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To think of a profession, Maxence Favoral had not waited for thepaternal warnings.
Modern schoolboys are precocious: they know the strong and the weakside of life; and, when they take their degree, they already havebut few illusions left.
And how could it be otherwise? In the interior of the colleges isfatally found the echo of the thoughts, and the reflex of the manners,of the time. Neither walls nor keepers can avail. At the same time,as the city mud that stains their boots, the scholars bring back ontheir return from holidays their stock of observations and of facts.
And what have they seen during the day in their families, or amongtheir friends?
Ardent cravings, insatiable appetites for luxuries, comforts,enjoyments, pleasures, contempt for patient labor, scorn for austereconvictions, eager longing for money, the will to become rich at anycost, and the firm resolution to ravish fortune on the firstfavorable occasion.
To be sure, they have dissembled in their presence; but theirperceptions are keen.
True, their father has told them in a grave tone, that there isnothing respectable in this world except labor and honesty; but theyhave caught that same father scarcely noticing a poor devil of anhonest man, and bowing to the earth before some clever rascal bearingthe stigma of three judgments, but worth six millions.
Conclusion? Oh! they know very well how to conclude; for there arenone such as young people to be logical, and to deduce the utmostconsequences of a fact.
They know, the most of them, that they will have to do something orother; but what? And it is then, that, during the recreations,their imagination strives to find that hitherto unknown professionwhich is to give them fortune without work, and freedom at the sametime as a brilliant situation.
They discuss and criticise freely all the careers which are open toyouthful ambition. And how they laugh, if some simple fellowventures upon suggesting some of those modest situations where theyearn one hundred and fifty francs a month at the start! One hundredand fifty francs!--why, it's hardly as much as many a boy spendsfor his cigars, and his cab-fares when he is late.
Maxence was neither better nor worse than the rest. Like the resthe strove to discover the ideal profession which makes a man rich,and amuses him at the same time.
Under the pretext that he drew nicely, he spoke of becoming a painter,calculating coolly what painting may yield, and reckoning, accordingto some newspaper, the earnings of Corot or Geroine, Ziem, Bouguereau,and some others, who are reaping at last the fruits of unceasingefforts and crushing labors.
But, in the way of pictures, M. Vincent Favoral appreciated only theblue vignettes of the Bank of France.
"I wish no artists in my family," he said, in a tone that admittedof no reply.
Maxence would willingly have become an engineer, for it's ratherthe style to be an engineer now-a-days; but the examinations forthe Polytechnic School are rather steep. Or else a cavalry officer;but the two years at Saint Cyr are not very gay. Or chief clerk,like M. Desormeaux; but he would have to begin by being supernumerary.
Finally after hesitating for a long time between law and medicine,he made up his mind to become a lawyer, influenced above all, bythe joyous legends of the Latin quarter.
That was not exactly M. Vincent Favoral's dream.
"That's going to cost money again," he growled.
The fact is, he had indulged in the fallacious hope that his son,as soon as he left college, would enter at once some business-house,where he would earn enough to take care of himself.
He yielded at last, however, to the persistent entreaties of hiswife, and the solicitations of his friends.
"Be it so," he said to Maxence: "you will study law. Only, as itcannot suit me that you should waste your days lounging in thebilliard-rooms of the left bank, you shall at the same time workin an attorney's office. Next Saturday I shall arrange with myfriend Chapelain."
Maxence had not bargained for such an arrangement; and he came nearbacking out at the prospect of a discipline which he foresaw mustbe as exacting as that of the college.
Still, as he could think of nothing better, he persevered. And,vacations over, he was duly entered at the law-school, and settledat a desk in M. Chapelain's office, which was then in the Rue St.Antoine.
The first year every thing went on tolerably. He enjoyed as muchfreedom as he cared to. His father did not allow him one centimefor his pocket-money; but the attorney, in his capacity of an oldfriend of the family, did for him what he had never done before foran amateur clerk, and allowed him twenty francs a month. Mme.Favoral adding to this a few five-franc pieces, Maxence declaredhimself entirely satisfied.
