Du Tillet

“ The passion for money took entire hold of him. Finally he came to Paris which became the centre of his operations, and established himself on rue des Gres. There Gobseck, like a spider in his web, crushed the pride of Maxime de Trailles and brought tears to the eyes of Mme. de Restaud and Jean-Joachim Goriot—1819. About this same time Ferdinand du Tillet sought out the money-lender to make some deals with him, and spoke of him as "Gobseck the Great, master of Palma, Gigonnet, Werbrust, Keller and Nucingen." ”

“ A clerk becomes a merchant in twenty-four hours," thought Birotteau, who understood the happiness and self-assurance of Anselme as little as the dandy luxury of du Tillet. "Anselme put on a little stiff air when I patted him on the head, just as if he were Francois Keller himself." ”

“ So this angel took up his pen and endorsed du Tillet's notes, telling him that he was heartily willing thus to oblige a lad who had been very useful to him. The blood rushed to his face as he uttered the falsehood. Du Tillet could not meet his eye, and no doubt vowed to him at that moment the undying hatred which the spirits of darkness feel towards the angels of light. ”

“ M. du Tillet was no more sparing of Maxime de Trailles, but harassed him pitilessly, when the count was sent into Champagne as electoral agent of the government. (The Member for Arcis) He was present at the fete given by Josepha Mirah, by way of a house-warming, in her mansion on the rue de la Ville-l'Eveque; Celestin Crevel and Valerie Marneffe invited him to their wedding. (Cousin Betty) At the end of the monarchy of July, being a deputy, with his seat in the Left Centre, Ferdinand du Tillet kept in the most magnificent style Seraphine Sinet, the Opera girl, more familiarly called Carabine. ”

“ His nerve failed him; too weak already to sustain so vast an enterprise, he felt himself incapable of attempting to build it up again; he was fated to perish in its ashes. Love for the countess gave him still a few thrills of life; his mask brightened for a moment, but behind it hope was dead. He did not suspect the hand of du Tillet, and laid the blame of his misfortune on the usurer. Rastignac, Blondet, Lousteau, Vernou, Finot, and Massol took care not to enlighten him. Rastignac, who wanted to return to power, made common cause with Nucingen and du Tillet. ”

“ To see some poor little touch of real sorrow, you need an impossible combination of circumstances. And, after all, is there such a thing as grief without a thought of self in it?"
"Ugh!" said Blondet. "Nothing is less respected than death; is it that there is nothing less respectable?"
"It is so common!" resumed Bixiou. "When the service was over Nucingen and du Tillet went to the graveside. The old man-servant walked; Nucingen and du Tillet were put at the head of the procession of mourning coaches.—'Goot, mein goot friend,' said Nucingen as they turned into the boulevard. ”

“ Ferdinand du Tillet, now a lynx of almost equal prominence with Nucingen, with whom he was on very intimate terms, being loved by Mademoiselle Malvina d'Aldrigger, being looked up to by the Kellers also, and being further the patron of Tiphaine, the Provins Royalist, was able to crush Birotteau, and triumphed over him, even on December 17, 1818, the evening of the famous ball given by the perfumer ”

“ Du Tillet could not very easily assassinate the man who knew him to be guilty of a petty theft, but he could fling him into the mire and annihilate him so completely that his word and testimony would count for nothing. For a long time revenge had germinated in his heart without budding; for the men who hate most are usually those who have little time in Paris to make plans; life is too fast, too full, too much at the mercy of unexpected events. ”

“ About the middle of the monarchy of July, Madame de Nucingen, as mother-in-law of Eugene de Rastignac, visited Madame d'Espard and met Maxime de Trailles and Ferdinand du Tillet in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. ”

“ Malvina could not well have less than fifty thousand crowns, he thought, and so the lawyer was fain to play the lover. Malvina, deeply humiliated as she was by du Tillet’s carelessness, loved him too well to shut the door upon him. With her, an enthusiastic, highly-wrought, sensitive girl, love sometimes got the better of pride, and pride again overcame wounded love. Our friend Ferdinand, cool and self-possessed, accepted her tenderness, and breathed the atmosphere with the quiet enjoyment of a tiger licking the blood that dyes his throat. ”

