IX
But the respite granted by fate to Mme. Favoral was drawing to anend: her trials were about to return more poignant than ever,occasioned, this time, by her children, hitherto her whole happinessand her only consolation.
Maxence was nearly twelve. He was a good little fellow, intelligent,studious at times, but thoughtless in the extreme, and of aturbulence which nothing could tame.
At the Massin School, where he had been sent, he made his teachers'hair turn white; and not a week went by that he did not signalizehimself by some fresh misdeed.
A father like any other would have paid but slight attention to thepranks of a schoolboy, who, after all, ranked among the first of hisclass, and of whom the teachers themselves, whilst complaining, said,
"Bash! What matters it, since the heart is sound and the mind sane?"
But M. Favoral took every thing tragically. If Maxence was kept in,or otherwise punished, he pretended that it reflected upon himself,and that his son was disgracing him.
If a report came home with this remark, "execrable conduct," he fellinto the most violent passion, and seemed to lose all control ofhimself.
"At your age," he would shout to the terrified boy, "I was workingin a factory, and earning my livelihood. Do you suppose that Iwill not tire of making sacrifices to procure you the advantagesof an education which I lacked myself? Beware. Havre is not faroff; and cabin-boys are always in demand there."
If, at least, he had confined himself to these admonitions, which,by their very exaggeration, failed in their object! But he favoredmechanical appliances as a necessary means of sufficiently impressingreprimands upon the minds of young people; and therefore, seizinghis cane, he would beat poor Maxence most unmercifully, the more sothat the boy, filled with pride, would have allowed himself to bechopped to pieces rather than utter a cry, or shed a tear.
The first time that Mme. Favoral saw her son struck, she was seizedwith one of those wild fits of anger which do not reason, and neverforgive. To be beaten herself would have seemed to her lessatrocious, less humiliating. Hitherto she had found it impossibleto love a husband such as hers: henceforth, she took him in utteraversion: he inspired her with horror. She looked upon her son asa martyr for whom she could hardly ever do enough.
And so, after these harrowing scenes, she would press him to herheart in the most passionate embrace; she would cover with her kissesthe traces of the blows; and she would strive, by the most deliriouscaresses, to make him forget the paternal brutalities. With him shesobbed. Like him, she would shake her clinched fists in the vacantspace; exclaiming, "Coward, tyrant, assassin!" The little Gilbertemingled her tears with theirs; and, pressed against each other, theydeplored their destiny, cursing the common enemy, the head of thefamily.
Thus did Maxence spend his boyhood between equally fatalexaggerations, between the revolting brutalities of his father, andthe dangerous caresses of his mother; the one depriving him of everything, the other refusing him nothing.
For Mme. Favoral had now found a use for her humble savings.
If the idea had never come to the cashier of the Mutual CreditSociety to put a few sous in his son's pocket, the too weak motherwould have suggested to him the want of money in order to have thepleasure of gratifying it.
She who had suffered so many humiliations in her life, she could notbear the idea of her son having his pride wounded, and being unableto indulge in those little trifling expenses which are the vanityof schoolboys.
"Here, take this," she would tell him on holidays, slipping a fewfrancs into his hands.
Unfortunately, to her present she joined the recommendation not toallow his father to know any thing about it; forgetting that she wasthus training Maxence to dissimulate, warping his natural sense ofright, and perverting his instincts.
No, she gave; and, to repair the gaps thus made in her treasure, sheworked to the point of ruining her sight, with such eager zeal, thatthe worthy shop-keeper of the Rue St. Denis asked her if she did notemploy working girls. In truth, the only help she received was fromGilberte, who, at the age of eight, already knew how to make herselfuseful.
And this is not all. For this son, in anticipation of growingexpenses, she stooped to expedients which formerly would have seemedto her unworthy and disgraceful. She robbed the household, cheatingon her own marketing. She went so far as to confide to her servant,and to make of the girl the accomplice of her operations. Sheapplied all her ingenuity to serve to M. Favoral dinners in whichthe excellence of the dressing concealed the want of solid substance.And on Sunday, when she rendered her weekly accounts, it was withouta blush that she increased by a few centimes the price of each object,rejoicing when she had thus scraped a dozen francs, and finding, tojustify herself to her own eyes, those sophisms which passion neverlacks.
At first Maxence was too young to wonder from what sources his motherdrew the money she lavished upon his schoolboy fancies. Sherecommended him to hide from his father: he did so, and thought itperfectly natural.
As he grew older, he learned to discern.
The moment came when he opened his eyes upon the system under whichthe paternal household was managed. He noticed there that anxiouseconomy which seems to betray want, and the acrimonious discussionswhich arose upon the inconsiderate use of a twenty-franc-piece. Hesaw his mother realize miracles of industry to conceal the shabbinessof her toilets, and resort to the most skillful diplomacy when shewished to purchase a dress for Gilberte.
And, despite all this, he had at his disposition as much money asthose of his comrades whose parents had the reputation to be themost opulent and the most generous.
Anxious, he questioned his mother.
"Eh, what does it matter?" she answered, blushingand confused. "Is that any thing to worry you?"
And, as he insisted,
"Go ahead," she said: "we are rich enough." But he could hardlybelieve her, accustomed as he was to hear every one talk of poverty;and, as he fixed upon her his great astonished eyes,
"Yes," she resumed, with an imprudence which fatally was to bear itsfruits, "we are rich; and, if we live as you see, it is because itsuits your father, who wishes to amass a still greater fortune."
This was hardly an answer; and yet Maxence asked no further question.But he inquired here and there, with that patient shrewdness of youngpeople possessed with a fixed idea.
Already, at this time, M. Favoral had in the neighborhood, and everamong his friends, the reputation to be worth at least a million.The Mutual Credit Society had considerably developed itself: he must,they thought, have benefitted largely by the circumstance; and theprofits must have swelled rapidly in the hands of so able a man,and one so noted for his rigid economy.
Such is the substance of what Maxence heard; and people did not failto add ironically, that he need not rely upon the paternal fortuneto amuse himself.
M. Desormeaux himself, whom he had "pumped" rather cleverly, hadtold him, whilst patting him amicably on the shoulder,
"If you ever need money for your frolics, young man, try and earnit; for I'll be hanged if it's the old man who'll ever supply it."
Such answers complicated, instead of explaining, the problem whichoccupied Maxence.
He observed, he watched; and at last he acquired the certainty thatthe money he spent was the fruit of the joint labor of his motherand sister.
"Ah! why not have told me so?" he exclaimed, throwing his armsaround his mother's neck. "Why have exposed me to the bitter regretswhich I feel at this moment?"
By this sole word the poor woman found herself amply repaid. Sheadmired the _noblesse_ of her son's feelings and the kindness of hisheart.
"Do you not understand," she told him, shedding tears of joy, "doyou not see, that the labor which can promote her son's pleasure isa happiness for his mother?"
But he was dismayed at his discovery.
"No matter!" he said. "I swear that I shall no longer scatter tothe winds, as I have been doing, the money that
you give me."
For a few weeks, indeed, he was faithful to his pledge. But atfifteen resolutions are not very stanch. The impressions he hadfelt wore off. He became tired of the small privations which he hadto impose upon himself.
He soon came to take to the letter what his mother had told him, andto prove to his own satisfaction that to deprive himself of apleasure was to deprive her. He asked for ten francs one day, thenten francs another, and gradually resumed his old habits.
He was at this time about leaving school.
"The moment has come," said M. Favoral, "for him to select a career,and support himself."