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The Mysteries of Paris V2

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Such are the events which took place at the Ravageur's Island, the
evening before Mrs. Seraphin was to conduct thither Fleur-de-Marie.




CHAPTER XXV.

FURNISHED ROOMS.


Brasserie passage, a dark and gloomy passage, but little known,
although situated in the center of Paris, extended on one side from
the Rue Traversiere Saint Honore to the Cour Saint Guillaume on the
other. About the middle of this wet, muddy, dark, and gloomy street,
where the sun scarcely ever penetrates, stood a furnished house.

On a rascally-looking sign was to be seen, "_Furnished Rooms_;"
on the right of an obscure alley opened the door of a shop not less
obscure, where the proprietor was generally to be found. This man,
whose name has been several times mentioned on Ravageur's Island, was
Micou; openly a seller of old iron; but secretly he bought and sold
stolen metal, such as iron, lead, copper, and tin. To say that Micou
was in business and friendly relations with the Martials, is
sufficiently to appreciate his morality.

Micou was a corpulent man of about fifty years of age, with a low,
cunning look, a pimply nose, and bloated cheeks; he wore an otter-skin
cap, and was wrapped up in an old green garrick. Over the little iron
stove near which he was warming himself, a board with numbers painted
on it was nailed against the wall; there were suspended the keys of
the rooms whose lodgers were absent. The window looking into the
street was soaped in such a manner that those without could not see
what was going on within the shop; this window was heavily barred with
iron. Throughout this large shop reigned great obscurity: on the damp
and blackish walls were suspended rusty chains of all sorts and sizes;
the floor was nearly covered with fragments and clippings of iron and
lead. Three peculiar knocks at the door attracted the attention of
Micou.

"Come in!" cried he, and Nicholas appeared. He was very pale; his face
seemed still more sinister-looking than the evening previous, and yet
it will be seen he feigned a kind of noisy gayety during the following
conversation. This scene took place the morning after his quarrel with
his brother Martial.

"Oh! here you are, good fellow!" said the lodging-house keeper,
cordially.

"Yes, Daddy Micou; I come to have some business with you."

"Shut the door."

"My dog and little cart are there--with the swag."

"What do you bring me? folded tripe (stolen sheet-lead)?"

"No, Micou."

"It is not dredge, you are too cunning now; you are no longer a
_ravageur_; perhaps it is iron?"

"No, Micou; it is copper. There must be at least one hundred and fifty
pounds; my dog has as much as he can draw."

"Go and bring the stuff; we will weigh it."

"You must help me, Micou; I have a lame arm."

"What is the matter with your arm?"

"Nothing--a bruise."

"You must make some iron red hot, put it into some water, and bathe
your arm in this almost boiling water; it is a dealer-in-old-iron's
remedy, but it is excellent."

"Thank you, Daddy Micou."

"Come, let us bring in the metal: I will help you, lazybones!"

The copper was then brought in from a little cart drawn by an enormous
dog, and placed in the shop.

"That barrow is a good idea," said Micou, adjusting the scales.

"Yes; when I have anything to bring, I put my dog and cart into my
boat, and I harness him when I land. A jarvey might blab: my dog
can't."

"All well at home?" demanded the receiver, weighing the copper: "your
mother and sister are in good health?"

"Yes, Micou."

"The children also?"

"The children also."

"And your nephew Andre, where is he?"

"Don't speak of it! he was in luck yesterday. Barbillon and the Big
Cripple took him away; he only came back this morning; he is already
gone on an errand to the post-office, Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau."

"And your brother Martial, is still savage?"

"I do not know anything about him."

"You don't know anything about him?"

"No," said Nicholas, affecting an indifferent manner; "for two days we
have not seen him; perhaps he has returned to his old trade of a
poacher--unless his boat, which was very old, has sunk in the river,
and he with--"

"That don't give you much concern, good-for-nothing, for you can't
feel it much!"

"It is true, one has his own ideas. How many pounds of copper are
there?"

"You made a good guess--one hundred and forty-eight pounds, my boy."

"And you will owe me--"

"Exactly thirty francs."

"Thirty francs, when copper is a franc a pound? Thirty francs!"

"We will say thirty-five, and don't turn up your nose, or I will send
you to the devil--you, copper, dog and cart."

"But, Micou you cheat me too much! there's no sense in it."

"Prove to me this copper belongs to you, and I will give you fifteen
sous a pound for it."

"Always the same song. You are all alike; get out, you nest of
thieves! Can one gouge a friend in such style? But this is not all. If
I take your merchandise in exchange, you should give me good measure
at least!"

