And, indeed, Marius did deserve some credit for these walks; for winter had come, spreading a thick coat of mud over the pavement of all those little streets which are always forgotten by the street-cleaners.
The cashier's home had resumed its habits of before the war, its drowsy monotony scarcely disturbed by the Saturday dinner, by M.
Desclavette's naivetes or old Desormeaux's puns.
Maxence, in the mean time, had ceased to live with his parents. He had returned to Paris immediately after the Commune; and, feeling no longer in the humor to submit to the paternal despotism, he had taken a small apartment on the Boulevard du Temple; but, at the pressing instance, of his mother, he had consented to come every night to dine at the Rue St. Gilles.
Faithful to his oath, he was working hard, though without getting on very fast. The moment was far from propitious; and the occasion, which he had so often allowed to escape, did not offer itself again.
For lack of any thing better, he had kept his clerkship at the railway; and, as two hundred francs a month were not quite sufficient for his wants, he spent a portion of his nights copying documents for M. Chapelain's successor.
"What do you need so much money for?" his mother said to him when she noticed his eyes a little red.
"Every thing is so dear!" he answered with a smile, which was equivalent to a confidence, and yet which Mme. Favoral did not understand.
He had, nevertheless, managed to pay all his debts, little by little. The day when, at last, he held in his hand the last receipted bill, he showed it proudly to his father, begging him to find him a place at the Mutual Credit, where, with infinitely less trouble, he could earn so much more.
M. Favoral commenced to giggle.
"Do you take me for a fool, like your mother?" he exclaimed. "And do you think I don't know what life you lead?"
My life is that of a poor devil who works as hard as he can."
"Indeed! How is it, then, that women are constantly seen at your house, whose dresses and manners are a scandal in the neighborhood?"
"You have been deceived, father."
"I have seen."
"It is impossible. Let me explain."
No, you would have your trouble for nothing. You are, and you will ever remain, the same; and it would be folly on my part to introduce into an office where I enjoy the esteem of all, a fellow, who, some day or other, will be fatally dragged into the mud by some lost creature."
Such discussions were not calculated to make the relations between father and son more cordial. Several times M. Favoral had insinuated, that, since Maxence lodged away from home, he might as well dine away too. And he would evidently have notified him to do so, had he not been prevented by a remnant of human respect, and the fear of gossip.
On the other hand, the bitter regret of having, perhaps, spoiled his life, the uncertainty of the future, the penury of the moment, all the unsatisfied desires of youth, kept Maxence in a state of perpetual irritation.
The excellent Mme. Favoral exhausted all her arguments to quiet him.
"Your father is harsh for us," she said; "but is he less harsh for himself? He forgives nothing; but he has never needed to be forgiven himself. He does not understand youth, but he has never been young himself; and at twenty he was as grave and as cold as you see him now. How could he know what pleasure is? - he to whom the idea has never come to take an hour's enjoyment."
"Have I, then, been guilty of any crimes, to be thus treated by my father?" exclaimed Maxence, flushed with anger. "Our existence here is an unheard-of thing. You, poor, dear mother! - you have never had the free disposition of a five-franc-piece. Gilberte spends her days turning her dresses, after having had them dyed. I am driven to a petty clerkship. And my father has fifty thousand francs a year!"
Such, indeed, was the figure at which the most moderate estimated M. Favoral's fortune. M. Chapelain, who was supposed to be well informed, insinuated freely that his friend Vincent, besides being the cashier of the Mutual Credit, must also be one of its principal stock-holders. Now, judging from the dividend which had just been paid, the Mutual Credit must, since the war, have realized enormous profits. All its enterprises were successful; and it was on the point of negotiating a foreign loan which would infallibly fill its exchequer to overflowing.
M. FAVORAL, moreover, defended himself feebly from these accusations of concealed opulence. When M. Desormeaux told him, "Come, now, between us, candidly, how many millions have you?" he had such a strange way of affirming that people were very much mistaken, that his friends' convictions became only the more settled. And, as soon as they had a few thousand francs of savings, they promptly brought them to him, imitated in this by a goodly number of the small capitalists of the neighborhood, who were wont to remark among themselves, "That man is safer than the bank!"
Millionaire or otherwise, the cashier of the Mutual Credit became daily more difficult to live with. If strangers, those who had with him but a superficial intercourse, if the Saturday guests themselves, discovered in him no appreciable change, his wife and his children followed with anxious surprise the modifications of his humor.
If outwardly he still appeared the same impassible, precise, and grave man, he showed himself at home more fretful than an old maid, - nervous, agitated, and subject to the oddest whims. After remaining three or four days without opening his lips, he would begin to speak upon all sorts of subjects with amazing volubility.
Instead of watering his wine freely, as formerly, he had begun to drink it pure; and he often took two bottles at his meal, excusing himself upon the necessity that he felt the need of stimulating himself a little after his excessive labors.
Then he would be taken with fits of coarse gayety; and he related singular anecdotes, intermingled with slang expressions, which Maxence alone could understand.