The Muse of the Department. Honore de Balzac
was even better pleased to receive a wife from the hands of the Cardinal. The little gentleman only demanded of His Eminence a formal promise to support his claims with the President of the Council to enable him to recover his debts from the Duc de Navarreins “and others” by a lien on their indemnities. This method, however, seemed to the able Minister then occupying the Pavillon Marsan rather too sharp practice, and he gave the vine-owner to understand that his business should be attended to all in good time.
It is easy to imagine the excitement produced in the Sancerre district by the news of Monsieur de la Baudraye’s imprudent marriage.
“It is quite intelligible,” said President Boirouge; “the little man was very much startled, as I am told, at hearing that handsome young Milaud, the Attorney-General’s deputy at Nevers, say to Monsieur de Clagny as they were looking at the turrets of La Baudraye, ‘That will be mine some day.’—‘But,’ says Clagny, ‘he may marry and have children.’—‘Impossible!’—So you may imagine how such a changeling as little La Baudraye must hate that colossal Milaud.”
There was at Nevers a plebeian branch of the Milauds, which had grown so rich in the cutlery trade that the present representative of that branch had been brought up to the civil service, in which he had enjoyed the patronage of Marchangy, now dead.
It will be as well to eliminate from this story, in which moral developments play the principal part, the baser material interests which alone occupied Monsieur de la Baudraye, by briefly relating the results of his negotiations in Paris. This will also throw light on certain mysterious phenomena of contemporary history, and the underground difficulties in matters of politics which hampered the Ministry at the time of the Restoration.
The promises of Ministers were so illusory that Monsieur de la Baudraye determined on going to Paris at the time when the Cardinal’s presence was required there by the sitting of the Chambers.
This is how the Duc de Navarreins, the principal debtor threatened by Monsieur de la Baudraye, got out of the scrape.
The country gentleman, lodging at the Hotel de Mayence, Rue Saint-Honore, near the Place Vendome, one morning received a visit from a confidential agent of the Ministry, who was an expert in “winding up” business. This elegant personage, who stepped out of an elegant cab, and was dressed in the most elegant style, was requested to walk up to No. 3—that is to say, to the third floor, to a small room where he found his provincial concocting a cup of coffee over his bedroom fire.
“Is it to Monsieur Milaud de la Baudraye that I have the honor—”
“Yes,” said the little man, draping himself in his dressing-gown.
After examining this garment, the illicit offspring of an old chine wrapper of Madame Piedefer’s and a gown of the late lamented Madame de la Baudraye, the emissary considered the man, the dressing-gown, and the little stove on which the milk was boiling in a tin saucepan, as so homogeneous and characteristic, that he deemed it needless to beat about the bush.
“I will lay a wager, monsieur,” said he, audaciously, “that you dine for forty sous at Hurbain’s in the Palais Royal.”
“Pray, why?”
“Oh, I know you, having seen you there,” replied the Parisian with perfect gravity. “All the princes’ creditors dine there. You know that you recover scarcely ten per cent on debts from these fine gentlemen. I would not give you five per cent on a debt to be recovered from the estate of the late Duc d’Orleans—nor even,” he added in a low voice—“from MONSIEUR.”
“So you have come to buy up the bills?” said La Baudraye, thinking himself very clever.
“Buy them!” said his visitor. “Why, what do you take me for? I am Monsieur des Lupeaulx, Master of Appeals, Secretary-General to the Ministry, and I have come to propose an arrangement.”
“What is that?”
“Of course, monsieur, you know the position of your debtor—”
“Of my debtors—”
“Well, monsieur, you understand the position of your debtors; they stand high in the King’s good graces, but they have no money, and are obliged to make a good show.—Again, you know the difficulties of the political situation. The aristocracy has to be rehabilitated in the face of a very strong force of the third estate. The King’s idea—and France does him scant justice—is to create a peerage as a national institution analogous to the English peerage. To realize this grand idea we need years—and millions.—Noblesse oblige. The Duc de Navarreins, who is, as you know, first gentleman of the Bedchamber to the King, does not repudiate his debt; but he cannot—Now, be reasonable.—Consider the state of politics. We are emerging from the pit of the Revolution.—and you yourself are noble—He simply cannot pay—”
“Monsieur—”
“You are hasty,” said des Lupeaulx. “Listen. He cannot pay in money. Well, then; you, a clever man, can take payment in favors—Royal or Ministerial.”
“What! When in 1793 my father put down one hundred thousand—”
“My dear sir, recrimination is useless. Listen to a simple statement in political arithmetic: The collectorship at Sancerre is vacant; a certain paymaster-general of the forces has a claim on it, but he has no chance of getting it; you have the chance—and no claim. You will get the place. You will hold it for three months, you will then resign, and Monsieur Gravier will give twenty thousand francs for it. In addition, the Order of the Legion of Honor will be conferred on you.”
“Well, that is something,” said the wine-grower, tempted by the money rather than by the red ribbon.
“But then,” said des Lupeaulx, “you must show your gratitude to His Excellency by restoring to Monseigneur the Duc de Navarreins all your claims on him.”
La Baudraye returned to Sancerre as Collector of Taxes. Six months later he was superseded by Monsieur Gravier, regarded as one of the most agreeable financiers who had served under the Empire, and who was of course presented by Monsieur de la Baudraye to his wife.
As soon as he was released from his functions, Monsieur de la Baudraye returned to Paris to come to an understanding with some other debtors. This time he was made a Referendary under the Great Seal, Baron, and Officer of the Legion of Honor. He sold the appointment as Referendary; and then the Baron de la Baudraye called on his last remaining debtors, and reappeared at Sancerre as Master of Appeals, with an appointment as Royal Commissioner to a commercial association established in the Nivernais, at a salary of six thousand francs, an absolute sinecure. So the worthy La Baudraye, who was supposed to have committed a financial blunder, had, in fact, done very good business in the choice of a wife.
Thanks to sordid economy and an indemnity paid him for the estate belonging to his father, nationalized and sold in 1793, by the year 1827 the little man could realize the dream of his whole life. By paying four hundred thousand francs down, and binding himself to further instalments, which compelled him to live for six years on the air as it came, to use his own expression, he was able to purchase the estate of Anzy on the banks of the Loire, about two leagues above Sancerre, and its magnificent castle built by Philibert de l’Orme, the admiration of every connoisseur, and for five centuries the property of the Uxelles family. At last he was one of the great landowners of the province! It is not absolutely certain that the satisfaction of knowing that an entail had been created, by letters patent dated back to December 1820, including the estates of Anzy, of La Baudraye, and of La Hautoy, was any compensation to Dinah on finding herself reduced to unconfessed penuriousness till 1835.
This sketch of the financial policy of the first Baron de la Baudraye explains the man completely. Those who are familiar with the manias of country folks will recognize in him the land-hunger which becomes such a consuming passion to the exclusion of every other; a sort of avarice displayed in the sight of the sun, which often leads to ruin by a want of balance between the interest on mortgages and the products of the soil. Those who, from 1802 till 1827, had merely laughed at the little