There"s nothing so useful as to be a visitor at a rich man"s house.
Since you have a black coat and white gloves, make use of them. You must mix in that set. You can introduce me into it later. Just think!--a man worth millions! Do all you can to make him like you, and his wife, too.
Become her lover!"
Frederick uttered an exclamation by way of protest.
"Why, I can quote cla.s.sical examples for you on that point, I rather think! Remember Rastignac in the _Comedie Humaine_. You will succeed, I have no doubt."
Frederick had so much confidence in Deslauriers that he felt his firmness giving way, and forgetting Madame Arnoux, or including her in the prediction made with regard to the other, he could not keep from smiling.
The clerk added:
"A last piece of advice: pa.s.s your examinations. It is always a good thing to have a handle to your name: and, without more ado, give up your Catholic and Satanic poets, whose philosophy is as old as the twelfth century! Your despair is silly. The very greatest men have had more difficult beginnings, as in the case of Mirabeau. Besides, our separation will not be so long. I will make that pickpocket of a father of mine disgorge. It is time for me to be going back. Farewell! Have you got a hundred sous to pay for my dinner?"
Frederick gave him ten francs, what was left of those he had got that morning from Isidore.
Meanwhile, some forty yards away from the bridges, a light shone from the garret-window of a low-built house.
Deslauriers noticed it. Then he said emphatically, as he took off his hat:
"Your pardon, Venus, Queen of Heaven, but Penury is the mother of wisdom. We have been slandered enough for that--so have mercy."
This allusion to an adventure in which they had both taken part, put them into a jovial mood. They laughed loudly as they pa.s.sed through the streets.
Then, having settled his bill at the inn, Deslauriers walked back with Frederick as far as the crossway near the Hotel-Dieu, and after a long embrace, the two friends parted.
CHAPTER III.
Sentiment and Pa.s.sion.
Two months later, Frederick, having debarked one morning in the Rue Coq-Heron, immediately thought of paying his great visit.
Chance came to his aid. Pere Roque had brought him a roll of papers and requested him to deliver them up himself to M. Dambreuse; and the worthy man accompanied the package with an open letter of introduction in behalf of his young fellow-countryman.
Madame Moreau appeared surprised at this proceeding. Frederick concealed the delight that it gave him.
M. Dambreuse"s real name was the Count d"Ambreuse; but since 1825, gradually abandoning his t.i.tle of n.o.bility and his party, he had turned his attention to business; and with his ears open in every office, his hand in every enterprise, on the watch for every opportunity, as subtle as a Greek and as laborious as a native of Auvergne, he had ama.s.sed a fortune which might be called considerable. Furthermore, he was an officer of the Legion of Honour, a member of the General Council of the Aube, a deputy, and one of these days would be a peer of France.
However, affable as he was in other respects, he wearied the Minister by his continual applications for relief, for crosses, and licences for tobacconists" shops; and in his complaints against authority he was inclined to join the Left Centre.
His wife, the pretty Madame Dambreuse, of whom mention was made in the fashion journals, presided at charitable a.s.semblies. By wheedling the d.u.c.h.esses, she appeased the rancours of the aristocratic faubourg, and led the residents to believe that M. Dambreuse might yet repent and render them some services.
The young man was agitated when he called on them.
"I should have done better to take my dress-coat with me. No doubt they will give me an invitation to next week"s ball. What will they say to me?"
His self-confidence returned when he reflected that M. Dambreuse was only a person of the middle cla.s.s, and he sprang out of the cab briskly on the pavement of the Rue d"Anjou.
When he had pushed forward one of the two gateways he crossed the courtyard, mounted the steps in front of the house, and entered a vestibule paved with coloured marble. A straight double staircase, with red carpet, fastened with copper rods, rested against the high walls of shining stucco. At the end of the stairs there was a banana-tree, whose wide leaves fell down over the velvet of the bal.u.s.ter. Two bronze candelabra, with porcelain globes, hung from little chains; the atmosphere was heavy with the fumes exhaled by the vent-holes of the hot-air stoves; and all that could be heard was the ticking of a big clock fixed at the other end of the vestibule, under a suit of armour.
A bell rang; a valet made his appearance, and introduced Frederick into a little apartment, where one could observe two strong boxes, with pigeon-holes filled with pieces of pasteboard. In the centre of it, M.
Dambreuse was writing at a roll-top desk.
He ran his eye over Pere Roque"s letter, tore open the canvas in which the papers had been wrapped, and examined them.
At some distance, he presented the appearance of being still young, owing to his slight figure. But his thin white hair, his feeble limbs, and, above all, the extraordinary pallor of his face, betrayed a shattered const.i.tution. There was an expression of pitiless energy in his sea-green eyes, colder than eyes of gla.s.s. His cheek-bones projected, and his finger-joints were knotted.
