Old Séchard immediately hurried round to the Cointets. There every sample was tested and meticulously examined. Some of them were sized, others not; they each had a price-label on them ranging from three to ten francs the ream. Some of them were of metallic hardness, others were as soft as Chinese paper, and there were some which had every possible shade of whiteness. Jews valuing diamonds would not have had a more avid glint in their eyes than these three men.
‘Your son is on to a good thing,’ said stout Cointet.
‘All right then, pay off his debts,’ said the old pressman.
‘Certainly I will, if he’ll take us into partnership,’ tall Cointet replied.
‘You’re a pair of brigands!’ the ex-’bear’ retorted. ‘You’re suing my son in Métivier’s name and you want me to do the paying. That’s what it adds up to. Well, my fine gentlemen, I’m not such a fool!’
The two brothers looked at each other, but managed to conceal the surprise they felt at the miser’s shrewdness.
‘We’re not millionaires,’ stout Cointet rejoindered. ‘We can’t afford to discount bills for fun. We should be only too glad if we ourselves could pay cash for the rags we buy, but we still have to get them on credit.’
‘What is needed is a wholesale experiment,’ tall Cointet coldly replied. ‘What has succeeded in a saucepan may fail in large-scale manufacture. Set your son free of debt!’
‘Yes, but once my son is free will he take me as a partner?’
‘That’s no business of ours,’ said stout Cointet. ‘Do you imagine, my good man, that when you have given your son ten thousand francs you’ll have finished? A patent of invention costs two thousand francs and will involve journeys to Paris. Also, before you start advancing capital, it would be well, as my brother has said, to manufacture a thousand reams and risk whole vatfuls in order to make a check. Mark my words, there’s nobody one should be more wary of than inventors.’
‘I myself,’ said tall Cointet, ‘prefer to have my bread ready baked.’
The old man spent the night ruminating over this dilemma: ‘If I pay David’s debts he’ll be free, and once he’s free he needn’t take me on as a partner. He knows very well I swindled him in our first partnership, and won’t feel like starting a second one. So it’s in my interest to keep him in prison and down on his luck.’
The Cointets knew old Séchard well enough to be sure that he would keep up with them in the chase. Each one of them was thinking: ‘In order to found a company based on a secret process, experiments are needed. In order to make these experiments, David Séchard must be solvent. But once he’s solvent he’ll be out of our power.’ And each of them was making his own mental reservations. Petit-Claud was saying to himself: ‘After my wedding I’ll pull along with the Cointets, but until then I’ll keep a tight rein on them.’ Tall Cointet told himself: ‘I’d rather keep David under lock and key and have him under my control.’ Old Séchard told himself: ‘If I pay his debts my son will just thank me and say good-bye.’
As for Eve, with her father-in-law pestering her and threatening to drive her from the house, she refused either to reveal where her husband was sheltering or to advise David to accept safe-conduct. She was not sure that she would be able to find him a second hiding-place better than the first, and so she replied to her father-in-law. ‘Set your son free and you shall know everything.’ Not one of the four schemers, who were sitting as it were at a sumptuous table, dared begin the banquet, so much did each one fear that the other might get ahead of him. So they all watched one another in mutual suspicion.
19. A bride for Petit-Claud
A FEW days after David had gone into hiding, Petit-Claud had come to see tall Cointet in his paper-mill.
‘I’ve done my best,’ he said. ‘David has voluntarily retreated into a prison we can’t locate and he’s peacefully working to perfect his process. If you haven’t yet reached your goal it’s no fault of mine. Are you going to keep your part of the bargain?’
‘Yes, if we’re successful,’ tall Cointet replied. ‘Old Séchard has been in Angoulême for several days and has come to ask us questions about the manufacture of paper. The old miser’s sniffing round his son’s invention and wants to make something out of it. Therefore there’s some hope of forming a partnership. You are the solicitor of both Father and Son…’
‘You must be the Holy Spirit and lay hands on them!’ Petit-Claud continued with a smile.
‘Yes,’ Cointet replied. ‘If you can manage either to put David in prison or to get him into our power by means of a deed of partnership, you shall marry Mademoiselle de La Haye.’
‘So that’s your ultimatum, as the English say?’
‘Yes,’ said Cointet, in English, ‘since we’re talking foreign languages.’
‘I’ll give you mine in plain French,’ Petit-Claud curtly replied.
