Next evening at nine Bianchon mounted his uncle’s dusty staircase, and
found him at work on the statement of some complicated judgment. The
coat Lavienne had ordered of the tailor had not been sent, so Popinot
put on his old stained coat, and was the Popinot unadorned whose
appearance made those laugh who did not know the secrets of his
private life. Bianchon, however, obtained permission to pull his
cravat straight, and to button his coat, and he hid the stains by
crossing the breast of it with the right side over the left, and so
displaying the new front of the cloth. But in a minute the judge
rucked the coat up over his chest by the way in which he stuffed his
hands into his pockets, obeying an irresistible habit. Thus the coat,
deeply wrinkled both in front and behind, made a sort of hump in the
middle of the back, leaving a gap between the waistcoat and trousers
through which his shirt showed. Bianchon, to his sorrow, only
discovered this crowning absurdity at the moment when his uncle
entered the Marquise’s room.
A brief sketch of the person and the career of the lady in whose
presence the doctor and the judge now found themselves is necessary
for an understanding of her interview with Popinot.
Madame d’Espard had, for the last seven years, been very much the
fashion in Paris, where Fashion can raise and drop by turns various
personages who, now great and now small, that is to say, in view or
forgotten, are at last quite intolerable—as discarded ministers are,
and every kind of decayed sovereignty. These flatterers of the past,
odious with their stale pretensions, know everything, speak ill of
everything, and, like ruined profligates, are friends with all the
world. Since her husband had separated from her in 1815, Madame
d’Espard must have married in the beginning of 1812. Her children,
therefore, were aged respectively fifteen and thirteen. By what luck
was the mother of a family, about three-and-thirty years of age, still
the fashion?
Though Fashion is capricious, and no one can foresee who shall be her
favorites, though she often exalts a banker’s wife, or some woman of
very doubtful elegance and beauty, it certainly seems supernatural
when Fashion puts on constitutional airs and gives promotion for age.
But in this case Fashion had done as the world did, and accepted
Madame d’Espard as still young.
The Marquise, who was thirty-three by her register of birth, was
twenty-two in a drawing-room in the evening. But by what care, what
artifice! Elaborate curls shaded her temples. She condemned herself to
live in twilight, affecting illness so as to sit under the protecting
tones of light filtered through muslin. Like Diane de Poitiers, she
used cold water in her bath, and, like her again, the Marquise slept
on a horse-hair mattress, with morocco-covered pillows to preserve her
hair; she ate very little, only drank water, and observed monastic
regularity in the smallest actions of her life.
This severe system has, it is said, been carried so far as to the use
of ice instead of water, and nothing but cold food, by a famous Polish
lady of our day who spends a life, now verging on a century old, after
the fashion of a town belle. Fated to live as long as Marion Delorme,
whom history has credited with surviving to be a hundred and thirty,
the old vice-queen of Poland, at the age of nearly a hundred, has the
heart and brain of youth, a charming face, an elegant shape; and in
her conversation, sparkling with brilliancy like faggots in the fire,
she can compare the men and books of our literature with the men and
books of the eighteenth century. Living in Warsaw, she orders her caps
of Herbault in Paris. She is a great lady with the amiability of a
mere girl; she swims, she runs like a schoolboy, and can sink on to a
sofa with the grace of a young coquette; she mocks at death, and
laughs at life. After having astonished the Emperor Alexander, she can
still amaze the Emperor Nicholas by the splendor of her
entertainments. She can still bring tears to the eyes of a youthful
lover, for her age is whatever she pleases, and she has the exquisite
self-devotion of a grisette. In short, she is herself a fairy tale,
unless, indeed, she is a fairy.
Had Madame d’Espard known Madame Zayonseck? Did she mean to imitate
her career? Be that as it may, the Marquise proved the merits of the
treatment; her complexion was clear, her brow unwrinkled, her figure,
like that of Henri II.’s lady-love, preserved the litheness, the
freshness, the covered charms which bring a woman love and keep it
alive. The simple precautions of this course, suggested by art and
nature, and perhaps by experience, had met in her with a general
system which confirmed the results. The Marquise was absolutely
indifferent to everything that was not herself: men amused her, but no
man had ever caused her those deep agitations which stir both natures
to their depths, and wreck one on the other. She knew neither hatred
nor love. When she was offended, she avenged herself coldly, quietly,
at her leisure, waiting for the opportunity to gratify the ill-will
she cherished against anybody who dwelt in her unfavorable
remembrance. She made no fuss, she did not excite herself, she talked,
because she knew that by two words a woman may cause the death of
three men.
