CHAPTER VI--IN WHICH MAGNON AND HER TWO CHILDREN ARE SEEN

  With M. Gillenormand, sorrow was converted into wrath; he was furious atbeing in despair. He had all sorts of prejudices and took all sortsof liberties. One of the facts of which his exterior relief and hisinternal satisfaction was composed, was, as we have just hinted, that hehad remained a brisk spark, and that he passed energetically for such.This he called having "royal renown." This royal renown sometimes drewdown upon him singular windfalls. One day, there was brought to him ina basket, as though it had been a basket of oysters, a stout, newlyborn boy, who was yelling like the deuce, and duly wrapped inswaddling-clothes, which a servant-maid, dismissed six monthspreviously, attributed to him. M. Gillenormand had, at that time,fully completed his eighty-fourth year. Indignation and uproar in theestablishment. And whom did that bold hussy think she could persuade tobelieve that? What audacity! What an abominable calumny! M. Gillenormandhimself was not at all enraged. He gazed at the brat with the amiablesmile of a good man who is flattered by the calumny, and said in anaside: "Well, what now? What's the matter? You are finely taken aback,and really, you are excessively ignorant. M. le Duc d'Angoulême, thebastard of his Majesty Charles IX., married a silly jade of fifteenwhen he was eighty-five; M. Virginal, Marquis d'Alluye, brother tothe Cardinal de Sourdis, Archbishop of Bordeaux, had, at the age ofeighty-three, by the maid of Madame la Présidente Jacquin, a son, areal child of love, who became a Chevalier of Malta and a counsellor ofstate; one of the great men of this century, the Abbé Tabaraud, is theson of a man of eighty-seven. There is nothing out of the ordinary inthese things. And then, the Bible! Upon that I declare that this littlegentleman is none of mine. Let him be taken care of. It is not hisfault." This manner of procedure was good-tempered. The woman, whosename was Magnon, sent him another parcel in the following year. It was aboy again. Thereupon, M. Gillenormand capitulated. He sent the two bratsback to their mother, promising to pay eighty francs a month for theirmaintenance, on the condition that the said mother would not do so anymore. He added: "I insist upon it that the mother shall treat them well.I shall go to see them from time to time." And this he did. He had hada brother who was a priest, and who had been rector of the Academy ofPoitiers for three and thirty years, and had died at seventy-nine."I lost him young," said he. This brother, of whom but little memoryremains, was a peaceable miser, who, being a priest, thought himselfbound to bestow alms on the poor whom he met, but he never gave themanything except bad or demonetized sous, thereby discovering a means ofgoing to hell by way of paradise. As for M. Gillenormand the elder, henever haggled over his alms-giving, but gave gladly and nobly. He waskindly, abrupt, charitable, and if he had been rich, his turn of mindwould have been magnificent. He desired that all which concerned himshould be done in a grand manner, even his rogueries. One day, havingbeen cheated by a business man in a matter of inheritance, in a grossand apparent manner, he uttered this solemn exclamation: "That wasindecently done! I am really ashamed of this pilfering. Everything hasdegenerated in this century, even the rascals. Morbleu! this is not theway to rob a man of my standing. I am robbed as though in a forest, butbadly robbed. _Silvæ sint consule dignæ! _" He had had two wives, aswe have already mentioned; by the first he had had a daughter, who hadremained unmarried, and by the second another daughter, who had diedat about the age of thirty, who had wedded, through love, or chance,or otherwise, a soldier of fortune who had served in the armies of theRepublic and of the Empire, who had won the cross at Austerlitz and hadbeen made colonel at Waterloo. _"He is the disgrace of my family," _said the old bourgeois. He took an immense amount of snuff, and had aparticularly graceful manner of plucking at his lace ruffle with theback of one hand. He believed very little in God.