“You can see, monsieur,” said the woman.
Desroches opened the letter and read it. On finding the five-hundred-franc note he went back into his own room, furious with his second clerk. Then at half-past seven he heard Godeschal dictating a report on the judgment to another clerk, and a few minutes later Godeschal came into the room in triumph.
“Was it Oscar Husson who went to Simon this morning?” asked Desroches.
“Yes, monsieur,” replied Godeschal.
“Who gave him the money?” said the lawyer.
“You,” said Godeschal, “on Saturday.”
“It rains five-hundred-franc notes, it would seem!” cried Desroches. “Look here, Godeschal, you are a good fellow, but that little wretch Husson does not deserve your generosity. I hate a fool, but yet more I hate people who will go wrong in spite of the care of those who are kind to them.” He gave Godeschal Mariette’s note and the five hundred francs she had sent. “Forgive me for opening it, but the maid said it was a matter of business.—You must get rid of Oscar.”
“What trouble I have had with that poor little ne’er-do-well!” said Godeschal. “That scoundrel Georges Marest is his evil genius; he must avoid him like the plague, for I do not know what might happen if they met a third time.”
“How is that?” asked Desroches, and Godeschal sketched the story of the practical joking on the journey to Presles.
“To be sure,” said the lawyer. “I remember Joseph Bridau told me something about that at the time. It was to that meeting that we owed the Comte de Sérizy’s interest in Bridau’s brother.”
At this moment Moreau came in, for this suit over the Vandenesse property was an important affair to him. The Marquis wanted to sell the Vandenesse estate in lots, and his brother opposed such a proceeding.
Thus the land-agent was the recipient of the justifiable complaints and sinister prophecies fulminated by Desroches as against his second clerk; and the unhappy boy’s most friendly protector was forced to the conclusion that Oscar’s vanity was incorrigible.
“Make a pleader of him,” said Desroches; “he only has to pass his final; in that branch of the law his faults may prove to be useful qualities, for conceit spurs the tongue of half of our advocates.”
As it happened, Clapart was at this time out of health, and nursed by his wife, a painful and thankless task. The man worried the poor soul, who had hitherto never known how odious the nagging and spiteful taunts can be in which a half-imbecile creature gives vent to his irritation when poverty drives him into a sort of cunning rage. Delighted to have a sharp dagger that he could drive home to her motherly heart, he had suspected the fears for the future which were suggested to the hapless woman by Oscar’s conduct and faults. In fact, when a mother has received such a blow as she had felt from the adventure at Presles she lives in perpetual alarms; and by the way in which Madame Clapart cried up Oscar whenever he achieved a success, Clapart understood all her secret fears and would stir them up on the slightest pretext.
“Well, well, Oscar is getting on better than I expected of him. I always said his journey to Presles was only a blunder due to inexperience. Where is the young man who never made a mistake? Poor boy, he is heroic in his endurance of the privations he would never have known if his father had lived. God grant he may control his passions!” and so on.
So, while so many disasters were crowding on each other in the Rue de Vendôme and the Rue de Béthisy, Clapart, sitting by the fire wrapped in a shabby dressing-gown, was watching his wife, who was busy cooking over the bedroom fire some broth, Clapart’s herb tea, and her own breakfast.
“Good heavens! I wish I knew how things fell out yesterday. Oscar was to breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale, and spend the evening with some Marquise—”
“Oh! don’t be in a hurry; sooner or later murder will out,” retorted her husband. “Do you believe in the Marquise? Go on; a boy who has his five senses and a love of extravagances—as Oscar has, after all—can find Marquises in Spain costing their weight in gold! He will come home some day loaded with debt—”
“You don’t know how to be cruel enough, and to drive me to despair!” exclaimed Madame Clapart. “You complained that my son ate up all your salary, and he never cost you a sou. For two years you have not had a fault to find with Oscar, and now he is second clerk, his uncle and Monsieur Moreau provide him with everything, and he has eight hundred francs a year of his own earning. If we have bread in our old age, we shall owe it to that dear boy. You really are too unjust.”
“You consider my foresight an injustice?” said the sick man sourly.
There came at this moment a sharp ring at the bell. Madame Clapart ran to open the door, and then remained in the outer room, talking to Moreau, who had come himself to soften the blow that the news of Oscar’s levity must be to his poor mother.
“What! He lost his master’s money?” cried Madame Clapart in tears.
“Aha! what did I tell you?” said Clapart, who appeared like a spectre in the doorway of the drawing-room, to which he had shuffled across under the prompting of curiosity.
“But what is to be done with him?” said his wife, whose distress left her insensible to this stab.
“Well, if he bore my name,” said Moreau, “I should calmly allow him to be drawn for the conscription, and if he should be called to serve, I would not pay for a substitute. This is the second time that sheer vanity has brought him into mischief. Well, vanity may lead him to some brilliant action, which will win him promotion as a soldier. Six years’ service will at any rate add a little weight
