Angèle's fortune

Front matter

A

V ®

o" vO q, t ^

Contents

Chapter Page

I. A PAIR OF BLUE EYES 21

n. INVITED TO DINNER 41

Chapter II. Invited To Dinner

NE afternoon, Joseph Toussaint was busy in the office writing. As he copied page after page, his eyes occasionally rested on the vacant desk of the amateur clerk.

“Shall I never see this Monsieur des Armoises?” he thought-.

Since his first interview with the fair AngMe, the recollection of what she had said of this mysterious Ren^, had often come back to him, and he had grown excessively curious in regard to this only son, who had wealth and good looks, who wrote poetry, and, “ who rode horseback like an angel.”

“ I am certain,” he said, “ that I shall be disappointed in him. Nevertheless, I should really like to make his acquaintance.

Suddenly the office door was burst open, as if by a whirlwind, and a young man wrapped in a heavy fur coat entered. He shook hands cordially with Monsieur S^ndchal, with a merry laugh, and exchanged a friendly good morning with the other clerks.

Joseph straightened himself up a little, and examined the new comer with keen attention. Ren4 des Armoises threw his overcoat on a table, and then went to the angele’s fortune.

stove, standing with his back toward it and talking as fast as possible. He was apparently about twenty-four, tall and well made, elegantly but very simply dressed. His brown eyes were frank and clear, his broad forehead and crisp curls spoke of intellect and strength. The imperious expression of the upper part of the face was corrected by the joyous smiles of a somewhat sensual mouth, which was half concealed by a heavy black beard — the tout ensemble irresistibly reminded one of the energetic, passionate physiognomy of the bust of Lucius Verus, to be seen at the Louvre. In the manners of the young man, there was a certain ease and dash which pleased Joseph, while at the same time it disconcerted him.

At this moment Lawyer Boblique opened the door of his private office, nodded to Rene, and asked Toussaint if his papers were ready. He ran them hastily over : —

“Very well,” he said, “Beaurain is ill and confined to the house. Take this paper to him for his signature, and remember that you must not leave without the money. You will go with Monsieur des Armoises, who will show you the way to Le Chanois. It is a fine day,” added the lawyer, turning toward Rend, “ and the walk will do you good.”

Rend bowed, and put on his coat, while Joseph folded the papers. The two young men were soon outside, and rapidly passing through the town found themselves soon on the road which leads to the Plaine de Viel.

angele’s fortune.

It was clean walking, for the snow of the previous week had been well trodden, and was now frozen hard.

“ Do you smoke ? ” asked des Armoises, extending to Toussaint a cigar case.

“ Thank you,” replied the country boy awkwardly. “ I have my pipe.”

He filled it slowly, while Ren^ lighted a cigar, with a little shrug of the shoulders which seemed to say: “ He is a bear, but after all, what do I care ! ”

The two young men walked on in silence. Joseph was excessively anxious to hear his companion talk, having promised himself, on starting, to have that amusement, but it was not so easy a thing as he fancied.

Ren^ seemed to be thoroughly indifferent to his companion. . He looked at the landscape, hummed an opera air, and replied by the briefest monosyllables, to Toussaint’s infrequent remarks. It was in this fashion that they reached the Farm du Ch^nois where Lawyer Boblique’s client dwelt. He was a farmer who was always behind hand with his rent, and the owner of the premises threatened to turn him out.

Before the threats and the papers brought by Joseph, the sick and recreant debtor wilted entirely, and the gold pieces were reluctantly counted down.

“ Another victim of Boblique’s ! ” said Ren^, as they turned their faces homeward.

“Are you in earnest,” cried Joseph, coloring at these words.

“ Am I in earnest? Well, rather! You do not know angele’s fortune.

your master yet, and have little idea of the ingenuity with which he gathers in the money of other people. You are new in the office — it is easy to see that ! And how do you think you shall like the business? ”

“Not at all,” answered Toussaint in a dreamy tone. I came here because my elder brother desired it, but I begin to dislike it intensely.”

