The Mysteries of Paris, vol 3 | Page 3

under his care
and that of the Count of St. Rémy, two gentlemen who had seen her
escape.

Rudolph was seeking her all this while, yet not so busily that he forgot
his avenger's course. Chief among social oppressors, whose cunning
baffled the law, and verified the old saying of "what is everybody's
business is nobody's business," Jacques Ferrand stood.
He withheld a large sum of money, intrusted verbally to him, from its
owner, the Baroness Fermont, and impoverished her and her daughter;
he had seduced his servant Louise Morel, caused her imprisonment on
a charge of child-murder, driving her father, a working jeweler, insane,
and menacing the destruction of the whole family--but Rudolph was at
hand to support them.
His cashier, François Germain, also was in prison, thanks to him. The
youth--who had saved some money, and deposited it with a banker out
of town--had no sooner heard that Louise Morel's father was in debt (a
means of Ferrand's triumph over the girl), than he gave her some of his
employer's money, thinking to replace it with his own immediately
after. But while he was away to draw the deficit from his banker's, the
notary discovered the loss, and had him arrested as a thief.
The notary, whose cunning had earned him a high reputation for
honesty, strictness, and parsimony, was, at this moment, therefore, at
the climax of inward delight. His chief accomplice removed (his only
other being the Dr. Polidori already mentioned) he believed he had
nothing to fear. Louise Morel had been replaced by a new servant,
much more tempting to a man of the notary's sensual cravings than that
first poor victim had been.
We usher the reader, at the clerks' breakfast-time, into the notary's
gloomy office.
A thing unheard-of, stupendous, marvelous! instead of the meager and
unattractive stew, brought every morning to these young people by the
departed housekeeper, Madame Séraphin, an enormous cold turkey,
served up on an old paper box, ornamented the middle of one of the
tables of the office, flanked by two loaves of bread, some Dutch cheese,
and three bottles of sealed wine; an old leaden inkstand, filled with a
mixture of salt and pepper, served as a salt-cellar; such was the bill of

fare.
Each clerk, armed with his knife and a formidable appetite, awaited the
hour of the feast with hungry impatience; some of them were raging
over the absence of the head clerk, without whom they could not
commence their breakfast pursuant to etiquette.
This radical change in the ordinary meals of the clerks of Jacques
Ferrand announced an excessive domestic revolution.
The following conversation, eminently Boeotian (if we may be allowed
to borrow this word from the witty writer who has made it popular),
will throw some light upon this important question:
"Behold a turkey who never expected, when he entered into life, to
appear at breakfast on the table of our governor's quill-drivers!"
"Just so; when the governor entered on the life of a notary, in like
manner he never expected to give his clerks a turkey for breakfast."
"For this turkey is ours," cried Stump-in-the-Gutters, the office-boy,
with greedy eyes.
"My friend you forget; this turkey must be a foreigner to you."
"And as a Frenchman, you should hate a foreigner."
"All that can be done is to give you the claws."
"Emblem of the velocity with which you run your errands."
"I think, at least, I have a right to the carcass," said the boy, murmuring.
"It might be granted; but you have no right to it, just as it was with the
Charter of 1814, which was only another carcass of liberty," said the
Mirabeau of the office.
"Apropos of carcass," said one of the party. "May the soul of Mother
Séraphin rest in peace! for, since she was drowned, we are no longer

condemned to eat her ever lasting hash!"
"And for a week past, the governor, instead of giving us a breakfast--"
"Allows us each forty sous a day."
"That is the reason I say: may her soul rest in peace."
"Exactly; for in her time, the old boy would never have given us the
forty sous."
"It is enormous!"
"It is astonishing!"
"There is not an office in Paris--"
"In Europe."
"In the universe, where they give forty sous to a famishing clerk for his
breakfast."
"Apropos of Madame Séraphin, which of you fellows has seen the new
servant that takes her place?"
"The Alsatian girl whom Madame Pipelet, the porter's wife of No. 17,
Rue du Temple, the house where poor Louise lived, brought one
evening?"
"Yes."
"I have not seen her yet."
"Nor I."
"Of course not; it is altogether impossible to see her, for the governor is
more savage than ever to prevent our entering the pavilion in