Pierrette Part 3

Breakfast took up some little time; with what deliberation those two human beings masticated their food! Their digestions were perfect; cancer of the stomach was not to be dreaded by them. They managed to get along till twelve o'clock by reading the "Bee-hive" and the "Const.i.tutionnel." The cost of subscribing to the Parisian paper was shared by Vinet the lawyer, and Baron Gouraud. Rogron himself carried the paper to Gouraud, who had been a colonel and lived on the square, and whose long yarns were Rogron's delight; the latter sometimes puzzled over the warnings he had received, and asked himself how such a lively companion could be dangerous. He was fool enough to tell the colonel he had been warned against him, and to repeat all the "clique" had said.

G.o.d knows how the colonel, who feared no one, and was equally to be dreaded with pistols or a sword, gave tongue about Madame Tiphaine and her Amadis, and the ministerialists of the Upper town, persons capable of any villany to get places, and who counted the votes at elections to suit themselves, etc.

About two o'clock Rogron started for a little walk. He was quite happy if some shopkeeper standing on the threshold of his door would stop him and say, "Well, pere Rogron, how goes it with _you_?" Then he would talk, and ask for news, and gather all the gossip of the town.

He usually went as far as the Upper town, sometimes to the ravines, according to the weather. Occasionally he would meet old men taking their walks abroad like himself. Such meetings were joyful events to him. There happened to be in Provins a few men weary of Parisian life, quiet scholars who lived with their books. Fancy the bewilderment of the ignorant Rogron when he heard a deputy-judge named Desfondrilles, more of an archaeologist than a magistrate, saying to old Monsieur Martener, a really learned man, as he pointed to the valley:--

"Explain to me why the idlers of Europe go to Spa instead of coming to Provins, when the springs here have a superior curative value recognized by the French faculty,--a potential worthy of the medicinal properties of our roses."

"That is one of the caprices of caprice," said the old gentleman.

"Bordeaux wine was unknown a hundred years ago. Marechal de Richelieu, one of the noted men of the last century, the French Alcibiades, was appointed governor of Guyenne. His lungs were diseased, and, heaven knows why! the wine of the country did him good and he recovered.

Bordeaux instantly made a hundred millions; the marshal widened its territory to Angouleme, to Cahors,--in short, to over a hundred miles of circ.u.mference! it is hard to tell where the Bordeaux vineyards end.

And yet they haven't erected an equestrian statue to the marshal in Bordeaux!"

"Ah! if anything of that kind happens to Provins," said Monsieur Desfondrilles, "let us hope that somewhere in the Upper or Lower town they will set up a bas-relief of the head of Monsieur Opoix, the re-discoverer of the mineral waters of Provins."

"My dear friend, the revival of Provins is impossible," replied Monsieur Martener; "the town was made bankrupt long ago."

"What!" cried Rogron, opening his eyes very wide.

"It was once a capital, holding its own against Paris in the twelfth century, when the Comtes de Champagne held their court here, just as King Rene held his in Provence," replied the man of learning; "for in those days civilization, gaiety, poesy, elegance, and women, in short all social splendors, were not found exclusively in Paris. It is as difficult for towns and cities as it is for commercial houses to recover from ruin. Nothing is left to us of the old Provins but the fragrance of our historical glory and that of our roses,--and a sub-prefecture!"

"Ah! what mightn't France be if she had only preserved her feudal capitals!" said Desfondrilles. "Can sub-prefects replace the poetic, gallant, warlike race of the Thibaults who made Provins what Ferrara was to Italy, Weimar to Germany,--what Munich is trying to be to-day."

"Was Provins ever a capital?" asked Rogron.

"Why! where do you come from?" exclaimed the archaeologist. "Don't you know," he added, striking the ground of the Upper town where they stood with his cane, "don't you know that the whole of this part of Provins is built on catacombs?"

"Catacombs?"

"Yes, catacombs, the extent and height of which are yet undiscovered.

They are like the naves of cathedrals, and there are pillars in them."

"Monsieur is writing a great archaeological work to explain these strange constructions," interposed Monsieur Martener, seeing that the deputy-judge was about to mount his hobby.

Rogron came home much comforted to know that his house was in the valley. The crypts of Provins kept him occupied for a week in explorations, and gave a topic of conversation to the unhappy celibates for many evenings.

In the course of these ramblings Rogron picked up various bits of information about Provins, its inhabitants, their marriages, together with stale political news; all of which he narrated to his sister.

Scores of times in his walks he would stop and say,--often to the same person on the same day,--"Well, what's the news?" When he reached home he would fling himself on the sofa like a man exhausted with labor, whereas he was only worn out with the burden of his own dulness. Dinner came at last, after he had gone twenty times to the kitchen and back, compared the clocks, and opened and shut all the doors of the house.

