第43章

Blondet felt himself unequal at his age to a contest with a young wife.He sought consolation in his greenhouse, and engaged a very pretty servant-maid to assist him to tend his ever-changing bevy of beauties.So while the judge potted, pricked out, watered, layered, slipped, blended, and induced his flowers to break, Mme.Blondet spent his substance on the dress and finery in which she shone at the prefecture.One interest alone had power to draw her away from the tender care of a romantic affection which the town came to admire in the end; and this interest was Emile's education.The child of love was a bright and pretty boy, while Joseph was no less heavy and plain-featured.The old judge, blinded by paternal affection loved Joseph as his wife loved Emile.

For a dozen years M.Blondet bore his lot with perfect resignation.He shut his eyes to his wife's intrigue with a dignified, well-bred composure, quite in the style of an eighteenth century grand seigneur;but, like all men with a taste for a quiet life, he could cherish a profound dislike, and he hated his younger son.When his wife died, therefore, in 1818, he turned the intruder out of the house, and packed him off to Paris to study law on an allowance of twelve hundred francs for all resource, nor could any cry of distress extract another penny from his purse.Emile Blondet would have gone under if it had not been for his real father.

M.Blondet's house was one of the prettiest in the town.It stood almost opposite the prefecture, with a neat little court in front.Arow of old-fashioned iron railings between two brick-work piers enclosed it from the street; and a low wall, also of brick, with a second row of railings along the top, connected the piers with the neighboring house.The little court, a space about ten fathoms in width by twenty in length, was cut in two by a brick pathway which ran from the gate to the house door between a border on either side.Those borders were always renewed; at every season of the year they exhibited a successful show of blossom, to the admiration of the public.All along the back of the gardenbeds a quantity of climbing plants grew up and covered the walls of the neighboring houses with a magnificent mantle; the brick-work piers were hidden in clusters of honeysuckle; and, to crown all, in a couple of terra-cotta vases at the summit, a pair of acclimatized cactuses displayed to the astonished eyes of the ignorant those thick leaves bristling with spiny defences which seem to be due to some plant disease.

It was a plain-looking house, built of brick, with brick-work arches above the windows, and bright green Venetian shutters to make it gay.

Through the glass door you could look straight across the house to the opposite glass door, at the end of a long passage, and down the central alley in the garden beyond; while through the windows of the dining-room and drawing-room, which extended, like the passage from back to front of the house, you could often catch further glimpses of the flower-beds in a garden of about two acres in extent.Seen from the road, the brick-work harmonized with the fresh flowers and shrubs, for two centuries had overlaid it with mosses and green and russet tints.No one could pass through the town without falling in love with a house with such charming surroundings, so covered with flowers and mosses to the roof-ridge, where two pigeons of glazed crockery ware were perched by way of ornament.

M.Blondet possessed an income of about four thousand livres derived from land, besides the old house in the town.He meant to avenge his wrongs legitimately enough.He would leave his house, his lands, his seat on the bench to his son Joseph, and the whole town knew what he meant to do.He had made a will in that son's favor; he had gone as far as the Code will permit a man to go in the way of disinheriting one child to benefit another; and what was more, he had been putting by money for the past fifteen years to enable his lout of a son to buy back from Emile that portion of his father's estate which could not legally be taken away from him.

Emile Blondet thus turned adrift had contrived to gain distinction in Paris, but so far it was rather a name than a practical result.

Emile's indolence, recklessness, and happy-go-lucky ways drove his real father to despair; and when that father died, a half-ruined man, turned out of office by one of the political reactions so frequent under the Restoration, it was with a mind uneasy as to the future of a man endowed with the most brilliant qualities.

Emile Blondet found support in a friendship with a Mlle.de Troisville, whom he had known before her marriage with the Comte de Montcornet.His mother was living when the Troisvilles came back after the emigration; she was related to the family, distantly it is true, but the connection was close enough to allow her to introduce Emile to the house.She, poor woman, foresaw the future.She knew that when she died her son would lose both mother and father, a thought which made death doubly bitter, so she tried to interest others in him.She encouraged the liking that sprang up between Emile and the eldest daughter of the house of Troisville; but while the liking was exceedingly strong on the young lady's part, a marriage was out of the question.It was a romance on the pattern of Paul et Virginie.Mme.

Blondet did what she could to teach her son to look to the Troisvilles, to found a lasting attachment on a children's game of "make-believe" love, which was bound to end as boy-and-girl romances usually do.When Mlle.de Troisville's marriage with General Montcornet was announced, Mme.Blondet, a dying woman, went to the bride and solemnly implored her never to abandon Emile, and to use her influence for him in society in Paris, whither the General's fortune summoned her to shine.