The Brotherhood of Consolation Part 18

Through the door of a third chamber, which the old man had left open, G.o.defroid beheld two cots of painted wood, like those of the cheapest boarding-schools, each with a straw bed and a thin mattress, on which there was but one blanket. A small iron stove like those that porters cook by, near which lay a few squares of peat, would alone have shown the poverty of the household without the help of other details.

Advancing a step or two, G.o.defroid saw utensils such as the poorest persons use,--earthenware jugs, and pans in which potatoes floated in dirty water. Two tables of blackened wood, covered with books and papers, stood before the windows that looked out upon the rue Notre-Dame des Champs, and indicated the nocturnal occupations of father and son.

On each of the tables was a flat iron candlestick, such as are used by the very poor, and in them G.o.defroid noticed tallow-candles of the kind that are sold at eight to the pound.

On a third table glittered two forks and spoons and another little spoon of silver-gilt, together with plates, bowls, and cups of Sevres china, and a silver-gilt knife and fork in an open case, all evidently for the service of the sick woman.

The stove was lighted; the water in the copper was steaming slightly.

A painted wooden closet or wardrobe contained, no doubt, the linen and clothing of Monsieur Bernard's daughter. On the old man's bed G.o.defroid noticed that the habiliments he had worn the night before lay spread as a covering. The floor, evidently seldom swept, looked like that of a boy's cla.s.s-room. A six-pound loaf of bread, from which some slices had been cut, was on a shelf above the table. Here was poverty in its last stages, poverty resolutely accepted with stern endurance, making shift with the lowest and poorest means. A strong and sickening odor came from this room, which was rarely cleaned.

The antechamber, in which G.o.defroid stood, was at any rate decent, and he suspected that it served to conceal the horrors of the room in which the grandfather and the grandson lived. This antechamber, hung with a checked paper of Scotch pattern, held four walnut chairs, a small table, a colored engraving of the Emperor after Horace Vernet, also portraits of Louis XVIII., Charles X., and Prince Poniatowski, no doubt the friend of Monsieur Bernard's father-in-law. The window was draped with white calico curtains edged with red bands and fringe.

G.o.defroid watched for Nepomucene, and when the latter made his next trip with wood signed to him to stack it very gently in Monsieur Bernard's antechamber; then (a perception which proved some progress in our initiate) he closed the door of the inner lair that Madame Vauthier's slave might not see the old man's squalor.

The antechamber was just then enc.u.mbered with three plant-stands filled with plants; two were oblong, one round, all three were of a species of ebony and of great elegance; even Nepomucene took notice of them and said as he deposited the wood:--

"Hey! ain't they pretty? They must have cost a good bit!"

"Jean! don't make so much noise!" called Monsieur Bernard from his daughter's room.

"Did you hear that?" whispered Nepomucene to G.o.defroid. "He's cracked, for sure, that old fellow."

"You don't know what you may be at his age."

"Yes, I do know," responded Nepomucene, "I shall be in the sugar-bowl."

"The sugar-bowl?"

"Yes, they'll have made my bones into charcoal by that time; I often see the carts of the refineries coming to Montsouris for charcoal; they tell me they make sugar of it." And he departed after another load of wood, satisfied with this philosophical reflection.

G.o.defroid discreetly withdrew to his own rooms, closing Monsieur Bernard's door behind him. Madame Vauthier, who during this time had been preparing her new lodger's breakfast, now came up to serve it, attended by Felicite. G.o.defroid, lost in reflection, stared into his fire. He was absorbed in meditation on this great misery which contained so many different miseries, and yet within which he could see the ineffable joys of the many triumphs of paternal and filial love; they were gems shining in the blackness of the pit.

"What romances, even those that are most famous, can equal such realities?" he thought. "What a life it will be to relieve the burden of such existences, to seek out causes and effects and remedy them, calming sorrows, helping good; to incarnate one's own being in misery; to familiarize one's self with homes like that; to act out constantly in life those dramas which move us so in fiction! I never imagined that good could be more interesting, more piquant than vice."

"Is monsieur satisfied with his breakfast?" asked Madame Vauthier, who now, with Felicite's a.s.sistance, brought the table close to G.o.defroid.

G.o.defroid then saw a cup of excellent _cafe au lait_ with a smoking omelet, fresh b.u.t.ter, and little red radishes.

"Where the devil did you get those radishes?" he asked.

"They were given me by Monsieur Cartier," answered Madame Vauthier; "and I make a present of them to monsieur."

"And what are you going to ask me for such a breakfast daily?"

"Well now, monsieur, be fair,--I couldn't do it for less than thirty sous."

"Very good, thirty sous then;" said G.o.defroid; "but how is it that they ask me only forty-five francs a month for dinner, close by here at Machillot's? That is the same price you ask me for breakfast."

"But what a difference, monsieur, between preparing a dinner for fifteen or twenty persons and going out to get you just what you want for breakfast! See here! there's a roll, eggs, b.u.t.ter, the cost of lighting a fire, sugar, milk, coffee!--just think! they ask you sixteen sous for a cup of coffee alone on the place de l'Odeon, and then you have to give a sou or two to the waiter. Here you have no trouble; you can breakfast in slippers."

