Array The griffin classics - The Collected Works of Honore de Balzac

“Enough,” said the count, whose conviction was now complete; “we are not children. All is now irrevocable. Put your affairs and mine in order. You can stay in the pavilion until October. Monsieur and Madame de Reybert will lodge for the present in the chateau; endeavor to keep on terms with them, like well-bred persons who hate each other, but still keep up appearances.”

The count and Moreau went downstairs; Moreau white as the count’s hair, the count himself calm and dignified.

During the time this interview lasted the Beaumont coach, which left Paris at one o’clock, had stopped before the gates of the chateau, and deposited Maitre Crottat, the notary, who was shown, according to the count’s orders, into the salon, where he found his clerk, extremely subdued in manner, and the two painters, all three of them painfully self-conscious and embarrassed. Monsieur de Reybert, a man of fifty, with a crabbed expression of face, was also there, accompanied by old Margueron and the notary of Beaumont, who held in his hand a bundle of deeds and other papers.

When these various personages saw the count in evening dress, and wearing his orders, Georges Marest had a slight sensation of colic, Joseph Bridau quivered, but Mistigris, who was conscious of being in his Sunday clothes, and had, moreover, nothing on his conscience, remarked, in a sufficiently loud tone: —

“Well, he looks a great deal better like that.”

“Little scamp,” said the count, catching him by the ear, “we are both in the decoration business. I hope you recognize your own work, my dear Schinner,” he added, pointing to the ceiling of the salon.

“Monseigneur,” replied the artist, “I did wrong to take such a celebrated name out of mere bravado; but this day will oblige me to do fine things for you, and so bring credit on my own name of Joseph Bridau.”

“You took up my defence,” said the count, hastily; “and I hope you will give me the pleasure of dining with me, as well as my lively friend Mistigris.”

“Your Excellency doesn’t know to what you expose yourself,” said the saucy rapin; “‘facilis descensus victuali,’ as we say at the Black Hen.”

“Bridau!” exclaimed the minister, struck by a sudden thought. “Are you any relation to one of the most devoted toilers under the Empire, the head of a bureau, who fell a victim to his zeal?”

“His son, monseigneur,” replied Joseph, bowing.

“Then you are most welcome here,” said the count, taking Bridau’s hand in both of his. “I knew your father, and you can count on me as on — on an uncle in America,” added the count, laughing. “But you are too young to have pupils of your own; to whom does Mistigris really belong?”

“To my friend Schinner, who lent him to me,” said Joseph. “Mistigris’ name is Leon de Lora. Monseigneur, if you knew my father, will you deign to think of his other son, who is now accused of plotting against the State, and is soon to be tried before the Court of Peers?”

“Ah! that’s true,” said the count. “Yes, I will think about it, be sure of that. As for Colonel Czerni-Georges, the friend of Ali Pacha, and Mina’s aide-de-camp — ” he continued, walking up to Georges.

“He! why that’s my second clerk!” cried Crottat.

“You are quite mistaken, Maitre Crottat,” said the count, assuming a stern air. “A clerk who intends to be a notary does not leave important deeds in a diligence at the mercy of other travellers; neither does he spend twenty francs between Paris and Moisselles; or expose himself to be arrested as a deserter — ”

“Monseigneur,” said Georges Marest, “I may have amused myself with the bourgeois in the diligence, but — ”

“Let his Excellency finish what he was saying,” said the notary, digging his elbow into his clerk’s ribs.

“A notary,” continued the count, “ought to practise discretion, shrewdness, caution from the start; he should be incapable of such a blunder as taking a peer of France for a tallow-chandler — ”

“I am willing to be blamed for my faults,” said Georges; “but I never left my deeds at the mercy of — ”

“Now you are committing the fault of contradicting the word of a minister of State, a gentleman, an old man, and a client,” said the count. “Give me that deed of sale.”

Georges turned over and over the papers in his portfolio.

“That will do; don’t disarrange those papers,” said the count, taking the deed from his pocket. “Here is what you are looking for.”

Crottat turned the paper back and forth, so astonished was he at receiving it from the hands of his client.

“What does this mean, monsieur?” he said, finally, to Georges.

“If I had not taken it,” said the count, “Pere Leger, — who is by no means such a ninny as you thought him from his questions about agriculture, by which he showed that he attended to his own business, — Pere Leger might have seized that paper and guessed my purpose. You must give me the pleasure of dining with me, but one on condition, — that of describing, as you promised, the execution of the Muslim of Smyrna, and you must also finish the memoirs of some client which you have certainly read to be so well informed.”

“Schlague for blague!” said Leon de Lora, in a whisper, to Joseph Bridau.

“Gentlemen,” said the count to the two notaries and Messieurs Margueron and de Reybert, “let us go into the next room and conclude this business before dinner, because, as my friend Mistigris would say: ‘Qui esurit constentit.’”

“Well, he is very good-natured,” said Leon de Lora to Georges Marest, when the count had left the room.

“Yes, HE may be, but my master isn’t,” said Georges, “and he will request me to go and blaguer somewhere else.”

“Never mind, you like travel,” said Bridau.

“What a dressing that boy will get from Monsieur and Madame Moreau!” cried Mistigris.

“Little idiot!” said Georges. “If it hadn’t been for him the count would have been amused. Well, anyhow, the lesson is a good one; and if ever again I am caught bragging in a public coach — ”

“It is a stupid thing to do,” said Joseph Bridau.

“And common,” added Mistigris. “‘Vulgarity is the brother of pretension.’”

While the matter of the sale was being settled between Monsieur Margueron and the Comte de Serizy, assisted by their respective notaries in presence of Monsieur de Reybert, the ex-steward walked with slow steps to his own house. There he entered the salon and sat down without noticing anything. Little Husson, who was present, slipped into a corner, out of sight, so much did the livid face of his mother’s friend alarm him.

“Eh! my friend!” said Estelle, coming into the room, somewhat tired with what she had been doing. “What is the matter?”

“My dear, we are lost, — lost beyond recovery. I am no longer steward of Presles, no longer in the count’s confidence.”

“Why not?”

“Pere Leger, who was in Pierrotin’s coach, told the count all about the affair of Les Moulineaux. But that is not the thing that has cost me his favor.”

“What then?”

“Oscar spoke ill of the countess, and he told about the count’s diseases.”

“Oscar!” cried Madame Moreau. “Ah! my dear, your sin has found you out. It was well worth while to warm that young serpent in your bosom. How often I have told you — ”

“Enough!” said Moreau, in a strained voice.

At this moment Estelle and her husband discovered Oscar cowering in his corner. Moreau swooped down on the luckless lad like a hawk on its prey, took him by the collar of the coat and dragged him to the light of a window. “Speak! what did you say to monseigneur in that coach? What demon let loose your tongue, you who keep a doltish silence whenever I speak to you? What did you do it for?” cried the steward, with frightful violence.