第27章

Du Croisier's first step was to rid himself of his most hated enemy, the venerable Chesnel.The good old man lived in the Rue du Bercail, in a house with a steep-pitched roof.There was a little paved courtyard in front, where the rose-bushes grew and clambered up to the windows of the upper story.Behind lay a little country garden, with its box-edged borders, shut in by damp, gloomy-looking walls.The prim, gray-painted street door, with its wicket opening and bell attached, announced quite as plainly as the official scutcheon that "a notary lives here."It was half-past five o'clock in the afternoon, at which hour the old man usually sat digesting his dinner.He had drawn his black leather-covered armchair before the fire, and put on his armor, a painted pasteboard contrivance shaped like a top boot, which protected his stockinged legs from the heat of the fire; for it was one of the good man's habits to sit for a while after dinner with his feet on the dogs and to stir up the glowing coals.He always ate too much; he was fond of good living.Alas! if it had not been for that little failing, would he not have been more perfect than it is permitted to mortal man to be? Chesnel had finished his cup of coffee.His old housekeeper had just taken away the tray which had been used for the purpose for the last twenty years.He was waiting for his clerks to go before he himself went out for his game at cards, and meanwhile he was thinking --no need to ask of whom or what.A day seldom passed but he asked himself, "Where is HE? What is HE doing?" He thought that the Count was in Italy with the fair Duchesse de Maufrigneuse.

When every franc of a man's fortune has come to him, not by inheritance, but through his own earning and saving, it is one of his sweetest pleasures to look back upon the pains that have gone to the making of it, and then to plan out a future for his crowns.This it is to conjugate the verb "to enjoy" in every tense.And the old lawyer, whose affections were all bound up in a single attachment, was thinking that all the carefully-chosen, well-tilled land which he had pinched and scraped to buy would one day go to round the d'Esgrignon estates, and the thought doubled his pleasure.His pride swelled as he sat at his ease in the old armchair; and the building of glowing coals, which he raised with the tongs, sometimes seemed to him to be the old noble house built up again, thanks to his care.He pictured the young Count's prosperity, and told himself that he had done well to live for such an aim.Chesnel was not lacking in intelligence;sheer goodness was not the sole source of his great devotion; he had a pride of his own; he was like the nobles who used to rebuild a pillar in a cathedral to inscribe their name upon it; he meant his name to be remembered by the great house which he had restored.Future generations of d'Esgrignons should speak of old Chesnel.Just at this point his old housekeeper came in with signs of alarm in her countenance.

"Is the house on fire, Brigitte?"

"Something of the sort," said she."Here is M.du Croisier wanting to speak to you----""M.du Croisier," repeated the old lawyer.A stab of cold misgiving gave him so sharp a pang at the heart that he dropped the tongs."M.

du Croisier here!" thought he, "our chief enemy!"Du Croisier came in at that moment, like a cat that scents milk in a dairy.He made a bow, seated himself quietly in the easy-chair which the lawyer brought forward, and produced a bill for two hundred and twenty-seven thousand francs, principal and interest, the total amount of sums advanced to M.Victurnien in bills of exchange drawn upon du Croisier, and duly honored by him.Of these, he now demanded immediate payment, with a threat of proceeding to extremities with the heir-presumptive of the house.Chesnel turned the unlucky letters over one by one, and asked the enemy to keep the secret.This he engaged to do if he were paid within forty-eight hours.He was pressed for money he had obliged various manufacturers; and there followed a series of the financial fictions by which neither notaries nor borrowers are deceived.Chesnel's eyes were dim; he could scarcely keep back the tears.There was but one way of raising the money; he must mortgage his own lands up to their full value.But when du Croisier learned the difficulty in the way of repayment, he forgot that he was hard pressed; he no longer wanted ready money, and suddenly came out with a proposal to buy the old lawyer's property.The sale was completed within two days.Poor Chesnel could not bear the thought of the son of the house undergoing a five years' imprisonment for debt.So in a few days' time nothing remained to him but his practice, the sums that were due to him, and the house in which he lived.Chesnel, stripped of all his lands, paced to and fro in his private office, paneled with dark oak, his eyes fixed on the beveled edges of the chestnut cross-beams of the ceiling, or on the trellised vines in the garden outside.

He was not thinking of his farms now, or of Le Jard, his dear house in the country; not he.

"What will become of him? He ought to come back; they must marry him to some rich heiress," he said to himself; and his eyes were dim, his head heavy.

How to approach Mlle.Armande, and in what words to break the news to her, he did not know.The man who had just paid the debts of the family quaked at the thought of confessing these things.He went from the Rue du Bercail to the Hotel d'Esgrignon with pulses throbbing like some girl's heart when she leaves her father's roof by stealth, not to return again till she is a mother and her heart is broken.