“Did she tell you about your future?” asked Leon.
“No; I had enough of her about my past. But,” added Gazonal, struck by a sudden thought, “if she can, by the help of those dreadful collaborators, predict the future, how came she to lose in the lottery?”
“Ah! you put your finger on one of the greatest mysteries of occult science,” replied Leon. “The moment that the species of inward mirror on which the past or the future is reflected to their minds become clouded by the breath of a personal feeling, by an idea foreign to the purpose of the power they are exerting, sorcerers and sorceresses can see nothing; just as an artist who blurs art with political combinations and systems loses his genius. Not long ago, a man endowed with the gift of divining by cards, a rival to Madame Fontaine, became addicted to vicious practices, and being unable to tell his own fate from the cards, was arrested, tried, and condemned at the court of assizes. Madame Fontaine, who predicts the future eight times out of ten, was never able to know if she would win or lose in a lottery.”
“It is the same thing in magnetism,” remarked Bixiou. “A man can’t magnetize himself.”
“Heavens! now we come to magnetism!” cried Gazonal. “Ah ca! do you know everything?”
“Friend Gazonal,” replied Bixiou, gravely, “to be able to laugh at everything one must know everything. As for me, I’ve been in Paris since my childhood; I’ve lived, by means of my pencil, on its follies and absurdities, at the rate of five caricatures a month. Consequently, I often laugh at ideas in which I have faith.”
“Come, let us get to something else,” said Leon. “We’ll go to the Chamber and settle the cousin’s affair.”
“This,” said Bixiou, imitating Odry in “Les Funambules,” “is high comedy, for we will make the first orator we meet pose for us, and you shall see that in those halls of legislation, as elsewhere, the Parisian language has but two tones, – Self-interest, Vanity.”
As they got into their citadine, Leon saw in a rapidly driven cabriolet a man to whom he made a sign that he had something to say to him.
“There’s Publicola Masson,” said Leon to Bixiou. “I’m going to ask for a sitting this evening at five o’clock, after the Chamber. The cousin shall then see the most curious of all the originals.”
“Who is he?” asked Gazonal, while Leon went to speak to Publicola Masson.
“An artist-pedicure,” replied Bixiou, “author of a ‘Treatise on Corporistics,’ who cuts your corns by subscription, and who, if the Republications triumph for six months, will assuredly become immortal.”
“Drives his carriage!” ejaculated Gazonal.
“But, my good Gazonal, it is only millionaires who have time to go afoot in Paris.”
“To the Chamber!” cried Leon to the coachman, getting back into the carriage.
“Which, monsieur?”
“Deputies,” replied Leon, exchanging a smile with Bixiou.
“Paris begins to confound me,” said Gazonal.
“To make you see its immensity, – moral, political, and literary, – we are now proceeding like the Roman cicerone, who shows you in Saint Peter’s the thumb of the statue you took to be life-size, and the thumb proves to be a foot long. You haven’t yet measured so much as a great toe of Paris.”
“And remark, cousin Gazonal, that we take things as they come; we haven’t selected.”
“This evening you shall sup as they feasted at Belshazzar’s; and there you shall see our Paris, our own particular Paris, playing lansquenet, and risking a hundred thousand francs at a throw without winking.”
A quarter of an hour later the citadine stopped at the foot of the steps going up to the Chamber of Deputies, at that end of the Pont de la Concorde which leads to discord.
“I thought the Chamber unapproachable?” said the provincial, surprised to find himself in the great lobby.
“That depends,” replied Bixiou; “materially speaking, it costs thirty sous for a citadine to approach it; politically, you have to spend rather more. The swallows thought, so a poet says, that the Arc de Triomphe was erected for them; we artists think that this public building was built for us, – to compensate for the stupidities of the Theatre-Francais and make us laugh; but the comedians on this stage are much more expensive; and they don’t give us every day the value of our money.”
“So this is the Chamber!” cried Gazonal, as he paced the great hall in which there were then about a dozen persons, and looked around him with an air which Bixiou noted down in his memory and reproduced in one of the famous caricatures with which he rivalled Gavarni.