She had parted from M. d’Espard with the greatest satisfaction. Had he
not taken with him two children who at present were troublesome, and
in the future would stand in the way of her pretensions? Her most
intimate friends, as much as her least persistent admirers, seeing
about her none of Cornelia’s jewels, who come and go, and
unconsciously betray their mother’s age, took her for quite a young
woman. The two boys, about whom she seemed so anxious in her petition,
were, like their father, as unknown in the world as the northwest
passage is unknown to navigators. M. d’Espard was supposed to be an
eccentric personage who had deserted his wife without having the
smallest cause for complaint against her.
Mistress of herself at two-and-twenty, and mistress of her fortune of
twenty-six thousand francs a year, the Marquise hesitated long before
deciding on a course of action and ordering her life. Though she
benefited by the expenses her husband had incurred in his house,
though she had all the furniture, the carriages, the horses, in short,
all the details of a handsome establishment, she lived a retired life
during the years 1816, 17, and 18, a time when families were
recovering from the disasters resulting from political tempests. She
belonged to one of the most important and illustrious families of the
Faubourg Saint-Germain, and her parents advised her to live with them
as much as possible after the separation forced upon her by her
husband’s inexplicable caprice.
In 1820 the Marquise roused herself from her lethargy; she went to
Court, appeared at parties, and entertained in her own house. From
1821 to 1827 she lived in great style, and made herself remarked for
her taste and her dress; she had a day, an hour, for receiving visits,
and ere long she had seated herself on the throne, occupied before her
by Madame la Vicomtesse de Beauseant, the Duchesse de Langeais, and
Madame Firmiani—who on her marriage with M. de Camps had resigned the
sceptre in favor of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, from whom Madame
d’Espard snatched it. The world knew nothing beyond this of the
private live of the Marquise d’Espard. She seemed likely to shine for
long on the Parisian horizon, like the sun near its setting, but which
will never set.
The Marquise was on terms of great intimacy with a duchess as famous
for her beauty as for her attachment to a prince just now in
banishment, but accustomed to play a leading part in every prospective
government. Madame d’Espard was also a friend of a foreign lady, with
whom a famous and very wily Russian diplomate was in the habit of
discussing public affairs. And then an antiquated countess, who was
accustomed to shuffle the cards for the great game of politics, had
adopted her in a maternal fashion. Thus, to any man of high ambitions,
Madame d’Espard was preparing a covert but very real influence to
follow the public and frivolous ascendency she now owed to fashion.
Her drawing-room was acquiring political individuality: “What do they
say at Madame d’Espard’s?” “Are they against the measure in Madame
d’Espard’s drawing-room?” were questions repeated by a sufficient
number of simpletons to give the flock of the faithful who surrounded
her the importance of a coterie. A few damaged politicians whose
wounds she had bound up, and whom she flattered, pronounced her as
capable in diplomacy as the wife of the Russian ambassador to London.
The Marquise had indeed several times suggested to deputies or to
peers words and ideas that had rung through Europe. She had often
judged correctly of certain events on which her circle of friends
dared not express an opinion. The principal persons about the Court
came in the evening to play whist in her rooms.
Then she also had the qualities of her defects; she was thought to be—and she was—indiscreet. Her friendship seemed to be staunch; she
worked for her proteges with a persistency which showed that she cared
less for patronage than for increased influence. This conduct was
based on her dominant passion, Vanity. Conquests and pleasure, which
so many women love, to her seemed only means to an end; she aimed at
living on every point of the largest circle that life can describe.
Among the men still young, and to whom the future belonged, who
crowded her drawing-room on great occasions, were to be seen MM. de
Marsay and de Ronquerolles, de Montriveau, de la Roche-Hugon, de
Serizy, Ferraud, Maxime de Trailles, de Listomere, the two
Vandenesses, du Chatelet, and others. She would frequently receive a
man whose wife she would not admit, and her power was great enough to
induce certain ambitious men to submit to these hard conditions, such
as two famous royalist bankers, M. de Nucingen and Ferdinand du
Tillet. She had so thoroughly studied the strength and the weakness of
Paris life, that her conduct had never given any man the smallest
advantage over her. An enormous price might have been set on a note or
letter by which she might have compromised herself, without one being
produced.
