THE READER will no doubt ask why M. Flageot, who is about to play so majestic a part in our story, was called procureur instead of avocat; and as the reader is quite right, we shall satisfy his curiosity.
The vacations had, for some time, been frequent in parliament, and the lawyers spoke so seldom that their speeches were not worth speaking of. Master Flageot, foreseeing the time when there would be no pleading at all, made certain arrangements with Master Guildou, the procureur, in virtue of which the latter yielded him up office and clients on consideration of the sum of twenty-five thousand livres paid down. That is how Master Flageot became a procureur. But if we are asked how he managed to pay the twenty-five thousand livres, we reply, by marrying Madame Marguerite, to whom this sum was left as an inheritance about the end of the year 1770—three months before M. de Choiseul's exile.
Master Flageot had been long distinguished for his persevering adherence to the opposition party. Once a procureur, he redoubled his violence, and by this violence succeeded in gaining some celebrity. It was this celebrity, together with the publication of an incendiary pamphlet on the subject of the conflict between M. d'Aiguillon and M. de la Chalotais, which attracted the attention of M. Rafte, who had occasion to keep himself well informed concerning the affairs of parliament.
But, notwithstanding his new dignity and his increasing importance, Master Flageot did not leave the Rue du Petit-Lion-Saint-Sauveur. It would have been too cruel a blow for Madame Marguerite not to have heard the neighbors call her Madame Flageot, and not to have inspired respect in the breasts of M. Guildoirs' clerks, who had entered the service of the new procureur.
The reader may readily imagine what M. de Richelieu suffered in traversing Paris—the filthy Paris of that region—to reach the disgusting hole which the Parisian magistrature dignified with the name of street.
In front of M. Flageot's door, M. de Richelieu's carriage was stopped by another carriage which pulled up at the same moment. The marshal perceived a woman's headdress protruding from the window of this carriage; and as his sixty-five years of age had not quenched the ardor of his gallantry, he hastily jumped out on the muddy pavement, and proceeded to offer his hand to the lady, who was unaccompanied.
But this day the marshal's evil star was in the ascendant. A long, withered leg which was stretched out to reach the step betrayed the old woman. A wrinkled face, adorned with a dark streak of rouge, proved further that the old woman was not only old but decrepit.
Nevertheless there was no room for retreat; the marshal had made the movement, and the movement had been seen. Besides, M. de Richelieu himself was no longer young. In the meantime, the litigant—for what woman with a carriage would have entered that street had she not been a litigant?—the litigant, we say, did not imitate the duke's hesitation; with a ghastly smile she placed her hand in Richelieu's.
“I have seen that face somewhere before,” thought Richelieu; then he added:
“Does madame also intend to visit M. Flageot?”
“Yes, duke,” replied the old lady.
“Oh, I have the honor to be known to you, madame!” exclaimed the duke, disagreeably surprised, and stopping on the threshold of the dark passage.
“Who does not know the Duke de Richelieu?” was the reply. “I should not be a woman if I did not.”
“This she-ape thinks she is a woman!” murmured the conqueror of Mahon, and he made a most graceful bow.
“If I may venture to ask the question,” added he, “to whom have I the honor of speaking?”
“I am the Countess de Bearn, at your service,” replied the old lady, curtseying with courtly reverence upon the dirty floor of the passage, and about three inches from the open trap-door of a cellar, into which the marshal wickedly awaited her disappearance at the third bend.
“I am delighted, madame—enchanted,” said he, “and I return a thousand thanks to fate. You also have lawsuits on hand, countess?”
“Oh! duke, I have only one; but what a lawsuit! Is it possible that you have never heard of it?”
“Oh, frequently, frequently—that great lawsuit. True; I entreat your pardon. How the deuce could I have forgotten That?”
“Against the Saluces, yes, countess; the lawsuit about which the song was written.”
“A song?” said the old lady, piqued, “what song?”
“Take care, madame, there is a trapdoor here,” said the duke, who saw that the old woman was decided not to throw herself into the cellar; “take hold of the balustrade—I mean the cord.”
The old lady mounted the first steps. The duke followed her.
“Yes, a very humorous song,” said he.
“A humorous song on my lawsuit!”
“Dame! I shall leave you to judge—but perhaps you know it?”
“It is to the tune of the Bourbonnaise; it runs so:
“Embarrassed, countess, as I stand,
Give me, I pray, a helping hand,
And I am quite at your command.'
It is Madame Dubarry who speaks, you must understand.”
“That is very impertinent toward her.”
“Oh! what can you expect?—the ballad-mongers respect no one. Heavens! how greasy this cord is! Then you reply as follows:
“I'm very old and stubborn, too; I'm forced at law my rights to sue; Ah, who can help me? tell me who!”