"Just so! What do you want? chains or hooks for your boat?"

"No; I want four or five iron plates, very strong, such as would
answer to line window-shutters with."

"I have just what you want--the third of an inch thick; a pistol ball
could not go through."

"Just the thing!"

"What size?"

"In all, seven or eight feet square."

"Good! what else do you want?"

"Three iron bars, three to four feet long, and two inches square."

"I tore down the other day some grating from a window; that will suit
you like a glove. What next?"

"Two strong hinges and a latch; to fix and shut at will, a wicket two
feet square."

"A trap, you mean to say?"

"No; a wicket."

"I cannot comprehend what you can want with it?"

"That is possible, but I can."

"Very well, you have only to choose; there are the hinges. What else
do you need?"

"That's all."

"It is not much."

"Get my goods ready at once, Daddy Micou, I will take them as I pass;
I have some more errands to do."

"With your cart? I say, I saw a bale of goods in the bottom; is it
something more that you have taken from everybody's cupboard, little
glutton?"

"As you say, Daddy Micou: but you don't eat this; don't make me wait
for my iron, for I must be back to the island by twelve o'clock."

"Don't be uneasy, it is eight o'clock; if you are not going far, in an
hour you can return, all will be ready, Will you take a drop?"

"To be sure; you can well afford to pay it!"

Daddy Micou took out of an old chest a bottle of brandy, a cracked
glass, a cup without a handle, and poured out the liquor.

"Your health, old 'un!"

"Yours, my boy, and the ladies' at home!"

"Thank you; and your lodgings come on well?"

"So, so. I have always some lodgers for whom I fear the visits of the
grabs; but they pay more in consequence."

"Why?"

"How stupid you are! Sometimes I lodge as I buy; to such I no more ask
for their passports than I ask you for an invoice."

"Understood! but to those you let as dear as you buy of me cheap."

"Must take care of one's self. I have a cousin who keeps a fine hotel
in the Rue Saint Honore, while his wife is a mantua-maker, who employs
as many as twenty assistants, either at her shop, or at their own
homes."

"Say now, old obstinacy, there must be some pretty ones there?"

"I guess so! there are two or three that I have seen sometimes
bringing in their work. Crimini! ain't they nice! One little puss, who
works at home, always laughing, called Rigolette. Oh, my lark! what a
pity I ain't twenty!"

"Come, come, papa, put yourself out, or I'll cry fire!"

"But she is virtuous, my boy; she is virtuous."

"Get out! and you say that your cousin--"

"Keeps a very good house, and, as she is of the same number as little
Rigolette--"

"Virtuous?"

"Exactly."

"Over!"

"She will not have lodgers without passports or papers; but if any
present themselves, knowing I am not very particular, she sends them
to me."

"And they pay in consequence?"

"Always."

"But are they all friends of the family, those who have no papers?"

"No. Ah, now, speaking of that, my cousin sent me, a few days ago, a
customer. May the devil burn me, if I can understand it! Come, another
turn?"

"Agreed; the liquor is good. Your health, Micou!"

"Yours, lad! I say, then, that the other day my cousin sent me a
customer whom I cannot make out. Just imagine a mother and her
daughter, who had a very seedy look, it is true; they carried their
luggage in a handkerchief. Well, although they must, of course, be
nobody, since they had no papers, and they lodge by the fortnight;
since they have been here they do not stir out; no one comes to see
them, my pal--no one! and yet, if they were not so thin and so pale,
they'd be two fine women, the little one above all. She is not more
than fifteen at least; she is as white as a white rabbit, with large
black eyes--large as that! What eyes! what eyes!"

"You'll get on fire again; I'll call the engines! What do these women
do for a living?"

"I tell you I comprehend nothing about it; they must be virtuous, and
yet no papers; without counting that they receive letters without
address, their name must be bad to write."

"How is that?"

"They sent, this morning, my nephew Andre to the office of the letters
to be called for, to reclaim a letter addressed to Madame X. Z. The
letter was to come from Normandy, from a place called Aubiers. They
wrote that on a piece of paper, so that Andre might get the letter.
You see they can be no great things, women who take the name of X and
a Z."

"They will never pay you."

"It is not for an old ape like me to learn to make faces. They have
taken a room without a fireplace, for which I make them pay twenty
francs a fortnight, and in advance. They are, perhaps, sick; for two
days they have not come down. It certainly is not from indigestion;
for I do not think they have cooked anything since they have been
here."