Leon went to speak to one of the ushers who go and come continually between this hall and the hall of sessions, with which it communicates by a passage in which are stationed the stenographers of the “Moniteur” and persons attached to the Chamber.
“As for the minister,” replied the usher to Leon as Gazonal approached them, “he is there, but I don’t know if Monsieur Giraud has come. I’ll see.”
As the usher opened one side of the double door through which none but deputies, ministers, or messengers from the king are allowed to pass, Gazonal saw a man come out who seemed still young, although he was really forty-eight years old, and to whom the usher evidently indicated Leon de Lora.
“Ha! you here!” he exclaimed, shaking hands with both Bixiou and Lora. “Scamps! what are you doing in the sanctuary of the laws?”
“Parbleu! we’ve come to learn how to blague,” said Bixiou. “We might get rusty if we didn’t.”
“Let us go into the garden,” said the young man, not observing that Gazonal belonged to the party.
Seeing that this new-comer was well-dressed, in black, the provincial did not know in which political category to place him; but he followed the others into the garden contiguous to the hall which follows the line of the quai Napoleon. Once in the garden the ci-devant young man gave way to a peal of laughter which he seemed to have been repressing since he entered the lobby.
“What is it?” asked Leon de Lora.
“My dear friend, to prove the sincerity of the constitutional government we are forced to tell the most frightful lies with incredible self-possession. But as for me, I’m freakish; some days I can lie like a prospectus; other days I can’t be serious. This is one of my hilarious days. Now, at this moment, the prime minister, being summoned by the Opposition to make known a certain diplomatic secret, is going through his paces in the tribune. Being an honest man who never lies on his own account, he whispered to me as he mounted the breach: ‘Heaven knows what I shall say to them.’ A mad desire to laugh overcame me, and as one mustn’t laugh on the ministerial bench I rushed out, for my youth does come back to me most unseasonably at times.”
“At last,” cried Gazonal, “I’ve found an honest man in Paris! You must be a very superior man,” he added, looking at the stranger.
“Ah ca! who is this gentleman?” said the ci-devant young man, examining Gazonal.
“My cousin,” said Leon, hastily. “I’ll answer for his silence and his honor as for my own. It is on his account we have come here now; he has a case before the administration which depends on your ministry. His prefect evidently wants to ruin him, and we have come to see you in order to prevent the Council of State from ratifying a great injustice.”
“Who brings up the case?”
“Massol.”
“Good.”
“And our friends Giraud and Claude Vignon are on the committee,” said Bixiou.
“Say just a word to them,” urged Leon; “tell them to come to-night to Carabine’s, where du Tillet gives a fete apropos of railways, – they are plundering more than ever on the roads.”
“Ah ca! but isn’t your cousin from the Pyrenees?” asked the young man, now become serious.
“Yes,” replied Gazonal.
“And you did not vote for us in the last elections?” said the statesman, looking hard at Gazonal.
“No; but what you have just said in my hearing has bribed me; on the word of a commandant of the National Guard I’ll have your candidate elected – ”
“Very good; will you guarantee your cousin?” asked the young man, turning to Leon.
“We are forming him,” said Bixiou, in a tone irresistibly comic.
“Well, I’ll see about it,” said the young man, leaving his friends and rushing precipitately back to the Chamber.
“Who is that?” asked Gazonal.
“The Comte de Rastignac; the minister of the department in which your affair is brought up.”
“A minister! Isn’t a minister anything more than that?”
“He is an old friend of ours. He now has three hundred thousand francs a year; he’s a peer of France; the king has made him a count; he married Nucingen’s daughter; and he is one of the two or three statesmen produced by the revolution of July. But his fame and his power bore him sometimes, and he comes down to laugh with us.”
“Ah ca! cousin; why didn’t you tell us you belonged to the Opposition?” asked Leon, seizing Gazonal by the arm. “How stupid of you! One deputy more or less to Right or Left and your bed is made.”
“We are all for the Others down my way.”
“Let ‘em go,” said Bixiou, with a facetious look; “they have Providence on their side, and Providence will bring them back without you and in spite of themselves. A manufacturer ought to be a fatalist.”
