Part 9

Here Bianchon and Rastignac looked at each other. Madame d’Espard bit her lips.

“What can the age of my children matter to you?”

“Well, madame,” said the lawyer, without seeming to attach any importance to his words, “a lad of fifteen and his brother, of thirteen, I suppose, have legs and their wits about them; they might come to see you on the sly. If they do not, it is because they obey their father, and to obey him in that matter they must love him very dearly.”

“I do not understand,” said the Marquise.

“You do not know, perhaps,” replied Popinot, “that in your petition your attorney represents your children as being very unhappy with their father?”

Madame d’Espard replied with charming innocence:

“I do not know what my attorney may have put into my mouth.”

“Forgive my inferences,” said Popinot, “but Justice weighs everything. What I ask you, madame, is suggested by my wish thoroughly to understand the matter. By your account M. d’Espard deserted you on the most frivolous pretext. Instead of going to Briancon, where he wished to take you, he remained in Paris. This point is not clear. Did he know this Madame Jeanrenaud before his marriage?”

“No, monsieur,” replied the Marquise, with some asperity, visible only to Rastignac and the Chevalier d’Espard.

She was offended at being cross-examined by this lawyer when she had intended to beguile his judgment; but as Popinot still looked stupid from sheer absence of mind, she ended by attributing his interrogatory to the Questioning Spirit of Voltaire’s bailiff.

“My parents,” she went on, “married me at the age of sixteen to M. d’Espard, whose name, fortune, and mode of life were such as my family looked for in the man who was to be my husband. M. d’Espard was then six-and-twenty; he was a gentleman in the English sense of the word; his manners pleased me, he seemed to have plenty of ambition, and I like ambitious people,” she added, looking at Rastignac. “If M. d’Espard had never met that Madame Jeanrenaud, his character, his learning, his acquirements would have raised him--as his friends then believed--to high office in the Government. King Charles X., at that time Monsieur, had the greatest esteem for him, and a peer’s seat, an appointment at Court, some important post certainly would have been his. That woman turned his head, and has ruined all the prospects of my family.”

“What were M. d’Espard’s religious opinions at that time?”

“He was, and is still, a very pious man.”

“You do not suppose that Madame Jeanrenaud may have influenced him by mysticism?”

“No, monsieur.”

“You have a very fine house, madame,” said Popinot suddenly, taking his hands out of his pockets, and rising to pick up his coat-tails and warm himself. “This boudoir is very nice, those chairs are magnificent, the whole apartment is sumptuous. You must indeed be most unhappy when, seeing yourself here, you know that your children are ill lodged, ill clothed, and ill fed. I can imagine nothing more terrible for a mother.”

“Yes, indeed. I should be so glad to give the poor little fellows some amusement, while their father keeps them at work from morning till night at that wretched history of China.”

“You give handsome balls; they would enjoy them, but they might acquire a taste for dissipation. However, their father might send them to you once or twice in the course of the winter.”

“He brings them here on my birthday and on New Year’s Day. On those days M. d’Espard does me the favor of dining here with them.”

“It is very singular behaviour,” said the judge, with an air of conviction. “Have you ever seen this Dame Jeanrenaud?”

“My brother-in-law one day, out of interest in his brother----”

“Ah! monsieur is M. d’Espard’s brother?” said the lawyer, interrupting her.

The Chevalier bowed, but did not speak.

“M. d’Espard, who has watched this affair, took me to the Oratoire, where this woman goes to sermon, for she is a Protestant. I saw her; she is not in the least attractive; she looks like a butcher’s wife, extremely fat, horribly marked with the smallpox; she has feet and hands like a man’s, she squints, in short, she is monstrous!”

“It is inconceivable,” said the judge, looking like the most imbecile judge in the whole kingdom. “And this creature lives near here, Rue Verte, in a fine house? There are no plain folk left, it would seem?”

“In a mansion on which her son has spent absurd sums.”

“Madame,” said Popinot, “I live in the Faubourg Saint-Marceau; I know nothing of such expenses. What do you call absurd sums?”

“Well,” said the Marquise, “a stable with five horses and three carriages, a phaeton, a brougham, and a cabriolet.”