Luxury-Gluttony Part 6

His keenest suffering had come from the va.s.salage, the servitude, and complete effacement of self in which he had been held for so long a time under the tyranny of his opulent employers. Now, his pleasure was to impose this servitude on others,--on some, by exercising their natural servility, on others, by compelling them to submit to hard necessity, thus symbolising in himself the almighty power of money, holding all who came within his grasp in absolute slavery, from the petty merchant whom he commanded to the prince of royal blood who humbled himself to obtain a loan. This awful despotism, which the man who lends exercises over the man whose necessities force him to borrow, Pascal wielded and enjoyed with all the refinement and delicacy of an incredible barbarity. We hear often of the power of Satan over souls. M. Pascal was able to destroy or torture as many and more souls than Satan.

Once in his power, through credit, loan, or partnership,--often granted with a show of perfect good-nature, and not unfrequently offered with a duplicity which looked like generosity, though always on solid security,--a man belonged to himself no longer; he had, as was commonly said, sold his soul to Satan-Pascal.

He calculated and arranged his bargains with a skill which seemed infernal.

A commercial crisis would arrive,--capital not be found, or at such exorbitant interest that merchants, at other times solvent and prompt in payment, saw themselves in extreme embarra.s.sment, often upon the brink of failure. M. Pascal, perfectly instructed and certain of covering his advances by merchandise or property, granted or proposed a.s.sistance at enormous interest, with the invariable condition that he was to be reimbursed at his will, hastening to add that he would not exercise his right, inasmuch as his own advantage would be gained by keeping his money at interest; but by habit or caprice, as he argued, he always held to this express condition, to be reimbursed at his will.

The alternative was cruel indeed for the unhappy ones whom Satan-Pascal tempted: on one hand, the ruin of a prosperous industry; on the other, an unexpected aid, so easily offered that it might pa.s.s for a generous service. The impossibility of finding capital, even at ruinous rates, and the confidence which M. Pascal knew how to inspire, rendered the temptation most powerful, a temptation all the more seductive by the insinuating kindness of the multi-millionaire, who came, as he declared, as a financial providence to the a.s.sistance of honest, labouring people.

In a word, everything conspired to stifle suspicion; they accepted. From that time Pascal possessed them.

Beset by the fear of an immediate demand for repayment which must reduce them to a desperate condition from which they could not hope to rise, they had but one aim, to please M. Pascal, but one dread, to displease M. Pascal, who was master of their fate.

It not infrequently happened that our Satan did not at first use his power, and, by a refinement of wicked malice, would play the part of a kind man, a benefactor, taking a fiendish pleasure in hearing the benedictions with which his victims loaded him, leaving them for a long time in the error which led them to adore their benevolent friend; then, by degrees, according to his humour, he revealed himself slowly, never employing threats, rudeness, or pa.s.sion, but, on the contrary, affecting an insinuating sweetness which in itself became frightful. Circ.u.mstances the most insignificant and puerile offered him a thousand means of tormenting the persons he held in his absolute power.

For instance, he would arrive at the house of one of his va.s.sals, so to speak. Perhaps the man was going with his wife and children to some family reunion, long before arranged.

"I have come to dine with you without ceremony to-day, my friends," this Satan would say.

"My G.o.d, M. Pascal! how sorry we are! To-day is my mother's birthday, and you see we are just getting ready to go to dine with her. It is an anniversary we never fail to celebrate."

"Ah! that is very provoking, as I hoped to spend my evening with you."

"And do you think it is less annoying to us, dear M. Pascal?"

"Bah! you could very easily give up a family reunion for me. After all, your mother would not die if you were not there."

"Oh, my dear M. Pascal, that is impossible! It would be the first time since our marriage that we failed in this little family ceremony."

"Come, you surely will do that for me."

"But, M. Pascal--"

"I tell you, you will do that for your good M. Pascal, will you not?"

"We would like to do it with all our heart, but--"

"What! you refuse me that--me--the first thing I have ever asked of you?"

And M. Pascal put such an emphasis on the word _me_ that the whole family suddenly trembled; they felt, as is vulgarly said, their master, and knowing of the strange caprice of the capitalist, they submitted sadly rather than offend the dreadful man upon whom their fate depended.

They gave up the visit and improvised a dinner. They tried to smile, to have a cheerful air, and not to appear to regret the family festivity which they had renounced. But soon another fear begins to oppress their hearts; the dinner is becoming more and more sad and constrained. M.

Pascal professes a sort of pathetic astonishment, as he complains with a sigh:

"Come, now, I have interfered with your plans; you feel bitterly toward me, alas! I see it."

"Ah, M. Pascal!" cried the unhappy family, more and more disquieted, "how can you conceive such a thought?"

"Oh, I am not mistaken. I see it, I feel it, because my heart tells me so. Eh, my G.o.d! just to think of it! It is always a great wrong to put friendship to the proof, even in the smallest things, because they serve sometimes to measure great ones. I,--yes, I,--who counted on you as true and good friends!--yet it was a deception, perhaps."

And Satan-Pascal put his hand over his eyes, got up from the table, and went out of the house with a grieved and afflicted air, leaving the miserable inmates in unspeakable anguish, because he no longer believed in their friendship, and thought them ungrateful,--he who could in one moment plunge them in an abyss of woe by demanding the money he had so generously offered. The grat.i.tude that he expected from them was their only a.s.surance of his continued a.s.sistance.

We have insisted on these circ.u.mstances, trifling as they may seem perhaps, but whose result was so cruel, because we wished to give an example of how M. Pascal tortured his victims.

