"What is that to you?"

"Oh! nothing at all," she replied, making a face.

"You made a great mistake in not putting yourself on my side," said Godefroid, returning slowly to the house; "you would have made more out of me than you will ever get from Barbet and Metivier; from whom, mark my words, you'll get nothing."

"I am not for them particularly," said Madame Vauthier, shrugging her shoulders; "Monsieur Barbet is my proprietor, that's all!"

It required two days' persuasion to induce Monsieur Bernard to separate from his daughter and take her to Chaillot. Godefroid and the old man made the trip walking on each side of the litter, canopied with blue and white striped linen, in which was the dear patient, partly bound to a mattress, so much did her father dread the possible convulsions of a nervous attack. They started at three o'clock and reached their destination at five just as evening was coming on. Godefroid paid the sum demanded for three months' board in advance, being careful to obtain a receipt for the money. When he went back to pay the bearers of the litter, he was followed by Monsieur Bernard, who took from beneath the mattress a bulky package carefully sealed up, and gave it to Godefroid.

"One of these men will fetch you a cab," said the old man; "for you cannot carry these four volumes under your arm. That is my book; give it to your reader; he may keep it the whole of the coming week. I shall stay at least that time in this quarter; for I cannot leave my daughter in such total abandonment. I trust my grandson; he can take care of our rooms; especially if you keep an eye on him. If I were what I once was I would ask you the name of my critic, the former magistrate you spoke of; there were but few of them whom I did not know."

"Oh, there's no mystery about it!" said Godefroid, interrupting Monsieur Bernard. "Now that you have shown this entire confidence in trusting me with your book, I will tell you that your censor is the former president, Lecamus de Tresnes."

"Oh, yes!—of the Royal Court of Paris. Take him the book; he is one of the noblest characters of the present day. He and the late Popinot, a judge of the Lower Court, were both worthy of the days of the old Parliaments. All my fears, if I had any, are dissipated. Where does he live? I should like to go and thank him for the trouble he is taking."

"You will find him in the rue Chanoinesse, under the name of Monsieur Joseph. I am going there now. Where is that agreement you made with your swindlers?"

"Auguste will give it to you," said the old man, re-entering the courtyard of the hospital.

A cab was now brought up by the porter, and Godefroid jumped into it,—promising the coachman a good pourboire if he would get him to the rue Chanoinesse in good time, for he wanted to dine there.

Half an hour after Vanda's departure, three men dressed in black, whom Madame Vauthier let into the house by the door on the rue Notre-Dame des Champs, filed up the staircase, accompanied by their female Judas, and knocked gently at the door of Monsieur Bernard's lodging. As it happened to be a Thursday, Auguste was at home. He opened the door, and the three men glided in like shadows.

"What do you want, messieurs?" asked the lad.

"These are the rooms of Monsieur Bernard,—that is, Monsieur le baron,—are they not?"

"Yes; but what do you want?"

"You know very well, young man, what we want! We are informed that your grandfather has left this house with a covered litter. That's not surprising; he had the right to do so. But I am the sheriff, and I have come to seize everything he has left. On Monday he received a summons to pay three thousand francs, with interest and costs, to Monsieur Metivier, under pain of arrest for debt duly notified to him, and like an old stager who is up to the tricks of his own trade, he has walked off just in time. However, if we can't catch him, his furniture hasn't taken wings. You see we know all about it, young man."

"Here are the stamped papers your grandpapa didn't choose to take," said Madame Vauthier, thrusting three writs into Auguste's hand.

"Remain here, madame," said the sheriff; "we shall make you legal guardian of the property. The law gives you forty sous a day, and that's not to be sneezed at."

"Ha! now I shall see the inside of that fine bedroom!" cried the Vauthier.

"You shall not go into my mother's room!" said the young lad, in a threatening voice, springing between the door and the three men in black.

At a sign from the sheriff, two of the men seized Auguste.

"No resistance, young man; you are not master here," said the sheriff. "We shall draw up the proces-verbal, and you will sleep in jail."

Hearing that dreadful word, Auguste burst into tears.

"Ah, how fortunate," he cried, "that mamma has gone! It would have killed her."

A conference now took place between the sheriff, the other men, and Vauthier, by which Auguste discovered, although they spoke in a low voice, that his grandfather's manuscripts were what they chiefly wanted. On that, he opened the door of his mother's bedroom.

"Go in," he said, "but take care to do no injury. You will be paid to-morrow morning."

Then he went off weeping into the lair, seized his grandfather's notes and stuck them into the stove, in which, as he knew very well, there was not a spark of fire.

The thing was done so rapidly that the sheriff—a sly, keen fellow, worthy of his clients Barbet and Metivier—found the lad weeping in his chair when he entered the wretched room, after assuring himself that the manuscripts were not in the antechamber.

Though it is not permissible to seize books or manuscripts for debt, the bill of sale which Monsieur Bernard had made of his work justified this proceeding. It was, however, easy to oppose various delays to this seizure, and Monsieur Bernard, had he been there, would not have failed to do so. For that reason the whole affair had been conducted slyly. Madame Vauthier had not attempted to give the writs to Monsieur Bernard; she meant to have flung them into the room on entering behind the sheriff's men, so to give the appearance of their being in the old man's possession.

