But already, at this time, M. Vincent Favoral’s situation had been singularly modified.
The revolution of 1848 had just taken place. The factory in the Faubourg St. Antoine, where he was employed, had been compelled to close its doors.
One evening, as he came home at the usual hour, he announced that he had been discharged.
Mme. Favoral shuddered at the thought of what her husband might be, without work, and deprived of his salary.
“What is to become of us?” she murmured.
He shrugged his shoulders. Visibly he was much excited. His cheeks were flushed; his eyes sparkled.
“Bash!” he said: “we shan’t starve for all that.” And, as his wife was gazing at him in astonishment:
“Well,” he went on, “what are you looking at? It is so: I know many a one who affects to live on his income, and who are not as well off as we are.”
It was, for over six years since he was married, the first time that he spoke of his business otherwise than to groan and complain, to accuse fate, and curse the high price of living. The very day before, he had declared himself ruined by the purchase of a pair of shoes for Maxence. The change was so sudden and so great, that she hardly knew what to think, and wondered if grief at the loss of his situation had not somewhat disturbed his mind.
“Such are women,” he went on with a giggle. “Results astonish them, because they know nothing of the means used to bring them about. Am I a fool, then? Would I impose upon myself privations of all sorts, if it were to accomplish nothing? Parbleu! I love fine living too, I do, and good dinners at the restaurant, and the theatre, and the nice little excursions in the country. But I want to be rich. At the price of all the comforts which I have not had, I have saved a capital, the income of which will support us all. Eh, eh! That’s the power of the little penny put out to fatten!”
As she went to bed that night, Mme. Favoral felt more happy than she had done since her mother’s death. She almost forgave her husband his sordid parsimony, and the humiliations he had heaped upon her.
“Well, be it so,” she thought. “I shall have lived miserably, I shall have endured nameless sufferings; but my children shall be rich, their life shall be easy and pleasant.”
The next day M. Favoral’s excitement had completely abated. Manifestly he regretted his confidences.
“You must not think on that account that you can waste and pillage every thing,” he declared rudely. “Besides, I have greatly exaggerated.”
And he started in search of a situation.
To find one was likely to be difficult. Times of revolution are not exactly propitious to industry. Whilst the parties discussed in the Chamber, there were on the street twenty thousand clerks, who, every morning as they rose, wondered where they would dine that day.
For want of any thing better, Vincent Favoral undertook to keep books in various places,--an hour here, an hour there, twice a week in one house, four times in another.
In this way he earned as much and more than he did at the factory; but the business did not suit him.
What he liked was the office from which one does not stir, the stove-heated atmosphere, the elbow-worn desk, the leather-cushioned chair, the black alpaca sleeves over the coat. The idea that he should on one and the same day have to do with five or six different houses, and be compelled to walk an hour, to go and work another hour at the other end of Paris, fairly irritated him. He found himself out of his reckoning, like a horse who has turned a mill for ten years; if he is made to trot straight before him.
So, one morning, he gave up the whole thing, swearing that he would rather remain idle until he could find a place suited to his taste and his convenience; and, in the mean time, all they would have to do would be to put a little less butter in the soup, and a little more water in the wine.
He went out, nevertheless, and remained until dinner-time. And he did the same the next and the following days.
He started off the moment he had swallowed the last mouthful of his breakfast, came home at six o’clock, dined in haste, and disappeared again, not to return until about midnight. He had hours of delirious joy, and moments of frightful discouragement. Sometimes he seemed horribly uneasy.
“What can he be doing?” thought Mme. Favoral.
She ventured to ask him the question one morning, when he was in fine humor.
“Well,” he answered, “am I not the master? I am operating at the bourse, that’s all!”
He could hardly have owned to any thing that would have frightened the poor woman as much.
“Are you not afraid,” she objected, “to lose all we have so painfully accumulated? We have children--”
He did not allow her to proceed.
“Do you take me for a child?” he exclaimed; “or do I look to you like a man so easy to be duped? Mind to economize in your household expenses, and don’t meddle with my business.”
And he continued. And he must have been lucky in his operations; for he had never been so pleasant at home. All his ways had changed. He had had clothes made at a first-class tailor’s, and was evidently trying to look elegant. He gave up his pipe, and smoked only cigars. He got tired of giving every morning the money for the house, and took the habit of handing it to his wife every week, on Sunday. A mark of vast confidence, as he observed to her. And so, the first time:
“Be careful,” he said, “that you don’t find yourself penniless before Thursday.”
He became also more communicative. Often during the dinner, he would tell what he had heard during the day, anecdotes, gossip. He enumerated the persons with whom he had spoken. He named a number of people whom he called his friends, and whose names Mme. Favoral carefully stored away in her memory.
There was one especially, who seemed to inspire him with a profound respect, a boundless admiration, and of whom he never tired of talking. He was, said he, a man of his age,--M. de Thaller, the Baron de Thaller.
“This one,” he kept repeating, “is really mad: he is rich, he has ideas, he’ll go far. It would be a great piece of luck if I could get him to do something for me!”
