"'Ah!poor devil,and what does he want with me?'
"'Well,he is at present your creditor for a matter of three thousand two hundred francs,seventy-five centimes,principal,interest,and costs--'
"'Coutelier's business?'put in Maxime,who knew his affairs as a pilot knows his coast.
"'Yes,Monsieur le Comte,'said Cerizet with a bow.'I have come to ask your intentions.'
"'I shall only pay when the fancy takes me,'returned Maxime,and he rang for Suzon.'It was very rash of Claparon to buy up bills of mine without speaking to me beforehand.I am sorry for him,for he did so very well for such a long time as a man of straw for friends of mine.
I always said that a man must really be weak in his intellect to work for men that stuff themselves with millions,and to serve them so faithfully for such low wages.And now here he gives me another proof of his stupidity!Yes,men deserve what they get.It is your own doing whether you get a crown on your forehead or a bullet through your head;whether you are a millionaire or a porter,justice is always done you.I cannot help it,my dear fellow;I myself am not a king,I stick to my principles.I have no pity for those that put me to expense or do not know their business as creditors.--Suzon!my tea!Do you see this gentleman?'he continued when the man came in.'Well,you have allowed yourself to be taken in,poor old boy.This gentleman is a creditor;you ought to have known him by his boots.No friend nor foe of mine,nor those that are neither and want something of me,come to see me on foot.--My dear M.Cerizet,do you understand?You will not wipe your boots on my carpet again'(looking as he spoke at the mud that whitened the enemy's soles).'Convey my compliments and sympathy to Claparon,poor buffer,for I shall file this business under the letter Z.'
"All this with an easy good-humor fit to give a virtuous citizen the colic.
"'You are wrong,Monsieur le Comte,'retorted Cerizet,in a slightly peremptory tone.'We will be paid in full,and that in a way which you may not like.That is why I came to you first in a friendly spirit,as is right and fit between gentlemen--'
"'Oh!so that is how you understand it?'began Maxime,enraged by this last piece of presumption.There was something of Talleyrand's wit in the insolent retort,if you have quite grasped the contrast between the two men and their costumes.Maxime scowled and looked full at the intruder;Cerizet not merely endured the glare of cold fury,but even returned it,with an icy,cat-like malignance and fixity of gaze.
"'Very good,sir,go out--'
"'Very well,good-day,Monsieur le Comte.We shall be quits before six months are out.'
"'If you can steal the amount of your bill,which is legally due I own,I shall be indebted to you,sir,'replied Maxime.'You will have taught me a new precaution to take.I am very much your servant.'
"'Monsieur le Comte,'said Cerizet,'it is I,on the contrary,who am yours.'
"Here was an explicit,forcible,confident declaration on either side.
A couple of tigers confabulating,with the prey before them,and a fight impending,would have been no finer and no shrewder than this pair;the insolent fine gentleman as great a blackguard as the other in his soiled and mud-stained clothes.
"Which will you lay your money on?"asked Desroches,looking round at an audience,surprised to find how deeply it was interested.
"A pretty story!"cried Malaga."My dear boy,go on,I beg of you.
This goes to one's heart."
"Nothing commonplace could happen between two fighting-cocks of that calibre,"added La Palferine.
"Pooh!"cried Malaga."I will wager my cabinet-maker's invoice (the fellow is dunning me)that the little toad was too many for Maxime."
"I bet on Maxime,"said Cardot."Nobody ever caught him napping."
Desroches drank off a glass that Malaga handed to him.
"Mlle.Chocardelle's reading-room,"he continued,after a pause,"was in the Rue Coquenard,just a step or two from the Rue Pigalle where Maxime was living.The said Mlle.Chocardelle lived at the back on the garden side of the house,beyond a big dark place where the books were kept.Antonia left her aunt to look after the business--"
"Had she an aunt even then?"exclaimed Malaga."Hang it all,Maxime did things handsomely."
"Alas!it was a real aunt,"said Desroches;"her name was--let me see----"
"Ida Bonamy,"said Bixiou.
"So as Antonia's aunt took a good deal of the work off her hands,she went to bed late and lay late of a morning,never showing her face at the desk until the afternoon,some time between two and four.From the very first her appearance was enough to draw custom.Several elderly men in the quarter used to come,among them a retired coach-builder,one Croizeau.Beholding this miracle of female loveliness through the window-panes,he took it into his head to read the newspapers in the beauty's reading-room;and a sometime custom-house officer,named Denisart,with a ribbon in his button-hole,followed the example.
Croizeau chose to look upon Denisart as a rival.'/Monsieur/,'he said afterwards,'I did not know what to buy for you!'
"That speech should give you an idea of the man.The Sieur Croizeau happens to belong to a particular class of old man which should be known as 'Coquerels'since Henri Monnier's time;so well did Monnier render the piping voice,the little mannerisms,little queue,little sprinkling of powder,little movements of the head,prim little manner,and tripping gait in the part of Coquerel in /La Famille Improvisee/.This Croizeau used to hand over his halfpence with a flourish and a 'There,fair lady!'
"Mme.Ida Bonamy the aunt was not long in finding out through a servant that Croizeau,by popular report of the neighborhood of the Rue de Buffault,where he lived,was a man of exceeding stinginess,possessed of forty thousand francs per annum.A week after the instalment of the charming librarian he was delivered of a pun:
"'You lend me books (livres),but I give you plenty of francs in return,'said he.