I explained the meaning of my smile.
"That waiter," said Jacques Bricheteau, "was not altogether mistaken; for I have long been employed at the prefecture of police in the health department; but I have nothing to do with police espial; on the contrary, I have more than once come near being the victim of it."
Here a rather ridiculous noise struck our ears, nothing less than a loud snore from my father, who thus gave us to know that he did not take a very keen interest in the explanations furnished in his name with a certain prolixity. I don"t know whether Jacques Bricheteau"s vanity being touched put him slightly out of temper, but he rose impatiently and shook the arm of the sleeper, crying out:--
"Hey! marquis, if you sleep like this at the Council of state, upon my soul, your country must be well governed!"
Monsieur de Sallenauve opened his eyes, shook himself, and then said, turning to me:--
"Pardon me, Monsieur le comte, but for the last ten nights I have travelled, without stopping, to meet you here; and though I spent the last night in a bed, I am still much fatigued."
So saying he rose, took a large pinch of snuff, and began to walk up and down the room, while Jacques Bricheteau continued:--
"It is a little more than a year since I received a letter from your father explaining his long silence, the plans he had made for you, and the necessity he was under of keeping his incognito for a few years longer. It was at that very time that you made your attempt to penetrate a secret the existence of which had become apparent to you."
"You made haste to escape me," I said laughing. "It was then you went to Stockholm."
"No, I went to your father"s residence; I put the letter that he gave me for you into the post at Stockholm."
"I do not seize your--"
"Nothing is easier to understand," interrupted the marquis. "I do not reside in Sweden, and we wished to throw you off the track."
"Will you continue the explanation yourself?" asked Jacques Bricheteau, who spoke, as you may have observed, my dear friend, with elegance and fluency.
"No, no, go on," said the marquis; "you are giving it admirably."
"Feeling certain that your equivocal position as to family would injure the political career your father desired you to enter, I made that remark to him in one of my letters. He agreed with me, and resolved to hasten the period of your legal recognition, which, indeed, the extinction of the family in its other branch rendered desirable. But the recognition of a natural son is a serious act which the law surrounds with many precautions. Deeds must be signed before a notary, and to do this by power of attorney would involve both in a publicity which he is anxious for the present to avoid, he being married, and, as it were, naturalized in the country of his adoption. Hence, he decided to come here himself, obtaining leave of absence for a few weeks, in order to sign in person all papers necessary to secure to you his name and property in this country. Now let me put to you a final question. Do you consent to take the name of de Sallenauve and be recognized as his son?"
"I am not a lawyer," I answered; "but it seems to me that, supposing I do not feel honored by this recognition, it does not wholly depend on me to decline it."
"Pardon me," replied Jacques Bricheteau; "under the circ.u.mstances you could, if you chose, legally contest the paternity. I will also add,--and in doing so I am sure that I express the intentions of your father,--if you think that a man who has already spent half a million on furthering your career is not a desirable father, we leave you free to follow your own course, and shall not insist in any way."
"Precisely, precisely," said Monsieur de Sallenauve, uttering that affirmation with the curt intonation and shrill voice peculiar to the relics of the old aristocracy.
Politeness, to say the least, forced me to accept the paternity thus offered to me. To the few words I uttered to that effect, Jacques Bricheteau replied gaily:--
"We certainly do not intend to make you buy a father in a poke.
Monsieur le marquis is desirous of laying before you all t.i.tle-deeds and doc.u.ments of every kind of which he is the present holder. Moreover, as he has been so long absent from this country, he intends to prove his ident.i.ty by several of his contemporaries who are still living. For instance, among the honorable personages who have already recognized him I may mention the worthy superior of the Ursuline convent, Mother Marie-des-Anges, for whom, by the bye, you have done a masterpiece."
"Faith, yes," said the marquis, "a pretty thing, and if you turn out as well in politics--"
"Well, marquis," interrupted Jacques Bricheteau, who seemed to me inclined to manage the affair, "are you ready to proceed with our young friend to the verification of the doc.u.ments?"
"That is unnecessary," I remarked, and did not think that by this refusal I pledged my faith too much; for, after all, what signify papers in the hands of a man who might have forged them or stolen them? But my father would not consent; and for more than two hours they spread before me parchments, genealogical trees, contracts, patents, doc.u.ments of all kinds, from which it appeared that the family of Sallenauve is, after that of Cinq-Cygne, the most ancient family in the department of the Aube. I ought to add that the exhibition of these archives was accompanied by an infinite number of spoken details which seemed to make the ident.i.ty of the Marquis de Sallenauve indisputable. On all other subjects my father is laconic; his mental capacity does not seem to me remarkable, and he willingly allowed his _mouthpiece_ to talk for him.
But here, in the matter of his parchments, he was loquaciously full of anecdotes, recollections, heraldic knowledge; in short, he was exactly the old n.o.ble, ignorant and superficial in all things, but possessed of Benedictine erudition where the genealogy of his family was concerned.