So long as the brother and sister could spend their evenings in paying visits they managed to get along till bedtime; but after they were compelled to stay at home those evenings became like a parching desert.

Sometimes persons pa.s.sing through the quiet little square would hear unearthly noises as though the brother were throttling the sister; a moment's listening would show that they were only yawning. These two human mechanisms, having nothing to grind between their rusty wheels, were creaking and grating at each other. The brother talked of marrying, but only in despair. He felt old and weary; the thought of a woman frightened him. Sylvie, who began to see the necessity of having a third person in the home, suddenly remembered the little cousin, about whom no one in Provins had yet inquired, the friends of Madame Lorrain probably supposing that mother and child were both dead.

Sylvie Rogron never lost anything; she was too thoroughly an old maid even to mislay the smallest article; but she pretended to have suddenly found the Lorrains' letter, so as to mention Pierrette naturally to her brother, who was greatly pleased at the possibility of having a little girl in the house. Sylvie replied to Madame Lorrain's letter half affectionately, half commercially, as one may say, explaining the delay by their change of abode and the settlement of their affairs. She seemed desirous of receiving her little cousin, and hinted that Pierrette would perhaps inherit twelve thousand francs a year if her brother Jerome did not marry.

Perhaps it is necessary to have been, like Nebuchadnezzar, something of a wild beast, and shut up in a cage at the Jardin des Plantes without other prey than the butcher's meat doled out by the keeper, or a retired merchant deprived of the joys of tormenting his clerks, to understand the impatience with which the brother and sister awaited the arrival of their cousin Lorrain. Three days after the letter had gone, the pair were already asking themselves when she would get there.

Sylvie perceived in her spurious benevolence towards her poor cousin a means of recovering her position in the social world of Provins. She accordingly went to call on Madame Tiphaine, of whose reprobation she was conscious, in order to impart the fact of Pierrette's approaching arrival,--deploring the girl's unfortunate position, and posing herself as being only too happy to succor her and give her a position as daughter and future heiress.

"You have been rather long in discovering her," said Madame Tiphaine, with a touch of sarcasm.

A few words said in a low voice by Madame Garceland, while the cards were being dealt, recalled to the minds of those who heard her the shameful conduct of old Rogron about the Auffray property; the notary explained the iniquity.

"Where is the little girl now?" asked Monsieur Tiphaine, politely.

"In Brittany," said Rogron.

"Brittany is a large place," remarked Monsieur Lesourd.

"Her grandfather and grandmother Lorrain wrote to us--when was that, my dear?" said Rogron addressing his sister.

Sylvie, who was just then asking Madame Garceland where she had bought the stuff for her gown, answered hastily, without thinking of the effect of her words:--

"Before we sold the business."

"And have you only just answered the letter, mademoiselle?" asked the notary.

Sylvie turned as red as a live coal.

"We wrote to the Inst.i.tution of Saint-Jacques," remarked Rogron.

"That is a sort of hospital or almshouse for old people," said Monsieur Desfondrilles, who knew Nantes. "She can't be there; they receive no one under sixty."

"She is there, with her grandmother Lorrain," said Rogron.

"Her mother had a little fortune, the eight thousand francs which your father--no, I mean of course your grandfather--left to her," said the notary, making the blunder intentionally.

"Ah!" said Rogron, stupidly, not understanding the notary's sarcasm.

"Then you know nothing about your cousin's position or means?" asked Monsieur Tiphaine.

"If Monsieur Rogron had known it," said the deputy-judge, "he would never have left her all this time in an establishment of that kind. I remember now that a house in Nantes belonging to Monsieur and Madame Lorrain was sold under an order of the court, and that Mademoiselle Lorrain's claim was swallowed up. I know this, for I was commissioner at the time."

The notary spoke of Colonel Lorrain, who, had he lived, would have been much amazed to know that his daughter was in such an inst.i.tution. The Rogrons beat a retreat, saying to each other that the world was very malicious. Sylvie perceived that the news of her benevolence had missed its effect,--in fact, she had lost ground in all minds; and she felt that henceforth she was forbidden to attempt an intimacy with the upper cla.s.s of Provins. After this evening the Rogrons no longer concealed their hatred of that cla.s.s and all its adherents. The brother told the sister the scandals that Colonel Gouraud and the lawyer Vinet had put into his head about the Tiphaines, the Guenees, the Garcelands, the Julliards, and others:--

"I declare, Sylvie, I don't see why Madame Tiphaine should turn up her nose at shopkeeping in the rue Saint-Denis; it is more honest than what she comes from. Madame Roguin, her mother, is cousin to those Guillaumes of the 'Cat-playing-ball' who gave up the business to Joseph Lebas, their son-in-law. Her father is that Roguin who failed in 1819, and ruined the house of Cesar Birotteau. Madame Tiphaine's fortune was stolen,--for what else are you to call it when a notary's wife who is very rich lets her husband make a fraudulent bankruptcy? Fine doings!

and she marries her daughter in Provins to get her out of the way,--all on account of her own relations with du Tillet. And such people set up to be proud! Well, well, that's the world!"

