The White House Part 11

"Five hundred thousand francs!"

"Ah! my friend, you can imagine my delight, my amazement. I almost fainted, and the notary had to give me vinegar and salts."

"What! you, Robineau, a philosopher, a bachelor without ambition, who despised riches,--you fainted when you learned that you had inherited a fortune?"

"Oh! my dear fellow, a man may be a philosopher, you know--that's all right; indeed it's the best thing one can do when one has to endure privations; but he may have a heart all the same, and be easily moved; and five hundred thousand francs! I thought at first that that meant a million a year, but, on figuring it out, I found that it was only twenty-five thousand francs at five per cent.--But when a man is sharp and knows how to go about it, he can make his money bring in six or eight or ten per cent.--Isn't that so, my friend?"

"My dear Robineau, I know very well how to spend money, but I know absolutely nothing about investing it."

"Of course not! You have never been a clerk in the Treasury!"

"However, if I should give you any advice, it would be to invest your money in solid securities, consols or real estate. It seems to me that a man who has been accustomed to live on fifteen hundred francs a year may do very well with twenty thousand; and it would be better to have no more than that and have it perfectly safe, than to expose your fortune to the risks of business. That is my opinion, my dear Robineau; a man may be very heedless about his own concerns and yet advise others wisely; so you will do well to----"

Robineau, who seemed to grew impatient toward the end of Alfred's harangue, had risen and was walking about the room humming; at last he interrupted his friend.

"All right! all right!" he cried; "I thank you for your advice, but I flatter myself that I shall be able to manage my fortune as well as any other man. Let us drop the subject, my friend, and think only of pleasures, of merry-making. In my opinion, when a man is rich, life should be simply a torrent of enjoyments.--Finish your dressing and let's go out to breakfast; I invite you to breakfast with me at the Cafe Anglais, or the Cafe de la Bourse, or Very's, if you choose."

"You come too late, my dear Robineau; I have breakfasted."

"What's the odds? You can begin again."

"No indeed! Do you think that because one is rich, one can eat every minute of the day without making one's self sick?"

"The devil! that's a pity. I have already had some coffee and tea, but I want a dejeuner a la fourchette--that's better form.--By the way, my dear Alfred, as to form I will take your advice. I know that you follow the fashions, and I propose to follow them too, strictly.--Twenty-five thousand francs a year! Why, just imagine my joy!"

"Faith, I congratulate you; for you are a good fellow at bottom."

"If you knew how many plans I already have in my head! I mean to do so many things that I don't know where to begin!--But let us go to breakfast, I beg; you can pretend to eat."

The two young men were about to go out when Edouard appeared. Robineau did not give him time to bid his friend good-morning, but threw his arms about his neck, embraced him and apprized him of the change that had taken place in his fortune. Edouard quietly congratulated him, and Robineau could not understand why the news did not produce a greater effect on him; he conceived that all those who were about him ought to be equally excited and enchanted on learning that he had twenty-five thousand francs a year.

"I came to ask you to breakfast with me," Edouard said to Alfred.

Giving the latter no time to reply, Robineau seized Edouard's arm and cried:

"I am going to take you with us; we will breakfast together, yes, and dine too, if you have time; and while we are at the table, I'll tell you my plans, my ideas.--Look, here's a coat that I bought yesterday ready-made; I was in a hurry to have a new one. It fits me rather well, eh?--Let us go downstairs, and I'll show you my cabriolet."

"What! have you bought a cabriolet and horses, already?"

"No, I have hired until I can buy them. I must have other lodgings; I can't keep my cabriolet in my present fourth floor apartment; I am going to look for one with a stable and carriage house.--Mon Dieu! how many things I have to do! Really, I had no idea that wealth kept one so busy."

Alfred and Edouard glanced at each other with a smile; then they followed Robineau, who could not keep still, but ran through the rooms puffing like an ox.

They went downstairs, Robineau in the lead; he called his servant and shouted to him to get up behind his carriage.

"We shall founder your horse," said Alfred; "I might take my own cabriolet for Edouard and myself."

"No, no," said Robineau, "I prefer to go together. My horse is strong; at all events, if he isn't a good one, I'll make them give me another to-morrow. Oh! I see to it that I am well served, I do!--Get up behind, Francois; I will drive."

They all entered Robineau's cabriolet; he seated himself in the middle, took the reins and essayed to drive, because he was convinced that as soon as one is rich, one knows everything by instinct. He plied the whip vigorously, pulled the reins this way and that, and tormented his horse, who grazed curbstones and pedestrians every instant; and while his companions laughed at his exertions and at his manner of driving, he locked his wheel in the wheel of a cab, while trying to avoid a dray.

The cabman swore and said that he must be a duffer to run into his wheel; Robineau swore too, in order not to seem to be in the wrong; but his oaths did not suffice to extricate him from the fix in which he had involved himself; and, realizing that he would never get out of the tangle himself, he handed the reins to Alfred, saying:

"Do me the favor to drive, my dear fellow, for I am so engrossed by my affairs that I might mistake the road."