“What luck! There’s Maxime, with Canalis and Giraud,” said Leon.
“Come along, friend Gazonal, the promised actors are mustering on the stage,” said Bixiou.
And all three advanced to the above-named personages, who seemed to be sauntering along with nothing to do.
“Have they turned you out, or why are you idling about in this way?” said Bixiou to Giraud.
“No, while they are voting by secret ballot we have come out for a little air,” replied Giraud.
“How did the prime minister pull through?”
“He was magnificent!” said Canalis.
“Magnificent!” repeated Maxime.
“Magnificent!” cried Giraud.
“So! so! Right, Left, and Centre are unanimous!”
“All with a different meaning,” observed Maxime de Trailles.
Maxime was the ministerial deputy.
“Yes,” said Canalis, laughing.
Though Canalis had already been a minister, he was at this moment tending toward the Right.
“Ah! but you had a fine triumph just now,” said Maxime to Canalis; “it was you who forced the minister into the tribune.”
“And made him lie like a charlatan,” returned Canalis.
“A worthy victory,” said the honest Giraud. “In his place what would you have done?”
“I should have lied.”
“It isn’t called lying,” said Maxime de Trailles; “it is called protecting the crown.”
So saying, he led Canalis away to a little distance.
“That’s a great orator,” said Leon to Giraud, pointing to Canalis.
“Yes and no,” replied the councillor of state. “A fine bass voice, and sonorous, but more of an artist in words than an orator. In short, he’s a fine instrument but he isn’t music, consequently he has not, and he never will have, the ear of the Chamber; in no case will he ever be master of the situation.”
Canalis and Maxime were returning toward the little group as Giraud, deputy of the Left Centre, pronounced this verdict. Maxime took Giraud by the arm and led him off, probably to make the same confidence he had just made Canalis.
“What an honest, upright fellow that is,” said Leon to Canalis, nodding towards Giraud.
“One of those upright fellows who kill administrators,” replied Canalis.
“Do you think him a good orator?”
“Yes and no,” replied Canalis; “he is wordy; he’s long-winded, a plodder in argument, and a good logician; but he doesn’t understand the higher logic, that of events and circumstances; consequently he has never had, and never will have, the ear of the Chamber.”
At the moment when Canalis uttered this judgment on Giraud, the latter was returning with Maxime to the group; and forgetting the presence of a stranger whose discretion was not known to them like that of Leon and Bixiou, he took Canalis by the hand in a very significant manner.
“Well,” he said, “I consent to what Monsieur de Trailles proposes. I’ll put the question to you in the Chamber, but I shall do it with great severity.”
“Then we shall have the house with us, for a man of your weight and your eloquence is certain to have the ear of the Chamber,” said Canalis. “I’ll reply to you; but I shall do it sharply, to crush you.”
“You could bring about a change of the cabinet, for on such ground you can do what you like with the Chamber, and be master of the situation.”
“Maxime has trapped them both,” said Leon to his cousin; “that fellow is like a fish in water among the intrigues of the Chamber.”
“Who is he?” asked Gazonal.
“An ex-scoundrel who is now in a fair way to become an ambassador,” replied Bixiou.
“Giraud!” said Leon to the councillor of state, “don’t leave the Chamber without asking Rastignac what he promised to tell you about a suit you are to render a decision on two days hence. It concerns my cousin here; I’ll go and see you to-morrow morning early about it.”
The three friends followed the three deputies, at a distance, into the lobby.
“Cousin, look at those two men,” said Leon, pointing out to him a former minister and the leader of the Left Centre. “Those are two men who really have ‘the ear of the Chamber,’ and who are called in jest ministers of the department of the Opposition. They have the ear of the Chamber so completely that they are always pulling it.”
“It is four o’clock,” said Bixiou, “let us go back to the rue de Berlin.”
“Yes; you’ve now seen the heart of the government, cousin, and you must next be shown the ascarides, the taenia, the intestinal worm, – the republican, since I must needs name him,” said Leon.
When the three friends were once more packed into their hackney-coach, Gazonal looked at his cousin and Bixiou like a man who had a mind to launch a flood of oratorical and Southern bile upon the elements.