The proces-verbal of the seizure took an hour to write down; the sheriff omitted nothing, and declared that the value of the property seized was sufficient to pay the debt. As soon as he and his men had departed, Auguste took the writs and rushed to the hospital to find his grandfather. The sheriff having told him that Madame Vauthier was now responsible, under heavy penalties, for the safety of the property, he could leave the house without fear of robbery.

The idea of his grandfather being dragged to prison for debt drove the poor lad, if not exactly crazy, at any rate as crazy as youth becomes under one of those dangerous and fatal excitements in which all powers ferment at once, and lead as often to evil actions as to heroic deeds. When he reached the rue Basse-Saint-Pierre, the porter told him that he did not know what had become of the father of the lady who had arrived that afternoon; the orders of Monsieur Halpersohn were to admit no one to see her for the next eight days, under pain of putting her life in danger.

This answer brought Auguste's exasperation to a crisis. He returned to the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, turning over in his mind the wildest and most extravagant plans of action. He reached home at half-past eight o'clock, half famished, and so exhausted with hunger and distress that he listened to Madame Vauthier when she asked him to share her supper, which happened to be a mutton stew with potatoes. The poor lad fell half dead upon a chair in that atrocious woman's room.

Persuaded by the wheedling and honeyed words of the old vulture, he replied to a few questions about Godefroid which she adroitly put to him, letting her discover that it was really her other lodger who was to pay his grandfather's debts the next day, and also that it was to him they owed the improvement in their condition during the past week. The widow listened to these confidences with a dubious air, plying Auguste with several glasses of wine meantime.

About ten o'clock a cab stopped before the house, and Madame Vauthier looking out exclaimed:—

"Oh! it is Monsieur Godefroid."

Auguste at once took the key of his apartment and went up to meet the protector of his family; but he found Godefroid's face and manner so changed that he hesitated to address him until, generous lad that he was, the thought of his grandfather's danger came over him and gave him courage.



XVIII. WHO MONSIEUR BERNARD WAS

The cause of this change and of the sternness in Godefroid's face was an event which had just taken place in the rue Chanoinesse. When the initiate arrived there he found Madame de la Chanterie and her friends assembled in the salon awaiting dinner; and he instantly took Monsieur Joseph apart to give him the four volumes on "The Spirit of Modern Laws." Monsieur Joseph took the voluminous manuscript to his room and returned for dinner; then, after sharing in the conversation for part of the evening, he went back to his room, intending to begin the reading of the book that night.

Godefroid was much astonished when Manon came to him soon after Monsieur Joseph's retirement and asked if he would at once go up and speak to that gentleman. He went up, conducted by Manon, and was unable to pay any heed to the apartment (which he had never before entered) so amazed was he by the agitated look and manner of a man who was usually calm and placid.

"Do you know," asked Monsieur Joseph, once more a judge, "who the author of this work is?"

"He is Monsieur Bernard," said Godefroid; "I know him only under that name. I did not open the package."

"True," said Monsieur Joseph, as if to himself, "I broke the seals myself. You have not tried to find out anything about his antecedents?"

"No, I only know that he made a love-match with the daughter of General Tarlowski; that the daughter is named after the mother, Vanda; the grandson is called Auguste; and I have seen a portrait of Monsieur Bernard in the red robes of a president of the Royal Courts."

"Here, read that," said Monsieur Joseph, pointing to the titlepage of the manuscript, written probably in Auguste's handwriting:—

ON THE

SPIRIT OF MODERN LAWS

By M. Bernard-Jean-Baptiste Macloud, Baron Bourlac.

Formerly attorney-general to the Royal Court of Rouen. Grand officer of the Legion of honor.

"Ha! the slayer of Madame's daughter! of the Chevalier du Vissard! the man who condemned her to twenty years' imprisonment!" said Godefroid, in a feeble voice. His legs gave way under him, and he dropped into a chair. "What a beginning!" he muttered.

"This matter, my dear Godefroid," resumed Monsieur Joseph, "concerns us all. You have done your part; leave the rest to us. I beg you to have no more to do with it; go and fetch the things you have left behind you. Don't say a word of all this. Practise absolute discretion. Tell the Baron de Bourlac to address himself to me. By that time we shall have decided how to act under the circumstances."

Godefroid left him, took a cab, and went back as fast as he could to the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, filled with horror as he remembered that indictment signed with Bourlac's name, the bloody drama ending on the scaffold, and Madame de la Chanterie's imprisonment at Bicetre. He understood now the abandonment in which this former attorney-general, another Fourquier-Tinville in the public mind, was ending his days, and the true reasons for the concealment of his name.

"May Monsieur Joseph avenge her terribly!" he thought. As he uttered the wish in his own mind, he saw Auguste.

"What do you want of me?" he asked.

"My good friend, such a dreadful misfortune has overtaken us that I am almost mad. Wretches have come here and seized all my mother's property, and they are going to put my grandfather in prison. But it is not on account of those misfortunes that I come to implore you," said the lad, with Roman pride; "it is to ask you to do me a service such as people do to those who are condemned to die."