If an arid soul enabled her to play her part to the life, her person
was no less available for it. She had a youthful figure. Her voice
was, at will, soft and fresh, or clear and hard. She possessed in the
highest degree the secret of that aristocratic pose by which a woman
wipes out the past. The Marquise knew well the art of setting an
immense space between herself and the sort of man who fancies he may
be familiar after some chance advances. Her imposing gaze could deny
everything. In her conversation fine and beautiful sentiments and
noble resolutions flowed naturally, as it seemed, from a pure heart
and soul; but in reality she was all self, and quite capable of
blasting a man who was clumsy in his negotiations, at the very time
when she was shamelessly making a compromise for the benefit of her
own interest.
Rastignac, in trying to fasten on to this woman, had discerned her to
be the cleverest of tools, but he had not yet used it; far from
handling it, he was already finding himself crushed by it. This young
Condottiere of the brain, condemned, like Napoleon, to give battle
constantly, while knowing that a single defeat would prove the grave
of his fortunes, had met a dangerous adversary in his protectress. For
the first time in his turbulent life, he was playing a game with a
partner worthy of him. He saw a place as Minister in the conquest of
Madame d’Espard, so he was her tool till he could make her his—a
perilous beginning.
The Hotel d’Espard needed a large household, and the Marquise had a
great number of servants. The grand receptions were held in the
ground-floor rooms, but she lived on the first floor of the house. The
perfect order of a fine staircase splendidly decorated, and rooms
fitted in the dignified style which formerly prevailed at Versailles,
spoke of an immense fortune. When the judge saw the carriage gates
thrown open to admit his nephew’s cab, he took in with a rapid glance
the lodge, the porter, the courtyard, the stables, the arrangement of
the house, the flowers that decorated the stairs, the perfect
cleanliness of the banisters, walls, and carpets, and counted the
footmen in livery who, as the bell rang, appeared on the landing. His
eyes, which only yesterday in his parlor had sounded the dignity of
misery under the muddy clothing of the poor, now studied with the same
penetrating vision the furniture and splendor of the rooms he passed
through, to pierce the misery of grandeur.
“M. Popinot—M. Bianchon.”
The two names were pronounced at the door of the boudoir where the
Marquise was sitting, a pretty room recently refurnished, and looking
out on the garden behind the house. At the moment Madame d’Espard was
seated in one of the old rococo armchairs of which Madame had set the
fashion. Rastignac was at her left hand on a low chair, in which he
looked settled like an Italian lady’s “cousin.” A third person was
standing by the corner of the chimney-piece. As the shrewd doctor had
suspected, the Marquise was a woman of a parched and wiry
constitution. But for her regimen her complexion must have taken the
ruddy tone that is produced by constant heat; but she added to the
effect of her acquired pallor by the strong colors of the stuffs she
hung her rooms with, or in which she dressed. Reddish-brown, marone,
bistre with a golden light in it, suited her to perfection. Her
boudoir, copied from that of a famous lady then at the height of
fashion in London, was in tan-colored velvet; but she had added
various details of ornament which moderated the pompous splendor of
this royal hue. Her hair was dressed like a girl’s in bands ending in
curls, which emphasized the rather long oval of her face; but an oval
face is as majestic as a round one is ignoble. The mirrors, cut with
facets to lengthen or flatten the face at will, amply proved the rule
as applied to the physiognomy.
On seeing Popinot, who stood in the doorway craning his neck like a
startled animal, with his left hand in his pocket, and the right hand
holding a hat with a greasy lining, the Marquise gave Rastignac a look
wherein lay a germ of mockery. The good man’s rather foolish
appearance was so completely in harmony with his grotesque figure and
scared looks, that Rastignac, catching sight of Bianchon’s dejected
expression of humiliation through his uncle, could not help laughing,
and turned away. The Marquise bowed a greeting, and made a great
effort to rise from her seat, falling back again, not without grace,
with an air of apologizing for her incivility by affected weakness.
At this instant the person who was standing between the fireplace and
the door bowed slightly, and pushed forward two chairs, which he
offered by a gesture to the doctor and the judge; then, when they had
seated themselves, he leaned against the wall again, crossing his
arms.