“Oh! sir, it is frightful!” cried the countess; “a woman of quality is not to be insulted in this manner.”
“Madame, excuse me if I have sung out of tune; these stairs heat me so. Ah! here we are at last. Allow me to pull the bell.”
The old lady, grumbling all the time, made way for the duke to pass.
The marshal rang, and Madame Flageot, who in becoming a procureur's wife had not ceased to fill the functions of portress and cook, opened the door. The two litigants were ushered into M. Flageot's study, where they found that worthy in a state of furious excitement, and with a pen in his mouth, hard at work dictating a terrible plea to his head clerk.
“Good heavens, Master Flageot! what is the matter?” cried the countess, at whose voice the attorney turned round.
“Ah! madame, your most humble servant—a chair here for the Countess de Bearn. This gentleman is a friend of yours, madame, I presume. But surely—oil! I cannot be mistaken—the Duke de Richelieu in my house! Another chair. Bernardet—another chair.”
“Master Flageot,” said the countess, “how does my lawsuit get on, pray?”
“Ah, madame! I was just now working for you.”
“Very good, Master Flageot, very good.”
“ And after a fashion, my lady, which will make some noise, I hope.”
“Oh! madame, there is no longer any occasion for caution.”
“Then if you are busy about my affair, you can give an audience to the duke.”
“Excuse me, my lord duke,” said Master Flageot; “but you are too gallant not to understand—”
“I understand. Master Flageot; I understand.”
“But now I can attend to you exclusively.”
“Don't be uneasy; I shall not abuse your good-nature; you are aware what brings me here?”
“The bags which M. Rafte gave me the other day.”
“Some papers relative to my lawsuit of—my suit about—deuce take it! You must know what suit I mean, Master Flageot?”
“Your lawsuit about the lands of Chapenal.”
“Very probably; and will you gain it for me? That would be very kind on your part.”
“My lord, it is postponed indefinitely.”
“It will not be brought forward in less than a year, at the earliest.”
“Circumstances, my lord, circumstances; you have heard of his majesty's decree?”
“I think so; but which one? His majesty publishes so many.”
“Well! my lord duke, we shall reply by burning our ships.”
“Burning your ships, my dear friend? —you will burn the ships of the parliament? I do not quite comprehend you; I was not aware that the parliament had ships.”
“The first chamber refuses to register, perhaps?” inquired the Countess de Bearn, whom Richelieu's lawsuit in no way prevented from thinking of her own.
“That would be a mere nothing. Both chambers have resolved not to give any judgments until the king shall have dismissed M. d'Aiguillon.”
“Bah!” exclaimed the marshal, rubbing his hands.
“Not adjudicate! on what?” asked the countess, alarmed.
“They will not adjudicate on my lawsuit,” exclaimed the Countess de Bearn, with a dismay which she did not even attempt to conceal.
“Neither on yours, madame, nor the duke's.”
“It is iniquitous! It is rebellion against his majesty's orders, that!
“Madame,” replied the procureur majestically, “the king has forgotten himself; we shall forget also.”
“Monsieur Flageot, you will be sent to the Bastille; remember, I warn you.”
“I shall go singing, madame, and if I am sent thither, all my fellow-members of parliament will follow me, carrying palms in their hands.”
“He is mad!” said the countess to Richelieu.
“We are all the same,” replied the procureur.
“Oh, oh!” said the marshal, “that is becoming rather curious.”
“But, sir, you said just now that you were working for me,” replied Madame de Bearn.
“I said so, and it is quite true. You, madame, are the first example I cite in my narration; here is the paragraph which relates to you.”
He snatched the draft from his clerk's hand, fixed his spectacles upon his nose, and read with emphasis:
“Their position ruined, their fortune compromised, their duties trampled under foot! His majesty will understand how much they must have suffered. Thus the petitioner had intrusted to his care a very important suit, upon which the fortune of one of the first families in the kingdom depends; by his zeal, his industry, and, he ventures to say, his talents, this suit was progressing favorably, and the rights of the most noble and most powerful lady, Angelique Charlotte Veronique, Countess de Bearn, were on the point of being recognized, proclaimed, when the breath of discord —engulfing—”
“I had just got so far, madame,” said the procureur, drawing himself up; “"but I think the simile is not amiss.”
“M. Flageot,” said the countess, “it is forty years ago since I first employed your father, who proved most worthy of my patronage; I continued that patronage to you; you have gained ten or twelve thousand livres by my suit, and you would probably have gained as many more.”
“Write down all that,” said M. Flageot eagerly to his clerk; “it is a testimony, a proof. It shall be inserted in the confirmation.”
