The Works of Honoré de Balzac: About Catherine de' Medici, Seraphita, and Other Stories. Honore de Balzac
not spoil them by being of service to Queen Catherine. But, for God's sake, keep your head on your shoulders! And the Guises would cut it off as la Bourguignonne cuts off a turnip, for the people who are employing you would throw you over at once."
"I know that, father," said Christophe.
"And you are so bold as that! You know it, and you will risk it?"
"Yes, father."
"Why, the Devil's in it!" cried the old man, hugging his son, "we may understand each other; you are your father's son.—My boy, you will be a credit to the family, and your old father may be plain with you, I see.—But do not be more of a Huguenot than the Messieurs de Coligny; and do not draw your sword. You are to be a man of the pen; stick to your part as a sucking lawyer.—Well, tell me no more till you have succeeded. If I hear nothing of you for four days after you reach Blois, that silence will tell me that you are in danger. Then the old man will follow to save the young one. I have not sold furs for thirty years without knowing the seamy side of a Court robe. I can find means of opening doors."
Christophe stared with amazement at hearing his father speak thus; but he feared some parental snare, and held his tongue.
Then he said:
"Very well, make up the account; write a letter to the Queen. I must be off this moment, or dreadful things will happen."
"Be off? But how?"
"I will buy a horse.—Write, for God's sake!"
"Here! Mother! Give your boy some money," the furrier called out to his wife.
She came in, flew to her chest, and gave a purse to Christophe, who excitedly kissed her.
"The account was ready," said his father; "here it is. I will write the letter."
Christophe took the bill and put it in his pocket.
"But at any rate you will sup with us," said the goodman. "In this extremity you and the Lallier girl must exchange rings."
"Well, I will go to fetch her," cried Christophe.
The young man feared some indecision in his father, whose character he did not thoroughly appreciate; he went up to his room, dressed, took out a small trunk, stole downstairs, and placed it with his cloak and rapier under a counter in the shop.
"What the devil are you about?" asked his father, hearing him there.
"I do not want any one to see my preparations for leaving; I have put everything under the counter," he whispered in reply.
"And here is the letter," said his father.
Christophe took the paper, and went out as if to fetch their neighbor.
A few moments after Christophe had gone out, old Lallier and his daughter came in, preceded by a woman-servant carrying three bottles of old wine.
"Well, and where is Christophe?" asked the furrier and his wife.
"Christophe?" said Babette; "we have not seen him."
"A pretty rogue is my son!" cried Lecamus. "He tricks me as if I had no beard. Why, old gossip, what will come to us? We live in times when the children are all too clever for their fathers!"
"But he has long been regarded by all the neighbors as a mad follower of Colas," said Lallier.
"Defend him stoutly on that score," said the furrier to the goldsmith. "Youth is foolish, and runs after anything new; but Babette will keep him quiet, she is even newer than Calvin."
Babette smiled. She truly loved Christophe, was affronted by everything that was ever said against him. She was a girl of the good old middle-class type, brought up under her mother's eye, for she had never left her; her demeanor was as gentle and precise as her features; she was dressed in stuff of harmonious tones of gray; her ruff, plainly pleated, was a contrast by its whiteness to her sober gown; on her head was a black velvet cap, like a child's hood in shape, but trimmed, on each side of her face, with frills and ends of tan-colored gauze. Though she was fair-haired, with a white skin, she seemed cunning and crafty, though trying to hide her wiliness under the expression of a simple and honest girl.
As long as the two women remained in the room, coming to and fro to lay the cloth, and place the jugs, the large pewter dishes, and the knives and forks, the goldsmith and his daughter, the furrier and his wife, sat in front of the high chimney-place, hung with red serge and black fringes, talking of nothing. It was in vain that Babette asked where Christophe could be; the young Huguenot's father and mother made ambiguous replies; but as soon as the party had sat down to their meal, and the two maids were in the kitchen, Lecamus said to his future daughter-in-law:
"Christophe is gone to the Court."
"To Blois! What a journey to take without saying good-bye to me!" said Babette.
"He was in a great hurry," said his old mother.
"Old friend," said the furrier to Lallier, taking up the thread of the conversation, "we are going to see hot work in France; the Reformers are astir."
"If they win the day, it will only be after long fighting, which will be very bad for trade," said Lallier, incapable of looking higher than the commercial point of view.
"My father, who had seen the end of the wars between the Bourguignons and the Armagnacs, told me that our family would never have lived through them if one of his grandfathers—his mother's father—had not been one of the Goix, the famous butchers at the Halle, who were attached to the Bourguignons, while the other, a Lecamus, was on the side of the Armagnacs; they pretended to be ready to flay each other before the outer world, but at home they were very good friends. So we will try to save Christophe. Perhaps a time may come when he will save us."
"You are a cunning dog, neighbor," said the goldsmith.
"No," replied Lecamus. "The citizen class must take care of itself, the populace and the nobility alike owe it a grudge. Everybody is afraid of the middle class in Paris excepting the King, who knows us to be his friends."
"You who know so much, and who have seen so much," said Babette timidly, "pray tell me what it is that the Reformers want."
"Ay, tell us that, neighbor!" cried the goldsmith. "I knew the late King's tailor, and I always took him to be a simple soul, with no great genius; he was much such another as you are, they would have given him the Host without requiring him to confess, and all the time he was up to his eyes in this new religion.—He! a man whose ears were worth many hundred thousand crowns. He must have known some secrets worth hearing for the King and Madame de Valentinois to be present when he was tortured."
"Ay! and terrible secrets too," said the furrier. "The Reformation, my friends," he went on, in a low voice, "will give the Church lands back to the citizen class. When ecclesiastical privileges are annulled, the Reformers mean to claim equality of taxation for the nobles and the middle class, and to have only the King above all alike—if indeed they have a king at all."
"What, do away with the Throne?" cried Lallier.
"Well, neighbor," said Lecamus, "in the Low Countries the citizens govern themselves by provosts over them, who elect a temporary chief."
"God bless me! Neighbor, we might do all these fine things, and still be Catholics," said the goldsmith.
"We are too old to see the triumph of the middle class in Paris, but it will triumph, neighbor, all in good time! Why, the King is bound to rely on us to hold his own, and we have always been well paid for our support. And the last time all the citizens were ennobled, and they had leave to buy manors, and take the names of their estates without any special letters patent from the King. You and I, for instance, grandsons of the Goix in the female line, are we not as good as many a nobleman?"
This speech was so alarming to the goldsmith and the two women, that it was followed by a long silence. The leaven of 1789 was already germinating in the blood of Lecamus, who was not yet so old but that he lived to see the daring of his class under the Ligue.
"Is business pretty firm in spite of