than that! But let's sit down and listen; if we
should go in, the concert would at once come to an
end and the consultation begin."

La Peyrade was struck dumb with amazement as
he listened to an improvisation in which the union,
so rarely perfect, of inspiration and science, opened to
his impressionable nature a wellspring of emotions
as deep as they were unlooked-for. Corentin en-
joyed the surprise to which the Provencal gave vent
from moment to moment by admiring exclamations.

"Hein! how's that for playing?" he exclaimed,
making the most of what he had to sell, "Liszt
can't hold a candle to her !"

The performer followed up a very lively scherzo
with the first notes of an adagio movement

"Ah! she's going to sing," said Corentin, recog-
nizing the air.



374 THE PETTY BOURGEOIS

"She sings too?" asked La Peyrade.

"Like Pasta and Malibran; listen to that, will
you!"

Following a few measures of a prelude in arpeg-
gios a vibrating voice burst forth, whose tones
seemed to move the Provencal to the extreme depths
of his soul.

"How music affects you!" said Corentin "You
were certainly made for each other."

With a gesture La Peyrade imposed silence upon
his talkative companion, and as the notes fell from
the singer's lips, his emotion, waxing greater from
moment to moment, at last extorted from him this
cry, which in its turn seemed to make a deep im-
pression upon Corentin :

"O my God! it is the same air ! the same voice !"

"Do you mean that you have met Lydie some-
where before?" asked the great police official.

"I don't know I don't think so," replied La
Peyrade in a broken voice; "in any event it was
a long while ago But that tune that voice it
seems to me "

"Let's go in," said Corentin.

And, opening the door suddenly, he drew the Pro-
vencal into the room after him.

Having her back turned to the door and prevented
by the noise of the piano from hearing what was
going on behind her, Lydie noticed nothing.

"Look!" said Corentin, "have you any remem-
brance of her?"

La Peyrade walked forward a few steps, and as



THE PETTY BOURGEOIS 375

soon as he could see but the mad girl's profile,
he cried out, striking his hands together over his
head:

'"Tisshe!"

"Silence!" said Corentin.

But at Theodose's cry Lydie had turned ; her eyes
did not go beyond Corentin.

"What a wicked, tiresome man you are," she
said, "to come and annoy me so! You know per-
fectly well that I don't like to have anybody listen
tome. But no!" she added, catching sight of La
Peyrade's black coat, "you have brought the doctor ;
it's very nice of you, I was going to ask you to
send for him: the little thing has done nothing but
cry since this morning; it's no use for me to try
and sing her to sleep, nothing comes of it"

And, to get what she called her child, she ran to
a corner, where, with two chairs turned bottom
upwards and the cushions of a couch, she had made
something resembling a cradle.

As she walked toward La Peyrade, carrying her
precious burden in one hand, with the other Lydie
was busily occupied arranging her little darling's
cap, having no eyes for anything except the insane
creation of her sick brain. As she drew near, so
that Theodose had a full, unobstructed view of her,
he fell back, pale, trembling and wild-eyed, appa-
rently in abject terror, nor did he stop until he
stumbled against a chair behind him, which threw
him off his balance and received him as he fell.

So shrewd a man as Corentin, who, moreover,



376 THE PETTY BOURGEOIS

was familiar with the smallest details of the hor-
rible drama in which Lydie had lost her reason,
had not failed already to divine and comprehend the
whole story, but it was a part of his plan to allow
the bright light of proof to force its way into this
ghastly darkness.

"Look, doctor," Lydie was saying, putting aside
the linen clothes and placing the pins between her
lips as she removed them, "see if she isn't growing
visibly thinner!"

La Peyrade did not trust himself to reply; with
his face hidden behind his handkerchief, his breath
came in gasps which would have made it impossible
for him to utter a word.

Thereupon, with one of those bursts of feverish
impatience which were the result of her mental
condition, she seized Theodose's arm and forced
him to let her see his features.

"Look at him, doctor, will you!" she cried.
"My God!" she exclaimed as soon as she saw the
Provencal's face.

Dropping the package of linen she held in her
arms she threw herself violently back. Her eyes
became haggard ; passing her white hands hurriedly
across her face and through her hair, which was
soon in disorder, she seemed to be making an effort
to awaken a sleeping, rebellious memory. Then,
like a frightened horse, which returns to smell at
the object that has caused its fright, she slowly ap-
proached the Provencal, and bending half over to
obtain a nearer view of the face which he was



THE PETTY BOURGEOIS 377

seeking to conceal from her, in the midst of an inde-
scribable silence, she devoted some seconds to
scrutinizing it Suddenly a terrible shriek escaped
from her breast, she ran to seek shelter in Coren-
tin's arms, and clung to him in a mad embrace.

