The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac (best ereader for graphic novels TXT) 📕

admits no brother unless he has a suitable study, a legal library, and

can thus, as it were, verify his claims,--Theodose de la Peyrade began

to practise as a barrister before the Royal Court of Paris.

The whole of the year 1838 was employed in making this change in his

condition, and he led a most regular life. He studied at home in the

mornings till dinner-time, going sometimes to the Palais for important

cases. Having become very intimate with Dutocq (so Dutocq said), he

did certain services to the poor of the faubourg Saint-Jacques who

were brought to his notice by that official. He pleaded their cases

before the court, after bringing them to the notice of the attorneys,

who, according to the statutes of their order, are obliged to take

turns in doing business for the poor. As Theodose was careful to plead

only safe cases, he won them all. Those persons whom he thus obliged

expressed their gratitude and their admiration, in spite of the young

lawyer's admonitions, among their own class, and to the porters of

private houses, through whom many anecdotes rose to the ears of the

proprietors. Delighted to have in their house a tenant so worthy and

so charitable, the Thuilliers wished to attract him to their salon,

and they questioned Dutocq about him. The mayor's clerk replied as the

envious reply; while doing justice to the young man he dwelt on his

remarkable avarice, which might, however, be the effect of poverty.

"I have had other information about him. He belongs to the Peyrades,

an old family of the 'comtat' of Avignon; he came here toward the end

of 1829, to inquire about an uncle whose fortune was said to be

considerable; he discovered the address of the old man only three days

before his death; and the furniture of the deceased merely sufficed to

bury him and pay his debts. A friend of this useless uncle gave a

couple of hundred louis to the poor fortune-hunter, advising him to

finish his legal studies and enter the judiciary career. Those two

hundred louis supported him for three years in Paris, where he lived

like an anchorite. But being unable to discover his unknown friend and

benefactor, the poor student was in abject distress in 1833. He worked

then, like so many other licentiates, in politics and literature, by

which he kept himself for a time above want--for he had nothing to

expect from his family. His father, the youngest brother of the dead

uncle, has eleven other children, who live on a small estate called

Les Canquoelles. He finally obtained a place on a ministerial

newspaper, the manager of which was the famous Cerizet, so celebrated

for the persecutions he met with, under the Restoration, on account of

his attachment to the liberals,--a man whom the new Left will never

forgive for having made his paper ministerial. As the government of

these days does very little to protect even its most devoted servants

(witness the Gisquet affair), the republicans have ended by ruining

Cerizet. I tell you this to explain how it is that Cerizet is now a

copying clerk in my office. Well, in the days when he flourished as

managing editor of a paper directed by the Perier ministry against the

incendiary journals, the 'Tribune' and others, Cerizet, who is a

worthy fellow after all, though he is too fond of women, pleasure, and

good living, was very useful to Theodose, who edited the political

department of the paper; and if it hadn't been for the death of

Casimir Perier that young man would certainly have received an

appointment as substitute judge in Paris. As it was, he dropped back

in 1834-35, in spite of his talent; for his connection with a

ministerial journal of course did him harm. 'If it had not been for my

religious principles,' he said to me, 'I should have thrown myself

into the Seine.' However, it seems that the friend of his uncle must

have heard of his distress, for again he sent him a sum of money;

enough to complete his terms for the bar; but, strange to say, he has

never known the name or the address of this mysterious benefactor.

After all, perhaps, under such circumstances, his economy is

excusable, and he must have great strength of mind to refuse what the

poor devils whose cases he wins by his devotion offer him. He is

indignant at the way other lawyers speculate on the possibility or

impossibility of poor creatures, unjustly sued, paying for the costs

of their defence. Oh! he'll succeed in the end. I shouldn't be

surprised to see that fellow in some very brilliant position; he has

tenacity, honesty, and courage. He studies, he delves."

Notwithstanding the favor with which he was greeted, la Peyrade went

discreetly to the Thuilliers'. When reproached for this reserve he

went oftener, and ended by appearing every Sunday; he was invited to

all dinner-parties, and became at last so familiar in the house that

whenever he came to see Thuillier about four o'clock he was always

requested to take "pot-luck" without ceremony. Mademoiselle Thuillier

used to say:--

"Then we know that he will get a good dinner, poor fellow!"

A social phenomenon which has certainly been observed, but never, as

yet, formulated, or, if you like it better, published, though it fully

deserves to be recorded, is the return of habits, mind, and manners to

primitive conditions in certain persons who, between youth and old

age, have raised themselves above their first estate. Thus Thuillier

had become, once more, morally speaking, the son of a concierge. He

now made use of many of his father's jokes, and a little of the slime

of early days was beginning to appear on the surface of his declining

life. About five or six times a month, when the soup was rich and good

he would deposit his spoon in his empty plate and say, as if the

proposition were entirely novel:--

"That's better than a kick on the shin-bone!"

On hearing that witticism for the first time Theodose, to whom it was

really new, laughed so heartily that the handsome Thuillier was

tickled in his vanity as he had never been before. After that,

Theodose greeted the same speech with a knowing little smile. This

slight detail will explain how it was that on the morning of the day

when Theodose had his passage at arms with Vinet he had said to

Thuillier, as they were walking in the garden to see the effect of a

frost:--

"You have much more wit than you give yourself credit for."

