The Brotherhood of Consolation Part 2

"Do not speak so loud, Louis!" said a woman's voice. "Your brother has often told you to speak in a low voice. There may be some one in the next room."

At this moment Frederic Mongenod himself opened the door of communication between his private house and the counting-room. He saw G.o.defroid and crossed the room, bowing respectfully to the lady who was conversing with his brother.

"To whom have I the honor of speaking?" he said to G.o.defroid.

As soon as G.o.defroid gave his name, Frederic begged him to be seated; and as the banker opened the lid of his desk, Louis Mongenod and the lady, who was no other than Madame de la Chanterie, rose and went up to him. All three then moved into the embrasure of a window and talked in a low voice with Madame Mongenod, the mother, who was sitting there, and to whom all the affairs of the bank were confided. For over thirty years this woman had given, to her husband first and then to her sons, such proofs of business sagacity that she had long been a managing partner in the firm and signed for it.

G.o.defroid, as he looked about him, noticed on a shelf certain boxes ticketed with the words "De la Chanterie," and numbered 1 to 7. When the conference was ended by the banker saying to his brother, "Very good; go down to the cashier," Madame de la Chanterie turned round, saw G.o.defroid, checked a gesture of surprise, and asked a few questions of the banker in a low voice, to which he replied in a few words spoken equally in a whisper.

Madame de la Chanterie now wore gray silk stockings and small prunella shoes; her gown was the same as before, but she was wrapped in a Venetian "mantua,"--a sort of cloak which was just then returning into fashion. On her head was a drawn bonnet of green silk, lined with white silk, of a style called _a la bonne femme_. Her face was framed by a cloud of lace. She held herself very erect, in an att.i.tude which bespoke, if not n.o.ble birth, certainly the habits of an aristocratic life. Without the extreme affability of her manner, she might have seemed haughty; she was certainly imposing.

"It is the will of Providence rather than mere chance that has brought us here together, monsieur," she said to G.o.defroid; "for I had almost decided to refuse a lodger whose ways of life seemed to me quite antipathetic to those of my household; but Monsieur Mongenod has just given me some information about your family which--"

"Ah, madame,--monsieur!" said G.o.defroid, addressing both Madame de la Chanterie and the banker, "I have no longer a family; and I have come here now to ask some financial advice of my father's business advisers as to the best method of adapting my means to a new way of life."

G.o.defroid then succinctly, and in as few words as possible, related his history, and expressed his desire to change his existence.

"Formerly," he said, "a man in my position would have made himself a monk; but there are no longer any religious orders."

"Go and live with madame, if she is willing to take you," said Frederic Mongenod, after exchanging a glance with Madame de la Chanterie, "and do not sell out your property; leave it in my hands. Give me the exact amount of your debts; I will agree with your creditors for payment at certain dates, and you can have for yourself about a hundred and fifty francs a month. It will thus take two years to clear you. During those two years, if you take those quiet lodgings, you will have time to think of a career, especially among the persons with whom you will live, who are all good counsellors."

Here Louis Mongenod returned, bringing in his hand a hundred notes of a thousand francs each, which he gave to Madame de la Chanterie. G.o.defroid offered his arm to his future hostess, and took her down to the hackney-coach which was waiting for her.

"I hope I shall see you soon, monsieur," she said in a cordial tone of voice.

"At what hour shall you be at home, madame?" he asked.

"At two o'clock."

"I shall have time to sell my furniture," he said, as he bowed to her.

During the short time that Madame de la Chanterie's arm rested upon his as they walked to the carriage, G.o.defroid could not escape the glamour of the words: "Your account is for sixteen hundred thousand francs!"--words said by Louis Mongenod to the woman whose life was spent in the depths of the cloisters of Notre-Dame. The thought, "She must be rich!" entirely changed his way of looking at the matter. "How old is she?" he began to ask himself; and a vision of a romance in the rue Chanoinesse came to him. "She certainly has an air of n.o.bility! Can she be concerned in some bank?" thought he.

In our day nine hundred and ninety-nine young men out of a thousand in G.o.defroid's position would have had the thought of marrying that woman.

A furniture dealer, who also had apartments to let, paid about three thousand francs for the articles G.o.defroid was willing to sell, and agreed to let him keep them during the few days that were needed to prepare the shabby apartment in the rue Chanoinesse for this lodger with a sick mind. G.o.defroid went there at once, and obtained from Madame de la Chanterie the address of a painter who, for a moderate sum, agreed to whiten the ceilings, clean the windows, paint the woodwork, and stain the floors, within a week. G.o.defroid took the measure of the rooms, intending to put the same carpet in all of them,--a green carpet of the cheapest kind. He wished for the plainest uniformity in this retreat, and Madame de la Chanterie approved of the idea. She calculated, with Manon's a.s.sistance, the number of yards of white calico required for the window curtains, and also for those of the modest iron bed; and she undertook to buy and have them made for a price so moderate as to surprise G.o.defroid. Having brought with him a certain amount of furniture, the whole cost of fitting up the rooms proved to be not over six hundred francs.

"We lead here," said Madame de la Chanterie, "a Christian life, which does not, as you know, accord with many superfluities; I think you have too many as it is."

In giving this hint to her future lodger, she looked at a diamond which gleamed in the ring through which G.o.defroid's blue cravat was slipped.

"I only speak of this," she added, "because of the intention you expressed to abandon the frivolous life you complained of to Monsieur Mongenod."

G.o.defroid looked at Madame de la Chanterie as he listened to the harmonies of her limpid voice; he examined that face so purely white, resembling those of the cold, grave women of Holland whom the Flemish painters have so wonderfully reproduced with their smooth skins, in which a wrinkle is impossible.

"White and plump!" he said to himself, as he walked away; "but her hair is white, too."

