to Madame Bridau of her son's evident vocation.
Agathe, a true provincial, and as
ignorant of art as she was accomplished in housekeeping, was When Lemire was gone, she burst into filled with alarms. tears.
"Oh
!
" she cried, as
Madame
Descoings came
"
I
am
who
has
in,
undone Joseph, whom I meant to make his way ready for him in the ministry of the interior, and guarded by the shade of his father, would have been at the head of an office by the time he was five-and-twenty. Well, a clerk,
!
he
is
bent on being a painter
—
a beggar's trade.
I
"
always
boy would bring me nothing but trouble Madame Descoings had to confess that for some months
knew
that
!
A BACHELOR'^ E^TA RLTSIIMF.NT. she had been encouraging
past
Joseph
in
27
and
passion
his
screening his stolen Sunday and Thursday visits to the school of
At the Salon, whither she had taken him, the little was something miraculous.
art.
fellow's interest in the pictures
" And
he understands painting
if
dear, your Joseph will be a
"
To
I
daresay
and
;
worked
die,
man
age of thirteen,
at the
what genius brought
see
my
of genius." his father to!
to death, at forty."
Late in the autumn, just as Joseph was reaching the age of fourteen, Agathe, in spite of
Madame
Descoings' entreaties,
went to see Chaudet, and insisted that her son should not be led into mischief.
modeling
widow of
tion of the service
She found Chaudet
He
his latest statue.
the
very critical
in
in his blue overall,
was barely
civil in his recep-
man who had once done him but
circumstances,
his
a
health was
already undermined he was working with the fevered energy which enables a man to do in a few moments things which it ;
it is difficult to achieve in as many months; he had just hit on a thing he had long been striving for, and handled his clay and modeling tool with hasty jerks which, to Agathe, in
her ignorance, seemed to be those of a maniac.
In any other
frame of mind Chaudet would have laughed outright
he heard
this
mother blaspheming
;
but as
bewailing the fate
art,
forced upon her son, and requesting that he might never
more
be admitted to the studio, he broke out in sacred fury.
"
I
am under
hoped
to
watching over your all
if
careers
!
a king
;
for, in ;
little
the
it,
first
step in the noblest of
" Yes, madame,
that a great artist
first
place, he
he lives as he pleases
;
I
by helping your son, by
return
Joseph's
" he exclaimed.
you do not know
pendent
your lamented husband;
obligations to
make him some
is
is
I
may
tell
you,
a king, more than
happier, and he
is
inde-
and, besides, he rules over
Your son has a splendid future him Such talents as his are rare they are not revealed so young in any artists but a Giotto, a Raphael, a the world of imagination.
before
!
;
A BACBELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
28
—
Rubens, a Murillo for he will be a painter, I think, Light of heaven If I had such a boy,
Titian, a
rather than a sculptor. I
!
should be as happy as the Emperor
the
King of Rome
!
being the father of
in
Well, madame, you are mistress of your
Go, make an
child's fate.
is
man who
idiot of him, a
put one leg before the other, a wretched scrivener
be committing murder
remain
he will always
efforts,
stronger than
vocation
!
all
— the
only hope that, in spite of
I
!
an
artist
A
!
the obstacles opposed to
word means a
call.
Ah
its it
!
you
will
all
your
vocation
working is
only
will
;
!
election
is
A by
God! " But you
He
will
make your
child wretched
" !
violently flung the handful of clay he had ceased to
need into a tub, and said
to his
model, " That will do for
to-day."
Agathe looked up, and saw a naked woman sitting on a which had not yet come under
stool in a corner of the studio
At the sight she
her eye.
"You said
are not to let
Chaudet to
fled in horror.
little
his pupils.
Bridau come here any more," " Madame his mother does not
approve."
" Hoo-oo
" shouted the lads as Agathe closed the door. Joseph has been going to that place!" said the poor woman, in consternation of what she had seen and !
"And
heard.
As soon
as the students of painting
and sculpture heard that
Bridau would not allow her son to become an artist, In all their delight was to get Joseph to their own rooms. his mother not to from him by spite of the promise extracted
Madame
go any more to the that Regnauld used
When
the
widow
boy often stole into a studio and was encouraged to daub canvas.
Institute, the
there,
tried to complain, Chaudet's pupils told her
Regnauld was not Chaudet, that she had not made them the guardians of monsieur her son, and laughed at her in a thousand ways. The rascally students composed and sang that
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. Madame
a ballad on
29
Bridau in a hundred and thirty-seven
verses.
On
Agathe refused
the evening of that melancholy day,
to
play cards, and sat in her armchair, a prey to such deep mel-
ancholy that the tears welled up
What
* '
is
the matter,
" She believes " But
I
little
Men
of painting," said
are
made
to fight their
Descoings.
my
stepson's
way."
had never been able
happily have but one son francs,
my
and
dred by her license to
me
bread be-
his
right," said Desroches, a hard, dry man,
is
in spite of his abilities I
beg
Madame
Bixiou, though he too has a passion for drawing.
" Madame
"
asked old Claparon.
'
have not the smallest misgiving as to
boy,
hundred
'
that her son will have to
bump
cause he has the
in her beautiful eyes.
Madame Bridau ?
for
;
with
my
who makes
wife,
salary of eighteen
barely twelve hun-
stamps, what would have
sell
who
to rise in his office.
become
my
boy to an attorney ; he gets twenty-five frances a month and his breakfast, and I give him That is all he the same sum he dines and sleeps at home. of
?
I
have articled
;
he must needs go on, and he will make his way. cut out more work for my youngster than if he were has
;
lege,
and he
will
to the play he
keep him tight
is !
be an attorney some day as
He
happy
as a king,
has to account to
when
;
he hugs
me
treat
I
me
I
!
for all his
have
at col-
him
Oh
!
I
money.
If your boy wants to He will turn out all right." him alone " For my part," said du Bruel, a retired head clerk who had just taken his pension, " my boy is but sixteen, and his mother worships him. But I would not listen to a vocation
You
are too easy with your children.
try roughing
it,
let
!
that declared itself at such an early age.
I
think boys need
directing."
"You, monsieur,
are rich;
you are a man, and have but
one child," said Agathe. my honor," Claparon went on, "our children are *' On our tyrants (in hearts).
Mine
drives
me mad he ;
has brought
;!
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
30
me
to ruin,
and
have given him up altogether (inde-
at last I
Well, he
pendence).
all
is
no sooner was he he never could
in the
rest,
am I. He be-
the better pleased, and so
The rascal was partly the death of his poor mother. came a commercial traveler, and it was the very life
for
him
house than he wanted to be out of
he never would learn.
All
;
it
pray heaven
I
may die without seeing him disgrace my name Those who have no children miss many pleasures, but they also escape many troubles." is
that
I
"Just
like a father
"What
I tell
you,
!
" said Agathe, beginning
my
dear
Madame
Bridau,
to cry again. is
to prove to
you must allow your boy to become a painter ; other" wise you will lose your time "If you were capable of keeping him in hand," said the harsh Desroches, " I would tell you to oppose his wishes
you
that
but, seeing
you so weak with them,
I
say
—
let
him daub and
scribble."
"Lost " said Claparon. " What ? Lost " cried the unhappy mother. !
!
"Oh
my independence always makes me lose."
roches
yes,
in hearts
— that
dry stick Des-
" Be comforted, Agathe," said Madame Descoings "Joseph be a great man." At the end of this discussion, which was like every earthly discussion, the widow's friends united in one opinion, which by no means put an end to her perplexities. She was advised ;
will
to allow Joseph to follow his bent.
"And was
if
civil to
On
he is not a man of genius," said du Bruel, Agathe, " you can always get him a place."
the landing
clerks, called
Madame
them the "
who
Descoings, seeing out the three old
three Sages of Greece."
" She worries herself too much," said du Bruel. " She may think herself only too lucky that her boy
will
do
anything! " said Claparon.
"
If
God
preserves the
Emperor,"
said Desroches,
"Joseph
'
'
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. So what has she
be provided for elsewhere.
wrill
ious about ?
"She
is
afraid of everything
"Well, dear
"you now ?
to cry for
to
be anx-
'
Madame
cerned," replied the room,
31
woman,"
little
where her children are con-
Descoings. she went on, as she re-entered
see they are all of
What have you
one mind.
'
" Oh if it were Philippe, I should have no fears. You do know what goes on in those studios. They actually have !
not
naked women there
"But they have
A
a
" !
fire, I
hope," said
Madame
Descoings.
later news came of the disastrous rout at MosNapoleon was returning to organize fresh armies and on France for further sacrifices. Now the poor mother
few days
cow. call
was tortured by very different alarms. Philippe, who did not A like college, was positively bent on serving the Emperor. review at the Tuileries, the
last
Napoleon ever held, of which At that period
Philippe was a spectator, had turned his head.
of military display the sight of the uniforms, the authority of
an epaulette, had an
men.
fascination for
irresistible
some young
Philippe believed himself to have the same taste for
military service that his brother had for the arts.
Unknown
to his mother, he wrote to the
Emperor
a peti-
tion in the following words:
" Sire
:
—
I
am
the son of your Bridau
;
and measure nearly six feet I have constitution, and I wish to be one of your old,
am
I
eighteen years
stout
;
legs, a
soldiers.
I
good
appeal
to your favor to be enrolled in the army, etc."
Within twenty-four hours the Emperor had sent Philippe to and six months later, in November, 1813, he called him out as sub-lieutenant the Imperial I^Iilitary School of Saint-Cyr
in a cavalry regiment.
;
During part of the winter Philippe
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
32
remained out
full
in
depot
of ardor.
but as soon as he had learned to ride he set
;
In the course of the campaign in France,
he gained his lieutenancy
in a
skirmish of the advanced guard,
when his headlong valor saved his colonel. The Emperor made him captain after the battle of La Fere-Champenoise, and placed him on the staff. Stimulated by this promotion, Then, having witat Montereau Philippe won the cross. nessed Napoleon's farewell at Fontainebleau, and being driven
by the scene, Captain Philippe refused to serve
to fanaticism
under the Bourbons. When he went home to his mother her a ruined
woman.
in July, 1814,
he found
In the course of the long vacation
and Madame Bridau, whose pension had been paid out of tlie Emperor's privy
Joseph's scholarship was canceled
;
purse, vainly applied for a clerkship for
to painting,
allow him
in the offices
of
was enclianted, and only besought his mother to go to Monsieur Regnauld's studio, promising
to
her that he would
enough
him
Joseph, more than ever devoted
the ministry of the interior.
in the
make
second
He
a living.
class at school,
was, he said, high
and could
get
on without
rhetoric.
Philippe, a
flattered his
and
captain, and wearing
an
under Napoleon on two
after serving
mother's pride
in reality
devoid of
all
;
so,
who was
immensely
though he was rough, noisy,
merit but the vulgar courage of a
slashing swordsman, to her he was the
Joseph,
order at nineteen,
battlefields,
small, sickly,
and
man
of genius
thin, with a
;
while
rugged brow,
loved peace and quiet, and dreamed of fame as an artist, as she declared, never to give her anything but doomed, was worry and anxiety. The winter of 181 4-1 5 was a good one for Joseph, who, by the secret interest of Madame Descoings and of Bixiou, a pupil of Gros, was admitted to work in that famous studio, whence proceeded so many different types of
who
talent,
and wlicre he formed a close intimacy with Schinner.
Then came
the great 20th of
March
;
Captain Bridau,
who
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. joined the
at
promoted
After the battle slightly,
Lyons and escorted him back to the to be major of the Dragoon Guards. of Waterloo, where he was wounded, but
Emperor
Tuileries, was
33
and won the
cross of a
commander of
himself with
the Legion of
Marechal Davoust
at Honor, he next found thus, by the Loire of army the ; with not Saint-Denis, and the interest of Marechal Davoust, he was allowed to retain his cross and his rank in the army, but he was put upon half-pay. Joseph, uneasy about the future, studied meanwhile with an
ardor that
made him
more than once
ill
in the
midst of the
hurricane of public events.
"It
is
the smell of paint," Agathe would say to
Descoings.
"
He
ought to give up work that
is
so
Madame
bad
for his
health."
were then centred in her son the She saw him again in 1816, fallen from of about nine thousand francs a year as
All Agathe's anxieties lieutenant-colonel.
pay and profits major in the Emperor's Dragoon Guards to half-pay amounthis
ing to three hundred francs a month ings in furnishing for
him the
attic
;
she spent her
little sav-
over the kitchen.
Philippe was one of the most assiduous Bonapartists that haunted the Cafe Lemblin, a thorough constitutional Boeotia. There he acquired the habits, manners, and style of living of half-pay officers; nay, he outdid them, as any
young man of
twenty was sure to do, solemnly vowing a mortal hatred of the Bourbons ; he was not to be talked over, and even refused such opportunities as were offered in the field
with his
full
rank.
him of employment
In his mother's eyes Philippe
was showing great strength of character. " His father could have done no better," said she. He would cost his Philippe could live on his half-pay.
mother nothing, while Joseph was entirely dependent on the two widows. From that moment Agathe's preference for Hitherto it had been covert but the Philippe was manifest. ;
persecution under which he suffered as a faithful adherent to
3
34
^4
BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
the Emperor, the
memory
of the
wound her
darling son had
was, —which, voluntary adversity — brought out Agathe's weak-
received, his courage in adversity
seemed ness.
to her noble
The words, " He
as
it
unfortunate," justified everything.
is
Joseph, whose nature overflowed with the childlike simplicity which is superabundant in the youthful artist-soul, and
who had been brought up
to
admire
his elder brother,
far
from resenting his mother's favoritism, vindicated it by sharing in her worship of a " veteran " who had won Napoleon's orders in two battles
— of a man wounded
at
Waterloo.
could he doubt the superiority of this big brother,
How
whom
he
had seen in the splendid green-and-gold uniform of the Dragoon Guards, at the head of his squadron on the Champ de Mai. And in spite of her preference, Agathe was a good She loved Joseph, but not blindly she simply did mother. ;
not understand him. Joseph worshiped his mother, whereas Philippe allowed her to adore him. Still, for her the dragoon
moderated his
his military coarseness, while
contempt
for Joseph,
he never disguised
though expressing
it
not unkindly.
As he looked at his brother's powerful head, too large for a body kept thin by constant work, and still, at the age of seventeen, slight and weakly, he would call him "the kid." His patronizing ways would have been offensive but for the artist's
indifference,
in
the
belief,
indeed,
that
always liad a kind heart under his rough manners.
a
soldier
The poor men are as
boy did not yet know that really first-rate military gentle and polite as other superior persons. Genius is everywhere true to itself. "Poor child!" Philippe would say to his mother. " Don't tease him let him amuse himself." And this contempt was in his mother's eyes an evidence of brotherly ;
affection.
"Philippe
will always love
and protect
his brother," she
thought.
In i8i6 Joseph obtained his mother's permission to convert
j
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
35
bedroom into a painting- room, and gave him a small sum to purchase such
the loft adjoining his
Madame Descoings
things as were indispensable to his "business" as a painter for in the
minds of the two widows painting was but a
trade.
with the energy and zeal that are part of such a vocation, arranged everything in his humble studio with his
Joseph,
own hands. The landlord, at Madame made a skylight in the roof. Thus the
Descoings' request, attic
became a
large
room, and was painted chocolate-color by Joseph he hung some sketches against the walls Agathe, not very willingly, had a small cast-iron stove fixed and Joseph could now work ;
;
;
at
home, not, however, neglecting Gros' studio or Schinner's.
The
Constitutional
consisting largely of
parly,
half-pay
and the Bonapartists, who were at that time frequently engaged in riots round the House of Representatives, in the officers
name
of the Charter, which no one would hear
plotted sundry conspiracies.
Philippe,
of,
and they
who must needs
get
mixed up in them, was arrested, but released for lack of evidence ; but the war minister cut off his half-pay, reducing him to what might be called punishment pay. France was no longer the place for him Philippe would end by falling There was at into some trap laid by the government agents. ;
that time a great talk of these agents provocateurs.
So while
Philippe was playing billiards in cafes suspected of disaffection,
losing his time, and getting into a habit of drinking
various liqueurs, Agathe lived in mortal terrors for the great
man of the family. The " three Sages
of Greece " were too well used to walk-
way every evening, to mounting the stairs to the widows' rooms, and to finding the ladies always expecting them, and anxious to ask them the news of the day, ever to cease their visits. They came regularly to their game in the ing the same
little
green drawing-room.
thoroughly purged
in
The
ministry of the interior,
1816, had kept Claparon on
one of the trimmers who murmur
in
its
lists
as
an undertone the news
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
S6
from the Moniteur, adding, "
still
Do
me
not get
dismissed soon after his
Desroches,
into trouble
These three
fighting for his pension.
" !
dif Bruel, was
senior,
seeing
friends,
Agathe's despair, advised her to send the colonel abroad.
"There
is
raucli talk of conspiracies,
is
and your son, with
be the victim of some such
his character, will
affair, for
there
always some one to peach." **
The
devil
"
" said du Bruel,
!
He
in a
low voice and looking
Emperor used to make his marshals, and he ought not to give up his calling. " Let him serve in the East, in the Indies " But his health ? " objected Agathe. about him.
"Why
the stuff of which his
is
does he not enter an
" So many
office?"
Desroches.
said
private concerns are being started.
I
mean
to get
a place as head clerk in an assurance company as soon as pension
is
my
settled."
"Philippe is a soldier; he only cares for fighting," said Agathe the warlike. " Then he should be a good boy, and apply for active ser" vice with
" This crew? "
cried the widow.
" Oh, you
will
never get
"
me to suggest it "You are wrong," !
replied
du Bruel.
"My
son has just
been helped on by the Due de Navarreins. The Bourbons are very good to all who join them honestly. Your son will be appointed as lieutenant-colonel to a regiment."
" They will
will take
never be
Agathe,
full
none but noblemen
colonel," cried
in great alarm,
in the cavalry,
Madame
and he
Descoings.
implored Philippe to go abroad and
foreign power.. Any one of them would receive with favor an officer of the Emperor's staff. "Serve with foreigners?" cried Philippe in horror. Agathe embraced her son fervently, exclaiming, "He is offer his services to
some
his father all over."
"He
is
quite right," said Joseph.
"A
Frenchman
is
too
:
J BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
37
his column to lead any foreign columns. Napoleon may come back again yet."
Besides,
proud of
please his mother, a splendid idea occurred to Philippe
To
might join General Lallemand in the United States, and co-operate in founding the Champ cV Asile, one of the most disastrous hoaxes ever perpetrated under the name of a national
He
Agathe paid ten thousand francs, and went with her son to Havre to see him on board ship. At the end of 1817, Agathe was managing to live on the six hundred francs a year left to her in government securities; then, by a happy inspiration, she invested at once the ten^ thousand francs that remained to her of her savings, and so fund.
had seven hundred francs a year more. Joseph wished to contribute to her act of
sacrifice
;
he went
about dressed like a bum-bailiff, wearing thick shoes and blue he wore no gloves ; he burned coal instead of wood \ socks ;
he lived on bread, milk, and cheap cheese.
The poor
lad
never heard a word of encouragement from anybody but old
Descoings and from Bixiou, his school-fellow and who was by this time employed in drawing
Madame
fellow-student, capital
caricatures, besides having a small
little
government
place in a
ofifice.
was to see the summer of 1818 " Bridau "The would often say when speaking of these hard times.
"How
glad
sun saved
He went tilt
my
I
!
buying fuel."
was already quite as good a colorist as Gros, and only to his master for advice; he
tionality
and the leading
birthright tiveness
is
and
nature as its
it
caprice.
struggle which, from the
Salon, was never
more
was thinking of riding a
of breaking free from Greek conven-
at the classic school,
which fettered an art whose omnipotence of its creaJoseph was making ready for the
strings is,
in the
day when he
first
exhibited at the
to cease.
them all. Roguin, the widows' notary, disappeared, taking with him all the money kept back It
was a
terrible year for
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
S8
during the past seven years from
which by
this
Madame
Descoings' annuity,
time ought to have been bringing them in two
thousand francs a year.
Three days
after
this
catastrophe
came from New York a bill drawn on his mother by The poor fellow, swindled like so many Colonel Philippe. more, had lost everything in the scheme for the Champ This letter, by which Agathe, Madame Descoings, d'Asile. and Joseph all were melted to tears, spoke of debts incurred at New York, where his companions in misfortune had stood there
surety for him.
"And
it
was
all
mother, ingenious
"
I
my
doing that he went
" cried the poor
!
in finding excuses for Philippe's sins.
advise you not to send
him often on such journeys,"
Madame Descoings to her Madame Descoings was heroic
said old
Bridau a thousand crowns
;
niece. ;
she
but she also
Madame
still
paid
still
paid regularly
keep up the three numbers which had never come out
to
^^ ^^^^^ time she began to doubt the honesty of management. She accused the government authorities, believing them quite capable of suppressing the issue of the three numbers in the drawing so as to keep up the frenzied
since 1799.
the
deposits of the ticket-holders.
seemed some plate, some
After a brief consideration of ways and means,
it
impossible to raise a thousand francs without selling shares.
The two women
talked of pledging their
of their house-linen, or even part of the furniture that they
could do without.
Joseph, terrified
by
these plans, went to
on Gerard, and explained the situation the great painter obtained a commission for him from the master of the royal household to make two copies of the portrait of Louis XVIII., call
at the price
;
Though
of five hundred francs each.
dicted to liberality, Gros took his pupil to
Joseph got
all
and painted four
little
little
ad-
shop where
But the thousand
the necessary materials.
francs were to be paid only on delivery.
a
Joseph
pictures in ten days
;
set to
work
these he sold to
—
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
39
liis mother a thousand francs; she week later, another letter from the his mother that he was sailing on board
the dealers, and brought
could meet the
bill.
colonel announced to
A
a packet, the captain having accepted his promise to pay. Philippe added that he would need at least a thousand francs more on disembarking at Havre. "Well," said Joseph to his mother, "I shall have finished the copies you can take him the thousand francs." " Dear Joseph " cried Agathe, embracing him with tears. **Then you really love that poor persecuted boy ? He is our glory and all our hope So young, so brave, and so unfortunate Everything is against him let us all three at any rate be on his side." "Painting is good for something after all, you see," cried Joseph, happy at having at last won his mother's permission to become a great artist. ;
!
!
!
;
Madame
Bridau flew to meet her beloved son, Colonel At Havre she walked every day to a point beyond the round tower built by Francis I., every day imagining fresh and dreadful alarms as she watched for the American Philippe.
None
packet.
revives their
morning met the
but mothers
first
know how this kind of torment The vessel came in one fine
motherhood.
October, 1819, without damage, without having
in
slightest squall.
The air of his native land, and the sight of his mother, must always have some effect, even on the coarsest soul, especially after an exile full of disasters. Philippe gave way to an eflfusiveness of feeling which made Agathe think to herself, " How much this one loves me " Alas the young officer !
!
loved but one creature in the world, and that was Colonel Philippe. a place
His
ill-fortune in Texas, his stay in
where speculation and
New York
self-interest arc carried to the
highest pitch, where the coarsest selfishness becomes cynicism, where each man, living for himself alone, is compelled to
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
40 tread his
own
path, where politeness does not exist
—
in short,
the smallest incidents of his expedition had developed
Philippe
all
in
He
the bad tendencies of the disbanded trooper.
was a bully, a drinker, a smoker, assertive and rude ; penury and privations had deteriorated him. Also, the colonel considered himself persecuted
of low intelligence
To
is
to
the effect of this belief on a
;
make him an
Philippe the whole universe began at his head and ended
at his feet;
the sua shone for
him
alone.
New
York, interpreted by a robbed him of every moral scruple. experience of
With beings of ence all
man
intolerant persecutor.
his
stamp there are but two modes of
they are believers or they are unbelievers
:
the virtues of an honest
every pressure of necessity regarding their smallest
prompted by passion, may go far. In
To crown all, his man of action, had
as
man, or they ;
;
exist-
they have
are carried
away by
then they get into a habit of
and every passing wish
interests,
a necessity.
On
this
plan a
man
appearance, but in appearance only, the colonel had
preserved the blunt, frank, easy-going manner of a soldier.
Thus he was a very dangerous man he seemed as guileless as but having no one to think of but himself, he never did anything without carefully considering what he had best do, much as a wily prosecutor considers every twist and turn of a tricky rogue. Words cost him nothing, and he would ;
a child
;
give you as
many
as
you chose to believe.
If a
man
should,
unluckily, be so rash as to take exception to the explanations
by which he would
justify the discrepancies
duct and his speech, the colonel,
who could
who was
between
his con-
a first-rate shot,
who had man to whom life is a matter of indifference, was ready to demand satisfaction for the first sharp word. Pending that, he looked like a man so ready for blows as to make compromise impossible. His tall figure had become burly, his face was tanned during his stay in Texas, and challenge the most skillful swordsman, and
the cool head of a
;
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
41
he had caught the abrupt speech and peremptory tone of a to be respected in the midst of the populace
man who means of
New
York.
Such
as
he was, plainly dressed, and his frame evidently
hardened by
hard
his recent
life,
Philippe was a hero in his
poor mother's eyes; but he had, in
fact,
become what the
common people plainly describe as a "bad lot." Madame Bridau, startled by her darling son's destitute dition,
had a complete
outfit
made
for
him
at
Havre
;
con-
as she
to the tale of his woes, she had not the heart to check his eating, drinking, and amusing himself, as a man was bound to drink and enjoy himself on his return from the
listened
Champ (T Asile. The occupation army was no doubt
of Texas by the remnant of
the grand
but it was the men that a splendid idea conditions, since Texas than the were found wanting rather The experiment promise. great state of is now a republican
made under
the
interests of the
;
Restoration proved emphatically that the no sense
Liberals were purely selfish, and in else.
Neither the
material, the place, the idea, nor the good-will
was lacking,
national
;
aiming
at
power, and
at
nothing
only the money and the support of that hypocritical party they had vast sums at their disposal, and would give nothing when the reinstatement of an empire was at stake.
Housewives of Agathe's stamp have the good sense which enables them to see through such politcal frauds.
The
hapless
mother saw the truth as she heard her son's story ; for, during his absence, her interest in the exile had led her to listen to the
pompous announcements of the Constitutional newsand to watch the vicissitudes of the braggart subscrip-
papers, tion,
francs
which yielded scarcely a hundred and fifty thousand when five or six millions were needed. The leaders of
the Liberal party very soon discoA ered that they were, in fact,
doing the job
for
Louis
XVHL
t
i
sending away the glorious
remnant of the French army, and they abandoned
to their
a
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
42
and ardent enthusiabts, who were the Agathe never was able to explain to Philippe
fate
ihe most devoted
first
to go.
that he liad been the prey of fraud rather than of persecution.
In her belief in her idol she accused herself of stupidity, and
lamented the disasters of the times which had
fallen
on
Philippe.
And
was true
it
had been
less
now,
that, until
in all
misfortunes he
his
a sinner than a victim to his fine temper and
energy, to the Emperor's overthrow, to the duplicity of the Liberals and the vindictiveness of the Bourbons towards the Bonapartists.
All through the
horribly expensive
week
become reconciled
week they spent
—she never dared hint
to the
at
Havre
—
that he should
King's government and
call at the
war office ; she had enough to do to get him away from Havre, where living is very dear, and back to Paris, when she had no money left but just enough for the journey. Madame Descoings and Joseph, who met them as they alighted from the coach in the yard of the Messageries Royales, were shocked at the
change
in
Agathe.
"Your mother
has grown ten years older in two months,"
said the old lady to Joseph, in the midst of the embracing,
while their two trunks were taken down.
