“When your name is Savinien de Portenduère,” cried Rastignac, “when you have a future peer of France for your cousin, and the Admiral de Kergarouët for your granduncle, if you are such a blunderer as to let yourself be sent to Sainte-Pélagie, at any rate you must get out of it, my dear fellow!”
“Why did you say nothing about it to me?” cried de Marsay. “My traveling carriage was at your orders, ten thousand francs, and letters for Germany. We know Gobseck and Gigonnet, and the other beasts of prey; we would have brought them to terms. To begin with, what ass brought you to drink of these poisoned waters?” asked de Marsay.
“Des Lupeaulx.”
The three young men looked at each other, communicating the same thought, a suspicion, but without speaking it.
“Explain your resources; show us your hand,” said de Marsay.
When Savinien had described his mother and her cap and bows, her little house with its three windows fronting on the Rue des Bourgeois, with no garden but a yard with a well, and an outhouse to hold fire-logs; when he had estimated the value of this dwelling, built of rough stone set in reddish cement, and that of the farm of Bordières, the three dandies exchanged glances, and, with a look of deep meaning, quoted the word spoken by the Abbé in Alfred de Musset’s play les Marrons du feu—for his Contes d’Espagne had just come out:
“Dismal!”
“Your mother would pay in response to a skilful letter,” said Rastignac.
“Yes; but after—?” cried de Marsay.
“If you had only been put into the hackney coach,” said Lucien, “the King’s Government would give you a berth in a foreign mission; but Sainte-Pélagie is not the anteroom to an Embassy.”
“You are not up to the mark for life in Paris,” said Rastignac.
“Let’s see,” de Marsay began, looking at Savinien from head to foot as a horse-dealer examines a horse, “You have good blue eyes well set, you have a well-shaped white forehead, splendid black hair, a neat little moustache which looks well on your pale skin, and a slight figure; your foot bespeaks a good breed, shoulders and chest strong, and not too like a coal-heaver’s. I should call you a good specimen of a dark man. Your face is in the style of that of Louis XIII; not much color, and a well-shaped nose; and you have besides the thing that appeals to woman, the indescribable something of which men themselves are never conscious, which is in the air, the walk, the tone of voice, the flash of the eyes, the gesture, a hundred little things which women see, and to which they attach a meaning which eludes us. You do not know yourself, my dear fellow. With a little style, in six months you could fascinate an Englishwoman with a hundred thousand francs, especially if you use the title of Vicomte de Portenduère to which you have a right. My charming mother-in-law. Lady Dudley, who has not her equal for skewering two hearts together, will discover the damsel for you in some alluvial district of Great Britain. But then you must be able to stave off your debts for ninety days, and know how to do it by some skilful stroke of high finance. Oh! why did you say nothing of it to me? At Baden these moneylenders would have respected you, have served you perhaps; but after clapping you in prison they despise you. The moneylender is like society, like the mob—on his knees to a man who is clever enough to take advantage of him, and pitiless to a lamb. In the eyes of a certain set, Sainte-Pélagie is a demon which takes the shine off a young man’s soul to a terrible extent. Will you have my opinion, my dear boy? I say to you as I did to little d’Esgrignon: Pay your debts cautiously, keeping enough to live on for three years, and get married in the country to the first girl who has thirty thousand francs a year. In three years you will be sure to have found some suitable heiress who will gladly hear herself called Madame de Portenduère. These are the words of wisdom. Let us have a drink. I propose a toast: ‘To the girl with money!’ ”
The young men did not leave their ex-friend till the official hour of parting, and on the threshold of the gate they said to each other, “He is not game!—He is very much crushed!—Will he pick himself up again?”
The next day Savinien wrote to his mother, a general confession covering twenty-two pages. Madame de Portenduère, after crying for a whole day, wrote first to her son, promising to get him out of prison, and then to the Comtes de Portenduère and de Kergarouët.
The letters the curé had just read, and which the poor mother now held in her hand, moist with her tears, had reached her that morning, and had broken her heart.
Paris, September 1829.
To Madame de Portenduère.
Madame—You cannot doubt the great interest which the admiral takes in your troubles. The news you write to M. de Kergarouët distresses me all the more because my house was open to your son; we were proud of him. If Savinien had had more confidence in the admiral, we would have taken him in charge, and he would now have a suitable appointment; but the unhappy boy told us nothing! The admiral could not possibly pay a hundred thousand francs; he is himself in debt, and has involved himself for me, for I knew nothing of his pecuniary position. He regrets it all the more because Savinien, by allowing himself to be arrested, has for the moment tied our hands. If my handsome nephew had not felt for me some foolish passion which smothered the voice of relationship in the arrogance of a