To which he received this answer:--

"In any other career, my dear Theodose, I should have made my way

nobly; but the fall of the Emperor broke my neck."

"There is still time," said the young lawyer. "In the first place,

what did that mountebank, Colleville, ever do to get the cross?"

There la Peyrade laid his finger on a sore wound which Thuillier hid

from every eye so carefully that even his sister did not know of it;

but the young man, interested in studying these bourgeois, had divined

the secret envy that gnawed at the heart of the ex-official.

"If you, experienced as you are, will do the honor to follow my

advice," added the philanthropist, "and, above all, not mention our

compact to any one, I will undertake to have you decorated with the

Legion of honor, to the applause of the whole quarter."

"Oh! if we succeed in that," cried Thuillier, "you don't know what I

would do for you."

This explains why Thuillier carried his head high when Theodose had

the audacity that evening to put opinions into his mouth.

In art--and perhaps Moliere had placed hypocrisy in the rank of art by

classing Tartuffe forever among comedians--there exists a point of

perfection to which genius alone attains; mere talent falls below it.

There is so little difference between a work of genius and a work of

talent, that only men of genius can appreciate the distance that

separates Raffaelle from Correggio, Titian from Rubens. More than

that; common minds are easily deceived on this point. The sign of

genius is a certain appearance of facility. In fact, its work must

appear, at first sight, ordinary, so natural is it, even on the

highest subjects. Many peasant-women hold their children as the famous

Madonna in the Dresden gallery holds hers. Well, the height of art in

a man of la Peyrade's force was to oblige others to say of him later:

"Everybody would have been taken in by him."

Now, in the salon Thuillier, he noted a dawning opposition; he

perceived in Colleville the somewhat clear-sighted and criticising

nature of an artist who has missed his vocation. The barrister felt

himself displeasing to Colleville, who (as the result of circumstances

not necessary to here report) considered himself justified in

believing in the science of anagrams. None of this anagrams had ever

failed. The clerks in the government office had laughed at him when,

demanding an anagram on the name of the poor helpless

Auguste-Jean-Francois Minard, he had produced, "J'amassai une si

grande fortune"; and the event had justified him after the lapse of

ten years! Theodose, on several occasions, had made advances to the

jovial secretary of the mayor's office, and had felt himself rebuffed

by a coldness which was not natural in so sociable a man. When the

game of bouillotte came to an end, Colleville seized the moment to

draw Thuillier into the recess of a window and say to him:--

"You are letting that lawyer get too much foothold in your house; he

kept the ball in his own hands all the evening."

"Thank you, my friend; forewarned is forearmed," replied Thuillier,

inwardly scoffing at Colleville.

Theodose, who was talking at the moment to Madame Colleville, had his

eye on the two men, and, with the same prescience by which women know

when and how they are spoken of, he perceived that Colleville was

trying to injure him in the mind of the weak and silly Thuillier.

"Madame," he said in Flavie's ear, "if any one here is capable of

appreciating you it is certainly I. You seem to me a pearl dropped

into the mire. You say you are forty-two, but a woman is no older than

she looks, and many women of thirty would be thankful to have your

figure and that noble countenance, where love has passed without ever

filling the void in your heart. You have given yourself to God, I

know, and I have too much religion myself to regret it, but I also

know that you have done so because no human being has proved worthy of

you. You have been loved, but you have never been adored--I have

divined that. There is your husband, who has not known how to please

you in a position in keeping with your deserts. He dislikes me, as if

he thought I loved you; and he prevents me from telling you of a way

that I think I have found to place you in the sphere for which you

were destined. No, madame," he continued, rising, "the Abbe Gondrin

will not preach this year through Lent at our humble Saint-Jacques du

Haut-Pas; the preacher will be Monsieur d'Estival, a compatriot of

mine, and you will hear in him one of the most impressive speakers

that I have ever known,--a priest whose outward appearance is not

agreeable, but, oh! what a soul!"

"Then my desire will be gratified," said poor Madame Thuillier. "I

have never yet been able to understand a famous preacher."

A smile flickered on the lips of Mademoiselle Thuillier and several

others who heard the remark.

"They devote themselves too much to theological demonstration," said

Theodose. "I have long thought so myself--but I never talk religion;

if it had not been for Madame _de_ Colleville, I--"

"Are there demonstrations in theology?" asked the professor of

mathematics, naively, plunging headlong into the conversation.

"I think, monsieur," replied Theodose, looking straight at Felix

Phellion, "that you cannot be serious in asking me such a question."

"Felix," said old Phellion, coming heavily to the rescue of his son,

and catching a distressed look on the pale face of Madame Thuillier,

--"Felix separates religion into two categories; he considers it from

the human point of view and the divine point of view,--tradition and

reason."

"That is heresy, monsieur," replied Theodose. "Religion is one; it

requires, above all things, faith."

Old Phellion, nonplussed by that remark, nodded to his wife:--

"It is getting late, my dear," and he pointed to the clock.

"Oh, Monsieur Felix," said Celeste in a whisper to the candid

mathematician, "Couldn't you be, like Pascal and Bossuet, learned and

pious both?"

The Phellions, on departing, carried the Collevilles with them. Soon

no one remained in the salon but Dutocq, Theodose, and the Thuilliers.

The flattery administered by Theodose to Flavie seems at the first

sight coarsely commonplace, but we must here remark, in the interests

of this history, that the