that I let loose in his family the Hungarian who
played you all so well ; that I am responsible for the
fact that firing has begun to-day in the ministerial
journals, which will become more and more brisk
every day, to say nothing of the other machinery
which will, in case of need, be set in motion against
his candidacy. So you see, my dear sir, not only
have you no longer in Thuillier's eyes the merit of
being his great elector, but you are the stumbling-
block in the way of his ambition ; it is enough to
tell you that the fortifications by which you held
this family in check a family, who, at bottom,
have never sincerely cared for you are entirely
demolished and dismantled."

"But who, in heaven's name, are you, to have
done all this in which you take such pride?" de-
manded La Peyrade.

"I won't reply that you are very inquisitive, for
I shall tell you directly ; but we will continue, if
you please, the autopsy of your existence, to-day
wrecked, and for which I am preparing a glorious
resurrection. You are twenty-eight years old, and
have before you a career as yet hardly sketched, in
which I forbid you to take another step. A few
days hence the council of the order of advocates
will assemble and will pass censure more or less



358 THE PETTY BOURGEOIS

absolutely upon your conduct in the matter of that
real estate which you were simple enough to put in
Thuillier's hands. Now, you must not form any
illusions; even though you receive nothing but a
severe admonition, and I am playing for the light-
est penalty, an advocate isn't like the cabdriver
whom the censure of Parliament does not prevent
from driving his cab; once censured, you are as
good as struck from the list "

"And I am indebted to your good will, no doubt,
for this precious result?" said La Peyrade.

"Yes, and I pride myself on it," Du Portail re-
plied, "for, in order to tow you to port, it was
necessary first of all to clear away all your rigging;
otherwise you'd have insisted upon cruising under
your own sails in the shoals of bourgeoisie."

Realizing at last that he had to do with a power-
ful adversary, the adroit Provencal thought fit to
modify his attitude, and he said with a much more
reserved air :

"You will allow me, monsieur, to await more
ample developments before expressing my grati-
tude."

"Here you are, then," continued Du Portail, "at
twenty-eight years of age, without a sou, without a
profession, with very modest antecedents, and old
acquaintances like Monsieur Dutocq and courageous
Cerizet ; owing Mademoiselle Thuillier ten thousand
francs, which in good conscience you are called
upon to repay her, even if you had not agreed to do
so out of respect for your self-esteem ; to Madame



THE PETTY BOURGEOIS 359

Lambert twenty-five thousand, which you are un-
doubtedly extremely anxious to replace in her hands
as soon as possible; lastly, this marriage, your last
hope, your plank of safety, has just now become
impossible. Between ourselves, if I have any
reasonable proposition to make you, don't you think
you'd be a little inclined to listen to me?"

"There will always be time enough for me to
prove the contrary," La Peyrade replied, "and I
shall not come to any decision, so long as the pro-
jects you have chosen to form for me are not known
to me."

"I have caused something to be said to you con-
cerning a marriage," Du Portail resumed; "that
marriage is closely connected in my thoughts with
another scheme of existence which, in your case,
devolves upon you, so to speak, by hereditary right.
Do you know what that uncle whom you came to
Paris in search of in 1829, was doing here at that
time? In your family, he was looked upon as a
millionaire; and yet, having died suddenly before
you could join him, he didn't leave enough money
to bury him ; the pauper's hearse and the common
grave, that's what he came to."

"You knew him, then?" asked Theodose.

"He was my dearest and oldest friend," Du Por-
tail replied.

"Why, in that case," said La Peyrade hastily,
"a certain hundred louis that were brought to me by
a stranger in the early days of my life in Paris ?"

"Came from myself," replied the annuitant;



360 THE PETTY BOURGEOIS

"unfortunately, being absorbed by a press of urgent
business which you will understand better in a
moment, I was unable to follow up the kindly inter-
est in you with which your uncle's memory inspired
me: that is why I left you lying upon straw in a
garret until, like the medlar, you reached that
mature stage of poverty which was certain to call
down upon you the hand of a Dutocq or a Cerizet"

"I am none the less indebted to you, monsieur,"
said La Peyrade, "and if I had known that you
were the generous protector who has always re-
mained a mystery to me, pray believe that I should
have been the first to seek an opportunity to see
you, without awaiting a summons, and to thank
you."

