The Muse of the Department Part 18

"I knew monsieur your father," said he, "at Florentine's, so I may well know you here, at Mademoiselle Turquet's. Like father, like son. A very good fellow and a philosopher, was little Daddy Cardot--excuse me, we always called him so. At that time, Florine, Florentine, Tullia, Coralie, and Mariette were the five fingers of your hand, so to speak--it is fifteen years ago. My follies, as you may suppose, are a thing of the past.--In those days it was pleasure that ran away with me; now I am ambitious; but, in our day, to get on at all a man must be free from debt, have a good income, a wife, and a family. If I pay taxes enough to qualify me, I may be a deputy yet, like any other man."

Maitre Cardot appreciated this profession of faith. Lousteau had laid himself out to please and the notary liked him, feeling himself more at his ease, as may be easily imagined, with a man who had known his father's secrets than he would have been with another. On the following day Lousteau was introduced to the Cardot family as the purchaser of the house in the Rue Saint-Lazare, and three days later he dined there.

Cardot lived in an old house near the Place du Chatelet. In this house everything was "good." Economy covered every sc.r.a.p of gilding with green gauze; all the furniture wore holland covers. Though it was impossible to feel a shade of uneasiness as to the wealth of the inhabitants, at the end of half an hour no one could suppress a yawn. Boredom perched in every nook; the curtains hung dolefully; the dining-room was like Harpagon's. Even if Lousteau had not known all about Malaga, he could have guessed that the notary's real life was spent elsewhere.

The journalist saw a tall, fair girl with blue eyes, at once shy and languishing. The elder brother took a fancy to him; he was the fourth clerk in the office, but strongly attracted by the snares of literary fame, though destined to succeed his father. The younger sister was twelve years old. Lousteau, a.s.suming a little Jesuitical air, played the Monarchist and Churchman for the benefit of the mother, was quite smooth, deliberate, and complimentary.

Within three weeks of their introduction, at his fourth dinner there, Felicie Cardot, who had been watching Lousteau out of the corner of her eye, carried him a cup of coffee where he stood in the window recess, and said in a low voice, with tears in her eyes:

"I will devote my whole life, monsieur, to thanking you for your sacrifice in favor of a poor girl----"

Lousteau was touched; there was so much expression in her look, her accent, her att.i.tude. "She would make a good man happy," thought he, pressing her hand in reply.

Madame Cardot looked upon her son-in-law as a man with a future before him; but, above all the fine qualities she ascribed to him, she was most delighted by his high tone of morals. Etienne, prompted by the wily notary, had pledged his word that he had no natural children, no tie that could endanger the happiness of her dear Felicie.

"You may perhaps think I go rather too far," said the bigot to the journalist; "but in giving such a jewel as my Felicie to any man, one must think of the future. I am not one of those mothers who want to be rid of their daughters. Monsieur Cardot hurries matters on, urges forward his daughter's marriage; he wishes it over. This is the only point on which we differ.--Though with a man like you, monsieur, a literary man whose youth has been preserved by hard work from the moral shipwreck now so prevalent, we may feel quite safe; still, you would be the first to laugh at me if I looked for a husband for my daughter with my eyes shut. I know you are not an innocent, and I should be very sorry for my Felicie if you were" (this was said in a whisper); "but if you had any _liaison_--For instance, monsieur, you have heard of Madame Roguin, the wife of a notary who, unhappily for our faculty, was sadly notorious. Madame Roguin has, ever since 1820, been kept by a banker--"

"Yes, du Tillet," replied Etienne; but he bit his tongue as he recollected how rash it was to confess to an acquaintance with du Tillet.

"Yes.--Well, monsieur, if you were a mother, would you not quake at the thought that Madame du Tillet's fate might be your child's? At her age, and _nee_ de Granville! To have as a rival a woman of fifty and more.

Sooner would I see my daughter dead than give her to a man who had such a connection with a married woman. A grisette, an actress, you take her and leave her.--There is no danger, in my opinion, from women of that stamp; love is their trade, they care for no one, one down and another to come on!--But a woman who has sinned against duty must hug her sin, her only excuse is constancy, if such a crime can ever have an excuse.

At least, that is the view I hold of a respectable woman's fall, and that is what makes it so terrible----"

Instead of looking for the meaning of these speeches, Etienne made a jest of them at Malaga's, whither he went with his father-in-law elect; for the notary and the journalist were the best of friends.

Lousteau had already given himself the airs of a person of importance; his life at last was to have a purpose; he was in luck's way, and in a few days would be the owner of a delightful little house in the Rue Saint-Lazare; he was going to be married to a charming woman, he would have about twenty thousand francs a year, and could give the reins to his ambition; the young lady loved him, and he would be connected with several respectable families. In short, he was in full sail on the blue waters of hope.

Madame Cardot had expressed a wish to see the prints for _Gil Blas_, one of the ill.u.s.trated volumes which the French publishers were at that time bringing out, and Lousteau had taken the first numbers for the lady's inspection. The lawyer's wife had a scheme of her own, she had borrowed the book merely to return it; she wanted an excuse for walking in on her future son-in-law quite unexpectedly. The sight of those bachelor rooms, which her husband had described as charming, would tell her more, she thought, as to Lousteau's habits of life than any information she could pick up. Her sister-in-law, Madame Camusot, who knew nothing of the fateful secret, was terrified at such a marriage for her niece. Monsieur Camusot, a Councillor of the Supreme Court, old Camusot's son by his first marriage, had given his step-mother, who was Cardot's sister, a far from flattering account of the journalist.