"Save me! save me!" she cried; "it is he! the
villain! the wretch! He did everything "

And, with her extended forefinger, she seemed to
nail to his place the cringing object of her loathing.

After this explosion she stammered a few discon-
nected words, then her eyes closed; Corentin felt
the muscles relax, by which a moment before he had
been held as in a vice, and he received in his arms
the unconscious Lydie before it had even occurred
to La Peyrade, utterly overwhelmed as he was, to
assist him to support her and place her upon a couch.

"Don't stay here, monsieur," said Corentin; "go
into my study; I will join you there very soon."

True to his word, Corentin was with La Peyrade
a few moments after, the sick girl being left in the
care of Kate and Bruneau, and Perrache despatched
in hot haste for Doctor Bianchon.

"You can see for yourself, monsieur," he said
solemnly, "whether, in persisting with a sort of
passion in bringing about this marriage, I have for-
warded God's designs."

"Monsieur, "said La Peyrade humbly, "I have to
confess to you "

"It's useless," Corentin broke in; "there's noth-
ing you can tell me, but I have much to say to you.
Old Peyrade, your uncle, in the hope of securing a



378 THE PETTY BOURGEOIS

dowry for his daughter, whom he worshiped, had
undertaken a thing that you will never do if you
follow my advice the handling of a risky private
case. In the course of his investigations in that
case he fell in with Vautrin, whom you mentioned
to me yesterday, and whom the police had not
then absorbed as they did later. Your uncle,
clever as he was, wasn't strong enough to tilt
against that fellow, who had the additional advan-
tage that he was utterly unscrupulous in the means
he employed; murder, poison, rape, it was all one
to him. (See Splendors and Miseries of Court-
esans.) To neutralize your uncle's action, Lydie
was, not kidnapped, but lured away from his house,
and taken to a house that was apparently all
straight, where she remained sequestered for ten
days, but without any special uneasiness as to her
captivity and her father's absence : they had suc-
ceeded in persuading her that it was all done by his
orders; and so, monsieur, as you remember, she
sang in that house!"

"Oh!" exclaimed La Peyrade, covering his face
with his hands.

"Being held to ransom," continued Corentin, "if
her father failed to do within the ten days what he
was given to understand he must do, the unfortunate
girl was reserved for a horrible fate. A narcotic, a
man to play the part the executioner was forced to
play with the daughter of Sejanus "

"Monsieur, monsieur, for God's sake!" cried La
Peyrade.



THE PETTY BOURGEOIS 379

"You know I told you yesterday," said Corentin,
"that perhaps you had on your conscience something
worse than the Thuillier house; but you were so
young at that time! Utterly inexperienced as you
were, you brought with you from your province the
brutality, the frenzy of the southern blood which
overflows on the least provocation; and, besides,
your relationship to the victim had been discovered,
and for the artists in crime who were scheming the
ruin of another Clarissa Harlowe, the refined cruelty
of bringing you into the plot had something so allur-
ing that a shrewder and more experienced roue than
yourself would have failed to avoid the effects of
the manoeuvring of which you were the object
Happily, Providence has ordained that in this extra-
ordinary history there is no wrong that cannot be
set right; the same poison, according to the manner
of its use, may cause death or bring back health."

"But, monsieur," said La Peyrade, "shall I not be
an object of horror to her, and will it be possible for
me to make this reparation of which you speak?"

"The doctor, monsieur," said Kate, opening the
door.

"How is Mademoiselle Lydie?" inquired La Pey-
rade eagerly.

"Very quiet," was Kate's reply; "and just now,
when I carried her her bundle of rags to induce her
to go to bed, for she had refused to do it, saying
that she wasn't sick she said to me as if she was
surprised : 'What do you want me to do with that,
my poor Kate? if you want me to play dolls, do



380 THE PETTY BOURGEOIS

give me one that's made up a little better than
that'"

"You see," said Corentin, pressing La Peyrade's
hand, "you're the lance of Achilles."

And he went out with Kate to receive Bianchon.

Theodose, left to himself, had been for some time
eng r ossed in such reflections as may be imagined,
when the study door opened, and Bruneau,the valet
de chambre, ushered in Cerizet

"Aha!" cried the copyist as his eye fell upon La
Peyrade, "I knew that you'd end by coming to see
Du Portail Well, how does the marriage come
on?"

