The Deputy of Arcis by Honoré de Balzac (free ebook reader for pc .txt) 📕

Our good friend Jacques Bricheteau, if he will have the kindness, will lay them before you."

This was equivalent to the royal formula of the old regime: "My chamberlain will tell you the rest."

"To go back to the origin of everything," said Jacques Bricheteau, accepting the duty thus put upon him, "I must first tell you that you are not a legitimate Sallenauve. When Monsieur le marquis, here present, returned after the emigration, in the year 1808, he made the acquaintance of your mother, and in 1809 you were born as the fruit of their intercourse. Your birth, as you already know, cost your mother her life, and as misfortunes never come singly, Monsieur de Sallenauve was compromised in a conspiracy against the imperial power and compelled to fly the country. Brought up in Arcis with me, the marquis, wishing to give me a proof of his friendship, confided to me, on his departure to this new expatriation, the care of your childhood. I accepted that charge, I will not say with alacrity, but certainly with gratitude."

At these words the marquis held out his hand to Jacques Bricheteau, who was seated near him, and after a silent pressure, which did not seem to me remarkably warm, Jacques Bricheteau continued:--

"The mysterious precautions I was forced to take in carrying out my trust are explained by Monsieur le marquis's position towards the various governments which have succeeded each other in France since the period of your birth. Under the Empire, I feared that a government little indulgent to attacks upon itself might send you to share your father's exile; it was then that the idea of giving you a sort of anonymous existence first occurred to me. Under the Restoration I feared for you another class of enemies; the Sallenauve family, which has no other representatives at the present day than Monsieur le marquis, was then powerful. In some way it got wind of your existence, and also of the fact that the marquis had taken the precaution not to recognize you, in order to retain the right to leave you his whole fortune, which, as a natural child, the law would in part have deprived you. The obscurity in which I kept you seemed to me the best security, against the schemes of greedy relations, and certain mysterious steps taken by them from time to time proved the wisdom of these precautions. Under the government of July, on the other hand, it was I myself who I feared might endanger you. I had seen the establishment of the new order of things with the deepest regret, and not believing in its duration, I took part in certain active hostilities against it, which brought me under the ban of the police."

Here the recollection that Jacques Bricheteau had been pointed out by the waiter of the Cafe des Arts as a member of the police made me smile, whereupon the speaker stopped and said with a very serious air:--

"Do these explanations which I have the honor to give you seem improbable?"

I explained the meaning of my smile.

"That waiter," said Jacques Bricheteau, "was not altogether mistaken; for I have long been employed at the prefecture of police in the health department; but I have nothing to do with police espial; on the contrary, I have more than once come near being the victim of it."

Here a rather ridiculous noise struck our ears, nothing less than a loud snore from my father, who thus gave us to know that he did not take a very keen interest in the explanations furnished in his name with a certain prolixity. I don't know whether Jacques Bricheteau's vanity being touched put him slightly out of temper, but he rose impatiently and shook the arm of the sleeper, crying out:--

"Hey! marquis, if you sleep like this at the Council of state, upon my soul, your country must be well governed!"

Monsieur de Sallenauve opened his eyes, shook himself, and then said, turning to me:--

"Pardon me, Monsieur le comte, but for the last ten nights I have travelled, without stopping, to meet you here; and though I spent the last night in a bed, I am still much fatigued."

So saying he rose, took a large pinch of snuff, and began to walk up and down the room, while Jacques Bricheteau continued:--

"It is a little more than a year since I received a letter from your father explaining his long silence, the plans he had made for you, and the necessity he was under of keeping his incognito for a few years longer. It was at that very time that you made your attempt to penetrate a secret the existence of which had become apparent to you."

"You made haste to escape me," I said laughing. "It was then you went to Stockholm."

"No, I went to your father's residence; I put the letter that he gave me for you into the post at Stockholm."

"I do not seize your--"

"Nothing is easier to understand," interrupted the marquis. "I do not reside in Sweden, and we wished to throw you off the track."

"Will you continue the explanation yourself?" asked Jacques Bricheteau, who spoke, as you may have observed, my dear friend, with elegance and fluency.

"No, no, go on," said the marquis; "you are giving it admirably."

"Feeling certain that your equivocal position as to family would injure the political career your father desired you to enter, I made that remark to him in one of my letters. He agreed with me, and resolved to hasten the period of your legal recognition, which, indeed, the extinction of the family in its other branch rendered desirable. But the recognition of a natural son is a serious act which the law surrounds with many precautions. Deeds must be signed before a notary, and to do this by power of attorney would involve both in a publicity which he is anxious for the present to avoid, he being married, and, as it were, naturalized in the country of his adoption. Hence, he decided to come here himself, obtaining leave of absence for a few weeks, in order to sign in person all papers necessary to secure to you his name and property in this country. Now let me put to you a final question. Do you consent to take the name of de Sallenauve and be recognized as his son?"

