“Yes, du Tillet,” replied Étienne; but he bit his tongue as he recollected how rash it was to confess to an acquaintance with du Tillet.
“Yes.—Well, monsieur, if you were a mother, would you not quake at the thought that Madame du Tillet’s fate might be your child’s? At her age, and née de Granville! To have as a rival a woman of fifty and more. Sooner would I see my daughter dead than give her to a man who had such a connection with a married woman. A grisette, an actress, you take her and leave her.—There is no danger, in my opinion, from women of that stamp; love is their trade, they care for no one, one down and another to come on!—But a woman who has sinned against duty must hug her sin, her only excuse is constancy, if such a crime can ever have an excuse. At least, that is the view I hold of a respectable woman’s fall, and that is what makes it so terrible—”
Instead of looking for the meaning of these speeches, Étienne made a jest of them at Malaga’s, whither he went with his father-in-law elect; for the notary and the journalist were the best of friends.
Lousteau had already given himself the airs of a person of importance; his life at last was to have a purpose; he was in luck’s way, and in a few days would be the owner of a delightful little house in the Rue Saint-Lazare; he was going to be married to a charming woman, he would have about twenty thousand francs a year, and could give the reins to his ambition; the young lady loved him, and he would be connected with several respectable families. In short, he was in full sail on the blue waters of hope.
Madame Cardot had expressed a wish to see the prints for Gil Blas, one of the illustrated volumes which the French publishers were at that time bringing out, and Lousteau had taken the first numbers for the lady’s inspection. The lawyer’s wife had a scheme of her own, she had borrowed the book merely to return it; she wanted an excuse for walking in on her future son-in-law quite unexpectedly. The sight of those bachelor rooms, which her husband had described as charming, would tell her more, she thought, as to Lousteau’s habits of life than any information she could pick up. Her sister-in-law, Madame Camusot, who knew nothing of the fateful secret, was terrified at such a marriage for her niece. Monsieur Camusot, a Councillor of the Supreme Court, old Camusot’s son by his first marriage, had given his stepmother, who was Cardot’s sister, a far from flattering account of the journalist.
Lousteau, clever as he was, did not think it strange that the wife of a rich notary should wish to inspect a volume costing fifteen francs before deciding on the purchase. Your clever man never condescends to study the middle-class, who escape his ken by this want of attention; and while he is making game of them, they are at leisure to throttle him.
So one day early in January 1837, Madame Cardot and her daughter took a hackney coach and went to the Rue des Martyrs to return the parts of Gil Blas to Félicie’s betrothed, both delighted at the thought of seeing Lousteau’s rooms. These domiciliary visitations are not unusual in the old citizen class. The porter at the front gate was not in; but his daughter, on being informed by the worthy lady that she was in the presence of Monsieur Lousteau’s future mother-in-law and bride, handed over the key of the apartment—all the more readily because Madame Cardot placed a gold piece in her hand.
It was by this time about noon, the hour at which the journalist would return from breakfasting at the Café Anglais. As he crossed the open space between the Church of Notre-Dame de Lorette and the Rue des Martyrs, Lousteau happened to look at a hired coach that was toiling up the Rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, and he fancied it was a dream when he saw the face of Dinah! He stood frozen to the spot when, on reaching his house, he beheld his Didine at the coach door.
“What has brought you here?” he inquired.—He adopted the familiar tu. The formality of vous was out of the question to a woman he must get rid of.
“Why, my love,” cried she, “have you not read my letters?”
“Certainly I have,” said Lousteau.
“Well, then?”
“Well, then?”
“You are a father,” replied the country lady.
“Faugh!” cried he, disregarding the barbarity of such an exclamation. “Well,” thought he to himself, “she must be prepared for the blow.”
He signed to the coachman to wait, gave his hand to Madame de la Baudraye, and left the man with the chaise full of trunks, vowing that he would send away illico, as he said to himself, the woman and her luggage, back to the place she had come from.
“Monsieur, monsieur,” called out little Pamela.
The child had some sense, and felt that three women must not be allowed to meet in a bachelor’s rooms.
“Well, well!” said Lousteau, dragging Dinah along.
Pamela concluded that the lady must be some relation; however, she added:
“The key is in the door; your mother-in-law is there.”
In his agitation, while Madame de la Baudraye was pouring out a flood of words, Étienne understood the child to say, “Mother is there,” the only circumstance that suggested itself as
