"/Our/ interests," said the little man coldly, "for we have two children.--Your Uncle Silas Piedefer is dead, at New York, where, after having made and lost several fortunes in various parts of the world, he has finally left some seven or eight hundred thousand francs --they say twelve--but there is stock-in-trade to be sold. I am the chief in our common interests, and act for you.""Oh!" cried Dinah, "in everything that relates to business, I trust no one but Monsieur de Clagny. He knows the law, come to terms with him;what he does, will be done right."
"I have no occasion for Monsieur de Clagny," answered Monsieur de la Baudraye, "to take my children from you--""Your children!" exclaimed Dinah. "Your children, to whom you have not sent a sou! /Your/ children!" She burst into a loud shout of laughter;but Monsieur de la Baudraye's unmoved coolness threw ice on the explosion.
"Your mother has just brought them to show me," he went on. "They are charming boys. I do not intend to part from them. I shall take them to our house at Anzy, if it were only to save them from seeing their mother disguised like a--""Silence!" said Madame de la Baudraye imperatively. "What do you want of me that brought you here?""A power of attorney to receive our Uncle Silas' property."Dinah took a pen, wrote two lines to Monsieur de Clagny, and desired her husband to call again in the afternoon.
At five o'clock, Monsieur de Clagny--who had been promoted to the post of Attorney-General--enlightened Madame de la Baudraye as to her position; still, he undertook to arrange everything by a bargain with the old fellow, whose visit had been prompted by avarice alone.
Monsieur de la Baudraye, to whom his wife's power of attorney was indispensable to enable him to deal with the business as he wished, purchased it by certain concessions. In the first place, he undertook to allow her ten thousand francs a year so long as she found it convenient--so the document was worded--to reside in Paris; the children, each on attaining the age of six, were to be placed in Monsieur de la Baudraye's keeping. Finally, the lawyer extracted the payment of the allowance in advance.
Little La Baudraye, who came jauntily enough to say good-bye to his wife and /his/ children, appeared in a white india-rubber overcoat. He was so firm on his feet, and so exactly like the La Baudraye of 1836, that Dinah despaired of ever burying the dreadful little dwarf. From the garden, where he was smoking a cigar, the journalist could watch Monsieur de la Baudraye for so long as it took the little reptile to cross the forecourt, but that was enough for Lousteau; it was plain to him that the little man had intended to wreck every hope of his dying that his wife might have conceived.
This short scene made a considerable change in the writer's secret scheming. As he smoked a second cigar, he seriously reviewed the position.
His life with Madame de la Baudraye had hitherto cost him quite as much as it had cost her. To use the language of business, the two sides of the account balanced, and they could, if necessary, cry quits. Considering how small his income was, and how hardly he earned it, Lousteau regarded himself, morally speaking, as the creditor. It was, no doubt, a favorable moment for throwing the woman over. Tired at the end of three years of playing a comedy which never can become a habit, he was perpetually concealing his weariness; and this fellow, who was accustomed to disguise none of his feelings, compelled himself to wear a smile at home like that of a debtor in the presence of his creditor. This compulsion was every day more intolerable.
Hitherto the immense advantages he foresaw in the future had given him strength; but when he saw Monsieur de la Baudraye embark for the United States, as briskly as if it were to go down to Rouen in a steamboat, he ceased to believe in the future.
He went in from the garden to the pretty drawing-room, where Dinah had just taken leave of her husband.
"Etienne," said Madame de la Baudraye, "do you know what my lord and master has proposed to me? In the event of my wishing to return to live at Anzy during his absence, he has left his orders, and he hopes that my mother's good advice will weigh with me, and that I shall go back there with my children.""It is very good advice," replied Lousteau drily, knowing the passionate disclaimer that Dinah expected, and indeed begged for with her eyes.
The tone, the words, the cold look, all hit the hapless woman so hard, who lived only in her love, that two large tears trickled slowly down her cheeks, while she did not speak a word, and Lousteau only saw them when she took out her handkerchief to wipe away these two beads of anguish.
"What is it, Didine?" he asked, touched to the heart by this excessive sensibility.
"Just as I was priding myself on having won our freedom," said she--"at the cost of my fortune--by selling--what is most precious to a mother's heart--selling my children!--for he is to have them from the age of six--and I cannot see them without going to Sancerre!--and that is torture!--Ah, dear God! What have I done----?"Lousteau knelt down by her and kissed her hands with a lavish display of coaxing and petting.
"You do not understand me," said he. "I blame myself, for I am not worth such sacrifices, dear angel. I am, in a literary sense, a quite second-rate man. If the day comes when I can no longer cut a figure at the bottom of the newspaper, the editors will let me lie, like an old shoe flung into the rubbish heap. Remember, we tight-rope dancers have no retiring pension! The State would have too many clever men on its hands if it started on such a career of beneficence. I am forty-two, and I am as idle as a marmot. I feel it--I know it"--and he took her by the hand--"my love can only be fatal to you.
