The Slaves of Paris quotes

This torrent of sarcasm brought out Paul’s real nature. His face flushed, and rage began to gain the mastery over him. “Can you not work?” he asked. “Why do you not do something instead of talking so much?”

“That is not at all the same thing,” answered she coolly. “I was not made for work.”

Paul made a threatening gesture. “You wretch!” exclaimed he.

Paul made a threatening gesture. “You wretch!” exclaimed he.

“You are wrong,” she replied. “I am not a wretch; I am simply hungry.”

There seemed every prospect of an angry scene, when a slight sound attracted the attention of the disputants, and, turning round, they saw an old man standing upon the threshold of their open door. He was tall, but stooped a good deal.

Rose, too, was delighted, and could not refrain from jeering at their benefactor, whom she stigmatized as “an old idiot.”

“Laugh while you can, my dears!” muttered Daddy Tantaine; “for this may be the last time you will do so.”

With these words he crept down the dark staircase, which was only lighted up on Sundays, owing to the high price of gas, and, peeping through the glass door of the porter’s lodge, saw Madame Loupins engaged in cooking;

You will ask why? Ah, that is a question I cannot answer today, but you shall know later on. Be assured, however, that I know everything about you, but I cannot tell you by what means. Say it has all happened by chance.

Chance has broad shoulders, and can bear a great deal.

”

“What, to arrive at fortune by the road of talent?

Foolish boy! Every year a thousand poor wretches have been thus intoxicated by their provincial celebrity, and have started for Paris, buoyed up by similar hopes.

Do you know the end of them? At the end of ten years—I give them no longer—nine out of ten die of starvation and disappointment, and the other joins the criminal army.”

The Count Octave de Mussidan in no way resembled the man sketched by Florestan.

Since the time of Montaigne, a servant’s portrait of his employer should always be distrusted.

The Count looked fully sixty, though he was but fifty years of age; he was undersized, and he looked shrunk and shrivelled; he was nearly bald, and his long whiskers were perfectly white.

“You won’t go, won’t you?” said he; and in spite of the pain that at the moment evidently oppressed him, he stepped to the bell, but was arrested by Mascarin, uttering in a warning voice the words—

“Take care; if you ring that bell, you will regret it to the last day of your life.”

This was too much for the Count’s patience, and letting go the bell rope, he snatched up a walking cane that was leaning against the chimneypiece, and made a rush toward his visitor.

But Mascarin did not move or lift his hand in self-defence, contenting himself with saying calmly—

“No violence, Count; remember Montlouis.”

At this name the Count grew livid, and dropping the cane from his nerveless hand staggered back a pace or two. Had a spectre suddenly stood up before him with threatening hand, he could not have been more horrified.

I am estranged from my husband, and my daughter dislikes and despises me. Some people think that life can be divided into two portions, one consecrated to pleasure and excitement, and the other to domestic peace and happiness; but the idea is a false one.

As youth has been, so will be age, either a reward or an expiation.

”

At last their footsteps really sounded on the steps.

The sweetest music in the world is the rustle of the beloved one’s dress.

Leaning over the banisters, he gazed fondly down. Soon she appeared, and in a short time had gained the open door of the studio.

When Mascarin was asked what was the best way to achieve certain results, his invariable reply was, “Keep moving, keep moving.”

He had one great advantage over other men, he put in practice the doctrines he preached, and at seven o’clock the morning after his interview with the Count de Mussidan he was hard at work in his room.

Mascarin made a little grimace. “You are an idiot, Beaumarchef,” said he, “to be pleased at so trivial a matter.

I have often told you that there is no such thing as luck or chance, and that all comes to those who work methodically.

”

“There, my friend, is something for yourself.”

“No, sir,” returned the man; “I always ask wages enough to prevent the necessity of accepting presents.”

And with this dignified reply he bowed with the stiff air of a Quaker, and walked rigidly out of the room.

“I say nothing,” continued Mascarin, “of the influence I exercise over Tantaine, and which may enable me to compel him to confess the truth.”

Weak natures like Paul’s are raised in a moment from the lowest depths of depression to the highest pitch of exultation, and he already considered that he was saved.

“Shall I ever be able to prove my gratitude to you?” said he impulsively.

“Ah! I shall never dare to go home,” wailed she; “never have the courage to tell my husband.”

“If you are afraid of your own husband, go to someone else’s,” said he roughly

; and tearing himself from her, he followed Mascarin and Paul.

“And yet,” repeated Madame de Mussidan.

