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

man entered hastily by a side-door; he seemed agitated, and so absorbed in some anxiety that he forgot to remove his hat. The beadle caught him by the arm, and his face became livid, but, turning round, he saw at once that his fears were causeless.

"Is your hat glued on your head, young man?" said the beadle, pompously.

"Oh, pardon me, monsieur," he replied, snatching it off; "I forgot myself."

Then he slipped into the thickest of the crowd and disappeared.

A few seconds after the irruption of this youth the same door gave access to a man around whose powerful, seamed face was the collar of a white beard, which, combined with a thick shock of hair, also white but slightly reddish in tone and falling almost to his shoulders, gave him very much the air of an old Conventional, or a Bernardin de Saint-Pierre who had had the small-pox. His face and his hair placed him in the sixties, but his robust figure, the energetic decision of his movements, and, above all, the piercing keenness of the glance which he cast about him on entering the church, showed a powerful organization on which the passage of years had made little or no impression. No doubt, he was in search of the young fellow who had preceded him; but he did not commit the mistake of entering the crowd, where he knew of course that the youth had lost himself. Like a practised hunter, he saw that pursuit was useless, and he was just about to leave the church when, after a short organ prelude, the contralto of the signora delivering its solemn notes gave forth that glorious harmony to which is sung the Litany of the Virgin. The beauty of the voice, the beauty of the chant, the beauty of the words of the sacred hymn, which the fine method of the singer brought out distinctly, made a singular impression on the stalwart stranger. Instead of leaving the church, he put himself in the shadow of a column, against which he leaned as he stood; but as the last notes of the divine canticle died away among the arches of the church, he knelt on the pavement, and whoever had chanced to look that way would have seen two heavy tears rolling slowly down his cheeks. The benediction given, and the crowd dispersing, he rose, wiped his eyes, and, muttering, "What a fool I am!" left the church. Then he went to the Place Saint-Sulpice, and, beckoning to a coach on the stand, he said to the driver,--

"Rue de Provence, my man, quick! there's fat in it."

Reaching the house, he went rapidly up the stairway, and rang at the door of an apartment on the first floor.

"Is my aunt at home?" he inquired of the Negro who opened it. Then he followed the man, and was presently ushered into a salon where the Negro announced,--

"Monsieur de Saint-Esteve."

The salon which the famous chief of the detective police now entered was remarkable for the luxury, but still more for the horribly bad taste, of its appointments. Three women of advanced age were seated round a card-table earnestly employed in a game of dominoes. Three glasses and an empty silver bowl which gave forth a vinous odor showed that the worship of double-sixes was not without its due libations.

"Good evening, mesdames," said the chief of police, sitting down; "for I have something to say to each of you."

"We'll listen presently," said his aunt; "you can't interrupt the game. It won't be long; I play for four."

"White all round!" said one of the hags.

"Domino!" cried the Saint-Esteve. "I win; you have four points between you two, and the whites are all out. Well, my dear, what is it?" she said, turning to her nephew, after a rather stormy reckoning among the witches was over.

"You, Madame Fontaine," said the chief of police, addressing one of the venerable beings, whose head was covered with disorderly gray hair and a battered green bonnet,--"you neglect your duty; you have sent me no report, and, on the contrary, I get many complaints of you. The prefect has a great mind to close your establishment. I protect you on account of the services you are supposed to render us; but if you don't render them, I warn you, without claiming any gifts of prediction, that your fate-shop will be shut up."

"There now!" replied the pythoness, "you prevented me from hiring Mademoiselle Lenormand's apartment in the rue de Tournon, and how can you expect me to make reports about the cooks and clerks and workmen and grisettes who are all I get where I am? If you had let me work among the great folks, I'd make you reports and plenty of them."

"I don't see how you can say that, Madame Fontaine," said Madame de Saint-Esteve. "I am sure I send you all my clients. It was only the other day," continued the matrimonial agent, "I sent you that Italian singer, living with a deputy who is against the government; why didn't you report about that?"

"There's another thing," said the chief of police, "which appears in several of the complaints that I received about you,--that nasty animal--"

"What, Astaroth?" said Madame Fontaine.

"Yes, that batrachian, that toad, to come down to his right name. It seems he nearly killed a woman who was pregnant--"

"Well, well," interrupted the sorceress, "if I am to tell fortunes alone, you might as well guillotine me at once. Because a fool of a woman lay-in with a dead child, must toads be suppressed in nature? Why did God make them?"

"My dear woman," said the chief, "did you never hear that in 1617 a learned man was put to death for having a toad in a bottle?"

"Yes, I know that; but we are not in those light ages," replied Madame Fontaine, facetiously.