"I am not a lawyer," I answered; "but it seems to me that, supposing I do not feel honored by this recognition, it does not wholly depend on me to decline it."

"Pardon me," replied Jacques Bricheteau; "under the circumstances you could, if you chose, legally contest the paternity. I will also add,--and in doing so I am sure that I express the intentions of your father,--if you think that a man who has already spent half a million on furthering your career is not a desirable father, we leave you free to follow your own course, and shall not insist in any way."

"Precisely, precisely," said Monsieur de Sallenauve, uttering that affirmation with the curt intonation and shrill voice peculiar to the relics of the old aristocracy.

Politeness, to say the least, forced me to accept the paternity thus offered to me. To the few words I uttered to that effect, Jacques Bricheteau replied gaily:--

"We certainly do not intend to make you buy a father in a poke. Monsieur le marquis is desirous of laying before you all title-deeds and documents of every kind of which he is the present holder. Moreover, as he has been so long absent from this country, he intends to prove his identity by several of his contemporaries who are still living. For instance, among the honorable personages who have already recognized him I may mention the worthy superior of the Ursuline convent, Mother Marie-des-Anges, for whom, by the bye, you have done a masterpiece."

"Faith, yes," said the marquis, "a pretty thing, and if you turn out as well in politics--"

"Well, marquis," interrupted Jacques Bricheteau, who seemed to me inclined to manage the affair, "are you ready to proceed with our young friend to the verification of the documents?"

"That is unnecessary," I remarked, and did not think that by this refusal I pledged my faith too much; for, after all, what signify papers in the hands of a man who might have forged them or stolen them? But my father would not consent; and for more than two hours they spread before me parchments, genealogical trees, contracts, patents, documents of all kinds, from which it appeared that the family of Sallenauve is, after that of Cinq-Cygne, the most ancient family in the department of the Aube. I ought to add that the exhibition of these archives was accompanied by an infinite number of spoken details which seemed to make the identity of the Marquis de Sallenauve indisputable. On all other subjects my father is laconic; his mental capacity does not seem to me remarkable, and he willingly allowed his _mouthpiece_ to talk for him. But here, in the matter of his parchments, he was loquaciously full of anecdotes, recollections, heraldic knowledge; in short, he was exactly the old noble, ignorant and superficial in all things, but possessed of Benedictine erudition where the genealogy of his family was concerned.

The _session_ would, I believe, be still going on, if Jacques Bricheteau had not intervened. As the marquis was preparing to read a voluminous memorandum refuting a chapter in Tallemant des Reaux' "Historiettes" which did not redound to the credit of the great house of Sallenauve, the wise organist remarked that it was time we dined, if we intended to keep an appointment already made for seven o'clock at the office of Maitre Achille Pigoult the notary.

We dined, not at the table-d'hote, but in private, and the dinner seemed very long on account of the silent preoccupation of the marquis, and the slowness with which, owing to his loss of teeth, he swallowed his food.

At seven o'clock we went to the notary's office; but as it is now two o'clock in the morning, and I am heavy with sleep, I shall put off till to-morrow an account of what happened there.

May 4, 5 A.M.

I reckoned on peaceful slumbers, embellished by dreams. On the contrary, I did not sleep an hour, and I have waked up stung to the heart by an odious thought. But before I transmit that thought to you, I must tell you what happened at the notary's.

Maitre Achille Pigoult, a puny little man, horribly pitted with the small-pox, and afflicted with green spectacles, above which he darts glances of vivacious intelligence, asked us if we felt warm enough, the room having no fire. Politeness required us to say yes, although he had already given signs of incendiarism by striking a match, when, from a distant and dark corner of the room, a broken, feeble voice, the owner of which we had not as yet perceived, interposed to prevent the prodigality.

"No, Achille, no, don't make a fire," said an old man. "There are five in the room, and the lamp gives out a good heat; before long the room would be too hot to bear."

Hearing these words, the marquis exclaimed:--

"Ah! this is the good Monsieur Pigoult, formerly justice of the peace."

Thus recognized, the old man rose and went up to my father, into whose face he peered.

"_Parbleu_!" he cried, "I recognize you for a Champagnard of the _vieille roche_. Achille did not deceive me in declaring that I should see two of my former acquaintances. You," he said, addressing the