“I have never kissed her,” he burst forth with a fresh and terrible explosion of wrath, “without feeling a hideous doubt as to whether she was really my child.”

This was more than the Countess could endure.

“He won’t make off,” replied Mascarin in a tone which froze his listener’s blood.

“He can’t escape from us any more than the cockchafer can from the string that a child has fastened to it. Do you not understand weak natures like his? He is the glove, I the strong hand beneath it.”

The doctor did not argue this point, but merely murmured—

Paul wondered whether he was awake or dreaming. He too had been promised a rich wife, and here was another man who was being provided for in the same manner.

“These people,” muttered he, “seem to keep a matrimonial agency as well as a servants’ registry office!”

“All that is left, then,” said the Marquis, “is to arrange the—shall I call it the commission?”

“Among honest men—” began he.

“We are not honest men,” interrupted Mascarin. “Sir,” added he in a severe tone, “nor are you either.”

This plain speaking brought a bright flush to the face of the Marquis, who had half a mind to be angry, but policy restrained him, and he affected to look on the matter as a joke. “Your joke is a little personal,” said he.

I snatched it up, and was about to strike, when the recollection of Marie dying of cold and starvation occurred to me. I dashed the knife to the ground, and rushed from the house in a state bordering on insanity.

I went into that house an honest man, and left it a degraded scoundrel.

But I must finish. When I reached the street, the two banknotes which I had taken from the packet seemed to burn me like coals of fire. I hastened to a money-changer, and got coin for them.

The plan emanated from my brain complete in all its details in the will I made twenty years ago to my friends.

Marquis, as the summer goes on, you know that the ripest and reddest cherries are the fullest flavored, just so, in the noblest and wealthiest of families in Paris there is not one that has not some terrible and ghostly secret which is sedulously concealed.

Now, suppose that one man should gain possession of all of them, would he not be sole and absolute master? Would he not be more powerful than a despot on his throne?

The word is modern, but the operation doubtless dates from the earliest ages. The day upon which one man began to trade upon the guilty secret of another was the date of the institution of this line of business.

If antiquity makes a thing respectable, then blackmailing is worthy of great respect.

”

These unsuspecting agents remind me of those strange Brazilian birds, whose presence is a sure sign that water is to be found near at hand.

When one of them utters a note, I dig, and I find.

And now, Marquis, do you understand the aim and end of our association?”

Croisenois started to his feet angrily. “Why,” cried he, “you intend to make a catspaw of me! Such a proceeding would send me to penal servitude.”

“What an ungrateful man he is!” said Mascarin, appealing to his audience, “when I am doing all I can to prevent his going there.”

But Catenac now felt it time to interfere. “You do not understand,” remarked he, addressing Croisenois.

“What is that?” inquired Perpignan, in a voice of thunder.

“Who presumes to be unhappy in this establishment?”

“It is two of the lads that I have put on half rations,” returned Poluche. “I’ll make them learn somehow or—”

But I adopted the course I pursued because I wished to prove to you that you belonged more absolutely to Mascarin than did your wretched foreign slaves to you. You are absolutely at his mercy, and he can crush you to powder whenever he likes.”

“Your Mascarin is Satan himself,” muttered the discomfited man. “Who can resist him?”

“Come, as you think thus, we can talk sensibly at last.”

nay, it is true, and when you believe this thoroughly, you are quite prepared for the fray, but until then you must remain quiescent. Remember this, you cannot impress others unless you firmly believe yourself.

The greatest impostors of all ages have ever been their own dupes.

”

“And why not?” said he.

“Is it not better to kill than to be killed?”

Hortebise trembled from head to foot. He had no objection to extorting money by the basest threats, but he drew the line at murder.

He had made up his mind that for the present he would yield to his despotism, but afterwards, in the future, what was he to do?

It is an easy thing to find persons to give you bad advice, and the very next day Norbert found one at Bevron in the shape of a certain man called Daumon, a bitter enemy of the Duke.

You mentioned two means by which I could regain my freedom, and hinted that there was a third one. I have come to you today to ask you what it was.”

Never did any man more successfully assume an air of astonishment than did Daumon at this moment.

“What,” said he, “do you absolutely remember those idle words I made use of then?”

“I am not mistaken,” said he, and calmly pointed out in the code the provision to which he had alluded.

As Diana read the passage to which his finger pointed, he watched her as a cat watches a mouse.

“After all, what does it matter to me?” remarked Diana, making an effort to recover herself. “I will speak about this poor woman’s case to my father;” and, with her limbs bending under her, she left the room.