“I distrusted with all my might this great hussy of a town,” he rolled out in Southern accents; “but since this morning I despise her! The poor little province you think so petty is an honest girl; but Paris is a prostitute, a greedy, lying comedian; and I am very thankful not to be robbed of my skin in it.”
“The day is not over yet,” said Bixiou, sententiously, winking at Leon.
“And why do you complain in that stupid way,” said Leon, “of a prostitution to which you will owe the winning of your lawsuit? Do you think you are more virtuous than we, less of a comedian, less greedy, less liable to fall under some temptation, less conceited than those we have been making dance for you like puppets?”
“Try me!”
“Poor lad!” said Leon, shrugging his shoulders, “haven’t you already promised Rastignac your electoral influence?”
“Yes, because he was the only one who ridiculed himself.”
“Poor lad!” repeated Bixiou, “why slight me, who am always ridiculing myself? You are like a pug-dog barking at a tiger. Ha! if you saw us really ridiculing a man, you’d see that we can drive a sane man mad.”
This conversation brought Gazonal back to his cousin’s house, where the sight of luxury silenced him, and put an end to the discussion. Too late he perceived that Bixiou had been making him pose.
At half-past five o’clock, the moment when Leon de Lora was making his evening toilet to the great wonderment of Gazonal, who counted the thousand and one superfluities of his cousin, and admired the solemnity of the valet as he performed his functions, the “pedicure of monsieur” was announced, and Publicola Masson, a little man fifty years of age, made his appearance, laid a small box of instruments on the floor, and sat down on a small chair opposite to Leon, after bowing to Gazonal and Bixiou.
“How are matters going with you?” asked Leon, delivering to Publicola one of his feet, already washed and prepared by the valet.
“I am forced to take two pupils, – two young fellows who, despairing of fortune, have quitted surgery for corporistics; they were actually dying of hunger; and yet they are full of talent.”
“I’m not asking you about pedestrial affairs, I want to know how you are getting on politically.”
Masson gave a glance at Gazonal, more eloquent than any species of question.
“Oh! you can speak out, that’s my cousin; in a way he belongs to you; he thinks himself legitimist.”
“Well! we are coming along, we are advancing! In five years from now Europe will be with us. Switzerland and Italy are fermenting finely; and when the occasion comes we are all ready. Here, in Paris, we have fifty thousand armed men, without counting two hundred thousand citizens who haven’t a penny to live upon.”
“Pooh,” said Leon, “how about the fortifications?”
“Pie-crust; we can swallow them,” replied Masson.
“In the first place, we sha’n’t let the cannon in, and, in the second, we’ve got a little machine more powerful than all the forts in the world, – a machine, due to a doctor, which cured more people during the short time we worked it than the doctors ever killed.”
“How you talk!” exclaimed Gazonal, whose flesh began to creep at Publicola’s air and manner.
“Ha! that’s the thing we rely on! We follow Saint-Just and Robespierre; but we’ll do better than they; they were timid, and you see what came of it; an emperor! the elder branch! the younger branch! The Montagnards didn’t lop the social tree enough.”
“Ah ca! you, who will be, they tell me, consul, or something of that kind, tribune perhaps, be good enough to remember,” said Bixiou, “that I have asked your protection for the last dozen years.”
“No harm shall happen to you; we shall need wags, and you can take the place of Barere,” replied the corn-doctor.
“And I?” said Leon.
“Ah, you! you are my client, and that will save you; for genius is an odious privilege, to which too much is accorded in France; we shall be forced to annihilate some of our greatest men in order to teach others to be simple citizens.”
The corn-cutter spoke with a semi-serious, semi-jesting air that made Gazonal shudder.
“So,” he said, “there’s to be no more religion?”
“No more religion of the State,” replied the pedicure, emphasizing the last words; “every man will have his own. It is very fortunate that the government is just now endowing convents; they’ll provide our funds. Everything, you see, conspires in our favour. Those who pity the peoples, who clamor on behalf of proletaries, who write works against the Jesuits, who busy themselves about the amelioration of no matter what, – the communists, the humanitarians, the philanthropists, you understand, – all these people are our advanced guard. While we are storing gunpowder, they are making the tinder which the spark of a single circumstance will ignite.”