“But now,” interrupted the countess, “I take back all my papers from your charge; from this moment you have lost my confidence.”
Master Flageot, thunderstruck with this disgrace, remained for a moment almost stupefied; but, all at once, rising under the blow like a martyr who dies for his religion:
“Be it so,” said he. “Bernadet, give the papers back to madame; and you will insert this fact,” added he, “that the petitioner preferred his conscience to his fortune.”
“I beg your pardon, countess,” whispered the marshal in the countess's ear, “but it seems to me that you have acted without reflection.”
“In what respect, my lord duke?”
“You take back your papers from this honest procureur, but for what purpose?”
“To take them to another procureur, to another avocat!” exclaimed the countess.
Master Flageot raised his eyes to heaven, with a mournful smile of self-denial and stoic resignation.
“But,” continued the marshal, still whispering in the countess's ear, “if it has been decided that the chambers will not adjudicate, my dear madame, another procureur can do no more than Master Flageot.”
“Pardieu! do you think Master Flageot fool enough to protest alone, to lose his practice alone, if his fellow lawyers were not agreed to do the same, and consequently support him?”
“But you, my lord duke, what will you do?”
“For my part, I declare that I think Master Flageot a very honest procureur, and that my papers are as safe in his possession as in my own. Consequently I shall leave them with him, of course paying him as if my suit were going on.”
“It is well said, my lord marshal, that you are a generous, liberal-minded man!” exclaimed Master Flageot; “I shall spread your fame far and wide, my lord.”
“You absolutely overwhelm me, my dear procureur.” replied Richelieu, bowing.
“Bernadet,” cried the enthusiastic procureur to his clerk, “you will insert in the peroration a eulogy on the Marshal de Richelieu.”
“No, no! by no means, Master Flageot! I beg you will do nothing of the kind,” replied the marshal hastily. “Diable! that would be a pretty action! I love secrecy in what it is customary to call good actions. Do not disoblige me, Master Flageot—I shall deny it, look you —I shall positively contradict it—my modesty is susceptible. Well, countess, what say you?”
“I say my suit shall be judged. I must have a judgment, and I will.”
“And I say, madame, that if your suit is judged, the king must first send the Swiss guards, the light horse, and twenty pieces of cannon into the great hall,” replied Master Flageot with a belligerent air, which completed the consternation of the litigant.
“Then you do not think his majesty can get out of this scrape.” said Richelieu in a low voice to Flageot.
“Impossible, my lord marshal. It is an unheard-of case. No more justice in France! It is as if you were to say no more bread!”
“We are resolved to brave everything.”
“Even death, my lord marshal! We have a heart, although we wear the gown.”
And M. Flageot struck his breast vigorously.
“In fact, madame,” said Richelieu to his companion, “I believe that this is an unfortunate step for the ministry.”
“Oh, yes!” replied the old countess, after a pause; “it is very unfortunate for me, who never meddle in anything that passes, to be dragged into this conflict.”
“I think, madame,” said the marshal, “there is some one who could help you in this affair—a very powerful person. But would that person do it?”
“Is it displaying; too much curiosity, duke, to ask the name of this powerful person?”
“Your goddaughter!” said the duke.
“In fact, that is true; I am obliged to you for the hint.”
“Then you will go to Luciennes?” asked he.
“But the Countess Dubarry cannot overcome the opposition of parliament.”
“I will tell her I must have my suit judged, and as she can refuse me nothing, after the service I have rendered her, she will tell the king she wishes it. His majesty will speak to the chancellor, and the chancellor has a long arm, duke. Master Flageot, be kind enough, to continue to study my case well; it may come on sooner than you think. Mark nay words.” Master Flageot turned away his head with an air of incredulity which did not shake the countess in the least. In the meantime the duke had been reflecting.
“Well, madame, since you are going to Luciennes, will you have the goodness to present my most humble respects?”
“We are companions in misfortune; your suit is in abeyance, and mine also. In supplicating for yourself you will do so for me too. Moreover, you may express yonder the sort of pleasure these stubborn-headed parliament men cause me; and you will add that it was I who advised you to have recourse to the divinity of Luciennes.”
“I will not fail to do so, duke. Adieu, gentlemen.”
“Allow me the honor of conducting you to your carriage.”
“Once more, adieu, Monsieur Flageot; I leave you to your occupations.” The marshal handed the countess to her carriage.
“Rafte was right.” said he, “the Flageots will cause a revolution. Thank Heaven! I am supported on both sides—I am of the court, and of the parliament. Madame Dubarry will meddle with politics and fall, alone; if she resists, I have my little pretty-face at Trianon. Decidedly Rafte is of my school, and when I am minister he shall be my chief secretary.”