On the day when Jerome Rogron and his sister began to declaim against "the clique" they were, without being aware of it, on the road to having a society of their own; their house was to become a rendezvous for other interests seeking a centre,--those of the hitherto floating elements of the liberal party in Provins. And this is how it came about: The launch of the Rogrons in society had been watched with great curiosity by Colonel Gouraud and the lawyer Vinet, two men drawn together, first by their ostracism, next by their opinions. They both professed patriotism and for the same reason,--they wished to become of consequence. The Liberals in Provins were, so far, confined to one old soldier who kept a cafe, an innkeeper, Monsieur Cournant a notary, Doctor Neraud, and a few stray persons, mostly farmers or those who had bought lands of the public domain.

The colonel and the lawyer, delighted to lay hands on a fool whose money would be useful to their schemes, and who might himself, in certain cases, be made to bell the cat, while his house would serve as a meeting-ground for the scattered elements of the party, made the most of the Rogrons' ill-will against the upper cla.s.ses of the place. The three had already a slight tie in their united subscription to the "Const.i.tutionnel"; it would certainly not be difficult for the colonel to make a Liberal of the ex-mercer, though Rogron knew so little of politics that he was capable of regarding the exploits of Sergeant Mercier as those of a brother shopkeeper.

The expected arrival of Pierrette brought to sudden fruition the selfish ideas of the two men, inspired as they were by the folly and ignorance of the celibates. Seeing that Sylvie had lost all chance of establis.h.i.+ng herself in the good society of the place, an afterthought came to the colonel. Old soldiers have seen so many horrors in all lands, so many grinning corpses on battle-fields, that no physiognomies repel them; and Gouraud began to cast his eyes on the old maid's fortune. This imperial colonel, a short, fat man, wore enormous rings in ears that were bushy with tufts of hair. His spa.r.s.e and grizzled whiskers were called in 1799 "fins." His jolly red face was rather discolored, like those of all who had lived to tell of the Beresina. The lower half of his big, pointed stomach marked the straight line which characterizes a cavalry officer.

Gouraud had commanded the Second Hussars. His gray moustache hid a huge bl.u.s.tering mouth,--if we may use a term which alone describes that gulf.

He did not eat his food, he engulfed it. A sabre cut had slit his nose, by which his speech was made thick and very nasal, like that attributed to Capuchins. His hands, which were short and broad, were of the kind that make women say: "You have the hands of a rascal." His legs seemed slender for his torso. In that fat and active body an absolutely lawless spirit disported itself, and a thorough experience of the things of life, together with a profound contempt for social convention, lay hidden beneath the apparent indifference of a soldier. Colonel Gouraud wore the cross of an officer of the Legion of honor, and his emoluments from that, together with his salary as a retired officer, gave him in all about three thousand francs a year.

The lawyer, tall and thin, had liberal opinions in place of talent, and his only revenue was the meagre profits of his office. In Provins lawyers plead their own cases. The court was unfavorable to Vinet on account of his opinions; consequently, even the farmers who were Liberals, when it came to lawsuits preferred to employ some lawyer who was more congenial to the judges. Vinet was regarded with disfavor in other ways. He was said to have seduced a rich girl in the neighborhood of Coulommiers, and thus have forced her parents to marry her to him.

Madame Vinet was a Chargeboeuf, an old and n.o.ble family of La Brie, whose name comes from the exploit of a squire during the expedition of Saint Louis to Egypt. She incurred the displeasure of her father and mother, who arranged, unknown to Vinet, to leave their entire fortune to their son, doubtless charging him privately, to pay over a portion of it to his sister's children.

Thus the first bold effort of the ambitious man was a failure. Pursued by poverty, and ashamed not to give his wife the means of making a suitable appearance, he had made desperate efforts to enter public life, but the Chargeboeuf family refused him their influence. These Royalists disapproved, on moral grounds, of his forced marriage; besides, he was named Vinet, and how could they be expected to protect a plebian? Thus he was driven from branch to branch when he tried to get some good out of his marriage. Repulsed by every one, filled with hatred for the family of his wife, for the government which denied him a place, for the social world of Provins, which refused to admit him, Vinet submitted to his fate; but his gall increased. He became a Liberal in the belief that his fortune might yet be made by the triumph of the opposition, and he lived in a miserable little house in the Upper town from which his wife seldom issued. Madame Vinet had found no one to defend her since her marriage except an old Madame de Chargeboeuf, a widow with one daughter, who lived at Troyes. The unfortunate young woman, destined for better things, was absolutely alone in her home with a single child.