“But what do you expect will make the happiness of France?” cried Gazonal.
“Equality of citizens and cheapness of provisions. We mean that there will be no persons lacking anything, no millionaires, no suckers of blood and victims.”
“That’s it! – maximum and minimum,” said Gazonal.
“You’ve said it,” replied the corn-cutter, decisively.
“No more manufacturers?” asked Gazonal.
“The state will manufacture. We shall all be the usufructuaries of France; each will have his ration as on board ship; and all the world will work according to their capacity.”
“Ah!” said Gazonal, “and while awaiting the time when you can cut off the heads of aristocrats – ”
“I cut their nails,” said the radical republican, putting up his tools and finishing the jest himself.
Then he bowed very politely and went away.
“Can this be possible in 1845?” cried Gazonal.
“If there were time we could show you,” said his cousin, “all the personages of 1793, and you could talk with them. You have just seen Marat; well! we know Fouquier-Tinville, Collot d’Herbois, Robespierre, Chabot, Fouche, Barras; there is even a magnificent Madame Roland.”
“Well, the tragic is not lacking in your play,” said Gazonal.
“It is six o’clock. Before we take you to see Odry in ‘Les Saltimbauques’ to-night,” said Leon to Gazonal, “we must go and pay a visit to Madame Cadine, – an actress whom your committee-man Massol cultivates, and to whom you must therefore pay the most assiduous court.”
“And as it is all important that you conciliate that power, I am going to give you a few instructions,” said Bixiou. “Do you employ workwomen in your manufactory?”
“Of course I do,” replied Gazonal.
“That’s all I want to know,” resumed Bixiou. “You are not married, and you are a great – ”
“Yes!” cried Gazonal, “you’ve guessed my strong point, I’m a great lover of women.”
“Well, then! if you will execute the little manoeuvre which I am about to prescribe for you, you will taste, without spending a farthing, the sweets to be found in the good graces of an actress.”
When they reached the rue de la Victoire where the celebrated actress lived, Bixiou, who meditated a trick upon the distrustful provincial, had scarcely finished teaching him his role; but Gazonal was quick, as we shall see, to take a hint.
The three friends went up to the second floor of a rather handsome house, and found Madame Jenny Cadine just finishing dinner, for she played that night in an afterpiece at the Gymnase. Having presented Gazonal to this great power, Leon and Bixiou, in order to leave them alone together, made the excuse of looking at a piece of furniture in another room; but before leaving, Bixiou had whispered in the actress’s ear: “He is Leon’s cousin, a manufacturer, enormously rich; he wants to win a suit before the Council of State against his prefect, and he thinks it wise to fascinate you in order to get Massol on his side.”
All Paris knows the beauty of that young actress, and will therefore understand the stupefaction of the Southerner on seeing her. Though she had received him at first rather coldly, he became the object of her good graces before they had been many minutes alone together.
“How strange!” said Gazonal, looking round him disdainfully on the furniture of the salon, the door of which his accomplices had left half open, “that a woman like you should be allowed to live in such an ill-furnished apartment.”
“Ah, yes, indeed! but how can I help it? Massol is not rich; I am hoping he will be made a minister.”
“What a happy man!” cried Gazonal, heaving the sigh of a provincial.
“Good!” thought she. “I shall have new furniture, and get the better of Carabine.”
“Well, my dear!” said Leon, returning, “you’ll be sure to come to Carabine’s to-night, won’t you? – supper and lansquenet.”
“Will monsieur be there?” said Jenny Cadine, looking artlessly and graciously at Gazonal.
“Yes, madame,” replied the countryman, dazzled by such rapid success.
“But Massol will be there,” said Bixiou.
“Well, what of that?” returned Jenny. “Come, we must part, my treasures; I must go to the theatre.”
Gazonal gave his hand to the actress, and led her to the citadine which was waiting for her; as he did so he pressed hers with such ardor that Jenny Cadine exclaimed, shaking her fingers: “Take care! I haven’t any others.”