A word as to this man. There is living now, in our day, a painter—Decamps—who possesses in the very highest degree the art of
commanding your interest in everything he sets before your eyes,
whether it be a stone or a man. In this respect his pencil is more
skilful than his brush. He will sketch an empty room and leave a broom
against the wall. If he chooses, you shall shudder; you shall believe
that this broom has just been the instrument of crime, and is dripping
with blood; it shall be the broom which the widow Bancal used to clean
out the room where Fualdes was murdered. Yes, the painter will touzle
that broom like a man in a rage; he will make each hair of it stand
on-end as though it were on your own bristling scalp; he will make it
the interpreter between the secret poem of his imagination and the
poem that shall have its birth in yours. After terrifying you by the
aspect of that broom, to-morrow he will draw another, and lying by it
a cat, asleep, but mysterious in its sleep, shall tell you that this
broom is that on which the wife of a German cobbler rides off to the
Sabbath on the Brocken. Or it will be a quite harmless broom, on which
he will hang the coat of a clerk in the Treasury. Decamps had in his
brush what Paganini had in his bow—a magnetically communicative
power.
Well, I should have to transfer to my style that striking genius, that
marvelous knack of the pencil, to depict the upright, tall, lean man
dressed in black, with black hair, who stood there without speaking a
word. This gentleman had a face like a knife-blade, cold and harsh,
with a color like Seine water when it was muddy and strewn with
fragments of charcoal from a sunken barge. He looked at the floor,
listening and passing judgment. His attitude was terrifying. He stood
there like the dreadful broom to which Decamps has given the power of
revealing a crime. Now and then, in the course of conversation, the
Marquise tried to get some tacit advice; but however eager her
questioning, he was as grave and as rigid as the statue of the
Commendatore.
The worthy Popinot, sitting on the edge of his chair in front of the
fire, his hat between his knees, stared at the gilt chandeliers, the
clock, and the curiosities with which the chimney-shelf was covered,
the velvet and trimmings of the curtains, and all the costly and
elegant nothings that a woman of fashion collects about her. He was
roused from his homely meditations by Madame d’Espard, who addressed
him in a piping tone:
“Monsieur, I owe you a million thanks——”
“A million thanks,” thought he to himself, “that is too many; it does
not mean one.”
“For the trouble you condescend——”
“Condescend!” thought he; “she is laughing at me.”
“To take in coming to see an unhappy client, who is too ill to go
out——”
Here the lawyer cut the Marquise short by giving her an inquisitorial
look, examining the sanitary condition of the unhappy client.
“As sound as a bell,” said he to himself.
“Madame,” said he, assuming a respectful mien, “you owe me nothing.
Although my visit to you is not in strict accordance with the practice
of the Court, we ought to spare no pains to discover the truth in
cases of this kind. Our judgment is then guided less by the letter of
the law than by the promptings of our conscience. Whether I seek the
truth here or in my own consulting-room, so long as I find it, all
will be well.”
While Popinot was speaking, Rastignac was shaking hands with Bianchon;
the Marquise welcomed the doctor with a little bow full of gracious
significance.
“Who is that?” asked Bianchon in a whisper of Rastignac, indicating
the dark man.
“The Chevalier d’Espard, the Marquis’ brother.”
“Your nephew told me,” said the Marquise to Popinot, “how much you are
occupied, and I know too that you are so good as to wish to conceal
your kind actions, so as to release those whom you oblige from the
burden of gratitude. The work in Court is most fatiguing, it would
seem. Why have they not twice as many judges?”
“Ah, madame, that would not be difficult; we should be none the worse
if they had. But when that happens, fowls will cut their teeth!”
As he heard this speech, so entirely in character with the lawyer’s
appearance, the Chevalier measured him from head to foot, out of one
eye, as much as to say, “We shall easily manage him.”
The Marquise looked at Rastignac, who bent over her. “That is the sort
of man,” murmured the dandy in her ear, “who is trusted to pass
judgments on the life and interests of private individuals.”
Like most men who have grown old in a business, Popinot readily let
himself follow the habits he had acquired, more particularly habits of
mind. His conversation was all of “the shop.” He was fond of
questioning those he talked to, forcing them to unexpected
conclusions, making them tell more than they wished to reveal. Pozzo
di Borgo, it is said, used to amuse himself by discovering other
folks’ secrets, and entangling them in his diplomatic snares, and
thus, by invincible habit, showed how his mind was soaked in wiliness.