“Is that so? I did just the same thing. I entered Boblique’s office to please an old uncle, whose heir I have since become. Now that I am my own master, back I go to Paris, and in three months shall again begin to live, as I understand the word.”

“And how do you understand it?” asked Joseph.

“ By living, I mean movement. A life filled with a succession of passionate emotion. Novelty is as necessary to me as bread, and fills me with an energy that here I never feel.”

“ How tastes differ ! ” exclaimed Joseph. “ What I like, is absolute and entire solitude. A solitude filled with books. A quiet country village, or a farm house shut in by trees, undisturbed by a sound, except from the poultry yard. That is what I enjoy! I adore nature, and I never tire of the same scene.”

“You are a dreamer then,” remarked Ren^, looking at J oseph with more interest than before.

“ And you a poet ! ” replied Toussaint, with a smile.

“ Who told you so ? ”

“Monsieur S^n^chal’s daughter, who knows your verses by heart.”

angele’s foktune.

“Ah! Mademoiselle AngMe I ” exclaimed Rene, highly gratified. “ She is a very pretty girl. I hope you are paying your court to her.”

“I!” stammered Joseph. “I shall never take the liberty.”

“ And why not ? ” interrupted des Armoises. “ You should adore all that is adorable — beautiful women — luminous skies — glowing colors. Look! is not that magnificent ! ”

And he pointed out to his companion the white and sunny plain stretched before them. In a hollow lay the farm house they had just left, from its chimneys rose a light bluish smoke — beyond, the wooded hills overlapped each other, and their last outlines were lost in a soft grey mist.

“ This silent symphony is exquisite,” resumed Ren^. All these varied tones are in perfect unison, and the clear blue of the sky harmonises with the forest, whose every twig clothed in ice, takes a bluish tinge. How beautiful ! ”

He was evidently sincere as he gazed, his eyes flashed with enthusiasm, and he threw back his shoulders and drank in the fresh, keen air with delight.

Joseph watched him in mute surprise. Far off on the plain were seen two women bending under the weight of their fagots of dead wood. They moved slowly over the snow, and when they reached the highway, one of them sat down near the young men to rest. She was old and decrepit, long locks of angele’s fortune.

gray hair fell over her wrinkled cheeks, her eyes had the mournful expression of a beast of burthen, and her gaunt form tottered under the burthen she bore.

Joseph looked at her sadly, and walked on, thoughtfully.

“ That old woman has an immortal soul, as well as ourselves,” he said, sadly, to des Armoises. “ She has had nothing in this life. What think you, will be her fate in the next world — will the deprivations here be made up to her there ? I confess, that troubles me sometimes.”

Ken^ uttered a long, low whistle.

“ What a strange fellow ! ” he thought.

“ Life is too short,” he said, aloud, “ for us to spend it in guessing riddles. Philosophical problems fatigue the mind uselessly ; the contemplation of sordid realities, weighs down the imagination. I don’t like to wade in the mud myself, with the rain pouring down my back.”

“Good heavens!” cried Joseph, lifting his eyes in astonishment to heaven.

“All artists and poets are alike,” he continued. “You pitilessly cut all the chords of humanity which do not vibrate according to your own fancies. You have no conception of Duty, it seems to me.”

“ Duty I ” replied Ren4, with a laugh. “ Duty is a scarecrow placed in the field of dreams, to frighten away the poet who ventures to pluck forbidden fruit.” And the young man looked about him with an air of haughty defiance.

angele’s fortune.

“ Our strongest duty, we owe to ourselves,” he said, slowly, “ and to Art — and Art can only be developed through the imagination — which necessarily tramples on conventional prejudices.”

Joseph turned and looked at his companion with a sort of fear. Rent’s haughty profile was clearly cut against the red of the sunset sky. He was forced, in spite of himself, to admire the young man, and he felt a certain sympathy with his enthusiasm and strength of will. This silent admiration was not lost on Ren^, and influenced him in favor of Toussaint, who after a short silence, said ;

“ Your words upset all my preconceived opinions. You have not convinced me, and yet, I am silent. A simple village youth can not argue with a student like yourself.”