‘Indeed! Let’s hear what it is,’ Cointet retorted in a tone of curiosity.
‘Introduce me tomorrow to Madame de Sénonches, make a positive arrangement for me, in short fulfil your ptomise, or I’ll pay Séchard’s debt, sell my practice and become his partner. I’m not going to be duped by you. You’ve just been frank with me, I’ll be the same with you. I’ve proved my mettle: you must do the same. So far you’ve made all the winnings. Unless you give me some pledge of good faith I’ll overcall your hand.’
Tall Cointet took up his hat, his umbrella, and, maintaining his jesuitical cast of countenance, he went out, telling Petit-Claud to follow him.
‘You’ll see, my dear friend, whether I’ve prepared the way for you or not,’ said the tradesman to the solicitor.
The astute and wily paper-manufacturer had been quick to realize the danger he was running, and had recognized that Petit-Claud was one of those men with whom one has to play a straight game. Already, in order to keep abreast with him and salve his conscience, he had made a few quiet hints to the former consul-general on the pretext of giving an account of Mademoiselle de La Haye’s financial situation.
‘I’ve a match in view for Françoise, for in these days, with a dowry of only thirty thousand francs, a girl mustn’t expect too much,’ he said with a smile.
‘We’ll have a talk about it,’ Francis du Hautoy had replied. ‘Now that Madame de Bargeton has left Angoulême, the standing of Madame de Sénonches has changed for the better: we can marry Françoise to some worthy elderly country gentleman.’
‘And she’ll misbehave,’ said the paper-manufacturer, putting on his chilly air. ‘Come now, marry her to a capable, ambitious young man, one you’ll help to get on, one who’ll put his wife in a good position.’
‘We’ll see,’ Francis had repeated. ‘Before all else we must consult her godmother.’
After Monsieur de Bargeton’s death, Louise de Nègrepelisse had put her residence in the rue du Minage up for sale. Madame de Sénonches, considering herself meanly-lodged, persuaded Monsieur de Sénonches to buy the house which had been the cradle of Lucien’s ambitions and the opening scene of this story. Zéphirine de Sénonches had conceived the plan of succeeding Madame de Bargeton in the kind of royalty the latter had enjoyed, holding a salon and in fact playing the great lady. A schism had occurred in the high society of Angoulême between those who, when Monsieur de Bargeton fought his duel with Monsieur de Chandour, maintained that Louise de Nègrepelisse was innocent and those who believed the slanders spread about by Stanislas de Chandour. Madame de Sénonches opted for the Bargetons and began by winning over all the adherents to their cause. Then, when she was settled in her new residence, she took advantage of the routine habits of many people who had come there year in year out for an evening of cards. She held an at-home every evening and won a decisive victory over Amélie de Chandour, who posed as her rival. Francis du Hautoy thus found himself in the very centre of the Angoulême aristocracy and let his hopes go so far as to think of marrying Françoise to the aged Monsieur de Séverac, whom Madame du Brossard had failed to capture for her daughter. The return of Mad
ame de Bargeton, now wife of the prefect of Angoulême, encouraged Zéphirine’s ambitions for her darling godchild. She told herself that the Comtesse Sixte du Châtelet would use her credit on behalf of a woman who had championed her cause. The paper-manufacturer, who had Angoulême at his fingertips, sized up the difficulties at one glance; but he resolved to get over them by a stroke of audacity that Tartuffe alone would have permitted himself. The little solicitor, very surprised that his associate in sharp practice was keeping his part of the bargain, left him to his meditations as they proceeded from the paper-mill to the mansion in the rue du Minage. When they reached the landing, the two uninvited visitors were halted by the announcement: ‘Monsieur and Madame are at lunch.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said tall Cointet, ‘tell them we are here.’
And the devout tradesman, immediately admitted on the strength of his name, introduced the advocate to the affected Zéphirine, who was lunching privately with Monsieur Francis du Hautoy and Mademoiselle de La Haye. Monsieur de Sénonches had gone off, as usual, to open the hunting season with Monsieur de Pimentel.
‘Here, Madame, is the young solicitor-advocate I spoke to you about, who will undertake to relieve you of the tutelage of your beautiful ward.’