Let one judge after that of the degrees of torture to which he was capable of subjecting them, when so insignificant a fact as we have mentioned offered such food to his calculating cruelty.

He was a monster, it must be admitted.

There are Neros, unhappily, everywhere and in every age, but who would dare say that Pascal could have reached such a degree of perversity without the pernicious influences and terrible resentments which his soul, irritated by a degrading servitude, had nourished for so long a time?

The word reprisal does not excuse the cruelty of this man; it explains itself. Man rarely becomes wicked without a cause. Evil owes its birth to evil.

M. Pascal thus portrayed, we will precede him by one hour to the home of M. Charles Dutertre.

CHAPTER V.

The factory of M. Dutertre, devoted to the manufacture of locomotives for railroads, occupied an immense site in the Faubourg St. Marceau, and its tall brick chimneys, constantly smoking, designated it at a great distance.

M. Dutertre and his family lived in a small house separated from the workshops by a large garden.

At the moment we introduce the reader into this modest dwelling, an air of festivity reigned there; every one in the house seemed to be occupied with hospitable preparation. A young and active servant had just finished arranging the table in the middle of the dining-room, the window of which looked out upon the garden, and which bordered upon a small kitchen separated from the landing-place by a gla.s.s part.i.tion, panes set in an unpolished frame. An old cook woman went to and fro with a bewildered air in this culinary laboratory, from which issued whiffs of appetising odours, which sometimes pervaded the dining-room.

In the parlour, furnished with walnut covered in yellow Utrecht velvet and curtains of white muslin, other preparations were going on. Two vases of white porcelain, ornamenting the chimneypiece, had just been filled with fresh flowers; between these two vases, replacing the ornamental clock, was a miniature locomotive under a gla.s.s globe, a veritable masterpiece of mechanism and ironmongery. On the black pedestal of this trinket of iron, copper, and steel one could see engraved the words:

_To M. Charles Dutertre._ _His grateful workmen._

Teniers or Gerard Dow would have made a charming picture of the family group in this parlour.

A blind old man, with a venerable and melancholy face encircled by long white hair falling over his shoulders, was seated in an armchair, holding two children on his knees,--a little boy of three years old and a little girl of five,--two angels of beauty and grace.

The little boy, dark and rosy, with great black eyes as soft as velvet, every now and then would look at his pretty blue casimir shirt and white trousers with the utmost satisfaction, but was most of all delighted with his white silk stockings striped with crimson, and his black morocco shoes with ribbon bows.

The little girl, named Madeleine for an intimate friend of the mother who was G.o.dmother to the child, was fair and rosy, with lovely blue eyes, and wore a pretty white dress. Her shoulders and arms were bare, and her legs were only half covered by dainty Scotch socks. To tell how many dimples were in those shoulders, on those arms, and in those fat little cheeks, so red and fresh and smooth, would have required a mother's computation, and she could only have learned by the number of kisses she gave them.

Standing by and leaning on the back of the old blind man's chair, Madame Dutertre was listening with a mother's interest and earnestness to the chirping of the little warblers that the grandfather held on his knees, talking of this and of that, in that infantine jargon which mothers know how to translate with such rare sagacity.

Madame Sophie Dutertre was only twenty-five years old, and, although slightly marked by smallpox, had unusually regular and beautiful features. It would be difficult to imagine a more gracious or attractive countenance, a more refined or agreeable smile, which was the ideal of sweetness and amiability. Superb hair, teeth of pearl, a dazzling complexion, and an elegant stature rendered her a charming presence under any circ.u.mstances, and when she raised her large, bright, limpid eyes to her husband, who was then standing on the other side of the blind old grandfather, love and maternity gave to this tender glance an expression at the same time pathetic and pa.s.sionate, for the marriage of Sophie and Charles Dutertre had been a marriage of love.

The only fault--if a fault could be said to pertain to Sophie Dutertre--was, as careful and fastidious as she was about the attire of her children, she gave very little attention to her own toilet. An unbecoming, badly made stuff dress disparaged her elegant figure; her little foot was by no means irreproachably shod, and her beautiful brown hair was arranged with as little taste as care.

Frank and resolute, intelligent and kind, such was the character of M.

Dutertre, then about twenty-eight years old. His keen eye, full of fire, and his robust, yet slender figure announced an active, energetic nature. A civil engineer, a man of science and study, as capable of solving difficult problems with the pen as of handling the file and the iron hammer; knowing how to command as well as to execute; honouring and elevating manual labour and sometimes practising it, whether by example or encouragement; scrupulously just; loyal and confiding almost to temerity; paternal, firm and impartial toward his numerous workmen; possessing an antique simplicity of manner; enthusiastic in labour, and in love with his creatures of iron and copper and steel, his life was divided between the three great things which const.i.tute the happiness of man,--love, family, and labour.

Charles Dutertre had only one sorrow, the blindness of his father, and yet this affliction was the opportunity for such tender devotion, such delicate and constant care, that Dutertre and his wife endeavoured to console themselves in the thought that it enabled them to prove to the old man their affection and fidelity. Notwithstanding the preparations for the approaching festivity, Charles Dutertre had postponed shaving until the next day, and his working suit which he kept on showed here and there upon the gray cloth spots and stains and burns which gave evidence of his contact with the forge. His forehead was high and n.o.ble-looking, his hands, which were white and nervous, were somewhat blackened by the smoke of the workshops. He seemed to forget, in his laborious and untiring activity, or in the refreshing repose which succeeded it, that personal care which some men very properly never renounce.