"If you had only such lodgers as they, Micou--"

"That comes and goes. If I lodge people without passports, I lodge
great folks also; I have at this moment two traveling clerks, a
post-office carrier, the leader of the orchestra of the Cafe des Aveugles,
and an independent lady, all very genteel people. They save the
reputation of the house, if the police wish to examine too closely;
they are not lodgers by night, not they; they are lodgers in the full
light of the sun."

"Whenever it shines in your passage, Daddy--"

"Joker, one more turn."

"And the last, for I must take my hook. By-the-bye, does Robin, the
big lame man, lodge here yet?"

"Upstairs, next door to the mother and daughter. He has consumed all
his prison money, and I believe he has none left."

"I say, look out; he's broke his ticket-of-leave."

"I know it well; but I can't get rid of him. I believe he is after
something. Little Tortillard, the son of Bras-Rouge, came here the
other night with Barbillon, to look for him. I am afraid he will do
some harm to my good lodgers that damnable Robin. As soon as his term
is up, I shall put him out, telling him his room is engaged by an
embassador, or by the husband of Madame de Saint Ildefonso?"

"The lady?"

"I should think so! Three rooms and a cabinet on the front, nearly
furnished, without counting a garret for her female servant, eighty
francs a month, and paid in advance by her uncle, to whom she gives
one of her rooms as a stopping-place when he comes from the country.
After all, I believe his country house is the Rue Vivienne, Rue Saint
Honore, or in the environs of those places."

"Understood! she is an independent lady, because the old one pays her
rent."

"Hush, here is her maid."

A woman rather advanced in life, wearing a white apron of doubtful
purity, entered the shop. "What can I do for you, Madame Charles?"

"Daddy Micou, your nephew is not here?"

"He has gone on an errand to the post-office; he will soon return."

"M. Badinot wishes he would take this letter to its address; there is
no answer, but it is very urgent."

"In a quarter of an hour it shall be on the way."

"Let him hurry."

"Be easy." The maid retired.

"That's the servant of one of your lodgers, Micou?"

"Madame Saint Ildefonso's. But M. Badinot is her uncle; he came
yesterday from the country, "answered Micou. "But see, now, what fine
acquaintances they have! I told you they were people of style; he
writes to a viscount."

"No!"

"Well, look: 'To his Lordship the Viscount of Saint Remy, Rue de
Chaillot. Haste, haste! (_Private_).' I hope that when one lodges
people who have uncles who write to viscounts, one can very well
overlook a poor devil in the fourth story who has no passport!"

"I think so. Well, good-bye for the present, Micou; I am going to
fasten my dog and cart to your door; I will carry what I have to carry
myself. Have my goods and money ready on my return."

"All shall be ready. But, I say, before you go I must tell you, since
you have been here, I have watched you."

"Well?"

"I don't know, but you seem to have something the matter with you."

"I?"

"Yes."

"You are a fool. I am hungry."

"Hungry! it is possible, but I should say that you wish to appear
lively, but at the bottom there is something that bites and pinches
you--conscience, as they say; and to trouble you it must bite hard,
for you are no prude."

"I tell you, you are crazy, Micou," said Nicholas, shuddering in spite
of himself.

"One would say that you tremble."

"My arm pains me."

"Then don't forget my recipe: it will cure you."

"Thank you, Father Micou. Good-bye," said Nicholas, taking his
departure.

The receiver, after having concealed the copper, busied himself in
collecting the different articles for Nicholas, when a new personage
entered the shop. He was a man of about fifty, with a knowing face,
heavy gray whiskers, and gold spectacles; he was dressed with some
care; the large sleeves of his brown paletot, with velvet cuffs,
displayed his straw-colored gloves; his boots undoubtedly the evening
previous had been brilliantly polished.

Such was M. Badinot, the uncle of Madame de Saint Ildefonso, whose
social position was the pride and security of Micou the Fence.

Badinot, formerly a lawyer, but struck off the rolls, and now a
chevalier d'industrie, and agent of equivocal affairs, served as a spy
for the Baron de Graün (Rudolph's friend), and gave the diplomatist a
great deal of information concerning several characters of this
narration.

"Madame Charles has just given you a letter?" said Badinot to the
receiver.

"Yes, sir; my nephew will soon return; in a moment he will be off
again."

"No, give me the letter; I have changed my mind; I will go myself to
the Viscount de Saint Remy," said Badinot, emphasizing purposely the
aristocratic address.

"Here is the letter, sir; have you no other commission?"