"Go on, what is it?" said Godefroid.

"They came here to seize my grandfather's manuscript; and as I think he gave you the book itself I want you to take the notes, for Madame Vauthier will not let me carry anything out of the house. Put them with the volumes and—"

"Yes, yes," said Godefroid, "go and get them at once."

While the lad went back to his own rooms, returning immediately, Godefroid reflected that the poor child was guilty of no crime, and that he ought not to put despair into that young heart by speaking of his grandfather and of the punishment for his savage political actions that had overtaken his old age. He therefore took the little package with a good grace.

"What is your mother's name?" he asked.

"My mother is the Baronne de Mergi; my father was the son of the president of the Royal Court at Rouen."

"Ah!" said Godefroid; "then your grandfather married his daughter to the son of the famous president Mergi."

"Yes, monsieur."

"Now, my little friend, leave me," said Godefroid. He went with young Mergi to the landing, and called to Madame Vauthier.

"Mere Vauthier," he said, "you can let my rooms. I shall not come back any more."

He gathered his things together, went downstairs, and got into the cab.

"Have you given anything to that gentleman?" said the Vauthier to Auguste.

"Yes," said the young man.

"You're a pretty fellow! that's the agent of your grandfather's enemies. He managed this whole business, and the proof is that, now that the trick is played, he goes off and isn't coming back any more. He has just told me I can let his lodgings."

Auguste flew to the boulevard and ran after the cab shouting so loudly that he finally stopped it.

"What do you want?" asked Godefroid.

"My grandfather's manuscripts."

"Tell them he can get them from Monsieur Joseph."

The youth thought the words were intended as a cruel joke. He sat down in the snow as he saw the cab disappearing rapidly. Presently he sprang up with momentary vigor, returned to his room and went to bed worn out with fatigue and distress.

The next morning, when the poor boy woke alone in that apartment so lately occupied by his mother and grandfather, the painful emotions of his cruel position filled his mind. The solitude of his home, where up to this time every moment had had its duty and its occupation, seemed so hard to bear that he went down to Madame Vauthier to ask if she had received any news of his grandfather. The woman answered sneeringly that he knew very well, or he might know, where to find his grandfather; the reason why he had not come in, she said, was because he had gone to live at the chateau de Clichy. This malicious speech, from the woman who had coaxed and wheedled him the evening before, put the lad into another frenzy, and he rushed to the hospital once more, desperate with the idea that his grandfather was in prison.

Baron Bourlac had wandered all night round the hospital, where he was refused entrance, and round the private residence of Dr. Halpersohn from whom he wished, naturally, to obtain an explanation of such treatment. The doctor did not get home till two in the morning. At half-past one the old man was at his door; on being told he was absent, he turned and walked about the grand alley of the Champs Elysees until half-past two. When he again went to the house, the porter told him that Monsieur Halpersohn had returned, gone to bed, was asleep, and could not be disturbed.

The poor father, in despair, wandered along the quay and under the frost-laden trees of the Cours-la-reine, waiting for daylight. At nine o'clock in the morning he again presented himself at the doctor's house, demanding to know the reason why his daughter was thus virtually imprisoned.

"Monsieur," replied the doctor, to whose presence he was admitted, "yesterday I told you I would answer for your daughter's recovery; but to-day I am responsible for her life and you will readily understand that I must be the sovereign master in such a case. Yesterday your daughter took a medicine intended to bring out her disease, the plica polonica; until that horrible disease shows itself on the surface you cannot see her. I will not allow excitement or any mistake of management to carry off my patient and your daughter. If you positively insist on seeing her, I shall call a consultation of three physicians, so as to relieve myself of responsibility, for the patient may die of it."

The old man, worn out with fatigue, dropped on a chair; but he rose immediately, saying:—

"Forgive me, monsieur. I have spent the night waiting for you in dreadful distress of mind. You cannot know to what degree I love my daughter; I have nursed her for fifteen years hovering between life and death, and this week of waiting is torture to me."

The baron left the room staggering like a drunken man. The doctor followed and supported him by the arm until he saw him safely down the staircase.

An hour later Auguste de Mergi entered the doctor's room. On questioning the porter at the hospital the unhappy lad heard that his grandfather had been refused an entrance and had gone away to find Monsieur Halpersohn, who could probably give information about him. As Auguste entered the doctor's study Halpersohn was breakfasting on a cup of chocolate and a glass of water. He did not disturb himself at the young man's entrance, but went on sopping his bread in the chocolate; for he never ate anything for breakfast but a small roll cut into four strips with careful precision.

"Well, young man," he said, glancing at Vanda's son, "so you have come, too, to find out about your mother?"

"Yes, monsieur;" replied Auguste de Mergi.

Auguste was standing near the table on which lay several bank-notes among a pile of gold louis. Under the circumstances in which the unhappy boy was placed the temptation was stronger than his principles, solid as they were. He saw a means of saving his grandfather and the fruits of almost a lifetime of toil. He yielded. The fascination was rapid as thought; and it was justified to the child's mind by the idea of self-devotion. "I destroy myself, but I save my mother and my grandfather," he thought. Under the strain put upon his reason by this criminal temptation he acquired, like madmen, a singular and momentary dexterity.