"Let us have done with compliments," said Du
Portail ; "and to come to the serious part of our con-
ference, what should you say if I should tell you
that that uncle, whose protection and support you
came to Paris to seek, was one of the agents of the
occult power which is the theme of so many absurd
fables, and the object of such idiotic prejudices?"

"I don't understand very well," said La Peyrade
with anxious interest; "may I venture to ask you
to be more explicit?"

"For example," continued Du Portail, "imagine
that your uncle was still living and should say to
you: 'My gallant nephew, you are seeking fortune
and influence; you undertake to distinguish your-
self from the common herd and to be concerned in
all the great affairs of your day; you would like to



THE PETTY BOURGEOIS 361

find employment for your mind, keen, alert, re-
sourceful and somewhat inclined to intrigue as it is,
and to display in a more exalted and fashionable
sphere the powerful will and the inventive faculty
which you have thus far wasted in exploiting the
toughest, dryest object on this earth, to wit, a bour-
geois. Very well; bend your head, my dear
nephew, and go with me through this low door I am
going to open, which leads into a great house of
unsavory reputation, but which is less black than
it's painted. Having crossed the threshold you will
stand erect to the full height of your genius, if there
is a spark of genius in you : statesmen, even kings
will admit you to share their most secret thoughts;
you will be their unknown collaborator, and, in
that way, none of the delights which money and the
loftiest functions can promise a man will be forbid-
den to you or unattainable by you.' "

"But, monsieur," objected La Peyrade, "without
venturing even yet to understand you, I will remind
you that my uncle died in such poverty that public
charity had to be called upon to bury him "

"Your uncle," replied Du Portail, "was a man of
rare talents, but he had in his character certain
weak points by which his whole career was com-
promised. He was extravagant, very fond of
women, and without thought for the future; he
chose also to partake of that joy suited only to
men of common mould, and which for exceptionally
great geniuses is the worst of embarrassments and
pitfalls; I mean a family: he had a daughter he was



362 THE PETTY BOURGEOIS

mad over, and it was on that side that deadly
enemies opened a breach in his life, and were able
to plan the terrible catastrophe which brought it to
a close. Your uncle I am taking up your argu-
ment, you see died by poison."

"And that you consider an encouragement to
walk in the obscure path in which he would have
desired me to follow him?" said La Peyrade.

"But what if I were the man, my dear sir, who
proposes to show you the way?" replied DuPortail.

"You, monsieur!" said La Peyrade in stupefac-
tion.

"Yes, I, who was your uncle's pupil, and later
his protector and his providence; I, whose influence
has done nothing but grow greater day by day for
nearly half a century; I, who am rich, and to whom
successive governments, as they overturn one
another like card houses, come to seek safety and
strength for the future; I, the manager of a vast
theatre of puppets, where I have Columbines of the
style of Madame de Godollo; I, who, if it were es-
sential to the success of one of my vaudevilles or
dramas, could exhibit myself to you to-morrow,
wearing the grand cross of the Legion of Honor, the
order of the Garter, or the Golden Fleece! And do
you want to know why neither you nor I will die of
poison; why I, more fortunate than contemporary
crowned heads, can transmit my sceptre to the suc-
cessor I select? Because, like you, my young
friend, despite your southern look, I was cold, pro-
foundly calculating, and never wasted my time on



THE PETTY BOURGEOIS 363

trifles at the door; warmth, when I was required, by
the necessity of the moment, to exhibit that quality,
never existed below the surface. It is more than
probable that you have heard of me ; to you, there-
fore, I will open a window in my cloud; look at me
and take notice that I have no cloven foot and no
tail at the base of my spine; on the contrary, in me
you see the features of the most inoffensive annui-
tant in the Quartier Saint-Sulpice; in this quarter,
where I can say that I have enjoyed universal
esteem for five and twenty years, my name is Du
Portail, while to you, if you will permit me, I will
be known as CORENTIN!"

"Corentin!" cried La Peyrade in horrified sur-
prise.

"Yes, monsieur, and you will see that by dis-
closing this secret I lay my hand upon you and enroll
you. Corentin ! the greatest police official of modern
times, as I am called by the author of an article in
the Biography of Living Men, to whom, by the way, I
must do the justice to say that he knows nothing
about my life."