The ex-diplomat scrutinized Petit-Claud who for his part was casting sideward glances at the ‘beautiful ward’. Zéphirine, with whom neither Cointet nor Francis had ever broached the subject, was so surprised that her knife and fork fell from her hands. Mademoiselle de La Haye, a shrewish sour-faced, skinny little person with an ungraceful figure and insipid blond hair, was exceedingly unmarriageable despite her aristocratic little airs. The formula of unknown parentage on her birth certificate in reality barred her from the sphere in which the benevolence of her godmother and Francis was trying to establish her. Mademoiselle de La Haye, ignorant of her situation, was inclined to be fastidious: she would have refused to marry even the richest tradesman in L’Houmeau. The meaningful grimace which contorted her features was reciprocated, as Cointet noticed, by Petit-Claud himself. It looked as if Madame de Sénonches and Francis were at one in wondering how they could get rid of Cointet and his protégé. Cointet took in the whole scene and begged Monsieur du Hautoy to grant him a moment’s audience. He accompanied the diplomat into the salon.
‘Monsieur,’ he said to him in plain terms, ‘paternal affection is making you short-sighted. You will find it difficult to marry your daughter. And, in your common interest, I have made it impossible for you to draw back out of this, for I love Françoise as one loves one’s ward. Petit-Claud knows all the facts!… His unbounded ambition is a guarantee of your dear girl’s happiness. In the first place Françoise will be able to do anything she wants with her husband. But you, with the aid of the Prefect’s wife who is coming back to Angoulême, will make a public attorney of him. Monsieur Milhaud has definitely been promoted to Nevers. Petit-Claud will sell his practice, it will be easy for you to obtain him a post as assistant deputy attorney, and he’ll soon become public attorney, then president of the tribunal, a Parliamentary deputy, and…’
When they had returned to the dining-room, Francis behaved charmingly to his daughter’s suitor. He gave Madame de Sénonches a warning glance and brought this presentation scene to an end by inviting Petit-Claud to dinner the following day so that they might talk matters over. Then he escorted the tradesman and the solicitor as far as the courtyard while he told Petit-Claud that, on Cointet’s recommendation, he was inclined, with Madame de Sénonches, to ratify everything which the custodian of Mademoiselle de La Haye’s fortune had arranged for the happiness of their little angel.
‘Good Heavens, how ugly she is!’ said Petit-Claud. ‘I’m trapped…!’
‘She has an air of distinction,’ Cointet replied. ‘But if she were beautiful would they let you marry her? Why now, my dear fellow, there’s more than one small land-owner who’d ask nothing better than her thirty thousand francs, the patronage of Madame de Sénonches and that of the Comtesse du Châtelet – the more so because Francis du Hautoy will never marry and this girl is his heiress… Your marriage is a foregone conclusion!’
‘How do you make that out?’
‘This is what I have just told Du Hautoy,’ tall Cointet continued, and he informed the solicitor of his bold move. ‘My dear man, Monsieur Milhaud, they say, is about to be appointed public attorney at Nevers. You’ll sell your practice, and in ten years’ time you’ll be Keeper of the Seals. You’ve nerve enough not to shrink from doing any services the Court will require of you.’
‘Very well. Meet me tomorrow, at half past four, at the Place du Mûrier,’ the solicitor replied, fascinated at the prospect of such a future. ‘I shall have seen old Séchard, and we’ll fix up a deed of partnership which will make Father and Son the property of the Holy Spirit, namely the Cointet firm!’
20. The Curé has his say
AT the moment when the old Curé of Marsac was climbing the slopes of Angoulême in order to inform Eve about her brother’s condition, David had been in hiding for eleven days only two doors away from the house which the worthy priest had just left.
When the Abbé Marron emerged on to the Place du Mûrier, he found the three men there, each of them remarkable in his own way, who were bringing all their weight to bear on the present and the future of the poor self-constituted prisoner: old Séchard, tall Cointet and the little shrimp of a solicitor. Three men, three kinds of covetousness, but each kind as different as the men themselves. The one had hit upon the idea of trafficking in a son, another in a client, and tall Cointet was purchasing all this infamy while flattering himself that it would cost him nothing. It was about five o’clock, and most of the people who were then going home to dinner paused for a moment to look at these three men.
‘What on earth can old Papa Séchard and tall Cointet have to say to each other?’ asked the most inquisitive among them.
‘No doubt they’re talking about the poor devil who’s leaving his wife, mother-in-law and child without a crust of bread,’ someone replied.