"Well, Granny Descoings, and Philippe's
tender
greeting
to
the
Joseph affectionately addressed as "
"
We
how
are
you?"
grocer's widow,
Maman "
was
whom
Descoings.
have no money to pay for the cab," said Agathe
piteously.
" But is
I
" My brother " he exclaimed, looking at Philippe. But you have not altered, colored like a pipe.
have," replied the young painter.
splendidly burnt
" Yes, I am man."
!
little
Joseph,
now one-and-twenty, and much appreciated by a who had stood by him in evil days, felt his
few friends
powers, and was conscious of his talent.
of young
men devoted
In a
little
to science, letters, politics,
society
and phil-
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISIIMF NT. osophy, he represented painting
;
he was hurt by his brother's
contemptuous tone, emphasized by an pulled his ear as
if
right
incivility
he were a mere child.
the sort of chill which
Joseph after their
first
43
Philippe
;
Agathe observed
came over Madame Descoings and
affectionate
warmth, but she
set
matters
by speaking of the privations endured by Philippe dur-
ing his exile.
Madame
Descoings, anxious to
make
a high
day
in
honor
of the return of the prodigal son, as she called him in her
own mind, had prepared
the best of dinners to which she had invited old Claparon and the elder Desroches. All the friends of the family were invited,
and came
in the evening.
Joseph had asked Leon Giraud, d'Arthez, Michel Chrestien,
Fulgence Ridal, and
Madame
Bianchon, his friends of the coterie.
Descoings had
him
—
told
Bixiou
— her
stepson,
as
she
young people would play a game of ecarte. The younger Desroches, sternly forced by his father to become a law-student, also joined the party. Du Bruel, Claparon, Desroches, and the Abbe Loraux stared at the traveler, frightened by his coarse face and manners, his voice husky with dram-drinking, his vulgar language and looks. While Joseph was setting out and arranging the card-tables, her most intimate friends gathered round Agathe and asked called
her
that the
:
"What do you intend to do with Philippe? " "I do not know," said she. "But he is still
determined
not to serve under the Bourbons."
"
It is
very difficult to find him a place in France.
will not re-enter the
army, he
will not easily find a
If he
pigeon-
hole ready for him in the civil service," said old du Bruel.
"And
only to listen to him
enough to prove that he will by writing plays." Agathe's glance in reply was enough to make them all understand how anxious she was as to Philippe's prospects ; and as neither of her friends had any suggestions to offer. never make a fortune, like
is
my
son,
—
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
44
they
all
kept
The
silence.
Bixiou were playing ecarte, a
young Desroches, and
exile,
game
that was then the rage.
" Maman Descoings, my brother
has
no money
to play
with," said Joseph, in the kind and staunch old lady's ear.
The gambler
in the lottery
gave them to the
artist,
went
to fetch twenty francs,
who
quietly slipped
Two
tables
them
and
into his
brother's hands.
All the guests arrived. the party grew lively.
were
set for boston,
and
Philippe proved but a sorry player.
After winning a good deal at
first, he lost, till, by eleven young Desroches and Bixiou. The noise and disputes over the ecarte more than once disturbed the peaceful boston players, and they kept covert watch over Philippe. The colonel gave evidence of such a bad spirit that, in his last wrangle with young Desroches
o'clock, he
who was though
owed
fifty
francs to
not very good-tempered either
his son
was
— the elder Desroches,
pronounced against him, and
in the right,
him to play no more. Madame Descoings d'id the same with her grandson, who had begun firing such keen still, they witticisms that Philippe did not understand them danger if chance satirist into by caustic this led might have desired
;
one of
his
barbed arrows had pierced the colonel's dense
intelligence.
"Come must be tired," said Agathe to Philippe. room." "Traveling forms the young " said Bixiou, smiling, when Agathe and the colonel were out of the room. Joseph, who rose with the dawn and went early to rest, did Next morning Agathe and her not see the evening out. friend, as they laid breakfast in the front room, could not help thinking that evening company would cost them very dear if Piiilippe went on playing " tliat game," as Madame Descoings "You
to your
!
phrased
it.
proposed to third
flour
The sell
to
old
woman, now
seventy-six years of age,
her furniture, to give up her rooms on the
the
landlord
— who was
most willing
to
have
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
—
45
for her bedroom, and and dining-room in one. In this v/ay they could save seven hundred francs a year. This retrenchment would enable them to allow Philippe fifty francs a month while he was looking out tor something to do. Agathe
them
to take
to use the other
accepted the
When
Agathe's drawing-room
room
as a sitting
sacrifice.
the colonel
came down,
after his
mother had asked room, the two
him if he had been comfortable widows laid the state of affairs before him. in
his little
Madame
Des-
coings and Agathe, by combining their incomes, had five thou-
sand three hundred francs a year, of which four thousand were Madame Descoings' annuity. The old lady allowed Bixiou six
hundred francs a year
owned him
to be her
the rest, with generally.
"Be
—
for the last six
grandson
— and
six
months she had
hundred
to Joseph
;
housekeeping
Agathe's income, was spent in
All their savings were gone.
quite easy," said the colonel;
"
I will
look out for
some appointment. I will cost you nothing. All I want is a crust and a crib for the present." Agathe kissed her son, and his old friend slipped a hundred francs into his hand to pay the gambling debt of the evening before.
Within ten days the
of the furniture, the giving up of
sale
the rooms, and the necessary changes in Agathe's dwelling
were effected with the rapidity to be seen only ing these ten days Philippe regularly after breakfast,
came
in
and did not come home This was the plan of
to dinner, to
bed
life
till
into
in Paris.
made himself
went out
Durscarce
in the evening,
midnight.
which the soldier
mechanically, and which became a rooted habit
fell
almost
he had his
;
boots blacked on the Pont Neuf for the two sous he would otherwise have spent in crossing by the Pont des Arts to the Palais
Royal, where he took two liqueur glasses of brandy while reading the papers, an occupation absorbing
him
till
mid-day
;
at
about noon he made his way by the Rue Vivienne to the Cafe
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
46
Minerve,
at
that time the headquarters of the Liberals,
there he played
billiards
There, while he won or
lost,
and
with some retired fellow-officers. Philippe always got through three
or four more glasses of various
spirits, and then smoked ten wandered and lounged about the streets. In the evening, after smoking a ifv^ pipes at the Estaminet Hollandais, he went up to the gambling tables at about ten. The waiter handed him a card and a pin he consulted certain experienced players as to the state of the run on red or black, and staked ten francs at an opportune moment, never playing more than three times, whether he won or lost. When he had won, as he commonly did, he drank a tumbler of punch and made his way home to his attic ; but by this time he would be talking of smashing up the ultras and the body guard, and sing on the stairs, " Preserve the Empire from its foes."
regie cigars as he
;
as she heard him, would say, "Philippe is good spirits this evening," and she would go up to give him a kiss, never complaining of the reek of punch, spirits, and tobacco. " You ought to be pleased with me, my dear mother," said
His poor mother,
in
he one day towards the end of January, the most regular
life
"I am
sure I lead
" !
Philippe had dined out five times with some old comrades. These soldiers had talked over the state of their affairs, and discussed the hopes they founded on the building of a submarine vessel to be employed to deliver the Emperor. Among the fellow-officers he here met again, Philippe was
Dragoon Guard whose company he had first smelt gunpowder. This officer of dragoons was the cause of Philippe's completing what Rabelais calls the devil's outfit, and adding a fourth iniquity to his dram, his cigar, and his gambling. One evening, at the beginning of February, Giroudeau particularly thick with a former captain of the
named Giroudeau,
in
took Philippe after dinner to the Gaite Theatre, to a box
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. sent to a small theatrical paper belonging to his for
whom
47
nephew Finot,
the old soldier kept the cash-box and the accounts,
addressed and checked the papers.
Dressed after the fashion
of the Bonapartist officers of the Constitutional opposition, in
loose, long coats, with a square collar
buttoned up to the
chin, hanging to their heels, and decorated with the rosette,
armed with
a loaded cane,
hanging to the wrist by a plaited
had treated themselves to a and opened their hearts to each other as they went into the box. Through the haze of a considerable number of bottles of wine and "nips" of
leather cord, the two troopers skinful, as they expressed
it,
sundry liqueurs, Giroudeau pointed out to Philippe a plump and nimble little damsel on the stage, known as Florentine, whose favors and affections, as well as the box, were his through the all-powerful influence of the paper.
"But dear me,"
said
Philippe,
"how
far
does she carry "
her favors for an old dappled-gray trooper like you
"
?
Praise the Lord, I have never forgotten the old principles
of our glorious uniform
!
" said Giroudeau.
"
I
never spent
two farthings on a woman."
"What next?"
cried
Philippe, with a finger to his
left
eye.
" Quite true," said Giroudeau. the paper has something to do with see, in
two
lines,
the
management
Mademoiselle Florentine a pas boy,
I
am
will
be advised to give
On my
word,
my
dear
very happy," said Giroudeau.
"Well," thought in
seul.
"But, between ourselves, To-morrow you will it.
spite of a skull
Philippe, "if this venerable Giroudeau, as bare as
years, his tub (saloir), his
your knee, his eight-and-forty
face like a vine-grower's,
and
his
nose like a potato, can be sweetheart to a dancer, I ought to be the man for the first actress in Paris. Where are such articles to
"I home.
be
had?"
will take
you
he asked Giroudeau. this
evening to see Florentine's humble
Though my dulcinea
gets but fifty francs a
montk
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHM::XT.
48
from the theatre, thanks to a retired dot,
silk
mercer named Car-
allows her five hundred francs a month, she
who
is
not
so badly set up."
"Why— what?"
said Philippe, jealous.
" said Giroudeau. "True love is blind." Philippe to see Mademoitook Giroudeau play After the selle Florentine, who lived in the Rue de Crussol, a stone's-
" Pooh
!
throw from the theatre. " We must behave," said Giroudeau
" Florentine has her
;
As you may suppose, I cannot afford to allow her one, and the good woman really is her mother.
mother with
her.
The woman was a doorkeeper, but and her name is Cabirolle. Call
she does not lack brains,
her
madame
;
she
is
par-
ticular about that."
Florentine had at her house that evening a friend of hers, a certain Marie Godeschal, as lovely as an angel, as cold as a ballet-dancer, and a pupil of Vestris, who promised her the highest terpsichorean distinctions.
who was
anxious to
come
Mademoiselle Godeschal,
out at the " Panorama-dramatique,"
under the name of Mariette, counted on the patronage of a to whom Vestris had long first groom of the Chambers, promised to present her.
Vestris, as yet
still
in
full
vigor,
Marie Godedid not think his pupil sufficiently advanced. schal was ambitious, and she made her assumed name of Mariette famous
;
but her ambition was praiseworthy.
She
had a brother, a clerk in Derville the lawyer's office. Orphans and poor, but loving each other truly, the brother and. sister
had seen
life as it is in
Paris; he wished to
attorney so as to provide for his sister
;
become an
she determined in
cold blood to be a dancer, and to avail herself of her beauty her as well as of her nimble legs to buy a connection for brother.
Apart from their affections for each other, from and their life together, everything else was to
their interests
them, as to the ancient Romans and the Hebrews, barbarian, This beautiful aff"ection, which nothforeign, and inimical.
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. ing could ever change, explained Mariette's
knew her well. The brother and
sister lived at this
those
who
time on the eighth floor
Rue du Temple. Mariette had age of ten, and had now seen sixteen
of a house in
the Vieille
begun learning
at the
summers.
!
Alas
life to
49
for lack of a little dress her dainty beauty,
hidden under an Angola shawl, perched on iron pattens, dressed in cotton print, and only moderately neat, could never be suspected by any one but the Paris lounger in pursuit of grisettes and on the track of beauty under a cloud. Philippe in Philippe
fell
in love with Mariette.
was an
ofificer
What Mariette found
of the Dragoon Guards and of the
young man of seven-and-twenty, and the by the eviBoth Florentine dent superiority of Philippe to Giroudeau. and Giroudeau he to give his comrade pleasure, and she urged Mariette and to procure a protector for her friend Emperor's
staff,
a
delight of proving herself superior to Florentine
—
—
Philippe to a "water-color marriage." sion a la dctrenipe
is
The
Parisian expres-
equivalent to the words " morganatic
marriage" applied to kings and queens. Philippe, as they went out, explained to Giroudeau how poor he was.
" I will mention you to my nephew Finot," said Giroudeau. " Look here, Philippe, this is the day of black coats and fine words we must knock under. The inkstand is all powerful now. Ink takes the place of gunpowder, and words are used instead of shot. After all, these little vermin of editors are ;
very ingenious, and not bad fellows.
Come
to see
me
to-
by that time I will have spoken two morrow ; words about you to my nephew. Before long you will have something to do on some newspaper. Mariette, who will have you now because she has nothing else make no mistake on that point no engagement, no hope of coming out, and whom I told that, like me, you were going in for journalism Mariette will prove that she loves you for yourself, and you at
the office
—
—
4
—
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
50
Do as I do ; keep her from rising as long was so desperately in love that as soon as Florentine wanted to dance a pas seul, I begged Finot to write her up but says my nephew to me, She is clever, is
will believe her
as
you can.
!
I
'
;
she not
?
Well, the day she
first
dances a step of her
own
she
show you across the doorstep.' That's Finot all over. Oh, you'll find him a wide-awake chap." Next day, at about four o'clock, Philippe made his way to the Rue du Sentier, and up to a small room on the entresol, where he found Giroudeau shut up like a wild beast in a sort will
of hen-coop with a wicket
it
;
contained a
little
stove, a little
two little chairs, and some little billets for the fire. The whole apparatus was dignified by these magical words, Office for Subscribers, painted on the outside door in black letters, and the word Cashier in running hand on a board hung on the bars of the cage. Along the wall opposite the table,
old trooper's coop was a bench, on which an old soldier was
eating a snack
him
;
he had
Egyptian hue of
his face.
"Sweetly pretty!"
"What
have
business
said
Philippe,
you
here
Colonel Chabert's charge In
all
an arm, and Giroudeau addressed
lost
Coloquinte (Colocynth), by reason, no doubt, of the
as
the devils'
names
A
!
—
Eylau
at
looking about
you who rode
in
In the devil's
?
superior officer
him.
poor
name
!
" showing
the utmost astonisliment at his friend's novel position.
" Why, yes receipts in a
!
black silk skull-cap. ble editor of
A
superior officer signing
office," said
Giroudeau, settling his
Roo-ty too-too
newspaper that
!
"And what is more, I am the responsirhodomontade," and he pointed to tlie
paper.
"And
I,
who once went
to Egypt,
now go
to the
stamp
" You are
in the
office," said the pensioner.
" Silence, Coloquinte," presence of a brave
said Giroudeau.
man who
the battle of Montmirail
" !
carried the Emperor's orders at
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. " Pre-sent arms " cried Coloquinte. '' I arm there." "Coloquinte, mind the shop; lam going !
lost
61
my
missing
upstairs to
my
nephew." The two soldiers went up to the fifth floor, to an attic at the end of a passage, and found a young man with cold, The civilian did colorless eyes stretched on a shabby sofa. not disturb himself, though he offered cigars to his uncle and his uncle's friend. *'
My
voice,
dear fellow," said Giroudeau, in a
" here
is
the valiant major of
whom
I
meek and
gentle
spoke."
" said Finot, looking Philippe from head to while the officer lost all his spirit, like Giroudeau, in the
"What foot,
then
?
presence of the diplomat of the press.
"
"
My
dear boy," said Giroudeau, trying to play the uncle,
the colonel has just
"
Oh
come from Texas."
you were caught for Texas and the Cha}np d'Asile?
!
You were very young, too, to turn soldier-ploughman." The sting of this witticism can be appreciated only by those who can remember the flood of prints, screens, clocks, bronzes, and casts to which the idea of the soldier- ploughman
gave
rise, as
a great allegory of the fate of Napoleon and his
which at last found vent in various satirical songs. The idea was worth a million at least you may still see the veterans,
;
soldier-ploughman on wall-papers in the depths of the provinces.
young man had not been Giroudeau's nephew,
If this
Philippe would have smacked his cheeks.
"Yes, I was caught for it; and I lost twelve thousand and my time," replied he, trying to force a smile. "And you still love the Emperor? " " He is my God " replied Philippe Bridau. " You are a Liberal ? " " I shall always side with the Constitutional opposition.
francs
!
Oh, Foy
!
Manuel
!
Laffitte
!
There are men
for you.
They
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
\2
will rid us \)f
of these wretches
who have sneaked
"Well, then," Liberals,
my good
on your opinions
Remain
fellow. ;
of the national subscription, splendid position
a
is
started
take
the
a Liberal
if
you are
set
but threaten the Liberals with divulging
the madness of the Texas scheme.
This
"you must
Finot coldly,
said
of your misfortunes, for you are a victim to the
benefit
in
in at the heels
the foreigners."
You never
suppose?
I
got a farthing
Well, then, you are
ask for the accounts of the fund.
:
A fresh newspaper is now being by the Opposition under the auspices of the deputies what
of the Left
;
happen
will
you
be made cashier with a thousand crowns
will
a year, a place for
:
You have only
life.
have a berth.
I will
to find twenty thou-
get them, and in a
sand francs as security;
week you will making
advise them to silence you by
—
them offer you the place but cry out, and cry loud " Giroudeau allowed Philippe to go down a few steps before him, pouring out thanks as he went, and said to his nephew " Well, you're a pretty fellow, you are You let me hang on !
:
!
"
here with twelve hundred francs a year
"The
"
paper will not live a year," replied Finot.
something better
for
I
have
you."
" By heaven " said Philippe to Giroudeau, "that nephew I had never thought of taking the benefit of yours is no fool. !
of
my
position, as he puts it."
That evening,
Cafe Lemblin and the Cafe Minerve,
at the
Colonel Philippe broke out a
man
to
Texas,
ploughman, who
who left
in
abuse of the Liberals
gammon about men to starve in
talked
brave
who
sent
the soldier-
misery after
squeezing twenty thousand francs out of them, and driving
them
for
two years from
"I mean for the
tomers
pillar to post.
to ask for an
account of the
Champ d' Asile'' he at the
of the Left.
Caf6 Minerve,
said to
who
money
subscribed
one of the regular cus-
repeated
it
to the journalists
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISIIMIIXT. Philippe did not go to tell Mariette that he
home
Rue Mazarine
to the
ambitions should be ardently supported.
Descoings
sat
up
he went
in
terpsichorean
Agathe and Madame
an agony of terror, for the Dug
moment been
assassinated.
colonel walked in next day, a few minutes after break-
The fast.
him
for
;
was about to be employed on a paper
with ten thousand subscribers, in which her
de Berry had that
53
When
mother
his
expressed
her
absence, he flew into a passion, and asked
uneasiness
at
his
he were of age
if
or not.
" By heaven as
solemn
much
I
!
the better
you are
!
There
!
to be cashier in a
year, so
come in with good news, and you all look Well, so The Due de Berry is dead
as hearses.
is
newspaper
free
from
all
one
less
office,
of them
!
I
am
going
with a thousand crowns a
worry so
far as I
am concerned,"
exclaimed Philippe. "Is it possible ? " cried Agathe.
"Yes,
if
you can stand surety for twenty thousand francs. to deposit your securities for thirteen hundred
You have only francs a year, all
and you
will
draw your half-yearly dividends
for
two months past had been killing
the same."
The two widows, who
themselves with wondering what Philippe was doing, and
how
him employment, were so delighted at his prospects that they thought no more of the various difficulties of the In the evening old du Bruel, Claparon, who was a hour. dying man, and the inflexible Desroches senior the three They advised the widow Sages of Greece were unanimous. The paper having been started, to stand surety for her son. most fortunately, before the murder of the Due de Berry, escaped the blow struck at the press by M. Decaze. The widow to find
—
—
Bridau's state securities for thirteen hundred francs of divi-
dends were deposited as a pledge for Philippe, and he was This good son then promised to pay the appointed cashier. widows a hundred francs a month for his board and lodging,
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
54
and was regarded thought
"We
as the best of
Those who had
good boys.
of him congratulated Agathe.
ill
judged him wrongly," they
said.
Poor Joseph, not to be left in the lurch, tried to keep himself, and succeeded. At the end of three months, the colonel who ate and drank for four, who was very particular, and, under the pretext of his paying, led the two widows into expensive living had not contributed a farthing. Neither his mother noi
—
—
Madame
Descoings would remind him of his promise, out of
delicate feeling. pieces,
The
year went by, and not one of the crown*
which Leon Gozlan picturesquely
On
keeping.
this point, to
his scruples of conscience
"And,
calls a
had passed from Philippe's pocket
five claws,
after all,
easy, he has
Through
he
is
;
tiger with
to the houses
be sure, the colonel had silenced he rarely dined
happy," said
at
home.
his mother.
"He
i?
an appointment." the influence of the theatrical articles, written
by
Vernon, a friend of Bixiou's, of Finot's, and Giroudeau's, not indeed at the Panorama-dramatique, Mariette came out ;
but at the Porte Saint-Martin, where she was a success even by the side of Begrand. there was
just
Among
the directors of that theatre
then a wealthy and luxurious general, who,
being in love with an actress, had become an impresario for
actress,
in Paris men in love with some who make themselves theatrical This general knew Philippe and
There are always
her sake.
dancer, or singer,
managers
for love's sake.
Giroudeau.
By
the help of the two newspapers, Finot's
and
by the three officers, would seem, such pas-
Philippe's, Mariette's debut was arranged
with
all
the greater ease because, as
it
sions are always reciprocally helpful in matters of folly.
Bixiou, ever mischievous, had soon told his grandmother and pious Agathe that Philippe the cashier, the bravest of the brave, was the lover of Mariette, the famous dancer at the
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. Porte Saint-Martin.
on the two widows. sentiments
The
news
stale
In the
made her look on
first
the
like a thunder-clap
fell
Agathe's religious
place,
women
55
of the stage as brands
women
of hell, and then they both believed that such gold, drank
pearls,
and devoured the
came in their way. " Why " said Joseph !
to his mother,
ate
fortunes
finest
that
" do you suppose
Philippe would be such a fool as to give any
money
Such women only ruin rich men." " There is a talk already of securing Mariette
that
to Mari-
ette?
house," said Bixiou.
at the
Opera-
"But don't be alarmed, Madame Bridau; and
the corps diplomatique haunts the Porte Saint-Martin, that
handsome
there
girl will
soon throw over your son.
an ambassador who
is
is
They
say
desperately in love with Mari-
some other news. Old Claparon is dead, and and his son, who is a banker, and ; silver, has ordered a third-class funeral. rolling in gold and Such a thing could not happen breeding. fellow has no The " in China Philippe, with an eye to profit, proposed to marry the dancer but being on the eve of an engagement at the opera, There
ette. is
to
is
be buried to-morrow
!
;
Mademoiselle Godeschal
refused
him,
either
because she
guessed the colonel's motive or because she understood that
independence was necessary to her fortunes.
Throughout the remainder of this year Philippe came to mother twice a month at most. Where was he? At No light was his office, at the theatre, or with Mariette.
see his
shed on his proceedings
in the
home
in tlie
Rue Mazarine.
Giroudeau, Finot, Bixiou, Vernon, and Lousteau saw him of pleasure.
leading a
life
by
one of the
Tullia,
who took
first
Philippe was at every party given singers at the opera
Mariette's place at the
Florine and Matifat, Coralie and Camusot.
when he
left
by Florentine, by
From
;
four o'clock,
he amused himself till midnight for some play arranged the day before, a good
his office,
there was always
;
Porte Saint-Martin
;
—
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT,
66
dinner given by somebody, an evening
at cards, or
a supper-
Philippe lived in his element.
party.
But
this carnival,
which lasted
The
not devoid of cares.
for eighteen
months, was
Mariette on her debut at the
fair
opera, in January, 1S21, subjugated one of the most brilliaHt
dukes of Louis XVIII. 's court.
own
against the duke
gaming
;
the
table, as
Philippe tried to hold his
some luck at the month of April came round his passion but, notwithstanding
compelled him to borrow from the cash-box of the newspaper.
May
In the month of
he owed eleven thousand
the course of that fatal
make what
month Mariette went
to
francs.
In
London,
to
she might out of the milords, while the temporary
Opera-house was being built in the Rue the ill-starred
still
— such
le Pelletier.
Philippe
loved Mariette in spite of her flagrant
infi-
on her part, had never seen anything in him but a rough and brainless soldier, the first rung of the ladder, on which she did not mean to stay Also, as she had foreseen the day when Philippe would long. have no more money, the dancer had been clever enough to secure supporters among journalists, which made it unnecesdelities
things happen
;
she,
sary for her to cling to Philippe peculiar to
the
first
women
;
still,
she
to level the obstacles in
felt
the gratitude
man who had been
of her stamp to the
the dreadful career of an
actress.
Philippe,
thus obliged to
London without being
own Rue Mazarine
winter quarters, to use his his attic in the reflections as he
let
his
terrible
mistress
go to
able to follow her, returned to his
and came home to made many gloomy
expression, ;
there he
went to bed and got up again.
He
felt
it
impossible to live otherwise than as he had been living for this
year past.
The luxury of
Mariette's
life,
the dinners
and suppers, the evenings spent behind the scenes, the high spirits of wits and journalists, the turmoil he had lived in, and all the flattering effect on his senses and on his vanity this existence, which is to be found only in Paris, and which
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. offers
67
some new sensation every day, had become more than it was a necessity, like tobacco and drams.
a habit to Philippe
;
Indeed, he plainly perceived that he could not live without
enjoyment.
this constant
The
idea of suicide passed through his mind, not on ac-
count of the deficit which would be discovered in his balance, but by reason of the impossibility of being with Mariette
and living in the atmosphere of pleasures in which he had Full of these gloomy wallowed for the last twelvemonth.
made
notions, he
his appearance, for
the
first
time,
in
his
brother's studio, and found Joseph at work, in a blue blouse,
copying a picture
"So
that
is
the
for a dealer.
way
pictures are
made?"
said Philippe as
an opening.
"No,"
said
Joseph,
"but
that
way they
the
is
are
copied."
"
How much
"Oh, I
do you
get for that ?
Two hundred and
never enough.
study the master's method
There
secrets of the trade.
"
;
is
by
learn
I
one of
my
fifty
it,
I
francs; but
out the
find
pictures," he went
on, pointing with the handle of his brush to a sketch of which the paint was
still vvet.
"And how much
a year
do you pocket now?" continued
his brother.
"Unfortunately,
I
am
as
unknown excepting
yet
me
to the
hand ; he is to get me some work at the cliateau de Presles, where I am going in October to paint some arabesques and borders, and ornaments for the Comte de Serizy, wlio pays very well. With Schinner
painters.
pot-boilers,
hundred But is
to
I shall
liked, I
like
is
giving
a helping
this dealer's orders,
I
may make
two thousand francs before long,
all
eighteen
clear profit.
send that picture in to the next exhibition
am
"I am no
a
made man.
My
;
if it
friends think well of it."
judge," said Philippe in a quiet tone, which
made Joseph look up
at
him.
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
68
" What
is
the
matter?" he asked, seeing
his brother look
pale.
"
want to know how long
I
it
would take you
my
to paint
portrait." *'
Well,
good,
I
if I
worked
could do
at
nothing
in three or four
it
else,
and the
light
were
days."
" That is too long. I can only give you a day. My poor mother is so fond of me that I should wish to leave her my likeness. But say no more about it." " Why, are you going away again? " "Going, never
return,"
to
Philippe with
said
affected
cheerfulness.
Come,
*'
Piiilippe,
anything serious,
am I
I
my
am
dear fellow, what
a man, and
I
am
preparing for a hard struggle, and
you?
ails
If
it is
not a simpleton.
if
discretion
is
I
needed
can hold my tongue." " Can I rely upon it?"