As soon as Popinot had surveyed the ground, so to speak, on which he
stood, he saw that it would be necessary to have recourse to the
cleverest subtleties, the most elaborately wrapped up and disguised,
which were in use in the Courts, to detect the truth.
Bianchon sat cold and stern, as a man who has made up his mind to
endure torture without revealing his sufferings; but in his heart he
wished that his uncle could only trample on this woman as we trample
on a viper—a comparison suggested to him by the Marquise’s long
dress, by the curve of her attitude, her long neck, small head, and
undulating movements.
“Well, monsieur,” said Madame d’Espard, “however great my dislike to
be or seem selfish, I have been suffering too long not to wish that
you may settle matters at once. Shall I soon get a favorable
decision?”
“Madame, I will do my best to bring matters to a conclusion,” said
Popinot, with an air of frank good-nature. “Are you ignorant of the
reason which made the separation necessary which now subsists between
you and the Marquis d’Espard?”
“Yes, monsieur,” she replied, evidently prepared with a story to tell.
“At the beginning of 1816 M. d’Espard, whose temper had completely
changed within three months or so, proposed that we should go to live
on one of his estates near Briancon, without any regard for my health,
which that climate would have destroyed, or for my habits of life; I
refused to go. My refusal gave rise to such unjustifiable reproaches
on his part, that from that hour I had my suspicions as to the
soundness of his mind. On the following day he left me, leaving me his
house and the free use of my own income, and he went to live in the
Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, taking with him my two
children——”
“One moment, madame,” said the lawyer, interrupting her. “What was
that income?”
“Twenty-six thousand francs a year,” she replied parenthetically. “I
at once consulted old M. Bordin as to what I ought to do,” she went
on; “but it seems that there are so many difficulties in the way of
depriving a father of the care of his children, that I was forced to
resign myself to remaining alone at the age of twenty-two—an age at
which many young women do very foolish things. You have read my
petition, no doubt, monsieur; you know the principal facts on which I
rely to procure a Commission in Lunacy with regard to M. d’Espard?”
“Have you ever applied to him, madame, to obtain the care of your
children?”
“Yes, monsieur; but in vain. It is very hard on a mother to be
deprived of the affection of her children, particularly when they can
give her such happiness as every woman clings to.”
“The elder must be sixteen,” said Popinot.
“Fifteen,” said the Marquise eagerly.
Here Bianchon and Rastignac looked at each other. Madame d’Espard bit
her lips.
“What can the age of my children matter to you?”
“Well, madame,” said the lawyer, without seeming to attach any
importance to his words, “a lad of fifteen and his brother, of
thirteen, I suppose, have legs and their wits about them; they might
come to see you on the sly. If they do not, it is because they obey
their father, and to obey him in that matter they must love him very
dearly.”
“I do not understand,” said the Marquise.
“You do not know, perhaps,” replied Popinot, “that in your petition
your attorney represents your children as being very unhappy with
their father?”
Madame d’Espard replied with charming innocence:
“I do not know what my attorney may have put into my mouth.”
“Forgive my inferences,” said Popinot, “but Justice weighs everything.
What I ask you, madame, is suggested by my wish thoroughly to
understand the matter. By your account M. d’Espard deserted you on the
most frivolous pretext. Instead of going to Briancon, where he wished
to take you, he remained in Paris. This point is not clear. Did he
know this Madame Jeanrenaud before his marriage?”
“No, monsieur,” replied the Marquise, with some asperity, visible only
to Rastignac and the Chevalier d’Espard.
She was offended at being cross-examined by this layer when she had
intended to beguile his judgment; but as Popinot still looked stupid
from sheer absence of mind, she ended by attributing his interrogatory
to the Questioning Spirit of Voltaire’s bailiff.
“My parents,” she went on, “married me at the age of sixteen to M.
d’Espard, whose name, fortune, and mode of life were such as my family
looked for in the man who was to be my husband. M. d’Espard was then
six-and-twenty; he was a gentleman in the English sense of the word;
his manners pleased me, he seemed to have plenty of ambition, and I
like ambitious people,” she added, looking at Rastignac. “If M.
d’Espard had never met that Madame Jeanrenaud, his character, his
learning, his acquirements would have raised him—as his friends then
believed—to high office in the Government. King Charles X., at that
time Monsieur, had the greatest esteem for him, and a peer’s seat, an
appointment at Court, some important post certainly would have been
his. That woman turned his head, and has ruined all the prospects of
my family.”