Until at last one day:
“Your parents were very rich once?” he asked his wife.
“I have heard it said,” she answered.
“They spent a good deal of money, did they not? They had friends: they gave dinner-parties.”
“Yes, they received a good deal of company.”
“You remember that time?”
“Surely I do.”
“So that if I should take a fancy to receive some one here, some one of note, you would know how to do things properly?”
“I think so.”
He remained silent for a moment, like a man who thinks before taking an important decision, and then:
“I wish to invite a few persons to dinner,” he said. She could scarcely believe her ears. He had never received at his table any one but a fellow-clerk at the factory, named Desclavettes, who had just married the daughter of a dealer in bronzes, and succeeded to his business.
“Is it possible?” exclaimed Mme. Favoral.
“So it is. The question is now, how much would a first-class dinner cost, the best of every thing?”
“That depends upon the number of guests.”
“Say three or four persons.”
The poor woman set herself to figuring diligently for some time; and then timidly, for the sum seemed formidable to her:
“I think,” she began, “that with a hundred francs--”
Her husband commenced whistling.
“You’ll need that for the wines alone;” he interrupted. “Do you take me for a fool? But here, don’t let us go into figures. Do as your parents did when they did their best; and, if it’s well, I shall not complain of the expense. Take a good cook, hire a waiter who understands his business well.”
She was utterly confounded; and yet she was not at the end of her surprises.
Soon M. Favoral declared that their table-ware was not suitable, and that he must buy a new set. He discovered a hundred purchases to be made, and swore that he would make them. He even hesitated a moment about renewing the parlor furniture, although it was in tolerably good condition still, and was a present from his father-in-law.
And, having finished his inventory:
“And you,” he asked his wife: “what dress will you wear?”
“I have my black silk dress--”
He stopped her.
“Which means that you have none at all,” he said. “Very well. You must go this very day and get yourself one,--a very handsome, a magnificent one; and you’ll send it to be made to a fashionable dressmaker. And at the same time you had better get some little suits for Maxence and Gilberte. Here are a thousand francs.”
Completely bewildered:
“Who in the world are you going to invite, then?” she asked.
“The Baron and the Baroness de Thaller,” he replied with an emphasis full of conviction. “So try and distinguish yourself. Our fortune is at stake.”
That this dinner was a matter of considerable import, Mme. Favoral could not doubt when she saw her husband’s fabulous liberality continue without flinching for a number of days.
Ten times of an afternoon he would come home to tell his wife the name of some dish that had been mentioned before him, or to consult her on the subject of some exotic viand he had just noticed in some shop-window. Daily he brought home wines of the most fantastic vintages,--those wines which dealers manufacture for the special use of verdant fools, and which they sell in odd-shaped bottles previously overlaid with secular dust and cobwebs.
He subjected to a protracted cross-examination the cook whom Mme. Favoral had engaged, and demanded that she should enumerate the houses where she had cooked. He absolutely required the man who was to wait at the table to exhibit the dress-coat he was to wear.
The great day having come, he did not stir from the house, going and coming from the kitchen to the dining-room, uneasy, agitated, unable to stay in one place. He breathed only when he had seen the table set and loaded with the new china he had purchased and the magnificent silver he had gone to hire in person. And when his young wife made her appearance, looking lovely in her new dress, and leading by the hands the two children, Maxence and Gilberte, in their new suits:
“That’s perfect,” he exclaimed, highly delighted. “Nothing could be better. Now, let our four guests come!”
They arrived a few minutes before seven, in two carriages, the magnificence of which astonished the Rue St. Gilles.
And, the presentations over, Vincent Favoral had at last the ineffable satisfaction to see seated at his table the Baron and Baroness de Thaller, M. Saint Pavin, who called himself a financial editor, and M. Jules Jottras, of the house of Jottras & Brother.
It was with an eager curiosity that Mme. Favoral observed these people whom her husband called his friends, and whom she saw herself for the first time.
M. de Thaller, who could not then have been much over thirty, was already a man without any particular age.
Cold, stiff, aping evidently the English style, he expressed himself in brief sentences, and with a strong foreign accent. Nothing to surprise on his countenance. He had the forehead prominent, the eyes of a dull blue, and the nose very thin. His scanty hair was spread over the top of his head with labored symmetry; and his red, thick, and carefully-trimmed whiskers seemed to engross much of his attention.
M. Saint Pavin had not the same stiff manner. Careless in his dress, he lacked breeding. He was a robust fellow, dark and bearded, with thick lips, the eye bright and prominent, spreading upon the table-cloth broad hands ornamented at the joints with small tufts of hair, speaking loud, laughing noisily, eating much and drinking more.
By the side of him, M. Jules Jottras, although looking like a fashion-plate, did not show to much advantage. Delicate, blonde, sallow, almost beardless, M. Jottras distinguished himself only by a sort of unconscious impudence, a harmless cynicism, and a sort of spasmodic giggle, that shook the eye-glasses which he wore stuck over his nose.
