Beauvisage had had the courage to bring up her daughter to good principles; she had made herself employ a false severity which enabled her to compel obedience and repress the little evil that existed in the girl’s soul. Mother and daughter had never been parted; thus Cecile had, what is more rare in young girls than is generally supposed, a purity of thought, a freshness of heart, and a naivete of nature, real, complete, and flawless.
“Your dress is enough to make me reflect,” said Madame Beauvisage. “Did Simon Giguet say anything to you yesterday that you are hiding from me?”
“Dear mamma,” said Cecile in her mother’s ear, “he bores me; but there is no one else for me in Arcis.”
“You judge him rightly; but wait till your grandfather has given an opinion,” said Madame Beauvisage, kissing her daughter, whose reply proved her good-sense, though it also revealed the breach made in her innocence by the idea of marriage.
Severine was devoted to her father; she and her daughter allowed no one but themselves to take charge of his linen; they knitted his socks for him, and gave the most minute care to his comfort. Grevin knew that no thought of self-interest had entered their affection; the million they would probably inherit could not dry their tears at his death; old men are very sensible to disinterested tenderness. Every morning before going to see him, Madame Beauvisage and Cecile attended to his dinner for the next day, sending him the best that the market afforded.
Madame Beauvisage had always desired that her father would present her at the Chateau de Gondreville and connect her with the count’s daughters; but the wise old man explained, again and again, how difficult it would be to have permanent relations with the Duchesse de Carigliano, who lived in Paris and seldom came to Gondreville, or with the brilliant Madame Keller, after doing a business in hosiery.
“Your life is lived,” he said to his daughter; “find all your enjoyments henceforth in Cecile, who will certainly be rich enough to give you an existence as broad and high as you deserve. Choose a son-in-law with ambition and means, and you can follow her to Paris and leave that jackass Beauvisage behind you. If I live long enough to see Cecile’s husband I’ll pilot you all on the sea of political interests, as I once piloted others, and you will reach a position equal to that of the Kellers.”
These few words were said before the revolution of July, 1830. Grevin desired to live that he might get under way the future grandeur of his daughter, his grand-daughter, and his great-grandchildren. His ambition extended to the third generation.
When he talked thus, the old man’s idea was to marry Cecile to Charles Keller; he was now grieving over that lost hope, uncertain where to look in the future. Having no relations with Parisian society, and seeing in the department of the Aube no other husband for Cecile than the youthful Marquis de Cinq-Cygne, he was asking himself whether by the power of gold he could surmount the animosities which the revolution of July had roused between the royalists who were faithful to their principles, and their conquerors. The happiness of his grand-daughter seemed to him so doubtful if he delivered her into the hands of the proud and haughty Marquise de Cinq-Cygne that he decided in his own mind to trust to the friend of old age, Time. He hoped that his bitter enemy the marquise might die, and, in that case, he thought he could win the son through his grandfather, old d’Hauteserre, who was then living at Cinq-Cygne and whom he knew to be accessible to the persuasions of money.
If this plan failed, and Cecile Beauvisage remained unmarried, he resolved as a last resort to consult his friend Gondreville, who would, he believed, find his Cecile a husband, after his heart and his ambition, among the dukes of the Empire.
IX. A STRANGER
Severine found her father seated on a wooden bench at the end of his terrace, under a bower of lilacs then in bloom, and taking his coffee; for it was half-past five in the afternoon. She saw, by the pain on her father’s face, that he had already heard the news. In fact, the old count had sent a valet to his friend, begging him to come to him.
Up to the present time, old Grevin had endeavored not to encourage his daughter’s ambition too far; but now, in the midst of the contradictory reflections which the melancholy death of Charles Keller caused him, his secret escaped his lips.
“My dear child,” he said to her, “I had formed the finest plans for your future. Cecile was to have been Vicomtesse Keller, for Charles, by my influence, would now have been selected deputy. Neither Gondreville nor his daughter Madame Keller would have refused Cecile’s dot of sixty thousand francs a year, especially with the prospect of a hundred thousand more which she will some day have from you. You would have lived in Paris with your daughter, and played your part of mother-in-law in the upper regions of power.”
Madame Beauvisage made a sign of satisfaction.
“But we are knocked down by the death of this charming young man, to whom the prince royal had already given his friendship. Now this Simon Giguet, who has thrust himself upon the scene, is a fool, and the worst of all fools, for he thinks himself an eagle. You are, however, too intimate with the Giguets and the Marion household not to put the utmost politeness into your refusal – but you must refuse him.”
“As usual, you and I are of the same opinion, father.”
“You can say that I have otherwise disposed of Cecile’s hand, and that will cut short all preposterous pretensions like that of Antonin Goulard. Little Vinet may offer himself, and he is preferable to the others who are smelling after the dot; he has talent, and shrewdness, and he belongs to the Chargeboeufs by his mother; but he has too much character not to rule his wife, and he is young enough to make himself loved. You would perish between two sentiments – for I know you by heart, my child.”
“I shall be much embarrassed this evening at the Marions’ to know what to say,” remarked Severine.
“Well, then, my dear,” said her father, “send Madame Marion to me; I’ll talk to her.”
“I knew, father, that you were thinking of our future, but I had no idea you expected it to be so brilliant,” said Madame Beauvisage, taking the hands of the old man and kissing them.
“I have pondered the matter so deeply,” said Grevin, “that in 1831 I bought the Beauseant mansion in Paris, which you have probably seen.”
Madame de Beauvisage made a movement of surprise on hearing this secret, until then so carefully kept, but she did not interrupt her father.
“It will be my wedding present,” he went on. “In 1832 I let it for seven years to an Englishman for twenty-four thousand francs a year, – a pretty stroke of business; for it only cost me three hundred and twenty-five thousand francs, of which I thus recover nearly two hundred thousand. The lease ends in July of this year.”
Severine kissed her father on the forehead and on both cheeks. This last revelation so magnified her future that she was well-nigh dazzled.
“I shall advise my father,” she said to herself, as she recrossed the bridge, “to give only the reversion of that property to his grandchildren, and let me have the life-interest in it. I have no idea of letting my daughter and son-in-law turn me out of doors; they must live with me.”
At dessert, when the two women-servants were safely at their own dinner in the kitchen, and Madame Beauvisage was certain of not being overheard, she thought it advisable to give Cecile a little lecture.
“My daughter,” she said, “behave this evening with propriety, like a well-bred girl; and from this day forth be more sedate. Do not chatter heedlessly, and never walk alone with Monsieur Giguet, or Monsieur Olivier Vinet, or the sub-prefect, or Monsieur Martener, –