“What were M. d’Espard’s religious opinions at that time?”
“He was, and is still, a very pious man.”
“You do not suppose that Madame Jeanrenaud may have influenced him by
mysticism?”
“No, monsieur.”
“You have a very fine house, madame,” said Popinot suddenly, taking
his hands out of his pockets, and rising to pick up his coat-tails and
warm himself. “This boudoir is very nice, those chairs are
magnificent, the whole apartment is sumptuous. You must indeed be most
unhappy when, seeing yourself here, you know that your children are
ill lodged, ill clothed, and ill fed. I can imagine nothing more
terrible for a mother.”
“Yes, indeed. I should be so glad to give the poor little fellows some
amusement, while their father keeps them at work from morning till
night at that wretched history of China.”
“You give handsome balls; they would enjoy them, but they might
acquire a taste for dissipation. However, their father might send them
to you once or twice in the course of the winter.”
“He brings them here on my birthday and on New Year’s Day. On those
days M. d’Espard does me the favor of dining here with them.”
“It is very singular behaviour,” said the judge, with an air of
conviction. “Have you ever seen this Dame Jeanrenaud?”
“My brother-in-law one day, out of interest in his brother——”
“Ah! monsieur is M. d’Espard’s brother?” said the lawyer, interrupting
her.
The Chevalier bowed, but did not speak.
“M. d’Espard, who has watched this affair, took me to the Oratoire,
where this woman goes to sermon, for she is a Protestant. I saw her;
she is not in the least attractive; she looks like a butcher’s wife,
extremely fat, horribly marked with the smallpox; she has feet and
hands like a man’s, she squints, in short, she is monstrous!”
“It is inconceivable,” said the judge, looking like the most imbecile
judge in the whole kingdom. “And this creature lives near here, Rue
Verte, in a fine house? There are no plain folk left, it would seem?”
“In a mansion on which her son has spent absurd sums.”
“Madame,” said Popinot, “I live in the Faubourg Saint-Marceau; I know
nothing of such expenses. What do you call absurd sums?”
“Well,” said the Marquise, “a stable with five horses and three
carriages, a phaeton, a brougham, and a cabriolet.”
“That costs a large sum, then?” asked Popinot in surprise.
“Enormous sums!” said Rastignac, intervening. “Such an establishment
would cost, for the stables, the keeping the carriages in order, and
the liveries for the men, between fifteen and sixteen thousand francs
a year.”
“Should you think so, madame?” said the judge, looking much
astonished.
“Yes, at least,” replied the Marquise.
“And the furniture, too, must have cost a lot of money?”
“More than a hundred thousand francs,” replied Madame d’Espard, who
could not help smiling at the lawyer’s vulgarity.
“Judges, madame, are apt to be incredulous; it is what they are paid
for, and I am incredulous. The Baron Jeanrenaud and his mother must
have fleeced M. d’Espard most preposterously, if what you say is
correct. There is a stable establishment which, by your account, costs
sixteen thousand francs a year. Housekeeping, servants’ wages, and the
gross expenses of the house itself must run to twice as much; that
makes a total of from fifty to sixty thousand francs a year. Do you
suppose that these people, formerly so extremely poor, can have so
large a fortune? A million yields scarcely forty thousand a year.”
“Monsieur, the mother and son invested the money given them by M.
d’Espard in the funds when they were at 60 to 80. I should think their
income must be more than sixty thousand francs. And then the son has
fine appointments.”
“If they spend sixty thousand francs a year,” said the judge, “how
much do you spend?”
“Well,” said Madame d’Espard, “about the same.” The Chevalier started
a little, the Marquise colored; Bianchon looked at Rastignac; but
Popinot preserved an expression of simplicity which quite deceived
Madame d’Espard. The chevalier took no part in the conversation; he
saw that all was lost.
“These people, madame, might be indicted before the superior Court,”
said Popinot.
“That was my opinion,” exclaimed the Marquise, enchanted. “If
threatened with the police, they would have come to terms.”
“Madame,” said Popinot, “when M. d’Espard left you, did he not give
you a power of attorney enabling you to manage and control your own
affairs?”
“I do not understand the object of all these questions,” said the
Marquise with petulance. “It seems to me that if you would only
consider the state in which I am placed by my husband’s insanity, you
ought to be troubling yourself about him, and not about me.”