Halpersohn, an experienced observer, had divined, retrospectively, the life of the old man and that of the lad and of the mother. He felt or perceived the truth; the Baronne de Mergi's remarks had helped to unveil it to him; and the result was a feeling of benevolent pity for his new clients. As for respect or admiration, he was incapable of those emotions.

"Well, my dear boy," he replied familiarly, "I am taking care of your mother, and I shall return her to you young and handsome and perfectly well in health. Here is one of those rare cases in which physicians take an interest. Besides, through her mother, she is a compatriot of mine. You and your grandfather must for two weeks have the courage to keep away from Madame—?"

"The Baronne de Mergi."

"Ah! if she is a baroness, you must be a baron," remarked Halpersohn.

At that instant the theft was accomplished. While the doctor was looking at his sopped bread heavy with chocolate, Auguste snatched four notes and put them into his pocket, as if he were merely putting his hand there by accident.

"Yes, monsieur," he replied, "I am a baron, and so is my grandfather; he was attorney-general under the Restoration."

"You blush, young man; there's no need to blush for being a poor baron; that's common enough."

"Who told you, monsieur, that we are poor?"

"Your grandfather told me he had spent the night in the Champs Elysees; and though I know no palace with half so fine a ceiling as that of the skies at two o'clock this morning, I assure you it was pretty cold in the palace where your grandfather passed the night. We don't select the 'Star' inn from choice."

"Has my grandfather been here this morning?" said Auguste, seizing the opportunity to get away. "I thank you, monsieur, and I will call again, if you will permit me, to ask for news of my mother."

As soon as he was in the street the young baron took a cab to go as rapidly as he could to the sheriff's office, where he paid his grandfather's debt. The sheriff gave him the papers and a receipted bill of costs, and told one of his clerks to accompany the young man home and relieve the legal guardian of her functions.

"As Messieurs Barbet and Metivier live in your quarter," he said, "I will tell my young man to carry the money there and obtain the bill of sale of the books and return it to you."

Auguste who did not understand either the terms or the formalities of the law, did exactly as he was told. He received seven hundred francs change from the four thousand francs he had stolen, and went away with the clerk. He got back into the cab in a condition of semi-stupor; for, the result being now obtained, remorse began; he saw himself dishonored, cursed by his grandfather, whose inflexible nature was well-known to him, and he felt that his mother would surely die if she knew him guilty. All nature changed for him. He was hot; he did not see the snow; the houses looked like spectres flitting past him.

By the time he reached home the young baron had decided on his course which was certainly that of an honest man. He went to his mother's room, took the gold snuff-box set with diamonds given to his grandfather by the Emperor, and wrapped it in a parcel with the seven hundred francs and the following letter, which required several rough copies before it was satisfactory. Then he directed the whole to Doctor Halpersohn:—

Monsieur,—The fruits of twenty years of my grandfather's toil were about to be seized by usurers, who even threatened to put him in prison. Three thousand three hundred francs were enough to save him. Seeing all that money on your table, I could not resist the happiness of freeing my grandfather from his danger. I borrowed, without your consent, four thousand francs of you; but as three thousand three hundred were all that was necessary, I send the other seven hundred in money, together with a gold snuff-box set with diamonds, given to my grandfather by the Emperor, the value of which will probably cover the whole sum.

In case you do not believe in the honor of him who will forever regard you as a benefactor, I pray you to keep silence about an act which would be quite unjustifiable under other circumstances; for by so doing you will save my grandfather's life, just as you are saving my mother's life; and I shall be forever

Your devoted servant, Auguste de Mergi.

About half-past two o'clock in the afternoon, Auguste, who went himself as far as the Champs Elysees, sent the package from there by a street messenger to Doctor Halpersohn's house; then he walked slowly homeward by the pont de Jena, the Invalides, and the boulevards, relying on Halpersohn's generosity.

The Polish doctor had meanwhile discovered the theft, and he instantly changed his opinion of his clients. He now thought the old man had come to rob him, and being unable to succeed, had sent the boy. He doubted the rank they had claimed, and went straight to the police-office where he lodged a complaint, requesting that the lad might be arrested at once.

The prudence with which the law proceeds seldom allows it to move as rapidly as complainants desire; but about three o'clock of that day a commissary of police, accompanied by agents who kept watch outside the house, was questioning Madame Vauthier as to her lodgers, and the widow was increasing, without being aware of it, the suspicions of the policeman.

When Nepomucene saw the police agents stationed outside the house, he thought they had come to arrest the old man, and as he was fond of Monsieur Auguste, he rushed to meet Monsieur Bernard, whom he now saw on his way home in the avenue de l'Observatoire.

"Hide yourself, monsieur!" he cried, "the police have come to arrest you. The sheriff was here yesterday and seized everything. Madame Vauthier didn't give you the stamped papers, and she says you'll be in Clichy to-night or to-morrow. There, don't you see those policemen?"

Baron Bourlac immediately resolved to go straight to Barbet. The former publisher lived in the rue Saint-Catherine d'Enfer, and it took him a quarter of an hour to reach the house.

