Cerizet

“ Cerizet, who had an eye as nimble as a hand, instantly noticed a certain fact. La Peyrade, who was so placed as to be plainly seen by the new-comer, no sooner heard that drawling, honeyed voice, than he turned his head in a manner to conceal his features. Instead therefore of being roughly sent away, as usually happened to petitioners who addressed the most surly of official clerks, the modest visitor heard herself greeted in a very surprising manner.
"Come in, come in, Madame Lambert," said Cerizet; "you won't be kept waiting long; come in." ”

“ La Peyrade reflected for a moment.
"No," he said, "it was not Dutocq who told you that. He is not a man to wrestle with an enemy of my strength without a strong interest in it. It was Cerizet; he's the infamous calumniator, from whose hands I wrenched the lease of your house near the Madeleine,—Cerizet, whom in kindness, I went to seek on his dunghill that I might give him the chance of honorable employment; that is the wretch, to whom a benefit is only an encouragement to treachery. ”

“ As the government of these days does very little to protect even its most devoted servants (witness the Gisquet affair) , the republicans have ended by ruining Cerizet. I tell you this to explain how it is that Cerizet is now a copying clerk in my office. Well, in the days when he flourished as managing editor of a paper directed by the Perier ministry against the incendiary journals, the ‘Tribune’ and others, Cerizet, who is a worthy fellow after all, though he is too fond of women, pleasure, and good living, was very useful to Theodose, who edited the political department of the paper ”

“ I tell you that after all your tergiversations you had better settle down peaceably; and I advise you, as your countess did, to go and see du Portail."
"Who and what is he?" asked la Peyrade.
"He is a little old man," replied Cerizet, "as shrewd as a weasel. He gives me the idea of having dealings with the devil. Go and see him! Sight, as they say, costs nothing."
"Yes," said la Peyrade, "perhaps I will; but, first of all, I want you to find out for me about this Comtesse de Godollo."
"What do you care about her? She is nothing but a supernumerary, that countess." ”

“ Cerizet.
"What is it made of?" asked the paper manufacturer.
"Impossible to guess," answered Cerizet; "I made a hole in the roof and scrambled up and watched the gaffer; he was boiling pulp in a copper pan all last night. There was a heap of stuff in a corner, but I could make nothing of it; it looked like a heap of tow, as near as I could make out."
"Go no farther," said Boniface Cointet in unctuous tones; "it would not be right. Mme. Sechard will offer to renew your lease; tell her that you are thinking of setting up for yourself. ”

“ Do not name her to him; and come here and let me know how the proposal has been taken."
"Your confidence delights me as much as it honors me," replied Cerizet, "and I will justify it the best I can."
"We must not expect too much," said du Portail. "Refusal will be the first impulse of a man who has an affair on hand elsewhere; but we need not consider ourselves beaten. I shall not easily give up a plan which I know to be just, even if I push my zeal so far as to put la Peyrade under lock and key in Clichy. ”

“ The Provencal, writhing upon the gridiron on which his partners held him, became suddenly possessed with a good idea, which flashed from the body of the live coal under him. Peril has gleams of light. He resolved to rely on the power of frankness, which affects all men, even swindlers. Every one is grateful to an adversary who bares himself to the waist in a duel.
“Well!” said Cerizet, “now the humbug begins.” ”

“ The numbers, as they issued from Cerizet's office, called up the succeeding numbers; and if any disputes arose Cadenet put a stop to the fray at once my remarking:—
"If you get the police here you won't gain anything; he'll shut up shop."
HE was Cerizet's name. When, in the course of the day, some hapless woman, without an atom of food in her room, and seeing her children pale with hunger, would come to borrow ten or twenty sous, she would say to the wine-merchant anxiously:—
"Is he there?" ”

“ Did the affair get wind at the Palais?”
“Phew!” said Cerizet, whose intercourse, no doubt pretty frequent, with du Portail had put him on a footing of some familiarity with the old man, “there’s no question of that now. The eel has wriggled out of our hands; neither softness nor violence has any effect upon that devil of a man. ”