Ren^ laughed and clapping his companion on the shoulder, he said, gayly :

“ You are an original ! I like you. Let us be friends.”

By this time, they had reached an elevation which commanded the town. Twilight was creeping gently over the scene. On the side of the town where the manufactories all lay, the forges shone brightly, and rows of windows were lighted, one after another. The far off hills were lost in the mist, and the notes of a hand organ came toward them on the breeze.

“ Let us be friends ! ” repeated Ren^. “ And to inaugurate our friendship, you will come home to-night angele’s foktune.

and dine with me. I will present you to my mother, show you my books, and sing for you.”

This promise of friendship, this unexpected hospitality, touched Joseph. He consented at once to the proposition, saying that he must, however, hand the money to lawyer Boblique, and notify Monsieur Sdndchal.

“ I will not leave you,” said Ren^, gayly ; and he did, in fact, accompany Joseph to the office, and then to la Rue des Savonnaires, and finally took the young man to his home, in the best part of Bay.

“ Dear mother ! ” he said, as he entered a salon where a lady sat with her work, at the corner of the fire, “ this is one of my fellow clerks. Monsieur Toussaint. We have had a long walk together in the snow, and have sworn eternal friendship on the way — a friendship now to be cemented by a good dinner and a good fire.”

“You are very welcome, sir,” said Madame des Armoises, rising with an air which was both courteous and haughty.

While Ren^ kissed his mother with demonstrative affection, Joseph stood looking at this tall, elegant woman, whose beauty was unmarred by Time, and whose fifty years were indicated only by a becoming embonpoint. He recognized in the broad brow, brown eyes and firmly chiselled lips, the same intellect which was the predominant characteristic of her son’s face. Only, with the mother, the imperious expression was not tempered by his laughing lips and jocund air.

angele’s fortune.

Notwithstanding all her efforts to be affable, Madame des Armoises was imperious in every gesture, word and movement.

While Ren^ asked his mother what she had been doing all day, Joseph looked about the salon with its thick, soft carpets, heavy hangings and family portraits, all of which, in his eyes, indicated princely luxury; and when, in the dining-room, he saw the table with its flowers and glittering silver, softly lighted by a lamp hung from the ceiling, he mentally compared it to the S^n^chal establishment. As his hand touched the satiny damask, he involuntarily thought of the plebeian varnished cloth at Madame Sdn^chal’s.

All was novel to him here, — the arrangement of the table, the chafing dishes, the very way in which Ren^ and his mother used their forks and broke their bread* He looked on in wonder at the attentions Madame des Armoises lavished on her son, whom she worshiped and spoiled.

If the table was gay with flowers in the middle of January, it was because Ren^ could not exist without flowers ; that wine which they drank from glasses frail and delicate as bubbles, was Rent’s wine. As to Ren4 himself, he seemed to move in this atmosphere of attention like a fish in water. He allowed himself to be adored, emptied his glass gayly, and uttered witticism after witticism, which his mother, in her turn, drank as if it were the choicest wine, and which finally, did their work of intoxication on Joseph himself. So great was 3 angele’s fortune.

the effect produced on the somewhat lethargic nature of Joseph, that when dinner was over and his happy host went out for a moment to light the fire in his own sanctum, his guest burst out involuntarily and as if he were alone :

“ A most rich and generous nature ! ”

“ Ah ! ” said Madame des Armoises, whose heart was at once won, “you recognize his talent, do you not?”

“ Yes,” answered Joseph, “ I do indeed. But, dear Madame, you spoil him. His life cannot always be as happy as it is now.”

“ He can at all events,” she answered, “ look back on these days with me, as having been days of unalloyed bliss.” She then went on to say how much she loved her only son. She had been early left a widow, and had never wished to marry again. “No one,” she added, “ should come between her and her boy. She wished,” she said, “ to see him famous and well married; and yet,” she added, with a smile, “ I know I should be horribly jealous of any woman whom he loved.”