"Very well, very well," said G.o.defroid.

"Without Madame Cartier who supplies me with milk and eggs and herbs I couldn't manage it. You ought to go and see their establishment, monsieur. Ha! it's fine! They employ five journeymen gardeners, and Nepomucene goes there in summer to draw water for them; they hire him of me as a waterer. They make lots of money out of melons and strawberries.

It seems monsieur takes quite an interest in Monsieur Bernard,"

continued the widow in dulcet tones; "or he wouldn't be responsible for his debts. Perhaps he doesn't know all that family owes. There's the lady who keeps the circulating library on the place Saint-Michel; she is always coming here after thirty francs they owe her,--and she needs it, G.o.d knows! That sick woman in there, she reads, reads, reads! Two sous a volume makes thirty francs in three months."

"That means a hundred volumes a month," said G.o.defroid.

"Ah! there's the old man going now to fetch a roll and cream for his daughter's tea,--yes, tea! she lives on tea, that lady. She drinks it twice a day. And twice a week she has to have sweet things. Oh! she's dainty! The old man buys cakes and pates from the pastry cook in the rue de Buci. He don't care what he spends, if it's for her. He calls her his daughter! It ain't often that men of his age do for a daughter what he does for her! He just kills himself, he and Auguste too, for that woman.

Monsieur is just like me; I'd give anything to see her. Monsieur Berton says she's a monster,--something like those they show for money. That's the reason they've come to live here, in this lonely quarter. Well, so monsieur thinks of dining at Madame Machillot's, does he?"

"Yes, I think of making an arrangement there."

"Monsieur, it isn't that I want to interfere, but I must say, comparing food with food, you'd do much better to dine in the rue de Tournon; you needn't engage by the month, and you'll find a better table."

"Whereabouts in the rue de Tournon?"

"At the successors to Madame Giraud. That's where the gentlemen upstairs go; they are satisfied, and more than satisfied."

"Well, I'll take your advice and dine there to-day."

"My dear monsieur," said the woman, emboldened by the good-nature which G.o.defroid intentionally a.s.sumed, "tell me seriously, you are not going to be such a m.u.f.f as to pay Monsieur Bernard's debts? It would really trouble me if you did; for just reflect, my kind monsieur G.o.defroid, he's nearly seventy, and after him, what then? not a penny of pension!

How'll you get paid? Young men are so imprudent! Do you know that he owes three thousand francs?"

"To whom?" inquired G.o.defroid.

"Oh! to whom? that's not my affair," said the widow, mysteriously; "it is enough that he does owe them. Between ourselves I'll tell you this: somebody will soon be down on him for that money, and he can't get a penny of credit now in the quarter just on that account."

"Three thousand francs!" repeated G.o.defroid; "oh, you needn't be afraid I'll lend him that. If I had three thousand francs to dispose of I shouldn't be your lodger. But I can't bear to see others suffer, and just for a hundred or so of francs I sha'n't let my neighbor, a man with white hair too, lack for bread or wood; why, one often loses as much as that at cards. But three thousand francs! good heavens! what are you thinking of?"

Madame Vauthier, deceived by G.o.defroid's apparent frankness, let a smile of satisfaction appear on her specious face, which confirmed all her lodger's suspicions. G.o.defroid was convinced that the old woman was an accomplice in some plot that was brewing against the unfortunate old man.

"It is strange, monsieur," she went on, "what fancies one takes into one's head! You'll think me very curious, but yesterday, when I saw you talking with Monsieur Bernard I said to myself that you were the clerk of some publisher; for this, you know, is a publisher's quarter. I once lodged the foreman of a printing-house in the rue de Vaugirard, and his name was the same as yours--"

"What does my business signify to you?" interrupted G.o.defroid.

"Oh, pooh! you can tell me, or you needn't tell me; I shall know it all the same," retorted Vauthier. "There's Monsieur Bernard, for instance, for eighteen months he concealed everything from me, but on the nineteenth I discovered that he had been a magistrate, a judge somewhere or other, I forget where, and was writing a book on law matters. What did he gain by concealing it, I ask you. If he had told me I'd have said nothing about it--so there!"

"I am not yet a publisher's clerk, but I expect to be," said G.o.defroid.

"I thought so!" exclaimed Madame Vauthier, turning round from the bed she had been making as a pretext for staying in the room. "You have come here to cut the ground from under the feet of--Good! _a man warned_ is a man armed."

"Stop!" cried G.o.defroid, placing himself between the Vauthier and the door. "Look here, what interest have you in the matter?"

"Gracious!" said the old woman, eyeing G.o.defroid cautiously, "you're a bold one, anyhow."

She went to the door of the outer room and bolted it; then she came back and sat down on a chair beside the fire.

"On my word of honor, and as sure as my name is Vauthier, I took you for a student until I saw you giving your wood to that old Bernard. Ha!

you're a sly one; and what a play-actor! I was so certain you were a ninny! Look here, will you guarantee me a thousand francs? As sure as the sun shines, my old Barbet and Monsieur Metivier have promised me five hundred to keep my eyes open for them."