I will write to you and guide you according to the direction which events may take. Mind, no panic or excitement. You must obey me implicitly.”
“What have you been plotting there?” Felicite asked inquisitively.
“My dear mother,” Eugene replied with a smile, “you have had too little faith in me thitherto to induce me to confide in you my hopes, particularly as at present they are only based on probabilities. To be able to understand me you would require faith. However, father will inform you when the right time comes.”
Then, as Felicite assumed the demeanour of a woman who feels somewhat piqued, he added in her ear, as he kissed her once more: “I take after you, although you disowned me. Too much intelligence would be dangerous at the present moment. When the crisis comes, it is you who will have to manage the business.”
He then quitted the room, but, suddenly reopening the door, exclaimed in an imperious tone: “Above all things, do not trust Aristide; he is a mar-all, who would spoil everything. I have studied him sufficiently to feel certain that he will always fall on his feet. Don’t have any pity; if we make a fortune, he’ll know well enough how to rob us of his share.”
When Eugene had gone, Felicite endeavoured to ferret out the secret that was being hidden from her. She knew her husband too well to interrogate him openly. He would have angrily replied that it was no business of hers. In spite, however, of the clever tactics she pursued, she learnt absolutely nothing. Eugene had chosen a good confidant for those troubled times, when the greatest discretion was necessary. Pierre, flattered by his son’s confidence, exaggerated that passive ponderosity which made him so impenetrable. When Felicite saw she would not learn anything from him, she ceased to flutter round him. On one point only did she remain inquisitive, but in this respect her curiosity was intense. The two men had mentioned a price stipulated by Pierre himself. What could that price be? This after all was the sole point of interest for Felicite, who did not care a rap for political matters. She knew that her husband must have sold himself dearly, but she was burning to know the nature of the bargain. One evening, when they had gone to bed, finding Pierre in a good humour, she brought the conversation round to the discomforts of their poverty.
“It’s quite time to put an end to this,” she said. “We have been ruining ourselves in oil and fuel since those gentlemen have been coming here. And who will pay the reckoning? Nobody perhaps.”
Her husband fell into the trap, and smiled with complacent superiority. “Patience,” said he. And with an air of shrewdness he looked into his wife’s eyes and added: “Would you be glad to be the wife of a receiver of taxes?”
Felicite’s face flushed with a joyous glow. She sat up in bed and clapped her old withered little hands like a child.
“Really?” she stammered. “At Plassans?”
Pierre, without replying, gave a long affirmative nod. He enjoyed his consort’s astonishment and emotion.
“But,” she at last resumed, half sitting, “you would have to deposit an enormous sum as security. I have heard that our neighbour, Monsieur Peirotte, had to deposit eighty thousand francs with the Treasury.”
“Eh!” said the retired oil-dealer, “that’s nothing to do with me; Eugene will see to that. He will get the money advanced by a banker in Paris. You see, I selected an appointment bringing in a good income. Eugene at first made a wry face, saying one must be rich to occupy such posts, to which influential men were usually nominated. I persisted, however, and he yielded. To be a receiver of taxes one need not know either Greek or Latin. I shall have a representative, like Monsieur Peirotte, and he will do all the work.”
Felicite listened to him with rapture.
“I guessed, however,” he continued, “what it was that worried our dear son. We’re not much liked here. People know that we have no means, and will make themselves obnoxious. But all sorts of things occur in a time of crisis. Eugene wished to get me an appointment in another town. However, I objected; I want to remain at Plassans.”
“Yes, yes, we must remain here,” the old woman quickly replied. “We have suffered here, and here we must triumph. Ah! I’ll crush them all, those fine ladies on the Mail, who scornfully eye my woollen dresses! I didn’t think of the appointment of receiver of taxes at all; I thought you wanted to become mayor.”
“Mayor! Nonsense. That appointment is honorary. Eugene also mentioned the mayoralty to me. I replied: ‘I’ll accept, if you give me an income of fifteen thousand francs.’“
This conversation, in which high figures flew about like rockets, quite excited Felicite. She felt delightfully buoyant. But at last she put on a devout air, and gravely said: “Come, let us reckon it out. How much will you earn?”
“Well,” said Pierre, “the fixed salary, I believe, is three thousand francs.”
“Three thousand,” Felicite counted.
“Then there is so much per cent on the receipts, which at Plassans, may produce the sum of twelve thousand francs.”
“That makes fifteen thousand.”
“Yes, about fifteen thousand francs. That’s what Peirotte earns. That’s not all. Peirotte does a little banking business on his own account. It’s allowed. Perhaps I shall be disposed to make a venture when I feel luck on my side.”
“Well, let us say twenty thousand. Twenty thousand francs a year!” repeated Felicite, overwhelmed by the amount.
“We shall have to repay the advances,” Pierre observed.
“That doesn’t matter,” Felicite replied, “we shall be richer than many of those gentlemen. Are the marquis and the others going to share the cake with you?”
“No, no; it will be all for us,” he replied.
Then, as she continued to importune him with her questions, Pierre frowned, thinking that she wanted to wrest his secret from him. “We’ve talked enough,” he said, abruptly. “It’s late, let us go to sleep. It will bring us bad luck to count our chickens beforehand. I haven’t got the place yet. Above all things, be prudent.”
When the lamp was extinguished, Felicite could not sleep. With her eyes closed she built the most marvellous castles in the air. Those twenty thousand francs a year danced a diabolical dance before her in the darkness. She occupied splendid apartments in the new town, enjoyed the same luxuries as Monsieur Peirotte, gave parties, and bespattered the whole place with her wealth. That, however, which tickled her vanity most was the high position that her husband would then occupy. He would pay their state dividends to Granoux, Roudier, and all those people who now came to her house as they might come to a cafe, to swagger and learn the latest news. She had noticed the free-and-easy manner in which these people entered her drawingroom, and it had made her take a dislike to them. Even the marquis, with his ironical politeness, was beginning to displease her. To triumph alone, therefore, to keep the cake for themselves, as she expressed it, was a revenge which she fondly cherished. Later on, when all those illbred persons presented themselves, hats off, before Monsieur Rougon the receiver of taxes, she would crush them in her turn. She was busy with these thoughts all night; and on the morrow, as she opened the shutters, she instinctively cast her first glance across the street towards Monsieur Peirotte’s house, and smiled as she contemplated the broad damask curtains hanging in the windows.
Felicite’s hopes, in becoming modified, had grown yet more intense. Like all women, she did not object to a tinge of mystery. The secret object that her husband was pursuing excited her far more than the Legitimist intrigues of Monsieur de Carnavant had ever done. She abandoned, without much regret, the calculations she had based on the marquis’s success now that her husband declared he would be able to make large profits by other means. She displayed, moreover, remarkable prudence and discretion.
In reality, she was still tortured by anxious curiosity; she studied Pierre’s slightest actions, endeavouring to discover their meaning. What if by chance he were following the wrong track? What if Eugene were dragging them in his train into some breakneck