“We are coming to that, madame,” said the judge. “Before placing in
your hands, or in any others, the control of M. d’Espard’s property,
supposing he were pronounced incapable, the Court must inquire as to
how you have managed your own. If M. d’Espard gave you the power, he
would have shown confidence in you, and the Court would recognize the
fact. Had you any power from him? You might have bought or sold house
property or invested money in business?”
“No, monsieur, the Blamont-Chauvrys are not in the habit of trading,”
said she, extremely nettled in her pride as an aristocrat, and
forgetting the business in hand. “My property is intact, and M.
d’Espard gave me no power to act.”
The Chevalier put his hand over his eyes not to betray the vexation he
felt at his sister-in-law’s short-sightedness, for she was ruining
herself by her answers. Popinot had gone straight to the mark in spite
of his apparent doublings.
“Madame,” said the lawyer, indicating the Chevalier, “this gentleman,
of course, is your near connection? May we speak openly before these
other gentlemen?”
“Speak on,” said the Marquise, surprised at this caution.
“Well, madame, granting that you spend only sixty thousand francs a
year, to any one who sees your stables, your house, your train of
servants, and a style of housekeeping which strikes me as far more
luxurious than that of the Jeanrenauds, that sum would seem well laid
out.”
The Marquise bowed an agreement.
“But,” continued the judge, “if you have no more than twenty-six
thousand francs a year, you may have a hundred thousand francs of
debt. The Court would therefore have a right to imagine that the
motives which prompt you to ask that your husband may be deprived of
the control of his property are complicated by self-interest and the
need of paying your debts—if—you—have—any. The requests addressed
to me have interested me in your position; consider fully and make
your confession. If my suppositions have hit the truth, there is yet
time to avoid the blame which the Court would have a perfect right to
express in the saving clauses of the verdict if you could not show
your attitude to be absolutely honorable and clear.
“It is our duty to examine the motives of the applicant as well as to
listen to the plea of the witness under examination, to ascertain
whether the petitioner may not have been prompted by passion, by a
desire for money, which is unfortunately too common——”
The Marquise was on Saint Laurence’s gridiron.
“And I must have explanations on this point. Madame, I have no wish to
call you to account; I only want to know how you have managed to live
at the rate of sixty thousand francs a year, and that for some years
past. There are plenty of women who achieve this in their
housekeeping, but you are not one of those. Tell me, you may have the
most legitimate resources, a royal pension, or some claim on the
indemnities lately granted; but even then you must have had your
husband’s authority to receive them.”
The Marquise did not speak.
“You must remember,” Popinot went on, “that M. d’Espard may wish to
enter a protest, and his counsel will have a right to find out whether
you have any creditors. This boudoir is newly furnished, your rooms
are not now furnished with the things left to you by M. d’Espard in
1816. If, as you did me the honor of informing me, furniture is costly
for the Jeanrenauds, it must be yet more so for you, who are a great
lady. Though I am a judge, I am but a man; I may be wrong—tell me so.
Remember the duties imposed on me by the law, and the rigorous
inquiries it demands, when the case before it is the suspension from
all his functions of the father of a family in the prime of life. So
you will pardon me, Madame la Marquise, for laying all these
difficulties before you; it will be easy for you to give me an
explanation.
“When a man is pronounced incapable of the control of his own affairs,
a trustee has to be appointed. Who will be the trustee?”
“His brother,” said the Marquise.
The Chevalier bowed. There was a short silence, very uncomfortable for
the five persons who were present. The judge, in sport as it were, had
laid open the woman’s sore place. Popinot’s countenance of common,
clumsy good-nature, at which the Marquise, the Chevalier, and
Rastignac had been inclined to laugh, had gained importance in their
eyes. As they stole a look at him, they discerned the various
expressions of that eloquent mouth. The ridiculous mortal was a judge
of acumen. His studious notice of the boudoir was accounted for: he
had started from the gilt elephant supporting the chimney-clock,
examining all this luxury, and had ended by reading this woman’s soul.
“If the Marquis d’Espard is mad about China, I see that you are not
less fond of its products,” said Popinot, looking at the porcelain on
the chimney-piece. “But perhaps it was from M. le Marquis that you had
these charming Oriental pieces,” and he pointed to some precious
trifles.
This irony, in very good taste, made Bianchon smile, and petrified
Rastignac, while the Marquise bit her thin lips.
“Instead of being the protector of a woman placed in a cruel dilemma—an alternative between losing her fortune and her children, and being
regarded as her husband’s enemy,” she said, “you accuse me, monsieur!
