The Magic Skin Part 19

"You are all as ugly as bailiffs. You won't be fit for anything to-day, so this day is lost, and I vote for breakfast."

At this Taillefer went out to give some orders. The women went languidly up to the mirrors to set their toilettes in order. Each one shook herself. The wilder sort lectured the steadier ones. The courtesans made fun of those who looked unable to continue the boisterous festivity; but these wan forms revived all at once, stood in groups, and talked and smiled. Some servants quickly and adroitly set the furniture and everything else in its place, and a magnificent breakfast was got ready.

The guests hurried into the dining-room. Everything there bore indelible marks of yesterday's excess, it is true, but there were at any rate some traces of ordinary, rational existence, such traces as may be found in a sick man's dying struggles. And so the revelry was laid away and buried, like carnival of a Shrove Tuesday, by masks wearied out with dancing, drunk with drunkenness, and quite ready to be persuaded of the pleasures of la.s.situde, lest they should be forced to admit their exhaustion.

As soon as these bold spirits surrounded the capitalist's breakfast-table, Cardot appeared. He had left the rest to make a night of it after the dinner, and finished the evening after his own fas.h.i.+on in the retirement of domestic life. Just now a sweet smile wandered over his features. He seemed to have a presentiment that there would be some inheritance to sample and divide, involving inventories and engrossing; an inheritance rich in fees and deeds to draw up, and something as juicy as the trembling fillet of beef in which their host had just plunged his knife.

"Oh, ho! we are to have breakfast in the presence of a notary," cried Cursy.

"You have come here just at the right time," said the banker, indicating the breakfast; "you can jot down the numbers, and initial off all the dishes."

"There is no will to make here, but contracts of marriage there may be, perhaps," said the scholar, who had made a satisfactory arrangement for the first time in twelve months.

"Oh! Oh!"

"Ah! Ah!"

"One moment," cried Cardot, fairly deafened by a chorus of wretched jokes. "I came here on serious business. I am bringing six millions for one of you." (Dead silence.) "Monsieur," he went on, turning to Raphael, who at the moment was unceremoniously wiping his eyes on a corner of the table-napkin, "was not your mother a Mlle. O'Flaharty?"

"Yes," said Raphael mechanically enough; "Barbara Marie."

"Have you your certificate of birth about you," Cardot went on, "and Mme. de Valentin's as well?"

"I believe so."

"Very well then, monsieur; you are the sole heir of Major O'Flaharty, who died in August 1828 at Calcutta."

"An _incalcuttable_ fortune," said the critic.

"The Major having bequeathed several amounts to public inst.i.tutions in his will, the French Government sent in a claim for the remainder to the East India Company," the notary continued. "The estate is clear and ready to be transferred at this moment. I have been looking in vain for the heirs and a.s.signs of Mlle. Barbara Marie O'Flaharty for a fortnight past, when yesterday at dinner----"

Just then Raphael suddenly staggered to his feet; he looked like a man who has just received a blow. Acclamation took the form of silence, for stifled envy had been the first feeling in every breast, and all eyes devoured him like flames. Then a murmur rose, and grew like the voice of a discontented audience, or the first mutterings of a riot, as everybody made some comment on this news of great wealth brought by the notary.

This abrupt subservience of fate brought Raphael thoroughly to his senses. He immediately spread out the table-napkin with which he had lately taken the measure of the piece of s.h.a.green. He heeded nothing as he laid the talisman upon it, and shuddered involuntarily at the sight of a slight difference between the present size of the skin and the outline traced upon the linen.

"Why, what is the matter with him?" Taillefer cried. "He comes by his fortune very cheaply."

"_Soutiens-le Chatillon_!" said Bixiou to Emile. "The joy will kill him."

A ghastly white hue overspread every line of the wan features of the heir-at-law. His face was drawn, every outline grew haggard; the hollows in his livid countenance grew deeper, and his eyes were fixed and staring. He was facing Death.

The opulent banker, surrounded by faded women, and faces with satiety written on them, the enjoyment that had reached the pitch of agony, was a living ill.u.s.tration of his own life.

Raphael looked thrice at the talisman, which lay pa.s.sively within the merciless outlines on the table-napkin; he tried not to believe it, but his incredulity vanished utterly before the light of an inner presentiment. The whole world was his; he could have all things, but the will to possess them was utterly extinct. Like a traveler in the midst of the desert, with but a little water left to quench his thirst, he must measure his life by the draughts he took of it. He saw what every desire of his must cost him in the days of his life. He believed in the powers of the Magic Skin at last, he listened to every breath he drew; he felt ill already; he asked himself:

"Am I not consumptive? Did not my mother die of a lung complaint?"

"Aha, Raphael! what fun you will have! What will you give me?" asked Aquilina.

"Here's to the death of his uncle, Major O'Flaharty! There is a man for you."

"He will be a peer of France."

"Pooh! what is a peer of France since July?" said the amateur critic.

"Are you going to take a box at the Bouffons?"

"You are going to treat us all, I hope?" put in Bixiou.

"A man of his sort will be sure to do things in style," said Emile.

The hurrah set up by the jovial a.s.sembly rang in Valentin's ears, but he could not grasp the sense of a single word. Vague thoughts crossed him of the Breton peasant's life of mechanical labor, without a wish of any kind; he pictured him burdened with a family, tilling the soil, living on buckwheat meal, drinking cider out of a pitcher, believing in the Virgin and the King, taking the sacrament at Easter, dancing of a Sunday on the green sward, and understanding never a word of the rector's sermon. The actual scene that lay before him, the gilded furniture, the courtesans, the feast itself, and the surrounding splendors, seemed to catch him by the throat and made him cough.

"Do you wish for some asparagus?" the banker cried.

"_I wish for nothing_!" thundered Raphael.

"Bravo!" Taillefer exclaimed; "you understand your position; a fortune confers the privilege of being impertinent. You are one of us.

Gentlemen, let us drink to the might of gold! M. Valentin here, six times a millionaire, has become a power. He is a king, like all the rich; everything is at his disposal, everything lies under his feet.

From this time forth the axiom that 'all Frenchmen are alike in the eyes of the law,' is for him a fib at the head of the Const.i.tutional Charter.

He is not going to obey the law--the law is going to obey him. There are neither scaffolds nor executioners for millionaires."

"Yes, there are," said Raphael; "they are their own executioners."

"Here is another victim of prejudices!" cried the banker.

"Let us drink!" Raphael said, putting the talisman into his pocket.

"What are you doing?" said Emile, checking his movement. "Gentlemen," he added, addressing the company, who were rather taken aback by Raphael's behavior, "you must know that our friend Valentin here--what am I saying?--I mean my Lord Marquis de Valentin--is in the possession of a secret for obtaining wealth. His wishes are fulfilled as soon as he knows them. He will make us all rich together, or he is a flunkey, and devoid of all decent feeling."

"Oh, Raphael dear, I should like a set of pearl ornaments!" Euphrasia exclaimed.

"If he has any grat.i.tude in him, he will give me a couple of carriages with fast steppers," said Aquilina.

"Wish for a hundred thousand a year for me!"

"Indian shawls!"

"Pay my debts!"

"Send an apoplexy to my uncle, the old stick!"

"Ten thousand a year in the funds, and I'll cry quits with you, Raphael!"

"Deeds of gift and no mistake," was the notary's comment.

"He ought, at least, to rid me of the gout!"

"Lower the funds!" shouted the banker.