The Mysteries of Paris, vol 3 | Page 3

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, Fran?ois 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 Louise Morel had been replaced by a new servant, much more tempting to a man of the notary's sensual cravings than that first poor victim had been.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 the courtyard."
"And since the porter cleans the office now, how can one get a glimpse at his Mary?"
"Pooh! I have seen her."
"You?"
"Where was that?"
"How does she look?"
"Large or small?"
"Young or old?"
"I am sure, beforehand, that she has not so good-looking a face as poor Louise--that good girl?"
"Come, since you have seen her, how does this new servant look?"
"When I say I saw her, I have seen her cap--a very funny cap."
"What sort?"
"It was cherry color, and of velvet, I