On the evening of the day of the funeral, Madame Sidonie took Saccard to her apartment on the mezzanine floor, and grand resolutions were formed there. The civil servant decided that he would send little Clotilde to one of his brothers, Pascal Rougon, a doctor at Plassans, who led a bachelor life, wrapt up in the love of science, and who had often offered to take his niece to live with him to enliven his silent home. Madame Sidonie then made Saccard understand that he could no longer sojourn in the Rue Saint-Jacques. She would take an elegantly furnished apartment for him for a month, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Hôtel de Ville; she would try to find this apartment in a private house, so that the furniture should appear to belong to him. As to the chattels in the Rue Saint-Jacques, they should all be sold, so as to efface every trace of the past. He could use the money in buying himself a trousseau and some decent clothes.
Three days later, Clotilde was handed over to an old lady who it so happened was just starting for the South. And Aristide Saccard, triumphant and rosy-cheeked, looking fattened up in three days by the first smiles of fortune, occupied in a quiet and respectable house in the Rue Payenne, situated in the Marais quarter, a charming floor of five rooms through which he wandered with embroidered slippers on his feet. They were the apartments of a young abbé who had been suddenly called to Italy, and who had instructed his servant to let the rooms during his absence. This servant was a friend of Madame Sidonie's, who rather fancied the cloth; she loved priests with the same love that she showered on women, through instinct, no doubt establishing a certain nervous relationship between cassocks and silk skirts. From that time Saccard was ready; he arranged the part he was to play with exquisite art; he awaited without betraying the least emotion the difficulties and niceties of the situation which he had accepted.
On the dreadful evening when Angèle died, Madame Sidonie had faithfully told in a few words the misfortune which had overtaken the Bérauds. The father, Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel, a fine old man of sixty, was the last representative of an ancient middle-class family, who could trace their origin much farther back than many a noble house. One of his ancestors was a companion of Étienne Marcel. In 1793 his father perished on the scaffold, after saluting the Republic with all the enthusiasm of a Paris citizen, in whose veins flowed the revolutionary blood of the city. He himself was one of those Spartan republicans who dream of a government of full justice and wise liberty. Grown old in the magistracy, where he had contracted quite a professional stiffness and severity, he resigned his post of presiding judge in 1851, at the time of the Coup d'État, after refusing to be a member of one of those mixed commissions which dishonoured French justice.
Since that time he had been living, solitary and retired, in his mansion on the Île Saint-Louis, situated at the extremity of the island, almost opposite the mansion of the Lamberts. His wife had died young. Some secret drama, the wound from which still remained unhealed, probably added to the gloom of the judge's grave countenance. He was already the father of a girl of eight, Renée, when his wife expired on giving birth to a second daughter. This latter, who was named Christine, was taken care of by a sister of Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel's, the wife of Aubertot the notary. Renée was sent to a convent. Madame Aubertot, who had no child of her own, was filled with quite a maternal affection for Christine, whom she brought up herself. Her husband dying, she took the little one back to her father, and remained between the silent old man and his smiling fair-haired daughter. Renée was forgotten at her school. During the holidays she filled the house with such an uproar that her aunt heaved a great sigh of relief when she at length escorted her back to the ladies of the Visitation, where the child had been a boarder since she was eight years old. She did not leave the convent for good until she was nineteen, and then she went to pass the summer at the home of her friend Adeline, whose parents owned a beautiful estate in the Nivernais. When she came back in October, her Aunt Élisabeth was surprised to find her very grave and profoundly sad. One evening she discovered her stifling her sobs in the pillow, writhing on her bed in an attack of mad grief. In the misery of her despair the child told her a most heart-rending story: a man of forty, rich, married, and whose wife, a young and charming person, was also staying at the house, had violated her during her visit in the country, without her daring or knowing how to defend herself.