At length, he arose and addressed to the young man a few questions with regard to persons of their acquaintance at Nogent and also with regard to his studies, and then dismissed him with a bow. Frederick went out through another lobby, and found himself at the lower end of the courtyard near the coach-house.
A blue brougham, to which a black horse was yoked, stood in front of the steps before the house. The carriage door flew open, a lady sprang in, and the vehicle, with a rumbling noise, went rolling along the gravel.
Frederick had come up to the courtyard gate from the other side at the same moment. As there was not room enough to allow him to pa.s.s, he was compelled to wait. The young lady, with her head thrust forward past the carriage blind, talked to the door-keeper in a very low tone. All he could see was her back, covered with a violet mantle. However, he took a glance into the interior of the carriage, lined with blue rep, with silk lace and fringes. The lady"s ample robes filled up the s.p.a.ce within. He stole away from this little padded box with its perfume of iris, and, so to speak, its vague odour of feminine elegance. The coachman slackened the reins, the horse brushed abruptly past the starting-point, and all disappeared.
Frederick returned on foot, following the track of the boulevard.
He regretted not having been able to get a proper view of Madame Dambreuse. A little higher than the Rue Montmartre, a regular jumble of vehicles made him turn round his head, and on the opposite side, facing him, he read on a marble plate:
"JACQUES ARNOUX."
How was it that he had not thought about her sooner? It was Deslauriers"
fault; and he approached the shop, which, however, he did not enter. He was waiting for _her_ to appear.
The high, transparent plate-gla.s.s windows presented to one"s gaze statuettes, drawings, engravings, catalogues and numbers of _L"Art Industriel_, arranged in a skilful fashion; and the amounts of the subscription were repeated on the door, which was decorated in the centre with the publisher"s initials. Against the walls could be seen large pictures whose varnish had a shiny look, two chests laden with porcelain, bronze, alluring curiosities; a little staircase separated them, shut off at the top by a Wilton portiere; and a l.u.s.tre of old Saxe, a green carpet on the floor, with a table of marqueterie, gave to this interior the appearance rather of a drawing-room than of a shop.
Frederick pretended to be examining the drawings. After hesitating for a long time, he went in. A clerk lifted the portiere, and in reply to a question, said that Monsieur would not be in the shop before five o"clock. But if the message could be conveyed----
"No! I"ll come back again," Frederick answered blandly.
The following days were spent in searching for lodgings; and he fixed upon an apartment in a second story of a furnished mansion in the Rue Hyacinthe.
With a fresh blotting-case under his arm, he set forth to attend the opening lecture of the course. Three hundred young men, bare-headed, filled an amphitheatre, where an old man in a red gown was delivering a discourse in a monotonous voice. Quill pens went scratching over the paper. In this hall he found once more the dusty odour of the school, a reading-desk of similar shape, the same wearisome monotony! For a fortnight he regularly continued his attendance at law lectures. But he left off the study of the Civil Code before getting as far as Article 3, and he gave up the Inst.i.tutes at the _Summa Divisio Personarum_.
The pleasures that he had promised himself did not come to him; and when he had exhausted a circulating library, gone over the collections in the Louvre, and been at the theatre a great many nights in succession, he sank into the lowest depths of idleness.
His depression was increased by a thousand fresh annoyances. He found it necessary to count his linen and to bear with the door keeper, a bore with the figure of a male hospital nurse who came in the morning to make up his bed, smelling of alcohol and grunting. He did not like his apartment, which was ornamented with an alabaster time-piece. The part.i.tions were thin; he could hear the students making punch, laughing and singing.
Tired of this solitude, he sought out one of his old schoolfellows named Baptiste Martinon; and he discovered this friend of his boyhood in a middle-cla.s.s boarding-house in the Rue Saint-Jacques, cramming up legal procedure before a coal fire. A woman in a print dress sat opposite him darning his socks.
Martinon was what people call a very fine man--big, chubby, with a regular physiognomy, and blue eyes far up in his face. His father, an extensive land-owner, had destined him for the magistracy; and wishing already to present a grave exterior, he wore his beard cut like a collar round his neck.
As there was no rational foundation for Frederick"s complaints, and as he could not give evidence of any misfortune, Martinon was unable in any way to understand his lamentations about existence. As for him, he went every morning to the school, after that took a walk in the Luxembourg, in the evening swallowed his half-cup of coffee; and with fifteen hundred francs a year, and the love of this workwoman, he felt perfectly happy.
"What happiness!" was Frederick"s internal comment.
At the school he had formed another acquaintance, a youth of aristocratic family, who on account of his dainty manners, suggested a resemblance to a young lady.
M. de Cisy devoted himself to drawing, and loved the Gothic style. They frequently went together to admire the Sainte-Chapelle and Notre Dame.
But the young patrician"s rank and pretensions covered an intellect of the feeblest order. Everything took him by surprise. He laughed immoderately at the most trifling joke, and displayed such utter simplicity that Frederick at first took him for a wag, and finally regarded him as a b.o.o.by.