Joseph thought with a pang of this mother love, and remembered that he, the last of the eleven Toussaints, had lost his mother when he was less than a year old.

When they had finished their coffee. Rend took him to his den, as he called the charming room where Avere his piano and his books, and played to him for an hour.

“ Well,” said the poet, when Toussaint rose to depart, “ are you sorry you came ? ”

“I am very glad,” answered Joseph, in his strongest

German accent, for when he was moved by emotion, he relapsed into his provincial intonation. “There are two men in me — the dreamer and the savage. I am glad that you divined the one under the skin of the other.”

He returned to his lodgings, subjugated and enchanted.

“ Yes, we are friends,” he said, some days later, in reply to Angele’s questions. Then he added, in his picturesque phraseology, “ we are friends, although he is far cleverer than I ; but I have more heart than he has. His glass is always full of sparkling, foaming wine, while I only pour into mine a little claret. It may have an earthy flavor, but it is warming and strengthening. Sometimes we may change our glasses, and to do so occasionally, will be mutually advantageous.”

In fact, after this first interview, the two men became very intimate, and Ren^ often went to la Rue des Savonnaires to find Toussaint ; but he also went at hours when he knew his friend must be in the office. Under pretext of waiting for him, he would take a chair in the room where Angele sat sewing, with her mother. Ren^ had the faculty of being thoroughly at ease with people of all stations in life, and also of putting them equally at their ease. He, therefore, soon conquered Madame Sen^chal’s heart. He liked to make Angele talk, and found infinite amusement in her girlish enthusiasm. Knowing that she had learned his verses, he made her repeat them, corrected her whenever her angele’s fortune.

interpretation did not satisfy him, and applauded gayly when she followed his instruction.

Madame S^ndchal listened to her daughter with pleasure, with no comprehension of the words she uttered, however, but she delighted in any opportunity of displaying her daughter’s talents. After Rent’s departure, the girl would often go to the window, and, with her forehead pressed to the glass, would listen to the monotonous swash of the water, and never realize that night had come, so bright was the light of hope within herself.

Thanks to Des Armoises, Joseph was becoming quite a polished member of society. Ren^ took him to the theatre, to dinners and assemblies, and introduced him everywhere as his friend. Toussaint, however, found little enjoyment in this exciting life. He was really happier in the S^n^chal mansion, with AngMe and her mother, than anywhere else. After supper. Monsieur S^n^chal, who was in mortal dread of apoplexy, always went out to walk. Joseph then read aloud to the two women, who worked at their embroidery, and whose bent heads nearly touched each other under the shaded lamp.

It was so restful there, with the doors shut, the curtains drawn close, and the dash of the water under the windows.

At nine o’clock. Monsieur S^n^chal returned, his pockets stuffed with chestnuts. Taking a penknife, he carefully cut a slit in the side of each, and laid them on angele’s fortune.

the top of the stove — their crackling and snapping making an accompaniment to Joseph’s reading. By degrees the tempting odor of the roasting chestnuts filled the room — the old clerk brought out a bottle of wine, and the four ate their simple supper, amid jests and laughs. Madame Sen^chal, softened by the wine, would then bring out a pack of cards and, with the greatest gravity, proceed to tell Ang^le’s fortune, the girl listening, with heightened color and bated breath.

There was always a stranger, who would come from a great distance and bring with him much wealth.

“ And, after all,” said Madame S^nechal, when her husband laughed at her, “there would be nothing so very strange in that. My grandfather had an uncle, who went away, a great many years ago, to the East Indies. Who knows that he did not become rich ? that he did not have descendants? and that we shall not hear of them yet? Much stranger things than that have happened, we all know ! ”

Joseph listened to all this, and, as he looked at the young girl, wished, with all his heart, that the stranger from a great distance, would come with a fortune for the pretty creature.

He had become each day more and more interested in AngHe, who had finally taken possession of his heart. Up to this time women had played no part in Joseph’s life — in fact, he had known none save his sister Genevieve — consequently, all the region of feminine love was to him like those white spaces on geographical maps marked “ unexplored countrie%r Since he had taken up his abode in the S^ndchal mansion, he fancied that he had made some little advances in his explorations of this unknown land.