" On my honor."
"You
will
never say a word to any living being? "
"Never." "Well, then, I am going to blow my brains out." " What, are you going to fight a duel ? " " I am going to kill myself."
"Why?" "
have taken eleven thousand francs out of the cash-box,
I
and
must give
I
money
will
reduced to nothing;
But
I
am
I
my
in
accounts to-morrow
be diminished by half;
my
;
my
deposit-
poor mother
will
be
hundred francs a year. That, after all, is might be able later to give her back a fortune. six
disgraced
;
I will
not live disgraced," Philippe re-
plied, dejectedly.
"You
will
not be disgraced
your place; you
will
if
you pay; but you
have nothing
left
francs pension attached to your cross. five
hundred francs."
will lose
but the five hundred Still,
you can
live
on
!
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
59
"Good-by," ciied Philippe, who hurried downstairs, and would not listen. Joseph left his work, and went down to join his mother at breakfast; but Philippe's confession had spoiled his appetite. He took Madame Descoings aside, and told her the dreadful The old woman gave a loud cry of dismay, dropped a news. pipkin full of milk that she had in her hand, and sank on to With one exclamation and anAgathe hurried in. a chair. other, the fatal facts were told to the mother.
" He? To
fail in
honesty
Bridau's son has taken "
!
that was intrusted to his keeping
The widow was trembling to
grow
limb
in every
larger in a fixed stare
;
money
!
her eyes seemed
;
she sat down, and burst into
tears.
"Where
is
he?"
"You
"Perhaps
she cried between her sobs.
"
he has thrown himself into the Seine
must not despair," said
cause the poor boy has
come
in the
!
Madame way of
made a fool of him. Dear me Until he came home Philippe had been
she
;
Descoings, "be-
a bad
that
woman, and
often
happens
so constantly unlucky,
he had so few chances of being happy and loved, that we need not wonder
at his
All passions
passion for this creature.
I have had something of the kind in my life lead to excess. blame myself, and yet I think myself an honest which I for
woman.
One
fault
only those
all,
does not constitute a vice
who do nothing
at
all
!
Besides, after
never make
any
mistakes."
Agathe was so overwhelmed by despair that the old lady and Joseph were obliged to make light of Philippe's crime by telling her that such things occur in every family.
"But he
is
longer a child
woman "
"he
is
no
" a cry of anguish betraying what the poor
thought of her son's conduct.
I assure
grief
eight-and-twenty." cried Agathe, !
you, mother, that he thinks of nothing but your
and the wrong he has done,"
said Joseph.
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
60
"Oh, and
great
I will
God!
forgive
him
Bring him back. Only let him live, " cried the poor mother, who in
all
!
fancy beheld a horrible picture of Philippe dragged dead out of the river.
For some minutes awful silence reigned. spent in dreadful suspense.
window
at the least noise,
The day was
All three flew to the sitting-room
and gave themselves up
to endless
conjectures.
While
his family
were
Philippe was calmly
in this despair,
setting everything in order in his office.
dence to hand
He
had the impu-
in his accounts, saying that, for fear of mis-
chance, he had kept eleven thousand francs at his lodgings.
The
rascal left at four o'clock, taking five hundred francs more from the cash-box, and coolly went up to the gambling tables, where he had not been seen since his appointment, for he had at least understood that a cashier must not frequent a gambling hell. His subsequent conduct will show that he resembles his grandfather Rouget rather than his admirable father. He might perhaps have made a good general but in private life he was one of those deep-dyed scoundrels who slielter their audacity and their evil deeds behind the screen of strict legality, and under the reticence of the family roof. Philippe was perfectly calm during this critical venture. At first he won, and picked up as much as six thousand francs but he let himself be dazzled by the hope of ending his anxieties at one stroke. He left the game of trente-etquarante on hearing that at the roulette table there had been a run of sixteen on the black he staked five thousand francs on the red, and black turned up again for the seveuteenth ;
;
;
time.
The
colonel
francs on the black,
then
staked
and won.
his
remaining
Notwithstanding
thousand
this astonish-
ing intuition of the chances, his head was not clear
;
he
felt
and yet he would go on but the spirit of divination which guides players, enlightening them by flashes, was the gamester's already exhausted. It was now intermittent this,
\
—
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. ruin.
61
Intuition, like the rays of the sun, acts only in an in-
flexibly straight line;
never diverting
it
can guess right only on condition of
gaze
its
Philippe lost everything.
the
;
freaks of chance
disturb
it.
After so severe an ordeal the most
reckless spirit or the boldest
must collapse.
As he went home Philippe thought the less of his promise He to kill himself, because he had never really meant it. had forgotten his lost appointment, his impaired depositmoney, his mother, and Mariette the cause of his ruin ; he
—
When
walked on mechanically. bathed in
arms round to a seat
Madame
tears,
his neck,
by the
"Good!"
he went
in,
his
mother,
Descoings, and Joseph threw their
hugged him, and led him with rejoicing
fire.
thought he; "the announcement has had
its
effect."
The wretch put on an appropriately dolorous face, with all more ease because his evening's play had considerably
the
On
upset him.
seeing her atrocious Benjamin pale and de-
mother knelt down by him, kissing his hands, pressing them to her heart, and looking long in his face with jected, his
her eyes
of
full
tears.
"Philippe," she said in a choked voice, "promise not to kill yourself;
we
will forget everything."
Philippe looked at his unnerved brother, at
Madame
coings with a tear in her eye, and he said to himself, "
"
Then he
are
good
on
his knee, clasped
souls
kissed her,
Madame
!
"You
lifted
up
mother, seated her
his
her to his heart, and whispered as he
have given
me new
Descoings contrived
to
life
" !
produce a very good
dinner, adding a couple of bottles of old wine and a
West India
liqueur,
Des-
They
a treasure remaining from her
little
former
stock-in-trade.
" Agathe, we must let him smoke his cigars," And she handed Philippe some cigars. The two poor souls believed that by giving
said she at
desert.
this
fellovy
A BACHELUR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
62
home and stay and they tried to accustom themselves to tobacco smoke, which they abominated. This immense sacrifice was every comfort he would learn to love his there,
not even suspected by Philippe.
Next day Agathe had aged by ten years. Her alarms once followed, and the poor woman had not She was now closed an eye throughout that dreadful night. relieved, reflection
Madame
reduced to an income of six hundred francs.
women who
Des-
good eating, had an obstinate catarrh and cough, and was growing heavy her step on the stairs sounded like a pavior's hammer; she might die at a moment's notice, and four thousand francs would coings, like
fat
all
love
;
perish with her.
source of supply?
come of her?
Was it not What was
preposterous to count on that to be
done?
What would
be-
Agathe, resolved to be a sick-nurse rather
than to be a burthen on her children, was not thinking of
But what would Philippe do, reduced to his five hundred francs of pension attached to the cross of the Legion
herself.
of
Honor? By contributing
a
Madame
eleven years,
her debt, and she was
thousand crowns a year for the
still
sacrificing her grandson's interests
to those of the Bridau family.
Agathe, though
and honest sentiments were outraged, dire disaster
still
It is
my
in
all
her
strict
the midst of this
could ask herself as she thought of her son,
" Poor boy, could he help soldier.
last
Descoings had more than twice repaid
fault for
it
?
He
is
faithful to his
not getting him married.
oath as a If I
had
found him a wife, he would not have formed a connection " with this dancer. a strong nature
He
The
has such
!
old tradeswoman, too, had reflected during the night
as to the
means of saving the honor of the
family.
At day-
break she got out of bed and crept to her friend's room.
"It
is
not your part, nor Philippe's, to manage this deli-
cate matter," said she.
" Though our two old
friends, Clap-
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. aron and du Bruel, are dead, we Desroches, this
who
morning.
still
63
have old Monsieur
has good judgment, and
I
will
go to him
Desroches must report that Philippe has been
and that his weakhim for the post of cashier. What has happened once may happen again Philippe prefers the victim of his confidence in a friend,
ness in such cases quite unfits
:
to retire, thus he will not be dismissed."
Agathe, seeing in
this
official
lie
a cloak for
Philippe's
honor, at any rate in the eyes of strangers, embraced the old
who went
lady,
had
out to settle the dreadful business.
Philippe
slept the sleep of the just.
" She
is
a sharp one
explained to her son
!
" said he with a smile, when Agathe
why
breakfast was late.
Old Desroches, the last friend left to these two poor women, in spite of his hard nature, that it was still remembered, Bridau who had given him his place, and he executed the delicate task proposed plislied
diplomat.
to
him with the
He came
skill
of an accom-
to dine with the family,
and
to
remind Agathe that she must go on the morrow to the Treasury in the Rue Vivienne to sign the transfer of the securities to be sold, and take out the coupons for six hundred francs, her remaining dividends. hapless household
till
The
a petition to the minister of
active
service.
old
man
did not leave this
he had obtained Philippe's signature to
war begging to be reinstated in word to the two
Desroches pledged his
women
that he would forward the petition through the departments of the war office, and take advantage of the Duke's triumph over Philippe with the dancer to secure that great
man's interest, " Within three months he
will
be lieutenant-colonel in the
Due de Maufrigneuse's regiment, and you will be rid of him," Desroches went home loaded with blessings by the two women and Joseph. As to the newspaper, as Finot had prophesied, two months later
it
had ceased to appear.
Thus, to the world, Philippe's
64
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
defalcation
had
no
But Agathe's motherly feeling
results.
Her
had been deeply wounded.
belief
in
her son
once
shaken, she lived in perpetual terrors, mitigated by satisfaction
when
she
found that her
sinister
anticipations
were
unfounded.
When men
like Philippe, gifted
with personal courage, but
moral cowards and sneaks, see the course of them following its usual channel after a plunge moral status has almost perished, ation
by
their family or friends
are sure of impunity
;
their
this
is
around which their
affairs
in
acceptance of the
an encouragement.
perverted mind,
situ-
They
their gratified
them to consider how they succeeded in evading the social law, and they become atrociously clever. Thus, a fortnight after, Philippe, once more an idle man and a passions, lead
lounger, inevitably returned to the
by drams,
life
of cafes, to his sittings
games of billiards with punch, his nightly visit to the gaming-tables, where he risked a small stake at a lucky moment, and pocketed such little winnings as He made a display of sufficed to pay for his dissipations. economy to deceive his mother and her friend, wore an almost filthy hat, hairless at the edges of the crown and brim, patched boots, a threadbare greatcoat, on which the red rosette scarcely showed, so darkened was it by long wear and soiled His greenish buckskin with splashes of spirits or of coffee. gloves lasted a long time, and he never cast off his satin stock relieved
till it
his long
looked like tow.
Mariette was this man's only love, and the dancer's faith-
much to harden his heart. Now and then he won more than he expected, or, if he were supping with his friend Giroudeau, Philippe would court a Venus of the street, out lessness did
of a sort of brutal scorn for
all
her sex.
and dined
night at about one.
Three months of
stored Agathe to
As
fo" Joseph,
some
little
who was
at
at
Still
he kept regu-
home, and came
lar hours, breakfasted
this
in every
wretched
life
re-
confidence.
work on the splendid picture
to
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. which he owed
his reputation,
of her grandson,
who
65
On
he lived in his studio.
firmly believed in Joseph's
the
word umph, Madame Descoings lavished maternal care on the painter; she carried up his breakfast in the morning, ran his The artist never appeared till errands, blacked his boots. tri-
dinner-time, and gave his evenings to his friends of the ArtHe also read a great deal ; he was giving himists' Society. self the
thorough and serious education which a man gets only man of talent does, in fact,
from himself, and which every
give himself between the ages of twenty and thirty.
Agathe,
no uneasiness about
little of Joseph, and him, lived in Philippe only, since he alone gave her those alternations of rising fears and terrors allayed which are to a
feeling
seeing so
certain extent the very
motherhood
as love
life
of feeling, and as necessary to
is.
Desrochep, who came about once a week to call on the widow of his old friend and chief, could give her hopes; the Due de Maufrigneuse had applied for Philippe to be appointed to his regiment, the
name
the in
war minister had asked
for a report
and
;
any criminal
trial, in
the early part of the year Philippe
and orders to join. To succeed in matter, Desroches had stirred up all his acquaintances would get
as
of Bridau was not to be found on any police-list or
his papers
;
this
his
inquiries at the head-office of the police led to his hearing that Philippe was to be seen every night in the gaming-houses; and he thought it wise to communicate the secret to Madame Descoings, but to her alone, begging her to keep an eye on the future lieutenant-colonel, to whom any scandal might be
moment
the war minister
would not be
likely to
ask whether Philippe were a gambler.
And once
enrolled
ruin
;
for the
under the regimental that
was the
Agathe,
result of
flag,
the officer would give
want of occupation.
who now had no company
prayers by the
fire,
up a passion
while
Madame
in the evening, read
by the cards, interpreting her dreams, and applying the 5
her
Descoings read her fortune rules of
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMLXT.
66
The
the Cabala to her stakes.
woman
light-hearted
and obstinate old
never missed a drawing of lottery tickets
;
she
still
staked on the same three numbers which had never yet been
This set of numbers was now nearly twenty-one years would soon be of age. Its holder based high hopes on One of the numbers had never come out at trivial fact.
drawn. old
—
this
it
any drawing of either of the wheels ever since the lottery was founded, so she staked heavily on this number, and on every combination of the three
The bottom
figures.
mattress of
her bed was the hiding-place for the poor old creature's savings
;
she unsewed
on her
it,
pushed
necessities, neatly
She was resolved,
again.
had saved and sewed it up
in the gold-piece she
wrapped
in wool,
the last Paris drawing, to risk
at
her savings on the combinations of her cherished three
all
numbers. This passion, universally condemned, has never been duly
No one
studied.
Did not the rise to
has
lottery, the
magical hopes?
understood
most puissant
The
this
opium
to
poverty.
fairy in the world, give
turn at roulette, which gives the
player a vision of limitless gold and enjoyments, only lasted as long as a lightning flash
of
life
to
these days,
;
while the lottery gave five days
that glorious gleam.
make you happy
What
power can, in and bestow on you
social
for five da)'s,
—
in fancy all the delights of civilized life for forty sous? Tobacco, a mania a thousand times more mischievous than gambling, destroys the body, undermines the intellect, stupefies
the nation
The
;
the lottery caused
no misfortunes of
that
was compelled to moderation by the interval between the drawings, and by the particular wlieel
kind.
passion
the ticket-holder might affect.
Madame
staked on any but the Paris wheel. the three numbers
twenty years, she tions to enable
the year.
Descoings never
In the hope of seeing
drawn which she had kept
liad
in
hand
for
subjected herself to the greatest priva-
her to stake freely on the
last
drawing of
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
When
she had cabalistic dreams
—
tell
them
to
her dreams did
for all
not bear on the numbers of the lottery
67
—she would go and
Joseph; he was the only being who would
listen
to her, not merely without scolding her, but saying the kindly
words by which artists can soothe a monomania. All really minds respect and sympathize with genuine passions;
great
they understand
bacco and
his
spirits,
mother
his
tickets,
them,
finding their root
As Joseph saw
the brain.
lawsuits, old
old
things,
Maman
in the
heart
or
brother loved to-
Descoings loved lottery
God, young
loved
Desroches loved
loves something.
his
fly-fishing
What he loved was
;
Desroches
loved
every one, said he,
beauty in
ideal
all
things; he loved Byron's poetry, Gericault's painting, Rossini's
music, Walter Scott's romances.
"Every man
to his taste,
your three-pounder hangs
fire
maman," he would a very long while,
say, ''but it
seems to
me.
"
It will
not miss.
Bixiou as well
"Give do
it all
You
to your
be a rich man, and
grandson," cried Joseph.
as you please." " Oh, if it comes out,
To
shall
my
little
" !
I
shall
"After
all,
have enough for everybody.
begin with, you shall have a fine studio
;
you
shall not
have to give up going to the opera in order to pay your
models and colorman.
"
that
Do you know, child," she went on, me a very creditable part in that
you have not given "
picture of yours
?
Joseph, from motives of economy, had used
Madame
Des-
coings as the model for a head in his splendid painting of a
young courtesan introduced by an old woman to a Venetian This work, a masterpiece of modern art, mistaken for a Titian by Gros himself, prepared the younger painters to recognize and proclaim Joseph's superiority in the Salon
senator.
of 1823.
"Those who know
you,
know
well what you are," said
;
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
68
he gaily, " and
why
should you care about those
who do not
know you ? " In the
woman's
ten years the old
last
face
had acquired
Her wrinkles had
the mellow tone of an Easter pippin.
be-
had grown cold and pulpy. full of sparkle still, seemed animated by a youthful and eager thought, which might the more easily be regarded as one of greed, because there is always some little greed in Her plump features betrayed deep dissimulation a gambler.
come set Her eyes,
and
a
the
in
full
that
flesh
dominant idea buried
passion
far
required secretiveness.
gave a hint of gluttony.
worthy and kind-hearted
down in her heart. Her The movement of her lips
Thus, though she was in
woman we
She was a perfect model
be mistaken in her.
woman Joseph wished
fact
the
have seen, the eye might for the old
to represent.
young actress of exquisite beauty, who died in bloom of her youth, the mistress of a friend of Bridau's, Lucien de Rubempre, a young poet, had given him the idea of this subject. This fine work was sometimes called an Coralie, a
the
imitation, but
it
was a splendid scene
as a setting for three
Michel Chrestien, a youthful member of the ArtSociety, had lent his republican countenance as a model
portraits. ists'
for the senator,
as
and Joseph gave
it
some touches of maturity,
he slightly exaggerated the expression of
Madame
Des-
coings' face.
This great picture, which was to become so famous, and to give rise to so
much
animosity, jealousy, and admiration, was
work on it was busy copying pictures by the old masters, thus studying all their methods no painter handles his brush more learnedly. His good sense only begun
and
as
an
;
Joseph, compelled
to execute
artist
commissions
had counseled him
in Plnilippc
to conceal
from
Madame
Des-
mother the amount of money he was make, seeing that each had a road to ruin one
coings and from
beginning to
to suspend his
for a living,
liis
and the other
—
in
the lottery.
The
peculiar cool-
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHME XT. ness
shown by the
69
way
soldier in his downfall, the
— the
Joseph had seen through never
he ought
career
mistakes he had
have abandoned
to
smallest details of his conduct
— had
at
—
— which
made in
which
in
he had counted on his pretended purpose of suicide
in
the
short,
the
opened Joseph's
last
eyes.
Such insight
womanly
their thoughts
;
Occupied day work which leaves they grow in some way
rarely lacking in painters.
is
day in the silence of the the mind, to a certain extent, after
studio, in free,
wander round the small
and detect their covert meaning. Joseph had bought a fine old cabinet
facts
of
life,
fashion
— to
— they were
played on the panels in piece of
yet the
decorate a corner of his studio, where the light
relief, and gave some sixteenth-century craftsman.
a secret drawer, where he hoarded a small
With the easy
lustre to a master-
Inside
sum
trustfulness of an artist, he
keep the cash he allowed himself
for
he found
it
in case
of need.
was accustomed
porket-money
that lay on one of the divisions of this cabinet
;
to
in a skull
but, since his
brother's return, he found a constant discrepancy between the
sums he spent and the balance
would seem!" penses
;
money
fifty francs,
vain five
did
francs a
finding noth-
the
time
first
has gone traveling post,
The next time he
but in
"Sixteen and
"My
On
rapidity.
ing wlien he had spent but forty or
he said to himself,
The hundred
left.
month melted with extraordinary
carefully noted
his
it
ex-
he count, like Robert Macaire,
make twenty-three,"
it
would not come
right.
On
finding
it
a third time
mentioned the painful subject loved him, as he
felt,
still
more
to his
seriously wrong, he
Maman
Descoings,
who
with that maternal affection, tender,
and enthusiastic, which his mother did however kind she might be, and which is as needful
trusting, credulous,
not
feel,
to an artist at the
her chicks
till
opening of
they are fledged.
his career as a hen's care
To
is
to
her only could he confide
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLTSHMENT.
70
He
horrible suspicions.
his
Madame
himself;
was
and the poor soul wrung her thought as he said, " Only Philippe could com-
thing to risk in the lottery
hands
as sure of his friends as of
Descoings would certainly never take any-
at the
;
mit this petty household theft."
"
Why
me
does he not ask
for
what he wants? " exclaimed
Joseph, mixing the paints on his palette in utter confusion of
without
colors,
" But
I
?
robbing an infant
it is
" Should
heeding what he was doing. "
him money
refuse to give
?
" cried the old woman,
with,
horror expressed in her face.
" No," replied Joseph, " he can have
my
purse
is
his
;
but he ought to ask
" Place a fixed sum of money there touch
said
it,"
Madame
it
;
he
is
my brother;
me." this
morning and don't
"I
Descoings;
know wha
shall
comes to the studio, and if nobody comes in but Philippe you will know for certain." Thus, by next day, Joseph had proof of the forced loans levied on him by his brother. Philippe came up to the studio in his brother's absence and took the little cash he
The
needed.
" Wait a rascal
" said he
!
" Quite
hoard.
artist feared for his little
bit,
right;
wait a bit, to
Madame
we ought
deficit occasionally
will catch
I
out,
my
fine
to punish him, for I have found a
my own
in
you
Descoings with a laugh. purse.
But, poor boy, he
he has made a habit of it." boy! and poor boy indeed " retorted the
artist.
"I am
beginning to agree with Fulgence and Bixiou.
Phil-
ippe
always dragging
must have
"Poor
riot,
is
his
and has
tobacco
;
!
at
to be sent to
twelve thousand
francs
;
to get
he gets mixed up
America, and that costs
my
in a
mother
then he has not the wit to find any-
thing in the wilds of the
much
First
us.
New World, and
him home again
;
it
costs just as
under the pretext of having
repeated two words from Napoleon to a general, he believes
himself a great soldier, and bound to sulk with the Bourbons;
A BACHF.LOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. meanwliile he can
world
I
!
am
of his woes
;
and amuse himself, and see the
travel,
not to be caught with such bird-lime as the story
he does not look
my
fine fellow has
man who
like a
himself comfortable wherever he was
" Then
71
made
has not
!
a capital place found for him;
he lives like Sardanapalus with an opera girl, robs the till of a newspaper, and costs his mother another twelve thousand Certainly, so far as I
francs.
treats
Dragoon Guards
the
am
concerned, what need
And
!
it
will
be
my
part, perhaps, to
maintain that poor dear mother in her old age, while, goes on as he has begun, the retired officer will end
know
I
But Philippe will bring the poor mother to want. He me like the dirt under his feet because I never was in
care ?
if
he
don't
I
where.
"Bixiou
me, 'Your brother
to
said
Well, your grandson trick yet that will
is
right
;
is
nice rogue!'
a
Philippe will play some reckless
compromise the honor of the family, and
then there will be ten or twelve thousand francs more to pay
He
gambles every evening
lord
lie
;
when he comes
drops pricked cards on the
he can to get Philippe
part, I
believe he
reinstated in the
would be
drunk
in despair at
!
as a
on which he has
Old Desroches
noted the turns of red and black. all
stairs,
in as
army
;
is
doing
but, for
my
having to serve again.
Could you have believed that a boy with such beautiful clear blue eyes, and a look like the Chevalier Bayard, would ever
have turned out such a scoundrel
Notwithstanding Philippe staked his
the
have
"
and
caution
money every
cleaned out, as players say. ible craving to
?
coolness
with which
evening, he was occasionally
Then, prompted by an
irresist-
his stake for the evening, ten francs,
he
helped himself in the house to his brother's money, to any Madame Descoings might leave about, or to his mother's.
Once already a
the poor
terrible vision
:
widow had
Philippe had
seen through her
come
into
first
sleep
her room and
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
72
all the money in it. She had pretended to be asleep, but she had spent the rest of that " One fault does not connight in tears. She saw the truth.
emptied the pocket of her dress of
Madame
stitute a vice,"
stant lapses
Descoings had said; but after con-
Agathe could no
the vice was plainly visible.
longer doubt
her best-beloved son had neither feeling nor
;
honor.
The day him
in
him
into her
room and besought
suppliant tones to ask her for the
But
need.
went out
after this dreadful vision, before Philippe
after breakfast, she called
demands became
his
money he should
so frequent that now, for
above a fortnight, Agathe' s savings had been exhausted.
She
For several had not a sou left she thought of seeking work. evenings she had discussed with Madame Descoings the means of making money by her needle; indeed, the poor mother ;
had already asked
at a
shop
— Le Pere de Famille —
for fancy-
in,
an employment by which she might earn about
a franc a day.
In spite of her niece's absolute secrecy, the
work old to
to
fill
woman had
easily guessed the reasons for this eagerness
make money by such feminine
in Agathe's appearance
was
arts.
Indeed, the change
sufficiently eloquent
;
her fresh
complexion was faded, the skin was drawn over the temples and cheek-bones, her forehead was seamed, her eyes lost their lustre, some inward fire was evidently consuming her, and she spent the night in tears.
But what most deeply ravaged her was the necessity
for
and her apprehensions. she lisPhilippe had come in
silence as to her pain, her anxieties,
She never went
to sleep
till
tened for him in the street
;
;
she had studied the differences in
his voice, in his step, in the very tone of his cane rattling
on
She knew everything, exactly the degree of intoxication that he had reached, quaking as she heard him One night she had picked up some stumble on the stairs. the paving-stones.
gold-i)ieces
on the spot where he had let himself fall. When his voice was husky and his stick
he had drunk and won,
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. dragged
;
and
crisp,
when he had
but
73
there was something short,
lost,
would sing a tune in a and carry his cane shouldered like a musket. At if he had been winning, his expression was cheerful furious in his footstep; he
clear voice, breakfast,
he jested coarsely, still he jested, and almost affectionate with Madame Descomgs, with Joseph, and his mother ; if he had lost, on the contrary, he was morose, his speech was curt ;
and his gloom quite alarming. This life of debauchery and the habit of drink left their mark day by day on the countenance that had once been so
and sharp,
his gaze hard,
The
handsome.
grew
were purple,
his face
veins in
his features
and looked dry. And person, carried with him the
thick, his eyes lost their lashes
then Philippe, careless of his
miasma of smoke and spirits, and a smell of muddy boots, which to a stranger would have seemed the last stamp of squalor.
"And who
Madame
to
is
pay
for
poor mother has not a sou It
;
them?" I
have
"A
debt of honor.
;
hundred francs a
buy me an "
My
year.
and
outfit,
I
come
said Joseph.
from Florentine to lend be confessed
"
said he bitterly.
five
to
for three years to
it
"What for?"
from
suit of clothes
Descoings to Philippe one day
would cost a year's pension
have pledged
new
to have a complete
You ought
**
head to foot," said early in December.
but
Giroudeau borrowed to
me.
I
am
a
thousand francs
not well gotten up,
when you remember
that
it
Napoleon
must is
at
buy food, the soldiers that remain faithful to him may very well walk in boot-tops," said he, showing his boots without heels, and he walked off. "He is not a bad fellow," said Agathe "he has good St.
Helena, and
sells his plate to
;
feelings."
"
He may
said Joseph,
clothes, he
Emperor and still keep himself clean," "If he took some care of himself and his
love the
would look
less like
a tramp."
:
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
74
"Joseph, you ought to be indulgent to your brother," said "You can do just what you like, while he certainly
Agathe. is
out of his place."
"And why does
did he leave it?"
"What
asked Joseph.
matter whether the flag shows Louis XVIII. 's bugs or
it
Napoleon's cockyoly bird
France
France
is
ought to
fight, if
he
had stayed quietly
if
the bunting
would paint
I
!
flies
a soldier, for love of the
is
in the
army, by
France?
for
A
for the devil.
this
soldier
art.
