The Lesser Bourgeoisie | Page 6

this noble building. The iron-work of the staircase baluster is worthy of
the artist and the magistrate; but to find other traces of their taste to-day
in this majestic relic, the eyes of an artistic observer are needed.
The Thuilliers and their predecessors have frequently degraded this
jewel of the upper bourgeoisie by the habits and inventions of the lesser
bourgeoisie. Look at those walnut chairs covered with horse- hair, that
mahogany table with its oilcloth cover, that sideboard, also of
mahogany, that carpet, bought at a bargain, beneath the table, those
metal lamps, that wretched paper with its red border, those execrable
engravings, and the calico curtains with red fringes, in a dining-room,
where the friends of Petitot once feasted! Do you notice the effect
produced in the salon by those portraits of Monsieur and Madame and
Mademoiselle Thuillier by Pierre Grassou, the artist par excellence of
the modern bourgeoisie. Have you remarked the card- tables and the
consoles of the Empire, the tea-table supported by a lyre, and that
species of sofa, of gnarled mahogany, covered in painted velvet of a
chocolate tone? On the chimney-piece, with the clock (representing the
Bellona of the Empire), are candelabra with fluted columns. Curtains of
woollen damask, with under-curtains of embroidered muslin held back
by stamped brass holders, drape the windows. On the floor a cheap
carpet. The handsome vestibule has wooden benches, covered with
velvet, and the panelled walls with their fine carvings are mostly
hidden by wardrobes, brought there from time to time from the
bedrooms occupied by the Thuilliers. Fear, that hideous divinity, has
caused the family to add sheet-iron doors on the garden side and on the
courtyard side, which are folded back against the walls in the daytime,
and are closed at night.
It is easy to explain the deplorable profanation practised on this
monument of the private life of the bourgeoisie of the seventeenth
century, by the private life of the bourgeoisie of the nineteenth. At the
beginning of the Consulate, let us say, some master-mason having
bought the ancient building, took the idea of turning to account the
ground which lay between it and the street. He probably pulled down

the fine porte-cochere or entrance gate, flanked by little lodges which
guarded the charming "sejour" (to use a word of the olden time), and
proceeded, with the industry of a Parisian proprietor, to impress his
withering mark on the elegance of the old building. What a curious
study might be made of the successive title-deeds of property in Paris!
A private lunatic asylum performs its functions in the rue des Batailles
in the former dwelling of the Chevalier Pierre Bayard du Terrail, once
without fear and without reproach; a street has now been built by the
present bourgeois administration through the site of the hotel Necker.
Old Paris is departing, following its kings who abandoned it. For one
masterpiece of architecture saved from destruction by a Polish princess
(the hotel Lambert, Ile Saint-Louis, bought and occupied by the
Princess Czartoriska) how many little palaces have fallen, like this
dwelling of Petitot, into the hands of such as Thuillier.
Here follows the causes which made Mademoiselle Thuillier the owner
of the house.


CHAPTER II
THE HISTORY OF A TYRANNY
At the fall of the Villele ministry, Monsieur Louis-Jerome Thuillier,
who had then seen twenty-six years' service as a clerk in the ministry of
finance, became sub-director of a department thereof; but scarcely had
he enjoyed the subaltern authority of a position formerly his lowest
hope, when the events of July, 1830, forced him to resign it. He
calculated, shrewdly enough, that his pension would be honorably and
readily given by the new-comers, glad to have another office at their
disposal. He was right; for a pension of seventeen hundred francs was
paid to him immediately.
When the prudent sub-director first talked of resigning, his sister, who
was far more the companion of his life than his wife, trembled for his

future.
"What will become of Thuillier?" was a question which Madame and
Mademoiselle Thuillier put to each other with mutual terror in their
little lodging on a third floor of the rue d'Argenteuil.
"Securing his pension will occupy him for a time," Mademoiselle
Thuillier said one day; "but I am thinking of investing my savings in a
way that will cut out work for him. Yes; it will be something like
administrating the finances to manage a piece of property."
"Oh, sister! you will save his life," cried Madame Thuillier.
"I have always looked for a crisis of this kind in Jerome's life," replied
the old maid, with a protecting air.
Mademoiselle Thuillier had too often heard her brother remark: "Such a
one is dead; he only survived his retirement two years"; she had too