AngMe has fascinated him without any premeditation on her part. She had treated him precisely as she had treated his predecessor — with gay indifference — but even that, was enough to make Joseph quite happy. He belonged to that very small class in this world who give much and ask little. His imagination had the property, like certain lenses, of tripling the rays which passed through them.

The smallest friendly word assumed to him, the proportions of a caress. A smile from Angele kept him warm all day, and at night, when he went up to his dingy room after pressing her hand, he passed a wakeful, but happy night. His favorite dream was of a tiny house at Alberstroff, with a garden full of fruit trees. He saw this cottage, and always with a blue-eyed woman, in a white dress, standing in the doorway.

This was Joseph’s castle in the air.

This household seemed all to lean toward castles in the air, for they were built by all its members. It was as if the fogs from the canal were favorable for the construction of these shadowy edifices. Within their alcove Monsieur Senechal and his wife spent many an hour, edifying each other with stories. The old clerk’s castles were possibly a little common-place, but they were square and solid, while those of his wife were frail and delicate, but rose to immeasurable heights. Unfortunately, however, a staircase was generally lacking, and one could ascend them only with wings. The husband and wife agreed only on one point — the castle of each, was built for Angdle’s exclusive use.

Monsieur S^n^chal wished her to marry a good, honest, steady fellow like Joseph Toussaint, but his wife heard his plebeian name with a shudder. She wanted a more distinguished son-in-law — a man of the world — an artist — some one, in fact, like Monsieur des Armoises. That was the kind of man whom Ang^le ought to marry.

Thereupon Monsieur S^n^chal would shrug his shoulders, fly into a passion, and exclaim :

“ Are you crazy ? He should not marry Angele were his fortune twice what it is ! A scatterbrain — a hanger on at the theatres, who will ruin himself sooner or later, and all who belongs to him.”

In the meantime, this scatterbrain of whom the old clerk stood in such mortal terror, was conspiring quietly to take AngMe to a subscription ball, of which he was one of the managers. He had thrown off his mourning for his uncle, and before leaving for Paris he wished to have “ one more jolly time,” as he phrased it, in Bay.

Joseph, led away by the prospect of a waltz with AngHe, entered into the plot, and had even invested his savings in a dress coat. Up to this time he had angele's foktune.

looked upon this as an extravagance, but the idea of dancing with Ang^le impelled him to the rash deed. Angele’s toilette had been secretly prepared, for more than a fortnight, when Monsieur S^n^chal reluctantly gave his consent, and then only on condition that he should not be made to go. It was therefore with her mother and Joseph that Ang^le entered the public ballroom. She was simply but freshly dressed in white tarletan.

Madame Sen^chal, gorgeous in a flanie-colored silk, held her head high, happy in her anticipation of the effect which her daughter’s beauty would excite.

Ang^le, who had never before been at a ball, was enchanted at the lights, the flowers and the toilettes. Hardly was she seated, than the orchestra played a waltz, and Toussaint offered his arm. The girl would have been glad to make her d^but with a more brilliant partner, but she had given her word to Joseph, and they took their places. The young man had declared that he could waltz, and well, but after a few turns the poor fellow found himself embarrassed among the trains — elbowed, and knocked, and lost the time completely. No notion had he, however, of giving up — waltz he would — and he dragged the unfortunate Ang^e along in spite of her protestations.

At this moment Ren^ passed them.

“ WiU you not give me a turn,” he said, and without the smallest ceremony, he slipped his arm round the girl’s waist and bore her off from the astonished Joseph, angele’s fortune.

who stood looking after the pair as they glided around the room.

“ Yes ! he does dance better than I ! ” said Toussaint, bravely.

It was a pleasure to see them, and they talked as they danced.

“ I have never danced with you before, Mademoiselle,” murmured Ren^.

“Nor will you again, as you are about to leave Bay. When are you going ? ”

“ On Sunday,” and as he spoke his eyes sparkled, so pleased was he at the thought of seeing Paris once more.

