Victorin held back his wife, who was rushing forward.
“You do not know, perhaps,” said the lawyer gently, “that your disease is contagious, monsieur.”
“To be sure,” replied Crevel. “And the doctors are quite proud of having rediscovered in me some long lost plague of the Middle Ages, which the Faculty has had cried like lost property—it is very funny!”
“Papa,” said Celestine, “be brave, and you will get the better of this disease.”
“Be quite easy, my children; Death thinks twice of it before carrying off a Mayor of Paris,” said he, with monstrous composure. “And if, after all, my district is so unfortunate as to lose a man it has twice honored with its suffrages—you see, what a flow of words I have!—Well, I shall know how to pack up and go. I have been a commercial traveler; I am experienced in such matters. Ah! my children, I am a man of strong mind.”
“Papa, promise me to admit the Church—”
“Never,” replied Crevel. “What is to be said? I drank the milk of Revolution; I have not Baron Holbach’s wit, but I have his strength of mind. I am more Regence than ever, more Musketeer, Abbe Dubois, and Marechal de Richelieu! By the Holy Poker!—My wife, who is wandering in her head, has just sent me a man in a gown—to me! the admirer of Beranger, the friend of Lisette, the son of Voltaire and Rousseau.—The doctor, to feel my pulse, as it were, and see if sickness had subdued me—‘You saw Monsieur l’Abbe?’ said he.—Well, I imitated the great Montesquieu. Yes, I looked at the doctor—see, like this,” and he turned to show three-quarters face, like his portrait, and extended his hand authoritatively—“and I said:
“The slave was here,
He showed his order, but he nothing gained.
“His order is a pretty jest, showing that even in death Monsieur le President de Montesquieu preserved his elegant wit, for they had sent him a Jesuit. I admire that passage—I cannot say of his life, but of his death—the passage—another joke!—The passage from life to death—the Passage Montesquieu!”
Victorin gazed sadly at his father-in-law, wondering whether folly and vanity were not forces on a par with true greatness of soul. The causes that act on the springs of the soul seem to be quite independent of the results. Can it be that the fortitude which upholds a great criminal is the same as that which a Champcenetz so proudly walks to the scaffold?