"Why, I ought rather to ask you about yours,"
replied the Provencal.

"Well, well! have they told you about that?
Faith, yes, my dear boy. A fellow must go into
port at last after sailing so long on a stormy sea.
You know whom I'm going to marry?"

"Yes, a young actress, Mademoiselle Olympe
Cardinal, a protege of the Minard family, who
contribute thirty thousand francs toward her estab-
lishment"

"Which," continued Cerizet, "added to thirty
thousand Du Portail has promised me if your mar-
riage comes off, and to the other twenty thousand I
made out of your marriage that won't come off,
make a snug little capital of eighty-five thousand
francs ; with that, you know, and a pretty wife, a
man must be abandoned by Heaven if he can't get
hold of a good thing or two. But I have one to



THE PETTY BOURGEOIS 381

discuss with you first of all. Du Portail, who's too
busy to see me, has sent me here to agree with you
on some way of putting a spoke in Thuillier's elec-
tion. Have you any ideas on the subject?"

"No, and I confess that, in the state of mind in
which the conversation I have just had with Mon-
sieur du Portail has left me, I don't feel greatly in-
clined to exert my imagination."

"This is the way the thing stands," Cerizet re-
sumed. "The government has on hand another
candidate, who hasn't yet been brought forward
because there's been some difficulty about the min-
isterial bargain with him. Meanwhile, Thuillier's
candidacy has made progress; Minard, whom they'd
relied on to make a diversion, has hung back in his
corner like an ass, and the seizure of your pamphlet
gave your stupid protege a considerable odor of pop-
ularity. In short, the minister's afraid he'll pull it
off, and nothing would be more disagreeable to them
than his election. Pompous idiots like Thuillier
are horribly embarrassing in opposition; they're
like jugs without handles, you never know where
to take hold of 'em."

"Monsieur Cerizet," said La Peyrade, beginning
to assume a patronizing tone, and being desirous,
moreover, to ascertain just how far his companion
was admitted to Corentin's confidence, "you seem
to be well posted as to the private intentions of
the government: can it be that you have found
the way to a certain money box on Rue de
Crenelle?"



382 THE PETTY BOURGEOIS

"No. All that I tell you," replied Cerizet, "for
it seems that we are not upon as intimate terms as
formerly, I know from Du Portail."

"Ah!" said La Peyrade, lowering his voice,
"what is Du Portail any way? you have had busi-
ness with him for some time, and a man of your
calibre must have seen through this great personage,
who, between ourselves, seems to me to have a
good deal of mystery about him."

"My friend," Cerizet replied, "Du Portail's a
good deal of a man. He's an old fox who acts to me
as if he'd been employed in the Public Lands de-
partment, where he probably held some manager's
berth in the departments suppressed at the fall of
the Empire, such as the department of La Dyle or
La Doire or Sambre-et-Meuse, or Les Deux-
Nethes."

"Yes " said La Peyrade.

"There he seems to have feathered his nest,"
continued Cerizet, "and a very ingenious idea
this, having a natural daughter, he arranged a lit-
tle philanthropical stepping-stone for himself, by
passing her off as the daughter of one of his friends
named Peyrade, whom he had taken into his house.
Now, to confirm the probability of this story, your
name of La Peyrade suggested to him the idea of
having you marry her, because she must marry
someone, you see."

"Very good! but how do you explain his intimate
relations with the government and his interest in
the elections?"



THE PETTY BOURGEOIS 383

"It's the most natural thing in the world, " Cerizet
replied. "Du Portail's a man who loves money,
and loves to have a hand in everything; he has
done some service as an amateur for Rastignac, the
great campaign manager, who's a compatriot of his,
I think; Rastignac, in exchange, gives him points
with which he gambles on the Bourse."

"Did he confide all this to you?" queried La
Peyrade.

"What do you take me for.'" retorted Cerizet;
"with the good old man, from whom, you see, I
have already extracted a promise of thirty thousand
francs, I play the blockhead and flatten myself out,
but I have pumped Bruneau, his old footman. You
can safely go into the family, my dear fellow, for
Du Portail is tremendously rich and he'll get you
appointed sub-prefect; and from that to the prefec-
ture, with the fortune you'll have, is only a step, as
you can see."

"I thank you for this information," said La Pey-
rade; "at least I shall know which foot to dance on;
but how did you find it out yourself?"

