The Deputy of Arcis

III

A MINISTER’S MORNING

The next day, when Rastignac entered his office, the adjoining waiting-room was already occupied by eleven persons waiting with letters of introduction to solicit favors, also two peers of France and several deputies.

Presently a bell rang.  The usher, with an eagerness which communicated itself to all present, entered the sanctum; an instant later he came out, bearing this stereotyped message:—­

“The minister is obliged to attend a Council.  He will, however, have the honor to receive the gentlemen of the two Chambers.  As for the others, they can call again at another time.”

“What other time?” asked one of the postponed; “this is the third time in three days that I have come here uselessly.”

The usher made a gesture which meant, “It is not my affair; I follow my orders.”  But hearing certain murmurs as to the privilege granted to honorable members, he said, with a certain solemnity,—­

“The honorable gentlemen came to discuss affairs of public interest with his Excellency.”

The office-seekers, being compelled to accept this fib, departed.  After which the bell rang again.  The usher then assumed his most gracious expression of face.  By natural affinity, the lucky ones had gathered in a group at one end of the room.  Though they had never seen one another before, most of them being the offspring of the late national lying-in, they seemed to recognize a certain representative air which is very difficult to define, though it can never be mistaken.  The usher, not venturing to choose among so many eminent personages, turned a mute, caressing glance on all, as if to say,—­

“Whom shall I have the honor of first announcing?”

“Gentlemen,” said Colonel Franchessini, “I believe I have seen you all arrive.”

And he walked to the closed door, which the usher threw open, announcing in a loud, clear voice,—­

“Monsieur le Colonel Franchessini!”

“Ha! so you are the first this morning,” said the minister, making a few steps towards the colonel, and giving him his hand.  “What have you come for, my dear fellow?—­a railroad, a canal, a suspension bridge?”

“I have come, my good-natured minister, on private business in which you are more interested than I.”

“That is not a judicious way of urging it, for I warn you I pay little or no attention to my own business.”

“I had a visit from Maxime this morning, on his return from Arcis-sur-Aube,” said the colonel, coming to the point.  “He gave me all the particulars of that election.  He thinks a spoke might be put in the wheel of it.  Now, if you have time to let me make a few explanations—­”

The minister, who was sitting before his desk with his back to the fireplace, turned round to look at the clock.

“Look here, my dear fellow,” he said, “I’m afraid you will be long, and I have a hungry pack outside there waiting for me.  I shouldn’t listen to you comfortably.  Do me the favor to go and take a walk and come back at twelve o’clock to breakfast.  I’ll present you to Madame de Rastignac, whom you don’t know, I think, and after breakfast we will take a few turns in the garden; then I can listen to you in peace.”

“Very good, I accept that arrangement,” said the colonel, rising.

As he crossed the waiting-room, he said,—­

“Messieurs, I have not delayed you long, I hope.”

Then, after distributing a few grasps of the hand, he departed.

Three hours later, when the colonel entered the salon where he was presented to Madame de Rastignac, he found there the Baron de Nucingen, who came nearly every day to breakfast with his son-in-law before the Bourse hour, Emile Blondet of the “Debats,” Messieurs Moreau (de l’Oise), Dionis, and Camusot, three deputies madly loquacious, and two newly elected deputies whose names it is doubtful if Rastignac knew himself.  Franchessini also recognized Martial de la Roche-Hugon, the minister’s brother-in-law, and the inevitable des Lupeaulx, peer of France.  As for another figure, who stood talking with the minister for some time in the recess of a window, the colonel learned, after inquiring of Emile Blondet, that it was that of a former functionary of the upper police, who continued, as an amateur, to do part of his former business, going daily to each minister under all administrations with as much zeal and regularity as if he were still charged with his official duties.

Madame de Rastignac seen at close quarters seemed to the colonel a handsome blonde, not at all languishing.  She was strikingly like her mother, but with that shade of greater distinction which in the descendants of parvenus increases from generation to generation as they advance from their source.  The last drop of the primitive Goriot blood had evaporated in this charming young woman, who was particularly remarkable for the high-bred delicacy of all her extremities, the absence of which in Madame de Nucingen had shown the daughter of Pere Goriot.

As the colonel wished to retain a footing in the house he now entered for the first time, he talked about his wife.

“She lived,” he said, “in the old English fashion, in her home; but he should be most glad to bring her out of her retreat in order to present her to Madame de Rastignac if the latter would graciously consent.”