“ He looked for the Countess in her box and, finding it empty, buried his face in his hands, leaning his elbows on the balustrade.
"Can she be here!" he thought.
"Look up, unhappy hero," whispered Mme. du Tillet.
As for Marie, at all risks she fixed on him that steady magnetic gaze, in which the will flashes from the eye, as rays of light from the sun. Such a look, mesmerizers say, penetrates to the person on whom it is directed, and certainly Raoul seemed as though struck by a magic wand. Raising his head, his eyes met those of the sisters. ”

“ He had his bank on the rue Joubert when Rodolphe Castanier, the dishonest cashier, robbed Nucingen. (Melmoth Reconciled) Ferdinand du Tillet was now a consequential personage, when Lucien de Rubempre was making his start in Paris (1821) . (A Distinguished Provincial at Paris) Ten years later he married his last daughter to the Comte de Granville, a peer of France, and "one of the most illustrious names of the French magistracy." He occupied one of the elegant mansions on the rue Neuve-des-Mathurins, now rue des Mathurins; for a long time he kept Madame Roguin as his mistress ”

“ At this day you know the secret of the firm of Claparon and Company, founded by du Tillet, one of the finest inventions——”
“Yes,” said Blondet, “the responsible editor in business matters, the instigator, and scapegoat; but we know better than that nowadays. We put, ‘Apply at the offices of the Company, such and such a number, such and such a street,’ where the public find a staff of clerks in green caps, about as pleasing to behold as broker’s men.”
“Nucingen,” pursued Bixiou, “had supported the firm of Charles Claparon and Company with all his credit. ”

“ These three phrases were like so many pistol-shots fired point-blank at Montes. He turned white, and the shock was so painful that he rose with difficulty.
"You are a set of blackguards!" cried he. "You have no right to speak the name of an honest woman in the same breath with those fallen creatures—above all, not to make it a mark for your slander!"
He was interrupted by unanimous bravos and applause. Bixiou, Leon de Lora, Vauvinet, du Tillet, and Massol set the example, and there was a chorus. ”

“ All hatreds, public or private, from woman to woman, from man to man, have no other cause then some such detection. People do not hate each other for injured interests, for wounds, not even for a blow; all such wrongs can be redressed. But to have been seized, flagrante delicto, in a base act! The duel which follows between the criminal and the witness of his crime ends only with the death of the one or of the other.
"Oh! Madame Roguin!" said du Tillet, jestingly, "don't you call that a feather in a young man's cap? ”

“ La belle Hollandaise was one of those mad-cap women who care nothing as to where the money comes from, or how it is obtained, and who are capable of giving a ball with the gold obtained by a parricide. She never thought of the morrow; for her the future was after dinner, and the end of the month eternity, even if she had bills to pay. Du Tillet, delighted to have found such a lever, exacted from la belle Hollandaise a promise that she would love Roguin for thirty thousand francs a year instead of fifty thousand,—a service which infatuated old men seldom forget. ”

“ Is there a man among you who ever loved a woman—a woman beneath him—enough to squander his fortune and his children’s, to sacrifice his future and blight his past, to risk going to the hulks for robbing the Government, to kill an uncle and a brother, to let his eye be so effectually blinded that he did not even perceive that it was done to hinder his seeing the abyss into which, as a crowning jest, he was being driven? Du Tillet has a cash-box under his left breast; Leon de Lora has his wit; Bixiou would laugh at himself for a fool if he loved any one but himself ”

“ Popinot sent the cheque at once to the Bank, and went up to speak to Madame Birotteau; she was not in the counting-room, and had doubtless gone to her chamber. Anselme and Constance lived like mother-in-law and son-in-law when people in that relation suit each other; he therefore rushed up to Madame Cesar's appartement with the natural eagerness of a lover on the threshold of his happiness. The young man was prodigiously surprised to find her, as he sprang like a cat into the room, reading a letter from du Tillet, whose handwriting he recognized at a glance. ”