"Monsieur," said La Peyrade, "I most assuredly
will keep the secret ; but the place you are good
enough to offer me with you "

"Frightens you, or at least makes you uneasy,"
interrupted the ex-annuitant hastily. "Even before
you have given any thought to the matter, the word
terrifies you. The po-o-o-lice! should you re-
proach yourself for not sharing the terrible prejudice
which brands them on the forehead?"



364 THE PETTY BOURGEOIS

"Most certainly," said La Peyrade, "the police
are a useful institution, but I do not think they
have always been slandered. If it's an honorable
profession, why do they who practice it always keep
out of sight?"

"Because everything that threatens society, and
that it is their mission to put down, is concocted
and arranged in the darkness. Do thieves and con-
spirators put upon their hats : 'I am Guillot, shep-
herd of the flock ? ' and should we, when we are
trying to get at them, send a bell ahead, as the
commissioner does in the morning by his under-
strapper to warn the concierges to sweep the side-
walks in front of their houses?"

"Monsieur," said La Peyrade, "when a feeling
is universal, it ceases to be a prejudice and becomes
an opinion, and such opinion should be a guide to
every man who desires the esteem of his fellow-men
as well as his own."

"And when you fleeced that bankrupt notary,"
cried Corentin; "when you robbed a corpse to en-
rich the Thuilliers, you desired your own esteem
and that of the council of your order; and who
knows whether there haven't been even blacker
deeds than those in your life! I am a more honor-
able man than you, for, outside of the duties of my
office, I haven't a single shameful act to reproach
myself with, and when the right has been made
clear to me, I have done it everywhere and always.
Do you imagine that the guardianship of this mad
girl for eleven years has been all roses ? But she



THE PETTY BOURGEOIS 365

was your uncle's, my old friend's daughter, and
when, feeling that I am growing old, I come to you,
with heaps of shining crowns, and tell you to re-
lieve me of this duty "

"What!" said La Peyrade, "this mad girl my
uncle La Peyrade's daughter?"

"Yes, monsieur, the girl I wish you to marry is
Peyrade's daughter, for he had democratized his
name; or, if you prefer, she is Pere Canquoelle's
daughter, that being a nom de guerre he took from
the little estate of Canquoelles, where your father
died of hunger, leaving eleven children. Don't you
see that, although your uncle was so closemouthed
about his family, I know it root and branch as if I
belonged to it ? Don't you see that, before selecting
you for your cousin, I learned all there is to be
known about you ? You don't think much of the
police, but as the common people say, the hand-
somest part of your nose is made of them; your
uncle was one of them, and, thanks to the police,
he was the confidant, I had almost said the friend of
Louis XVIII., who took infinite pleasure in his con-
versation ; your cousin is a chip of the old block ;
your character and talents, and the absurd position
in which you have placed yourself, everything about
you gravitates toward the conclusion I propose to
you, and, monsieur, that conclusion is to take my
place, if you please, to succeed Corentin! And you
think that I haven't a firm grasp upon you, and that
you will succeed in escaping me by any idiotic
arguments based upon middle-class self-esteem!"



366 THE PETTY BOURGEOIS

It must have been that La Peyrade was not so
obstinately bent upon declining the honor as we
might suppose, for the great police official's warmth,
and his appropriation, so to speak, of his person,
brought a smile to his face.

Meanwhile, Corentin had risen and seemed to be
talking to himself as he strode up and down the
room where this scene took place.

"The police!" he cried; "we might say of them
as Basile said to Bartholo, of calumny: Hie police,
monsieur I the police, you don' t know what it is that
you despise! And, in point of fact," he continued
a moment later, "who despises them? Imbeciles,
who know no better than to insult the institution
that gives them security. For suppress the police,
and you suppress civilization. Do you suppose they
care for the esteem of those people ? They want to
inspire only one sentiment in them : fear, the great
lever with which we govern men, a vile race, whose
execrable instincts we can hardly succeed in keep-
ing down, with the aid of God, hell, the execu-
tioner and the gendarmes."

The panegyrist of the police stopped in front of
La Peyrade and eyed him with a disdainful smile.

"So you're one of those idiots," he said,"who see
in the police nothing but a collection of spies and
informers, and who have never suspected that there
are among them shrewd politicians, diplomatists of
the first order, Richelieus in short gowns? Why,
monsieur, was not Mercury, Mercury the wisest of
the heathen gods, the very incarnation of the police ?



