The Collected Works of Honore de Balzac. The griffin classics
didn’t Mariette carry you off?” she said to Oscar, who stood there petrified. “What can he do now, poor boy?”
“Whatever he pleases!” said Cardot, sharply, marching to the door as if to go away.
“One moment, papa Cardot. You will be so good as to get your nephew out of a scrape into which I led him; for he played the money of his master and lost it, and I lend him a thousand francs to win it back, and he lost that too.”
“Miserable boy! you lost fifteen hundred francs at play at your age?”
“Oh, uncle, uncle!” cried poor Oscar, plunged by these words into all the horrors of his position, and falling on his knees before his uncle, with clasped hands, “It is twelve o’clock! I am lost, dishonored! Monsieur Desroches will have no pity! He gave me the money for an important affair, in which his pride was concerned. I was to get a paper at the Palais in the case of Vandernesse versus Vandernesse! What will become of me? Oh, save me for the sake of my father and aunt! Come with me to Monsieur Desroches, and explain it to him; make some excuse, — anything!”
These sentences were jerked out through sobs and tears that might have moved the sphinx of Luxor.
“Old skinflint!” said the danseuse, who was crying, “will you let your own nephew be dishonored, — the son of the man to whom you owe your fortune? — for his name is Oscar Husson. Save him, or Titine will deny you forever!”
“But how did he come here?” asked Cardot.
“Don’t you see that the reason he forgot to go for those papers was because he was drunk and overslept himself. Georges and his cousin Frederic took all the clerks in his office to a feast at the Rocher de Cancale.”
Pere Cardot looked at Florentine and hesitated.
“Come, come,” she said, “you old monkey, shouldn’t I have hid him better if there had been anything else in it?”
“There, take your five hundred francs, you scamp!” said Cardot to his nephew, “and remember, that’s the last penny you’ll ever get from me. Go and make it up with your master if you can. I’ll return the thousand francs which you borrowed of mademoiselle; but I’ll never hear another word about you.”
Oscar disappeared, not wishing to hear more. Once in the street, however, he knew not where to go.
Chance which destroys men and chance which saves them were both making equal efforts for and against Oscar during that fateful morning. But he was doomed to fall before a master who forgave no failure in any affair he had once undertaken. When Mariette reached home that night, she felt alarmed at what might happen to the youth in whom her brother took interest and she wrote a hasty note to Godeschal, telling him what had happened to Oscar and inclosing a bank bill for five hundred francs to repair his loss. The kind-hearted creature went to sleep after charging her maid to carry the little note to Desroches’ office before seven o’clock in the morning. Godeschal, on his side, getting up at six and finding that Oscar had not returned, guessed what had happened. He took the five hundred francs from his own little hoard and rushed to the Palais, where he obtained a copy of the judgment and returned in time to lay it before Desroches by eight o’clock.
Meantime Desroches, who always rose at four, was in his office by seven. Mariette’s maid, not finding the brother of her mistress in his bedroom, came down to the office and there met Desroches, to whom she very naturally offered the note.
“Is it about business?” he said; “I am Monsieur Desroches.”
“You can see, monsieur,” replied the maid.
Desroches opened the letter and read it. Finding the five-hundred-franc note, he went into his private office furiously angry with his second clerk. About half-past seven he heard Godeschal dictating to the second head-clerk a copy of the document in question, and a few moments later the good fellow entered his master’s office with an air of triumph in his heart.
“Did Oscar Husson fetch the paper this morning from Simon?” inquired Desroches.
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Who gave him the money?”
“Why, you did, Saturday,” replied Godeschal.
“Then it rains five-hundred-franc notes,” cried Desroches. “Look here, Godeschal, you are a fine fellow, but that little Husson does not deserve such generosity. I hate idiots, but I hate still more the men who will go wrong in spite of the fatherly care which watches over them.” He gave Godeschal Mariette’s letter and the five-hundred-franc note which she had sent. “You must excuse my having opened it,” he said, “but your sister’s maid told me it was on business. Dismiss Husson.”
“Poor unhappy boy! what grief he has caused me!” said Godeschal, “that tall ne’er-do-well of a Georges Marest is his evil genius; he ought to flee him like the plague; if not, he’ll bring him to some third disgrace.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Desroches.
Godeschal then related briefly the affair of the journey to Presles.
“Ah! yes,” said the lawyer, “I remember Joseph Bridau told me that story about the time it happened. It is to that meeting that we owe the favor Monsieur de Serizy has since shown in the matter of Joseph’s brother, Philippe Bridau.”
At this moment Moreau, to whom the case of the Vandernesse estate was of much importance, entered the office. The marquis wished to sell the land in parcels and the count was opposed to such a sale. The land-agent received therefore the first fire of Desroches’ wrath against his ex-second clerk and all the threatening prophecies which he fulminated against him. The result was that this most sincere friend and protector of the unhappy youth came to the conclusion that his vanity was incorrigible.
“Make him a barrister,” said Desroches. “He has only his last examination to pass. In that line, his defects might prove virtues, for self-love and vanity give tongues to half the attorneys.”
At this time Clapart, who was ill, was being nursed by his wife, — a painful task, a duty without reward. The sick man tormented the poor creature, who was now doomed to learn what venomous and spiteful teasing a half-imbecile man, whom poverty had rendered craftily savage, could be capable of in the weary tete-a-tete of each endless day. Delighted to turn a sharpened arrow in the sensitive heart of the mother, he had, in a measure, studied the fears that Oscar’s behavior and defects inspired in the poor woman. When a mother receives from her child a shock like that of the affair at Presles, she continues in a state of constant fear, and, by the manner in which his wife boasted of Oscar every time he obtained the slightest success, Clapart knew the extent of her secret uneasiness, and he took pains to rouse it on every occasion.
“Well, Madame,” Clapart would say, “Oscar is doing better than I even hoped. That journey to Presles was only a heedlessness of youth. Where can you find young lads who do not commit just such faults? Poor child! he bears his privations heroically! If his father had lived, he would never have had any. God grant he may know how to control his passions!” etc., etc.
While all these catastrophes were happening in the rue de Vendome and the rue de Bethisy, Clapart, sitting in the chimney corner, wrapped in an old dressing-gown, watched his wife, who was engaged over the fire in their bedroom in simultaneously making the family broth, Clapart’s “tisane,” and her own breakfast.
“Mon Dieu! I wish I knew how the affair of yesterday ended. Oscar was to breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale and spend the evening with a marquise — ”
“Don’t trouble yourself! Sooner or later you’ll find out about your swan,” said her husband. “Do you really believe in that marquise? Pooh! A young man who has senses and a taste for extravagance like Oscar can find such ladies as that on every bush — if he pays for them. Some fine morning you’ll find yourself with a load of debt on your back.”
“You are always trying to put me in despair!” cried Madame Clapart. “You complained that my son lived on your salary, and never has he cost you a penny.