"No, friend Micou," said Badinot, with a patronizing air; "but I have
reproaches to make to you."

"To me, sir?"

"Very grave reproaches."

"How, sir?"

"Certainly Madame de Saint Ildefonso pays very dear for your first
floor. My niece is one of those lodgers to whom one should pay the
greatest respect; she came with confidence to this house, disliking
the noise of the large streets; she hoped she would be here as in the
country."

"And she is; just like a village. You ought to find it so, sir, who
live in the country--it is just like a real village here."

"A village? Very fine--always the most infernal noise."

"Yet it is impossible to find a more quiet house. Over madame, there
is the leader of the orchestra of the Cafe des Aveugles and a
traveling clerk; over them another clerk; over him again, there is--"

"It is not of these persons I complain; they are very quiet; my niece
finds no inconvenience from them; but in the fourth story there is a
lame man, whom Madame de Saint Ildefonso met yesterday drunk on the
staircase; he uttered horrible, savage cries; she almost fainted, she
was so much alarmed. If you think with such occupants your house
resembles a village--"

"I swear to you, sir, that I only wait an opportunity to put this lame
man out of doors; he has paid me his term in advance, otherwise he
would have been already shown how to get out."

"You should not have taken him for a lodger."

"But I hope madame has no other cause of complaint? There is a
postman, who is the very cream of honest people! and over him,
alongside of the lame man, a woman and her daughter, who keep as close
as mice."

"I repeat, Madame de Saint Iledefonso only complains of the lame man;
he is the nightmare of the whole house, that knave! and I warn you, if
you keep him, he will cause all the respectable people to leave."

"I will send him off, be assured--I do not hold to him."

"And you will do well, for they will not remain."

"Which would not answer my purpose. So, sir, you may regard the lame
man as off, for he only has four days to remain here."

"That is too many; however, it is your business. At the very first
insult my niece leaves the house."

"Be assured."

"All this is for your interest; profit by it, for I only speak once,"
said Badinot, in a patronizing manner, as he left the shop.

Is it not needless for us to say that this woman and girl who lived so
solitary, were victims of the cupidity of the notary? We will conduct
the reader into the miserable room they occupied.




CHAPTER XXVI.

THE VICTIMS OF AN ABUSE OF TRUST.


Let the reader imagine a closet situated on the fourth story of the
house. A pale, gloomy light hardly penetrated this narrow apartment,
through a little window of cracked, dirty glass, with a single
shutter; a yellowish, dilapidated paper covered the walls; from the
broken ceiling hung long spider-webs. The floor, broken in several
places, showed the beams and laths of the room below. A deal table, a
chair, an old trunk without a lock, and a flock bed with coarse sheets
and an old woolen covering--such was the furniture. On the chair was
seated the Baroness de Fermont. In the bed reposed Claire de Fermont
(such were the names of the two victims of Jacques Ferrand).

Possessing but one narrow bed, the mother and daughter slept by turns,
dividing thus the hours of the night. The mother had too much anguish,
too many inquietudes, to get much repose; but the daughter found some
moments of rest and forgetfulness.

She was now asleep. Nothing could be more touching, more sorrowful,
than the sight of this misery, imposed by the cupidity of the notary
on two women, until then accustomed to the sweet enjoyments of a life
of ease, and surrounded in their native town with that consideration
which an honorable and honored family always inspire.

The Baroness de Fermont was about thirty-six years of age; her
countenance at once expresses mildness and excellence; her features,
formerly of remarkable beauty, are now sadly changed; her black hair,
divided on her forehead and confined behind her head, already shows
some tresses of silver. Clothed in a dress of mourning, tattered in
several places, the Baroness de Fermont, with her hand supporting her
head, leaned against the wretched bed of her child, and regarded her
with inexpressible anguish.

Claire was only sixteen; her complexion had lost its dazzling purity;
her beautiful dark eyelashes reached to her hollow cheeks. Once humid
and rosy, but now dry and pale, her lips, half-opened, displayed the
enamel of her teeth; the rude contact of the bedclothes had given a
red appearance in several places to the delicate neck, arms, and
shoulders of the young girl. From time to time a slight shudder passed
over her, as if she had some painful dream. For a long period the
Baroness de Fermont had not wept; she looked on her daughter with a
dry and inflamed eye, consumed by a slow fever, which was undermining
her. Each day she found herself weaker; but fearing to alarm Claire,
and not willing, we may say, to alarm herself, she struggled with all
her strength against the first symptoms of her sickness. Through
motives of similar generosity, the daughter endeavored to conceal her
sufferings. These two unhappy creatures, afflicted with the same
griefs, were yet to be afflicted with the same disease.

