The lawyer, tall and lean, had no talent but his political opinions, and no income but the meagre profits of his business. At Provins solicitors plead their own cases. In view of his opinions, the Court listened with small favor to Maître Vinet; and the most Liberal farmers, when entangled in lawsuits, would rely on an attorney in favor with the Bench rather than employ Vinet. This man was said to have led astray a rich girl living near Coulommiers, and to have compelled her parents to let her marry him. His wife was one of the Chargeboeufs, an old family of nobles in la Brie, who took their name from the exploit of a squire in Saint Louis’ expedition to Egypt. She had incurred her parents’ displeasure, and they, to Vinet’s knowledge, had arranged to leave their whole fortune to their eldest son, charged, no doubt, with a reversion in favor of his sister’s children. Thus this man’s first ambitious scheme came to nothing. The lawyer, soon haunted by poverty, and ashamed of not having enough to enable his wife to keep up appearances, had made vain efforts to get his foot into a ministerial career; but the rich branch of the Chargeboeufs refused to assist him. These Royalists were strictly moral, and disapproved of a compulsory marriage; besides, their would-be relation’s name was Vinet; how could they favor anyone so common? So the lawyer was handed on from one branch to another when he tried to utilize his wife’s interest with her relations. Madame Vinet found no assistance but from one of the family, a widowed Madame Chargeboeuf, with a daughter, quite poor, who lived at Troyes. And a day came when Vinet remembered the kind reception his wife met with from this lady.
Rejected by the whole world, full of hatred of his wife’s family, of the Government which refused him an appointment, and of the society of Provins, which would have nothing to say to him, Vinet accepted his poverty. His venom fermented and gave him energy to endure. He became a liberal on perceiving that his fortune was bound up with the triumph of the Opposition, and vegetated in a wretched little house in the upper town, which his wife seldom quitted. This girl, born to a better fate, lived absolutely alone in her home with her one child. There are cases of poverty nobly met and cheerfully endured; but Vinet, eaten up by ambition, and feeling that he had wronged a young creature, cherished a dark indignation; his conscience expanded to admit every means to success. His face, still young, changed for the worse. People were sometimes terrified in Court at the sight of his flat viperine head, with its wide mouth, and eyes that glittered through his spectacles; at hearing his sharp, shrill, rasping voice, that wrung their nerves. His muddy complexion, patchy with sickly hues of yellow and green, revealed his suppressed ambitions, his perpetual mortifications and hidden penury. He could argue and harangue; he had no lack of point and imagery; he was learned and crafty. Accustomed to indulge his imagination for the sake of rising by hook or by crook, he might have made a politician. A man who hesitates at nothing so long as it is legal is a strong man, and in this lay Vinet’s strength.
This coming athlete of parliamentary debate—one of the men who were to proclaim the supremacy of the House of Orléans—had a disastrous influence over Pierrette’s fate. At present he wanted to provide himself with a weapon by founding a newspaper at Provins. After having studied the Rogrons from afar, with the assistance of the Colonel, he ended by reckoning on the brother. And this time he reckoned with his host; his poverty was to come to an end after seven dolorous years, during which more than one day had come round without bread. On the day when Gouraud announced to Vinet, on the little Square, that the Rogrons had broken with the citizen aristocracy and official circles of the old town, the lawyer nudged him significantly in the ribs.
“This wife or that, ugly or handsome, it must be all the same to you,” said he. “You should marry Mademoiselle Rogron, and then we could get something done here—”
“I was thinking of it. But they have sent for the daughter of poor Colonel Lorrain—their heiress,” said Gouraud.
“You could make them leave you their money by will. You would have a very nicely fitted house.”
“And the child, after all! Well, we shall see,” said the Colonel, with a jocose and deeply villainous leer, which showed a man of Vinet’s temper how small a thing a little girl was in the eyes of this old soldier.
Since her grandparents had gone into the asylum where they were forlornly ending their days, Pierrette, young and full of pride, was so dreadfully miserable at living there on charity, that she was happy to learn that she had some rich connections. On hearing that she was leaving, Brigaut, the Major’s
