Maître Mathias Tras a noble and respectable survival of the notaries, obscure men of honor, of whom no receipt was asked for millions, and who returned them in the same bags, tied with the same string; who fulfilled every trust to the letter, drew up inventories for probate with decent feeling, took a paternal interest in their client’s affairs, put a bar sometimes in the way of a spendthrift, and were the depositaries of family secrets; in short, one of those notaries who considered themselves responsible for blunders in their deeds, and who gave time and thought to them. Never, in the whole of his career as a notary, had one of his clients to complain of a bad investment, of a mortgage ill chosen or carelessly managed. His wealth, slowly but honestly acquired, had been accumulated through thirty years of industry and economy. He had found places for fourteen clerks. Religious and generous in secret, Mathias was always to be found where good was to be done without reward. He was an acting member of the Board of Asylums and the Charitable Committee, and the largest subscriber to the voluntary rates for the relief of unexpected disaster, or the establishment of some useful institution. Thus, neither he nor his wife had a carriage; his word was sacred; he had as much money deposited in his cellar as lay at the bank; he was known as “Good Monsieur Mathias”; and when he died, three thousand persons followed him to the grave.
Solonet was the youthful notary who comes in humming a tune, who affects an airy manner, and declares that business may be done quite as efficiently with a laugh as with a serious countenance; the notary who is a captain in the National Guard, who does not like to be known for a lawyer, and aims at the Cross of the Legion of Honor, who keeps his carriage and leaves the correcting of his deeds to his clerks; the notary who goes to balls and to the play, who buys pictures and plays écarté, who has a cash drawer into which he pours deposit-money, repaying in notes what he receives in gold; the notary who keeps pace with the times and risks his capital in doubtful investments, who speculates, hoping to retire with an income of thirty thousand francs after ten years in his office; the notary whose acumen is the outcome of duplicity, and who is feared by many as an accomplice in possession of their secrets; the notary who regards his official position as a means of marrying some bluestocking heiress.
When the fair and elegant Solonet—all curled and scented, booted like a lover of the Vaudeville, and dressed like a dandy whose most important business is a duel—entered the room before his older colleague, who walked slowly from a touch of the gout, the two were the living representatives of one of the caricatures entitled “Then and Now,” which had great success under the Empire.
Though Madame and Mademoiselle Evangelista, to whom “Good Monsieur Mathias” was a stranger, at first felt a slight inclination to laugh, they were at once touched by the perfect grace of his greeting. The worthy man’s speech was full of the amenity that an amiable old man can infuse both into what he says and the manner of saying it.
The younger man, with his frothy sparkle, was at once thrown into the shade. Mathias showed his superior breeding by the measured respect of his address to Paul. Without humiliating his white hairs, he recognized the young man’s rank, while appreciating the fact that certain honors are due to old age, and that all such social rights are interdependent. Solonet’s bow and “How d’ do?” were, on the contrary, the utterance of perfect equality, which could not fail to offend the susceptibilities of a man of the world, and to make himself ridiculous in the eyes of a man of rank.
The young notary, by a somewhat familiar gesture, invited Madame Evangelista to speak with him in a window-recess. For some few moments they spoke in whispers, laughing now and then, no doubt to mislead the others as to the importance of the conversation, in which Maître Solonet communicated the plan of battle to the lady in command.
“And could you really,” said he, in conclusion, “make up your mind to sell your house?”
“Undoubtedly!” said she.
Madame Evangelista did not choose to tell her lawyer her reasons for such heroism, as he thought it, for Solonet’s zeal might have cooled if he had known that his client meant to leave Bordeaux. She had not even said so to Paul, not wishing to alarm him prematurely by the extent of the circumvallations needed for the first outworks of a political position.
After dinner the plenipotentiaries left the lovers with Madame Evangelista, and went into an adjoining room to discuss business. Thus two dramas were being enacted: by the chimney corner in the drawing-room a love scene in which life smiled bright and happy; in the study a serious duologue, in which interest was laid bare, and already played the part it always fills under the most flowery aspects of life.
“My dear sir, the deed will be in your hands; I know what I owe to my senior.” Mathias bowed gravely. “But,” Solonet went on, unfolding a rough draft, of no use whatever, that a clerk had written out, “as we are the weaker party, as we are the spinster, I have drafted the articles
