The Parisians — Complete by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (best novels ever txt) 📕

Three days elapsed before Graham again saw M. Lebeau. The letter-writer did not show himself at the cafe, and was not to be found at his office, the ordinary business of which was transacted by his clerk, saying that his master was much engaged on important matters that took him from home.

Graham naturally thought that these matters concerned the discovery of Louise Duval, and was reconciled to suspense. At the cafe, awaiting Lebeau, he had slid into some acquaintance with the ouvrier Armand Monnier, whose face and talk had before excited his interest. Indeed, the acquaintance had been commenced by the ouvrier, who seated himself at a table near to Graham’s, and, after looking at him earnestly for some minutes, said, “You are waiting for your antagonist at dominos, M. Lebeau,—a very remarkable man.”

“So he seems. I know, however, but little of him. You, perhaps, have known him longer?”

“Several months. Many of your countrymen frequent this cafe, but you do not seem to care to associate with the blouses.”

“It is not that; but we islanders are shy, and don’t make acquaintance with each other readily. By the way, since you so courteously accost me, I may take the liberty of saying that I overheard you defend the other night, against one of my countrymen, who seemed to me to talk great nonsense, the existence of le bon Dieu. You had much the best of it. I rather gathered from your argument that you went somewhat further, and were not too enlightened to admit of Christianity.”

Armand Monnier looked pleased. He liked praise; and he liked to hear himself talk, and he plunged at once into a very complicated sort of Christianity,—partly Arian, partly Saint Simonian, with a little of Rousseau and a great deal of Armand Monnier. Into this we need not follow him; but, in sum, it was a sort of Christianity, the main heads of which consisted in the removal of your neighbour’s landmarks, in the right of the poor to appropriate the property of the rich, in the right of love to dispense with marriage, and the duty of the State to provide for any children that might result from such union,—the parents being incapacitated to do so, as whatever they might leave was due to the treasury in common. Graham listened to these doctrines with melancholy not unmixed with contempt. “Are these opinions of yours,” he asked, “derived from reading or your own reflection?”

“Well, from both, but from circumstances in life that induced me to read and reflect. I am one of the many victims of the tyrannical law of marriage. When very young I married a woman who made me miserable, and then forsook me. Morally, she has ceased to be my wife; legally, she is. I then met with another woman who suits me, who loves me. She lives with me; I cannot marry her; she has to submit to humiliations, to be called contemptuously an ouvrier’s mistress. Then, though before I was only a Republican, I felt there was something wrong in society which needed a