“If that is the sentence you would pronounce on a son,” said Madame Clapart, “I see that a father’s heart is very unlike a mother’s.—My poor Oscar—a soldier—?”
“Would you rather see him jump head foremost into the Seine after doing something to disgrace himself? He can never now be an attorney; do you think he is fitted yet to be an advocate? While waiting till he reaches years of discretion, what will he become? A thorough scamp; military discipline will at any rate preserve him from that.”
“Could he not go into another office? His uncle Cardot would certainly pay for a substitute—and Oscar will dedicate his thesis to him—”
The clatter of a cab, in which was piled all Oscar’s personal property, announced the wretched lad’s return, and in a few minutes he made his appearance.
“So here you are, Master Joli-Coeur!” cried Clapart.
Oscar kissed his mother, and held out a hand to Monsieur Moreau, which that gentleman would not take. Oscar answered this contempt with a look to which indignation lent a firmness new to the bystanders.
“Listen, Monsieur Clapart,” said the boy, so suddenly grown to be a man; “you worry my poor mother beyond endurance, and you have a right to do so; she is your wife—for her sins. But it is different with me. In a few months I shall be of age, and you have no power over me even while I am a minor. I have never asked you for anything. Thanks to this gentleman, I have never cost you one sou, and I owe you no sort of gratitude; so, have the goodness to leave me in peace.”
Clapart, startled by this apostrophe, went back to his armchair by the fire. The reasoning of the lawyer’s clerk and the suppressed fury of a young man of twenty, who had just had a sharp lecture from his friend Godeschal, had reduced the sick man’s imbecility to silence, once and for all.
“An error into which you would have been led quite as easily as I, at my age,” said Oscar to Moreau, “made me commit a fault which Desroches thinks serious, but which is really trivial enough; I am far more vexed with myself for having taken Florentine, of the Gaîté theatre, for a Marquise, and actresses for women of rank, than for having lost fifteen hundred francs at a little orgy where everybody, even Godeschal, was somewhat screwed. This time, at any rate, I have hurt no one but myself. I am thoroughly cured.—If you will help me, Monsieur Moreau, I swear to you that in the course of the six years during which I must remain a clerk before I can practice—”
“Stop a bit!” said Moreau. “I have three children; I can make no promises.”
“Well, well,” said Madame Clapart, with a reproachful look at Moreau, “your uncle Cardot—”
“No more uncle Cardot for me,” replied Oscar, and he related the adventure of the Rue de Vendôme.
Madame Clapart, feeling her knees give way under the weight of her body, dropped on one of the dining-room chairs as if a thunderbolt had fallen.
“Every possible misfortune at once!” said she, and fainted away.
Moreau lifted the poor woman in his arms, and carried her to her bed. Oscar stood motionless and speechless.
“There is nothing for you but to serve as a soldier,” said the estate-agent, coming back again. “That idiot Clapart will not last three months longer, it seems to me; your mother will not have a sou in the world; ought I not rather to keep for her the little money I can spare? This was what I could not say to you in her presence. As a soldier, you will earn your bread, and you may meditate on what life is to the penniless.”
“I might draw a lucky number,” said Oscar.
“And if you do?—Your mother has been a very good mother to you. She gave you an education, she started you in a good way; you have lost it; what could you do now? Without money, a man is helpless, as you now know, and you are not the man to begin all over again by pulling off your coat and putting on a workman’s or artisan’s blouse. And then your mother worships you.—Do you want to kill her? For she would die of seeing you fallen so low.”
Oscar sat down, and could no longer control his tears, which flowed freely. He understood now a form of appeal which had been perfectly incomprehensible at the time of his first error.
“Penniless folks ought to be perfect!” said Moreau to himself, not appreciating how deeply true this cruel verdict was.
“My fate will soon be decided,” said Oscar; “the numbers are drawn the day after tomorrow. Between this and then I will come to some decision.”
Moreau, deeply grieved in spite of his austerity, left the family in the Rue de la Cerisaie to their despair.
Three days after Oscar drew Number 27. To help the poor lad, the ex-steward of Presles found courage enough to go to the Comte de Sérizy and beg his interest to get Oscar into the cavalry. As it happened, the Count’s son, having come out well at his last examination on leaving the École Polytechnique, had been passed by favor, with the rank of sublieutenant, into the cavalry regiment commanded by the Duc de Maufrigneuse. And so, in the midst of his fall, Oscar had the small piece of luck of being enlisted in this fine regiment at the Comte de Sérizy’s recommendation, with the promise of promotion to be quartermaster in a