“ Her association with Nathan subserved, moreover, their mutual interests; the poet won respect for the actress, who knew moreover how to make herself formidable by her spirit of intrigue and the tartness of her sallies of wit. Who did not know her mansion on the rue Pigalle? Indeed, Madame Nathan was an intimate acquaintance of Coralie, Esther la Torpille, Claudine du Bruel, Euphrasie, Aquilina, Madame Theodore Gaillard, and Marie Godeschal; entertained Emile Blondet, Andoche Finot, Etienne Lousteau, Felicien Vernou, Couture, Bixiou, Rastignac, Vignon, F. du Tillet, Nucingen, and Conti. ”

“ Laughs ring loudly; all present surrender to the amusement of the moment, knowing that on the morrow toil will resume its sway. Matifat danced with a woman's bonnet on his head; Celestin called the figures of the interminable country dance, and some of the women beat their hands together excitedly at the words of command.
"How they do amuse themselves!" cried the happy Birotteau.
"I hope they won't break anything," said Constance to her uncle.
"You have given the most magnificent ball I have ever seen, and I have seen many," said du Tillet, bowing to his old master. ”

“ There was not another man in France who could paint like their father, they said, or who had such talent in composition. Meissonier would have been nowhere in the race if Eugène Tillet had but stuck to his easel. ”

“ Mr. Tillet, who teaches me, always whistles with me.’
‘Who’s Tillet?’ asked Phil.
‘He’s a soldier—a man my father knows.’
‘A soldier! oh, I suppose he will be a general—they are all generals,’ said Phil.
‘I think he is a bugler—is that the same?—something, I suppose; they all fight.’
‘Well, never mind; do it again, Carrie, ’tis such fun to see you.’
‘My mother does not like me to whistle,’ said Carrie, ‘but my father is ever teaching me new tunes, and Mr. Tillet, so I have to learn, but, if you please, I had rather look round the room, Phil ”

“ Your young friend is in very good hands. Mdme. Tillet is one of the best women I know; the true heart of motherhood beats under that broad chest of hers. She will take good care of your young friend in this dangerous city of Paris. ”

“ Again, Tillet might have been warned by Trottier, and might be on his guard against any act which could betray the assassin whom he had once reckoned amongst his friends.
It was certain that the painter would remember his friend's face; it was probable that he had some likeness of the missing man in his sketch-book. He was out-at-elbows, idle, a man content to live luxuriously on the labour of others. Such a man would be especially open to pecuniary temptation. ”

“ She spoke with infinite composure. She had familiarised herself with her sorrow, lived with it, cherished it, until grief had lost its power to agitate. Not a tone faltered as she spoke of that tragical past. Her countenance was as calm as marble. Every line in the noble face spoke of a settled sorrow, every line had become unalterable as the lines of a statue.
"You say, Madame, that the painter Tillet was upon intimate terms with Georges," said Heathcote. "Is this M. Tillet still living?"
"I believe so. I never heard of his death. He has clever sons whose names are before the public. ”

“ He, too, marveled that he should have found any one in this household to whom he could speak in such a vein as this.
"I always thought," Tillie said, "that when I was enough educated to be a teacher and be independent of father, I would be free to live truly. But I see that YOU cannot. You, too, have to hide your real self. Else you could not stay here in New Canaan."
"Or anywhere else, child," he smiled. "It is only with the rare few whom one finds on one's own line of march that one can be absolutely one's self. Your secret life, Miss Tillie, is not unique." ”

“ Tilly persisted in her mild rebuke. "It is the custom here, but it may not be at Ridgeville."
John was chagrined, but determined to hide it. "I have never heard of a man bowing to a man or a woman he never saw before," he fumed. "I don't care what you all do; it is foolishness out and out."
"Well, when you are in Rome," Tilly quoted in quite a grave tone, "you ought to do as the Romans do."
The thing rankled within him. The blood had mounted to his brow and stayed there. Even Tilly was telling him how to deport himself. ”

“ I wish we had a curtain there,' said Tilly.
'I like to have our light shine out in the evening, for the road is dark and lonely just here, and the twinkle of our lamp is pleasant to people's eyes as they go by. We can do so little for our neighbours, I am glad to cheer the way for them. Now put these poor old shoes to dry, and go to bed, dearie; I'll come soon.' [Pg 167]
Tilly went, taking her bird with her to sleep in his basket near by, lest he should be lonely in the night.
Soon the little house was dark and still, and no one saw the Christmas spirits at their work that night. ”