This confession terrified Aunt Élisabeth; she accused herself, as though she had felt she were an accomplice; she regretted her preference for Christine, and could not help thinking that, if she had also kept Renée beside her, the poor child would not have succumbed. Henceforward, to drive away that bitter remorse which her tender nature still further exaggerated, she did her best to sustain the erring one; she bore the brunt of the father's anger when they both apprised him of the horrible truth by the very excess of their precautions; in the bewilderment of her solicitude she invented that strange project of marriage which to her idea was to arrange everything, appease the father and rehabilitate Renée, and the shamefulness and fatal consequences of which she was unwilling to see.
It was never known how Madame Sidonie had got wind of this magnificent piece of business. The honour of the Bérauds had been dragged about in her basket amongst the protested bills of every dollymop of Paris. When she learned the story, she almost forced them to accept her brother, whose wife lay at death's door. Aunt Élisabeth ended by thinking that she was under an obligation to this lady, so gentle and humble, and who was so devoted to poor Renée, that she even found her a husband in her own family. The first interview between Saccard and the aunt took place in the little apartment on the upper floor of the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière. The civil servant, who had gained admittance through the carriage entrance in the Rue Papillon, understood, on beholding Madame Aubertot arrive by way of the shop and little staircase, all the ingenious mechanism of the two entrances. He was full of tact and good manners. He treated the marriage as a matter of business, but like a man of the world about to settle his gambling debts. Aunt Élisabeth was by far the more trembling of the two; she stammered, not daring to mention the hundred thousand francs which she had promised. It was he who first brought forward the money question, in the manner of a solicitor discussing a client's case. According to him, a hundred thousand francs was a ridiculous fortune for Mademoiselle Renée's husband to start housekeeping upon. And he laid a gentle stress on the word "Mademoiselle." Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel would despise still more a poor son-in-law; he would accuse him of having seduced his daughter for the sake of her money; perhaps, it might even occur to him to make some secret inquiries. Madame Aubertot, greatly frightened, and scared by Saccard's calm and polite way of talking, lost her head and consented to double the sum when he declared that he would not dare to ask for Renée's hand for less than two hundred thousand francs, not wishing to be considered an infamous fortune-hunter. The worthy lady departed quite confused, scarcely knowing what to think of a fellow who could be so indignant and yet enter into such an arrangement.
This first interview was followed by an official visit which Aunt Élisabeth paid Saccard at his apartments in the Rue Payenne. This time, she came in the name of Monsieur Béraud. The retired judge had refused to see "that man," as he called his daughter's seducer, so long as he was not married to Renée, to whom he had also closed his door. Madame Aubertot had full powers to arrange everything. She appeared delighted with the civil servant's luxurious surroundings; she had feared that the brother of that Madame Sidonie, with the draggled skirts, might be a blackguard. He received her, arrayed in a delicious dressing-gown. It was at the time, when the adventurers of the 2nd of December, after having paid their debts, were pitching their worn-out boots and frayed coats into the sewers, having their dirty chins shaved, and becoming respectable members of society. Saccard was at length joining the band; he took to cleaning his nails and using at his toilet the most invaluable powder and perfume. He was quite gallant; he changed his tactics and showed himself most prodigiously disinterested. When the old lady broached the subject of the marriage contract, he made a gesture as though to say that it was a matter of indifference to him. For a week past he had been studying the Code, considering this grave question upon which his future liberty of action in his underhand dealings would depend.
"For goodness' sake," said he, "let's say no more about this disagreeable money question. My opinion is that Mademoiselle Renée should remain mistress of her fortune and I master of mine. The notary will settle all that."
Aunt Élisabeth approved this arrangement; she trembled for fear this fellow, whose iron grip she could vaguely feel, should wish to thrust his fingers into her niece's dowry. She next gave the particulars of this dowry.
"My brother," said she, "possesses a fortune consisting mainly of landed property and houses. He is not the man to punish his daughter by reducing the share he intended for her. He gives her an estate in Sologne, valued at three hundred thousand francs, as well as a house in Paris said to be worth about two hundred thousand francs."