"Ah! I suppose you have come to get that bill of sale," said Barbet, replying to the salutation of his victim. "Here it is."

And, to Baron Bourlac's great astonishment, he held out the document, which the baron took, saying,—

"I do not understand."

"Didn't you pay me?" said the usurer.

"Are you paid?"

"Yes, your grandson took the money to the sheriff this morning."

"Then it is true you made a seizure at my house yesterday?"

"Haven't you been home for two days?" asked Barbet. "But an old magistrate ought to know what a notification of arrest means."

Hearing that remark, the baron bowed coldly to Barbet and returned home, thinking that the policemen whom Nepomucene had pointed out must have come for the two impecunious authors on the upper floor. He walked slowly, lost in vague apprehensions; for, in spite of the explanation he gave himself, Nepomucene's words came back, and seemed to him more and more obscure and inexplicable. Was it possible that Godefroid had betrayed him?



XIX. VENGEANCE

The old man walked mechanically along the rue Notre-Dame des Champs, and entered the house by the little door, which he noticed was open. There he came suddenly upon Nepomucene.

"Oh, monsieur, come quick! they are taking Monsieur Auguste to prison! They arrested him on the boulevard; it was he they were looking for; they have examined him."

The old man bounded like a tiger, rushed through the house with the speed of an arrow, and reached the door on the boulevard in time to see his grandson getting into a hackney-coach with three men.

"Auguste," he said, "what does all this mean?"

The poor boy burst into tears and fainted away.

"Monsieur, I am the Baron Bourlac, formerly attorney-general," he said to the commissary of police, whose scarf now attracted his eye. "I entreat you to explain all this."

"Monsieur, if you are Baron Bourlac, two words will be enough. I have just examined this young man, and he admits—"

"What?"

"The robbery of four thousand francs from Doctor Halpersohn!"

"Is that true, Auguste?"

"Grandpapa, I sent him as security your diamond snuff-box. I did it to save you from going to prison."

"Unhappy boy! what have you done? The diamonds are false!" cried the baron; "I sold the real ones three years ago!"

The commissary of police and his agents looked at each other. That look, full of many things, was intercepted by Baron Bourlac, and seemed to blast him.

"Monsieur," he said to the commissary, "you need not feel uneasy; I shall go myself to the prefect; but you are witness to the fact that I kept my grandson ignorant of the loss of the diamonds. Do your duty; but I implore you, in the name of humanity, put that lad in a cell by himself; I will go to the prison. To which one are you taking him?"

"Are you really Baron Bourlac?" asked the commissary.

"Oh, monsieur!"

"The fact is that the municipal judge and I doubted if it were possible that you and your grandson could be guilty. We thought, and the doctor, too, that some scoundrels had taken your name."

He took the baron aside, and added:—

"Did you go to see Doctor Halpersohn this morning?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Your grandson went there half an hour after you."

"Did he? I knew nothing of that. I have just returned home, and have not seen my grandson for two days."

"The writs he has shown me and the examination explain everything," said the commissary of police. "I see the cause of the crime. Monsieur, I ought by rights to arrest you as accomplice to your grandson; for your answers confirm the allegations in Doctor Halpersohn's complaint. But these papers, which I here return to you," holding out to the old man a bundle of papers, "do prove you to be Baron Bourlac. Nevertheless, you must hold yourself ready to appear before Monsieur Marest, the judge of the Municipal Court who has cognizance of the case. As for your grandson, I will speak to the procureur du roi, and we will take all the care of him that is due to the grandson of a former judge,—the victim, no doubt, of youthful error. But the complaint has been made, the delinquent admits his guilt, I have drawn up the proces-verbal, and served the warrant of arrest; I cannot go back on that. As for the incarceration, I will put him in the Conciergerie."

"Thank you, monsieur," said the unhappy Bourlac.

With the words he fell rigid on the snow, and rolled into one of the hollows round the trees of the boulevard.

The commissary of police called for help, and Nepomucene ran up, together with Madame Vauthier. The old man was carried to his room, and Madame Vauthier begged the commissary to call on his way in the rue d'Enfer, and send Doctor Berton as soon as possible.

"What is the matter with my grandfather?" asked poor Auguste.

"He is out of his head. You see what it is to steal," said the Vauthier.

Auguste made a movement as though he would dash out his brains. The two agents caught him.

"Come, young man, be calm," said the commissary of police; "you have done wrong, but it may not be irreparable—"

"Monsieur, will you tell that woman my grandfather hasn't had anything to ear for twenty-four hours?"

"Oh! the poor things!" exclaimed the commissary under his breath.

He stopped the coach, which had started, and said a word in the ear of one of his agents, who got out and ran to Madame Vauthier, and then returned.

When Dr. Berton arrived he declared that Monsieur Bernard (he knew him only under that name) had a high fever of great intensity. After hearing from Madame Vauthier all the events which had brought on this crisis (related after the manner of such women) he informed Monsieur Alain the next morning, at Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas, of the present state of affairs; on which Monsieur Alain despatched a note in pencil by a street messenger to Monsieur Joseph.

Godefroid had given Monsieur Joseph, on his return from the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse the night before, the notes confided to him by Auguste, and Monsieur Joseph had spent part of the night in reading the first volume of Baron Bourlac's work.