"As for you, Madame Nourrisson, the complaint is that you gather your fruit unripe. You ought to know by this time the laws and regulations, and I warn you that everything under twenty-one years of age is forbidden. I wonder I have to remind you of it. Now, aunt, what I have to say to you is confidential."

Thus dismissed, two of the Fates departed.

Since the days when Jacques Collin had abdicated his former kingship and had made himself, as they say, a new skin in the police force, Jacqueline Collin, though she had never put herself within reach of the law, had certainly never donned the robe of innocence. But having attained, like her nephew, to what might fairly be called opulence, she kept at a safe and respectful distance from the Penal Code, and under cover of an agency that was fairly avowable, she sheltered practices more or less shady, on which she continued to bestow an intelligence and an activity that were really infernal.

"Aunt," said Vautrin, "I have so many things to say to you that I don't know where to begin."

"I should think so! It is a week since I've seen you."

"In the first place, I must tell you that I have just missed a splendid chance."

"What sort of chance?" asked Jacqueline.

"In the line of my odious calling. But this time the capture was worth making. Do you remember that little Prussian engraver about whom I sent you to Berlin?"

"The one who forged those Vienna bank bills in that wonderful way?"

"Yes. I just missed arresting him near Saint-Sulpice. But I followed him into the church, where I heard your Signora Luigia."

"Ah!" said Jacqueline, "she has made up her mind at last, and has left that imbecile of a sculptor."

"It is about her that I have come to talk to you," said Vautrin. "Here are the facts. The Italian opera season in London has begun badly,--their prima donna is taken ill. Sir Francis Drake, the impresario, arrived in Paris yesterday, at the Hotel des Princes, rue de Richelieu, in search of a prima donna, at any rate _pro tem_. I have been to see him in the interests of the signora. Sir Francis Drake is an Englishman, very bald, with a red nose, and long yellow teeth. He received me with cold politeness, and asked in very good French what my business was."

"Did you propose to him Luigia?"

"That was what I went for,--in the character, be it understood, of a Swedish nobleman. He asked if her talent was known. 'Absolutely unknown,' I replied. 'It is risky,' said Sir Francis; 'nevertheless arrange to let me hear her.' I told him that she was staying with her friend Madame de Saint-Esteve, at whose house I could take the liberty to invite him to dinner."

"When?" asked Jacqueline.

"To-day is the 19th; I said the 21st. Order the dinner from Chevet for fifteen persons, and send for your client Bixiou to make you out the list. Tell him you want the chief men of the press, a lawyer to settle the terms of the contract, and a pianist to accompany the signora. Let her know what hangs upon it. Sir Francis Drake and I will make up the number. Useless to tell you that I am your friend Comte Halphertius, who, having no house in Paris, gives this dinner at yours. Mind that everything is done in the best taste."

In designating Bixiou to his aunt as the recruiting-officer of the dinner, Vautrin knew that through the universality of his relations with writing, singing, designing, eating, living, and squirming Paris, no one was as capable as he of spreading the news of the dinner broadcast.

At seven o'clock precisely all the guests named by Desroches to Maxime, plus Desroches himself, were assembled in the salon of the rue de Provence, when the Negro footman opened the door and announced Sir Francis Drake and his Excellency the Comte Halphertius. The dress of the Swedish nobleman was correct to the last degree,--black coat, white cravat, and white waistcoat, on which glowed the ribbon of an order hanging from his neck; the rest of his decorations were fastened to his coat by chainlets. At the first glance which he cast upon the company, Vautrin had the annoyance of beholding that Jacqueline's habits and instincts had been more potent than his express order,--for a species of green and yellow turban surmounted her head in a manner which he felt to be ridiculous; but thanks to the admirable manner in which the rest of his programme had been carried out, the luckless coiffure was forgiven.

As for Signora Luigia, dressed in black, which was customary with her, and having had the good sense to reject the services of a _coiffeur_, she was royally beautiful. An air of melancholy gravity, expressed by her whole person, inspired a sentiment of respect which surprised the men who on Bixiou's invitation were there to judge of her. The only special presentation that was made among the guests was that of Desroches to Vautrin, which Bixiou made in the following lively formula:--

"Maitre Desroches, the most intelligent solicitor of modern times--Comte Halphertius of Sweden."

As for Sir Francis Drake, he seemed at first inclined to disdain the influence of the dramatic newspapers, whose representatives were there assembled; but presently recognizing Felicien Vernou and Lousteau, two noted men of that secondary press, he greeted them heartily and shook them by the hand.

Before dinner was announced, Comte Halphertius judged it advisable to make a little speech.

"Dear madame," he said to his aunt, "you are really a fairy godmother. This is the first time I have ever been in a