“Do you hear, Oscar?” said Madame Clapart. “And see how indulgent Monsieur Godeschal is, and how he combines the enjoyments of youth with the demands of duty.”
Madame Clapart, seeing the tailor and bootmaker waiting for Oscar, remained behind a moment with Godeschal to return the hundred francs he had just lent the boy.
“A mother’s blessing be on you, monsieur, and on all you do,” said she.
The mother had the supreme delight of seeing her boy well dressed; she had bought him a gold watch, purchased out of her savings, as a reward for his good conduct.
“You are on the list for the conscription next week,” said she, “and as it was necessary to be prepared in case your number should be drawn, I went to see your uncle Cardot; he is delighted at your being so high up at the age of twenty, and at your success in the examinations at the law schools, so he has promised to find the money for a substitute. Do you not yourself feel some satisfaction in finding good conduct so well rewarded? If you still have to put up with some privations, think of the joy of being able to purchase a connection in only five years! And remember too, dear boy, how happy you make your mother.”
Oscar’s face, thinned down a little by hard study, had developed into a countenance to which habits of business had given a look of gravity. He had done growing, and had a beard; in short, from a boy he had become a man. His mother could not but admire him, and she kissed him fondly, saying:
“Yes, enjoy yourself, but remember Monsieur Godeschal’s advice.—By the way, I was forgetting: here is a present from our friend Moreau—a pocketbook.”
“The very thing I want, for the chief gave me five hundred francs to pay for that confounded judgment in Vandenesse, and I did not want to leave them in my room.”
“Are you carrying the money about with you?” said his mother in alarm. “Supposing you were to lose such a sum of money! Would you not do better to leave it with Monsieur Godeschal?”
“Godeschal!” cried Oscar, thinking his mother’s idea admirable.
But Godeschal, like all clerks on Sunday, had his day to himself from ten o’clock, and was already gone.
When his mother had left, Oscar went out to lounge on the Boulevards till it was time for the breakfast. How could he help airing those resplendent clothes, that he wore with such pride, and the satisfaction that every man will understand who began life in narrow circumstances? A neat double-breasted blue cashmere waistcoat, black kerseymere trousers made with pleats, a well-fitting black coat, and a cane with a silver-gilt knob, bought out of his little savings, were the occasion of very natural pleasure to the poor boy, who remembered the clothes he had worn on the occasion of that journey to Presles, and the effect produced on his mind by Georges.
Oscar looked forward to a day of perfect bliss; he was to see the world of fashion for the first time that evening! And it must be admitted that to a lawyer’s clerk starved of pleasure, who had for long been craving for a debauch, the sudden play of the senses was enough to obliterate the wise counsels of Godeschal and his mother. To the shame of the young be it said, good advice and warnings are never to seek. Apart from the morning’s lecture, Oscar felt an instinctive dislike of Georges; he was humiliated in the presence of a man who had witnessed the scene in the drawing-room at Presles, when Moreau had dragged him to the Count’s feet.
The moral sphere has its laws; and we are always punished if we ignore them. One, especially, the very beasts obey invariably and without delay. It is that which bids us fly from anyone who has once injured us, voluntarily or involuntarily, intentionally or no. The being who has brought woe or discomfort on us is always odious. Whatever his rank, however near be the ties of affection, we must part. He is the emissary of our evil genius. Though Christian theory is opposed to such conduct, obedience to this inexorable law is essentially social and preservative. James II’s daughter, who sat on her father’s throne, must have inflicted more than one wound on him before her usurpation. Judas must certainly have given Jesus some mortal thrust or ever he betrayed Him. There is within us a second sight, a mind’s eye, which foresees disasters; and the repugnance we feel to the fateful being is the consequence of this prophetic sense. Though religion may command us to resist it, distrust remains and its voice should be listened to.
Could Oscar, at the age of twenty, be so prudent? Alas! When, at two o’clock, Oscar went into the room of the Rocher de Cancale, where he found three guests besides his fellow-clerks—to wit, an old dragoon captain named Giroudeau; Finot, a journalist who might enable Florentine to get an engagement at the opera; and du Bruel, an author and friend of Tullia’s, one of Mariette’s rivals at the opera—the junior felt his hostility melt away under the first handshaking, the first flow of talk among young men, as they sat at a table handsomely laid for twelve. And indeed Georges was charming