The next morning after breakfast Madame de la Chanterie told her neophyte that he should, if his resolution still held good, be put to work at once. Godefroid, initiated by her into the financial secrets of the society, worked steadily seven or eight hours a day for several months, under the inspection of Frederic Mongenod, who came every Sunday to examine the work, and from whom he received much praise and encouragement.

"You are," he said, when the books were all in order and the accounts audited, "a precious acquisition to the saints among whom you live. Two or three hours a day will now suffice to keep the current accounts in order, and you will have plenty of surplus time to help the work in other ways, if you still have the vocation you showed for it six months ago."

It was now July, 1838. During the time that had elapsed since his opening attempt on the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, Godefroid, eager to prove himself worthy of his friends, had refrained from asking any question relating to Baron Bourlac. Not hearing a single word on the subject, and finding no record of any transaction concerning it in the accounts, he regarded the silence maintained about the enemy of Madame de la Chanterie and his family either as a test to which he himself was subjected, or as a proof that the friends of the noble woman had in some way avenged her.

Some two months after he had left Madame Vauthier's lodgings he turned his steps when out for a walk towards the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, where he came upon the widow herself, and asked for news of the Bernard family.

"Just as if I knew what has become of them!" she replied. "Two days after your departure—for it was you, slyboots, who got the affair away from my proprietor—some men came here and rid me of that arrogant old fool and all his belongings. Bless me! if they didn't move everything out within twenty-four hours; and as close as wax they were too; not a word would they say to me. I think he went off to Algiers with his rogue of a grandson; for Nepomucene, who had a fancy for that young thief, being no better himself, couldn't find him at the Conciergerie. I dare say Nepomucene knows where he is, though, for he, too, has run away. That's what it is to bring up foundlings! that's how they reward you for all your trouble, leaving you in the lurch! I haven't yet been able to get a man in his place, and as the quarter is looking up the house is full, and I am worked to death."

Godefroid would never have known more about Baron Bourlac and his family if it had not been for one of those chance encounters such as often happens in Paris.

In the month of September he was walking down the great avenue of the Champs Elysees, thinking, as he passed the end of the rue Marbeuf, of Dr. Halpersohn.

"I might," thought he, "go and see him and ask if he ever cured Bourlac's daughter. What a voice, what immense talents she had!—and she wanted to consecrate herself to God!"

When he reached the Rond-point Godefroid crossed it quickly, on account of the many carriages that were passing rapidly. As he reached the other side in haste he knocked against a young man with a lady on his arm.

"Take care!" said the young man; "are you blind?"

"Hey! is it you?" cried Godefroid, recognizing Auguste de Mergi.

Auguste was so well-dressed, and looked so dandified and handsome and so proud of giving his arm to a pretty woman, that if it had not been for the youth's voice and the memories that were just then in his own mind he might not have recognized him.

"Oh! it is our dear Monsieur Godefroid!" said the lady.

Hearing those words in the celestial notes of Vanda's enchanting voice, Godefroid stopped short on the spot where he stood.

"Cured!" he exclaimed.

"For the last ten days he has allowed me to walk out," she replied.

"Who? Halpersohn?"

"Yes," she said. "Why have you not been to see us? Perhaps it was well you didn't;" she added; "my hair came off; this that you see is a wig; but the doctor assures me it will grow again. Oh! how many things we have to tell each other! Come and dine with us. Oh! your accordion! oh! monsieur,"—she put her handkerchief to her eyes.

"I shall keep it all my life," she went on, "and my son will preserve it as a relic after me. My father has searched all Paris for you. And he is also in search of his unknown benefactors; he will grieve himself to death if you do not help him to discover them. Poor father! he is gnawed by a melancholy I cannot always get the better of."

As much attracted by that exquisite voice, now rescued from the silence of the grave, as by a burning curiosity, Godefroid offered his arm to the hand held out to him by the Baronne de Mergi, who signed to her son to precede them, charging him with a commission which he seemed to understand.

"I shall not take you far," she said; "we live in the Allee d'Antin, in a pretty little house built in the English fashion. We occupy it alone; each of us has a floor. Oh! we are so comfortable. My father thinks that you had a great deal to do with our good fortune."

"I?"

"Yes; did you know that on a recommendation made by the minister of public instruction a chair of international law has been created for papa at the Sorbonne? He begins his first course next November. The great work on which he has been engaged for so long will be published this month by the firm of Cavalier and Co., who agree to share the profits with my father; they have already paid him on account thirty thousand francs. My father bought our house with that money. The minister of justice has awarded me a pension of twelve hundred francs as the daughter of a former judge; my father has his retiring pension of three thousand, and his professorship will give him five thousand more. We are so economical that we are almost rich. My dear Auguste will begin his law studies in two months; but he is already employed in the office of the attorney-general, and is earning twelve hundred francs a year. Ah! Monsieur Godefroid, promise me you will never speak of that unhappy affair of my poor Auguste. As for me, I bless him every day for his action, though his grandfather has not yet forgiven him. Yes, his mother blesses him, Halpersohn adores him, but my father is implacable!"

