he replied, “but the duplicity. I am rich enough, thank Heaven! not to begrudge a few francs; and I would gladly give to my wife twice as much as she takes, if she would only ask it frankly.”
But that was a lesson.
Hereafter he was careful to dissimulate, and seemed exclusively occupied in subjecting his son to a system of his invention, the excessive rigor of which would have upset a steadier one than he.
He demanded of him daily written attestations of his attendance both at the law-school and at the lawyer’s office. He marked out the itinerary of his walks for him, and measured the time they required, within a few minutes. Immediately after dinner he shut him up in his room, under lock and key, and never failed, when he came home at ten o’clock to make sure of his presence.
He could not have taken steps better calculated to exalt still more Mme. Favoral’s blind tenderness.
When she heard that Maxence had a mistress, she had been rudely shocked in her most cherished feelings. It is never without a secret jealousy that a mother discovers that a woman has robbed her of her son’s heart. She had retained a certain amount of spite against him on account of disorders, which, in her candor, she had never suspected. She forgave him every thing when she saw of what treatment he was the object.
She took sides with him, believing him to be the victim of a most unjust persecution. In the evening, after her husband had gone out, Gilberte and herself would take their sewing, sit in the hall outside his room, and converse with him through the door. Never had they worked so hard for the shop-keeper in the Rue St. Denis. Some weeks they earned as much as twenty-five or thirty francs.
But Maxence’s patience was exhausted; and one morning he declared resolutely that he would no longer attend the law-school, that he had been mistaken in his vocation, and that there was no human power capable to make him return to M. Chapelain’s.
“And where will you go?” exclaimed his father. “Do you expect me eternally to supply your wants?”
He answered that it was precisely in order to support himself, and conquer his independence, that he had resolved to abandon a profession, which, after two years, yielded him twenty francs a month.
“I want some business where I have a chance to get rich,” he replied. “I would like to enter a banking-house, or some great financial establishment.”
Mme. Favoral jumped at the idea.
“That’s a fact,” she said to her husband. “Why couldn’t you find a place for our son at the Mutual Credit? There he would be under your own eyes. Intelligent as he is, backed by M. de Thaller and yourself, he would soon earn a good salary.”
M. Favoral knit his brows.
“That I shall never do,” he uttered. “I have not sufficient confidence in my son. I cannot expose myself to have him compromise the consideration which I have acquired for myself.”
And, revealing to a certain extent the secret of his conduct:
“A cashier,” he added, “who like me handles immense sums cannot be too careful of his reputation. Confidence is a delicate thing in these times, when there are so many cashiers constantly on the road to Belgium. Who knows what would be thought of me, if I was known to have such a son as mine?”
Mme. Favoral was insisting, nevertheless, when he seemed to make up his mind suddenly.
“Enough,” he said. “Maxence is free. I allow him two years to establish himself in some position. That delay over, good-by: he can find board and lodging where he please. That’s all. I don’t want to hear any thing more about it.”
It was with a sort of frenzy that Maxence abused that freedom; and in less than two weeks he had dissipated three months’ earnings of his mother and sister.
That time over, he succeeded, thanks to M. Chapelain, in finding a place with an architect.
This was not a very brilliant opening; and the chances were, that he might remain a clerk all his life. But the future did not trouble him much. For the present, he was delighted with this inferior position, which assured him each month one hundred and seventy-five francs.
One hundred and seventy-five francs! A fortune. And so he rushed into that life of questionable pleasures, where so many wretches have left not only the money which they had, which is nothing, but the money which they had not, which leads straight to the police-court.
He made friends with those shabby fellows who walk up and down in front of the Café Riche, with an empty stomach, and a tooth-pick between their teeth. He became a regular customer at those low Cafés of the Boulevards, where plastered girls smile to the men. He frequented those suspicious table d’hotes where they play baccarat after dinner on a wine-stained table-cloth, and where the police make periodical raids. He ate suppers in those night restaurants where people throw the bottles at each other’s heads after drinking their contents.
Often he remained twenty-four hours without coming to the Rue St. Gilles; and then Mme. Favoral spent the night in the most fearful anxiety. Then, suddenly, at some hour when he knew his father to be absent, he would appear, and, taking his mother to one side:
“I very much want a few louis,” he would say in a sheepish tone.
She gave them to him; and she kept giving them so long as she had any, not, however, without observing timidly to him that Gilberte and herself could not earn very much.
Until finally one evening, and to a last demand:
“Alas!” she answered sorrowfully, “I have nothing left, and it is only on Monday that we are to take our work back. Couldn’t you wait until then?”
He could not wait: he was expected for a game. Blind devotion begets ferocious egotism. He wanted his mother to go out and borrow the money from the grocer or the butcher. She was hesitating. He spoke louder.
Then Mlle. Gilberte appeared.
“Have you, then, really no heart?” she said. “It seems to me, that, if I were a man, I would not ask my mother and sister to work for me.”
XII
Gilberte Favoral had just completed her eighteenth year. Rather tall, slender, her every motion betrayed the admirable proportions of her figure, and had that grace which results from the harmonious blending of litheness and strength. She did not strike at first sight; but soon a penetrating and indefinable charm arose from her whole person; and one knew not which to admire most—the exquisite perfections of her figure, the divine roundness of her neck, her aerial carriage, or the placid ingenuousness of her attitudes. She could not be called beautiful, inasmuch as her features lacked regularity; but the extreme mobility of her countenance, upon which could be read all the emotions of her soul, had an irresistible seduction. Her large eyes, of velvety blue, had untold depths and an incredible intensity of expression; the imperceptible quiver of her rosy nostrils revealed an untamable pride; and the smile that played upon her lips told her immense contempt for every thing mean and small. But her real beauty was her hair—of a blonde so luminous that it seemed powdered with diamond-dust; so thick and so long, that to be able to twist and confine it,
