M. Bergeret looked through the dirty window of the hall to see if there were any letter or paper in the box; he still took an interest in letters from a distance or in literary reviews. But to-day there were only visiting-cards, which suggested to him nothing more interesting than personalities as shadowy and pale as the cards themselves, and a bill from Mademoiselle Rose, the modiste of the Tintelleries. As his eyes fell on this, the thought suddenly occurred to him that Madame Bergeret was becoming extravagant and that the house was stuffy. He could feel the weight of it on his shoulders, and as he stood in the hall, he seemed to be bearing on his back the whole flooring of his flat, in addition to the drawing-room piano and that terrible wardrobe that swallowed up his little store of money and yet was always empty. Thus weighted with domestic troubles, M. Bergeret grasped the iron handrail with its ample curves of florid metal-work, and began, with bent head and short breath, to climb the stone steps. These were now blackened, worn, cracked, patched, and ornamented with worn bricks and squalid paving-stones, but once, in the bygone days of their early youth, they had known the tread of fine gentlemen and pretty girls, hurrying to pay rival court to Pauquet, the revenue-tax farmer who had enriched himself by the spoils of a whole province. For it was in the mansion of Pauquet de Sainte-Croix that M. Bergeret lived, now fallen from its glory, despoiled of its splendour and degraded by a plaster top-storey which had taken the place of its graceful gable and majestic roof. Now the building was darkened by tall houses built all round it, on ground where once there were gardens with a thousand statues, ornamental waters and a park, and even on the main courtyard where Pauquet had erected an allegorical monument to his king, who was in the habit of making him disgorge his booty every five or six years, after which he was left for another term to stuff himself again with gold.
This courtyard, which was flanked by a splendid Tuscan portico, had vanished in 1857 when the Rue des Tintelleries was widened. Now Pauquet de Sainte-Croix’s mansion was nothing but an ugly tenement-house badly neglected by two old caretakers, Gaubert by name, who despised M. Bergeret for his quietness and had no sense of his true generosity, because it was that of a man of moderate means. Yet whatever M. Raynaud gave they regarded with respect, although he gave little when he was well able to give much: to the Gauberts, his hundred-sou piece was valuable because it came from great wealth.
M. Raynaud, who owned the land near the new railway station, lived on the first storey. Over the doorway of this there was a bas-relief which, as usual, caught M. Bergeret’s eye as he passed. It depicted old Silenus on his ass surrounded by a group of nymphs. This was all that remained of the interior decoration of the mansion which, belonging to the reign of Louis XV, had been built at a period when the French style was aiming at the classic, but, lucky in missing its aim, had acquired that note of chastity, stability and noble elegance which one associates more especially with Gabriel’s designs. As a matter of fact Pauquet de Sainte-Croix’s mansion had actually been designed by a pupil of that great architect. Since then it had been systematically disfigured. Although, for economy’s sake and just to save a little trouble and expense, they had not torn down the little bas-relief of Silenus and the nymphs, they had at any rate painted it, like the rest of the staircase, with a sham decoration of red granite. The tradition of the place would have it that in this Silenus one might see a portrait of Pauquet himself, who was reputed to have been the ugliest man of his time, as well as the most popular with women. M. Bergeret, although no great connoisseur in art, made no such mistake as this, for in the grotesque, yet sublime, figure of the old god he recognised a type well known in the Renaissance, and transmitted from the Greeks and Romans. Yet, whenever he saw this Silenus and his nymphs, his thoughts naturally turned to Pauquet, who had enjoyed all the good things of this world in the very house where he himself lived a life that was not only toilsome, but thankless.
“This financier,” he thought as he stood on the landing, “merely sucked money from a king who in turn sucked it from him. This made them quits. It is unwise to brag about the finances of the monarchy, since, in the end, it was the financial deficit that brought about the downfall of the system. But this point is noteworthy, that the king was then the sole owner of all property, both real and personal, throughout the kingdom. Every house belonged to the king, and in proof of this, the subject who actually enjoyed the possession of it had to place the royal arms on the slab at the back of the hearth. It was therefore as owner, and not in pursuance of his right of taxation, that Louis XIV sent his subjects’ plate to the Mint in order to defray the expenses of his wars. He even had the treasures of the churches melted down, and I read lately that he carried off the votive-offerings of Notre-Dame de Liesse in Picardy, among which was found the breast that the Queen of Poland had deposited there in gratitude for her miraculous recovery. Everything then belonged to the king, that is to say, to the state. And yet neither the Socialists, who to-day demand the nationalisation of private property, nor the owners who intend to hold fast their possessions, pay any heed to the fact that this nationalisation would be, in some respects, a return to the ancient custom. It gives one a philosophic pleasure to reflect that the Revolution really was for the benefit of those who had acquired private ownership of national possessions and that the Declaration of the Rights of Man has become the landlords’ charter.
“This Pauquet, who used to bring here the prettiest girls from the opera, was no knight of Saint-Louis. To-day he would be commander of the Legion of Honour and to him the finance ministers would come for their instructions. Then it was money he enjoyed; now it would be honours. For money has become honourable. It is, in fact, the only nobility we possess. We have destroyed all the others to put in their place the most oppressive, the most insolent, and the most powerful of all orders of nobility.”
M. Bergeret’s reflections were distracted at this point by the sight of a group of men, women, and children coming out of M. Raynaud’s flat. He saw that it was a band of poor relations who had come to wish the old man a happy New Year: he fancied he could see them smelling about, under their new hats, for some profit to themselves. He went on up the stairs, for he lived on the third floor, which he delighted to call the third “room,” using the seventeenth-century phrase for it. And to explain this ancient term he loved to quote La Fontaine’s lines:
Where is the good of life to men of make like you,
To live and read for ever in a poor third room?
Chill winter always finds you in the dress of June,
With for lackey but the shadow that is each man’s due.[6]