"What affair?" asked Godefroid.

"Ah! I recognize your generosity," cried Vanda. "What a heart you have! Your mother must be proud of you."

She stopped as if a pain had struck her heart.

"I swear to you that I know nothing of the affair of which you speak," said Godefroid.

"It is possible that you really did not know it?" said Vanda. And she related naively, in terms of admiration for her son, the story of the loan that he had secured from the doctor.

"We may not speak of it before Baron Bourlac," said Godefroid, "tell me now how your son got out of his trouble."

"Well," said Vanda, "I told you, I think, that he is now employed by the attorney-general, who shows him the greatest kindness. Auguste was only forty-eight hours in the Conciergerie, where he was put into the governor's house. The good doctor, who did not receive a noble letter the boy wrote him till late at night, withdrew his complaint; and, through the influence of a former judge of the Royal Courts, whom my father has never been able to meet, the attorney-general was induced to annul the proceedings in the court. There is no trace left of the affair except in my heart and my son's conscience, and alas! in his grandfather's mind. From that day he has treated Auguste as almost a stranger. Only yesterday Halpersohn begged him to forgive the boy; but my father, who never before refused me anything—me, whom he loves so well!—replied: 'You are the person robbed; you can, and you ought to forgive; but I am responsible for the thief. When I was attorney-general I never pardoned.' 'You'll kill your daughter,' said Halpersohn. My father made no reply and turned away."

"But who helped you in all this?"

"A gentleman, whom we think is employed to do the queen's benefits."

"What is he like?"

"Well, he is of medium height; rather stout, but active; with a kindly, genial face. It was he who found my father ill of fever in the house where you knew us and had him brought to that in which we now live. And just fancy, as soon as my father recovered I was installed there too, in my very own room, just as if I had never left it. Halpersohn, whom the gentleman captivated, I am sure I don't know how, then told me all the sufferings my father had endured. Ah, when I think of it! my father and my son often without bread to eat, and when with me pretending to be rich! even the diamonds in the snuff box sold! Oh, Monsieur Godefroid! those two beings are martyrs. And so, what can I say to my father? Between him and my son I can take no part; I can only make return to them in kind by suffering with them, as they once suffered with me."

"And you say you think that gentleman came from the queen?"

"Oh! I am sure you know him, I see it in your face," cried Vanda, now at the door of the house.

She seized Godefroid by the hand with the vigor of a nervous woman and dragged him into a salon, the door of which stood open.

"Papa!" she cried, "here is Monsieur Godefroid! and I am certain he knows our benefactors."

Baron Bourlac, whom Godefroid now saw dressed in a manner suitable for a man of his rank and position, rose and came forward, holding out his hand to Godefroid, saying as he did so:—

"I was sure of it."

Godefroid made a gesture denying that he shared in this noble vengeance, but the former attorney-general gave him no chance to speak.

"Ah! monsieur," he said, continuing, "Providence could not be more powerful, love more ingenious, motherhood more clear-sighted than your friends have been for us. I bless the chance that has brought you here to-day; for Monsieur Joseph has disappeared forever; he has evaded all the traps I set to discover his true name and residence. Here, read his last letter. But perhaps you already know it."

Godefroid read as follows:—

Monsieur le Baron Bourlac,—The sums which we have spent for you, under the orders of a charitable lady, amount to fifteen thousand francs. Take note of this, so that you may return that sum either yourself, or through your descendants, whenever the prosperity of your family will admit of it,—for that money is the money of the poor. When you or your family are able to make this restitution, pay the sum you owe into the hands of Messrs. Mongenod and Company, bankers.

May God forgive you.

Five crosses formed the mysterious signature of this letter, which Godefroid returned to the baron.

"The five crosses are there," he said as if to himself.

"Ah! monsieur," said the old man; "you do know all; you were sent to me by that mysterious lady—tell me her name!"

"Her name!" exclaimed Godefroid; "her name! Unhappy man! you must not ask it; never seek to find it out. Ah! madame," he cried, taking Madame de Mergi's hand; "tell your father, if he values his peace of mind, to remain in his ignorance and make no effort to discover the truth."

"No, tell it!" said Vanda.

"Well, then, she who saved your daughter," said Godefroid, looking at the old man, "who returns her to you young and beautiful and fresh and happy, who rescued her from her coffin, she who saved your grandson from disgrace, and has given you an old age of peace and honor—" He stopped short—"is a woman whom you sent innocent to prison for twenty years; to whom, as a magistrate, you did the foulest wrong; whose sanctity you insulted; whose beautiful daughter you tore from her arms and condemned to the cruellest of all deaths, for she died on the guillotine."

Godefroid, seeing that Vanda had fallen back half fainting on her chair, rushed into the corridor and from there into the street, running at full speed.

"If you want your pardon," said Baron Bourlac to his grandson, "follow that man and find out where he lives."

Auguste was off like an arrow.

The next morning at eight o'clock, Baron Bourlac knocked at the old yellow door in the rue Chanoinesse, and asked for Madame de la Chanterie. The portress showed him the portico. Happily it was the breakfast hour. Godefroid saw the baron, through one of the casements on the stairs, crossing the court-yard; he had just time to get down into the salon where the friends were all assembled and to cry out:—

"Baron Bourlac is here!"

