Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 397, November 1848

"'The two halves shall be paid together,' added Pélagie, bolder than her husband.

"'It is to-day the money would be useful to me; I miss an affair on which I should gain fifty crowns! It is very hard to have obliged people, and to find one's-self in difficulty in consequence. I am so much in want of money, Risquetout, that if you give me two hundred francs, I will return you these two bills of sixty crowns each.'

"'You know very well I have no money, Eloi.'

"'Never mind, it shows you what sacrifices I would make to-day, to receive what you owe me.'

"Again no one dared tell the miller that he was not very sincere when he offered to sacrifice a hundred and sixty francs to obtain payment of a sum which would enable him, he said, to gain a hundred and fifty.

"'What is to be done?' said he.

"'I wish I had the money, Eloi.'

"'You say then that you cannot pay, till Michaelmas, the hundred and twenty crowns you should have paid to-day?'

"'That is to say, cousin,' cried Pélagie, always bolder or less patient than her husband, 'that we should have given you half of it.'

"'Yes; but that half was due a fortnight ago; and, besides, I am in such want of that half, that – See here, now, I offered just now to give you back your bills for two hundred francs; well, pay me one, and I return you both. There is nothing stingy or greedy in that offer, I hope; I lent you a hundred and twenty crowns, and I cry quits for sixty.'

"'Cousin, I repeat that I have no money, and besides, if I had sixty crowns, I would give them you, which would not prevent my giving you the sixty others later.'

"'It is sixty crowns that I lose on the affair I miss for want of money.'

"'Pélagie longed to remind Eloi that the profit sacrificed had been but fifty crowns a few minutes before, but she held her tongue.

"'I am no Turk,' continued the miller; 'I will renew your bills. Draw one of a hundred and fifty crowns payable at Michaelmas.'

"The husband and wife exchanged a look. Pélagie spoke.

"'What, cousin! a hundred and fifty crowns! That makes, then, thirty crowns interest from now till Michaelmas, and that on sixty crowns, or rather on fifty, since only half the sum is due; and out of the sixty crowns ten are for interest.'

"'I don't deny it. You think thirty crowns interest too much; well, I offer sixty for the same time. Give me sixty crowns, and I return the two bills, and thank you into the bargain, and you will have done me famous service.'

"'Ah! cousin, I wish I had never borrowed this money of you!'

"'I am sure I wish you had not; I should not be pinched for it to-day. And why am I? Because I won't get you into difficulties, for I might give your two bills in payment for the affair I speak of, and then you would be made to pay, or your boats would be sold; but I prefer being the loser myself, for after all, cousin, we are brothers' sons, and we must help one another in this world.'

"'Nevertheless, cousin, thirty crowns are a very high figure.'

"'Yes; and I should be quite content if you would give me sixty for the hundred and twenty I lent you; but, Lord bless me! add nothing to the bill, if you like – let me lose every thing.'

"'It is fair to add something, Eloi.'

"'Well, since you find thirty crowns too much, when I should be too happy to give sixty, add nothing, or add thirty crowns.'

"Tranquille and his wife looked at each other.

"'I will do as you wish,' said Risquetout.

"'Observe,' said the miller, 'that it is not I who wish it. What I wish, on the contrary, is to see my hundred and twenty crowns which went out of my pocket, and to receive them without addition; what I would gladly agree to is, to receive sixty, and make you a present of the rest.'

"'Write out the bill; I will make my mark.'

"Eloi wrote; but, when about to set down the sum upon the stamp he had brought with him, he checked himself.

"'Tranquille,' said he, 'the stamp is five sous; it is not fair I should pay it. Give me five sous.'

"'There is not a sou in the house,' said Pélagie.

"'Then we will add it to the amount of the bill. Thus: At Michaelmas I promise to pay to my cousin, Eloi Alain, the sum of four hundred and fifty-one francs (one cannot put four hundred and fifty francs and five sous, it would look so paltry,) which he has been so obliging as to lend me in hard cash. Signed, Tranquille Alain. There, put your mark, and you, Pélagie, put yours also.'

"The signatures given, Eloi returned the old bills with the air of a benefactor conferring an immense favour.

