“We’ve come about the journal,” said he.
“What! are you still thinking about that?” said Frederick, in an absent tone.
“Certainly, I am thinking about it!”
And he explained his plan anew. By means of the Bourse returns, they would get into communication with financiers, and would thus obtain the hundred thousand francs indispensable as security. But, in order that the print might be transformed into a political journal, it was necessary beforehand to have a large clientele, and for that purpose to make up their minds to go to some expense—so much for the cost of paper and printing, and for outlay at the office; in short, a sum of about fifteen thousand francs.
“I have no funds,” said Frederick.
“And what are we to do, then?” said Deslauriers, with folded arms.
Frederick, hurt by the attitude which Deslauriers was assuming, replied:
“Is that my fault?”
“Ah! very fine. A man has wood in his fire, truffles on his table, a good bed, a library, a carriage, every kind of comfort. But let another man shiver under the slates, dine at twenty sous, work like a convict, and sprawl through want in the mire—is it the rich man’s fault?”
And he repeated, “Is it the rich man’s fault?” with a Ciceronian irony which smacked of the law-courts.
Frederick tried to speak.
“However, I understand one has certain wants—aristocratic wants; for, no doubt, some woman—”
“Well, even if that were so? Am I not free—?”
“Oh! quite free!”
And, after a minute’s silence:
“Promises are so convenient!”
“Good God! I don’t deny that I gave them!” said Frederick.
The advocate went on:
“At college we take oaths; we are going to set up a phalanx; we are going to imitate Balzac’s Thirteen. Then, on meeting a friend after a separation: ‘Good night, old fellow! Go about your business!’ For he who might help the other carefully keeps everything for himself alone.”
“How is that?”
“Yes, you have not even introduced me to the Dambreuses.”
Frederick cast a scrutinising glance at him. With his shabby frock-coat, his spectacles of rough glass, and his sallow face, that advocate seemed to him such a typical specimen of the penniless pedant that he could not prevent his lips from curling with a disdainful smile.
Deslauriers perceived this, and reddened.
He had already taken his hat to leave. Hussonnet, filled with uneasiness, tried to mollify him with appealing looks, and, as Frederick was turning his back on him:
“Look here, my boy, become my Maecenas! Protect the arts!”
Frederick, with an abrupt movement of resignation, took a sheet of paper, and, having scrawled some lines on it, handed it to him. The Bohemian’s face lighted up.
Then, passing across the sheet of paper to Deslauriers:
“Apologise, my fine fellow!”
Their friend begged his notary to send him fifteen thousand francs as quickly as possible.
“Ah! I recognise you in that,” said Deslauriers.
“On the faith of a gentleman,” added the Bohemian, “you are a noble fellow, you’ll be placed in the gallery of useful men!”
The advocate remarked:
“You’ll lose nothing by it, ’tis an excellent speculation.”
“Faith,” exclaimed Hussonnet, “I’d stake my head at the scaffold on its success!”
And he said so many foolish things, and promised so many wonderful things, in which perhaps he believed, that Frederick did not know whether he did this in order to laugh at others or at himself.
The same evening he received a letter from his mother. She expressed astonishment at not seeing him yet a minister, while indulging in a little banter at his expense. Then she spoke of her health, and informed him that M. Roque had now become one of her visitors.
“Since he is a widower, I thought there would be no objection to inviting him to the house. Louise is greatly changed for the better.” And in a postscript: “You have told me nothing about your fine acquaintance, M. Dambreuse; if I were you, I would make use of him.”
Why not? His intellectual ambitions had left him, and his fortune (he saw it clearly) was insufficient, for when his debts had been paid, and the sum agreed on remitted to the others, his income would be diminished by four thousand at least! Moreover, he felt the need of giving up this sort of life, and attaching himself to some pursuit. So, next day, when dining at Madame Arnoux’s, he said that his mother was tormenting him in order to make him take up a profession.
“But I was under the impression,” she said, “that M. Dambreuse was going to get you into the Council of State? That would suit you very well.”
So, then, she wished him to take this course. He regarded her wish as a command.
The banker, as on the first occasion, was seated at his desk, and, with a gesture, intimated that he desired Frederick to wait a few minutes; for a gentleman who was standing at the door with his back turned had been discussing some serious topic with him.
The subject of their conversation was the proposed amalgamation of the different coal-mining companies.
On each side of the glass hung portraits of General Foy and Louis Philippe. Cardboard shelves rose along the panels up to the ceiling, and there were six straw chairs, M. Dambreuse not requiring a more fashionably-furnished apartment for the transaction of business. It resembled those gloomy kitchens in which great banquets are prepared.
Frederick noticed particularly two chests of prodigious size which stood