Madame de la Chanterie, hearing the name, rose; supported by the Abbe de Veze she went to her room.

"You shall not come in, tool of Satan!" cried Manon, recognizing their former prosecutor and preventing his entrance through the door of the salon. "Have you come to kill Madame?"

"Manon, let the gentleman come in," said Monsieur Alain.

Manon sat down on a chair as if both her legs had given way at once.

"Monsieur," said the baron in an agitated voice, recognizing Monsieur Joseph and Godefroid, and bowing to Monsieur Nicolas, "mercy gives rights to those it benefits."

"You owe us nothing, monsieur;" said the good old Alain; "you owe everything to God."

"You are saints, and you have the calmness of saints;" said the former magistrate; "you will therefore listen to me. I know that the vast benefits I have received during the last eighteen months have come from the hand of a person whom I grievously injured in doing my duty. It was fifteen years before I was convinced of her innocence; and that case is the only one, gentlemen, for which I feel any remorse as to the exercise of my functions. Listen to me! I have but a short time to live, but I shall lose even that poor remnant of a life, still so important to my children whom Madame de la Chanterie has saved, unless she will also grant me her pardon. Yes, I will stay there on my knees on the pavement of Notre-Dame until she says to me that word. I, who cannot weep, whom the tortures of my child have dried like stubble, I shall find tears within me to move her—"

The door of Madame de la Chanterie's room opened; the Abbe de Veze glided in like a shadow and said to Monsieur Joseph:—

"That voice is torturing Madame."

"Ah! she is there!" exclaimed the baron.

He fell on his knees and burst into tears, crying out in a heart-rending voice: "In the name of Jesus dying on the cross, forgive, forgive me, for my daughter has suffered a thousand deaths!"

The old man fell forward on the floor so prone that the agitated spectators thought him dead. At that instant Madame de la Chanterie appeared like a spectre at the door of her room, against the frame of which she supported herself.

"In the name of Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette whom I see on their scaffold, in the name of Madame Elisabeth, in the name of my daughter and of yours, and for Jesus' sake, I forgive you."

Hearing those words the old man raised his head. "It is the vengeance of angels!" he said.

Monsieur Joseph and Monsieur Nicolas raised him and led him to the courtyard; Godefroid went to fetch a carriage, and when they put the old man into it Monsieur Nicolas said to him gravely:—

"Do not return here, monsieur; the power of God is infinite, but human nature has its limits."

On that day Godefroid was admitted to the order of the Brotherhood of Consolation.



ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy. The Brotherhood of Consolation is also known by the title The Seamy Side of History and is referred to by that title in other Addendums.

Barbet A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Man of Business The Middle Classes

Bianchon, Horace Father Goriot The Atheist's Mass Cesar Birotteau The Commission in Lunacy Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Magic Skin A Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following: Another Study of Woman La Grande Breteche

Bonaparte, Napoleon The Vendetta The Gondreville Mystery Colonel Chabert Domestic Peace A Woman of Thirty

Bordin The Gondreville Mystery The Commission in Lunacy Jealousies of a Country Town

Bourlac, Bernard-Jean-Baptiste-Macloud, Baron de The Peasantry

Casteran, De The Chouans Jealousies of a Country Town Beatrix The Peasantry

Cavalier A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Champignelles, De The Deserted Woman

Chesnel (or Choisnel) Jealousies of a Country Town

Cibot, Jean (alias Pille-Miche) The Chouans

Cinq-Cygne, Laurence, Comtesse (afterwards Marquise de) The Gondreville Mystery The Secrets of a Princess The Member for Arcis

Desplein The Atheist's Mass Cousin Pons Lost Illusions The Thirteen The Government Clerks Pierrette A Bachelor's Establishment Modeste Mignon Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine

Haudry (doctor) Cesar Birotteau The Thirteen A Bachelor's Establishment Cousin Pons

La Chanterie, Baronne Henri le Chantre de Cousin Betty

Lelewel The Imaginary Mistress

Leroi, Pierre The Chouans Jealousies of a Country Town

Louis XVIII., Louis-Stanislas-Xavier The Chouans The Gondreville Mystery Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Ball at Sceaux The Lily of the Valley Colonel Chabert The Government Clerks

Marest, Frederic A Start in Life The Member for Arcis

Metivier (nephew) The Middle Classes

Mongenod Cesar Birotteau

Mongenod, Frederic The Commission in Lunacy

Montauran, Marquis de (younger brother of Alphonse de) The Chouans Cousin Betty

Nathan, Raoul Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Secrets of a Princess A Daughter of Eve Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department A Prince of Bohemia A Man of Business The Unconscious Humorists

Popinot, Jean-Jules Cesar Birotteau Honorine The Commission in Lunacy The Middle Classes

Tours-Minieres, Bernard-Polydor Bryond, Baron des Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Troisville, Guibelin, Vicomte de The Chouans Jealousies of a Country Town The Peasantry

Vernisset, Victor de Beatrix Cousin Betty

Vissard, Charles-Amedee-Louis-Joseph Rifoel, Chevalier du The Chouans

THE END