"Oh! it's a long story; through my intervention
he recovered possession of a lot of diamonds that
had been stolen from him."

At that moment Corentin appeared.

"Everything is going on as well as possible," he
said to La Peyrade. "Her reason seems to be in a
fair way to return. Bianchon, from whom I thought
it my duty to keep nothing back, wishes to have a
talk with you. So, dear Monsieur Cerizet, we'll



384 THE PETTY BOURGEOIS

postpone till this evening, if you please, our little
discussion of the Thuillier affair."

"Well, here he is at last!" said Cerizet, slapping
La Peyrade on the shoulder.

"Yes," said Corentin, "and you know what I
promised you you can count on it"

Cerizet took his leave in high glee.



On the day following that on which this confer-
ence took place between Corentin, La Peyrade and
Cerizet, their object being to place Thuillier's can-
didacy in a state of siege, that gentleman was talk-
ing over with his sister the letter in which Theodose
had renounced his claim to Celeste's hand, and he
seemed especially preoccupied by the postscript
conveying the hint that the Provencal might not
retain his post as editor-in-chief of the cho de la
Btevre. At this juncture Henri, his servant, came
to ask if he would receive Monsieur Cerizet.

Thuillier's first impulse was to show his unex-
pected visitor the door. He soon thought better of
it, however, reflecting that, in the embarrassing
position in which he felt that La Peyrade was
likely to leave him at any moment, Cerizet might
be an invaluable resource. Consequently he gave
orders that he should be admitted.

His greeting was very cold, nevertheless, and in
a certain sense expectant. Cerizet was quite unem-
barrassed and had the air of a man who had calcu-
lated the consequences of his act

"Well, my dear sir," he said to Thuillier, "are
you beginning to find out a little something about
friend La Peyrade?"

"What do you mean by that?" demanded the old
beau.

25 (385)^



386 THE PETTY BOURGEOIS

"Why, it seems to me," replied Cerizet, "that
the man who, after doing so much scheming to
marry your goddaughter, suddenly breaks off the
match, just as he'll break one of these days the
lion-like contract he made you sign, making him
editor-in-chief, can hardly expect to be the object
of such blind confidence on your part as in the
past."

"So you have some information," said Thuillier
hastily, "as to La Peyrade's intention of leaving the
paper?"

"No," said the poor man's banker; "being on
such terms as I am with him you can understand
that I haven't seen him, much less been honored
with his confidence. But, to draw my inferences,
I start with the man's well-known character, and
you can look upon it as certain that, when the day
comes that he finds it to his advantage to leave you,
he'll drop you then, just as one casts off an old coat;
I have been through it and I speak from experience. "

"So you've had some rows with him before this
newspaper business, have you?" asked Thuillier.

"Parbleu!" replied Cerizet; "I was the man who
struck the scent in the matter of the real estate he
got you to buy. He was to introduce me to you,
and to fix it so that I could have a lease of the
whole property ; but that beastly overbidding busi-
ness came up, and he took advantage of it to throw
me over, and keep all the profits of the scheme for
himself."

"The profits!" said Thuillier; "I don't see that



THE PETTY BOURGEOIS 387

his profits have amounted to very much, and, except
the marriage that he himself declines now to "

"What!" the usurer interrupted; "remember the
ten thousand francs he got out of you on the pre-
tence of procuring the Cross you're still waiting for ;
and the twenty-five thousand due Madame Lambert,
which you became surety for, and which you can
pay right up like a good boy."

"What's that you say!" cried Brigitte, leaping
from her chair, "twenty-five thousand francs you're
surety for?"

"Yes, mademoiselle," replied Cerizet; "there
was a mystery back of that sum, which that woman
loaned him about as much as I did, and if I didn't
put my hand on the real explanation, there was cer-
tainly something very dirty at the bottom of it
But La Peyrade has had a way of washing himself
clean in your good brother's eyes and then forcing
himself upon him as a much abused and neces-
sary "

"But how do you know that I became surety for
La Peyrade," interposed Thuillier, "if you haven't
seen him since?"

"I know it from the woman herself, monsieur, who
tells everybody that, now she's sure of being paid."

"Well," said Brigitte to her brother, "you do get
into pretty messes!"

