As for your embarrassments, I hold a hundred thousand francs for you; you can pay your principal debts, and sell what property you have left with a power of redemption, for you will soon obtain an office which will enable you by degrees to pay off your creditors.
Then, as for your wife, once enlightened as to her character you can rule her. When you loved her you had no power to manage her;not loving her, you will have an unconquerable force. I will undertake, myself, to make your mother-in-law as supple as a glove; for you must recover the use of the hundred and fifty thousand francs a year those two women have squeezed out of you.
Therefore, I say, renounce this expatriation which seems to me no better than a pan of charcoal or a pistol to your head. To go away is to justify all calumnies. The gambler who leaves the table to get his money loses it when he returns; we must have our gold in our pockets. Let us now, you and I, be two gamblers on the green baize of politics; between us loans are in order. Therefore take post-horses, come back instantly, and renew the game. You'll win it with Henri de Marsay for your partner, for Henri de Marsay knows how to will, and how to strike.
See how we stand politically. My father is in the British ministry; we shall have close relations with Spain through the Evangelistas, for, as soon as your mother-in-law and I have measured claws she will find there is nothing to gain by fighting the devil. Montriveau is our lieutenant-general; he will certainly be minister of war before long, and his eloquence will give him great ascendancy in the Chamber. Ronquerolles will be minister of State and privy-councillor; Martial de la Roche-Hugon is minister to Germany and peer of France; Serisy leads the Council of State, to which he is indispensable; Granville holds the magistracy, to which his sons belong; the Grandlieus stand well at court; Ferraud is the soul of the Gondreville coterie,--low intriguers who are always on the surface of things, I'm sure I don't know why. Thus supported, what have we to fear? The money question is a mere nothing when this great wheel of fortune rolls for us. What is a woman?--you are not a schoolboy. What is life, my dear fellow, if you let a woman be the whole of it? A boat you can't command, without a rudder, but not without a magnet, and tossed by every wind that blows. Pah!
The great secret of social alchemy, my dear Paul, is to get the most we can out of each age of life through which we pass; to have and to hold the buds of our spring, the flowers of our summer, the fruits of our autumn. We amused ourselves once, a few good fellows and I, for a dozen or more years, like mousquetaires, black, red, and gray; we denied ourselves nothing, not even an occasional filibustering here and there. Now we are going to shake down the plums which age and experience have ripened. Be one of us; you shall have your share in the PUDDING we are going to cook.
Come; you will find a friend all yours in the skin of H. de Marsay.
As Paul de Manerville ended the reading of this letter, which fell like the blows of a pickaxe on the edifice of his hopes, his illusions, and his love, the vessel which bore him from France was beyond the Azores. In the midst of this utter devastation a cold and impotent anger laid hold of him.
"What had I done to them?" he said to himself.
That is the question of fools, of feeble beings, who, seeing nothing, can nothing foresee. Then he cried aloud: "Henri! Henri!" to his loyal friend. Many a man would have gone mad; Paul went to bed and slept that heavy sleep which follows immense disasters,--the sleep that seized Napoleon after Waterloo.
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Casa-Real, Duc de The Quest of the Absolute Claes, Josephine de Temninck, Madame The Quest of the Absolute Magus, Elie The Vendetta A Bachelor's Establishment Pierre Grassou Cousin Pons Manerville, Paul Francois-Joseph, Comte de The Thirteen The Ball at Sceaux Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Manerville, Comtesse Paul de The Lily of the Valley A Daughter of Eve Marsay, Henri de The Thirteen The Unconscious Humorists Another Study of Woman The Lily of the Valley Father Goriot Jealousies of a Country Town Ursule Mirouet Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Letters of Two Brides The Ball at Sceaux Modeste Mignon The Secrets of a Princess The Gondreville Mystery A Daughter of Eve Maulincour, Baronne de The Thirteen Stevens, Dinah Cousin Pons Vandenesse, Comte Felix de The Lily of the Valley Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Cesar Birotteau Letters of Two Brides A Start in Life The Secrets of a Princess Another Study of Woman The Gondreville Mystery A Daughter of Eve.