“Great heavens!” said he in a voice before which Norbert, at one time, would have quailed.

“Whence comes the audacity that makes you venture to dispute my orders?”

“From the feeling that I am acting rightly.”

“How long is it that it has been right for children to disobey their parents’ commands?”

“Ever since parents began to issue unjust commands.”

This speech put the finishing stroke to the Duke’s rage. He made a step across the room, towards his son, raising the stick that he usually carried high in the air. For a moment he stood thus, and then, casting it aside, he exclaimed—

“And yet,” he went on, in cold, sinister accents, “let him take but a small pinch of this, and no one need fear his tyranny again in this world.

No one is much afraid of a man who lies some six feet under ground, shut up in a strong oak coffin, with a finely carved gravestone over his head.

”

“If, Marquis,” he began, “I might venture to advise you—”

“No advice is necessary, my mind is entirely made up, but I need some help, and in twenty-four hours I require a large sum of money⁠—twenty thousand francs.”

“You can have them, Marquis, but I warn you that you will have to pay heavily for the accommodation.”

and he could scarcely believe his eyes when he saw Diana, whom he had supposed to be lying half-sensible in the armchair, standing at the window, gazing after Norbert, as he walked along the road leading from the Counsellor’s cottage.

“Ah! what a woman!” muttered he. “Gracious powers, what a wonderful woman!”

When Diana had lost sight of her lover, she turned round to Daumon. Her face was pale, and her eyelids swollen, but her eyes flashed with the conviction of success.

He raised his glass, and raised it up to the light half mechanically. Norbert held his breath; the whole world seemed turning round.

“It is hard, very hard,” continued the Duke, “for a father thus to humiliate himself in vain before his son.”

It was useless for Norbert to turn away his head; he saw the Duke place the glass to his lips.

The moment was an intensely exciting one, but Croisenois did not show any sign of emotion, Norbert did not press the trigger, and the suspense became more than could be borne.

“No,” returned Norbert coldly; “on reflection I have come to the conclusion that your dead body would be a source of extreme inconvenience to me.”

“You try my forbearance too far. What are your intentions?”

“I mean to kill you,” answered Norbert in such a voice of concentrated ferocity that George shuddered in spite of all his courage, “but it shall not be with a pistol shot.

It is said that blood will wash out any stain, but it is false; for even if all yours is shed, it will not remove the stain from my escutcheon.

One of us must vanish from the face of the earth in such a manner that no trace of him may remain.”

You never loved me, why should you fight for me. Have pity! Tomorrow, by all that I hold sacred, I swear to you that I will enter a convent, and you shall never see my face again. Have pity!”

“Pray heaven, madame, that it may be your lover’s sword that pierces my heart. It is your only hope, for then you will be free.”

He tore his coat from her fingers with brutal violence, and the unhappy woman fell to the floor with a shriek as he closed the door upon her, and followed his antagonist downstairs.

She seemed to him to have undergone a complete change. There was an unearthly style of beauty around her—her eyes blazed and shone with the lurid light of a far-distant planet, while her wealth of raven hair fell in disordered masses on her shoulders.

It was passion, real passion, that he beheld tonight, not that mere empty delusion which he had so long followed blindly.

Marie was really capable of a deep-rooted feeling of adoration for the man she loved, while with Diana de Mussidan, the woman with her fair hair and the steel-blue eyes, love was but the lust of conquest, or the desire to jeer at a suitor’s …

Time was passing, however, and the miscreants in whose power they were made no signs of life. Hortebise did not appear any more, and there were moments when the miserable Diana actually ventured to hope. “Have they forgotten us?” thought she.

Alas! no; they were people who never forgot.

The Champdoce affair had been satisfactorily arranged, and every precaution had been taken to prevent the detection of Paul as an impostor, and engaged as he had been, Mascarin had no time to turn his attention to the marriage of Sabine and De Croisenois.

“Paul is a miserably cowardly dog,” answered the old man in a fierce undertone. “Paul does not love the girl as she loves him; but what he says is true, only too true, I can feel.

Between her father and her lover she would not hesitate for a moment.

Ah! unhappy girl, what a terrible future lies before her.”

“It is she!” said the father. “Her very smile; the same soft light in her eyes. It is exquisite!”

Misfortune is a harsh teacher; some weeks ago he would have smiled superciliously at the mere idea of granting his daughter’s hand to a struggling artist

, for then he thought only of M. de Breulh, but now he would have esteemed it a precious boon had he been allowed to choose André as Sabine’s husband.