Other People's Money, Emile Gaboriau [best ebook reader txt] 📗

have a young servant.  He gave her from time to time, a five-franc-piece, and took her to the country on Sundays.

This was the honeymoon; and, as he declared himself, this life of prodigalities could not last.

Under a futile pretext, the little servant was dismissed.  He tightened the strings of his purse.  The Sunday excursions were suppressed.

To mere economy succeeded the niggardly parsimony which counts the grains of salt in the pot-au-feu, which weighs the soap for the washing, and measures the evening’s allowance of candle.

Gradually the accountant took the habit of treating his young wife like a servant, whose honesty is suspected; or like a child, whose thoughtlessness is to be feared.  Every morning he handed her the money for the expenses of the day; and every evening he expressed his surprise that she had not made better use of it.  He accused her of allowing herself to be grossly cheated, or even to be in collusion with the dealers.  He charged her with being foolishly extravagant; which fact, however, he added, did not surprise him much on the part of the daughter of a man who had dissipated a large fortune.

To cap the climax, Vincent Favoral was on the worst possible terms with his father-in-law.  Of the twenty thousand francs of his wife’s dowry, twelve thousand only had been paid, and it was in vain that he clamored for the balance.  The silk-merchant’s business had become unprofitable; he was on the verge of bankruptcy.  The eight thousand francs seemed in imminent danger.

His wife alone he held responsible for this deception.  He repeated to her constantly that she had connived with her father to “take him in,” to fleece him, to ruin him.

What an existence!  Certainly, had the unhappy woman known where to find a refuge, she would have fled from that home where each of her days was but a protracted torture.  But where could she go?  Of whom could she beg a shelter?

She had terrible temptations at this time, when she was not yet twenty, and they called her the beautiful Mme. Favoral.

Perhaps she would have succumbed, when she discovered that she was about to become a mother.  One year, day for day, after her marriage, she gave birth to a son, who received the name of Maxence.

The accountant was but indifferently pleased at the coming of this son.  It was, above all, a cause of expense.  He had been compelled to give some thirty francs to a nurse, and almost twice as much for the baby’s clothes.  Then a child breaks up the regularity of one’s habits; and he, as he affirmed, was attached to his as much as to life itself.  And now he saw his household disturbed, the hours of his meals altered, his own importance reduced, his authority even ignored.

But what mattered now to his young wife the ill-humor which he no longer took the trouble to conceal?  Mother, she defied her tyrant.

Now, at least, she had in this world a being upon whom she could lavish all her caresses so brutally repelled.  There existed a soul within which she reigned supreme.  What troubles would not a smile of her son have made her forget?

With the admirable instinct of an egotist, M. Favoral understood so well what passed in the mind of his wife, that he dared not complain too much of what the little fellow cost.  He made up his mind bravely; and when four years later, his daughter Gilberte was born, instead of lamenting: 

“Bash!” said he:  “God blesses large families.”

VII

But already, at this time, M. Vincent Favoral’s situation had been singularly modified.

The revolution of 1848 had just taken place.  The factory in the Faubourg St. Antoine, where he was employed, had been compelled to close its doors.

One evening, as he came home at the usual hour, he announced that he had been discharged.

Mme. Favoral shuddered at the thought of what her husband might be, without work, and deprived of his salary.

“What is to become of us?” she murmured.

He shrugged his shoulders.  Visibly he was much excited.  His cheeks were flushed; his eyes sparkled.

“Bash!” he said:  “we shan’t starve for all that.”  And, as his wife was gazing at him in astonishment: 

“Well,” he went on, “what are you looking at?  It is so:  I know many a one who affects to live on his income, and who are not as well off as we are.”

It was, for over six years since he was married, the first time that he spoke of his business otherwise than to groan and complain, to accuse fate, and curse the high price of living.  The very day before, he had declared himself ruined by the purchase of a pair of shoes for Maxence.  The change was so sudden and so great, that she hardly knew what to think, and wondered if grief at the loss of his situation had not somewhat disturbed his mind.

“Such are women,” he went on with a giggle.  “Results astonish them, because they know nothing of the means used to bring them about.  Am I a fool, then?  Would I impose upon myself privations of all sorts, if it were to accomplish nothing?  Parbleu!  I love fine living too, I do, and good dinners at the restaurant, and the theatre, and the nice little excursions in the country.  But I want to be rich.  At the price of all the comforts which I have not had, I have saved a capital, the income of which will support us all.  Eh, eh!  That’s the power of the little penny put out to fatten!”

As she went to bed that night, Mme. Favoral felt more happy than she had done since her mother’s death.  She almost forgave her husband his sordid parsimony, and the humiliations he had heaped upon her.

“Well, be it so,” she thought.  “I shall have lived miserably, I shall have endured nameless sufferings; but my children shall be rich, their life shall be easy and pleasant.”

The next day M. Favoral’s excitement had completely abated.  Manifestly he regretted his confidences.

“You must not think on that account that you can waste and pillage every thing,” he declared rudely.  “Besides, I have greatly exaggerated.”

And he started in search of a situation.

To find one was likely to be difficult.  Times of revolution are not exactly propitious to industry.  Whilst the parties discussed in the Chamber, there were on the street twenty thousand clerks, who, every morning as they rose, wondered where they would dine that day.

For want of any thing better, Vincent Favoral undertook to keep books in various places,—an hour here, an hour there, twice a week in one house, four times in another.

In this way he earned as much and more than he did at the factory; but the business did not suit him.

What he liked was the office from which one does not stir,