He placed both hands on his forehead, then, spreading out his arms as if his mind were in a distracted state:
“If, however, we only made the effort! if we were only sincere, we might understand each other. But no! The workmen are no better than the capitalists, you see! At Elbœuf recently they refused to help at a fire! There are wretches who profess to regard Barbès as an aristocrat! In order to make the people ridiculous, they want to get nominated for the presidency Nadaud, a mason—just imagine! And there is no way out of it—no remedy! Everybody is against us! For my part, I have never done any harm; and yet this is like a weight pressing down on my stomach. If this state of things continues, I’ll go mad. I have a mind to do away with myself. I tell you I want no money for myself! You’ll pay it back to me, deuce take it! I am lending it to you.”
Frederick, who felt himself constrained by necessity, ended by taking the four thousand francs from him. And so they had no more disquietude so far as the Vatnaz was concerned.
But it was not long ere Rosanette was defeated in her action against Arnoux; and through sheer obstinacy she wished to appeal.
Deslauriers exhausted his energies in trying to make her understand that Arnoux’s promise constituted neither a gift nor a regular transfer. She did not even pay the slightest attention to him, her notion being that the law was unjust—it was because she was a woman; men backed up each other amongst themselves. In the end, however, she followed his advice.
He made himself so much at home in the house, that on several occasions he brought Sénécal to dine there. Frederick, who had advanced him money, and even got his own tailor to supply him with clothes, did not like this unceremoniousness; and the advocate gave his old clothes to the Socialist, whose means of existence were now of an exceedingly uncertain character.
He was, however, anxious to be of service to Rosanette. One day, when she showed him a dozen shares in the Kaolin Company (that enterprise which led to Arnoux being cast in damages to the extent of thirty thousand francs), he said to her:
“But this is a shady transaction, and you have now a grand chance!”
She had the right to call on him to pay her debts. In the first place, she could prove that he was jointly bound to pay all the company’s liabilities, since he had certified personal debts as collective debts—in short, he had embezzled sums which were payable only to the company.
“All this renders him guilty of fraudulent bankruptcy under articles 586 and 587 of the Commercial Code, and you may be sure, my pet, we’ll send him packing.”
Rosanette threw herself on his neck. He entrusted her case next day to his former master, not having time to devote attention to it himself, as he had business at Nogent. In case of any urgency, Sénécal could write to him.
His negotiations for the purchase of an office were a mere pretext. He spent his time at M. Roque’s house, where he had begun not only by sounding the praises of their friend, but by imitating his manners and language as much as possible; and in this way he had gained Louise’s confidence, while he won over that of her father by making an attack on Ledru-Rollin.
If Frederick did not return, it was because he mingled in aristocratic society, and gradually Deslauriers gave them to understand that he was in love with somebody, that he had a child, and that he was keeping a fallen creature.
The despair of Louise was intense. The indignation of Madame Moreau was not less strong. She saw her son whirling towards the bottom of a gulf the depth of which could not be determined, was wounded in her religious ideas as to propriety, and as it were, experienced a sense of personal dishonour; then all of a sudden her physiognomy underwent a change. To the questions which people put to her with regard to Frederick, she replied in a sly fashion:
“He is well, quite well.”
She was aware that he was about to be married to Madame Dambreuse.
The date of the event had been fixed, and he was even trying to think of some way of making Rosanette swallow the thing.
About the middle of autumn she won her action with reference to the kaolin shares. Frederick was informed about it by Sénécal, whom he met at his own door, on his way back from the courts.
It had been held that M. Arnoux was privy to all the frauds, and the ex-tutor had such an air of making merry over it that Frederick prevented him from coming further, assuring Sénécal that he would convey the intelligence to Rosanette. He presented himself before her with a look of irritation on his face.
“Well, now you are satisfied!”
But, without minding what he had said:
“Look here!”
And she pointed towards her child, which was lying in a cradle close to the fire. She had found it so sick at the house of the wet-nurse that morning that she had brought it back with her to Paris.
All the infant’s limbs were exceedingly thin, and the lips were covered with white specks, which in the interior of the mouth became, so to speak, clots of bloodstained milk.
“What did the doctor say?”
“Oh! the doctor! He pretends that the journey has increased his—I don’t know what it is, some name in ‘ite’—in short, that he has the thrush.24 Do you know what that is?”
Frederick replied without hesitation: “Certainly,” adding that it was nothing.
But in the evening he was alarmed by the child’s debilitated look and by the progress of