In misfortunes there are often moments when the future prospect is so
frightful, that the most energetic minds dare not look it in the face,
but shut their eyes, and endeavor to deceive themselves by mad
illusions. Such was the position of the Fermonts. To express the
tortures of this woman, during the long hours when she was thus
contemplating her sleeping child, thinking of the past, the present,
and the future, would be to describe what, in the holy and sacred
griefs of a mother, there is the most poignant, the most desperate,
the most insane; enchanting recollections, sinister fears, terrible
foresights, bitter regrets, extreme dejectedness, ejaculations of
powerless rage against the author of so much misery, vain
supplications, violent prayers, and, finally, frightful doubts of the
all-powerful justice of Him who remains inexorable to this cry,
dragged from the bottom of the maternal heart--to this sacred cry, of
which the echo ought to reach Heaven, "Pity for my child!"

"How cold she is now!" said the poor mother, touching lightly the icy
hand and arm of her daughter. "She is very cold; one hour ago she was
burning; it is fever; happily, she does not know she has it. How cold
she is! this covering is so thin! I would put my old shawl on the bed;
but if I take it from the door, where I have hung it, some of those
drunken men will come and look through the cracks, as they did
yesterday. What a horrible house! If I had known what kind of place it
was before I paid in advance, we should not have stayed here; but I
did not know--when one has no papers--could I think that I should ever
have need of a passport? When I left Angers in my own carriage, could
I have thought--but this infamous--because the notary has pleased to
rob me, I am reduced to the most frightful extremity, and against him
I can do nothing. Oh, the notary, he does not know the frightful
consequences of his robbery!

"Alas! yes, I never dare tell my child my fears--not to grieve her;
but I suffer; I have fever; I can hardly sustain myself; I feel within
me the germs of a malady--dangerous, perhaps--my bosom is on fire; my
heart throbs. Oh, if I should fall sick--if I should die! No, no! I
will not--I cannot die--leave Claire--alone, abandoned in Paris--can
it be possible? No! I am not sick, after all--what do I feel? A little
heat, a heaviness about the head, caused, no doubt, from my
uneasiness--from cold--oh, it is nothing serious!

"Come, come, no more of such weakness. It is by cherishing such ideas,
it is in listening thus, that one falls really sick. And I have the
time, truly! Must I not occupy myself in finding some work for Claire
and myself, since this man, who gave us engravings to color--"

Then, after a pause, she added, with indignation, "Oh! this is
abominable, to offer this work at the price of Claire's--to take from
us this miserable means of existence, because I would not allow my
child to go and work at his rooms! Perhaps we may find work elsewhere;
but when one knows nobody, it is so difficult! When one is so
miserably lodged they inspire no confidence; and yet, the small sum
that remains once gone, what shall we do? what will become of us?

"If the laws leave this crime unpunished, I will not--for, if fate
pushes me to the end--if I do not find the means to emerge from the
atrocious position in which this wretch has placed me and my child, I
do not know what I shall do--I shall be capable of killing him--I--
this man--then they can do what they will with me. Yes--but my child?
my child?

"To leave her alone, abandoned--ah! no, I do not wish to die! for
this, I cannot kill this man. What would become of her? She, at
sixteen--she is young, and pure as an angel; but she is handsome--but
misery, hunger, abandonment--what may they not cause? and then--and
then--into what abyss may she not fall?

"Oh! it is frightful--poverty! frightful enough for any one; but
perhaps more so for those who have always lived in opulence. I cannot
beg--I must absolutely see my child starve before I can beg! What a
coward--yet--"

Two or three violent knocks at the door made her tremble, and awoke
her daughter with a start.

"Mamma, what is that?" cried Claire, sitting up in bed; then, throwing
her arms around her mother's neck, who, very much alarmed, pressed her
child to her bosom, "Mamma, what is it?" repeated Claire.

"I do not know, my child; but do not be afraid, it is nothing: some
one knocked; it is, perhaps, the letter we expect."

At this moment the worm-eaten door shook again, under repeated blows
with the fist.

"Who is there?" said Madame de Fermont in a trembling voice.

A coarse, rough voice answered, "Are you deaf, neighbors?"

"What do you want? I do not know you," said Madame de Fermont, trying
to conceal the agitation of her voice.

"I am Robin, your neighbor; give me some fire to light my pipe: come,
make haste!"

"It is that lame man, who is always drunk," said the mother to her
child.

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