The Lesser Bourgeoisie, Honore de Balzac [good book recommendations .TXT] 📗

of Provence, "it is certainly

true that the bourgeoisie has ill understood its mission. We can see,

any day, the great law officers, attorney-generals, peers of France in

omnibuses, judges who live on their salaries, prefects without

fortunes, ministers in debt! Whereas the bourgeoisie, who have seized

upon those offices, ought to dignify them, as in the olden time when

aristocracy dignified them, and not occupy such posts solely for the

purpose of making their fortune, as scandalous disclosures have

proved."

 

"Who is this young man?" thought Olivier Vinet. "Is he a relative?

Cardot ought to have come with me on this first visit."

 

"Who is that little monsieur?" asked Minard of Barbet. "I have seen

him here several times."

 

"He is a tenant," replied Metivier, shuffling the cards.

 

"A lawyer," added Barbet, in a low voice, "who occupies a small

apartment on the third floor front. Oh! _He_ doesn't amount to much; he

has nothing."

 

"What is the name of that young man?" said Olivier Vinet to Thuillier.

 

"Theodose de la Peyrade; he is a barrister," replied Thuillier, in a

whisper.

 

At that moment the women present, as well as the men, looked at the

two young fellows, and Madame Minard remarked to Colleville:--

 

"He is rather good-looking, that stranger."

 

"I have made his anagram," replied Colleville, "and his name,

Charles-Marie-Theodose de la Peyrade, prophecies: 'Eh! monsieur

payera, de la dot, des oies et le char.' Therefore, my dear Mamma

Minard, be sure you don't give him your daughter."

 

"They say that young man is better-looking than my son," said Madame

Phellion to Madame Colleville. "What do you think about it?"

 

"Oh! in the matter of physical beauty a woman might hesitate before

choosing," replied Madame Colleville.

 

At that moment it occurred to young Vinet as he looked round the

salon, so full of the lesser bourgeoisie, that it might be a shrewd

thing to magnify that particular class; and he thereupon enlarged upon

the meaning of the young Provencal barrister, declaring that men so

honored by the confidence of the government should imitate royalty and

encourage a magnificence surpassing that of the former court. It was

folly, he said, to lay by the emoluments of an office. Besides, could

it be done, in Paris especially, where costs of living had trebled,

--the apartment of a magistrate, for instance, costing three thousand

francs a year?

 

"My father," he said in conclusion, "allows me three thousand francs a

year, and that, with my salary, barely allows me to maintain my rank."

 

When the young substitute rode boldly into this bog-hole, the

Provencal, who had slyly enticed him there, exchanged, without being

observed, a wink with Dutocq, who was just then waiting for the place

of a player at bouillotte.

 

"There is such a demand for offices," remarked the latter, "that they

talk of creating two justices of the peace to each arrondissement in

order to make a dozen new clerkships. As if they could interfere with

our rights and our salaries, which already require an exhorbitant

tax!"

 

"I have not yet had the pleasure of hearing you at the Palais," said

Vinet to Monsieur de la Peyrade.

 

"I am advocate for the poor, and I plead only before the justice of

peace," replied la Peyrade.

 

Mademoiselle Thuillier, as she listened to young Vinet's theory of the

necessity of spending an income, assumed a distant air and manner, the

significance of which was well understood by Dutocq and the young

Provencal. Vinet left the house in company with Minard and Julien the

advocate, so that the battle-field before the fire-place was abandoned

to la Peyrade and Dutocq.

 

"The upper bourgeoisie," said Dutocq to Thuillier, "will behave, in

future, exactly like the old aristocracy. The nobility wanted girls

with money to manure their lands, and the parvenus of to-day want the

same to feather their nests."

 

"That's exactly what Monsieur Thuillier was saying to me this

morning," remarked la Peyrade, boldly.

 

"Vinet's father," said Dutocq, "married a Demoiselle de Chargeboeuf

and has caught the opinions of the nobility; he wants a fortune at any

price; his wife spends money regally."

 

"Oh!" said Thuillier, in whom the jealousy between the two classes of

the bourgeoisie was fully roused, "take offices away from those

fellows and they'd fall back where they came."

 

Mademoiselle was knitting with such precipitous haste that she seemed

to be propelled by a steam-engine.

 

"Take my place, Monsieur Dutocq," said Madame Minard, rising. "My feet

are cold," she added, going to the fire, where the golden ornaments of

her turban made fireworks in the light of the Saint-Aurora wax-candles

that were struggling vainly to light the vast salon.

 

"He is very small fry, that young substitute," said Madame Minard,

glancing at Mademoiselle Thuillier.

 

"Small fry!" cried la Peyrade. "Ah, madame! how witty!"

 

"But madame has so long accustomed us to that sort of thing," said the

handsome Thuillier.

 

Madame Colleville was examining la Peyrade and comparing him with

young Phellion, who was just then talking to Celeste, neither of them

paying any heed to what was going on around them. This is, certainly,

the right moment to depict the singular personage who was destined to

play a signal part in the Thuillier household, and who fully deserves

the appellation of a great artist. 