If
he
time he would be a
general."
"You
unjust,"
are
"Your
Agathe.
said
father,
who
adored the Emperor, would have approved of what he did. However, he agrees to rejoin the army. God alone knows
what
it
costs your
brother to commit what he considers an
act of treason."
Joseph rose to go up to his studio
but Agathe took his
;
hand, saying **
Be good
When
to your brother
;
he
is
so unfortunate."
the artist entered his studio, followed
who begged him remarking how much she was Descoings,
to spare his
altered,
by Madame
mother's feelings,
and what acute mental
suffering this alteration betrayed, they found Philippe there,
to their great surprise.
boy," said he in an airy way, " I am desperBy the piper I owe thirty francs ately in want of money. for cigars at the tobacconist's, and I dare not pass the cursed " Joseph,
my
!
store without paying.
I
have promised to pay
at least
ten
times."
"All out of
right
tlie
" Oh,
I
!
I like this
way
best," said Joseph.
"Take
it
death's head."
took
"There were
all
that last night after dinner."
forty-five francs
"
made it," replied Philippe. " I found them there. Was that wrong? " he asked. " No, my dear fellow, no," said the artist. "If you were " That
is
just
what
I
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. rich, I should
should ask
"It
is
if it
75
do as you do; only, before helping myself, were convenient to you."
I
very humiliating to have to ask," replied Philippe.
would sooner you should take it as I do, and say nothing. In the army, when a comrade It shows more confidence. dies, if he has a good pair of boots and you have a bad pair, *'
I
you exchange with him." " Yes, but you don't take them while he is alive " "A mere quibble " retorted Philippe with a shrug. !
"So
!
you have no money?"
" No,"
said Joseph, determined not to
" In a few days we
shall all
" Oh yes You really come out on the 25th !
will
A
his hoard.
believe that your three numbers at the Paris
drawing
You must
!
you mean to make us all rich." natural ternion for two hundred francs will bring out
put in a large stake
"
show
be rich," said the old woman.
if
three millions, to say nothing of the doublets
and the single
drawings."
"At fifteen thousand times the stake hundred francs ? " cried Philippe. The
old
woman
bit
her lip
;
—
yes,
it is
exactly two
she had dropped an imprudent
hint.
In
fact, as
"Where tery tickets
he went downstairs, Philippe was asking himself:
has that old witch hidden the ?
It
is
such good use of
it
!
On
four stakes of
might make two hundred thousand
more tery!
money
sheer waste of money, and
certain than the drawing
fifty
francs.
I
for her lot-
could
make
francs each I
And
is
far
of three numbers in a
lot-
it
"
He wondered
where
Madame
Descoings would be likely to
hide her hoard.
On
Agathe always and stayed there a long time, at confession no doubt, and in preparing for communion. It was now Christmas Eve. Madame Descoings would certainly go out to buy went
the eve of the great church festivals,
to church
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
76
some
extra treat for supper, but perhaps she
days, on
wheels,
the
The
24th.
month
The the
;
lottery
would pay
for her
was drawn every
turn, of Bordeaux, Lyons,
in
Strasbourg, and Paris.
25th of each
The
same time.
ticket at the
five
Lille,
Paris drawing took place on the
lists
were closed
soldier studied the case,
at midnight on the and zealously set himself
to watch.
At about noon Philippe came in. Madame Descoings had gone out, but she had taken the door-key. This was no difficulty. Philippe, saying that he had forgotten something, begged the woman at the lodge to go to fetch a locksmith,
who
lived close
by
in
the door.
Philippe's
unmade
felt
and
it,
in the
Rue Guenegaud, and who opened
the first
idea was to search the bed
;
he
examining the frame,
the mattresses before
bottom mattress he felt the gold-pieces wrapped in had soon unsewn the ticking and picked out
He
paper.
twenty napoleons
;
then, without wasting time in sewing
it
up again, he remade the bed neatly enough to prevent the old woman's observing anything wrong. The gambler made off on a light foot, intending to play three times, at intervals of three hours,
The
only each time.
and
for ten
minutes
great gamblers, ever since 1786,
the gambling-houses were
first
when
opened, the formidable gam-
who were the terror of the bank, and who fairly ate money at the tables, to use the familiar expression in such
blers
places, never played this experience
those
who farmed
from the
by any other
they
lost
rule.
fortunes.
the concern
and
all
But before achieving
All
the
philosophy of
their profit
was derived
from the non-liability of the bank from ties called draws, of which half the winnings remained in its possession and from the villainous fraud authorized by the state, which made it optional to take or reject the players' stakes. rules
;
;
;
In a word, the bank, while refusing to play with a rich and cool hand, devoured the whole fortune of any player who was so persistently foolish as to allow himself to be intoxicated
by
PHILIPPE'S FIRST IDEA
WAS
TO
SEARCH THE BED.
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. the rapid whirl of
its
machinery, for the dealers
quarante worked almost as
fast as
77
at
trente-et-
the roulette could.
Philippe had at last succeeded in acquiring that presence of mind which enables a commander-in-chief to keep a keen eye and a calm brain in the midst of the whirligig of things.
He
had achieved those high
gambling which,
politics of
it
be said incidentally, enabled a thousand men in Paris to look night after night into a gulf without turning giddy. With these four hundred francs Philippe was determined to
may
make
He
his fortune in the course of the day.
hid two hun-
dred francs in his boots, and kept two hundred in his pocket. By three o'clock he was at the gambling-house, where the Palais-Royal theatre
Half an hour
He
having won seven thousand francs. tine,
On
his
commonly
he came out,
went to see Floren-
five
way back, he went through
his friend
later
hundred francs that he owed her, and supper after the play at the Rocher de Cancale.
paid her
invited her to
the bankers
now stands, where
held the largest reserve.
the
Giroudeau of the projected
Rue du
Sentier to
tell
festivity.
At six o'clock Philippe had won twenty-five thousand francs, and at the end of ten minutes kept his word to himself and went away. In the evening, at ten, he had won seventy-five After the supper, which was splendid, thousand francs. Philippe, drunk
and confident, returned to the tables at about Then, against the rule he had made, he played The bank, from whom for an hour and doubled his winnings. his mode of play had wrung a hundred and fifty thousand francs, watched him with curiosity. "Will he go away or will he stay?" the men asked each " If he stays, he is done for." other by a glance. midnight.
Philippe believed that luck was with him, and stayed. three in the
morning the hundred and
had returned
to the cash-box.
The
colonel,
who had drunk
a
fifty
At
thousand francs
good deal of grog while
playing, went out in a state of intoxication, which the nip-
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
78
ping cold aggravated to the utmost
;
but a waiter followed
him, picked him up, and earned him to one of the horrible
may be read, "Beds by the night." The waiter paid for the ruined gambler, who was laid on a bed in his clothes, and remained there The managers of the gambling-houses till Christmas night. places where, inscribed on a lamp, the notice
treated regular customers
Philippe did not wake furred, his face swelled,
and high players with till
respect.
seven that evening, his mouth
and racked with nervous
fever.
His
strong constitution enabled him to get on foot to his mother's
home, whither he had unwittingly brought sorrow, despair, and death.
ruin,
The day before, when dinner was ready, Madame Descoings and Agathe waited two hours for Philippe. They did not sit down till seven o'clock. Agathe almost always went to her room
at
went
to lie
ten; but as she wished to attend midnight mass, she
down
directly after dinner.
Joseph remained together in the
little
purposes, and she begged
The
old aunt and
sitting-room which
him
now
work out ilie sum of her much-talked-of stake, her monster stake on the famous ternion. She meant to, go for the double numbers and first drawings, so as to combine all the chances. After smacking her lips over the poetry of this masterstroke, and pouring out both cornucopias at the feet of her adopted favorite ; after telling him all her dreams, proving that she could not fail to win. wondering only how she should endure such good fortune, or wait for it from midnight till ten next morning, Joseph, who did not see where the four hundred francs were to come The old woman smiled and led from, mentioned the matter. him into the old drawing-room, now her bedroom. '' You will see " said she. served
all
to
!
Madame
Descoings hastily stripped her bed, and went for
her scissors to unstitch the mattress
looked
at
the ticking, and found
;
it
she put on
unsewn.
lier
On
spectacles,
hearing the
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. old
woman
79
heave a sigh that came from the depths of her
bosom, and seemed choked by the blood rushing to her heart, Joseph instinctively held out his arms to the poor old lottery gambler, and laid her senseless on a chair, calling his mother to
Agathe sprang up, put on her dressing-gown, and
come.
hurried in
;
by the
common remedy
light of a tallow candle she applied every
fainting
for a
aunt's temples, cold
water on
fit
— eau
de cologne on her
her forehead, burnt feathers
under her nose at last he saw her revive. " They were there this morning he has taken them ;
;
wretch
"What?" '*
I
years.
— that
" !
asked Joseph.
had twenty
my
louis in
mattress,
my
savings for two
"
Only Philippe can have taken them
"But when?" not been
cried the mother, quite crushed;
"he
has
in since breakfast."
" I should be glad to be mistaken," said the old woman. " But this morning, in Joseph's studio, when I spoke of my I was wrong not to go stake in the lottery I had a warning.
down and
take out
lottery at once.
me.
Good God
"But," it is
I !
my
little
meant
And
said Joseph,
lucky-penny and put
do it, and went to buy
to I
"our
I forget
it
cigars for
front-door was locked.
so vile that I will not believe
it.
into the
what hindered him " !
Besides,
Philippe watched you
No." unsewed your mattress, premeditated " I felt them there this morning when I made my bed
out,
breakfast," said
!
Madame
after
Descoings.
Agathe, quite horror-stricken, went downstairs to ask whether her son had come in during the day, and the doorkeeper told
The mother, struck to the heart, came fable. up again completely altered. As white as her cotton shift, she walked, as we fancy ghosts may walk, noiselessly, slowly, as if bv the impulse of a superhuman power, and yet almost She held a candle in her hand, which lighted mechanically. up her face and her eyes fixed in despair. Without knowing her Philippe's
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
80 it,
she had pushed her hair over her brow with her hands, and
made
this detail
her so beautiful in her horror that Joseph
stood riveted by this image of anguish, this vision of a statue
of terror and dejection.
"Aunt," Philippe
make up
it
in
thought
I
;
Oh
out.
She
sat
"It
is
" take
said she,
sets, that will
could replace
I
Her dry
down.
who
he
spoons and forks; it it
was
I
have six
I
who took
for
it
before you should find
"
have suffered
I
!
my
the sum, for
!
fixed gaze
wavered a
little
Madame
has done the trick," said
then.
Descoings
an undertone to Joseph.
"No, no," it is
"Take
repeated Agathe.
of no use to
me
we can
;
the silver,
it;
sell
use yours."
She went into her room, took up the plate-box, found it opened it, and saw a pawn ticket. The poor
very light,
mother gave a dreadful hastened
in,
hood was
At
that
laid her finger
"
I
tell
positive
you,
He
I
!
Philippe "'
Descoings
all
lips to seal
the secret which
no
three went back to the sitting-
fire.
my
is
am
children,
"My
ame Descoings.
If
on her
Then
one would divulge.
room
Madame
Joseph and
cry.
the box, and the mother's heroic false-
at
They all three stood silent, avoiding even moment, with a gesture almost of madness,
in vain.
a glance.
Agathe
glanced
not
I
heart-broken," said
Mad-
am
quite
will
be drawn,
I
thinking of myself, but of you two
!
a monster," she
does not love you, in
went on, turning to her niece. spite of all you have done for him.
you do not find some means
will turn
am
numbers
you into the
realize the capital,
and sink
to protect yourself, the
Promise
street. it
in
me
wretch
to sell your stock,
an annuity.
step you will never be a burden on Joseph.
By taking
that
Monsieur Des-
set up his son in an office, and the boy" (he six-and-twenty) " has found one. He will take your
roches wants to
was
now
twelve thousand francs and pay you an annuity."
Joseph seized
his
mother's candlestick and hurried up to
— A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. the studio
came down with
a very brief absence he
after
;
81
three hundred francs in his hands.
" Here, Maman Descoings,"
said he, offering her his little
no business of ours to inquire what you do with your money; we owe you what is missing, and here it is
hoard,
almost " I
!
'\it
is
of it."
all
— take your
which
me
distress
little
treasure, the result of your privations,
much
so
woman, evidently
the old
Are you mad, Joseph?" cried
!
torn by her stupid belief in the
luck of her numbers in the state lottery, and what seemed to
her the sacrilege of such a proceeding.
"
Oh by
tears
do what you
!
will
with it," said Agathe, moved to
this action of her true son.
Madame
Descoings took Joseph's head
in her
hands and
kissed his forehead.
" lose
My
do not tempt me," she said game "
child,
The
it.
lottery is a fool's
;
"
I
should only
!
Never was anything so heroically said dramas of private life. Was it not, in
in
any of the obscure the triumph of
fact,
affection over an inveterate vice ?
At this minute the bells began to toll for midnight mass. " Besides, it is too late," added the old woman. " here are your cabalistic calcula" Oh " cried Joseph ;
!
tions."
The magnanimous and away
to
Madame Descoings " He is gone " !
all
be
artist seized the tickets, flew
pay the stake.
his, for
it is
When
melted into
tears.
exclaimed the old gambler.
his
downstairs,
he was gone, Agathe and
" But
it
will
money."
know where to find who frequented them days, smokers know the
Joseph, unluckily, did not in the least the lottery ticket offices, which those
knew
as well in Paris as,
tobacco shops.
lamp
signs.
The
When
he asked some one he met to
where there was a lottery 6
in these
painter rushed wildly on, looking at the
office,
tell
him
he was told that they were
BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
'A
82
closed, but that
one by the steps of the Palais Royal some-
times remained open a Palais
Royal
"Two
;
little
The
later.
artist
flew to
the
the office was shut.
minutes sooner and you could have paid in your
stake," said one of the ticket-criers
who
stood
of the steps, shouting these strange words,
dred francs
for
forty
sous!"
and
selling
at the
bottom
"Twelve hunready numbered
tickets.
glimmer of a street lamp and the lights in the Rotonde, Joseph examined these tickets to see whether by chance either of them bore Madame Descoings' but he could not find one, and returned home pet numbers in grief at having done in vain all that lay in his power to
By
the
Cafe de
la
;
woman,
please the old
to
whom
he related his disappoint-
ments.
Agathe and her aunt went off to mass at Saint-GermainNo one kept Christmas Eve. Joseph went to bed. Madame Descoings had lost her head ; Agathe's heart was
des-Pres.
for ever broken.
The two women
Madame
rose late.
Ten o'clock was
striking
when
Descoings bestirred herself to get breakfast, which
was not ready till half-past eleven. By that time the long frames hanging outside the lottery ticket offices showed an array of figures. If Madame Descoings had had her ticket, she would have gone by half-past nine o'clock to the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs to learn her fate, which was decided in a house next door to the offices of the minister o'i finance, on a spot now occupied by the square and the Ventadour
theatre.
Every time the lottery was drawn, the curious could see at women, cooks, and
the door of this building a posse of old
old men,
who
at
that time constituted as strange a spectacle
as that of the stockholders forming a queue
on the day when
dividends are paid at the treasury.
" Well,
so you are rolling in riches
!
" exclaimed old Des-
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. coming
roches,
her
in just as
Madame
83
Descoings was swallowing
mouthful of coffee. How? " cried poor Agathe.
last
*'
"Her
numbers have come out,"
three
said he, holding
of numbers written on a scrap of paper, such as
out a
list
ofifice
clerks kept
by the hundred
in the paper-tray
on
their
desks.
Agathe read the
Joseph read the list. Descoings read nothing.
Madame
list.
back as if stricken by lightning; seeing her face change and hearing her cry, old Desroches and Joseph carried her to her bed. Agathe went The poor woman had fallen in a fit of apofor a doctor. She
fell
plexy, and she did not recover consciousness until about four in the afternoon.
nounced
that,
Old Doctor Haudry, her physician, pro-
notwithstanding this amelioration, she would
and think of her religious " She had uttered but two words, " Three millions
do
well to settle her affairs
duties.
!
Old Desroches,
whom
Joseph
explained the circum-
the necessary reservations, spoke
with
stances
to
of numbers
who had in the same way missed a fortune on the day when by some fatality they had failed to pay up their stakes still, he understood how mortal a blow this of lottery gamblers
;
must be
At
after
five
twenty years of perseverance.
o'clock,
dwelling, and
when
when
perfect silence reigned in the little
the dying
woman, watched by Joseph
at
the foot of her bed, and Agathe at her pillow, was expecting
her grandson,
whom
Desroches had gone to seek, the sound
of Philippe's step and walking-stick echoed on the
"There he sitting
up
is,
in bed,
there he is!"
cried
Madame
stairs.
Descoings,
and suddenly recovering the use of her
paralyzed tongue.
Agathe and Joseph were impressed by the impulse of horror which so vehemently roused the sick woman. Their miserable expectations were wholly justified by Philippe's appear-
ance
:
by
his purple, vacant face, his uncertain gait,
and the
'
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
84
and yet
horrible look of his eyes with deep red rims, glazed
wild-looking
he was shivering violently with fever, and his
;
teeth chattered.
" What the devil " he exclaimed. ** Neither bit nor sup, and my throat is on fire. Well, what's up now? The foul !
hoof
fiend puts his
ings in bed,
" Be
concerns
in all that
and making eyes
silent, sir," said
at
Agathe,
me
My
us.
old Desco-
"
as big as saucers
"At
rising,
you may
least
respect the misery you have caused."
"Hallo! Sir?'' dear
"My
said he, looking at his mother.
mother, that
little
is
not kind
;
do you no longer love
'
your boy
?
" Are you worthy you did yesterday?
Have you
be loved?
to
You may
forgotten what
look out for a lodging
with me.
for
From
tono longer in it are as you a state in such morrow," she added, "for " would be difficult "To turn me out? So you are going to play the melodrama of the Banished Son?" he went on. "Dear, dear! Well, you are all a pretty pack of Is that how you take it ?
you
yourself;
owls
live
shall
What harm have
!
woman's mattress deuce take
twenty thousand francs, her creditors? " Oh, God
We
And where
it.
I
done
I
for her.
is
?
Cleaned out the old
don't keep
money
in wool,
Did she not take know? Are we not
the crime?
should like to
have taken so much on account ; that's all." oh, God " cried the dying woman, clasping
I I
!
her hands in prayer.
" Hold your tongue " said Joseph, rushing at and clapping his hand over his mouth. "Ri^ht about face, half turn to the left, you !
painter
!
"
replied
Philippe,
laying
his
his brother
dirty
little
heavy hand
on
Joseph's shoulder, turning him round, and landing him in an "That is not the way to meddle with the musarmchair. tache of a major of dragoons of the Imperial Guard." " She has repaid me all she owed me," cried Agathe, rising
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
85
"Besides, that is and turning an angry face to her son. her. Go," killing are mine. You but business nobody's she added with a gesture that exhausted all her force, "and " You are a villain never let me see you again. !
"I am
her?"
killing
"Yes; her numbers were drawn in the money she would have staked."
lottery,
and you
stole the
" Oh,
she
if
is
dying of a
chance, then
lost
it is
not I
who
am killing her," retorted the drunkard. "Go, I say," said Agathe "you fill me with horror. " Good God and is this my son ? You have every vice A hollow croak from Madame Descoings' throat had aggra;
!
!
vated Agathe's wrath.
" And yet cause of
all
What
still
you are the " And you can
love you, mother, though
misfortunes," said Philippe.
out of doors on a Christmas Day, the birthday of
me
turn
I
my
d'ye
call
him
—Jesus
What
!
did you do to grandpapa
Rouget, your father, that he turned you out and disinherited you ? If you had not offended him in some way, we should
have been rich, and
I
should not have been reduced to the
What did you do to your father, I should know, you who are so good ? You see, I may be a
depths of misery. like to
very good boy, and be turned out of doors nevertheless the glory of the family
"
Its
disgrace
"Leave
!
" cried
—
I,
"
Madame me "
the room, or kill
!
Descoings. cried Joseph, rushing
on
of a lion, good God " cried Agathe, trying to sepa-
his brother with the fury
" Good God
!
!
rate the brothers.
At
this
moment Bixiou and Doctor Haudry came in. down his brother, and Philippe was
Joseph had knocked lying on the floor.
" He I'll
"I
is
a perfect wild beast
!
" he
said.
" Not a word, or
" will
remember
this," bellowed Philippe.
;
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
86
"
A
family difference? " said Bixiou.
little
"Pick him up," old lady
"he
the physician;
said
is
as
ill
as the
undress him, put him to bed, and pull his boots
;
off."
"That be cut
"
his legs are swelled
Agathe brought a pair of
on
"Blasted idiot that " too missed fire
I
am,
I
slit
the
tight-fitting
to the floor.
money,"
her
is
she had
worn outside of
trousers, ten gold-pieces rolled out
— there
When
scissors.
boots, which at that time were
"There
"But they must
easily said," observed Bixiou,
is
off:
muttered
Philippe.
forgot the reserve fund
So
!
I
!
The
delirium of high fever
began to talk wildly.
who came man up to
now came upon
Philippe,
Joseph, with the help of
Desroches,
in
wretched
his
presently,
who
the elder
and of Bixiou, got the Doctor Haudry was
own room.
obliged to write a line begging the loan of a strait-waistcoat
mania increased to such a pitch that he was like a madman. By nine o'clock peace was restored. The Abbe Loraux and Desroches did what they could to comfort Agathe, who sat by but she only her aunt's pillow, and never ceased crying listened and shook her head, preserving obstinate silence only Joseph and Madame Descoings knew the depth and from the hospital,
for his
they feared he might
kill
himself
—
;
extent of the inward wound.
"
He
will
do
better,
mother," said Joseph
Desroches and Bixiou were gone. " Oh " cried the poor woman, " but he !
is is
right
the
!
My
father cursed
money,"
me
she went on to
I
;
is
at
right.
last,
Philippe
Here
have no right
Madame
when
Descoings, adding
Joseph's three hundred francs to the two Inindred found in Philippe's possession.
" Go and
see
if
your brother wants
something to drink," she said to Joseph.
"Will you keep a promise made asked the old woman, feeling that
lier
to a
dying
woman?"
mind was going.
J BACHF.LOIVS ESTABLISHMENT.
87
"Yes, aunt."
" Then swear
me
to
to
hand over your money
Desroches for an annuity.
and from
hear you say
all I
squeeze you lo the
" Aunt,
The
last
to that
young
You will miss my little income, I know you will let that wretch "
sou
swear it."
I
woman
died on the 31st of December, five days blow so innocently dealt her by the elder DesThe five hundred francs, all the money there was in
old
after the fatal
roches,
the house, barely sufficed to pay the expenses of her funeral.
She
left
a very
little
plate
and
Madame
which
furniture, of
Bridau paid the value to her grandson.
Reduced now to eight hundred francs a year, the annuity who concluded the her by the younger Desroches purchase of a business, at present without clients, and took Agathe gave up her her twelve thousand francs as capital. rooms on the third floor and sold all but the most necessary When, at the end of a month, Philippe was confurniture. valescent, his mother coldly explained to him that the paid
—
expenses of his illness had absorbed
all
her ready
money
;
henceforth she must work for her living, and she entreated
him
in the
most affectionate manner to rejoin the army and
provide for himself.
" You might have saved yourself your sermon," said Philippe, looking at his
mother with eyes cold from utter indifferseen that neither you nor my I am alone in the world now
"I have very clearly brother love me in the least. ence.
Well, I prefer
"Prove
it
!
so."
yourself worthy to be loved,"
mother, wounded to the quick,
replied the poor
"and we
shall
love
you
again."
"
Fiddlesticks
He
!
" said he, interrupting her.
took his old hat,
all
worn
at
the edges,
and
his stick,
stuck the hat over his ear, and went downstairs whistling.
"Philippe! where are you
off to
without any
money?"
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
8S
cried his mother,
who could not
restrain her tears.
" Here
"
take
She held out a hundred francs done up in paper. Philippe came up the steps he had gone down and took the money. " And you do not kiss me? " said she, melting into tears.
He
clasped her to his breast, without any of the effusive
feeling
which alone gives value to a kiss. where are you going?" said Agathe.
"And
''To Florentine, Giroudeau's " he replied coarsely.
friends
mistress.
They
really are
!
He went. Agathe
returned to her room, her knees quaking,
her eyes dim, her heart in a sought
God
vise.
She
fell
to protect her unnatural son,
on her knees, be-
and abdicated the
burthen of motherhood. In February, 1S22,
Madame
Bridau had established herself
bedroom formerly occupied by Philippe, over the kitchen of her third-floor rooms. The painter's bedroom and in
the
studio were on the opposite side of the landing.
Seeing his
mother reduced so low, Joseph was determined that she should be as comfortable as possible. After his brother had left he took the arrangement of the attic in hand, and gave artistic
stamp.
He
put in a carpet
;
it
an
the bed, very simply
arranged, but with exquisite taste, had a character of monastic simplicity.
The
walls,
hung with cheap
chintz, judiciously
chosen of a color to harmonize with the furniture, which was
made the little room look neat and had a door made to shut in the landing, and hung it with a curtain. The window was screened by a blind that subdued the light. Thus, though the poor mother's life was restricted to the simplest expression which a woman's cleaned to look like new, elegant.
He
can be reduced to, Agathe was at any rate better anybody in a similar position, thanks to her son. To spare his mother the worst fatigues of housekeeping, Joseph took her to dine every day at a tabic if hate in the Rue life
in Paris
off than
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
89
de Beaune, frequented by ladies of respectability, deputies, and men of title, where the charge for each person was ninety francs a vide,
fell
Agathe, having only the breakfast to pro-
month. into the
same habits
for her son as she
In spite of Joseph's pious
for his father.
found out that her dinner cost about a
fibs,
had kept up she
somehow
hundred francs a month.
Horrified by this enormous expenditure, and never supposing that her son could earn
much by "
by the influence of her
director,
women," Abbe Loraux, she ob-
painting naked
the
tained the promise of a place with seven hundred francs a year, in a lottery ticket office granted
These lottery at court,
offices,
by the government
to
Chouan leader. bestowed on widows who had friends
the Comtesse de Bauvan, the
widow
of a
not unfrequently were the whole support of a family
who managed
the business of
it.
But, under the Restoration,
the difficulty of finding rewards in the gift of a constitutional
government
for all the services that
had been done, led
to the
practice of giving to impoverished ladies of rank not one but
two such lottery
ticket
offices,
of which
might be from six to ten thousand francs.
widow of a
emoluments
general or a nobleman did not keep the ticket she had managers with a sort of partnership.
office herself;
When
the
In such cases the
these managers were unmarried
men
they could not
help having a clerk under them, for the office always had to
be kept open
till
midnight, and the accounts required by the
minister of finance were very elaborate.
The Comtesse de Bauvan, plained
Madame
manager should
to
whom
the
Abbe Loraux
Bridau's position, promised that
leave,
if
ex-
her present
Agathe should have the reversion
;
mean-
while she bargained for a salary of six hundred francs for the
Compelled to be at her work by ten in the morning, poor Agathe had scarcely time to dine ; she returned to her office at seven in the evening, and never stirred out again Never once for two years did Joseph fail before midnight. to call for his mother and take her home, and he often escorted widow.
—
—
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
90
His friends would see him leave the opera,
her 10 dinner.
the Italiens, or the most splendid drav/ing-rooms, to be in the
Rue Vivienne
before midnight.