“ During this time Cerizet had time to recover from the blow he had just received squarely in the face, and to think of the transition he had to make from one set of interests to the other, of which he was now the agent.
"What you are declaiming there is all very clever," he said, carelessly, "but the thing that proves to me our defeat is the fact that you are not on the terms with Mademoiselle Thuillier you would have us believe you are. She is slipping through your fingers; and I don't think that marriage is anything like as certain as Dutocq and I have been fancying it was." ”

“ Now I know you! and from this time forth, we shall go armed."
"Then it is war between us!" exclaimed Theodose.
"You fired first," returned Cerizet.
"If you pull me down, farewell to your hopes and plans; if you don't pull me down, you have in me an enemy."
"That's just what I said yesterday to Dutocq; but, how can we help it? We are forced to choose between two alternatives—we must go according to circumstances. I'm a good-natured fellow myself," he added, after a pause; "bring me your twenty-five thousand francs to-morrow morning and Thuillier shall keep the house. ”

“ Ninas and Ophelias are all very well on the stage, but in a home—"
"In a home, when they bring a 'dot,' we can be their guardian," replied Cerizet, sententiously. "In point of fact, we get a fortune and not a wife."
"Well," said Dutocq, "that's one way to look at it."
"If you are willing," said Cerizet, "let us go and take our coffee somewhere else. This dinner has turned out so foolishly that I want to get out of this room, where there's no air." He rang for the waiter. ”

“ Well, doctor,” she continued, addressing Cerizet, “I am not satisfied with the condition of my little one, not satisfied at all; she is very pallid, and has grown so thin. I think she must be teething.”
Du Portail made Cerizet a sign to accept the role so abruptly thrust upon him.
“Yes, evidently,” he said, “it is the teeth; children always turn pale at that crisis; but there’s nothing in that, my dear lady, that need make you anxious.”
“Do you really think so, doctor,” said the poor crazed girl, whom our readers have recognized as du Portail’s ward, Lydie de la Peyrade ”

“ Toupillier, a man nearly six feet tall, was looking fixedly at some object at the foot of his bed; he did not move on hearing the groaning of the heavy door, which, being armed with iron bolts and a strong lock, closed his domicile securely.
"Is he conscious?" said Cerizet, before whom Madame Cardinal started back, not having recognized him till he spoke.
"Pretty nearly," she replied.
"Come out on the staircase, so that he doesn't hear us," whispered Cerizet. "This is how we'll manage it," he continued, in the ear of his future mother-in-law. "He is weak, but he isn't so very low ”

“ All that I tell you,” said Cerizet, “I get from du Portail.”
“Ah ca!” said la Peyrade, lowering his voice, “who is du Portail? You seem to have known him for some time. A man of your force ought to have discovered the real character of a man who seems to me to be rather mysterious.”
“My friend,” replied Cerizet, “du Portail is a pretty strong man. He’s an old slyboots, who has had some post, I fancy, in the administration of the national domain, or something of that kind, under government; in which, I think, he must have been employed in the departments suppressed under the Empire.” ”

“ I thought the sitting this afternoon would never end.”
“How unreasonable you are, my dear fellow,” said Dutocq; “when a man wants to succeed he must have the courage to make sacrifices. Once married, you can lift your head.”
“Ah, yes!” said la Peyrade with a sigh, “I’ll lift it; for since the day you made me eat this bread of anguish I’ve become terribly sick of it.”
“Cerizet,” said Dutocq, “has a plan that will feed you more succulently.”
Nothing more was said at the moment, for justice had to be done to the excellent fare ordered by Cerizet in honor of his coming lease. ”

“ I'll come and see you then."
"My good fellow," said Cerizet, "you seem to me to be amusing yourself with things that don't pay; you haven't fallen in love with that go-between, have you?"
"Plague take him!" thought la Peyrade; "he spies everything; there's no hiding anything from him! No," he said, aloud, "I am not in love; on the contrary, I am very cautious. I must admit that this marriage with a crazy girl doesn't attract me, and before I go a step into it I want to know where I put my feet. ”

“ Is Cerizet wrong in thinking you have twenty-five thousand francs in your desk? He says you offered them to him and he thinks it only natural not to leave them in your hands."
"Thank you for taking the step, my good friend," replied Theodose. "I have been expecting this attack."
"Between ourselves," replied Desroches, "you have made an utter fool of him, and he is furious. The scamp will stop at nothing to get his revenge upon you—for he'll lose everything if he forces you to fling your barrister's gown, as they say, to the nettles and go to prison." ”