Thanks to Alfred, they cut loose from the cab and arrived without other mishaps at the Palais-Royal. They went to Beauvilliers', and Robineau ordered all the most expensive dishes; if his two companions had not checked him, he would have provided a breakfast for twenty and would have shouted at the top of his lungs that he had twenty-five thousand francs a year.

"By the way," said Alfred, "what of Fifine? you don't mention her. She must be much pleased by what has happened to you, isn't she?"

"Fifine!" repeated Robineau, with a distraught air; "oh! I haven't had time yet to see her since I went to my notary's.--_My notary!_ I say, messieurs, how that rings in the ear! My notary!"

"Do you mean to say, Monsieur Robineau," said Edouard, "that you have not yet imparted your good news to her who was so dear to you a week since? Pray consider that when a woman has loved you for yourself alone, you owe her a debt of grat.i.tude; and the least that you can do is to let her share your pleasure in what has happened to you."

"Edouard is right," said Alfred; "when you have had the good luck to fall in with a good, sensible, loyal woman, it seems to me, my friend, that you can hardly do too much for her."

"Messieurs, messieurs," replied Robineau, nibbling at the wing of a chicken, "it is very easy for you to talk; perhaps you would like me to make Mademoiselle Fifine my wife; that would be very pretty!"

"We know very well that you won't do that; but----"

"But I can't keep that little milliner for my mistress either. You must agree that when one has a considerable fortune, one may fly at higher game, more distinguished. And then, messieurs, between ourselves, Mamzelle Fifine isn't exactly a model of virtue; indeed she falls very far short of it. I have noticed several times that--you understand--but I have always pretended not to see anything, because I wasn't in love with her. And then, she has a flighty disposition, a very quick temper; she's a perfect dragon. For my part, I like mild-mannered women. I am accustomed to her face; but the fact is that she isn't pretty; she has a bold look and that's all."

"Oh! I say, Robineau, you don't propose to tell us now that she hasn't a good figure; she was a Venus the other night."

"Oh, yes! a strange kind of Venus! And she made me spend all my money on little parties of two; two-thirds of my salary went that way."

"What, man! a woman who loved you for yourself alone?"

"Yes. Oh! I know that she loved me; but that didn't prevent her being as gluttonous as a cat. However, messieurs, I have no desire to speak ill of her; I shall certainly buy her something; I am too generous to--But let us drop Fifine and talk about my plans. My dear friends, you have no idea what I have in my head--well! it's a chateau!"

"A chateau!" exclaimed Alfred; "why, my poor Robineau, you are mad; if you buy a chateau you won't have anything left to keep it up!"

"Bah! I know how to calculate. There are chateaux and chateaux! Why can't I put a hundred thousand francs into a nice little estate, an estate with a house on it, built in the old style? My notary a.s.sures me that he can find such a one very readily; and then, my dear friends, I can a.s.sume the name of my estate. That is done every day; and, between ourselves, Robineau is a very vulgar name for a man with twenty-five thousand francs a year."

"What, Monsieur Robineau!" said Edouard; "you, who declared that you should never change, whatever might happen, and whose discourse reminded one of Socrates and Cincinnatus!"

"As I have told you, my friends, I have my plans. I look a long way ahead. I buy a small chateau, an estate, no matter where, and I a.s.sume its name; that gives me at once an air of n.o.bility; then I find a rich heiress, I present myself, I make a favorable impression, and I marry.

What do you say to that? It seems to me that's not a bad scheme; and if I had no other name than Robineau, I could never become allied to a distinguished family! Mon Dieu! my dear Uncle Gratien, what a n.o.ble use I will make of your wealth!"

"And to begin with, you propose to discard his name."

"You must see that I do it from policy. It is decided: I shall buy an estate, I shall have peasants and va.s.sals, and they will call me monseigneur!"

"They won't call you monseigneur, my poor Robineau, because in these days the man who owns lands, houses and farms is not on that account at liberty to dispose at his pleasure of the people who till his fields; and those delightful little prerogatives of _cuissage, jambage, marquette, prelibation,_ and the like, which made the plight of va.s.sals worse than that of beasts of burden, and degraded mankind by exalting one man at the expense of his fellowman--those prerogatives no longer exist; because men love a kind and virtuous master and no longer tremble before an arrogant and dissipated lord; because all men are under the protection of the laws, which ordain obedience and not humiliation; and finally because there are no more serfs except in Russia, where I advise you to go to buy your chateau, if you want to be called monseigneur. But I really believe, Robineau, that if you were left to your own devices, you would become one of the petty tyrants of the olden time, or at least a wolf, like the one in Little Red Riding Hood."

"I say, messieurs, to my mind, that was a very pretty little prerogative that ent.i.tled the lord to be the first man to put his legs into a newly married woman's bed.--But I will make _rosieres_[2]--that will be just the same thing."

"Pending the time when you make rosieres, pay the bill and let us go."

"Already?"