“Monsieur,” said the Canon coldly, and betraying no sort of feeling in his face, “Mademoiselle Gamard told me yesterday that you were leaving; of the cause of it I know nothing. If she moved me up here, it was because she was obliged to do so. Monsieur l’Abbé Poirel has taken my rooms. Whether the furniture in these rooms belongs to mademoiselle, I know not. If it is yours, you know her perfect honesty; the saintliness of her life is a guarantee for it.
“As to myself, you know how plainly I live. For fifteen years I slept in a bare room, never heeding the damp, which is killing me by inches. At the same time, if you wish to return to these rooms, I am ready to give them up to you.”
As he listened to this terrible speech, Birotteau forgot the matter of the canonry; he went downstairs as briskly as a young man to find Mademoiselle Gamard, and met her at the bottom of the stairs in the large paved passage which joined the two parts of the house.
“Mademoiselle,” said he, bowing, and not heeding the sour, sardonic smile that curled her lips, or the extraordinary fire that gave her eyes a glare like a tiger’s, “I cannot understand why you did not wait till I had removed my furniture before—”
“What?” she exclaimed, interrupting him, “have not all your things been taken to Madame de Listomère’s?”
“But my furniture?”
“Did you never read your agreement?” cried she, in tones which ought to be expressed in musical notation to show how many shades hatred could infuse into the accentuation of every word.
And Mademoiselle Gamard seemed to swell, her eyes flashed once more, and her face beamed; her whole person thrilled with satisfaction.
The Abbé Troubert opened a window to see better to read a folio volume.
Birotteau stood as if thunderstricken.
Mademoiselle Gamard trumpeted at him, in a voice as shrill as a clarion, the following words:—
“Was it not agreed that, in the event of your leaving my house, your furniture was to become mine to indemnify me for the difference between what you paid me for your board, and what I received from the late respectable Abbé Chapeloud? Now, as Monsieur l’Abbé Poirel has been made Canon—”
At these last words Birotteau bowed slightly as if to take leave; then he rushed out of the house. He was afraid lest, if he stayed any longer, he should faint, and so give his relentless foes a too great triumph. Walking like a drunken man, he got back to Madame de Listomère’s town house, where, in a lower room, he found his linen, clothes, and papers all packed into a trunk. At the sight of those relics of his property, the unhappy priest sat down and hid his face in his hands to hide his tears from the sight of men. The Abbé Poirel was Canon! He, Birotteau, found himself homeless, bereft of fortune and furniture.
Happily, Mademoiselle Salomon happened to drive past. The doorkeeper, understanding the poor man’s despair, signaled to the coachman. After a few words of explanation between the lady and the porter, the Abbé allowed himself to be led to his faithful friend, though he could only answer her in incoherent words. Mademoiselle Salomon, alarmed by the temporary derangement of a brain already so feeble, carried him at once to l’Alouette, ascribing these symptoms of mental disturbance to the effect naturally produced on him by the Abbé Poirel’s promotion. She knew nothing of the hapless priest’s agreement with Mademoiselle Gamard, for the excellent reason that he himself did not know its full bearing. And as it is in the nature of things that comedy is often mixed up with the most pathetic incidents, Birotteau’s bewildered answers almost made Mademoiselle Salomon laugh. “Chapeloid was right,” said he; “he is a monster.”
“Who?” said she.
“Chapeloud. He has robbed me of everything.”
“Then you mean Poirel?”
“No, Troubert.”
At length they reached l’Alouette, where the priest’s friends lavished on him such effusive kindness, that by the evening he grew calmer, and they could extract from him an account of all that had occurred that morning.
Monsieur de Bourbonne, always phlegmatic, naturally asked to see the agreement which ever since the day before had seemed to him to contain the key to the riddle. Birotteau brought the fatal document out of his pocket, and held it out to the landowner, who read it hastily, presently coming to a sentence in these terms:—
“Whereas there is a difference of eight hundred francs a year between the price paid by the late Monsieur Chapeloud and the sum for which the aforenamed Sophie Gamard agrees to lodge and board, on the terms hereinbefore stated, the said François Birotteau; whereas the said François Birotteau fully acknowledges that it is out of his power for some years to come to pay the full price paid by Mademoiselle Gamard’s boarders, and more especially by the Abbé Troubert; and, finally whereas the said Sophie Gamard has advanced certain sums of money, the said Birotteau hereby pledges himself to bequeath to her, as an indemnity, the furniture of which he may be possessed at the time of his decease; or in the event of his voluntary departing, for whatever cause or reason, and quitting the premises at present let to him, and no longer availing himself of the benefits contracted for in the agreement made by Mademoiselle Gamard hereinbefore—”
“Heaven above us! What impudence!” exclaimed Monsieur de Bourbonne. “And what claws the said Sophie Gamard has!”
Poor Birotteau, never conceiving in his childish brain of any cause which could ever separate him from Mademoiselle Gamard, had counted on dying under her roof. He had not the least recollection of this clause, of which the terms had not even been discussed at the time when, in his eagerness to lodge with the old maid, he would have signed all the documents she might have