You suspect my motives! You must own that your conduct is strange!”
“Madame,” said the judge eagerly, “the caution exercised by the Court
in such cases as these might have given you, in any other judge, a
perhaps less indulgent critic than I am.—And do you suppose that M.
d’Espard’s lawyer will show you any great consideration? Will he not
be suspicious of motives which may be perfectly pure and
disinterested? Your life will be at his mercy; he will inquire into it
without qualifying his search by the respectful deference I have for
you.”
“I am much obliged to you, monsieur,” said the Marquise satirically.
“Admitting for the moment that I owe thirty thousand or fifty thousand
francs, in the first place, it would be a mere trifle to the d’Espards
and the Blamont-Chauvrys. But if my husband is not in the possession
of his mental faculties, would that prevent his being pronounced
incapable?”
“No, madame,” said Popinot.
“Although you have questioned me with a sort of cunning which I should
not have suspected in a judge, and under circumstances where
straightforwardness would have answered your purpose,” she went on, “I
will tell you without subterfuge that my position in the world, and
the efforts I have to make to keep up my connection, are not in the
least to my taste. I began my life by a long period of solitude; but
my children’s interest appealed to me; I felt that I must fill their
father’s place. By receiving my friends, by keeping up all this
connection, by contracting these debts, I have secured their future
welfare; I have prepared for them a brilliant career where they will
find help and favor; and to have what has thus been acquired, many a
man of business, lawyer or banker, would gladly pay all it has cost
me.”
“I appreciate your devoted conduct, madame,” replied Popinot. “It does
you honor, and I blame you for nothing. A judge belongs to all: he
must know and weigh every fact.”
Madame d’Espard’s tact and practice in estimating men made her
understand that M. Popinot was not to be influenced by any
consideration. She had counted on an ambitious lawyer, she had found a
man of conscience. She at once thought of finding other means for
securing the success of her side.
The servants brought in tea.
“Have you any further explanations to give me, madame?” said Popinot,
seeing these preparations.
“Monsieur,” she replied haughtily, “do your business your own way;
question M. d’Espard, and you will pity me, I am sure.” She raised her
head, looking Popinot in the face with pride, mingled with
impertinence; the worthy man bowed himself out respectfully.
“A nice man is your uncle,” said Rastignac to Bianchon. “Is he really
so dense? Does not he know what the Marquise d’Espard is, what her
influence means, her unavowed power over people? The Keeper of the
Seals will be with her to-morrow——”
“My dear fellow, how can I help it?” said Bianchon. “Did not I warn
you? He is not a man you can get over.”
“No,” said Rastignac; “he is a man you must run over.”
The doctor was obliged to make his bow to the Marquise and her mute
Chevalier to catch up Popinot, who, not being the man to endure an
embarrassing position, was pacing through the rooms.
“That woman owes a hundred thousand crowns,” said the judge, as he
stepped into his nephew’s cab.
“And what do you think of the case?”
“I,” said the judge. “I never have an opinion till I have gone into
everything. To-morrow early I will send to Madame Jeanrenaud to call
on me in my private office at four o’clock, to make her explain the
facts which concern her, for she is compromised.”
“I should very much like to know what the end will be.”
“Why, bless me, do not you see that the Marquise is the tool of that
tall lean man who never uttered a word? There is a strain of Cain in
him, but of the Cain who goes to the Law Courts for his bludgeon, and
there, unluckily for him, we keep more than one Damocles’ sword.”
“Oh, Rastignac! what brought you into that boat, I wonder?” exclaimed
Bianchon.
“Ah, we are used to seeing these little family conspiracies,” said
Popinot. “Not a year passes without a number of verdicts of
‘insufficient evidence’ against applications of this kind. In our
state of society such an attempt brings no dishonor, while we send a
poor devil to the galleys who breaks a pane of glass dividing him from
a bowl full of gold. Our Code is not faultless.”
“But these are the facts?”
“My boy, do you not know all the judicial romances with which clients
impose on their attorneys? If the attorneys condemned themselves to
state nothing but the truth, they would not earn enough to keep their
office open.”
Nguồn: Wikisource English — The Commission in Lunacy/Section 3. Văn bản được nhập và định dạng lại; CC BY-SA 4.0, có thể áp dụng điều khoản bổ sung của tác phẩm.