Part 36 (1/2)
”And yet it was you yourself who declared that this publication would help my election; besides, I repeat, I have read pa.s.sages to all our friends, I have announced the matter in the munic.i.p.al council, and if the work were not to appear I should be dishonored; people would be sure to say the government had bought me up.”
”You have only to say that you are the friend of Ph.e.l.lion, the incorruptible; that will clear you. You might even give Celeste to his b.o.o.by of a son; that alliance would certainly protect you from all suspicion.”
”Theodose,” said Thuillier, ”there is something in your mind that you don't tell me. It is not natural that for a simple quarrel about a word you should wish to lose a friend like me.”
”Well, yes, there is,” replied la Peyrade, with the air of a man who makes up his mind to speak out. ”I don't like ingrat.i.tude.”
”Nor I either; I don't like it,” said Thuillier, hotly; ”and if you accuse me of so base an action, I summon you to explain yourself. We must get out of these hints and innuendoes. What do you complain of?
What have you against a man whom only a few days ago you called your friend?”
”Nothing and everything,” replied la Peyrade. ”You and your sister are much too clever to break openly with a man who, at the risk of his reputation, has put a million in your hands. But I am not so simple that I don't know how to detect changes. There are people about you who have set themselves, in an underhand way, to destroy me; and Brigitte has only one thought, and that is, how to find a decent way of not keeping her promises. Men like me don't wait till their claims are openly protested, and I certainly do not intend to impose myself on any family; still, I was far, I acknowledge, from expecting such treatment.”
”Come, come,” said Thuillier, kindly, seeing in the barrister's eye the glint of a tear of which he was completely the dupe, ”I don't know what Brigitte may have been doing to you, but one thing is very certain: I have never ceased to be your most devoted friend.”
”No,” said la Peyrade, ”since that mishap about the cross I am only good, as the saying is, to throw to the dogs. How could I have struggled against secret influences? Possibly it is that pamphlet, about which you have talked a great deal too much, that has hindered your appointment.
The ministers are so stupid! They would rather wait and have their hand forced by the fame of the publication than do the thing with a good grace as the reward of your services. But these are political mysteries which would never enter your sister's mind.”
”The devil!” cried Thuillier. ”I think I've got a pretty observing eye, and yet I can't see the slightest change in Brigitte toward you.”
”Oh, yes!” said la Peyrade, ”your eyesight is so good that you have never seen perpetually beside her that Madame de G.o.dollo, whom she now thinks she can't live without.”
”Ha, ha!” said Thuillier, slyly, ”so it is a little jealousy, is it, in our mind?”
”Jealousy!” retorted la Peyrade. ”I don't know if that's the right word, but certainly your sister--whose mind is nothing above the ordinary, and to whom I am surprised that a man of your intellectual superiority allows a supremacy in your household which she uses and abuses--”
”How can I help it, my dear fellow,” interrupted Thuillier, sucking in the compliment; ”she is so absolutely devoted to me.”
”I admit the weakness, but, I repeat, your sister doesn't fit into your groove. Well, I say that when a man of the value which you are good enough to recognize in me, does her the honor to consult her and devote himself to her as I have done, it can hardly be agreeable to him to find himself supplanted by a woman who comes from n.o.body knows where--and all because of a few trumpery chairs and tables she has helped her to buy!”
”With women, as you know very well,” replied Thuillier, ”household affairs have the first place.”
”And Brigitte, who wants a finger in everything, also a.s.sumes to carry matters with a high hand in affairs of the heart. As you are so extraordinarily clear-sighted you ought to have seen that in Brigitte's mind nothing is less certain than my marriage with Mademoiselle Colleville; and yet my love has been solemnly authorized by you.”
”Good gracious!” cried Thuillier, ”I'd like to see any one attempt to meddle with my arrangements!”
”Well, without speaking of Brigitte, I can tell you of another person,”
said Theodose, ”who is doing that very thing; and that person is Mademoiselle Celeste herself. In spite of their quarrels about religion, her mind is none the less full of that little Ph.e.l.lion.”
”But why don't you tell Flavie to put a stop to it?”
”No one knows Flavie, my dear Thuillier, better than you. She is a woman rather than a mother. I have found it necessary to do a little bit of courting to her myself, and, you understand, while she is willing for this marriage she doesn't desire it very much.”
”Well,” said Thuillier, ”I'll undertake to speak to Celeste myself. It shall never be said that a slip of a girl lays down the law to me.”
”That's exactly what I don't want you to do,” cried la Peyrade. ”Don't meddle in all this. Outside of your relations to your sister you have an iron will, and I will never have it said that you exerted your authority to put Celeste in my arms; on the contrary, I desire that the child may have complete control over her own heart. The only thing I request is that she shall decide positively between Felix Ph.e.l.lion and myself; because I do not choose to remain any longer in this doubtful position.
It is true we agreed that the marriage should only take place after you became a deputy; but I feel now that it is impossible to allow the greatest event of my life to remain at the mercy of doubtful circ.u.mstances. And, besides, such an arrangement, though at first agreed upon, seems to me now to have a flavor of a bargain which is unbecoming to both of us. I think I had better make you a confidence, to which I am led by the unpleasant state of things now between us. Dutocq may have told you, before you left the apartment in the rue Saint-Dominique, that an heiress had been offered to me whose immediate fortune is larger than that which Mademoiselle Colleville will eventually inherit. I refused, because I have had the folly to let my heart be won, and because an alliance with a family as honorable as yours seemed to me more desirable; but, after all, it is as well to let Brigitte know that if Celeste refuses me, I am not absolutely turned out into the cold.”
”I can easily believe that,” said Thuillier; ”but as for putting the whole decision into the hands of that little girl, especially if she has, as you tell me, a fancy for Felix--”