Luxury - Gluttony: Two of the Seven Cardinal Sins. Эжен СюЧитать онлайн книгу.
held to this express condition, to be reimbursed at his will.
The alternative was cruel indeed for the unhappy ones whom Satan-Pascal tempted: on one hand, the ruin of a prosperous industry; on the other, an unexpected aid, so easily offered that it might pass for a generous service. The impossibility of finding capital, even at ruinous rates, and the confidence which M. Pascal knew how to inspire, rendered the temptation most powerful, a temptation all the more seductive by the insinuating kindness of the multi-millionaire, who came, as he declared, as a financial providence to the assistance of honest, labouring people.
In a word, everything conspired to stifle suspicion; they accepted. From that time Pascal possessed them.
Beset by the fear of an immediate demand for repayment which must reduce them to a desperate condition from which they could not hope to rise, they had but one aim, to please M. Pascal, but one dread, to displease M. Pascal, who was master of their fate.
It not infrequently happened that our Satan did not at first use his power, and, by a refinement of wicked malice, would play the part of a kind man, a benefactor, taking a fiendish pleasure in hearing the benedictions with which his victims loaded him, leaving them for a long time in the error which led them to adore their benevolent friend; then, by degrees, according to his humour, he revealed himself slowly, never employing threats, rudeness, or passion, but, on the contrary, affecting an insinuating sweetness which in itself became frightful. Circumstances the most insignificant and puerile offered him a thousand means of tormenting the persons he held in his absolute power.
For instance, he would arrive at the house of one of his vassals, so to speak. Perhaps the man was going with his wife and children to some family reunion, long before arranged.
"I have come to dine with you without ceremony to-day, my friends," this Satan would say.
"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:
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,