“Now,” said the minister, dropping the arm of Emile Blondet, with whom he had been conversing, “let us go into the garden,”—­adding, as soon as they were alone, “We want no ears about us in this matter.”

“Maxime came to see me, as I told you,” said the colonel, “on his return from Arcis-sur-Aube, and he is full of an idea of discovering something about the pretended parentage of this sculptor by which to oust him—­”

“I know,” interrupted Rastignac; “he spoke to me about that idea, and there’s neither rhyme nor reason in it.  Either this Sallenauve has some value, or he is a mere cipher.  If the latter, it is useless to employ such a dangerous instrument as the man Maxime proposes to neutralize a power that does not exist.  If, on the other hand, this new deputy proves really an orator, we can deal with him in the tribune and in the newspapers without the help of such underground measures.  General rule:  in a land of unbridled publicity like ours, wherever the hand of the police appears, if even to lay bare the most shameful villany, there’s always a hue and cry against the government.  Public opinion behaves like the man to whom another man sang an air of Mozart to prove that Mozart was a great musician.  Was he vanquished by evidence?  ‘Mozart,’ he replied to the singer, ’may have been a great musician, but you, my dear fellow, have a cold in your head.’”

“There’s a great deal of truth in what you say,” replied Franchessini; “but the man whom Maxime wants to unmask may be one of those honest mediocrities who make themselves a thorn in the side of all administrations; your most dangerous adversaries are not the giants of oratory.”

“I expect to find out the real weight of the man before long,” replied Rastignac, “from a source I have more confidence in than I have in Monsieur de Trailles.  On this very occasion he has allowed himself to be tripped up, and now wants to compensate by heroic measures for his own lack of ability.  As for your other man, I shall not employ him for the purpose Maxime suggests, but you may tell him from me—­”

“Yes!” said Franchessini, with redoubled attention.

“—­that if he meddles in politics, as he shows an inclination to do, there are certain deplorable memories in his life—­”

“But they are only memories now; he has made himself a new skin.”

“I know all about him,” replied Rastignac; “do you suppose there are no other detectives in Paris?  I know that since 1830, when he took Bibi-Lupin’s place as chief of the detective police, he has given his life a most respectable bourgeois character; the only fault I find is that he overdoes it.”

“And yet—­” said the colonel.

“He is rich,” continued Rastignac, not heeding the interruption.  “His salary is twelve thousand francs, and he has the three hundred thousand Lucien de Rubempre left him,—­also the proceeds of a manufactory of varnished leather which he started at Gentilly; it pays him a large profit.  His aunt, Jacqueline Collin, who lives with him, still does a shady business secretly, which of course brings in large fees, and I have the best of reasons for believing that they both gamble at the Bourse.  He is so anxious to keep out of the mud that he has gone to the other extreme.  Every evening he plays dominoes, like any bourgeois, in a cafe near the Prefecture, and Sundays he goes out to a little box of a place he has bought near the forest of Romainville, in the Saint-Gervais meadows; there he cultivates blue dahlias, and talked, last year, of crowning a Rosiere.  All that, my dear colonel, is too bucolic to allow of my employing him on any political police-work.”

“I think myself,” said Franchessini, “that in order not to attract attention, he rolls himself too much into a ball.”

“Make him unwind, and then, if he wants to return to active life and take a hand in politics, he may find some honest way of doing so.  He’ll never make a Saint Vincent de Paul,—­though the saint was at the galleys once upon a time; but there are plenty of ways in which he could get a third or fourth class reputation.  If Monsieur de Saint-Esteve, as he now calls himself, takes that course, and I am still in power, tell him to come and see me; I might employ him then.”

“That is something, certainly,” said Franchessini, aloud; but he thought to himself that since the days of the pension Vauquer the minister had taken long strides and that roles had changed between himself and Vautrin.

“You can tell him what I say,” continued Rastignac, going up the steps of the portico, “but be cautious how you word it.”

“Don’t be uneasy,” replied the colonel.  “I will speak to him judiciously, for he’s a man who must not be pushed too far; there are some old scores in life one can’t wipe out.”

The minister, by making no reply to this remark, seemed to admit the truth of it.

“You must be in the Chamber when the king opens it; we shall want all the enthusiasm we can muster,” said Rastignac to the colonel, as they parted.

The latter, when he took leave of Madame de Rastignac, asked on what day he might have the honor of presenting his wife.

“Why, any day,” replied the countess, “but particularly on Fridays.”