Lousteau, clever as he was, did not think it strange that the wife of a rich notary should wish to inspect a volume costing fifteen francs before deciding on the purchase. Your clever man never condescends to study the middle-cla.s.s, who escape his ken by this want of attention; and while he is making game of them, they are at leisure to throttle him.

So one day early in January 1837, Madame Cardot and her daughter took a hackney coach and went to the Rue des Martyrs to return the parts of _Gil Blas_ to Felicie's betrothed, both delighted at the thought of seeing Lousteau's rooms. These domiciliary visitations are not unusual in the old citizen cla.s.s. The porter at the front gate was not in; but his daughter, on being informed by the worthy lady that she was in the presence of Monsieur Lousteau's future mother-in-law and bride, handed over the key of the apartment--all the more readily because Madame Cardot placed a gold piece in her hand.

It was by this time about noon, the hour at which the journalist would return from breakfasting at the Cafe Anglais. As he crossed the open s.p.a.ce between the Church of Notre-Dame de Lorette and the Rue des Martyrs, Lousteau happened to look at a hired coach that was toiling up the Rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, and he fancied it was a dream when he saw the face of Dinah! He stood frozen to the spot when, on reaching his house, he beheld his Didine at the coach door.

"What has brought you here?" he inquired.--He adopted the familiar _tu_.

The formality of _vous_ was out of the question to a woman he must get rid of.

"Why, my love," cried she, "have you not read my letters?"

"Certainly I have," said Lousteau.

"Well, then?"

"Well, then?"

"You are a father," replied the country lady.

"Faugh!" cried he, disregarding the barbarity of such an exclamation.

"Well," thought he to himself, "she must be prepared for the blow."

He signed to the coachman to wait, gave his hand to Madame de la Baudraye, and left the man with the chaise full of trunks, vowing that he would send away _illico_, as he said to himself, the woman and her luggage, back to the place she had come from.

"Monsieur, monsieur," called out little Pamela.

The child had some sense, and felt that three women must not be allowed to meet in a bachelor's rooms.

"Well, well!" said Lousteau, dragging Dinah along.

Pamela concluded that the lady must be some relation; however, she added:

"The key is in the door; your mother-in-law is there."

In his agitation, while Madame de la Baudraye was pouring out a flood of words, Etienne understood the child to say, "Mother is there," the only circ.u.mstance that suggested itself as possible, and he went in.

Felicie and her mother, who were by this time in the bed-room, crept into a corner on seeing Etienne enter with a woman.

"At last, Etienne, my dearest, I am yours for life!" cried Dinah, throwing her arms round his neck, and clasping him closely, while he took the key from the outside of the door. "Life is a perpetual anguish to me in that house at Anzy. I could bear it no longer; and when the time came for me to proclaim my happiness--well, I had not the courage.--Here I am, your wife with your child! And you have not written to me; you have left me two months without a line."

"But, Dinah, you place me in the greatest difficulty--"

"Do you love me?"

"How can I do otherwise than love you?--But would you not have been wiser to remain at Sancerre?--I am in the most abject poverty, and I fear to drag you into it--"

"Your misery will be paradise to me. I only ask to live here, never to go out--"

"Good G.o.d! that is all very fine in words, but--" Dinah sat down and melted into tears as she heard this speech, roughly spoken.

Lousteau could not resist this distress. He clasped the Baroness in his arms and kissed her.

"Do not cry, Didine!" said he; and, as he uttered the words, he saw in the mirror the figure of Madame Cardot, looking at him from the further end of the rooms. "Come, Didine, go with Pamela and get your trunks unloaded," said he in her ear. "Go; do not cry; we will be happy!"

He led her to the door, and then came back to divert the storm.

"Monsieur," said Madame Cardot, "I congratulate myself on having resolved to see for myself the home of the man who was to have been my son-in-law. If my daughter were to die of it, she should never be the wife of such a man as you. You must devote yourself to making your Didine happy, monsieur."

And the virtuous lady walked out, followed by Felicie, who was crying too, for she had become accustomed to Etienne. The dreadful Madame Cardot got into her hackney-coach again, staring insolently at the hapless Dinah, in whose heart the sting still rankled of "that is all very fine in words"; but who, nevertheless, like every woman in love, believed in the murmured, "Do not cry, Didine!"

Lousteau, who was not lacking in the sort of decision which grows out of the vicissitudes of a storm-tossed life, reflected thus:

"Didine is high-minded; when once she knows of my proposed marriage, she will sacrifice herself for my future prospects, and I know how I can manage to let her know." Delighted at having hit on a trick of which the success seemed certain, he danced round to a familiar tune:

"_Larifla, fla, fla!_--And Didine once out of the way," he went on, talking to himself, "I will treat Maman Cardot to a call and a novelette: I have seduced her Felicie at Saint-Eustache--Felicie, guilty through pa.s.sion, bears in her bosom the pledge of our affection--and _larifla, fla, fla!_ the father _Ergo_, the notary, his wife, and his daughter are caught, nabbed----"

And, to her great amazement, Dinah discovered Etienne performing a prohibited dance.