Agathe soon fell into the monotonously regular way of life, which often is a comfort and support to sorrow-stricken souls. In the morning, after tidying her room, where there were
no
cooked the breakfast
cats or little birds, she
at a
her fireplace, and laid
her son. fire, little
it in the studio, where she ate She then arranged Joseph's bedroom, took
and brought her sewing into the studio, stove, and leaving the room if he had
Though she knew nothing
model.
she liked the stillness of the place.
no advance
she
;
affected
nothing
of art or
sitting
it
with
off her
by the
a visitor
or a
processes,
its
In this matter she ;
now
corner of
made
she was always greatly
astonished at the importance attached to color, composition,
When
and drawing. club, or
one of
— Schinner, Pierre student
one of the members of Joseph's little was discussing such matters
his artist friends,
Grassou, or Leon de Lora, a very young
known by
then
the
—
name
of Mistigris she would and never discover what could such big words and hot arguments.
come and look on give occasion to
attentively,
She made her son's linen, mended
his stockings
and socks;
she even went so far as to clean his palette, collect his painting-rags,
and keep the studio
in order.
so intelligently careful of these
her with kindness.
little
And
seeing his mother
details,
Joseph loaded
mother and son did not meet halfthey were nevertheless closely united
If the
way on questions of art, by affection. The mother had a scheme.
One morning when she had made much of Joseph while he was sketching an enormous
picture
— which
he subsequently painted, but which
she ventured to say aloud
" Oh, dear
!
"Who?" "Philippe."
I
wonder what he
is
doing?"
fell fiat
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. **
By Jove
the fellow
!
is
91
having a hard lime.
It will
do
him good."
"But what
"
he has had liard times before, and perhaps that was
spoilt
My
him
If he were happy, he
for us.
he was away, but you are mistaken
New ful
would be good."
dear mother, you fancy that he was in distress while
York, as he
" But "
if
still
he were
in
he lived at his ease in
;
"
does here want, near
would be dread-
us, that
"Yes," said Joseph; "and for my part, I am willing to him money, but I will not see him. He killed poor Aunt Descoings," " Then you would not paint his portrait ? " give
"For
you, mother,
remember only
I
would
martyrdom,
suffer
the one fact that he
is
my
I
would
brother."
" His portrait as a captain of dragoons, on horseback ? " " Well, I have a fine horse there, copied from Gros, and
I
do not know what to do with it." " Then go to his friend and find out what has become of him."
"I
will."
Agathe rose; her
came
to kiss
scissors,
everything
on the floor; she
fell
Joseph on his forehead and shed two tears on his
hair.
"That boy
is
ill-starred passion
your passion," said he. "
"We
all
have our
!
That evening Joseph went to the Rue du Sen tier at about and tliere he found his brother, filling Girou-
four o'clock,
deau's
place.
transferred
nephew.
as
The
elder
cashier to
a
Though Finot was
captain
of
dragoons had been
weekly paper managed by still
proprietor of the
little
his
daily
paper for which he had issued shares, though the shares were all
in his
own
friend of his
hands, the ostensible owner and editor was a
named Lousteau,
the son, as
the sub-delegate from Issoudun, on
whom
it
happened, of
Bridau's grand-
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
92
father (Doctor
consequently
To
Rouget) had wanted to be revenged, and
Madame Hochon's nephew.
oblige
uncle,
his
Finot had given
him Philippe
deputy, paying him, however, only half the salary.
day
at five
as
Every
o'clock Giroudeau checked the balance and carried
money taken during the day. Coloquinte, the old who served as messenger and who ran the errands,
off the
soldier
also kept an eye
on Major Philippe.
A
behaving himself.
salary of six
Philippe, however, was hundred francs and a
five hundred were enough for him to live on, all more because a fire was provided for him during the day, and in the evenings he could go to the play on the free list, so he had nothing to pay for but food and lodging. Coloquinte was going out, loaded with stamped papers, and Philippe was engaged in brushing his green linen office cuffs, when Joseph
pension of the
walked
in.
"Lord!
"Well, we and Florentine have a box. I am going with Giroudeau you will be of the party, and I will introduce you to Nathan." He took up his loaded cane, and wetted the end of a will
Here
;
kid," said Philippe.
tiic
is
dine together
you
shall
come
to the opera, Florine ;
cigar.
" after
I
cannot avail myself of your invitation
my
We
mother.
"Well, and how
is
have finished one of myself, and in the
till
"Two
will
have made a
Descoings.
should like to give
I
I
my
" this
five."
Sundays
I
uniform of the Imperial Dragoon
"All right." " But you must come and sit " I am obliged to be here, in nine
must look
thing?"
she, poor dear
"She is pretty well," said the painter. " new portrait of my father and one of Aunt mother one of you Guards."
I
;
dine at a table d'hote.''
be enough."
hen-coop, every day from
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. "All
right,
officer, as
When
93
young 'un," replied Napoleon's erewhile
he lighted his cigar
at the porter's
staff-
lamp.
Joseph described Philippe's position to his mother, as Rue de Beaune, he felt
they went together to their dinner in the her hand tremble on his arm the poor
woman drew
;
joy lighted up the faded face
;
breath as though she had been relieved
Next day she was full of little prompted by her happiness and gratishe dressed his studio with flowers, and bought two
of some enormous burden. attentions for Joseph,
tude
;
vases.
The
Sunday when Philippe was to sit, Agathe took She placed everything on the table, not forgetting a flask of brandy, not more than half full. She then hid herself behind a screen, in which she made a small hole. The ex-dragoon had sent his uniform the day before, and she could not refrain from hugging it. When Philippe mounted, in full dress, on one of the stuffed horses kept by saddlers, which Joseph had hired, Agathe, not first
care to provide an excellent breakfast.
to betray herself,
was obliged to hide the slight noise of
her weeping under the voices of the two
brothers as they
talked.
Philippe sat breakfast.
for
dress, and, while
to dine with
two hours before and two hours
after
three in the afternoon he put on his ordinary
At
him
smoking a at the
cigar, again invited his brother
Palais Royal.
He
"You
me when
jingled the gold
in his pockets.
"No,"
said Joseph.
frighten
I see
you
with gold about you."
" By heaven
here?" roared "
Do you
Then you
!
still
have a bad opinion of
me
the lieutenant-colonel in a voice of thunder.
think a
man can never
save
?
"
"No, no," said Agathe, coming out of her hiding-place, and kissing her son. "We will go and dine with him, Joseph." Joseph dared not scold his mother
;
he dressed, and Phil-
— A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
94
took them to the Rue Montorgueuil, where, at the Rocher de Cancale, he gave them a splendid dinner, for which the bill ran up to a hundred francs. " The devil " said Joseph uneasily. " With a salary of ippe
!
eleven hundred francs a year you manage, like Ponchard in
'Dame
the
" Pooh,
Blanche,' to save enough to purchase an estate! I
am
in
luck," said the dragoon,
"
who had drunk
an enormous quantity of wine.
On
made on
hearing this speech,
the doorstep just as they
—
were getting into a hackney coach to go to the play for Philippe had proposed to take his mother to the circus, the only entertainment of the kind allowed her by her director
Joseph tightened his hand on his mother's arm.
once said she
felt
so Philippe took her
When sat
Agathe
at
unwell, and declined to go to the theatre,
and
his brother to the
Rue Mazarine.
she found herself alone with Joseph in their attic, she
long
On
lost in
thought.
Sunday Philippe came again to sit. This sat in the room with the brothers. She brought in the breakfast, and could ask the trooper various questions. She then learned that the nephew of her mother's old friend, Madame Hochon, figured in a small way in literature. Philippe and his ally, Giroudeau, lived in the society of journalists, actresses, and publishers, and, as cashiers, met with some respect. Philippe, who always took drams of time
next
the
his
mother
kirsch while sitting after breakfast, talked freely.
He
of becoming a person of importance again ere long.
boasted
But
at
a question from Joseph as to his pecuniary means he kept silence.
As
it
happened, the next day was a great holiday, and the
paper was not to come out, so Philippe, to get the thing done with, proposed to
come and
sit
again on the morrow.
Joseph
explained to him that the Salon would open before long, that
he
liad
not
money enough
could only earn
it
to
buy frames
by finishing
a
and Rubens required
for his pictures,
copy of
a
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. by
a picture-dealer
95
named Magus. The original belonged to who had loaned it only for ten days.
a rich Swiss banker,
Next day would be the
last
sary to put off the sitting
;
it
was therefore absolutely necesfollowing Sunday.
till rtie
" And is that it ? " said Philippe, looking at a painting by Rubens that stood on an easel. "Yes," said Joseph. "That is worth twenty thousand That is what genius can do. There are such squares francs. of canvas that are worth a hundred thousand francs." "Well, I like your copy best," said the dragoon. "It is fresher," said Joseph, laughing; "but my copy is I must have to-morrow to only worth one thousand francs. give the old tone and look of the original, that they may be
indistinguishable.
"Good-by, mother," "
embracing Agathe,
Philippe,
next Sunday."
till
On
A
said
Magus was who often worked
the following day Elie
friend of Joseph's,
Grassou, wished
to
copy
see the
come
to
for his copy.
for the dealer, Pierre
To
finished.
play him a
trick, Joseph put his copy, glazed with a particular varnish,
in
the place of the original, which he set up on his easel.
de Fougeres was completely taken
Pierre Grassou
in
and
amazed at this extraordinary imitation. " Will you take in old Magus?" said Pierre Grassou.
"That remains
to be seen," said Joseph.
But the dealer did not come, and it was to dine with Madame Desroches, who had
band
;
so Joseph proposed to Grassou to
On
his table crhbte.
going out he
as he always did, with the
"I am
going to
Philippe to this ently,
and
my
woman an hour
I will
wait for
The woman gave him copy, thinking
woman who
to
sit
it
left
him
late.
Agathe was
just lost her hus-
come and dine
at
the key of the studio,
kept the house-door.
brother this evening," said later.
"
He
will
be in pres-
in the studio."
the key.
Philippe went up, took the
was the original, came down, gave back the
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
96
key, explaining that he had forgotten something, and went off with the Rubens to sell it had taken the precaution of
Elie Magus,
telling
He
thousand francs.
for three
from
his
At night, when Joseph came in after bringing his mother from Madame Desroches', the porter told him of Philippe's vagaries, coming away almost brother, not to call
as
till
soon as he had gone
"If he has not had "
the next day.
in.
the
good
copy,
taste to take the
I
am
a
ruined
man
theft.
He flew up the three flights of stairs and into the and exclaimed, "Thank God He has been what he
studio,
!
exclaimed the painter, at once guessing the
!
—a
end
will be to the
fool
and
a
knave."
who had followed Joseph, did not understand this but when her son explained it, she simply stood
Agathe,
exclamation
;
dry-eyed.
still,
"
I
"
We
have but one son
!
" she said
weak
in a
voice.
have always avoided disgracing him before strangers," " But v/e must now tell the porter he is never replied Joseph. to be admitted.
Henceforth we must carry our keys.
finish the portrait
from memory, there
is
little
to be
I will
done
to
it."
"Leave
it
as
it
is;
it
me
would make
too unhappy," re-
and appalled by such
plied his mother, stricken to the heart,
meanness. Philippe
knew
knew what
the price of this copy was needed for,
the gulf of difficulty into which he was flinging his
brother, and nothing had deterred him.
After this
last
crime,
her face assumed a Agathe would never mention Philippe One thought look of bitter, deep, and concentrated despair. ;
was killing
"Some
her.
day," she said
to herself,
"we
shall see the
name
of Bridau in the criminal courts."
Two months
after this, just before
Agathe entered on her morning to
duties at the lottery office, a soldier called one
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. see
Madame
who was
Bridau,
at breakfast
97
with Joseph, an-
nouncing himself as a friend of Philippe's on urgent business. When Giroudeau mentioned his name the mother and son quailed, all the more because the ex-dragoon had a rough, weather-beaten sailor's countenance that was anything rather His ashy gray eyes, his piebald mustache, than reassuring. the remaining tufts of hair brushed up round his butter-colored bald head, had an indescribably unwholesome and licentious He wore an old iron-gray overcoat, with the rosette look.
was buttoned with difficulty over a stomach like a cook's, quite in keeping with a mouth that opened from ear to ear, and broad shoulders. His complexThis frame was carried on a pair of thin legs. of an
officer of the
Legion of Honor
;
it
on the cheek-bones, betrayed a jovial The lower part of his cheeks was deeply wrinkled and life. overlapped his worn black velvet collar. Among other decorative touches, the ex-dragoon had in his ears an enormous pair ion, with the high color
of gold earrings,
" What a sot " Madame,"
!
" said Joseph to himself.
said Finot's uncle
and
cashier,
" your son
is
in such an unfortunate predicament that his friends cannot
help applying to you to beg you to share the very considerable in. He can no longer do his work and Mademoiselle Florentine of the Porte Saint-Martin has given him a room in a miserable attic in the Rue Vendonie, where she lives. Philippe is dying ; if you and his brother cannot pay for the doctor and the medicine, we shall be obliged, for his own sake and cure, to have him
expenses he involves them for
the paper
;
taken to the Capucins.
But we will keep him ourselves for
he must positively have a nurse ; he goes out in the evening while Mademoiselle Florentine is at the theatre, and he takes irritant drinks, bad for his malady, three hundred francs
and contrary
makes
And we are attached to him it really The poor fellow has pledged his pension a substitute has been found for the moment
to rule.
us unhappy.
for tliree years
7
;
;
;
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
98 to
fill
and he gets no we cannot put him
his place,
madame,
if
Dubois.
It is
But he
asylum kept by Doctor
will kill himself,
a decent place, and the charge
Florentine and
day.
pay. in the
I will
pay
for half a
is
ten francs a
month's treatment
Come, it will not be for there, do you pay the rest more than two months." " Indeed, monsieur, as a mother I cannot but be eternally grateful
" But
for all
you are doing
for
that son has cut himself off
my
son," replied Agathe.
from
my
affection
;
and
as
—
money I have none. To avoid being a burden on this son, who works night and day, and is killing himself, who for
deserves
all his
mother's love,
morrow, into a lottery
my
age
ticket
I
am
going, the day after to-
At
as assistant clerk.
office
" !
"And " Come,
young man?" said the trooper you not do as much for your brother
you, will
to Joseph. as a
dancer
"
Porte Saint-Martin and an old soldier ? ''Look here!" said Joseph, out of patience. "Would you like me to tell you in the plainest language what was the " came to try
at the
purpose of your " Well, then,
visit ?
You
to fleece us ?
to-morrow your
brother
will
go
the
to
hospital."
" ever
He I
will
be very well looked after," said Joseph.
should be in the same plight,
I
"
If
should go there myself."
Giroudeau went away, much disappointed, but also very man who had been on
seriously grieved at having to send a
Napoleon's
staff at the battle
of Montereau to the hospital of
the Capucins.
Three months after this, one morning towards the end of Agathe, on her way to her office, crossing the Pont Neuf to save the toll of a sou on the Pont des Arts, saw a man lounging by the shops of the Quai de I'Ecole as she walked along by the river parapet. He wore the livery of the
July,
second degree of poverty, and she was startled, thought he resembled Philippe.
for
she
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. There
in
are,
men who keep up
have the future before them artists,
men
of the world
symptoms of
this
the poverty of
;
who
down on
are
kind of want are
knighthood of poverty
men,
the second rank are old
month of Honor on an alpaca
who The
their luck.
micro-
These people constiride in a cab.
still
whom
to
Paris.
young men,
visible only to the
they
;
in
appearances, and
scope of the most practiced observer. tute the
poverty
three degrees of
fact,
of the
First, that
99
everything
In
a matter
is
of indifference, who, in the
June, display the cross
of the Legion of
coat.
erty of
old annuitants,
careless
now about
of
ical
all
;
common
by Callot and Hogarth, by Murillo, adored and cultivated Gavarni, Meissonier ;
art, especially at
The man
people, and the most poet-
studied
Charlet, Raffet,
by
the pov-
is
Last comes poverty in
their appearance.
poverty of the
rags, the
This
old clerks living at Sainte-Perine,
in
the carnival
whom
the
nized her son had, as
it
!
unhappy Agathe fancied she recogwere, one foot on each of these two
She saw a horribly starchless collar, a mangy broken and patched boots, a threadbare overcoat with buttons that had lost their mould, while their empty gaping lowest steps. hat,
or twisted skins matched the torn pockets and greasy collar. flue on the cloth plainly revealed that if there were
Traces of
anything in those pockets,
it
could only be dust.
pair of ripped iron-gray trousers the as a
workman's.
Over
Out of a
man drew hands
his breast a knitted
as dirty
woolen undervest,
tawny with long wear, of which the sleeves came below those of the coat, and the edge was pulled outside the trousers, served visibly and undoubtedly as a substitute for linen. Philippe wore a shade over his eyes of green silk stretched on wire.
showed
His head, almost bald, that he
had
just
come
his
color,
and hollow cheeks
out of that dreadful hospital.
His blue military coat, though white
at the
seams,
still dis-
Thus every passer-by looked at this veteran, a victim of the government no doubt, with curiosity, played
his
rosette.
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
100
mingled with pity for the rosette attracted the eye, and suggested honorable fears for the Legion of Honor, even in the most rabid ultras. At that time, though an attempt had been made to cast a slur on the order by reckless promotions, not more than fifty-three thousand persons in France had the ;
right to display
Agache was
it.
thrilled to the
marrow.
possibly love this son of hers, she
she could not
could
suffer acutely
a last gleam of motherly feeling,
Touched by
through him.
Though
still
she shed tears as she saw the dashing
staff-officer
make
as
though he would go into a tobacconist's to buy a cigar, and he had felt in his pockets and found stop on the threshold ;
Agathe
nothing.
purse, pushed
it
crossed
hastily
the
road,
drew out her had
into Philippe's hand, and fled as if she
committed a crime. For two days after she could
nothing
eat
;
she constantly
saw before her the horrible vision of her son dying of hunger in Paris.
he has spent the money in my purse, who will " thought she. " Giroudeau was not deceiv-
"When give
him any
ing us
;
!
Philippe has just
come
out of the hospital."
She no longer saw her poor aunt's murderer, the scourge of the family, the domestic thief, the gambler, drunkard, low debauchee
what she saw was a discharged patient dying of
;
hunger, a smoker bereft of tobacco.
woman
looked like a
of seventy.
Her
At seven-and-forty she eyes grew dim in tears
and prayer. But
this
dreadful son
was not the ;
last
blow
to
be dealt her by
her worst anticipations were to be realized.
conspiracy was discovered
of officers on
service,
this
A
and the
paragraphs of the Afomfei/r containing the details of the arrests little
were shouted
coop,
in
tlie
In
streets.
in the lottery office in
heard the name of Philippe Bridau.
the
the recesses of her
Rue Vivienne, Agathe
She fainted away; and
the head clerk, understanding her grief and the necessity for
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. her taking some
action, gave
her a
]0l
fortnight's
leave
of
absence.
"Ah, my
dear
!
We, with our
have driven him
austerity,
to this," she said to Joseph, as she went to
down. go to see Desroches," said Joseph. The artist went off to place his brother's case in the hands of Desroches, who was regarded as the craftiest and astutest "
lie
I will
who had rendered good service to variamong others to des Lupeaulx, at
attorney in Paris, and
ous persons of importance,
that time chief secretary in a minister's office. to call
Meanwhile on the widow, who trusted him this
said he,
"find twelve thousand francs, and
Giroudeau came time.
"Madame," your son
We
be released for want of evidence.
will
have
only to purchase the silence of two witnesses."
"I how
will
them," said the poor mother, not knowing
get
or whence.
Inspired by the danger, she wrote to her godmother,
ame Hochon, Philippe.
Hochon
**
to lend her the
By
years.
last,
If
My
thousand
— Though
francs a
money he has saved in Hochon estimates
sieur
francs,
he
never seen.
money, promising
to repay
it
in
return of post she received the following letter
dear Child:
forty
Mad-
beg them of Jean-Jacques Rouget, to save Rouget should refuse, she entreated Madame to
will
As
your brother has,
year,
to
two :
and
first
nothing of the
say
the last seventeen years, which
Mon-
more than six hundred thousand not spend two sous on the nephews he has for
me
husband
lives I shall
Hochon
is
at
— you cannot know that so long
never have six francs to
the greatest miser in Issoudun
what he does with
his
money
;
;
I
call
my
as
my
OAvn.
do not know
he does not give his grand-
To borrow and he would not give it.
children twenty francs in a year.
it
to ask his leave,
I
attempted to speak with your brother,
I
should have
have not even
who keeps a woman,
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
102
whose very humble servant he the poor
man
is
treated in his
It
is.
is
how
pitiable to see
own house when he
has a
siste/
and nephews, " I have hinted
to you several times that your presence Issoudun might save your brother, and rescue from the
at
clutches of that hussy a fortune of forty or even sixty thou-
sand francs a year
but you do not answer me, or seem not
;
to have understood me.
any circumlocution.
I
So I write to you to-day without sympathize deeply with the misfor
tune that has come upon you, but
my
pity,
can give you nothing
I
btJ'
dearest child.
" This
why
is
can do nothing to help you
I
:
Hochon,
a>
the age of eighty-five, eats his four meals a day, sups off hard' boiled eggs and salad, and is as brisk as a rabbit. I shall
have lived
my
all
days
—
for
he will write
ever having had twenty francs in
my
my epitaph — withou'
If you like t( combat the influence of your brother'^concubine, though there are good reasons why Rouget shoul(?
come
purse.
to Issoudun to
not receive you into his house,
I shall find it difficult to obtaiff
my
husband's permission to invite you to mine. Still, you can come he will give way on that point. I know a way of ;
getting what
my
will.
I
want
in
some
This seems to
me
things,
and
that
so atrocious that
is
I
by talking of
have never ytX
had recourse to it ; but for you I would do the impossible. hope your Philippe will get out of the scrape, especially if
I
you have a good advocate but come to Issoudun as soon as you can. Remember that your brother, at fifty-seven, is older and more frail than Monsieur Hochon. So the case is urgent. " Already there are rumors of a will depriving you of your ;
inheritance
;
but by Monsieur Hochon's account there
time to procure
" rely
Farewell,
its
my
is
yet
revocation. little
on your godmother
Agathe.
God
be with you.
And
too, for she loves you.
" Maximilienne Hochon, n^e Lousteau.
— A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. "P.
S.
— Has
and
papers,
my
am
the
But only come, and
?
gave Agathe
much
to think about
to Joseph, to
whom
she was obliged to confide
letter
she showed
it
Giroudeau's suggestion. his brother
for
about him.."
will talk
This
writes
with your son Philippe,
told,
ever been to pay his respects to you
we
who
nepliew, Etienne,
intimate, I
is
103
The
artist,
who was
;
of course
cautious
when
was concerned, pointed out to his mother that she
ought to lay
Struck by the truth
before Desroches.
all
it
of this remark, she and her son went next day, at six in the
morning,
to call
Rue de Bussy. The lawyer,
on the attorney Desroches
at his office in the
him, with a harsh
as lean as his father before
voice, a coarse skin, pitiless
licking the blood of
eyes,
and a
murdered chickens
like a ferret
face off
its
lips,
sprang
when he heard of Giroudeau's call. Mother Bridau," he cried in his shrill, hard me, "Bless voice, " how long will you continue to be the dupe of your like a tiger
cursed scoundrel will
of a son
future that I shall leave
You
court.
God
Do
?
be responsible for Philippe;
him
give
is
to
him save
a
sou.
him
I
in the
to the sentence of the superior
quail at the idea of his being
grant that his counsel
to Issoudun
not it
may
fail
to get
found
him
guilty, but
off.
You, go
save your fortune and that of your children.
;
you do not succeed, if your brother has made his will in woman's favor, and you cannot get him to revoke it well, at any rate, collect the materials for proving undue in-
If
that
fluence,
and
too good a
I will
such an action.
—
if I
And
conduct the
woman
to
know how
In the holidays
case.
But there
to find out the I will
go myself
You
are
grounds
for
!
to Issoudun
possibly can." this
"
I will
go myself" made the
artist shiver in his
skin.
Desroches winked
at
Joseph as a sign that he should
let
— A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
104 his
mother go downstairs
and detained him
first,
for
an
instant.
"Your
brother
untarily,
the rascal
cunning that
so
is
truth about
it.
tween them. the
wretch; he, voluntarily or invol-
a base
is
the cause of the discovery of the conspiracy
is
it
is
Fool or traitor
—
He
detective
for
I
leave you to choose be-
no doubt be placed under the eye of but that is all. Be quite easy ; I much. Hurry off to Issoudun with
will
police
;
impossible to find out the
;
know even this your mother. You have alone
your wits; try to save the in-
all
heritance."
"Come, poor
mother, Desroches
rejoining Agathe on the stairs.
"I
is
right,"
said Joseph,
my
have sold
pictures
;
out for Berry, as you have a fortnight's leave."
let us set
Having wTitten to her godmother to announce their arrival, Agathe and Joseph started next day for Issoudun, leaving Philippe to his
The
fate.
diligence went
I'Enfcr to take the Orleans road.
down
the
When Agathe
Luxembourg, whither Philippe had been
Rue de saw the
transferred, she could
not help saying
"After
now " Many
all,
but
the
for
Allies
he
would not be there
!
in pity
sons would have given an impatient shrug or smiled
but Joseph,
;
who was
alone with her in the coupe of
arm round her, and pressed her to "Oh, mother! you are a mother as Ra-
the diligence, threw his his heart, saying,
phael was a painter
a mother
!
And you
always will be a dear goose of
" !
Aroused from her troubles by the amusement of the journey,
Madame
purpose of her chon's
letter,
Bridau was presently obliged to think of the visit.
which
Of
course,
she re-read
Madame Ho-
had so strongly excited
Desroches.
Struck by such words as "concubine" and "hussy," traced
by the pen of an old woman of seventy, respectable, to designate the
as pious as she
woman who was
was
absorbing Jean-
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
105
Jacques Rouget's fortune, while he himself was spoken of as a poor creature, she began to wonder how her presence at Joseph, an
Issoudun could avail to save her inheritance.
poor and disinterested, knew mother's exclamation puzzled him.
artist,
"Before sending us
we can be robbed " So
far as
inheritance, our
our
protect
off to
friend Desroches would have
of the law, and his
little
done well
to explain to us
how
of it," said he.
my memory
serves
me
—but
my
head was
full
of the notion of Philippe in prison, without a pipe even perhaps, and on the eve superior court"
—
were to collect materials if
it
"I
trial
before
fancy Desroches said
the
we
an action against undue influence brother has
made
his will in favor
— — woman."
"A if
for
my
should appear that
of this
of standing his
said Agathe,
this
good joke
Desroches!"
for
we can make nothing of
cried
'''Well,
Joseph.
I will ask
it,
him
to
go him-
self."
"Do
not then
us rack our brains for nothing," said
let
"When we
Agathe.
are
there,
This conversation, held
at the
my godmother
will advise
us."
ing
coach
entering
at
the
Orleans,
of
district
incapacity o{ both
the
moment when,
Madame
Bridau
Sologne, artist
sufficiently
and
his
after
chang-
and Joseph were mother
betrays
the
to play the
part the terrible attorney had assigned to them.
