Part 30

“What romances, even those that are most famous, can equal such realities?” he thought. “What a life it will be to relieve the burden of such existences, to seek out causes and effects and remedy them, calming sorrows, helping good; to incarnate one’s own being in misery; to familiarize one’s self with homes like that; to act out constantly in life those dramas which move us so in fiction! I never imagined that good could be more interesting, more piquant than vice.”

“Is monsieur satisfied with his breakfast?” asked Madame Vauthier, who now, with Felicite’s assistance, brought the table close to Godefroid.

Godefroid then saw a cup of excellent cafe au lait with a smoking omelet, fresh butter, and little red radishes.

“Where the devil did you get those radishes?” he asked.

“They were given me by Monsieur Cartier,” answered Madame Vauthier; “and I make a present of them to monsieur.”

“And what are you going to ask me for such a breakfast daily?”

“Well now, monsieur, be fair,--I couldn’t do it for less than thirty sous.”

“Very good, thirty sous then;” said Godefroid; “but how is it that they ask me only forty-five francs a month for dinner, close by here at Machillot’s? That is the same price you ask me for breakfast.”

“But what a difference, monsieur, between preparing a dinner for fifteen or twenty persons and going out to get you just what you want for breakfast! See here! there’s a roll, eggs, butter, the cost of lighting a fire, sugar, milk, coffee!--just think! they ask you sixteen sous for a cup of coffee alone on the place de l’Odeon, and then you have to give a sou or two to the waiter. Here you have no trouble; you can breakfast in slippers.”

“Very well, very well,” said Godefroid.

“Without Madame Cartier who supplies me with milk and eggs and herbs I couldn’t manage it. You ought to go and see their establishment, monsieur. Ha! it’s fine! They employ five journeymen gardeners, and Nepomucene goes there in summer to draw water for them; they hire him of me as a waterer. They make lots of money out of melons and strawberries. It seems monsieur takes quite an interest in Monsieur Bernard,” continued the widow in dulcet tones; “or he wouldn’t be responsible for his debts. Perhaps he doesn’t know all that family owes. There’s the lady who keeps the circulating library on the place Saint-Michel; she is always coming here after thirty francs they owe her,--and she needs it, God knows! That sick woman in there, she reads, reads, reads! Two sous a volume makes thirty francs in three months.”

“That means a hundred volumes a month,” said Godefroid.

“Ah! there’s the old man going now to fetch a roll and cream for his daughter’s tea,--yes, tea! she lives on tea, that lady. She drinks it twice a day. And twice a week she has to have sweet things. Oh! she’s dainty! The old man buys cakes and pates from the pastry cook in the rue de Buci. He don’t care what he spends, if it’s for her. He calls her his daughter! It ain’t often that men of his age do for a daughter what he does for her! He just kills himself, he and Auguste too, for that woman. Monsieur is just like me; I’d give anything to see her. Monsieur Berton says she’s a monster,--something like those they show for money. That’s the reason they’ve come to live here, in this lonely quarter. Well, so monsieur thinks of dining at Madame Machillot’s, does he?”

“Yes, I think of making an arrangement there.”

“Monsieur, it isn’t that I want to interfere, but I must say, comparing food with food, you’d do much better to dine in the rue de Tournon; you needn’t engage by the month, and you’ll find a better table.”

“Whereabouts in the rue de Tournon?”

“At the successors to Madame Giraud. That’s where the gentlemen upstairs go; they are satisfied, and more than satisfied.”

“Well, I’ll take your advice and dine there to-day.”

“My dear monsieur,” said the woman, emboldened by the good-nature which Godefroid intentionally assumed, “tell me seriously, you are not going to be such a muff as to pay Monsieur Bernard’s debts? It would really trouble me if you did; for just reflect, my kind monsieur Godefroid, he’s nearly seventy, and after him, what then? not a penny of pension! How’ll you get paid? Young men are so imprudent! Do you know that he owes three thousand francs?”

“To whom?” inquired Godefroid.

“Oh! to whom? that’s not my affair,” said the widow, mysteriously; “it is enough that he does owe them. Between ourselves I’ll tell you this: somebody will soon be down on him for that money, and he can’t get a penny of credit now in the quarter just on that account.”

“Three thousand francs!” repeated Godefroid; “oh, you needn’t be afraid I’ll lend him that. If I had three thousand francs to dispose of I shouldn’t be your lodger. But I can’t bear to see others suffer, and just for a hundred or so of francs I sha’n’t let my neighbor, a man with white hair too, lack for bread or wood; why, one often loses as much as that at cards. But three thousand francs! good heavens! what are you thinking of?”

Madame Vauthier, deceived by Godefroid’s apparent frankness, let a smile of satisfaction appear on her specious face, which confirmed all her lodger’s suspicions. Godefroid was convinced that the old woman was an accomplice in some plot that was brewing against the unfortunate old man.

“It is strange, monsieur,” she went on, “what fancies one takes into one’s head! You’ll think me very curious, but yesterday, when I saw you talking with Monsieur Bernard I said to myself that you were the clerk of some publisher; for this, you know, is a publisher’s quarter. I once lodged the foreman of a printing-house in the rue de Vaugirard, and his name was the same as yours--”

“What does my business signify to you?” interrupted Godefroid.

“Oh, pooh! you can tell me, or you needn’t tell me; I shall know it all the same,” retorted Vauthier. “There’s Monsieur Bernard, for instance, for eighteen months he concealed everything from me, but on the nineteenth I discovered that he had been a magistrate, a judge somewhere or other, I forget where, and was writing a book on law matters. What did he gain by concealing it, I ask you. If he had told me I’d have said nothing about it--so there!”

“I am not yet a publisher’s clerk, but I expect to be,” said Godefroid.

“I thought so!” exclaimed Madame Vauthier, turning round from the bed she had been making as a pretext for staying in the room. “You have come here to cut the ground from under the feet of--Good! a man warned is a man armed.”