"'This time, cousin,' said he, 'be punctual. I shall pay away your bill to a miller at Cherbourg; and if you are not prepared to take it up when due, he may not be so accommodating as I am; for, after all, these four hundred and fifty-one francs would be very useful to me, if I had them in my pocket instead of having lent them to you. Four hundred and fifty-one francs are not to be picked up under every hedge; it is not every day one finds a cousin willing to lend him four hundred and fifty-one francs.'

"No one made any observation on this pretended loan of four hundred and fifty-one francs.

"'Well, I must be off. I perhaps lost my temper a little, cousin, but I am really in want of the money. You understand – when one has reckoned on four hundred and fifty-one francs that one has lent – and then not to receive a single copper, it is rather vexatious; but, however, I will manage as I can. I am hasty at the moment, but I bear no malice. It is all forgotten.'

"He then took up the two whitings which had been laid aside for him. At the same time he took a third out of the basket, and placed it beside one of his, comparing the two.

"'I think this is a finer one!' he said. And he weighed them, one in each hand.

"'There is not much difference,' he observed.

"He changed them into the opposite hands, weighed them again, and appeared sadly embarrassed, until his kinsman said to him:

"'Don't mind, cousin, take the three.'

"'Here, Onesimus,' said he, 'run a piece of string through their gills.'

"Onesimus strung them on the end of a strong line. He was about to cut the piece off, when Eloi checked him.

"'Bless me!' said the miller, 'how wasteful children are! He would cut that capital new cord.'

"And he carried away the entire cord, with the three whitings at the end of it, after having several times repeated his advice to Risquetout to be punctual in the payment of his bill, and after kissing Berenice, and saying, —

"'Good-bye, my dear children; I am delighted to have been of service to you.'

"'Our cousin is a very hard and a very griping man,' said Pélagie.

"'God does not pay his labourers every night,' replied Tranquille, lifting his woollen cap, 'but sooner or later he never forgets to pay. Each man shall be recompensed according to his work.'"

This is by no means the sort of thing generally met with in French romances of the present day. It is neither the back-slum and bloody-murder style, nor the self-styled historical, nor the social-subversive. It is just simple, natural, pleasant reading, free from anything indecent or objectionable. We have taken this chapter because it bears extraction well, not as the best in the book, still less as the only good one. La Famille Alain has a well-contrived plot and well-managed incidents, contains some droll and quiet caricature, and many touching and delicately-handled passages. The correspondence between the young lady at the Paris boarding-school, and the fisherman's daughter at Dive, and the sketches of the company at the watering-place, are each excellent in their way. The introduction of Madame du Mortal and her daughter, and of the Viscount de Morgenstein, is rather foreign to the story, but affords M. Karr opportunity of sketching characters by no means uncommon in France, although little known in England. At this sort of delineation he is the Gavarni of the pen.

"The truth is, that Madame du Mortal's existence had been tolerably agitated. Eight years previously she had quitted M. du Mortal for the society of an officer, who soon, touched by remorse, had left her at full liberty to repair their mutual fault by returning to edify the conjugal mansion by her repentance, and by the exercise of those domestic virtues she had somewhat neglected. Madame du Mortal did nothing of the sort; she knew how to create resources for herself. Formerly, deceived and discouraged people fled to a convent, now they fly to the feuilleton. When a woman finds herself, by misconduct and scandal, excluded from society, she does not weep over her fault and expiate it in a cloister; before long you see her name at the bottom of a newspaper feuilleton, in which she demands the enfranchisement of her sex. No great effort of invention was requisite for Madame du Mortal to devise this resource. Her husband, M. du Mortal, a tall, corpulent man, with a severe countenance and formidable mustaches, had long furnished the article MODES to a widely-circulated newspaper; and under the name of the Marchioness of M – , discoursed weekly upon tucks and flounces, upon the length of gowns and the size of bonnets, according to the instructions of milliners and dressmakers, who paid him to give their names and addresses. Madame du Mortal devoted herself to the same branch of literature, and succeeded in seducing some of her husband's customers."

"The Viscount de Morgenstein was one of those illustrious pianists whose talent has much less connexion with music than with sleight of hand. M. de Morgenstein achieved only three notes a minute less than M. Henry Herz; as he was young and worked hard, it was thought he would overtake, and perhaps surpass that master. He had long curling hair, affected a melancholy and despairing countenance, and was considered to have something fatal in his gait. His mere aspect betrayed the man overwhelmed by the burden of genius and by the divine malediction."