G.o.defroid, like all weak natures, took readily to a new life, believing it satisfactory; and he was now quite eager to take up his abode in the rue Chanoinesse. Nevertheless, a prudent thought, or, if you prefer to say so, a distrustful thought, occurred to him. Two days before his installation, he went again to see Monsieur Mongenod to obtain some more definite information about the house he was to enter.

During the few moments he had spent in his future lodgings overlooking the changes that were being made in them, he had noticed the coming and going of several persons whose appearance and behavior, without being exactly mysterious, excited a belief that some secret occupation or profession was being carried on in that house. At that particular period there was much talk of attempts by the elder branch of the Bourbons to recover the throne, and G.o.defroid suspected some conspiracy. When he found himself in the banker's counting-room held by the scrutinizing eye of Frederic Mongenod while he made his inquiry, he felt ashamed as he saw a derisive smile on the lips of the listener.

"Madame la Baronne de la Chanterie," replied the banker, "is one of the most obscure persons in Paris, but she is also one of the most honorable. Have you any object in asking for information?"

G.o.defroid retreated into generalities: he was going to live among strangers; he naturally wished to know something of those with whom he should be intimately thrown. But the banker's smile became more and more sarcastic; and G.o.defroid, more and more embarra.s.sed, was ashamed of the step he had taken, and which bore no fruit, for he dared not continue his questions about Madame de la Chanterie and her inmates.

IV. FAREWELL TO THE LIFE OF THE WORLD

Two days later, of a Monday evening, having dined for the last time at the Cafe Anglais, and seen the two first pieces at the Varietes, he went, at ten o'clock, to sleep for the first time in the rue Chanoinesse, where Manon conducted him to his room.

Solitude has charms comparable only to those of savage life, which no European has ever really abandoned after once tasting them. This may seem strange at an epoch when every one lives so much to be seen of others that all the world concern themselves in their neighbors'

affairs, and when private life will soon be a thing of the past, so bold and so intrusive are the eyes of the press,--that modern Argus.

Nevertheless, it is a truth which rests on the authority of the first six Christian centuries, during which no recluse ever returned to social life. Few are the moral wounds that solitude will not heal.

So, at first, G.o.defroid was soothed by the deep peace and absolute stillness of his new abode, as a weary traveller is relaxed by a bath.

The very day after his arrival at Madame de la Chanterie's he was forced to examine himself, under the sense that he was separated from all, even from Paris, though he still lived in the shadow of its cathedral.

Stripped of his social vanities, he was about to have no other witnesses of his acts than his own conscience and the inmates of that house. He had quitted the great high-road of the world to enter an unknown path.

Where was that path to lead him to? to what occupation should he now be drawn?

He had been for two hours absorbed in such reflections when Manon, the only servant of the house, knocked at his door to tell him that the second breakfast was served and the family were waiting for him. Twelve o'clock was striking. The new lodger went down at once, stirred by a wish to see and judge the five persons among whom his life was in future to be spent.

When he entered the room he found all the inmates of the house standing; they were dressed precisely as they were on the day when he came to make his first inquiries.

"Did you sleep well?" asked Madame de la Chanterie.

"So well that I did not wake up till ten o'clock," replied G.o.defroid, bowing to the four men, who returned the bow with gravity.

"We thought so," said an old man named Alain, smiling.

"Manon spoke of a second breakfast," said G.o.defroid; "but I fear that I have already broken some rule. At what hour do you rise?"

"Not quite so early as the old monks," said Madame de la Chanterie, courteously, "but as early as the working-men,--six in winter, half-past three in summer. Our bed-time is ruled by that of the sun. We are always asleep by nine in winter and eleven in summer. On rising, we all take a little milk, which comes from our farm, after saying our prayers, except the Abbe de Veze, who says the first ma.s.s, at six o'clock in summer and seven o'clock in winter, at Notre-Dame, where these gentlemen are present daily, as well as your humble servant."

Madame de la Chanterie ended her explanation as the five lodgers took their seats at table.

The dining-room, painted throughout in gray, the design of the woodwork being in the style of Louis XIV., adjoined the sort of antechamber in which Manon was usually stationed, and it seemed to be parallel with Madame de la Chanterie's bedroom, which also opened into the salon. This room had no other ornament than a tall clock. The furniture consisted of six chairs with oval backs covered with worsted-work, done probably by Madame de la Chanterie's own hand, two buffets and a table, all of Mahogany, on which Manon did not lay a cloth for breakfast. The breakfast, of monastic frugality, was composed of a small turbot with a white sauce, potatoes, a salad, and four dishes of fruit,--peaches, grapes, strawberries, and fresh almonds; also, for relishes, honey in the comb (as in Switzerland), radishes, cuc.u.mbers, sardines, and b.u.t.ter,--the whole served in the well-known china with tiny blue flowers and green leaves on a white ground, which was no doubt a luxury in the days of Louis XIV., but had now, under the growing demands of luxury, come to be regarded as common.

"We keep the fasts," said Monsieur Alain. "As we go to ma.s.s every morning, you will not be surprised to find us blindly following all the customs of the Church, even the severest."

"And you shall begin by imitating us," said Madame de la Chanterie, with a glance at G.o.defroid, whom she had placed beside her.

Of the five persons present G.o.defroid knew the names of three,--Madame de la Chanterie, the Abbe de Veze, and Monsieur Alain. He wished to know those of the other two; but they kept silence and ate their food with the attention which recluses appear to give to every detail of a meal.

"Does this fine fruit come also from your farm, madame?" asked G.o.defroid.

"Yes, monsieur," she replied. "We have a little model farm, like the government itself; we call it our country house; it is twelve miles from here, on the road to Italy, near Villeneuve-Saint-Georges."