CHAPTER V (A PRINCIPAL PERSONAGE)

There exists in Provence, especially about Avignon, a race of men with

blond or chestnut hair, fair skin, and eyes that are almost tender,

their pupils calm, feeble, or languishing, rather than keen, ardent,

or profound, as they usually are in the eyes of Southerners. Let us

remark, in passing, that among Corsicans, a race subject to fits of

anger and dangerous irascibility, we often meet with fair skins and

physical natures of the same apparent tranquillity. These pale men,

rather stout, with somewhat dim and hazy eyes either green or blue,

are the worst species of humanity in Provence; and

Charles-Marie-Theodose de la Peyrade presents a fine type of that race,

the constitution of which deserves careful examination on the part of

medical science and philosophical physiology. There rises, at times,

within such men, a species of bile,--a bitter gall, which flies to

their head and makes them capable of ferocious actions, done,

apparently, in cold blood. Being the result of an inward intoxication,

this sort of dumb violence seems to be irreconcilable with their

quasi-lymphatic outward man, and the tranquillity of their benignant

glance.

 

Born in the neighborhood of Avignon, the young Provencal whose name we

have just mentioned was of middle height, well-proportioned, and

rather stout; the tone of his skin had no brilliancy; it was neither

livid nor dead-white, nor colored, but gelatinous,--that word can

alone give a true idea of the flabby, hueless envelope, beneath which

were concealed nerves that were less vigorous than capable of enormous

resistance at certain given moments. His eyes, of a pale cold blue,

expressed in their ordinary condition a species of deceptive sadness,

which must have had great charms for women. The forehead, finely cut,

was not without dignity, and it harmonized well with the soft, light

chestnut hair curling naturally, but slightly, at its tips. The nose,

precisely like that of a hunting dog, flat and furrowed at the tip,

inquisitive, intelligent, searching, always on the scent, instead of

expressing good-humor, was ironical and mocking; but this particular

aspect of his nature never showed itself openly; the young man must

have ceased to watch himself, he must have flown into fury before the

power came to him to flash out the sarcasm and the wit which

embittered, tenfold, his infernal humor. The mouth, the curving lines

and pomegranate-colored lips of which were very pleasing, seemed the

admirable instrument of an organ that was almost sweet in its middle

tones, where its owner usually kept it, but which, in its higher key,

vibrated on the ear like the sound of a gong. This falsetto was the

voice of his nerves and his anger. His face, kept expressionless by an

inward command, was oval in form. His manners, in harmony with the

sacerdotal calmness of the face, were reserved and conventional; but

he had supple, pliant ways which, though they never descended to

wheedling, were not lacking in seduction; although as soon as his back

was turned their charm seemed inexplicable. Charm, when it takes its

rise in the heart, leaves deep and lasting traces; that which is

merely a product of art, or of eloquence, has only a passing power; it

produces its immediate effect, and that is all. But how many

philosophers are there in life who are able to distinguish the

difference? Almost always the trick is played (to use a popular

expression) before the ordinary run of men have perceived its methods.

 

Everything about this young man of twenty-seven was in harmony with

his character; he obeyed his vocation by cultivating philanthropy,

--the only expression which explains the philanthropist. Theodose

loved the People, for he limited his love for humanity. Like the

horticulturist who devotes himself to roses, or dahlias, or

heart's-ease, or geraniums, and pays no attention to the plants his

fancy has not selected, so this young La Rochefoucault-Liancourt gave

himself to the workingmen, the proletariat and the paupers of the

faubourgs Saint-Jacques and Saint-Marceau. The strong man, the man of

genius at bay, the worthy poor of the bourgeois class, he cut them off

from the bosom of his charity. The heart of all persons with a mania

is like those boxes with compartments, in which sugarplums are kept in

sorts: "suum cuique tribuere" is their motto; they measure to each duty

its dose. There are some philanthropists who pity nothing but the man

condemned to death. Vanity is certainly the basis of philanthropy; but

in the case of this Provencal it was calculation, a predetermined

course, a "liberal" and democratic hypocrisy, played with a perfection

that no other actor will ever attain.

 

Theodose did not attack the rich; he contented himself with not

understanding them; he endured them; every one, in his opinion, ought

to enjoy the fruits of his labor. He had been, he said, a fervent

disciple of Saint-Simon, but that mistake must be attributed to his

youth: modern society could have no other basis than heredity. An

ardent Catholic, like all men from the Comtat, he went to the earliest

morning masses, and thus concealed his piety. Like other

philanthropists, he practised a sordid economy, and gave to the poor

his time, his legal advice, his eloquence, and such money as he

extracted for them from the rich. His clothes, always of black cloth,

were worn until the seams became white. Nature had done a great deal

for Theodose in not giving him that fine manly Southern beauty which

creates in others an imaginary expectation, to which it is more than

difficult for a man to respond. As it was, he could be what suited him

at the moment,--an agreeable man or a very ordinary one. Never, since

his admission to the Thuilliers', had he ventured, till this evening,

to raise his voice and speak as dogmatically as he had risked doing to

Olivier Vinet; but perhaps Theodose de la Peyrade was not sorry to

seize the opportunity to come out from the shade in which he had

hitherto kept himself. Besides, it was necessary to get rid of the

young substitute, just as the Minards had previously ruined the hopes

of Monsieur Godeschal. Like all superior men (for he certainly had

some superiority), Vinet had never lowered himself to the point where

the threads of these bourgeois spider-webs became visible to him, and

he had therefore plunged, like a fly, headforemost, into the almost

invisible trap to which Theodose inveigled him.

 

To complete this portrait of the poor man's lawyer we must here relate

the circumstances of his first arrival at the Thuilliers'.

 

Theodose came to lodge in Mademoiselle Thuillier's house toward the

close of the year 1837. He had taken his degree about five years

earlier, and had kept the proper number of terms to become a

barrister. Circumstances, however, about which he said nothing, had

interfered to prevent his being called to the bar; he was, therefore,

still a licentiate. But soon after he was installed in the little

apartment on the third floor, with the furniture rigorously required

by all members of his noble profession,--for the guild of