Unfortunately, with his lively imagination and his impetuous temper,no one was less fit than himself for that peaceful existence, thatsteady toil, the same each day, without the stimulus of difficultiesto overcome, or the satisfaction of results obtained.
Before long he became tired of it.
He had found at the law-school a number of his old schoolmates whoseparents resided in the provinces, and who, consequently, lived asthey pleased in the Latin quarter, less assiduous to the lecturesthan to the Spring Brewery and the Closerie des Lilas.[*]
[ * A noted dancing-garden. ]
He envied them their joyous life, their freedom without control,their facile pleasures, their furnished rooms, and even the loweating-house where they took their meals. And, as much as possible,he lived with them and like them.
But it is not with M. Chapelain's twenty francs that it would havebeen possible for him to keep up with fellows, who, with superbrecklessness, took on credit everything they could get, reservingthe amount of their allowance for those amusements which had to bepaid for in cash.
But was not Mme. Favoral here?
She had worked so much, the poor woman, especially since Mlle.Gilberte had become almost a young lady; she had so much saved, somuch stinted, that her reserve, notwithstanding repeated drafts,amounted to a good round sum.
When Maxence wanted two or three napoleons, he had but a word tosay; and he said it often. Thus, after a while, he became anexcellent billiard-player; he kept his colored meerschaum in therack of a popular brewery; he took absinthe before dinner, andspent his evenings in the laudable effort to ascertain how many mugsof beer he could "put away." Gaining in audacity, he danced atBullier's, dined at Foyd's, and at last had a mistress.
So much so, that one afternoon, M. Favoral having to visit onbusiness the other side of the water, found himself face to facewith his son, who was coming along, a cigar in his mouth, and havingon his arm a young lady, painted in superior style, and harnessedwith a toilet calculated to make the cab-horses rear.
He returned to the Rue St. Gilles in a state of indescribable rage.
"A woman!" he exclaimed in a tone of offended modesty. "A woman!--he, my son!"
And when that son made his appearance, looking quite sheepish, hisfirst impulse was to resort to his former mode of correction.
But Maxence was now over nineteen years of age.
At the sight of the uplifted cane, he became whiter than his shirt;and, wrenching it from his father's hands, he broke it across hisknees, threw the pieces violently upon the floor, and sprang outof the house.
"He shall never again set his foot here!" screamed the cashier ofthe Mutual Credit, thrown beside himself by an act of resistancewhich seemed to him unheard of. "I banish him. Let his clothes bepacked up, and taken to some hotel: I never want to see him again."
For a long time Mme. Favoral and Gilberte fairly dragged themselvesat his feet, before he consented to recall his determination.
"He will disgrace us all!" he kept repeating, seeming unable tounderstand that it was himself who had, as it were, driven Maxenceon to the fatal road which he was pursuing, forgetting that theabsurd severities of the father prepared the way for the perilousindulgence of the mother, unwilling to own that the head of afamily has other duties besides providing food and shelter for hiswi
fe and children, and that a father has but little right tocomplain who has not known how to make himself the friend and theadviser of his son.
At last, after the most violent recriminations, he forgave, inappearance at least.
But the scales had dropped from his eyes. He started in quest ofinformation, and discovered startling enormities.
He heard from M. Chapelain that Maxence remained whole weeks at atime without appearing at the office. If he had not complainedbefore, it was because he had yielded to the urgent entreaties ofMme. Favoral; and he was now glad, he added, of an opportunity torelieve his conscience by a full confession.
Thus the cashier discovered, one by one, all his son's tricks. Heheard that he was almost unknown at the law-school, that he spenthis days in the cafes, and that, in the evening, when he believedhim in bed and asleep, he was in fact running out to theatres andto balls.
"Ah! that's the way, is it?" he thought. "Ah, my wife and childrenare in league against me,--me, the master. Very well, we'll see."