THE PETTY BOURGEOIS 367

To be sure he was also the god of robbers. We are
much to be preferred to him, therefore, for we don't
allow pluralism."

"But," said La Peyrade, "Vautrin, the famous
chief of the secret service ?"

"Oh yes! there's always mud in the shallows,"
retorted Corentin, resuming his promenade, "but
don't you make any mistake; Vautrin's a man of
genius, but his passions, like your uncle's, have led
him into crooked paths. But go up higher for
therein lies the germ of the whole question, namely,
what step of the ladder one has the talent to roost
on : is the Prefect of Police, a minister who is
honored and respected and made much of, a mere
spy? Well, monsieur, 1 am the occult prefect of
police of the diplomatic and higher political circles,
and you hesitate to mount that throne from which
Charles the Fifth in his old age thought fit to
descend? To seem of little consequence and to do
great things, to live in a comfortably fitted den like
this, and to command the light; to have at your
orders an invisible army, always ready, always
devoted, always obedient; to know the reverse side
of everything; never to be the dupe of any plot,
because you hold all the wires right here in your
hand ; to see through every wall, to fathom every
secret, to search every man's heart and conscience:
that, monsieur, is what you are afraid of! and yet
you do not fear to befoul yourself in the obscure and
miry bog of the Thuillier household; you, a blooded
horse, allow yourself to be harnessed to a cab, to the



368 THE PETTY BOURGEOIS

ignoble task of looking after the campaign and the
newspaper of that parvenu bourgeois!"

"One does what one can," replied La Peyrade.

"It's a very remarkable thing, too," continued
Corentin, answering only his own thought, "that
our language, with more fairness and more gratitude
than publk opinion, puts us in our proper place;
for it made the word police the synonym of civiliza-
tion and the antipodes of a barbarous existence,
when it decreed that we should write: 'A well
policed State.' So we worry very little, I promise
you, over the prejudice which tries to sully our
fame ; no one knows men better than you do, and to
know them is to scorn their scorn as much as their
esteem."

"There is certainly much truth in the thesis you
work out with such warmth," said La Peyrade at
last

"Much truth!" echoed Corentin, resuming his
seat; "say rather that it is the truth and nothing
but the truth, but not the whole truth. However,
my dear sir, enough of this for to-day. To be my
successor in my functions, and to marry your cousin
with a dowry which can hardly fall below five hun-
dred thousand francs, that is my offer. I don't
ask you for an answer at this moment; I should
have no confidence in a resolution which was not
the result of serious reflection. To-morrow I shall
be at home all the morning; may my conviction
then have succeeded in forming yours! I will not
say adieu, but au revoir, Monsieur de la Peyrade,"



THE PETTY BOURGEOIS 369

he added, dismissing his visitor with a short,
brusque nod.

With that, Corentin drew forward a small console
whereon he found all the necessary ingredients for
preparing a glass of eau sucree, which he had in
truth well earned, and without looking at the Pro-
venc.al, who left the room a little abashed, he
seemed entirely absorbed in that prosaic occupation.

Was it altogether necessary that, on the day fol-
lowing his interview with Corentin, a visit from
Madame Lambert, now become a pressing and im-
portunate creditor, should supervene to influence La
Peyrade's decision ? Was it not true, as the tempter
had said to him the day before, that his charac-
ter, his talents, his aspirations, the imprudences of
his past life, everything seemed to give him an
irresistible impetus down the steep incline toward the
strange solution of the problem of life which had
suddenly been suggested to him ?

Fatality, if we may so say, was most lavish with
the complications to which he was at last to yield.
It was the thirty-first of October, and the long vaca-
tion at the Palais was drawing near its end ; on the
second of November the sessions of the courts would
begin anew, and, just as Madame Lambert left him,
the advocate received, in addition, a summons to
appear before the council of his order on that day.

To Madame Lambert, who was very urgent that he
should settle with her, on the pretext that she should
very soon return to her native country, and was
about to leave Monsieur Picot's house, he said:
24



370 THE PETTY BOURGEOIS

"Come and see me day after to-morrow at the
same time; your money will be ready."