‘That’s what comes of sending one’s children to learn their trade in Paris!’ said one of the local philosophers.
‘Well now, what brings you here, Monsieur le Curé?’ cried the vine-grower, who had spotted the Abbé Marron the moment he came into the square.
‘I’ve come on behalf of your family,’ the old priest answered.
‘Another of my son’s crackpot notions?’ said Séchard senior.
‘It would cost you very little to make them all happy,’ said the priest, pointing up to the window between the curtains of which Madame Séchard’s lovely head was visible. At this moment Eve was quieting her crying child by rocking him up and down and singing a lullaby.
‘Do you bring news of my son?’ asked David’s father. ‘Or, better still, some money?’
‘No’, said the Abbé. ‘I’m bringing your daughter-in-law news about her brother.’
‘News of Lucien?’ cried Petit-Claud:
‘Yes. The poor young man has walked the whole way from Paris. I found him at Courtois’s mill half-dead with fatigue and misery. Indeed, he’s very unhappy.’
Petit-Claud raised his hat to the priest and took tall Cointet’s arm as he said out loud: ‘We’re dining with Madame de Sénonches, it’s time we got ready.’ When they were a few paces away he whispered to him: ‘Catch the duckling and you’ll soon catch the duck. We’ll use Lucien as a decoy.’
‘I’ve got you a wife, now you get me married!’ said tall Cointet with some attempt at humour.
‘Lucien was at school with me and we were friends!… Within a week I shall learn quite a lot about him. Have the banns published and I undertake to clap David in jail. Once he’s in the lock-up, my mission is fulfilled.’
‘Ah!’ tall Cointet quietly exclaimed. ‘The great thing would be to take out the patent in our own name!’ The skinny little solicitor gave a start as he heard this remark.
At that moment Eve saw her father-in-law an
d the Abbé Marron coming in. The latter, with a single word, had just brought the judicial drama to the point of climax.
‘Look now, Madame Séchard,’ the old ‘bear’ said to his daughter-in-law. ‘Here’s our curé who’s no doubt come to tell us some pretty stories about your brother.’
‘Oh!’ poor Eve cried with her heart in her mouth. ‘Whatever can have happened to him now?’ This exclamation was expressive of so much pain suffered and so many fears of all kinds that the Abbé was quick to say: ‘Set your mind at rest, he’s alive.’
‘Would you be good enough, father,’ said Eve to the old vine-grower ‘to go and fetch my mother so that she can hear what Monsieur l’Abbé has to tell us about Lucien?’
The old man went off to find Madame Chardon and told her: ‘You’ll be learning lots of funny things from the Abbé Marron. He’s a decent man although he’s a parson. No doubt dinner will be late. I’ll come back in an hour’s time.’ And the old man, callous about everything except the clink and glitter of gold coins, quitted the old woman without noticing the effect his brutal announcement had on her.
The misfortune weighing on her two children, the miscarriage of all the hopes she had set on Lucien, the unexpected deterioration in the character of one so long believed to be energetic and honest, in short all the events of the last eighteen months had already changed Madame Chardon beyond recognition. She was noble in heart as well as birth, and she worshipped her children. Consequently she had known more suffering in the last six months than ever since she had lost her husband. Lucien had had the chance of becoming a Rubempré by virtue of a royal ordinance, of giving a new start to the family, of reviving its title and escutcheon, of becoming a great man! And he had fallen into the mire. She was harder on Lucien than his sister was, and had regarded him as a reprobate since learning about the forged drafts. Mothers sometimes wilfully deceive themselves; but they always know through and through the children they have brought up from the cradle. In the discussions between David and his wife over the hazards Lucien was running in Paris, Madame Chardon might seem to have shared Eve’s illusions about her brother, but she trembled lest David might be right, for what he said tallied with what her maternal awareness told her. She knew her daughter’s delicate sensitiveness too well to be able to voice her forebodings and was therefore obliged to keep them to herself, a thing which only truly loving mothers can do. On her side Eve was terrified to observe the ravages which grief had wrought in her mother, to see her passing steadily and continuously from old age to decrepitude. So mother and daughter alike kept up the noble pretence of believing what each of them knew to be false. For the unhappy mother the uncouth vine-grower’s remark was the last drop needed to fill the cup of her afflictions, and Madame Chardon was stricken to the heart.