‘So far so good!’ Petit-Claud said to himself. ‘The matter will remain at that stage for quite a time.’
Once the storm had been diverted to Poitiers and the case was in the hands of an advocate of the appeal court briefed by Petit-Claud, this two-faced champion of the Séchard cause induced Eve to take summary proceedings against David for the separation of their estates. To use the current legal jargon, he ‘expedited’ the affair so as to obtain the judgment of separation on 28 July, inserted it in the Courrier de la Charente, gave due notification of it and, on 1 August, the settlement of Madame Séchard’s claim was officially carried through: it recognized her as her husband’s creditor for the paltry sum of ten thousand francs which the loving David had acknowledged as her dowry in the marriage contract. In discharge of this debt he made over to her the stock-in-trade of the printing-office and the household furniture.
While Petit-Claud was thus safeguarding the family goods and chattels, he was also successfully establishing at Poitiers the contention on which he had based his appeal. He was arguing that David ought not to be liable for the costs incurred in the Paris proceedings against Lucien de Rubempré, because the Civil Court there had judged that they fell to Métivier’s charge. This view of the matter, adopted by the Court, was embodied in an order which confirmed the decisions taken against Séchard junior by the Commercial Court of Angoulême while making a rebate on the Paris costs which were charged to Métivier, thus balancing a portion of the costs between the contending parties in recognition of the point of law which had motivated the Séchard appeal. This decision, notified on 17 August to Séchard junior, was implemented on the 18th by a summons to pay the capital, the interest on it and the costs incurred, and by a writ for distraint on the 20th. At that juncture Petit-Claud intervened on Madame Séchard’s behalf and claimed the furniture as belonging to the consort, whose property had been formally sequestrated. What is more, Petit-Claud brought Séchard senior, now his client, into the case, for the following reason:
The day after his daughter-in-law’s visit, the vine-grower had come to Angoulême to consult his solicitor, Maître Cachan, on means to be adopted in order to recover his rent payments, jeopardized by the legal wrangles in which his son was involved.
Cachan told him: ‘I cannot act for the father while I am suing the son. But go and see Petit-Claud. He’s a very able man and will probably serve you even better than I could.’ And when they met in court, Cachan said to Petit-Claud: ‘I’ve sent old Séchard to you. Take him on instead of me on a give-and-take basis.’ – In the provinces as in Paris, solicitors do one another these mutual services.
The day after old Séchard had entrusted his interests to Petit-Claud, tall Cointet came to see his accomplice and said: ‘Try and teach old Séchard a lesson! He’s the sort of man who’ll never forgive his son for landing him in for a thousand francs’ costs: a disbursement like that will dry up any generous impulse in his heart, even if he had one!’
‘Go back to your vineyards,’ Petit-Claud told his new client. ‘Your son is in difficulties. Don’t sponge on him by eating his food. I’ll send for you when the time comes.’
And so, in Séchard’s name, Petit-Claud claimed that the presses now under seal were real estate thanks to the purpose they served, the more so because the building itself had been a printing-office since the reign of Louis XIV. Cachan, indignant on Métivier’s behalf – after finding that Lucien’s furniture in Paris belonged to Coralie, Métivier was now discovering that David’s furniture in Angoulême belonged to his wife and father (some cutting remarks were made about this at the hearing) – proceeded against both father and son with a view to demolishing their claims. ‘Our aim,’ he vociferated in Court, ‘is to unmask the frauds of these men who are building up a most formidable defence-work of bad faith and entrenching themselves behind the clearest and most straightforward articles of the Code. And for what purpose? To avoid paying three thousand francs which have been rifled from the unfortunate Métivier’s coffers. And people dare to accuse the discount-brokers!… In what times are we living?… In fact, I ask you, gentlemen, is there not a general scramble to lay hands on one’s neighbour’s money?… You will certainly not sanction a claim which would bring immorality into the very heart of justice!…’ The Angoulême court, moved by Cachan’s eloquent plea, gave a judgment, after a full hearing, which ceded the ownership of only movable furniture to Madame Séchard, rejected the claims of Séchard senior and flatly ordered him to pay four hundred and thirty-four francs and sixty-five centimes in costs.