But on returning to Issoudiin after an absence of thirty Agathe found the manners of the place so altered that
years,
a slight sketch of the
out such a picture,
Hochon's
real
it
life
of the town
would be
heroism
is
indispensable.
difficult to
in trying to
understand
With-
Madame
help her goddauglUer, or
Jean-Jacques Rouget's extraordinary position. Though the doctor had made his son regard Agathe as a stranger,
still,
in a brother, there
was something rather extraor-
dinary in living for thirty years without giving his sister any
— A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
106
This silence must evidently have
sign of his existence.
its
some unusual circumstances which any relations but Agatha and Joseph would long since have insisted on knowing. And, in fact, there was a certain connection between the state of the town and the Bridaus' concerns, which will come to cause in
light in the course of this narrative.
due respect to Paris, Issoudun is one of the oldest Notwithstanding historical prejudice, which insists on regarding the Emperor Probus as the Noah of Gaul, Cgesar writes of the fine wine of Champ-Fort fde Campo Rigord menForti), one of the finest vintages of Issoudun.
With
towns
all
in
France.
allow of no doubt as to its and extensive commerce. Still, these two authorities would give Issoudun a moderate antiquity in comExcavations lately made parison with its really immense age. by a learned archaeologist of the town, Monsieur Armand tions the
town
in terms vvhich
large population
Peremet, have led to the discovery of a basilica of the century
— probably
the only example in
famous tower of Issoudun. materials of which tion
;
it is
France
—under
This church preserves
in
fifth
the the
built the record of a previous civiliza-
for the stones are those of a
Roman
temple of earlier
show French towns of which the name, dunum, contains in its ancient or modern, ends in dun date.
And, indeed,
that Issoudun, like
name
all
=
a certificate of native origin.
ing to every
shows
the researches of this antiquary
it
to
hill
syllable dun, attachtlie
Druids,
have been a Celtic military and religious centre.
The Romans then may have Gauls a temple to
name
The
consecrated to the religion of
Isis
;
built at the foot of the
hence, according to
of the town, Is-sous-dun (Is[is]-under-hill)
an abbreviated form of
Dun
of the
Chaumon, the "
Is
" being
Isis.
Richard Coeur de Lion undoubtedly built the famous tower,
where he coined money, over a basilica of the
fifth
century,
the third sanctuary of the third religion of this ancient city.
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
He made
use of
107
church as a base which he needed
tl^.e
to the height of his ramparts,
and preserved
it
to
add
by covering
it
Issoudun next with his feudal fortifications as with a cloak. became the seat of the transient authority of the Routiers and Cottereaux, bands of brigands with which
Henry
II.
opposed
Richard when he rebelled as Count of Poitou. The history of Aquitaine, not having been written by the Benedictines, will now probably never be written, as there are no more Benedictines. Hence it is well to throw every possible his son
light
on these archceological obscurities whenever an oppor-
tunity offers.
There
further evidence of the ancient importance of
is still
Issoudun in the use
made of
the
little
Tournemine
river,
which has been raised for a considerable distance on an aqueduct several yards above the natural level of the Theols, the This work is, beyond quesstream that encircles the town. tion,
due
to
Roman
engineers.
the north of the castle
two thousand years
who
of the suburb,
is
as the
Finally, the quarter lying to
known
intersected by a road
Rue de Rome
;
for
and the inhabitants
are certainly of a quite distinct type in race,
blood, and features, call themselves the direct descendants of the
They
Romans.
larly stern
and perhaps Routiers,
their
in
also to
whom
and singu-
are almost all vine-dressers,
manners, owing, perhaps, to
tlieir
origin,
triumph over the Cottereaux and
their
they exterminated in the twelfth century on
the plain of Charost.
After the outbreak in 1S30, France was too to pay any attention to the rebellion
among
much
agitated
the vine-growers
of Issoudun, which was very serious, though the details were never published, and for very good reasons. place, the citizens of Issoudun
^nter the city. after the usage
dle ages.
The
lace supported
They chose
to be responsible for
and traditions of the six or
it
first
to
themselves,
citizen-class in the
authorities were forced to
by
In the
would not allow any troops
succumb
mid-
to a popu-
seven thousand vine-dressers,
who
108
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
had burned from street
all
and the
the archives
and who went
lax-of&ces,
to street, dragging about an excise officer of the
" This is the place to hang him." The unhappy man was delivered from these wretches by the National Guard, who saved his life by taking him to prison on the pretext of trying him. The general of the forces only got in by coming to terms with the vine-dressers, and it needed some courage to walk through the mob for as octroi, saying at each lamp-chain,
;
soon as he appeared outside the town-hall a man of the Roman suburb put his pruning scythe a large curved knife at the
—
end of a
pole, used for lopping trees
"No
out,
more
tax-gatherers, or
— round
we
his neck, crying
And
yield nothing."
the laborer would have pruned off the head of a sixteen years of fighting had spared, but for the
vention of one of the leaders of the rebellion,
man whom
prompt
inter-
who obtained
a
promise that the Chambers should be asked to suppress the "cellar-rats," or excise men.
In the fourteenth century Issoudun could
still
boast of sev-
enteen thousand inhabitants, the remnant of a population of nearly double that
number
had a residence there "Maison du Roi " so town,
at that
;
in
Rigord's time.
Charles VII.
and was known
as the
late as the eighteenth century.
This
it
still
exists,
time the central mart of the wool-trade, supplied
the greater part of Europe with the raw material, besides
manufacturing
it
on a large scale into cloth,
lent gloves, called Chevreautin.
hats,
and excel-
In the time of Louis
XIV.
Issoudun, the birthplace of Baron and of Bourdaloue, was
home of elegance, pure French, and Poupart, the priest, in his " History of San-
always mentioned as a
good
society.
cerre," speaks of the inhabitants of Issoudun as remarkable
among
all
the natives of Berry for their
acumen and mother-
wit.
At the present day appeared. its
this brilliancy
Issoudun, though
its
and wit have
totally dis-
wide extent bears witness to
former importance, claims but twelve thousand souls, in-
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
109
—
eluding the vine-dressers of four extensive suburbs Saintlittle towns in Paterne, Vilatte, Rome, and Les Alouettes
—
The
themselves.
elbow-room
inhabitants, like those of Versailles, have
Issoudun
in the streets.
now
wool-trade of Berry, a business
the centre of the
still is
in
danger from the im-
provements which are being generally introduced in the breed The vineyards of sheep which the Berrichon will not adopt. two departin of Issoudun yield a wine which is consumed wine is made in as made only ments; and which, if it were
Burgundy and Gascony, would be one of the best vintages " We do as our fathers did "—that is But, alas in France. the law of the land. So the vine-growers leave the stalks in the liquor during fermentation, which ruins the flavor of a wine that migiu be the source of renewed wealth, and an opening for the industry of the district. Thanks to the roughness communicated to the wine by the wood, and which is !
!
said to
diminish with age,
may
it
be kept for a century
This reason, assigned by the vine-grower,
is
!
important enough
to the science of the manufacture to be recorded here
;
Guil-
Breton has, in fact, celebrated this property in a few lines in liis " Philippide."
laume
le
Thus the decay of Issoudun
is
accounted for by
its
perverse
stagnation, carried to imbecility, as one single fact will show.
When
the direct road was contemplated from Paris to
louse,
it
was obvious that
Chateauroux, past Issoudun. actually taken
by Vatan.
it
This
for
it
is
shorter than the line
But the bigwigs of the town, and
the municipal council of Issoudun
— petitioned
Tou-
should run from Vierzon to
— which,
passing through Vatan
it is ;
said, still sits
objecting that
if
town lay on the high-road, the price of provisions would rise, and they might be obliged to pay thirty sous for a fowl. No analogous act is recorded of any land but the wildest districts of Sardinia, a country formerly so populous and rich, their
and now so deserted.
When King
Charles Albert, with a
laudable intent to civilize the land, proposed to connect Sas-
'
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
110
sari, the second town in the island, with Cagliari, by a fine and magnificent high-road, the only road existing in this wild
savannah, the direct line was planned to pass Bonorva, a district
inhabited by a refractory race very like our abject Arab
and, in fact, descended from the Moors. When they saw themselves within an ace of being caught by civilization, the savages of Bonorva, without taking the trouble to discuss tribes,
the matter, signified their opposition to the plan.
ment disregarded
who attempted and died by road
made
announcement.
to take a
his stake.
bend
a
this
The
The governengineer
first
bee-line had a bullet in his brain,
No
questions were asked
that lengthens
it
;
but the
by eight leagues.
At Issoudun the increasingly low price of the wine, all consumed on the spot, while gratifying the citizen's wish to bringing about the ruin of the grape-growers,
live cheaply, is
who
are
more and more oppressed by
and the excise
;
in
the cost of cultivation
the same way, ruin
threatens the wool
trade of the district, in consequence of the impossibility of
improving the breed of sheep.
The country
folks
have a
rooted horror of every kind of change, even of that which
may
A
serve their interests. traveler from Paris found a laborer in the country
was dining
off
vegetables.
who
an enormous quantity of bread, cheese, and
He
proved to him that by substituting a certain
proportion of meat he would be nourished better and cheaper,
he would do more work, and waste his capital of strength
more
slowly.
the calculation.
"The jaw?"
"He
The man of Berry admitted the accuracy of "But only consider tiie jaw, sir," said he. " Why, yes, sir how people would tattle " ;
!
would have been the talk of the district," said the owner of the land on which the incident occurred. "They would think he was as rich as a townsman. In short, he is afraid of public opinion, of being pointed at, of being supThat is what we all are in this part posed to be ailing or ill. of the world."
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. Country-town folk often echo these
last
Ill
words with a feeling
of covert pride.
And
while ignorance and routine are inseparable in the country, where the peasantry are left to themselves, Issoudun,
Being town, has settled into absolute social stagnation. obliged to make head against waning fortunes by sordid economy, each family lives for itself alone. Again, the society as a
there
now
is
that gives distinc-
forever bereft of the contrast
The town
tion to manners.
is
no longer the scene of
that
antagonism of two classes which gave vitality to the Italian Issoudun has no men of birth. states in the middle ages.
The
Cottereaiix,
the Rentiers,
the Jacquerie,
the
religious
wars, and the Revolution have completely exterminated the The town is very proud of this triumph. To keep nobility.
down the cost of living, Issoudun has persistently refused to thus it has lost that means of interbe made a garrison town ;
course with the times, besides losing the profit that
is
derived
from the presence of the military. Until 1756 Issoudun was one of the gayest of garrison A judicial drama, which was the talk of France at towns. that time, deprived the
of
lieutenant-general
town of
the
Chapt, whose son, a dragoon perhaps, but traitorously, for
The
its
district
the case of the
soldiery
;
against
the
officer,
Marquis
was put to death,
de
justly
some amorous misdemeanor.
occupation by the 44th half-brigade, forced upon
it
during the civil war, was not such as to reconcile the inhabitants to the soldier tribe.
Bourges, of which the population
is
annually diminishing,
a victim to the same social atrophy. these large bodies.
The
state is
Vitality
no doubt
is
to blame.
is
failing in It is
the
duty of a government to detect such sores in the body politic, and to remedy them by sending men of energy to the affected far from this, Alas spots to change the state of things. !
such
fatal
Besides,
and funereal peacefulness
how
is
it
is
a source of satisfaction
!
possible to send, fresh chiefs or capable
;
A BACHELOR'S ESJ'ABLISHMENT.
112
judges
?
Who
nowadays would care to be buried in a for the good to be done ?
district
where he can earn no credit
chance an ambitious outsider is
is
If
by
appointed to such a place, he
soon swamped by the power of inertia, and tunes himself life. Issoudun would
to the pitch of the dreadful provincial
have benumbed Napoleon.
As a in
of things, the district of Issoudun,
result of this state
1822,
of Berry.
men
was under the administration of
Government authority was
natives
all
therefore nil or impo-
tent, excepting in those cases, of course very rare, of
the evident importance
demands
which
the intervention of the law.
Monsieur Mouilleron, the public prosecutor, was related to everybody, and his deputy belonged to a family in the town. The president of the criminal court, before he had risen to such dignity, had made himself famous by one of those speeches which, in the provinces, crown a
cap for the
of his
rest
man
At the end of
life.
with a fool's
a case for the
prosecution which would entail capital punishment, he said to the prisoner
:
My
"
have your head cut
poor Pierre, the case
who had
superintendent of police,
the Restoration, had relations Finally, not only
is
clear
:
you
Let that be a lesson to you."
off.
all
will
The
held the post ever since
over the district.
had religion no influence whatever, but
the curd was not respected.
The townsfolk
—
— Liberals, back-
and ignorant repeated more or less absurd stories The chilabout the poor man's conduct to his housekeeper. dren went to his catechizing all the same, and were admitted and likewise, there was a school to their first communion mass was said and festivals were kept tlie taxes were paid, biters,
;
;
the only thing Paris requires of the provinces
passed resolutions
;
matters of routine.
but
all
;
these acts of social
Thus the lethargy of
and the mayor life were mere
official life
was
in
admirable harmony with the moral and intellectual condition of the place. results
The
sequel
of this narrative will
show the
of a state of things less exceptional than might be
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. supposed.
very like
Many towns in And Ibsoudun.
France, especially in the south, are the state to which the triumph of
the middle class had brought this town its district
113
(or arrondissement)
— awaits
Paris, if the citizen class continues to
— the
all
chief town of
France, and even
be master of the
home
and foreign policy of our country. Now a word as to the topography of Issoudun. The town extends north and south on a hillside that curves towards the Chateauroux road. At the foot of the slope a canal was constructed at the time when the place was prosperous, to supply the factories, or to flood the trenches below the ramparts ; it is known as la Riviere fore ee (the borrowed stream), its waters The borrowed stream forms being diverted from the Theols. the natural river below the to an artificial branch, returning it is met by the Tournemine where point suburb at a Roman and some other
These
affluents.
little
brooks of rushing
water irrigate meadows of some extent, which
below the yellow or white specks,
for
such
is
lie
on
all
closely dotted with
hills
sides
black
the aspect of the vineland of Issoudun
The
during seven months of the year. vines every year, and
leave notliing
vine-dressers cover the
but a hideous stump,
Thus, at the bottom of a funnel of earth. on arriving from Vierzon, Vatan, or Chateauroiix, the eye, wearied by the monotonous plain, is agreeably surprised by without any prop,
the appearance of the
meadowland of Issoudun,
the oasis of
this part of the country, supplying vegetables for ten leagues
round.
Below the suburb of
Rome
stretches one vast market-
garden exclusively devoted to kitchen produce, and divided into the
A
Upper and Lower
Baltan.
broad, long avenue, with sidewalks planted with poplars,
leads from the town, across the fields, to an ancient convent called Frapesle, trict
— bears
where an English garden
the high-sounding
name of
— unique
in the dis-
Tivoli.
Here, on
Sundays, fond couples wander to breathe their confidences.
Traces of the former splendor of Issoudun can, of course,
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
114
be discerned by an attentive observer, and spicuous are the divisions of the town. old was a town of
itself,
with
its
walls
The
the most castle,
con-
which of
and moats, constitutes
a distinct quarter even now, entered only through the old
by three bridges over the arms of the two The walls still show their formidable masonry, here and there crowned Above the castle rises the tower which was the with houses. citadel. The conqueror of the town lying round these two fortified strongholds had still to take both the tower and the castle. Nor did the mastery of the castle secure that of the tower. The suburb of Saint-Paterne beyond the tower, shaped like a palette, and encroaching on the fields, is so gates, or quitted
rivers
;
this
large that ship.
the
it
alone has the aspect of an old town.
must in early ages have been the original town-
Since the middle ages Issoudun, like Paris, has climbed
hill
and spread outside the tower and the
In 1822 this notion
still
castle.
derived some certainty from the
existence of the beautiful church of Saint-Paterne, only re-
cently pulled
down by
from the nation.
the son of the
man who
amples of Romanesque church architecture in perfect preservation.
raised to save the building found
nor
in the
Though
it
The only
France, was
in
destroyed without any one having drawn the
which was
purchased
This building, one of the prettiest ex-
porch
front,
voice that was
no echo, neither
in the
town
department. the castle-precincts of Issoudun have
narrow
all
the char-
and ancient houses, the town, properly so called, which was taken and burnt again and again at different periods, and especially during the Fronde, when it was burnt to the ground, has now a acteristics of an old place, with
modern
aspect.
Broad
streets,
its
as
streets
compared with the
otlier
and well-built houses form a contrast with the ancient castle, striking enough to have earned Issoudun, in some geographies, the epithet of " pretty." quarters,
In a town thus constituted, devoid even of commercial
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. of taste for the
activity,
every one
home,
sits at
it
arts,
115
of scientific interest, where
could not but happen
—
— and
it
did
happen that at the time of the Restoration, in 1816, when the war was over, many of the young men of the place had no career before them, and did not know what to do in fact
with themselves pending their marriage, or their coming into
home, these young and since, as the proverb has it, " young men must sow their wild oats," they performed the operation at the expense of the town It was difficult to do much by broad daylight they itself. would have been recognized, and, the cup of their misdemeanors once full, they would at their first serious offense money.
their parents'
Bored
to death at
people found no means of diversion in the town
;
;
have found themselves
in
the hands of the police
so they
;
very judiciously preferred to play their mischievous pranks at
And
night.
thus,
among
old ruins
these
left
by
many
so
departed phases of civilization, a vestige of the farcical that characterized the
manners of the
past flashed like a
spirit
dying
These young men took their pleasure as Charles IX. and his courtiers, or Henry V. and his companions, were wont to take theirs, in a form of amusement common of old flame.
in
many
provincial towns.
Having become confederates by their need of mutual help and defense, and the desire to invent practical jokes, the friction of wits developed among them a pitch of mischievousness which
is
even in animals.
natural to the young, and
may be
noticed
Their confederacy gave them also the
little
enjoyment that comes of the mystery of a standing conspiThey called themselves "The Knights of Idlesse." racy. All through the day these young
they
aff"ected
excessive quietude
;
monkeys were
little
saints;
besides, they slept late in
when they had carried out some The Knights of Idlesse began by common prac-
the mornings after nights cruel trick. tical
jokes,
such
as
unhooking and changing
ringing at doors, hurling a cask
left
shop-signs,
outside a door into a
;
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
116
neighbor's cellar with a prodigious clatter, and waking the folks
by
many
in
At Issoudun,
a noise like the explosion of a mine. places, the
way
into the cellars
is
as
through a trapdoor
the entrance from the street, closed by a huge lid
close to
with hinges, and fastened with a heavy padlock.
These bad
boys, at the end of 1816, had not gotten beyond the practical jokes played everywhere by young
men and
But in
lads.
January, 1S17, the Order of Idlessc had a grand master, and distinguished itself
by
which
certain pranks
until 1823
were
the terror of Issoudun, or, at any rate, kept the citizens and
craftsmen in perpetual alarms.
This leader was one Maxence Gilet, called
and
his
antecedents, no
destined him for the part.
Maxence
Gilet was supposed to
the sub-delegate whose gallantries had
and who had incurred,
for short
Madame Hochon's
be the natural son of Lousteau,
apropos to Agathe's
Max
than his strength and youth,
less
brother,
many memorials,
left
as
we know. Doctor Rouget's hatred
birth.
But before this quarrel the friend-
ship between the two
men had been
so close that, to use a
phrase of the country and period, where one went the other
would go.
So
it
was always said that
be the doctor's son as Lousteau's
;
Max
might
just as well
but he belonged to neither
of them, for his father was a handsome young dragoon
officer
However, as a consequence of their the boy, the two men were always dis-
in garrison at Bourges.
intimacy, happily for
puting for the paternity.
Max's mother, the wife of a clog-maker
in
Roman
the
suburb, was for her soul's destruction amazingly beautiful,
with the beauty of a true Trasleverina, the only thing she
had
to bequeath
birth
in
to her boy.
which was maliciously ascribed
men
— no
ened old collusion
Madame
Gilet, before
Max's
1788, had long pined for this boon from heaven,
doubt to sot,
set
winked
and tolerance
them at
at
his
to the gallantries of the
loggerheads. wife's
two
Gilet, a hard-
misconduct
by such
as arc not exceptional in the lowest
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. The woman
class.
for
the
herself,
117
hoping to secure their protection
good care not to enlighten the supposed at Isshe would have been a millionaire
child, took
In Paris
fathers.
;
soudun she sometimes was well poor, and at last scorned by all.
Madame Hochon, Monsieur
sometimes wretchedly-
off,
Lousteau's
sister,
paid about
This liberality,
ten crowns a year towards Max's schooling.
which Madame Hochon could not allow herself in consequence of her husband's avarice, was naturally attributed to her brother, then living at Sancerre. When Doctor Rouget, whose son was not a success, observed
how handsome Max
was, he
paid the school expenses of the " young rascal," as he called
him,
till
As Lousteau had died
1805.
seemed to
feeling
gratify a
schooling for
five years,
in 1800,
and the doctor
of pride by paying the boy's
the question of paternity remained
unsettled.
Indeed, Maxence Gilet, the cause of forgotten.
And
this
is
his story.
Rouget's death, the boy,
many
jests,
was soon
In 1S06, a year after Doctor
who seemed born
to a life of adven-
and who was indeed gifted with extraordinary strength and agility, had committed a number of more or less rash He and Monsieur Hochon's grandsons were acts of mischief. ture,
already in league to drive the tradesfolk to frenzy ; he gathered all the neighbors' fruit before the ovmcrs, making noth-
This imp had no match in athletic he played prisoner's base to perfection ; he could He had an eye worthy of have coursed and caught a hare. Instead of Leather Stocking, and had a passion for sport. ing of scaling a wall.
exercises
j
;
doing his lessons, he passed all his time in shooting at a mark. He spent all the money be could extract from the old doctor in buying powder and shot for a worn-out pistol given to him
autumn of 1806, Max, involuntary murder by this a young woman in upon coming nightfall by one evening at frightening her and fruit, stealing was where he garden, her
by Gilet the clog-maker.
Now,
in the
time seventeen, committed an
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
118
Being threatened by the clog-maker with
into a miscarriage.
the guillotine
him
— the
— Max ran
off,
old man, no doubt, wanted to be rid of
and never stopped
till
he reached Bourges,
joined a regiment on the march to Spain, and there enlisted.
No
young woman's death. Max's disposition was certain to distinguish him-
further notice was taken of the
A
lad of
and he did
self;
with such effect that, after three cam-
so,
paigns, he returned as a captain, for the
picked up had served him well.
was
for
left
In
learning he had
little
Portugal, he
1S09, in
dead on an English battery which
Max, a
had taken, but could not hold.
his
company by
prisoner, was sent
the English to the Spanish hulks at Cabrera, the worst of
An
peror for the cross of the
major, but Napoleon was just then in Austria favors for the dashing actions that were
eye; he had no liking
for
men who were
was not best pleased with the
Max
was
left
he kept
;
done under
own
state of affairs in Portugal.
on the hulks from iSio
own freedom of
In the
1814.
to
hulks were the galleys minus the crime and disgrace. place, to secure his
all his
his
taken prisoners, and
course of those four years he was utterly demoralized
first
all.
made on his behalf to the EmLegion of Honor and the rank of
application was indeed
;
for the
In the
action and defend
himself against the corruption that was rampant in those foul
unworthy of any civilized nation, the handsome young captain killed in duels for duels were fought on a space six yards square seven bullies and tyrants of whom he prisons,
—
—
Max
rid his ship, to the great joy of their victims.
in the hulks,
thanks to the prodigious
skill
reigned
he acquired in
handling his weapons, to his personal strength and cleverness.
But he,
in his turn,
adherents
committed some arbitrary
who took
his part
and became
acts,
and had
his flatterers.
In
where embittered nature dreamed only of revenge, and where the sophistries hatched in these seething brains found a warrant for every evil purpose, Max became
this school of misery,
utterly depraved.
He
listened
to
the counsel of those
who
;
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
119
and did not shrink from criminal deeds so long as they could be committed without proof. At last, at the peace, he was released, perverted though guiltless, capable of becoming a great politician in public life or a scoundrel in private life, as circumstances might direct. On his return to Issoudun he heard of the deplorable end aimed
at fortune at
Like
of his parents. sions,
any
price,
all
who
people
give
way
to their pas-
lead, as the saying goes, a short life
and
and
a
merry
one, the Gilets had died in hospital in the most dire poverty. Almost immediately after the news of Napoleon's landing at
Cannes ran through France, Max thought he could not do go to Paris and ask for his cross and his promoThe marshal who was then at the head of the war office tion.
better than
remembered Captain Gilet's brave conduct in Portugal; he gave him his commission with the rank of major of infantry " The Emperor but he could not obtain the cross for him, says you will be sure to win
marshal. tain's
And,
name
in fact, the
honor
for that
in the
fight," said the
first
the brave cap-
after the battle of Fleurus,
where
After the battle of Waterloo,
Gilet distinguished himself. Gilet retired with the
it
Emperor put down
army on
When
the Loire.
the revision
took place, Marshal Feltre would grant him neither his pro-
motion nor liis cross. Napoleon's soldier came home to Issoudun in a he refused exasperation that may easily be imagined ;
at all
ties thought this a monstrous demand from five-and-twenty, who at that rate might be a
So
The
without his cross and the rank of major.
Max
partists
ferred in 1815
—
among
the sight of this
authori-
young man of
—
for the
Bona-
themselves the promotions con-
lost the pittance
was doled out to the
of
to serve
colonel at thirty.
Thus the major
sent in his papers.
recognized
a
state
officers
designated as half-pay that
of the
handsome young
Army
fellow,
of the Loire.
At
whose whole posses-
sions were twenty napoleons, Issoudun bestirred itself in his favor,
and the mayor gave him a place
in his office with a
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
120
hundred
salary of six
ment
Max,
francs.
after
about six months, retired of
for
holding
this appoint-
own
accord, and
his
was succeeded by a captain named Carpentier, who, like himself, had remained faithful to Napoleon. Gilet, already grand master of the Knights of Idlesse, had life which lost him the regard of the best families town not that they said anything to him, for he was violent, and dreaded by everybody, even by those officers of the old army who had, like him, refused to serve, and had
entered on a in the
;
come home to plant cabbages The small affection felt for of Issoudun
And,
is
in Berry.
the Bourbons by the good folks
not surprising after what has here been said.
its size, there were more Bonapartists town than anywhere else. As it is well known, At Issoudun, or the Bonapartists became Liberals.
in proportion to
in this little
almost in
all
the neighborhood, there were perhaps a dozen officers in
the same position as Maxence,
regard him as their chief; pentier, his successor,
who
liked
him
so well as to
with the sole exception of Car-
and of a certain Monsieur Mignonnet, Carpentier, a cavalry tlie Guard. from the ranks, very soon married, thus
ex-captain of the artillery of officer,
who had
risen
allying himself with one of the most important families in the
town
— that of Borniche-Herau.
Mignonnet, a student of the
Ecole Polytechnique, had belonged to a corps which fancies
There were in the imperial armies itself superior to all others. two tones of feeling among the military. A strong party had an immense contempt for the mere citizen, the pequin, the plain-clothes man, such as the noble felt for the villein, the conquering race for tlie conquered. These were not overstrict in
civilians,
observing the code of honor in their intercourse with
and a man who had cut down a bourgeois was not The others, and among them the artil-
too severely blamed. lery, as a result
parts
—
perhaps of
its
republicanism, did not adopt
which tended indeed to divide France into two Hence, though Military France and Civilian France.
this view,
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
121
Major Potel and Captain Renard, two officers living in the Roman quarter, whose views as to civilians never varied, were Maxence Gilet's friends through thick and thin, Major Mignonnet and Captain Carpentier sided with the townsfolk in regarding Max's conduct as unworthy of an " officer and a gentleman."
Major Mignonnet, a his
mind
to
likely to solve,
Monsieur and
little
dry
man
of
much
dignity, gave
the problems which the steam-engine
and lived very simply
Madame
seemed
in the quiet society
of
His gentle manners and scientific pursuits gained him the consideration of the whole town. And it was currently said that these two gentlemen were a very different sort from Major Potel and Captain Renard, Maxence, and the rest who frequented the Cafe Militaire and kept up the rough manners and traditions of Carpentier.
the Empire.