"Mademoiselle," continued Cerizet, "I wanted
to stir up Monsieur Thuillier a little, but, in reality,
I don't think you'll lose anything. Although I
haven't any definite information about La Peyrade's



388 THE PETTY BOURGEOIS

projected marriage, it's hard to believe that the
family will want to leave him with those two
shameful debts around his neck, and, if need be,
I'll take a hand in it"

"Monsieur," said Thuillier, "while thanking you
for your officious intervention permit me to say that
it surprises me a little, for I could hardly hope for it
after the way we parted."

"Nonsense!" said Cerizet, "for God's sake, do
you suppose I bear you malice for it? I pitied you,
that was all : I saw that you were under the spell,
and I said to myself that I must leave you to be ex-
perimented on by La Peyrade, but I knew that the
day would soon dawn when justice would be done
me. With that gentleman one never has to wait
Jong for some vile performance or other."

"I beg your pardon," said Thuillier, "but I don't
call .it a vile performance to break off the marriage
we'd had in view; the thing was done by common
agreement, in a certain sense."

"And what about the embarrassing position he
proposes to leave you in by suddenly giving up his
position as editor-in-chief," retorted Cerizet, "and
the debt he's left hanging over you do you look
upon that as a courteous piece of business too?"

"Monsieur Cerizet," said Thuillier,still maintain-
ing an attitude of reserve, "as I once said to La Pey-
rade, no man is indispensable, and if the editorship
of my newspaper should happen to be vacated, I am
sure that I should find plenty of people eager to offer
me their services."



THE PETTY BOURGEOIS 389

"Do you mean that for me?" asked Cerizet;
"you're a long way off if you do, for if you should
do me the honor to desire my assistance, it would
be impossible for me to gratify you. I became dis-
gusted with newspapers long ago; I allowed myself
to be inveigled by La Peyrade, I don't know how,
into making one more campaign with you, but this
last experience turned out so badly that I promised
myself I'd never be caught at it again: it was
something quite different from the newspaper busi-
ness that 1 came to talk to you about"

"Ah!" said Thuillier.

"Yes," Cerizet replied; "as I recalled the busi-
ness-like way in which you carried through the
affair of this house, in which I now have the honor
to be received by you, I thought that I could do no
better than come to you about an affair of the same
description which I have in hand at this moment
But I won't do as La Peyrade did. I won't tell you
that I want to marry your goddaughter, and that I
do what I do through friendship and devotion to you.
In the first place, there's a chance for a bargain that
I want to make something out of; in the second
place, I'm inclined to think that mademoiselle finds
the management of this property rather a heavy
burden, for I noticed just now that all your shops
are still to let Very well, if she cared to recon-
sider the suggestion of letting me in as principal
tenant, which La Peyrade nipped in the bud, why
that might be taken into account in dividing up the
profits. That's the object of my visit, monsieur,



390 THE PETTY BOURGEOIS

and you see that the newspaper question isn't at all
concerned in it"

"But first of all we must know what this bargain
is," said Brigitte.

"It's precisely the opposite of the one you went
into with La Peyrade," rejoined Cerizet. "You got
this house for nothing, but you were kept on tenter-
hooks by an overbid. Well, this that I've come
about to-day is a farm in Beauce, which has just
been sold for a song, and, for a mere trifle above
the price, you can secure it at a fabulous bargain."

Thereupon Cerizet explained all the mechanism,
details which the reader will forgive our not enter-
ing upon, as, in all probability, he would take less
interest therein than Brigitte did. The explanation
was very clear, very precise ; it took a sharp hold
on the old maid's imagination; and Thuillier him-
self, despite his instinctive distrust, was forced to
admit that the proposed purchase had the appearance
at least of a very profitable speculation.

"But we must see the place," said Br^itte.

It will be remembered that in the matter of the
house near the Madeleine she refused to say the
first word to La Peyrade until she had made a
descent upon the property.

"Nothing can be easier," said Cerizet: "I my-
self want to know what it's like, in case we
shouldn't go into the thing together ; it was my pur-
pose to take a little excursion down that way about
this time; so if you choose I'll come to your door
after a while with a post-chaise ; we shall be there



THE PETTY BOURGEOIS 39!

early to-morrow morning, take a look around and
have our lunch, and we can be back here in time
for dinner to-morrow night"

"But the post is terrible swell," said Brigitte;
"seems to me the diligence "

"If we go by the diligence," Cerizet replied, "no
one knows when we'll get there; anyway you don't
need to worry about the expense ; I should take the
trip alone, if not with you, so I offer you two places
in my carriage. If we strike a bargain, why when
we come to settle our accounts, we'll count it in the