1.
No doubt, Sir, that you have noticed during the course of our conversations that Nature has endowed me with an over-sensitive heart. I feel keenly, Sir, very keenly. Blows dealt me by Fate, or, as has been more often the case, by the cruel and treacherous hand of man, touch me on the raw. I suffer acutely. I am highly strung. I am one of those rare beings whom Nature pre-ordained for love and for happiness. I am an ideal family man.
What? You did not know that I was married? Indeed, Sir, I am. And though Madame Ratichon does not perhaps fulfil all my ideals of exquisite womanhood, nevertheless she has been an able and willing helpmate during these last years of comparative prosperity. Yes, you see me fairly prosperous now. My industry, my genius—if I may so express myself—found their reward at last. You will be the first to acknowledge—you, the confidant of my life’s history—that that reward was fully deserved. I worked for it, toiled and thought and struggled, up to the last; and had Fate been just, rather than grudging, I should have attained that ideal which would have filled my cup of happiness to the brim.
But, anyway, the episode connected with my marriage did mark the close of my professional career, and is therefore worthy of record. Since that day, Sir—a happy one for me, a blissful one for Mme. Ratichon—I have been able, thanks to the foresight of an all-wise Providence, to gratify my bucolic tastes. I live now, Sir, amidst my flowers, with my dog and my canary and Mme. Ratichon, smiling with kindly indulgence on the struggles and the blunders of my younger colleagues, oft consulted by them in matters that require special tact and discretion. I sit and dream now beneath the shade of a vine-clad arbour of those glorious days of long ago, when kings and emperors placed the destiny of their inheritance in my hands, when autocrats and dictators came to me for assistance and advice, and the name of Hector Ratichon stood for everything that was most astute and most discreet. And if at times a gentle sigh of regret escapes my lips, Mme. Ratichon—whose thinness is ever my despair, for I admire comeliness, Sir, as being more womanly—Mme. Ratichon, I say, comes to me with the gladsome news that dinner is served; and though she is not all that I could wish in the matter of the culinary arts, yet she can fry a cutlet passably, and one of her brothers is a wholesale wine merchant of excellent reputation.
It was soon after my connexion with that abominable Marquis de Firmin-Latour that I first made the acquaintance of the present Mme. Ratichon, under somewhat peculiar circumstances.
I remember it was on the first day of April in the year 1817 that M. Rochez—Fernand Rochez was his exact name—came to see me at my office in the Rue Daunou, and the date proved propitious, as you will presently see. How M. Rochez came to know of my gifts and powers, I cannot tell you. He never would say. He had heard of me through a friend, was all that he vouchsafed to say.
Theodore had shown him in. Ah! have I not mentioned the fact that I had forgiven Theodore his lies and his treachery, and taken him back to my bosom and to my board? My sensitive heart had again got the better of my prudence, and Theodore was installed once more in the antechamber of my apartments in the Rue Daunou, and was, as heretofore, sharing with me all the good things that I could afford. So there he was on duty on that fateful first of April which was destined to be the turning-point of my destiny. And he showed M. de Rochez in.
At once I knew my man—the type, I mean. Immaculately dressed, scented and befrilled, haughty of manner and nonchalant of speech, M. Rochez had the word “adventurer” writ all over his well-groomed person. He was young, good-looking, his nails were beautifully polished, his pantaloons fitted him without a wrinkle. These were of a soft putty shade; his coat was bottle-green, and his hat of the latest modish shape. A perfect exquisite, in fact.
And he came to the point without much preamble.
“M.—er—Ratichon,” he said, “I have heard of you through a friend, who tells me that you are the most unscrupulous scoundrel he has ever come across.”
“Sir—!” I began, rising from my seat in indignant protest at the coarse insult. But with an authoritative gesture he checked the flow of my indignation.
“No comedy, I pray you, Sir,” he said. “We are not at the Theatre Molière, but, I presume, in an office where business is transacted both briefly and with discretion.”
“At your service, Monsieur,” I replied.
“Then listen, will you?” he went on curtly, “and pray do not interrupt. Only speak in answer to a question from me.”
I bowed my head in silence. Thus must the proud suffer when they happen to be sparsely endowed with riches.
“You have no doubt heard of Mlle. Goldberg,” M. Rochez continued after a moment’s pause, “the lovely daughter of the rich usurer in the Rue des Médecins.”
I had heard of Mlle. Goldberg. Her beauty and her father’s wealth were reported to be fabulous. I indicated my knowledge of the beautiful lady by a mute inclination of the head.
“I love Mlle. Goldberg,” my client resumed, “and I have reason for the belief that I am not altogether indifferent to her. Glances, you understand, from eyes as expressive as those of the exquisite Jewess speak more eloquently than words.”
He had forbidden me to speak, so I could only express concurrence in the sentiments which he expressed by a slight elevation of my left eyebrow.
“I am determined to win the affections of Mlle. Goldberg,” M. Rochez went on glibly, “and equally am I determined to make her my wife.”
“A very natural determination,” I remarked involuntarily.
“My only trouble with regard to pressing my court is the fact that my lovely Leah is never allowed outside her father’s house, save in his company or that of his sister—an old maid of dour mien and sour disposition, who acts the part of a duenna with dog-like tenacity. Over and over again have I tried to approach the lady of my heart, only to be repelled or roughly rebuked for my insolence by her irascible old aunt.”
“You are not the first lover, Sir,” I remarked drily, “who hath seen obstacles thus thrown in his way, and—”
“One moment, M.—er—Ratichon,” he broke in sharply. “I have not finished. I will not attempt to describe my feelings to you. I have been writhing—yes, writhing!—in face of those obstacles of which you speak so lightly, and for a long time I have been cudgelling my brains as to the possible means whereby I might approach my divinity unchecked. Then one day I bethought me of you—”
“Of me, Sir?” I ejaculated, sorely puzzled. “Why of me?”
“None of my friends,” he replied nonchalantly, “would care to undertake so scrubby a task as I would assign to you.”
“I pray you to be more explicit,” I retorted with unimpaired dignity.
Once more he paused. Obviously he was a born mountebank, and he calculated all his effects to a nicety.
“You, M.—er—Ratichon,” he said curtly at last, “will have to take the duenna off my hands.”
I was beginning to understand. So I let him prattle on the while my busy brain was already at work evolving the means to render this man service, which in its turn I expected to be amply repaid. Thus I cannot repeat exactly all that he said, for I was only listening with half an ear. But the substance of it all was this: I was to pose as the friend of M. Fernand Rochez, and engage the attention of Mlle. Goldberg senior the while he paid his court to the lovely Leah. It was not a repellent task altogether, because M. Rochez’s suggestion opened a vista of pleasant parties at open-air cafés, with foaming tankards of beer, on warm afternoons the while the young people sipped sirops and fed on love. My newly found friend was pleased to admit that my personality and appearance would render my courtship of the elderly duenna a comparatively easy one. She would soon, he declared, fall a victim to my charms.
After which the question of remuneration came in, and over this we did not altogether agree. Ultimately I decided to accept an advance of two hundred francs and a new suit of clothes, which I at once declared was indispensable under the circumstances, seeing that in my well-worn coat I might have the appearance of a fortune-hunter in the eyes of the suspicious old dame.
Within my mind I envisaged the possibility of touching M. Rochez for a further two hundred francs if and when opportunity arose.