Thus, at the time when
Max
was an
Madame
outlaw from
Bridau revisited Issoudun,
the citizen world.
The young
fellow indeed so far sentenced himself that he never intruded
himself on the circle
known
as the club,
and did not complain
of the reprobation of which he was the object, though he was the youngest, and smartest, and best-dressed
man
in Issoudun,
spent a good deal of money, and even had a horse
—a crea-
Lord Byron's was at Venice. It will presently be seen how it had come to pass that Maxence, poor and unassisted, had been enabled to become ture as strange at Issoudun as
the man of fashion of Issoudun for these disgracaful means, which earned him the contempt of timid or pious persons, were linked with the interests which had brought Agathe and Joseph from Paris. To judge from his braggart bearing and the expression of his countenance, Max cared little enough for public opinion he no doubt counted on being revenged some day, and reigning over those who now scorned him. ;
;
Besides, though the better class
admiration his character
might misprize him, the
commanded among
the populace was
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
122
a counterpoise to that opinion
;
his courage, his fine appear-
ance, his decisiveness, delighted the
known
depravity was not
to them, nor
mob was
but, indeed, his
;
its
extent suspected
even by the townsfolk.
Max,
at
armorer in
Issoudun, played a part very similar to that of the "The Fair Maid of Perth ; " he was the cham-
pion of Bonaparte and the Opposition.
A
fray
He
was looked to
good men of Perth looked to Smith. and the victim of the hundred days his gave the hero
on great occasions
as the
opportunity.
commanded by some Royalist officers, Maison Rouge, marched through Issoudun on Not knowing their way to relieve the garrison at Bourges. what to do in such a constitutional town, the officers went to There is such a resort pass the time at the Cafe Militaire. That of Issoudun, for soldiers in every provincial town. In 1819 a battalion
lads just out of
standing in a corner of the parade-ground under the walls,
and kept by the widow of an
officer, naturally
served as a
sort of club for the Bonapartists of the place, half-pay officers
and others who were of Max's way of thinking, and who were allowed, by the feeling of the town, to display their adoration of the Emperor. After 1816 a banquet was held Issoudun every year to celebrate the anniversary of Napo-
at
leon's coronation.
The
first
three Royalists
papers, naming, peaii blanc.
the
The
among
in asked for news-
and the Dra-
But the opinions of the town, and especially of
Cafe Militaire, did not encourage Royalist newspapers. cafe could
sumed
for a
only produce the Connncrce, the name
was suppressed by law.
"The
Cojfimercc
still
scriber at
as-
few years by the Constitufionnel when that paper
lished under that
was
who dropped
others, the Quotidieittie
title, is
But since, in the its
first
number pub-
leader opened with these words,
essentially constitutional in
its
views,"
it
Every subonce saw the joke which bid them pay no attention
familiarly called
the
Consiitutioniiel.
— A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISIIMEXT. name over
to the
The
stout
the door
;
the wine
mistress perched at her
123
would be of the old
tap.
desk told the Royalists
had not the papers they asked for. " What papers do you take then ? " said one of the
that she
officers,
a captain.
The
a small youth in a blue cloth jacket and a
waiter,
coarse linen apron, produced the Commerce.
"
Have you no other Oh so that is your paper " No," said the waiter, " that is the only one." !
!
The
?
"
captain tore the hostile sheet into fragments, threw
it
" on the floor, and spat upon it, saying, ** Bring the dominoes Within ten minutes news of the insult offered to the ConI
stitutional opposition
and liberalism generally
in the
person
of the sacrosanct paper, which waged war on the priesthood with the courage and wit
and
streets
was "
flashing
like
tell
all
know, was
flying along the
into every house
The same sentence
telling the tale.
Run and
we
light
:
every one
rose to every lip
:
"
Max
!
Max
was soon informed. The officers had not finished game of dominoes when Max, accompanied by Major
their
Potel and Captain Renard, entered the cafe
ing of thirty young
fellows,
eager to see
while a follow-
;
the
end of the
matter, remained, for the most part, outside in groups on the
Parade.
The
cafe was soon
me my
"Waiter, bring
Then
a little
comedy was
full.
paper," said
played.
The
Max very quietly. woman said in
stout
a timid and conciliatory tone
"
I
"
Go
have loaned
it,
and fetch
it
!
captain."
" cried one of Max's companions.
''Can you not do without the paper?" said the
"We
have
it
waiter.
not."
The young
officers were laughing and stealing side-glances town party. "It is torn up " exclaimed a young Bonapartist, looking
at the
!
at the captain's feet.
— A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
124
"Who
has dared to tear
up the newspaper?" asked Max and his arms crossed
in a voice of thunder, his eyes flashing, as he rose.
" And we have spit upon ists, rising and facing Max.
"You
it,
too," replied the three Royal-
have insulted the whole town
!
" said Max, turning
pale.
" Well, what of that?" said the youngest of the three.
With a neatness, a boldness, and a swiftness which the young men could not guard against, Max dealt two slaps to the foremost
man
as they stood, saying
" Do you understand French?" They went out to fight in the Allee de Frapesle, three against three. Potel and Renard would not hear of allowing
Max man man
to fight
it
Max
out alone with the Royalists.
killed his
wounded his so severely that the unhappy lad, a of good birth, died next day in the hospital, whither they carried him. As for the third, he got off with a swordcut, and wounded Captain Renard, his opponent. The bat;
talion
Potel
went on
to
Bourges that night.
talked about in the country, crowned
The Knights and-twenty
of Idlesse,
—admired
all
young
Maxence.
This
Maxence
— the
eldest
Some
of
much
affair,
Gilet as a hero.
was not
them,
far
five-
from
sharing the rigid prudery of their families with regard to Max,
envied him greatly, and thought him a very fortunate man.
Under such a leader the order did wonders. From the month of January, 1817, not a week passed but tlie town was in a
pother over some fresh prank.
Max,
as a point of
honor,
by-laws were imposed certain conditions on the knights drawn up. These young devils became as ])rompt as disciples ;
of Amoros, as tough as kites, skilled in every kind of exercise, as
strong and as dexterous as malefactors.
They were
adepts in the business of creeping over roofs, scaling housewalls,
jumping
and walking without
mortar, and building up doors.
a
sound,
They had an
spreading arsenal
of
— A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. ladders, ropes, tools,
and
The Knights of
disguises.
125 Idlesse,
in short, achieved the very ideal of ingenious mischief, not only in the execution, but in the invention of the tricks they
They were
played.
at last inspired by that genius of maligPanurge took such delight, which provokes
nity in which
every one to laugh, and makes the victim so ridiculous that
The men,
he dare not complain.
respectably connected,
all
had, of course, means of information in private houses which
enabled them to obtain such intelligence as could serve them in the perpetration
One
of their rascality.
very cold night these demons incarnate carried a large
stove out into the courtyard of a house, effectually,
that
the
lasted
fire
till
and stoked
morning.
Then
it
it
so
was
rumored in the town that Monsieur So-and-so (a noted miser !) had been trying to warm his yard. Sometimes they lay in ambush in the High Street, or the Rue Basse, the two arteries, as it were, of the town, into which run a great number of smaller cross-streets. Squatting, each at the corner of a side street, under the wall, putting their heads out when every household was in its first sleep, they would shout in a tone of terror from one end of the town to the other
"What
is
the matter?
Oh, what
is
in their shirts
and night-caps, candle
matter?" The who soon appeared
the
repeated question would rouse the citizens, in
hand, catechizing
each other, and holding the strangest colloquies with the
most bewildered
faces ever seen.
There was a poor bookbinder, very old, who believed in demons. Like most provincial artisans, he worked in a little low shop. at
night,
shrieking all
The knights, him into like three men put
the neighbors,
to
disguised as devils, invaded his shop
and left him The poor man roused
his waste-paper box, at the stake.
whom
he related these apparitions of
and the neighbors could never undeceive him. binder very nearly went mad. Lucifer,
The
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
126
In the depth of a severe winter the confederates demolished the chimney-pot of the tax-collector, and replaced
course of the night;
it
it
in the
was exactly the same; they made no
and left not the slightest trace of their work. The chimney was, however, so arranged inside as to fill the room with smoke. The tax-collector endured this for two months before discovering why his chimney, which had always worked properly and given him perfect satisfaction, should play such tricks and he had to reconstruct it in order to fully remedy
noise,
;
the difficulty.
One day they stuffed trusses of straw sprinkled with sulphur and greasy paper into the chimney of an old bigot, a friend Next morning, on lighting her fire, of Madame Hochon's. the poor old lady, a quiet, gentle creature, thought she had
The
lighted a volcano. in
;
and
as there
firemen came, the whole town rushed
were among the firemen some of the Knights
of Idlesse, they deluged the poor soul's house, and put her in
drowning
fear of
after the fear of fire.
She
fell
ill
of the
shock.
When arms and
they wished to keep any one up in
ing him of a plan to rob him
under
all
night, under
mortal terror, they sent anonymous letters warn-
his wall or past his
;
then they crept one by one
windows, whistling signals
to
each
other.
One
of their most successful hoaxes,
town hugely, and
is
which amused the
talked of to this day, was sending to
the possible heirs of a very miserly old
all
woman, who was
expected to leave a large fortune, a few lines announcing her death, and inviting
them
to
come punctually
at
a certain
About eighty persons arrived from Vatan, Saint-Florent, Vierzon, and the neighborhood, all in deep mourning, but in very good spirits men with their wives, widows with their sons, children with their parents, some in gigs, some in basket-carriages, some in old Imagine the scenes between the old lady's servant tax-carts. hour, when seals would be affixed.
—
;
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
127
Then the consultations at the lawyers and the first comers It was like a riot in the town. At last one day the sous-prefet began to think this state of things intolerable, all the more so because it was impossible !
to ascertain
!
who ventured
to
perpetrate
these pleasantries.
Suspicion, indeed, rested on the guilty youths; but as the
National Guard was at that time a mere
name
at
Issoudun, as
there was no garrison, and as the lieutenant of police had not eight gendarmes at his command, and kept no was impossible to obtain proofs. The sous-prefet was at once placed on " the order of the night," to be treated as obnoxious. This functionary was in the habit of eating
more than patrol,
it
two new-laid eggs for breakfast. He kept fowls in his yard, and he crowned his mania for eating new-laid eggs by insisting on cooking them himself. Neither his wife, nor the maid, nor any one, according to him, could cook an &gg as it ought he watched the clock, and boasted that in this to be done particular he could beat all the world. For two years he had ;
own eggs with
a success that was the subject of Then, every night for a month, the eggs were taken from his hens and hard-boiled eggs put in their place. The poor man was at his wits' end, and lost his reputation as
boiled his
much
jesting.
the egg-boiling sous-prefet.
Finally, he had something else
for breakfast. Still,
he never suspected the Knights of Idlesse
was too neatly done.
Max
hit
on a plan
;
the trick
for greasing his
stove-pipes every night with oil saturated with such vile odors that
it
was impossible to
one morning
his
wife,
live in the house.
Nor was
wishing to attend
mass,
this all
found her
shawl stuck together inside by some glue so tenacious that she
was obliged to go without it. The official begged to be transferred. His cowardice and submission established beyond question the occult and farcical sway of the Knights of Idlesse.
Between the Rue des Minimes and the Place Misere there town enclosed between the
existed at that time a part of the
— A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
328
"borrowed stream "
at the
bottom and the rampart above
the part extending from the Parade to the crockery market.
This sort of misshapen square was occupied by wretched-looking houses, closely packed and divided by alleys so narrow that two persons could not walk abreast.
This part of the town, a sort of court of miracles, was inhabited by poor people, or
such as carried on the
least
profitable trades, lodging
and wretched tenements expressively designated as maisofi borgnes purblind houses. It was, no doubt, at all times a spot accursed, the den of evil livers, for one of these lanes is called Rue du Bourreau, or Hangman's Alley. It is certain that the town executioner had here his house, with its in the hovels
—
red door, for
man
more than
The executioner's may be believed, for the
five centuries.
lives there still, if public report
townspeople never see him. None but the vine-dressers keep up any communication with this mysterious personage, who inherits from his predecessors the gift of healing fractures and wounds. The women of the town held high festival here of old,
when
the place gave itself the airs of a capital.
Here
dwelt the dealers in second-hand articles, which never seem to find a buyer
display;
;
old-clothes vendors, with their malodorous
in short, all the
mongrel population that herds
in
some such corner of almost every town, under the dominion of one or two Jews.
At the corner of one of these dark
passages, in the least
dead-alive part of the suburb, there was, from r8i5
till
1823,
and perhaps even later, a beer-shop kept by a woman known as Mother Cognette. The beer-shop occupied a house not ill built of courses of white stone filled in with rubble and mortar, and consisting of one story and an attic. Over the door shone an immense branch of a fir-tree gleaming like Florentine bronze. As if this "bush " were not sufficiently explicit, the eye was caught by a blue board, fastened to the architrave, on which the words "Good Marcli beer" were legible above a picture representing a soldier offering to a very lightly draped
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
woman holds,
129
a jet of foam spouting from a jug into the glass she and forming a curve like the arch of a bridge, the
whole so gorgeously colored
The ground-floor
as to
make Delacroix
faint.
consisted of a large front room, serving
and dining-room the provisions needed for Becarrying on the business hung to hooks from tiie rafters. second floor; but, to the went ladder-stair up hind this room a at the foot of the stairs, was a door opening into a small narrow room, lighted from one of those provincial back-yards which are more like a chimney, so narrow, dark, and high both
as kitchen
This
are they.
from
all
;
little
room, screened by a lean-to, and hidden
eyes by the surrounding walls, was the hall where the
Bad Boys of Issoudun held
their
full
Old Cognet market
court.
ostensibly entertained the country people there on
days; in
reality,
he played host to the Knights of Idlesse.
This old Cognet, formerly a groom
in
some
rich house,
had
married La Cognette, originally a cook in a good family. The suburb of Rome still uses a feminine form of the husband's name for the wife, in the Latin fashion, as
in Italy
and
Cognet and his wife had been able to buy this house and set up as tavern-keepers. La Cognette, a woman of about forty, tall and buxom, with a turn-up nose, an olive skin, hair as black as jet, brown eyes, round and bright, and an intelligent, merry face, had been chosen by Maxence Gilet to be the Leonarde of the order for Cogthe sake of her good-humor and her talents as a cook.
Poland.
By combining
net himself was about
their savings,
fifty-six, thick-set,
submissive to his wife,
and, to quote the joke she constantly repeated, he could not help seeing straight, for he was blind of one eye.
For seven years, from 1816 wife ever let out a
word
to
1823, neither husband nor
what was done or plotted every
as to
night on their premises, and they were always very
attached to fect,
but
it
all
may seem
their interest
9
the knights. less
much
Their devotion was indeed peradmirable when we consider that
was a guarantee
for their silence
and
affection,
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
130
At whatever hour of the night the members of the order came to La Cognette's, if they knocked in a particular way, Father Cognet, recognizing the signal, rose, lighted the
fire
and the candles, opened the door, and went to the cellar for wine laid in expressly for the order, while his wife cooked them a first-rate supper, either before or after the exploits planned the night before, or during the day.
While Madame Bridau was on her way from Orleans to Issoudun, the Knights of Idlesse were preparing one of their most famous who,
on
An
tricks.
old Spaniard, a prisoner of war,
had remained
at the peace,
left
his
the
first
empty
in
had come
a small trade in seeds,
France, where he carried to
market
to arrive at the meeting-place fixed for the evening
under the tower, and was presently asked " What is doing to-night? "
"Old broke
Fario's cart
my
When
is
nose against
and
foot of the tower,
as has
and had Maxence was
early,
the foot of the tower.
cart at
Richard
a low voice,
in
"I
out there," replied he.
Let us get
it.
we
after that
built the
it
almost
up the knoll
to the
will see."
tower of Issoudun, he founded
it,
been said, on the remains of a basilica which occupied
the site of the
Roman
temple and the Celtic Dun.
These
ruins,
each representing a long series of centuries, formed a large
mound,
full
of the
monuments of
Thus Richard
three ages.
Coeur de Lion's tower stands on the top of a cone sloping equally steep on
zag paths.
may
To
and
sides,
all
represent
its
to be
ascended only by zig-
position in a few words, the tower
be compared to the obelisk of Luxor on
base of the tower of Issoudun, concealing so cal
unknown,
treasures as yet
the side next the town. to pieces and hoisted bit foot of the tower, soldiers
who
is
above eighty
base.
The
archseologi-
feet
high on
In an hour the cart had been taken
by
bit
to the top of the hill at the
by means of something
carried
its
many
like
that of the
the guns up the pass of Saint-Bernani.
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. The
131
was put together again, and all traces of the operait would seem to have been
cart
tions so carefully effaced that
by a stroke of a
carried there by the devil, or
After this
made
thirsty,
wand.
fairy's
great achievement, the knights, being hungry and their
round the table
way
to
La Cognette's, and were soon
seated
low narrow room, laughing by anticipa-
in the
would make when,
tion at the face Fario
at
about ten o'clock
in the morning, he should go to look for his cart,
now
so
loftily elevated.
The
knights, of
The
night.
course,
rolled into one
hundred and
did not play these antics every
Sganarelle,
talents of
sixty-five
practical
and Scapin
Mascarille,
would not have been able
to
invent three In the
jokes a year.
place, circumstances were not always favorable
was too bright, or their
last
:
the
first
moon
prank had been too annoying to
sober folks, or one or another would refuse his cooperation when some relation was the chosen victim. But, though the
meet every night at La Cognette's, they saw each other every day, and were companions in such lawful rascals did not
pleasures as hunting or the vintage in autumn,
and skating
in
winter.
Among
this
group of a score of youths who thus protested some were more
against the social somnolence of the town, especially intimate with their
A man
idol.
younger than
Max
of this
himself.
than the others, or
temper often
made him
infatuates
Now Madame Hochon's
those
two grand-
Hochon and Baruch Borniche, were his devoThe two boys regarded Max as almost a cousin, accept-
sons, Frangois tees.
ing the views of the neighbors as to his left-handed relationship Lousteaus.
to the
Max
was
free
denied them by their grandfather
ments
he
;
training that of
;
took
with his loans of
Hochon
for their
money amuse-
them out shooting, and gave them some over them was paramount to
in fact, his influence
home.
They both were orphans, and, though of
age,
lived under the guardianship of their grandfather, in conse-
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
132
quence of certain circumstances to be explained when the Hochon appears on the scene.
great Monsieur
At
this
moment
their Christian
Francois and Baruch
names
to
make
— we
will call
the story clearer
them by
— were seated,
one on the right hand, and one on the left of Max, at the middle of the supper-table, that was wretchedly lighted by the The fuliginous glimmer of four dips, eight to the pound.
more than eleven of the knights, had drunk a dozen to fifteen bottles of various wines. Baruch, whose name suggests a survival of Calvinism at Issoudun, said to Max at the moment when the wine had set all tongues party, consisting of not
wagging—
"You
are about to be threatened at the very centre
"
" What do you mean by that ? " asked Max. " Why, my grandmother has had a letter from Madame Bridau, her goddaughter, announcing her arrival on a
My
with her son.
day
grandmother arranged two rooms
visit
yester-
for their reception."
" And what emptying it at
is
that to
a gulp,
me?
" said Max, taking up his glass,
and setting
it
down on
the table with a
comical flourish.
Max was now
four-and-thirty.
near him, and cast
its
light
on
One
minating his forehead, and showing his flashing eyes, jet.
and
of the candles stood
his martial countenance, illu-
his hair crisply
This hair stood up strongly and
off his fair
complexion,
waved, and as black as iiaturally, curling
back
brow and temples, and clearly marking the outline of growth which our grandfathers called the five points. Notwithstanding such a striking contrast of black and white, Max had a very sweet face, deriving its charm from its shape, much like that given by Raphael to his Virgins' faces, and from a finely-shaped mouth, on which a gentle smile was apt to linger, a set expression which Max had gradually adopted. The fine color that flushes the faces of the Berrichons added to his genial look, and when he laughed outright he displayed from
his
— A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
133
mouth of a fine lady. and well proportioned, neither stout nor thin. His hands, kept with care, were white and not unshapely, but two-and-thii ty teeth worthy to grace the
He
was
tall
his
feet
were those of the
Roman
suburb, of a foot soldier
He
would have made a fine general of division he had shoulders that would have been the fortune of a field-marshal, and a breast broad enough to display all under the Empire. ;
the orders of Europe.
And
movements.
Intelligence gave purpose to
then, attractive
by nature,
all
his
like almost all
children of a passion, the noble blood of his real father
came
out in him.
" But do you not know. Max," cried a youth at the bottom of the table, the son of a retired surgeon-major named Goddet, the best doctor in the town, " that Madame Hochon's goddaughter
And if she and no doubt to get and then good-by to
Rouget's sister?
is
her son the painter are coming here,
back her share of the old man's fortune, your harvest "
it
is
!
Max face
Then with
frowned.
all
round the
a glance that went from face to
he studied the
table,
effect
panions of this address, and again he said,
on
"What
his
com-
that to
is
me?" " But," Francois began again, " it seems to me that if old Rouget were to alter his will, supposing he has made one in " favor of La Rabouilleuse
\
j
Here Max cut his faithful follower short with these words " When, on my arrival here, I heard you mentioned as one of the cinq-Hochons (cinq-cochons five pigs), as the pun on
=
your name has the
man who
it
— and
called
has had
you so
that so emphatically, that
peated that idiotic this
is
tempt to."
jest, at
the return you in
these thirty years
to shut up,
my
—
I told
dear Francois, and
no one at Issoudun has ever reany rate not in ray presence And
make
speaking of a
it
!
:
you make use of a name of con-
woman you know me
to be attached
—
—
A BACHELOR S ESTABI.ISIIMES^T.
134
Max said so much as whom Francois had just
Never had
woman
of
commonly given on the hulks,
to his intimacy with the
spoken by the nickname
As a former prisoner
to her in Issoudun.
Max had enough
experience, and as major in the
Grenadier Guards he had learned enough of honor, to under-
He
stand the origin of the contempt for him in the town.
had never allowed any one whatever to say a word to him with reference to Mademoiselle Flore Brazier, Jean-Jacques
Rouget's servant-mistress, so vigorously designated by good
Madame Hochon known
as
a
hussy.
Moreover,
to be too touchy to be spoken to
he began
and he never had begun
it,
it.
Max
was well
on the subject unless In short,
it
was too
dangerous to incur Max's anger or displeasure for even his most intimate friends to banter him about La Rabouilleuse.
When something was once said of a connection between Max and this girl in the presence of Major Potel and of Captain Renard, the two officers with whom he lived on terms of equality, Potel had replied
"If he
is
"And
why should
Jean-Jacques Rouget's half-brother, "
he not live with him
?
besides," added Renard, " the girl
king; supposing he loves her, where
young Goddet pay court
to
is
Madame
the
is
a morsel for a
harm
daughter his wife as a reward for such a pel^ance
Does not
!
Fichet
to ?
make
the
"
After this well-merited lecture, Fran9ois could not recover tlie
thread of his ideas, and he was yet more at fault
Max
"
''Well, go on
"Certainly not
"You "Is
when
gently added
it
!
" cried Francois.
are angry for nothing.
Max,"
said
not an understood thing that here, at
we may
all
say what
we
please?
young Goddet.
La
Should we not
Cognette's, all
become
any one of us who remembered outside these walls anything that is said, thought, or done here? All the town speaks of Flore Brazier by the nickname of La the mortal foes of
A BACflELOR'S ESTABLISl/ArEXr.
135
Rabouilleuse ; if Francois let it slip out by accident, is that a " crime against the Order of Idlesse ? " "No," said Max, only against our personal friendship.
But I
I
thought better of
it
;
him to go on." There was utter silence.
I
remembered we were
in Idlesse.
told
**for all
(sensation),
The pause was
so uncomfortable
" go on for him of you" (amazement), "and tell you
Max
for all present that
exclaimed
"I
:
will
what you are thinking " (great sensation).
"You
think that
La Rabouilleuse, Flore Brazier, Daddy Rouget's housekeeper for they call him Fere Rouget an old bachelor, who will never have any children you think, I say, that this woman has supplied me with everything since I came to Issoudun. If I have three hundred francs a month to toss out of the window if I can treat you often as I am doing this evening, and have money to lend to you all, I must get the cash out of Madame Brazier's purse? Well, then, by heaven Flore,
—
!
—
—
!
;
!
Yes, and again yes.
Yes, Mademoiselle Brazier has taken
at the old man's fortune." " From father to son she will have richly earned it," said Goddet in his corner. "You believe," Max went on, after smiling at Goddet's remark, " that I have laid a plot to marry Flore after the old
deadly aim
man's death, and that then I
never heard
till
his sister,
this instant, will
and
this son, of
endanger
my
whom
future pros-
pects?" "That's it," cried Frangois. " So we all think round this table," said Baruch. "Well, be calm, my boys," replied Max; "forewarned
Now,
forearmed.
I
speak to the Knights of Idlesse.
be rid of these Parisians,
you lend
me
a
hand?
If,
is
to
I need the support of the order, will Oh, within the limits we have pre-
scribed for our pranks," he quickly added, seeing a slight hesitancy.
them
?
"
Do
you suppose
Thank God,
I
am
I
want
not a fool
!
to
murder or poison
And
supposing, after
13G
BACHELOR'S ESTABI.ISHMEXT.
yi
chat the Bridaus should
all,
no more than she hear? Fichet,
win the day, and Flore should get be
has, I should
enough
satisfied
with that, do you
to prefer her to
Mademoiselle
I
like her well
if
Mademoiselle Fichet would have anything to say to
me!" Mademoiselle Fichet was the richest heiress of Issoudun ; and the daughter's hand formed a large item in young Goddet's passion for her mother.
Plain speaking
is
so precious, that the eleven knights rose
one man.
as
"You **
are of the right sort,
That
something
is
Max
Max.
like,
" !
We
will
be the knights of
salvation."
"
Down
''
We
with the Bridaus
"After husbands
a
all,
there
And
known
to have three
"
unfettered
"
" !
sweetheart has been
!
" Deuce take and
" !
will bridle the Bridaus
it,
less
is
old Lousteau was fond of
harm
in
Madame
Rouget,
courting a housekeeper free and
" !
if
old Rouget was Max's father
in the family
more or
less, it is all
" !
" Opinions are free " " Hurrah for Max " " Down with cant " !
!
!
"Let
us drink the fair Flore's health
" !
Such were the eleven answers, acclamations, or toasts that from the eleven Knights of Idlesse, the outcome, it
broke
must be owned, of their very low standard of morality. see
now what Max's
grand master of the order.
While inventing
and making himself agreeable families,
We
object had been in establishing himself as practical jokes,
to the youth of the principal
Max hoped to secure their suffrages in the day of He rose with a grace, lifted his glass full
his rehabilitation.
of Bordeaux, and
all
awaited his next speech.
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. " For
the
all
wish you,
I
ill
wives to compare with the
I
of relations, for the present I
only hope you
Flore
fair
am
As
!
137
may
get
all
to the incursion
not alarmed
and
;
later,
we
"
shall see
!
"
We
must not forget Fario's cart
**
Oh,
that
"
I will see to
cried Max.
me know
at
is
safe
" !
enough, by Jove
?
" said Goddet.
the fitting conclusion of that huge joke,"
" Be very early at the market, and come and once when the old fellow comes to look for
let
his
cart."