“ How happy you look ! You will forget Bay and its inhabitants,” she added with a half sigh.

“ You are mistaken. I never forget my friends, and I shall often think of the old house in La Rue de Savonnaires, where the water ripples ^ softly under the windows.”

“ Truly ?” she said, and her face brightened. The waltz was over. He took her back to her place, and she sat with thoughts far away from the scene before her, watching him as he moved about the room. She regarded him as a demigod, and almost wondered at his condescension in mingling with the common herd, and accepting their admiration.

The ball was at its height, when about midnight an event occurred, which was the precursor of many events in the calm monotonous society of Bay, which are talked of even to this day.

angele’s fortune.

A quadrille was just over and the centre of the ballroom was unoccupied, when an old lawyer named Bouillard came in. This gentleman had never been seen at a ball before, but the general astonishment at his entrance was heightened by seeing with him a stranger whose general air and dress made a great impression.

“ Permit me,” said the lawyer to one of the managers, “ to present to you. Monsieur Gaspard La Genevraie, a celebrated traveller who comes now from Java, having just been round the world for the second time.”

The stranger bowed with a haughty air, throwing out his full chest, and hollowing in the waist which was still slender, although he was at least fifty years old. His pearl gray pantaloons looked as if he were melted and run into them, being literally without a wrinkle. His coat was turned back with velvet in the style of 1830, and gave him the look of one of the lions, celebrated by Balzac, and illustrated by Gavarni. His cravat of white silk was loosely knotted under a turnover collar and showed a well modeled throat.

A large and powerfully-made head was covered with thick hair which, like the moustache was carefully dyed. The forehead was crossed by several deep wrinkles, a large aquiline nose with wide expanded nostrils, and an olive complexion, with eyes which had not lost their brilliancy, completed the physique of the stranger. His eyelids were heavy, shorn of lashes, and veined with thready lines of red, showing that the man had used, and abused life. His mouth, drooping at the corners, angele’s fortune.

indicated this also, its expression was cynical and worn, but when these eyes and this mouth were animated in conversation, one was tempted to believe, that the man was twenty years younger than he had looked when his face was in repose.

Gaspard de Genevraie was in reality one of the last of that eccentric generation, who from 1835 to 1840, flourished as the champions of romance.

After having attempted a literary career, he threw himself into politics, in the same way that an unappreciated painter plunges into photography. In 1848 he was the president of a club, and a conspicuous public speaker ; all at once he vanished like a meteor from the sky. After a time he was heard of in Mexico, and again in California. He had tried everything, socialism— religion — work — he had even been consul in some town in the Malayan Archipelago. Now, as the lawyer Bouillard stated, he had returned from Java, and had come into port like a solid ship, which has weathered many a tough gale, but which still keeps a bold face, in spite of its broken masts and tattered sails.

Standing leaning against the railing of the orchestra with one leg lightly crossed over the other, and one thumb in his vest, he looked about the room and occasionally exchanged a word with the lawyer at his side.

“ Do you see,” said the lawyer, “ that lady in red, seated by the side of a young girl in white.

angele’s fortune.

“Yes,” answered La Genevraie, in a full deep voice. “I see them both — the little girl is very pretty, with her dreamy angelic air, but the mother looks like an old woman who keeps an apple stand at the corner of the street.”

“Hush!” said the lawyer, “the mother represents one of the principal branches of that Morel family, of which we were speaking.”

“ The deuce she does I Then my dear sir, pray take me to her, and introduce me.”

The lawyer, followed by his companion, went at once to Madame Sdn^chal, who opened her eyes wide, as he said something to her in a low voice.

“ Have I ever heard of a relative who went to India, do you ask,” cried the good lady aloud. “ To be sure I have ; it was an uncle of my grandfather’s, a certain Jacques Morel, who had left Bay before the revolution, and of whom we have never heard since.”

“Well then, I can tell you of him — or rather Monsieur Genevraie will — He will tell you that your relative died in that foreign land, and left no children to inherit his large fortune.”