To the suggestion that he should appear and ex-
plain his conduct before his peers, he replied that
he did not recognize the right of the council to
examine him concerning an incident of his private
life. It was an ill-judged reply. It was certain to
lead to the expunging of his name from the list of
advocates in the royal courts; but it had an appear-
ance of dignified remonstrance which afforded his
self-esteem a means of escape.

Finally he wrote a note to Thuillier to inform
him that as a result of his visit to Du Portail he was
compelled to accept the suggestion of a different
marriage. He, therefore, gave Thuillier back his
word, and took back his own. All this was said
coldly, without a word of regret for the alliance he
renounced. In a postscript he added :

"We shall have to talk over my position on the
newspaper;" thus indicating that his plans might
make it impossible for him to retain it

He was careful to make a copy of this letter, and
when, an hour later, he was questioned in Coren-
tin's study as to the result of his reflections, he
handed the great man, for his perusal, the matrimo-
nial resignation he had just despatched.

"That's all right," said Corentin, "but so far as
your position on the paper goes, perhaps you may
have to retain it for some little time; that block-
head's candidacy upsets the plans of the govern-
ment, and we're talking about tripping up the



THE PETTY BOURGEOIS 371

worthy municipal councillor's heels; in your posi-
tion of editor-in-chief with full power, you may
perhaps be able to play some trick on him that will
help us out, and I fancy your conscience wouldn't
be inclined to rebel against such a mission?"

"No, indeed not!" said La Peyrade; "the
memory of the humiliation I've had to undergo so
long, will lead me rather to take extraordinary
pleasure in lashing the bourgeois brood."

"Take care!" said Corentin; "you're young yet,
and you must look out for these attacks of bile. In
our stern profession, we love nobody, we hate no-
body. In our eyes, men are the pawns, of wood
or ivory according to their quality, with which we
play our games. We must be like the sword which
cuts what is given it to cut, but is careful only to
be keen-edged and sharp, and bears no good or ill-
will to any man. Now let us talk of your cousin,
to whom I suppose you have some curiosity to be
presented."

La Peyrade had no occasion to feign eagerness,
for that which he felt was genuine enough.

"Lydie de la Peyrade," said Corentin, "is near-
ing thirty years of age, but her virginity, combined
with a mild form of insanity, which has held her
aloof from passion of every sort, from all the ideas,
all the impulses by which the springs of life are
drained, has, in a certain sense, embalmed her in
perpetual youth. You would not say that she was
more than twenty ; she is fair and slender; her face,
instinct with refinement, is especially remarkable



372 THE PETTY BOURGEOIS

for its expression of angelic sweetness. Deprived
of her reason as the result of the terrible catas-
trophe to which her father succumbed, there is
something infinitely touching in her monomania;
she always has in her arms, or lying by her side, a
bundle of linen which she rocks and tends as care-
fully as if it were the sick child she imagines; and
with the exception of my valet Bruneau and myself,
whom she knows, she takes everybody she sees for
a doctor, and consults them all and listens to them
like oracles. A critical experience that she passed
through some time ago convinced Horace Bianchon,
that prince of his profession, that if reality could
be substituted for this long comedy of maternity,
her reason would resume its empire. Would it not
be a pleasant task to bring back the light to this
soul wherein it is but veiled? and does it not seem
to you that the bond of kinship nature has formed
between you, points to you more particularly as the
fitting person to undertake this cure, of which, I say
again, in the opinion of Bianchon and the two other
eminent specialists who have seen the patient in
consultation with him, there is no question as to
the success ? Now I am going to take you to Lydie's
presence; and remember to play your role of doctor;
for the only means of disturbing her customary
gentleness is to fail to enter heartily into her con-
stant idea of a consultation."

After passing through several rooms La Peyrade
and his conductor were on the point of entering that
one in which Lydie was ordinarily to be found,



THE PETTY BOURGEOIS 373

when she did not require more space to walk up
and down rocking her imaginary infant; but sud-
denly their steps were arrested by two or three
chords struck by a master hand upon a piano of a
most beautiful tone.

"What's that?" asked La Peyrade.

" That's Lydie," Corentin replied, with what one
might have taken for an outburst of paternal pride;
"she is an admirable musician, and although she no
longer composes beautiful tunes, as in the days
when her mind was clear, she produces some with
her fingers that often go to my heart Corentin's
heart," added the old fellow with a smile; "I fancy
a virtuoso couldn't receive a greater compliment