‘Old Séchard is good for the money,’ the solicitors said with a laugh. ‘He insisted on putting his foot in it. Let him pay!…’
Notice of the judgment was given on 26 August, which meant that the presses and appurtenances of the printing-office could be put under distraint on the 28th. The placards were duly posted. An order was applied for and obtained for the sale to take place on the premises. An announcement of the sale was inserted in the newspapers, and Doublon flattered himself that he would be able to proceed with the verification of the inventory and hold the sale on September 2nd.
David now owed Métivier, by formal judgment and valid writs of execution – quite legally in fact – the lump sum of five thousand two hundred francs and twenty-five centimes exclusive of interest. He owed Petit-Claud twelve hundred francs plus his fees, the figure for which, by analogy with the noble trustfulness of a cabman who has driven fast to satisfy his customer, was left to his generosity. Madame Séchard owed Petit-Claud about three hundred and fifty francs, and fees into the bargain. Old Séchard’s debt came to four hundred and thirty-four francs and sixty-five centimes, and Petit-Claud also demanded three hundred francs from him in fees. The whole thus amounted to some ten thousand francs.
Apart from the use these particulars may serve in enabling foreign nations to witness the play of judicial artillery fire in France, it is highly desirable that our Parliamentary legislators, supposing of course that legislators have time for reading, should know how far the abuse of legal procedure can go. Should not some minor enactment be speedily passed which in certain cases would forbid solicitors to let costs exceed the sum with which the law-suit is dealing? Is there not something absurd in subjecting a property of one square metre to the same formalities as govern a piece of land worth a million? This very terse account of all the phases through which the Séchard proceedings passed will enlighten readers about the value of such terms as rules of procedure, justice and costs! All this is double Dutch to the vast majority of Frenchmen. It is all part and parcel of what the legal confraternity calls ‘setting a man’s business on fire’. David’s printing type, five thousand pounds in weight, was worth two thousand francs for the metal it contained. The three presses were worth six hundred francs. The rest of the plant might just as well have been sold off as scrap-iron or mouldy wood. The household furniture would have fetched a thousand francs at most. Thus, of values belonging to David Séchard and representing a total of about four thousand francs, Cachan and Petit-Claud had made a pretext for extorting seven thousand francs in costs without reckoning in future perquisites – and the buds in blossom promised very fine fruit, as will be seen. Certainly legal practitioners in the kingdom of France and Navarre – those in Normandy above all – will accord their esteem and admiration to Petit-Claud. But will not good-hearted people spare a tear of sympathy for people like Kolb and Marion?
While this conflict went on, Kolb, sitting in a chair by the alley door so long as David did not need him, carried out his duties as watch-dog. He took in the official writs, though always under the surveillance of one of Petit-Claud’s clerks. When placards announcing the sale of the printing-house stock were affixed, Kolb tore them down as fast as the bill-poster stuck them up. He even rushed through the town to do the same there, crying out the while: ‘Ze scountrelss!… Plaquink so goot a man!… Ant zey call zat tchustice!’ In the mornings Marion was earning fifty centimes turning a wheel in a paper-mill an
d she used them for the daily expenses. Madame Chardon had uncomplainingly resumed the exhausting vigils of her profession as a nurse, and every weekend she handed her wages over to her daughter. She had already made two novenas, but was astonished to find God deaf to her prayers and blind to the gleam of the candles she lit.
15. Climax
ON 3 September Eve received the only letter Lucien wrote to her after the one in which he had announced the circulation of the three bills drawn on his brother-in-law and which David had concealed from his wife.
