Madame Firmiani | Page 4

Monsieur de Bourbonne, an old country
magnate, who had reason to think a great deal about her during the
winter of this year. He belonged to the class of provincial Planters, men
living on their estates, accustomed to keep close accounts of everything
and to bargain with the peasantry. Thus employed, a man becomes
sagacious in spite of himself, just as soldiers in the long run acquire
courage from routine. The old gentleman, who had come to Paris from
Touraine to satisfy his curiosity about Madame Firmiani, and found it
not at all assuaged by the Parisian gossip which he heard, was a man of
honor and breeding. His sole heir was a nephew, whom he greatly
loved, in whose interests he planted his poplars. When a man thinks
without annoyance about his heir, and watches the trees grow daily
finer for his future benefit, affection grows too with every blow of the
spade around her roots. Though this phenomenal feeling is not common,
it is still to be met with in Touraine.
This cherished nephew, named Octave de Camps, was a descendant of

the famous Abbe de Camps, so well known to bibliophiles and learned
men, --who, by the bye, are not at all the same thing. People in the
provinces have the bad habit of branding with a sort of decent
reprobation any young man who sells his inherited estates. This
antiquated prejudice has interfered very much with the stock-jobbing
which the present government encourages for its own interests. Without
consulting his uncle, Octave had lately sold an estate belonging to him
to the Black Band.[*] The chateau de Villaines would have been pulled
down were it not for the remonstrances which the old uncle made to the
representatives of the "Pickaxe company." To increase the old man's
wrath, a distant relative (one of those cousins of small means and much
astuteness about whom shrewd provincials are wont to remark, "No
lawsuits for me with him!") had, as it were by accident, come to visit
Monsieur de Bourbonne, and incidentally informed him of his nephew's
ruin. Monsieur Octave de Camps, he said, having wasted his means on
a certain Madame Firmiani, was now reduced to teaching mathematics
for a living, while awaiting his uncle's death, not daring to let him
know of his dissipations. This distant cousin, a sort of Charles Moor,
was not ashamed to give this fatal news to the old gentleman as he sat
by his fire, digesting a profuse provincial dinner.
[*] The "Bande Noire" was a mysterious association of speculators,
whose object was to buy in landed estates, cut them up, and sell them
off in small parcels to the peasantry, or others.
But heirs cannot always rid themselves of uncles as easily as they
would like to. Thanks to his obstinacy, this particular uncle refused to
believe the story, and came out victorious from the attack of indigestion
produced by his nephew's biography. Some shocks affect the heart,
others the head; but in this case the cousin's blow fell on the digestive
organs and did little harm, for the old man's stomach was sound. Like a
true disciple of Saint Thomas, Monsieur de Bourbonne came to Paris,
unknown to Octave, resolved to make full inquiries as to his nephew's
insolvency. Having many acquaintances in the faubourg Saint-Germain,
among the Listomeres, the Lenoncourts, and the Vandenesses, he heard
so much gossip, so many facts and falsities, about Madame Firmiani
that he resolved to be presented to her under the name of de Rouxellay,
that of his estate in Touraine. The astute old gentleman was careful to
choose an evening when he knew that Octave would be engaged in

finishing a piece of work which was to pay him well,--for this so-called
lover of Madame Firmiani still went to her house; a circumstance that
seemed difficult to explain. As to Octave's ruin, that, unfortunately, was
no fable, as Monsieur de Bourbonne had at once discovered.
Monsieur de Rouxellay was not at all like the provincial uncle at the
Gymnase. Formerly in the King's guard, a man of the world and a
favorite among women, he knew how to present himself in society with
the courteous manners of the olden time; he could make graceful
speeches and understand the whole Charter, or most of it. Though he
loved the Bourbons with noble frankness, believed in God as a
gentleman should, and read nothing but the "Quotidienne," he was not
as ridiculous as the liberals of his department would fain have had him.
He could hold his own in the court circle, provided no one talked to
him of "Moses in Egypt," nor of the drama, or romanticism, or local
color, nor of railways. He himself had never got beyond Monsieur de
Voltaire, Monsieur le Comte de Buffon,