The
clocks were striking half-past three in the morning;
went away
the knights
silence to find their
in
hugging the wall, and not making a sound, with
list
Max
all
way home, being shod
shoes.
slowly walked up to the Place Saint- Jean in the upper
part of the town, between the Porte Saint-Jean
and the Porte
Major Gilet had dissem-
Villate, the rich citizen's quarter.
bled his fears, but this news had hit him hard.
Since his
below decks he had acquired a power of dissimIn the first great and deep as his depravement.
stay above or
ulation as place,
and above
the forty thousand francs a year in land
all,
owned by Rouget was Brazier, of that you his
mode
the whole of Gilet's passion for Flore
may be
sure
in her future fortune, as based
news
At the same their way was enough time, the
ence.
It
!
may
easily
be seen from
of conduct what confidence she had led him to feel
The
to shake
savings of the
Rouget's name.
on the old bachelor's
Now
if
affection.
that the legitimate heirs were
last
Max's
faith
in
seventeen years
on
Flore's influstill
stood in
the will, which Flore declared
had
long since been executed in her favor, should be revoked, these savings at
vested in the
" In
all
any
rate
might be secured
name of Mademoiselle
these seven
years
that
idiot
spoken a word about nephews and a himself, as he turned
out the
if
they were in-
Brazier.
of a girl has never
sister
!
" said
Rue Marmouse
Max
into the
to
Rue
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
138
"Seven hundred and fifty thousand francs in the hands of ten or twelve different notaries, at Bourges, Vierzon, I'Avcnier.
and Chateauroux, cannot be drawn out or invested in state securities within a week without its being known in a land of
To
*jaw.'
begin
we must pack
witli,
off the relations; but
once quit of them, we must make haste and secure that Well, I must think it over." tune.
Max
was
He
tired.
and crept
key,
morrow my
went into Rouget's house with
noiselessly to
for-
a latch-
"To-
bed, saying to himself,
ideas will be clearer."
not be useless here to explain whence the Sultana
It will
of the Place Saint-Jean had obtained the nickname of Rabouilleuse, and
how
she had gained the
command
La
of the
Rouget establishment.
As he had advanced
in
years, the
old doctor, father of
Madame Bridau, had become aware of stupidity. He then held him very tight, trying
Jean-Jacques and of his son's utter
him but by
to force
dom
;
him
to be
into habits this
which would take the place of
means, without knowing
tame under the
tyrant
first
getting the halter around his neck.
home from lovely
wis-
it,
he was preparing
tliat
miglit succeed in
One
day, as he rode
and vicious old man saw a of the water-meadow by the
his rounds, the wily
little
on the
girl
avenue to Tivoli.
On
skirt
hearing the
horse,
the child
up from the bottom of one of the channels, from the height of Issoudnn, look green dress.
like
rose
wliich,
seen
silver ribbons
on a
Starting up like a naiad, the girl displayed to
the doctor one of the sweetest Virgin heads that ever painter
Old Rouget, who knew the whole neighborThe child, know this miracle of beauty. almost naked, wore a tattered and scanty petticoat full of holes, and made of cheap woolen stuff, striped brown and dreamed
of.
hood, did not
white.
A
slieet
of paper, fastened
served her for a hat.
Under
down by an
osier withy,
this paper, scrawled
over with
'WHERE DO YOU COME FROM,
LITTLE ONE?
YOU BEFORE."
I
NEVER SAW
A BACHELOR'S F.STABT rsiIMRNT. Strokes and O's, fully justifying
its
name
139
of scribbling paper,
was gathered up the most beautiful golden
any
hair that
daughter of Eve could desire, fastened in a twist with a horse's
Her pretty sunburnt bosom, scarcely covered currycomb. by the rags of a handkerchief that had once been a bandana, The petticoat, showed its whiteness below the sunburn. pulled through between the legs and fastened by a coarse pin, looked a great deal like a swimmer's bathing drawers. Her feet and legs, visible through the clear water, were characterized by a slenderness worthy of the sculptors of the middle ages. This fair body, from exposure to the sun, had a rosy hue which was not ungraceful the neck and bosom were worthy to be covered by a silken shawl. Finally, the nymph had blue eyes, shaded by lashes whose expression would have brought a painter or a poet to his knees. The doctor, enough ;
of an anatomist to
know
the arts would be losers
by
a lovely figure, perceived that
if this
all
exquisite person were destroyed
field labor,
"Where do you come
from,
little
one?
I
never saw you
before," said the old doctor of sixty-two.
The scene took "
I
place in the
month of September,
belong to Vatan," replied the
1799.
girl.
On hearing a town accent, an ill-looking man, about two hundred yards away, standing in the upper waters of the stream, raised his head.
"Now, then, what are you at, Flore?" he called "Jabbering there instead of working; all the basketful get off!
"And
out. will
"
what do you come here for from Vatan?" asked
the doctor, not troubling himself about this interruption.
"
I 7'abouille
Rabouiller
is
for
my Uncle
Brazier there."
a local word of Le Berry, which perfectly
describes the process
it is
meant
stirring the waters of a brooklet
of large racket
made
to represent
— the
action of
by beating them with
of the branch of a tree.
The
a sort
crayfish,
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
140
frightened
by
the
commotion, of which they
purpose, hastily escape up stream, and in
which the poacher has placed
into the nets,
to see the
fail
agitation rush
tlieir
proper dis-
at a
Flore Brazier held her racket, or rabouilloir, with the
tance.
unconscious grace of innocence.
" But has your Uncle got leave to fish for crayfish ? " "Well, and aren't we under the Republic one and indivisible ? " shouted Uncle Brazier from where he stood. "
We
know and
are under the Directory," said the doctor
of no law which will
fish
Then he "
No,
within the
my
and
sir,
of the
limits
said to Flore,
"
father
commune
a day
all
is
and
"Would
you
" No, no. charge before
like to
My
?
"
Bourges ; he "
in the fields
the season for crayfish
—
Then
in
goes to
I
harvest-
in winter, I spins."
" You are about twelve, " Yes, sir." fed, nicely dressed,
I
come
of Issoudun."
in the hospital at
Braisne, ever so far, to beat the waters. time, I gleans;
to
your mother living, child
Is
went mad from a sunstroke on his head " How much do you earn ? " " Five sous
" and
;
allow a man from Vatan
I
suppose
?
"
come with me?
You
niece has got to stay wi' me.
God and man,"
come down to his niece and dian, I am." The doctor preserved his
said
shall
be well
"
have pretty shoes
Uncle
the doctor.
gravity,
I
have her in
Brazier,
"
I
am
suppressing
who had her guar-
a smile,
which would certainly have been too much for any one else Tliis " guardian " had on a at the siglit of Uncle Brazier. peasant's broad hat, ruined by the sun and rain, riddled like a cabbage leaf on which
many
caterpillars have resided,
and
sewn up with white cotton. Under this hat was a dark hollow face, in which mouth, nose, and eyes were four darker spots.
His worn jacket was
his trousers
were of sacking.
like a piece of
patchwork, and
A BACHELOirS ESTABLISHMENT.
141
"I am Doctor Rouget," said the physician; "and, since you are the child's guardian, bring her to my house, Place it will not be a bad day's work lor you or for Saint-Jean ;
her either."
And
without another word, feeling quite sure that he should
Uncle Brazier in due course with the pretty Rabouilleusc, Doctor Rouget spurred his horse on the road to Issoudun. And, in fact, just as he was sitting down to dinner, his cook announced Citoyen and Citoyenne Brazier. " Sit down," said the doctor to the uncle and niece. Flore and her guardian, both barefoot, looked round the and this was why doctor's dining-room with eyes amazed see
:
;
The
house, inherited by Rouget from old Descoings, stands
in the
middle of one side of the Place Saint-Jean, a long and
very narrow square planted with a few sickly-looking lime trees.
The houses
here are better built than in any other part
of the town, and Descoings'
is
one of the
best.
This house,
windows on the front towards the square, on the second floor, and below them a carriage gate into the courtyard, behind which the garden lies. Under the archway of this carriage gate is a door into a large room with two windows to the street. The kitchen is behind this room, but cut off by a staircase leading to the second floor and attics above. At an angle with the kitchen are a woodhouse, a shed where the washing is done, stabling for two horses, and a coach-house; and above them are lofts for corn, hay, and oats, besides a room where the doctor's manservant facing Monsieur Hochon's, has three
slept.
The room,
so
much admired by
the
her uncle, was decorated with carved
little
wood
peasant-girl
and
in the style exe-
cuted under Louis XV., and painted gray, and a handsome
marble chimney-piece, above which Flore could see herself a large glass reaching to the ceiling, gilt frame.
On
and
the panels, at intervals,
set in a
in
carved and
hung a few
pictures,
the spoil of the abbeys of Deols, of Issoudun, of Saint-Gildas,
A BACHELOR'S ESIABLISHMENT.
142
of
La
Free,
of Chezal-Benoit, of Saint-Sulpice, and of the
convents of Bourges and Issoudun, which had formerly been enriched by the liberality of kings and of the faithful with precious gifts and the finest works of the Renaissance.
among
Thus,
by Descoings and inherited by Rouget, there was a Holy Family by Albano, a Saint Jerome by Domenichino, a Head of Christ by Gian Bellini, a Virgin by Leonardo da Vinci, Christ bearing the Cross by Titian, from the Marchese di Belabre's collection he wlio stood a siege and had his head cut off under Louis XIIL; a Lazarus by Veronese, a Marriage of the Virgin by the Priest of Genoa, two church pictures by Rubens, and a copy from Perugino by Perugino himself, or by Raphael ; finally, two Correggios and The Descoings had chosen these from an Andrea del Sarto. the pictures preserved
—
among
three hundred, the spoils of churches, not in the least
knowing
their value,
and selecting them
solely for their better
condition.
Several had not merely magnificent frames, but
were under
glass.
It
was the beauty of the frames, and the
value which the panes seemed to suggest, that had led to
tlieir
choice.
Thus the so
much
furniture of the
room was not devoid of
the luxury
prized in our days, though not at that time valued at
Issoudun.
The clock standing on
two superb
silver chandeliers
the chimney-shelf between
was distinguished 'by a solemn
The armwood, fitted with worsted-work done by devout ladies of rank, would be highly prized in these days, for Between the two they all bore coronets and coats-of-arms. magnificence that betrayed the hand of Boule. chairs in carved
windows stood a handsome console, brought from some chateau, and on it an enormous Chinese jar, in which the doctor kept his tobacco.
Neither Rouget, nor his son, nor the cook, nor the manservant took the least care of these treasures.
a fireplace of beautiful workmanship, and the
were variegated with verdigris.
A
They gilt
spit into
mouldings
pretty chandelier, partly
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
143
of porcelain, was speckled like the ceiling, with black spots,
The Descoings flies were at home there. had hung the windows with brocade curtains, stripped from To the left of the door a cabinet the bed of some abbot. showing that the
worth some thousands of francs served as a sideboard. "Now, Fanchette," said the doctor to his cook, "bring two glasses, and fetch us something good." Fanchette, a sturdy country servant, who was regarded as superior even to
La Cognette and
the best cook in Issoudun,
flew with an alacrity that testified to the doctor's despotic rule,
and also to some curiosity on her part. " What is an acre of vineland worth the doctor, pouring out a glass of wine
in
your parts?" said
for Brazier,
"A
hundred crowns in hard cash." "Well, leave your niece here as maidservant; she shall have a hundred crowns for wages, and you, as her guardian, shall take the
"
money
"Every year?"
said Brazier,
opening
his eyes to the size
of saucers.
"
I leave
" She
is
the matter to your conscience," replied the doctor.
an orphan.
Till she
is
eighteen Flore will have none
of the money." " She is goin' on for twelve," said the uncle ; " that makes But she is sweetly pretty, as it up to six acres of vineland.
mild as a lamb, very strong, very quick, very obedient. Poor creetur, she was the apple of his eye to my poor brother." " And I will pay a year in advance," said the doctor. "Lord A'mighty, make it two years, and us'll consider it
She
settled.
place, for
only
me
my
will
be better
with you than
down
that purtects her, poor dear little creetur
cent as a new-born babe
On
off"
wife whacks her, she can't abide her.
—
at
our
There's as inno-
" !
hearing this speech, the doctor, struck by the word
innocent, signed to Uncle Brazier, and led him out into the courtyard, and
thence into the
garden, leaving the
little
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
144
Rabouilleuse
looking
Jean-Jacques,
who
lessly related her
at
the
good job
between Fanchette and
whom
she
art-
meeting with the doctor.
"Well, honey, good-by," kissing Flore on
table
cross-questioned her, and to
said
Uncle Brazier on
"You may
the forehead.
in leaving
you with
this
his return,
thank
me
for a
kind and generous father
You've got to obey him like as you would me. Be a very good girl, and do what he tells you." "Get the room over mine ready," said the doctor to Fan"This little Flore, who is certainly well named, will chette. sleep there from this evening. To-morrow we will send for a shoemaker and a needlewoman. Now, lay a place for her she will keep us company." at once of the poor.
;
That evening nothing was talked of in Issoudun but the introduction of a little "rabouilleuse" into Doctor Rouget's The nickname stuck to Mademoiselle Brazier in household. this land of mocking spirits, before, during, and after her rise to fortune.
The doctor aimed, no doubt, XV. did on a de Romans but he set to work way, what Louis ;
a
at
doing
for Flore, in a small
large scale for Mademoiselle
too late.
XV. was
Louis
young man, while the doctor had arrived
still
at the verge of old
age.
From girl
twelve years old to fourteen the charming peasant-
enjoyed unmixed happiness.
Nicely dressed, in infinitely Issoudun, she had a
better clothes than the richest miss in
gold watch and trinkets, given her by the doctor to encourage her in her studies, for she had a master to teach her reading, writing, and account-keeping. But the almost animal life led by the peasantry had given Flore such an aversion for the bitter cup of learning, that the doctor got no farther with her
education.
His intentions with regard ing, teaching,
to this girl
and training with a care
pathetic, because he
whom
that
he was polish-
was
all
the
more
had been supposed incapable of tender-
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
145
were variously interpreted by the vulgar gossips of the
ness,
town, whose
tattle
gave
rise, as in
the matter of Agathe's and
Max's parentage, to serious mistakes.
It is
not easy for the
population of a ».own to disentangle the truth from a thousand conjectures
among
in
the
of contradictory comments, and
midst
the hypotheses to which a single fact gives
all
In the provinces, as formerly
Provence
and
at
among
rise.
the politicians of ia petite
everything must be accounted for, everybody knows everything. But each indi-
at the Tuileries,
last
vidual clings to the view of affairs that he prefers
only true one, he can prove exclusively.
it,
and believes
his
;
that
own
Hence, notwitlistanding the unscreened
the espionage of a country town, the truth
is
is
the
version life
and
often obscured,
and can be detected only by the impartiality of the historian, or of a superior mind looking down from a higher point of view.
" What do you suppose child of
that old ape wants, at his age, of a
fifteen?" said one and another, two years after
Flore's arrival.
"What indeed?"
replied a third;
"his high days are
long since past and gone."
"
My
dear fellow, the doctor
is
disgusted with his idiot of a
and he cannot get over his hatred of Agathe ; in that dilemma perhaps he has been such a good boy these two years and he might have a boy by past in order to marry the girl her, strong and sturdy and wide-awake like Max," observed son,
;
a wisehead.
" Get along life
man
!
Do
you suppose that
after leading such
a
Lousteau and Rouget did between 1770 and 1787, a of sixty-two is likely to have children ? Not a bit of it
as
:
Old Testament, if only from a medical point of view, and he knows how King David warmed himself in his old age. That is all, my good the old wretch has read his
fellow."
" They say 10
that
Brazier,
when he
is
fuddled, boasts at
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
146
Vatan
that he stole the child," cried
one of those people who
prefer to believe the worst.
me!
"Bless Issoudun
neighbor,
and
what
won't
say
folks
From 1800
to
1805, for
five
the doctor
years,
had the
pleasure of educating Flore without the worry which
Romans
moiselle de
is
The
little
illeuse" was so happy, comparing the position she life
Made-
said to have given to Louis the Well-
beloved by her ambitions and pretensions. with the
at
"
?
" rabou-
now was
in
she would have led with her uncle, that she sub-
mitted, no doubt, to her master's requirements, as an eastern slave does.
With
all
pists, the
virtues
;
respect to the writers of idyls
and
to philanthro-
sons of the soil have but vague notions of certain their scruples have their root in self-interest, not in
any feeling
for the
good and beautiful
forward to poverty, to incessant
toil
brought up to look and want, the prospect ;
makes them regard everything as allowable that can rescue them from the hell of hunger and everlasting labor, especially If there are exceptions, they if it is not prohibited by law. Virtue, socially speaking, is mated with ease, and are rare. Flore Brazier was, therefore, an begins with education. object of envy to every girl for six leagues round Issoudun, though
in the
eye of religion her conduct was in the highest
degree reprehensible. Flore, born in 1787, was brought
up amid the Saturnalia of
1793 and 1798, whose lurid light was reflected on a land bereft of priesthood, worship, altars, or religious ceremonies,
where marriage was a civil contract, and where revolutionary axioms left a deep impression, especially at Issoudun, where rebellion is traditional. Catholic worship was hardly re-established in 1802. priests; even in
The Emperor had some difficulty in 1S06 many a parisli in France was
finding still
in
widowhood, so slowly could a clergy decimated by the scaffold be reinstated afier such violent dispersal. Hence, in
A BACHELOR S ES lABLISHMENT.
147
1802, there was nothing to accuse Flore but her own conIn Uncle Brazier's ward was not conscience likely
science.
to prove
weaker than
interest ?
Though
the cynical doctor's
age led him, as there is every reason to suppose, to respect this maiden of fifteen, she was not the less regarded as a very
However, some people
wide-awake young person.
insisted
innocence in the cessation of the doctor's care and kindness; for the last two years of his life
on finding a
certificate of
he treated her with more than coldness. Old Rouget had killed enough people to be able to foresee His notary, finding him on his death-bed, his own end.
wrapped in the cloak of encyclopedist philosophy, urged him to do something for the young girl, then seventeen years old.
"Very good, make her of The reply is characteristic
age, emancipate her," said he.
of this old man,
who never
failed
to point his sarcasm with an allusion to the profession of the man he was answering. By veiling his evil deeds under a
witticism he obtained forgiveness for them in a part of the
world where wit always wins the day, especially when it The notary heard intelligent self-interest.
backed up by
this speech the
concentrated hatred of a
man whom
is
in
nature
had balked of an intended debauch, and his revenge on the This opinion was, to innocent object of his senile affection. some extent, confirmed by the doctor's obduracy; he left nothing to La Rabouilleuse, saying with a bitter smile, " Her beauty
wealth enough
is
" !
when
the notary again pressed
the matter.
Jean-Jacques Rouget did not mourn for the old man, but The doctor had made his son very unhappy, espe-
Flore did.
cially since
he had come of age, which was
he had given the
which
is
little
peasant-girl
the ideal of laboring folk.
in
1791
;
whereas
the material happiness
When,
after the old
man
was buried, Fanchette said to Flore, "Well, what is to become of you now that monsieur is gone?" Jean-Jacques' eyes
beamed, and
for the first
time in his
life his
stolid face lighted
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
148
up, seemed to shine with a flash of thought, and expressed a feeling.
" Leave her with me," said he
to
Fanchette,
who was
clearing the table. Flore, at seventeen,
women
of the world
still
had
that refinement of figure
and
beauty which had bewitched the doctor;
face, that elegance of
know how
to preserve
it,
but in a peasant-
At the same become stout, which comes to all handsome countrywomen when they do not lead a life of toil and girl
it
fades as swiftly as the flowers of the field.
time, the tendency to
privation in the open fields and sunshine, was already notice-
Her
able in Flore.
bust was large, her round, white shoulders
were richly moulded and finely joined to a throat that already
showed
wrinkles.
fat
and her chin "Flore,"
But the shape of her face was
still
pure,
as yet delicately cut.
said Jean-Jacques in agitated
quite used to this house?
tones,
"you
are
"
"Yes, Monsieur Jacques."
On
the very verge of a declaration, the heir
tongue
felt his
by the remembrance of the dead man but now laid in his grave, and wondered to what lengths his father's benevolence might have gone. Flore, looking at her new master, and incapable of imagining his simplicity, waited for some minutes tied
for Jean-Jacques to
knowing what
proceed
;
but she presently
education she might have had from the doctor,
day before she understood the character of this, in
At
left
a few words,
is
the history
his father's death Jacques,
it
him, not
Whatever
to think of his obstinate silence.
was many a
his son, of
whom
:
now
tliirty-seven
years old,
was as timid and as submissive to parental discipline as any boy of twelve. This timidity will account for his childhood, youth, and life to such readers as might not otherwise believe in such a character, or the facts of a story
mon,
alas
!
in
every rank of
life
— even
Sophie Dawes was taken up by the
last
which
among
is
com-
princes, for
of the Cond^s in a
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
There are two
worse position than that of La Rabouilleuse. kinds of timidity
—
mind and
timidity of
149
timidity
nerves; physical timidity and moral timidity.
Each
of the is
inde-
The body may be frightened and pendent of the other. quake while the mind remains calm and bold, and vice versa. This
say,
in the
"He
is
When
eccentricities of conduct.
same man he
This utter timidity
all his life.
we
many
the key to
is
both kinds meet
imbecile."
is
will
be good
for
nothing
that of the person of
Still, this
whom
imbecility sometimes
covers great qualities though suppressed.
To
this
double
in-
do we owe certain monks who have lived in ecstasy. This unhappy moral and physical disposition may be produced by the perfection of the bodily organs and of the soul, as well as by certain defects, as yet not fully studied. firmity perhaps
Jean-Jacques' timidity arose from a certain torpor of his
which a first-rate tutor, or a surgeon like Desplein, would have roused. In him, as in cretins, the sensual side of love had absorbed the strength and energy which his intelligence lacked, though he had sense enough to conduct himself faculties,
through
life.
ideal, in
which
timidity.
He
The
violence of his passsion, stripped of the
blossoms
it
in
other young men, added to his
never could make up his mind to go courting,
any woman in Issoudun. Now no young girl or woman could make advances to an undersized man, with a vulgar face, which two prominent greengooseberry eyes would have made ugly enough, if pinched features and a sallow complexion had not made him look old to use a familiar expression, to
before his time. the poor boy, as
In
fact,
woman
annihilated
his passion as
vehemently
the vicinity of a
who was goaded by
he was bridled by the few notions he had derived from his Halting between two equal forces, he did not
education.
know what rified
to say,
was he
at
and dreaded
to be asked a question, so ter-
having to reply.
Desire,
which generally
loosens a man's tongue, froze his.
So Jean-Jacques lived
solitary
and sought
solitiide,
not
A' BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
150
finding
irksome.
it
The doctor
them, the disastrous results of
this
saw, too late to remedy temperament and character.
He would gladly have seen his son married but as that would have been to subject him to a rule which would soon ;
-Would not that be management of a stranger, an unknown woman ? Now he well knew how difficult it is to foresee, from a study of a young girl, exactly what the woman's character may become. And so, while looking about him for a daughter-in-law whose education or whose be despotic, he could not but hesitate. to
hand over
his fortune to the
ideas should be a sufficient guarantee, he tried to guide his
hoped
Failing intelligence, he
son into the paths of avarice.
He
thus to give this simpleton a guiding instinct.
began br
accustoming him to a mechanical existence, and gave him fixed notions as to the investment of
money
then he spare(S
;
him the chief difficulties of the management of a landed estate by leaving all his lands in capital order, and let on long leases.
And
paramount penetration
for all that, the principal fact,
in
poor creature's
this
—Jean-Jacques' was
life,
which was
escaped the
to b''
doctor*-:;
passionately in love with
\jr
Rabouilleuse.
Nothing could, indeed, be more natural. Flore was the woman with whom the young man came in contact, the only woman he ever saw at his ease, gazing on her in secret, and watching her from hour to hour for him Flore was the only
;
light of his father's house
him the only
;
without knowing
pleasures that gilded his youth.
it,
she afforded
Far from being
jealous of his father, he was delighted by the education he
bestowed on Flore able it
woman
:
was not the wife he needed an approach-
wlio would need no courting
observed, brings insight with
telligence to simpletons, fools,
youth.
In the least
instinct which, in
its
human
it
;
and
soul
persistency,
it
?
idiots, especially
we always is
For passion, be
can give a sort of infind the
during
animal
like a thought.
Next day, Flore, who had meditated on
her
master's
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. silence,
some
expected
important
151
communication
;
but,
though he hovered about her, looking at her with covert, At amorous glances, Jean-Jacques found nothing to say. last,
at
dessert,
master
the
began again as he had begun
yesterday.
"You
are comfortable
here?" he asked
Flore.
"Yes, Monsieur Jean." "Well, stay then." " Thank you, Monsieur Jean." This strange state of things lasted for three weeks. night,
when not a sound broke
the stillness, Flore,
One
waking
by chance, heard the regular breathing of a man at her door, and was frightened at finding Jean-Jacques lying on the mat like a dog, having, no doubt, made some little hole at the bottom of the door to see into the room. " He is in love with me," thought she " but he will get ;
the rheumatism
at this
game."
Next day Flore looked
at
her master in a marked way.
This speechless and almost instinctive love had touched her; she no longer thought the poor simple creature so hideous, in spite of the ulcerlike spots
on
his temples
and forehead,
the terrible rr>ronal of vitiated blood.
"You do
not want to go back to the open
pose?" " Why do you ask? " "I wanted to know
when they were
said Jean-Jacques,
fields, I
sup-
alone.
said she, look'ng at him.
" replied Rouget, turning the color
of a boiled lobster.
" Do you want me to go? " she asked. " No, mademoiselle." "Well, then, what is it you want to know? •oome reason
"Yes,
I
"
wanted
"What?"
to
know
"
said Flore.
" You would not tell me." " Yes, on my word as an honest woman."
You have
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT.
152
"Ah!
That
are an honest
is
"You
the point," said Rouget, alarmed.
woman? "
" By heaven " " Yes— really ? " " Since I say it !
"Come, now. when uncle?
you "
"A
stood
"
Are you the same now there
pretty question,
barefoot,
brought
my word!"
on
you
as
here
were
by your
exclaimed
Flore,
reddening.
The again.
head
heir bent his
Flore, astounded
and did not look up
in silence,
her reply, so
finding
at
ing to the man, received with such consternation,
flatterleft
the
room.
Three days
later, at
the same hour, for they both battle, Flore
to regard the dessert as the scene of first
to
say to her
anything?
master,
with
me
for
"
" No, mademoiselle," he trary
"Are you vexed
seemed was the
replied.
" No
on the con-
"
" You seemed so much annoyed the other day at hearing " was an honest girl " No; I only wanted to know but you would not tell
that I
me."
On my honor," said she, " "The whole truth about "
I will tell
my
you the whole truth." " said he in a
father
choked voice.
"Your father," said she, looking straight into "was a good fellow; he loved a laugh
eyes,
her master's
Well, a
Poor dear man, it was not for want of will. And then he had some grievance against you, I don't know what, and he had intentions oh unfortunate intentions. He often made me laugh; well that is all. And what then?" little
—
!
!
"
"Well, then, Flore," said the heir, taking the " my father was nothing to you
since
girl's
hand,
—
;
A BACHELOR'S ESTABLTSHMENT.
153
"Why,
what did you suppose he was to me ? " she exclaimed, in the tone of a girl offended by an insulting suggestion.
"Well, then, listen to me." " He was my benefactor, that was all. Ah he would have " but liked to make me his wife "But," said Rouget, taking her hand again, for she had pulled it away, "since he was nothing of the kind, you can " here with me ? !
stay
"If you
like," said she, looking
down.
"No, no. It is if you like, _>'
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