But it was above all Mme. de Thaller who excited Mme. Favoral’s apprehensions.
Dressed with a magnificence of at least questionable taste, very much decolletee, wearing large diamonds at her ears, and rings on all her fingers, the young baroness was insolently handsome, of a beauty sensuous even to coarseness. With hair of a bluish black, twisted over the neck in heavy ringlets, she had skin of a pearly whiteness, lips redder than blood, and great eyes that threw flames from beneath their long, curved lashes. It was the poetry of flesh; and one could not help admiring. Did she speak, however, or make a gesture, all admiration vanished. The voice was vulgar, the motion common. Did M. Jottras venture upon a double-entendre, she would throw herself back upon her chair to laugh, stretching her neck, and thrusting her throat forward.
Wholly absorbed in the care of his guests, M. Favoral remarked nothing. He only thought of loading the plates, and filling the glasses, complaining that they ate and drank nothing, asking anxiously if the cooking was not good, if the wines were bad, and almost driving the waiter out of his wits with questions and suggestions.
It is a fact, that neither M. de Thaller nor M. Jottras had much appetite. But M. Saint Pavin officiated for all; and the sole task of keeping up with him caused M. Favoral to become visibly animated.
His cheeks were much flushed, when, having passed the champagne all around, he raised his froth-tipped glass, exclaiming:
“I drink to the success of the business.”
“To the success of the business,” echoed the others, touching his glass.
And a few moments later they passed into the parlor to take coffee.
This toast had caused Mme. Favoral no little uneasiness. But she found it impossible to ask a single question; Mme. de Thaller dragging her almost by force to a seat by her side on the sofa, pretending that two women always have secrets to exchange, even when they see each other for the first time.
The young baroness was fully au fait in matters of bonnets and dresses; and it was with giddy volubility that she asked Mme. Favoral the names of her milliner and her dressmaker, and to what jeweler she intrusted her diamonds to be reset.
This looked so much like a joke, that the poor housekeeper of the Rue St. Gilles could not help smiling whilst answering that she had no dressmaker, and that, having no diamonds, she had no possible use for the services of a jeweler.
The other declared she could not get over it. No diamonds! That was a misfortune exceeding all. And quick she seized the opportunity charitably to enumerate the parures in her jewel-case, and laces in her drawers, and the dresses in her wardrobes. In the first place, it would have been impossible for her, she swore, to live with a husband either miserly or poor. Hers had just presented her with a lovely coupe, lined with yellow satin, a perfect bijou. And she made good use of it too; for she loved to go about. She spent her days shopping, or riding in the Bois. Every evening she had the choice of the theatre or a ball, often both. The genre theatres were those she preferred. To be sure, the opera and the Italiens were more stylish; but she could not help gaping there.
Then she wished to kiss the children; and Gilberte and Maxence had to be brought in. She adored children, she vowed: it was her weakness, her passion. She had herself a little girl, eighteen months old, called Cesarine, to whom she was devoted; and certainly she would have brought her, had she not feared she would have been in the way.
All this verbiage sounded like a confused murmur to Mme. Favoral’s ears. “Yes, no,” she answered, hardly knowing to what she did answer.
Her head heavy with a vague apprehension, it required her utmost attention to observe her husband and his guests.
Standing by the mantel-piece, smoking their cigars, they conversed with considerable animation, but not loud enough to enable her to hear all they said. It was only when M. Saint Pavin spoke that she understood that they were still discussing the “business;” for he spoke of articles to publish, stocks to sell, dividends to distribute, sure profits to reap.
They all, at any rate, seemed to agree perfectly; and at a certain moment she saw her husband and M. de Thaller strike each other’s hand, as people do who exchange a pledge.
Eleven o’clock struck.
M. Favoral was insisting to make his guests accept a cup of tea or a glass of punch; but M. de Thaller declared that he had some work to do, and that, his carriage having come, he must go.
And go he did, taking with him the baroness, followed by M. Saint Pavin and M. Jottras. And when, the door having closed upon them, M. Favoral found himself alone with his wife,
“Well,” he exclaimed, swelling with gratified vanity, “what do you think of our friends?”
“They surprised me,” she answered.
He fairly jumped at that word.
“I should like to know why?”
Then, timidly, and with infinite precautions, she commenced explaining that M. de Thaller’s face inspired her with no confidence; that M. Jottras had seemed to her a very impudent personage; that M. Saint Pavin appeared low and vulgar; and that, finally, the young baroness had given her of herself the most singular idea.
M. Favoral refused to hear more.
“It’s because you have never seen people of the best society,” he exclaimed.
“Excuse me. Formerly, during my mother’s life--”
“Eh! Your mother never received but shop-keepers.”
The poor woman dropped her head.
“I beg of you, Vincent,” she insisted, “before doing any thing with these new friends, think well, consult--”
He burst out laughing.
“Are you not afraid that they will cheat me?” he said,--“people ten times as rich as we are. Here, don’t let us speak of it any more, and let us go to bed. You’ll see what this dinner will bring us, and whether I ever have reason to regret the money we have spent.”
