第44章

So one day early in January 1837, Madame Cardot and her daughter took a hackney coach and went to the Rue des Martyrs to return the parts of /Gil Blas/ to Felicie's betrothed, both delighted at the thought of seeing Lousteau's rooms. These domiciliary visitations are not unusual in the old citizen class. The porter at the front gate was not in; but his daughter, on being informed by the worthy lady that she was in the presence of Monsieur Lousteau's future mother-in-law and bride, handed over the key of the apartment--all the more readily because Madame Cardot placed a gold piece in her hand.

It was by this time about noon, the hour at which the journalist would return from breakfasting at the Cafe Anglais. As he crossed the open space between the Church of Notre-Dame de Lorette and the Rue des Martyrs, Lousteau happened to look at a hired coach that was toiling up the Rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, and he fancied it was a dream when he saw the face of Dinah! He stood frozen to the spot when, on reaching his house, he beheld his Didine at the coach door.

"What has brought you here?" he inquired.--He adopted the familiar /tu/. The formality of /vous/ was out of the question to a woman he must get rid of.

"Why, my love," cried she, "have you not read my letters?""Certainly I have," said Lousteau.

"Well, then?"

"Well, then?"

"You are a father," replied the country lady.

"Faugh!" cried he, disregarding the barbarity of such an exclamation.

"Well," thought he to himself, "she must be prepared for the blow."He signed to the coachman to wait, gave his hand to Madame de la Baudraye, and left the man with the chaise full of trunks, vowing that he would send away /illico/, as he said to himself, the woman and her luggage, back to the place she had come from.

"Monsieur, monsieur," called out little Pamela.

The child had some sense, and felt that three women must not be allowed to meet in a bachelor's rooms.

"Well, well!" said Lousteau, dragging Dinah along.

Pamela concluded that the lady must be some relation; however, she added:

"The key is in the door; your mother-in-law is there."In his agitation, while Madame de la Baudraye was pouring out a flood of words, Etienne understood the child to say, "Mother is there," the only circumstance that suggested itself as possible, and he went in.

Felicie and her mother, who were by this time in the bed-room, crept into a corner on seeing Etienne enter with a woman.

"At last, Etienne, my dearest, I am yours for life!" cried Dinah, throwing her arms round his neck, and clasping him closely, while he took the key from the outside of the door. "Life is a perpetual anguish to me in that house at Anzy. I could bear it no longer; and when the time came for me to proclaim my happiness--well, I had not the courage.--Here I am, your wife with your child! And you have not written to me; you have left me two months without a line.""But, Dinah, you place me in the greatest difficulty--""Do you love me?"

"How can I do otherwise than love you?--But would you not have been wiser to remain at Sancerre?--I am in the most abject poverty, and Ifear to drag you into it--"

"Your misery will be paradise to me. I only ask to live here, never to go out--""Good God! that is all very fine in words, but--" Dinah sat down and melted into tears as she heard this speech, roughly spoken.

Lousteau could not resist this distress. He clasped the Baroness in his arms and kissed her.

"Do not cry, Didine!" said he; and, as he uttered the words, he saw in the mirror the figure of Madame Cardot, looking at him from the further end of the rooms. "Come, Didine, go with Pamela and get your trunks unloaded," said he in her ear. "Go; do not cry; we will be happy!"He led her to the door, and then came back to divert the storm.

"Monsieur," said Madame Cardot, "I congratulate myself on having resolved to see for myself the home of the man who was to have been my son-in-law. If my daughter were to die of it, she should never be the wife of such a man as you. You must devote yourself to making your Didine happy, monsieur."And the virtuous lady walked out, followed by Felicie, who was crying too, for she had become accustomed to Etienne. The dreadful Madame Cardot got into her hackney-coach again, staring insolently at the hapless Dinah, in whose heart the sting still rankled of "that is all very fine in words"; but who, nevertheless, like every woman in love, believed in the murmured, "Do not cry, Didine!"Lousteau, who was not lacking in the sort of decision which grows out of the vicissitudes of a storm-tossed life, reflected thus:

"Didine is high-minded; when once she knows of my proposed marriage, she will sacrifice herself for my future prospects, and I know how Ican manage to let her know." Delighted at having hit on a trick of which the success seemed certain, he danced round to a familiar tune:

"/Larifla, fla, fla!/--And Didine once out of the way," he went on, talking to himself, "I will treat Maman Cardot to a call and a novelette: I have seduced her Felicie at Saint-Eustache--Felicie, guilty through passion, bears in her bosom the pledge of our affection --and /larifla, fla, fla!/ the father /Ergo/, the notary, his wife, and his daughter are caught, nabbed----"And, to her great amazement, Dinah discovered Etienne performing a prohibited dance.

"Your arrival and our happiness have turned my head with joy," said he, to explain this crazy mood.

"And I had fancied you had ceased to love me!" exclaimed the poor woman, dropping the handbag she was carrying, and weeping with joy as she sank into a chair.

"Make yourself at home, my darling," said Etienne, laughing in his sleeve; "I must write two lines to excuse myself from a bachelor party, for I mean to devote myself to you. Give your orders; you are at home."Etienne wrote to Bixiou: