Luxury - Gluttony: Two of the Seven Cardinal Sins

"My God, M. Pascal! how sorry we are! To-day is my mother's birthday, and you see we are just getting ready to go to dine with her. It is an anniversary we never fail to celebrate."

"Ah! that is very provoking, as I hoped to spend my evening with you."

"And do you think it is less annoying to us, dear M. Pascal?"

"Bah! you could very easily give up a family reunion for me. After all, your mother would not die if you were not there."

"Oh, my dear M. Pascal, that is impossible! It would be the first time since our marriage that we failed in this little family ceremony."

"Come, you surely will do that for me."

"But, M. Pascal — "

"I tell you, you will do that for your good M. Pascal, will you not?"

"We would like to do it with all our heart, but — "

"What! you refuse me that — me — the first thing I have ever asked of you?"

And M. Pascal put such an emphasis on the word me that the whole family suddenly trembled; they felt, as is vulgarly said, their master, and knowing of the strange caprice of the capitalist, they submitted sadly rather than offend the dreadful man upon whom their fate depended. They gave up the visit and improvised a dinner. They tried to smile, to have a cheerful air, and not to appear to regret the family festivity which they had renounced. But soon another fear begins to oppress their hearts; the dinner is becoming more and more sad and constrained. M. Pascal professes a sort of pathetic astonishment, as he complains with a sigh:

"Come, now, I have interfered with your plans; you feel bitterly toward me, alas! I see it."

"Ah, M. Pascal!" cried the unhappy family, more and more disquieted, "how can you conceive such a thought?"

"Oh, I am not mistaken. I see it, I feel it, because my heart tells me so. Eh, my God! just to think of it! It is always a great wrong to put friendship to the proof, even in the smallest things, because they serve sometimes to measure great ones. I, — yes, I, — who counted on you as true and good friends! — yet it was a deception, perhaps."

And Satan-Pascal put his hand over his eyes, got up from the table, and went out of the house with a grieved and afflicted air, leaving the miserable inmates in unspeakable anguish, because he no longer believed in their friendship, and thought them ungrateful, — he who could in one moment plunge them in an abyss of woe by demanding the money he had so generously offered. The gratitude that he expected from them was their only assurance of his continued assistance.

We have insisted on these circumstances, trifling as they may seem perhaps, but whose result was so cruel, because we wished to give an example of how M. Pascal tortured his victims.

Let one judge after that of the degrees of torture to which he was capable of subjecting them, when so insignificant a fact as we have mentioned offered such food to his calculating cruelty.

He was a monster, it must be admitted.

There are Neros, unhappily, everywhere and in every age, but who would dare say that Pascal could have reached such a degree of perversity without the pernicious influences and terrible resentments which his soul, irritated by a degrading servitude, had nourished for so long a time?

The word reprisal does not excuse the cruelty of this man; it explains itself. Man rarely becomes wicked without a cause. Evil owes its birth to evil.

M. Pascal thus portrayed, we will precede him by one hour to the home of M. Charles Dutertre.

CHAPTER V

The factory of M. Dutertre, devoted to the manufacture of locomotives for railroads, occupied an immense site in the Faubourg St. Marceau, and its tall brick chimneys, constantly smoking, designated it at a great distance.

M. Dutertre and his family lived in a small house separated from the workshops by a large garden.

At the moment we introduce the reader into this modest dwelling, an air of festivity reigned there; every one in the house seemed to be occupied with hospitable preparation. A young and active servant had just finished arranging the table in the middle of the dining-room, the window of which looked out upon the garden, and which bordered upon a small kitchen separated from the landing-place by a glass partition, panes set in an unpolished frame. An old cook woman went to and fro with a bewildered air in this culinary laboratory, from which issued whiffs of appetising odours, which sometimes pervaded the dining-room.

In the parlour, furnished with walnut covered in yellow Utrecht velvet and curtains of white muslin, other preparations were going on. Two vases of white porcelain, ornamenting the chimneypiece, had just been filled with fresh flowers; between these two vases, replacing the ornamental clock, was a miniature locomotive under a glass globe, a veritable masterpiece of mechanism and ironmongery. On the black pedestal of this trinket of iron, copper, and steel one could see engraved the words:

To M. Charles Dutertre

His grateful workmen

Téniers or Gérard Dow would have made a charming picture of the family group in this parlour.

A blind old man, with a venerable and melancholy face encircled by long white hair falling over his shoulders, was seated in an armchair, holding two children on his knees, — a little boy of three years old and a little girl of five, — two angels of beauty and grace.

The little boy, dark and rosy, with great black eyes as soft as velvet, every now and then would look at his pretty blue casimir shirt and white trousers with the utmost satisfaction, but was most of all delighted with his white silk stockings striped with crimson, and his black morocco shoes with ribbon bows.

The little girl, named Madeleine for an intimate friend of the mother who was godmother to the child, was fair and rosy, with lovely blue eyes, and wore a pretty white dress. Her shoulders and arms were bare, and her legs were only half covered by dainty Scotch socks. To tell how many dimples were in those shoulders, on those arms, and in those fat little cheeks, so red and fresh and smooth, would have required a mother's computation, and she could only have learned by the number of kisses she gave them.

Standing by and leaning on the back of the old blind man's chair, Madame Dutertre was listening with a mother's interest and earnestness to the chirping of the little warblers that the grandfather held on his knees, talking of this and of that, in that infantine jargon which mothers know how to translate with such rare sagacity.

Madame Sophie Dutertre was only twenty-five years old, and, although slightly marked by smallpox, had unusually regular and beautiful features. It would be difficult to imagine a more gracious or attractive countenance, a more refined or agreeable smile, which was the ideal of sweetness and amiability. Superb hair, teeth of pearl, a dazzling complexion, and an elegant stature rendered her a charming presence under any circumstances, and when she raised her large, bright, limpid eyes to her husband, who was then standing on the other side of the blind old grandfather, love and maternity gave to this tender glance an expression at the same time pathetic and passionate, for the marriage of Sophie and Charles Dutertre had been a marriage of love.

The only fault — if a fault could be said to pertain to Sophie Dutertre — was, as careful and fastidious as she was about the attire of her children, she gave very little attention to her own toilet. An unbecoming, badly made stuff dress disparaged her elegant figure; her little foot was by no means irreproachably shod, and her beautiful brown hair was arranged with as little taste as care.

Frank and resolute, intelligent and kind, such was the character of M. Dutertre, then about twenty-eight years old. His keen eye, full of fire, and his robust, yet slender figure announced an active, energetic nature. A civil engineer, a man of science and study, as capable of solving difficult problems with the pen as of handling the file and the iron hammer; knowing how to command as well as to execute; honouring and elevating manual labour and sometimes practising it, whether by example or encouragement; scrupulously just; loyal and confiding almost to temerity; paternal, firm and impartial toward his numerous workmen; possessing an antique simplicity of manner; enthusiastic in labour, and in love with his creatures of iron and copper and steel, his life was divided between the three great things which constitute the happiness of man, — love, family, and labour.

Charles Dutertre had only one sorrow, the blindness of his father, and yet this affliction was the opportunity for such tender devotion, such delicate and constant care, that Dutertre and his wife endeavoured to console themselves in the thought that it enabled them to prove to the old man their affection and fidelity. Notwithstanding the preparations for the approaching festivity, Charles Dutertre had postponed shaving until the next day, and his working suit which he kept on showed here and there upon the gray cloth spots and stains and burns which gave evidence of his contact with the forge. His forehead was high and noble-looking, his hands, which were white and nervous, were somewhat blackened by the smoke of the workshops. He seemed to forget, in his laborious and untiring activity, or in the refreshing repose which succeeded it, that personal care which some men very properly never renounce.

Such were the persons assembled in the modest parlour of the little home. The two children, chatting incessantly and at the same time, tried to make themselves understood by their grandfather, who responded with the best will in the world, and, smiling sweetly, would ask them:

"What did you say, my little Augustus, and what do you say, my little Madeleine?"

"Will madame the interpreter have the kindness to translate this pretty chirping into common language?" said Charles Dutertre to his wife, as he laughed merrily.

"Why, Charles, do you not understand?"

"Not at all."

"Do you not understand the children, father?" said she to the old man.

"I thought I heard something about Sunday dress," said the old man, smiling, "but it was so complicated that I gave up all hope of comprehending it."

"It was something very like that, — come, come, only mothers and grandfathers understand little children," said Sophie, triumphantly.

Then turning to the children, she said:

"My dears, did you not say to your grandfather, 'To-day is Sunday because we have on our pretty new clothes'?"

The little blonde Madeleine opened her great blue eyes wide, and bowed her curly head in the affirmative.

"You are the Champollion of mothers!" cried Charles Dutertre, while the old man said to the two children:

"No, to-day is not Sunday, my children, but it is a feast-day."