“ To misers, small gains are often determining causes in great matters; after a little resistance “pro forma,” Brigitte ended by accepting the proposal, and three hours later the trio were on the road to Chartres, Cerizet having advised Thuillier not to let la Peyrade know of his absence, lest he might take some unfair advantage of it.
The next day, by five o’clock, the party had returned, and the brother and sister, who kept their opinions to themselves in presence of Cerizet, were both agreed that the purchase was a good one. ”

“ I am poor; I have not a deed, nor a note, nor a share; not the slightest security of any kind in my possession.”
“I dare say not,” said Cerizet, glancing at la Peyrade out of the corner of his eye; “but there are always friends to take care of such things. However, that is none of my business; every one must settle his own affairs in his own way. Now, then, say what you have to say, distinctly.”
“I came, monsieur,” she replied, “to implore you, monsieur, to implore Monsieur the judge’s clerk, to speak in our favor to Monsieur the justice-of-peace. ”

“ Madame Cardinal was one of Cerizet's earliest clients; she peddled fish. If Parisians know these creations peculiar to their soil, foreigners have no suspicion of their existence; and Mere Cardinal—technologically speaking, of course, deserved all the interest she excited in Theodose. So many women of her species may be met with in the streets that the passers-by give them no more attention than they give to the three thousand pictures of the Salon. But as she stood in Cerizet's office the Cardinal had all the value of an isolated masterpiece ”

“ You may be at liberty by then, who knows?—Now do you understand how it was that I wanted clothes from Paris? One cannot act the lover’s part in rags.”
At six o’clock that morning Cerizet went to Petit-Claud.
“Doublon can be ready to take his man to-morrow at noon, I will answer for it,” he said; “I know one of Mlle. Clerget’s girls, do you understand?” Cerizet unfolded his plan, and Petit-Claud hurried to find Cointet.
“If M. Francis du Hautoy will settle his property on Francoise, you shall sign a deed of partnership with Sechard in two days. ”

“ CARDINAL (Madame) , Parisian fish-vender, daughter of one Toupillier, a carrier. Widow of a well-known marketman. Niece of Toupillier the pauper of Saint-Sulpice, from whom in 1840, with Cerizet's assistance, she tried to capture the hidden treasure. This woman had three sisters, four brothers, and three uncles, who would have shared with her the pauper's bequest. The scheming of Mme. Cardinal and Cerizet was frustrated by M. du Portail—Corentin. ”

“ I'll marry your daughter; give her your uncle's gold, and I'll guarantee to you a life-interest in the house and the dividends from the money in the Funds."
"We sha'n't run any risk?"
"None, whatever."
"Agreed, then," said the widow Cardinal, holding out her hand to her future son-in-law. "Six thousand francs a year; hey! what a fine life I'll have."
"With a son-in-law like me!" added Cerizet.
"I shall be a bourgeoisie of Paris!"
"Now," resumed Cerizet, after a pause, "I must study the ground. Don't leave your uncle alone a minute; tell the Perraches that you expect a doctor. ”

“ Then, after a moment’s reflection, he added, “I think you did newspaper work once upon a time; I remember ‘the courageous Cerizet.’”
“Yes,” replied the usurer, “I even managed one with la Peyrade,—an evening paper; and a pretty piece of work we did, for which we were finely recompensed.”
“Well,” said du Portail, “why don’t you do it again,—journalism, I mean,—with la Peyrade.”
Cerizet looked at du Portail in amazement.
“Ah ca!” he cried, “are you the devil, monsieur? Can nothing ever be hidden from you?”
“Yes,” said du Portail, “I know a good many things. ”

“ Scenes from a Courtesan's Life. The Middle Classes.]
CERIZET (Olympe Cardinal, Madame) , wife of foregoing; born about 1824; daughter of Mme. Cardinal the fish-dealer. Actress at the Bobino, Luxembourg, then at the Folies-Dramatiques, where she made her debut in "The Telegraph of Love." At first she was intimate with the first comedian. Afterwards she had Julien Minard for lover. From the father of the latter she received thirty thousand francs to renounce her son. This money she used as a dowry and it aided in consummating her marriage with Cerizet. [The Middle Classes.] ”