‘And this is only the third letter I’ve had from him since he left us!’ Lucien’s afflicted sister said to herself as she hesitatingly unsealed the fatal screed. At that moment, she was giving her child his milk – she was bottle-feeding him, for she had not been able to afford to keep on the wet-nurse. One can imagine the state she was in after reading the following letter; David also, whom she woke up. After spending the night at his paper-making, the inventor had gone to bed at about daybreak.
My dear sister,
Two days ago, at five in the morning, one of God’s loveliest creatures breathed her last: the only woman who was capable of loving me as you, David and my mother love me, and who added to such affectionate feeling what a mother and sister could not give – all the bliss of passionate love! Coralie sacrificed everything to me and probably died because of me. For me, who at present haven’t even the money for her funeral! She would have consoled me for the fact of being alive; you alone, dear angels, will be able to console me for her death. This innocent-hearted girl has, I believe, received absolution from her Maker, for she died a Christian death.
Oh, Paris!… My Eve, Paris is at once the glory and all the infamy of France. I have lost many illusions here, and I shall lose many more as I go about begging for the little money I need in order to bury an angel’s body in consecrated ground!
Your unhappy brother,
LUCIEN.
P.S. I must have brought you much sorrow through my frivolity: one day you will know all and forgive me. In any case, you need not worry. When he saw that Coralie and I were in such straits, a worthy merchant of the name of Camusot whom I had caused much cruel affliction, undertook, so he said, to settle this affair.
‘The letter is still wet with his tears!’ said Eve to David, and she looked at him with so much pity that some gleam of his former affection for Lucien showed in his eyes also.
‘Poor boy, he must have suffered very much if he was loved as he says he was,’ exclaimed the man who had found happiness in marriage.
And both husband and wife forgot their own sorrows, faced as they were with this cry of incomparable grief. At that moment Marion rushed in and said: ‘Madame, here they are!… Here they are!’
‘Who?’
‘That demon Doublon and his men. Kolb is struggling with them. They are going to sell us up.’
‘No, no, they shall not sell you up, don’t be alarmed!’ cried Petit-Claud in a voice which echoed through the room leading to the bedroom. ‘I have just launched an appeal. We must not submit to a judgment which taxes us with bad faith. To gain time for you, I have allowed Cachan to go on blathering. I’m sure of getting the better of him again at Poitiers.’
‘But how much will it cost us?’ asked Madame Séchard.
‘Legal fees if you win, a thousand francs if we lose.’
‘Good Heavens!’ poor Eve cried. ‘Isn’t the remedy worse than the disease?’ – When he heard this cry of innocence, now clear-sighted thanks to the glare judicial procedure was casting on their predicament, Petit-Claud stood quite abashed, so impressed he was by Eve’s beauty.
At this juncture old Séchard put in his appearance. He had been summoned by Petit-Claud. The presence of this old man in the young couple’s bedroom, with his grandson in his cradle smiling amid all this sorrow, gave the finishing touch to this scene.
‘Papa Séchard,’ said the young lawyer, ‘You owe me seven hundred francs for having intervened in this case; but you will claim them as against your son and add them to the rent payments due to you.’
The old vinegrower was alive to the stinging irony which Petit-Claud’s air and tone of voice conveyed as he made this remark.
‘It would have cost you less to have stood surety for your son!’ said Eve as she came forward from the cradle to embrace the old man.
David, overwhelmed at the sight of the crowd which had gathered in front of his house, to which Kolb’s scuffle with Doublon’s assistants had attracted many people, tendered a hand to his father without wishing him good-day.
‘Seven hundred francs! How can I owe you that?’ the old man asked Petit-Claud.
‘In the first place, because I have acted for you. Since it’s a question of your rents, as far as I am concerned you and your debtor are jointly responsible. If your son doesn’t pay me the costs for this, you’ll have to pay them… But that’s a trifling matter. In an hour or two they’ll try to get your son in prison. Will you let him be taken there?’
‘How much does he owe?’
