The Collected Works of Honore de Balzac. The griffin classics
Pere Leger to the inn-keeper. “You can harness that horse you want to sell me into the cabriolet; we’ll breakfast in peace and overtake Pierrotin, and I can judge of the beast as we go along. We can go three in your jolter.”
To the count’s surprise, Pierrotin himself rebridled the horses. Schinner and Mistigris had walked on. Scarcely had Pierrotin overtaken the two artists and was mounting the hill from which Ecouen, the steeple of Mesnil, and the forests that surround that most beautiful region, came in sight, when the gallop of a horse and the jingling of a vehicle announced the coming of Pere Leger and the grandson of Czerni-Georges, who were soon restored to their places in the coucou.
As Pierrotin drove down the narrow road to Moisselles, Georges, who had so far not ceased to talk with the farmer of the beauty of the hostess at Saint-Brice, suddenly exclaimed: “Upon my word, this landscape is not so bad, great painter, is it?”
“Pooh! you who have seen the East and Spain can’t really admire it.”
“I’ve two cigars left! If no one objects, will you help me finish them, Schinner? the little young man there seems to have found a whiff or two enough for him.”
Pere Leger and the count kept silence, which passed for consent.
Oscar, furious at being called a “little young man,” remarked, as the other two were lighting their cigars:
“I am not the aide-de-camp of Mina, monsieur, and I have not yet been to the East, but I shall probably go there. The career to which my family destine me will spare me, I trust, the annoyances of travelling in a coucou before I reach your present age. When I once become a personage I shall know how to maintain my station.”
“‘Et caetera punctum!’” crowed Mistigris, imitating the hoarse voice of a young cock; which made Oscar’s deliverance all the more absurd, because he had just reached the age when the beard sprouts and the voice breaks. “‘What a chit for chat!’” added the rapin.
“Your family, young man, destine you to some career, do they?” said Georges. “Might I ask what it is?”
“Diplomacy,” replied Oscar.
Three bursts of laughter came from Mistigris, the great painter, and the farmer. The count himself could not help smiling. Georges was perfectly grave.
“By Allah!” he exclaimed, “I see nothing to laugh at in that. Though it seems to me, young man, that your respectable mother is, at the present moment, not exactly in the social sphere of an ambassadress. She carried a handbag worthy of the utmost respect, and wore shoe-strings which — ”
“My mother, monsieur!” exclaimed Oscar, in a tone of indignation. “That was the person in charge of our household.”
“‘Our household’ is a very aristocratic term,” remarked the count.
“Kings have households,” replied Oscar, proudly.
A look from Georges repressed the desire to laugh which took possession of everybody; he contrived to make Mistigris and the painter understand that it was necessary to manage Oscar cleverly in order to work this new mine of amusement.
“Monsieur is right,” said the great Schinner to the count, motioning towards Oscar. “Well-bred people always talk of their ‘households’; it is only common persons like ourselves who say ‘home.’ For a man so covered with decorations — ”
“‘Nunc my eye, nunc alii,’” whispered Mistigris.
“ — you seem to know little of the language of the courts. I ask your future protection, Excellency,” added Schinner, turning to Oscar.
“I congratulate myself on having travelled with three such distinguished men,” said the count, — ”a painter already famous, a future general, and a young diplomatist who may some day recover Belgium for France.”
Having committed the odious crime of repudiating his mother, Oscar, furious from a sense that his companions were laughing at him, now resolved, at any cost, to make them pay attention to him.
“‘All is not gold that glitters,’” he began, his eyes flaming.
“That’s not it,” said Mistigris. “‘All is not old that titters.’ You’ll never get on in diplomacy if you don’t know your proverbs better than that.”
“I may not know proverbs, but I know my way — ”
“It must be far,” said Georges, “for I saw that person in charge of your household give you provisions enough for an ocean voyage: rolls, chocolate — ”
“A special kind of bread and chocolate, yes, monsieur,” returned Oscar; “my stomach is much too delicate to digest the victuals of a tavern.”
“‘Victuals’ is a word as delicate and refined as your stomach,” said Georges.
“Ah! I like that word ‘victuals,’” cried the great painter.
“The word is all the fashion in the best society,” said Mistigris. “I use it myself at the cafe of the Black Hen.”
“Your tutor is, doubtless, some celebrated professor, isn’t he? — Monsieur Andrieux of the Academie Francaise, or Monsieur Royer-Collard?” asked Schinner.
“My tutor is or was the Abbe Loraux, now vicar of Saint-Sulpice,” replied Oscar, recollecting the name of the confessor at his school.
“Well, you were right to take a private tutor,” said Mistigris. “‘Tuto, tutor, celeritus, and jocund.’ Of course, you will reward him well, your abbe?”
“Undoubtedly he will be made a bishop some day,” said Oscar.
“By your family influence?” inquired Georges gravely.
“We shall probably contribute to his rise, for the Abbe Frayssinous is constantly at our house.”
“Ah! you know the Abbe Frayssinous?” asked the count.
“He is under obligations to my father,” answered Oscar.
“Are you on your way to your estate?” asked Georges.
“No, monsieur; but I am able to say where I am going, if others are not. I am going to the Chateau de Presles, to the Comte de Serizy.”
“The devil! are you going to Presles?” cried Schinner, turning as red as a cherry.
“So you know his Excellency the Comte de Serizy?” said Georges.
Pere Leger turned round to look at Oscar with a stupefied air.
“Is Monsieur de Serizy at Presles?” he said.
“Apparently, as I am going there,” replied Oscar.
“Do you often see the count,” asked Monsieur de Serizy.
“Often,” replied Oscar. “I am a comrade of his son, who is about my age, nineteen; we ride together on horseback nearly every day.”
“‘Aut Caesar, aut Serizy,’” said Mistigris, sententiously.
Pierrotin and Pere Leger exchanged winks on hearing this statement.
“Really,” said the count to Oscar, “I am delighted to meet with a young man who can tell me about that personage. I want his influence on a rather serious matter, although it would cost him nothing to oblige me. It concerns a claim I wish to press on the American government. I should be glad to obtain information about Monsieur de Serizy.”
“Oh! if you want to succeed,” replied Oscar, with a knowing look, “don’t go to him, but go to his wife; he is madly in love with her; no one knows more than I do about that; but she can’t endure him.”
“Why not?” said Georges.
“The count has a skin disease which makes him hideous. Doctor Albert has tried in vain to cure it. The count would give half his fortune if