The _session_ would, I believe, be still going on, if Jacques Bricheteau had not intervened. As the marquis was preparing to read a voluminous memorandum refuting a chapter in Tallemant des Reaux" "Historiettes"
which did not redound to the credit of the great house of Sallenauve, the wise organist remarked that it was time we dined, if we intended to keep an appointment already made for seven o"clock at the office of Maitre Achille Pigoult the notary.
We dined, not at the table-d"hote, but in private, and the dinner seemed very long on account of the silent preoccupation of the marquis, and the slowness with which, owing to his loss of teeth, he swallowed his food.
At seven o"clock we went to the notary"s office; but as it is now two o"clock in the morning, and I am heavy with sleep, I shall put off till to-morrow an account of what happened there.
May 4, 5 A.M.
I reckoned on peaceful slumbers, embellished by dreams. On the contrary, I did not sleep an hour, and I have waked up stung to the heart by an odious thought. But before I transmit that thought to you, I must tell you what happened at the notary"s.
Maitre Achille Pigoult, a puny little man, horribly pitted with the small-pox, and afflicted with green spectacles, above which he darts glances of vivacious intelligence, asked us if we felt warm enough, the room having no fire. Politeness required us to say yes, although he had already given signs of incendiarism by striking a match, when, from a distant and dark corner of the room, a broken, feeble voice, the owner of which we had not as yet perceived, interposed to prevent the prodigality.
"No, Achille, no, don"t make a fire," said an old man. "There are five in the room, and the lamp gives out a good heat; before long the room would be too hot to bear."
Hearing these words, the marquis exclaimed:--
"Ah! this is the good Monsieur Pigoult, formerly justice of the peace."
Thus recognized, the old man rose and went up to my father, into whose face he peered.
"_Parbleu_!" he cried, "I recognize you for a Champagnard of the _vieille roche_. Achille did not deceive me in declaring that I should see two of my former acquaintances. You," he said, addressing the organist, "you are little Bricheteau, the nephew of our good abbess, Mother Marie-des-Anges; but as for that tall skeleton, looking like a duke and peer, I can"t recall his name. However, I don"t blame my memory; after eighty-six years" service it may well be rusty."
"Come, grandfather," said Achille Pigoult, "brush up your memory; and you, gentlemen, not a word, not a gesture. I want to be clear in my own mind. I have not the honor to know the client for whom I am asked to draw certain deeds, and I must, as a matter of legal regularity, have him identified."
While his son spoke, the old man was evidently straining his memory.
My father, fortunately, has a nervous twitching of the face, which increased under the fixed gaze his _certifier_ fastened upon him.
"Hey! _parbleu_! I have it!" he cried. "Monsieur is the Marquise de Sallenauve, whom we used to call the "Grimacer," and who would now be the owner of the Chateau d"Arcis if, instead of wandering off, like the other fools, into emigration, he had stayed at home and married his pretty cousin."
"You are still _sans-culotte_, it seems," said the marquis, laughing.
"Messieurs," said the notary, gravely, "the proof I had arranged for myself is conclusive. This proof, together with the t.i.tle-deeds and doc.u.ments Monsieur le marquis has shown to me, and which he deposits in my hands, together with the certificate of ident.i.ty sent to me by Mother Marie-des-Anges, who cannot, under the rules of her Order, come to my office, are sufficient for the execution of the deeds which I have here--already prepared. The presence of two witnesses is required for one of them. Monsieur Bricheteau will, of course, be the witness on your side and on the other my father, if agreeable to you; it is an honor that, as I think, belongs to him of right, for, as one may say, this matter has revived his memory."
"Very good, messieurs, let us proceed," said Jacques Bricheteau, heartily.
The notary sat down at his desk; the rest of us sat in a circle around him, and the reading of the first doc.u.ment began. Its purport was to establish, authentically, the recognition made by Francois-Henri-Pantaleon Dumirail, Marquis de Sallenauve, of me, his son. But in the course of the reading a difficulty came up. Notarial deeds must, under pain of being null and void, state the domicile of all contracting parties. Now, where was my father"s domicile? This part had been left in blank by the notary, who now insisted on filling it before proceeding farther.
"As for this domicile," said Achille Pigoult, "Monsieur le marquis appears to have none in France, as he does not reside in this country, and has owned no property here for a long time."
"It is true," said the marquis, seeming to put more meaning into his words than they naturally carried, "I am a mere vagabond in France."
"Ah!" said Jacques Bricheteau, "vagabonds like you, who can present their sons with the necessary sums to buy estates, are not to be pitied.
Still, the remark is a just one, not only as to France, but as to your residence in foreign countries. With your eternal mania for roving, it is really very difficult to a.s.sign you a domicile."
"Well," said Achille Pigoult, "it does not seem worth while to let so small a matter stop us. Monsieur," he continued, motioning to me, "is now the owner of the Chateau d"Arcis, for an engagement to sell is as good as the sale itself. What more natural, therefore, than that the father"s domicile should be stated as being on his son"s estate, especially as this is really the family property now returned into the hands of the family, being purchased by the father for the son, particularly as that father is known and recognized by some of the oldest and most important inhabitants of the place?"
"Yes, that is true," said old Pigoult, adopting his son"s opinion without hesitation.
"In short," said Jacques Bricheteau, "you think the matter can go on."