Godeschal practised what he preached. Professing the strictest principles of honor, reticence, and honesty, he acted on them without any display, as simply as he walked and breathed. It was the natural working of his soul, as walking and breathing are the working of certain organs.
Eighteen months after Oscar’s arrival, the second clerk had made, for the second time, a small mistake in the accounts of his little cashbox. Godeschal addressed him in the presence of all the clerks:
“My dear Gaudet, leave on your own account, that it may not be said that the chief turned you out. You are either inaccurate or careless, and neither of those faults is of any use here. The chief shall not know, and that is the best I can do for an old fellow-clerk.”
Thus, at the age of twenty, Oscar was third clerk in Maître Desroches’ office. Though he earned no salary yet, he was fed and lodged, for he did the work of a second clerk. Desroches employed two managing clerks, and the second clerk was overdone with work. By the time he had got through his second year at the schools, Oscar, who knew more than many a man who has taken out his license, did the work of the Courts very intelligently, and occasionally pleaded in chambers. In fact, Desroches and Godeschal were satisfied.
Still, though he had become almost sensible, he betrayed a love of pleasure and a desire to shine, which were only subdued by the stern discipline and incessant toil of the life he led. The estate agent, satisfied with the boy’s progress, then relaxed his strictness; and when, in the month of July 1825, Oscar passed his final examination, Moreau gave him enough money to buy some good clothes. Madame Clapart, very happy and proud of her son, prepared a magnificent outfit for the qualified attorney, the second clerk, as he was soon to be. In poor families a gift always takes the form of something useful.
When the Courts reopened in the month of November, Oscar took the second clerk’s room and his place, with a salary of eight hundred francs, board and lodging. And Uncle Cardot, who came privately to make inquiries about his nephew of Desroches, promised Madame Clapart that he would put Oscar in a position to buy a connection if he went on as he had begun.
In spite of such seeming wisdom, Oscar Husson was torn by many yearnings in the bottom of his soul. Sometimes he felt as if he must fly from a life so entirely opposed to his taste and character; a galley slave, he thought, was happier than he. Galled by his iron collar, he was sometimes tempted to run away when he compared himself with some well-dressed youth he met in the street. Now and then an impulse of folly with regard to women would surge up in him; and his resignation was only a part of his disgust of life. Kept steady by Godeschal’s example, he was dragged rather than led by his will to follow so thorny a path.
Godeschal, who watched Oscar, made it his rule not to put his ward in the way of temptation. The boy had usually no money, or so little that he could not run into excesses. During the last year the worthy Godeschal had five or six times taken Oscar out for some “lark,” paying the cost, for he perceived that the cord round this tethered kid’s neck must be loosened; and these excesses, as the austere head-clerk termed them, helped Oscar to endure life. He found little to amuse him at his uncle’s house, and still less at his mother’s, for she lived even more frugally than Desroches.
Moreau could not, like Godeschal, make himself familiar with Oscar, and it is probable that this true protector made Godeschal his deputy in initiating the poor boy into the many mysteries of life. Oscar, thus learning discretion, could at last appreciate the enormity of the blunder he had committed during his ill-starred journey in the coucou; still, as the greater part of his fancies were so far suppressed, the follies of youth might yet lead him astray. However, as by degrees he acquired knowledge of the world and its ways, his reason developed; and so long as Godeschal did not lose sight of him, Moreau hoped to train Madame Clapart’s son to a good end.
“How is he going on?” the estate agent asked on his return from a journey which had kept him away from Paris for some months.
“Still much too vain,” replied Godeschal. “You give him good clothes and fine linen, he wears shirt-frills like a stockbroker, and my gentleman goes walking in the Tuileries on Sundays in search of adventures. What can I say? He is young.—He teases me to introduce him to my sister, in whose house he would meet a famous crew!—actresses, dancers, dandies, men who are eating themselves out of house and home.—He is not cut out for an attorney, I fear. Still, he does not speak badly; he might become a pleader. He could argue a case from a well-prepared brief.”
In November 1825, when Oscar Husson was made second clerk, and was preparing his thesis for taking out his license, a new fourth clerk came to Desroches’ office to fill up the gap made by Oscar’s promotion.
This fourth clerk, whose name was Frédéric Marest, was intended for the higher walks of the law, and was now ending his third year at the schools. From information received by the inquiring minds