‘Something to the tune of five or six thousand francs, apart from what he owes you and what he owes his wife.’
The old man, now suspicious of all and sundry, looked round at the touching spectacle before his eyes in this blue and white bedroom: a lovely woman in tears over her son’s cradle, David, at last bending under the weight of his afflictions, and the solicitor, who had perhaps brought him to this pass in order to entrap him. The ‘bear’ then decided that they were staking on his paternal benevolence, and he was afraid of being exploited. He went over to fondle the child who stretched out his tiny hands to him. In the midst of all this anxiety the tiny boy, who was wearing a little embroidered bonnet with a pink lining, was the object of as much attention as the son of an English peer.
‘All right,’ the old grandfather blurted out. ‘Let David manage as best he can. All I’m thinking of is the baby, and his mother will back me in this. David’s such a scholar that he’ll surely manage to pay his debts.’
‘I’m going to translate your feelings into plain language,’ said the solicitor with a sarcastic air. ‘See now, Papa Séchard, you’re jealous of your son. Listen to the truth: it’s you who put David in his present predicament by selling him your printing-works for three times its real value and you’ve ruined him by making him pay this exorbitant price. It’s a fact. Don’t shake your head. The price the Cointets paid for the periodical – and you pocketed the whole of it – was all your printing-press was worth… You hate your son, not only because you’ve fleeced him, but more so still because you’ve made him a far better man than you are. You’re making a pretence of prodigious love for your grandson in order to disguise the bankruptcy of your feelings for your son and daughter-in-law who might cost you money hic et nunc, whereas your grandson will need your affection only when you’re in extremis. You fondle that little one so that you may appear to love someone in your family and not be taxed with hardhearted-ness. That’s all there is to it, Papa Séchard.’
‘Is that why you sent for me, in order to tell me that?’ the old man said in blustering tones, looking round in turn at the solicitor, his daughter-in-law and his son.
‘Monsieur Petit-Claud,’ cried the unhappy Eve, ‘are you dead set on ruining us? Never has my husband complained about his father.’ – The vine-grower cast a mocking glance at his daughter-in-law – ‘He has told me a hundred times that you’re fond of him in your way,’ she said to the old man, for she was able to understand why he was so much on his guard.
Complying with tall Cointet’s instructions, Petit-Claud was completing the task of embroiling father and son so that the father should not extricate his son from the cruel situation in which he found himself. ‘The day when we get David in prison,’ tall Cointet had told him the evening before, ‘you will be introduced to Madame de Sénonches.’ The understanding born of affection had given enlightenment to Madame Séchard, who tumbled to the lawyer’s show of severity as easily as she had sensed
Cérizet’s treachery. The reader will readily understand David’s air of surprise. He could not fathom why Petit-Claud knew so much about his father and his affairs. The honest printer knew nothing about the connivance between his solicitor and the Cointets. Nor did he realize that the Cointets were hand in glove with Métivier. David said nothing, and the old vine-grower took this as an insult. And so the solicitor took advantage of his client’s astonishment in order to withdraw.
‘Good-bye, my dear David. I warn you: imprisonment for debt cannot be invalidated by appeal. That is the only recourse left to your creditors, and they’ll make use of it. And so, get away from here!… Or rather, if you’ll take my advice, go and see the brothers Cointet. They have capital, and if you’ve brought your invention to completion and if it comes up to expectations, go into partnership with them. After all, they’re very decent people…’
‘What invention?’ old Séchard asked.
‘Well now, do you think your son’s such a fool as to have given up his printing without having something else in mind?’ the solicitor exclaimed. ‘He’s on the way, he tells me, to discovering a process for manufacturing a ream of paper for three francs. The present cost is ten francs…’
‘One more trick for catching me,’ old Séchard cried. ‘You’re all as thick as thieves. If David has made an invention like that he doesn’t need me. He’ll be a millionaire! Good-bye, my friends. Nothing doing.’ And the old man clattered downstairs.