This little dwelling was the torment of the present proprietor of the villa, Monsieur Vilquin; and here is the why and the wherefore. The original creator of the villa, whose sumptuous details cry aloud, “Behold our millions!” extended his park far into the country for the purpose, as he averred, of getting his gardeners out of his pockets; and so, when the Chalet was finished, none but a friend could be allowed to inhabit it. Monsieur Mignon, the next owner of the property, was very much attached to his cashier, Dumay, and the following history will prove that the attachment was mutual; to him therefore he offered the little dwelling. Dumay, a stickler for legal methods, insisted on signing a lease for three hundred francs for twelve years, and Monsieur Mignon willingly agreed, remarking—
“My dear Dumay, remember, you have now bound yourself to live with me for twelve years.”
In consequence of certain events which will presently be related, the estates of Monsieur Mignon, formerly the richest merchant in Havre, were sold to Vilquin, one of his business competitors. In his joy at getting possession of the celebrated villa Mignon, the latter forgot to demand the cancelling of the lease. Dumay, anxious not to hinder the sale, would have signed anything Vilquin required, but the sale once made, he held to his lease like a vengeance. And there he remained, in Vilquin’s pocket as it were; at the heart of Vilquin’s family life, observing Vilquin, irritating Vilquin—in short, the gadfly of all the Vilquins. Every morning, when he looked out of his window, Vilquin felt a violent shock of annoyance as his eye lighted on the little gem of a building, the Chalet, which had cost sixty thousand francs and sparkled like a ruby in the sun. That comparison is very nearly exact. The architect has constructed the cottage of brilliant red brick pointed with white. The window-frames are painted of a lively green, the woodwork is brown verging on yellow. The roof overhangs by several feet. A pretty gallery, with open-worked balustrade, surmounts the lower floor and projects at the centre of the facade into a veranda with glass sides. The ground-floor has a charming salon and a dining-room, separated from each other by the landing of a staircase built of wood, designed and decorated with elegant simplicity. The kitchen is behind the dining-room, and the corresponding room back of the salon, formerly a study, is now the bedroom of Monsieur and Madame Dumay. On the upper floor the architect has managed to get two large bedrooms, each with a dressing-room, to which the veranda serves as a salon; and above this floor, under the eaves, which are tipped together like a couple of cards, are two servants’ rooms with mansard roofs, each lighted by a circular window and tolerably spacious.
Vilquin has been petty enough to build a high wall on the side toward the orchard and kitchen garden; and in consequence of this piece of spite, the few square feet which the lease secured to the Chalet resembled a Parisian garden. The out-buildings, painted in keeping with the cottage, stood with their backs to the wall of the adjoining property.
The interior of this charming dwelling harmonized with its exterior. The salon, floored entirely with iron-wood, was painted in a style that suggested the beauties of Chinese lacquer. On black panels edged with gold, birds of every color, foliage of impossible greens, and fantastic oriental designs glowed and shimmered. The dining-room was entirely sheathed in Northern woods carved and cut in open-work like the beautiful Russian chalets. The little antechamber formed by the landing and the well of the staircase was painted in old oak to represent Gothic ornament. The bedrooms, hung with chintz, were charming in their costly simplicity. The study, where the cashier and his wife now slept, was panelled from top to bottom, on the walls and ceiling, like the cabin of a steamboat. These luxuries of his predecessor excited Vilquin’s wrath. He would fain have lodged his daughter and her husband in the cottage. This desire, well known to Dumay, will presently serve to illustrate the Breton obstinacy of the latter.
The entrance to the Chalet is by a little trellised iron door, the uprights of which, ending in lance-heads, show for a few inches above the fence and its hedge. The little garden, about as wide as the more pretentious lawn, was just now filled with flowers, roses, and dahlias of the choicest kind, and many rare products of the hot-houses, for (another Vilquinard grievance) the elegant little hot-house, a very whim of a hot-house, a hot-house representing dignity and style, belonged to the Chalet, and separated, or if you prefer, united it to the villa Vilquin. Dumay consoled himself for the toils of business in taking care of this hot-house, whose exotic treasures were one of Modeste’s joys. The billiard-room of the villa Vilquin, a species of gallery, formerly communicated through an immense aviary with this hot-house. But after the building of the wall which deprived him of a view into the orchards, Dumay bricked up the door of communication. “Wall for wall!” he said.
In 1827 Vilquin offered Dumay a salary of six thousand francs, and ten thousand more as indemnity, if he would give up the lease. The cashier refused; though he had but three thousand francs from Gobenheim, a former clerk of his master. Dumay was a Breton transplanted by fate into Normandy. Imagine therefore the hatred conceived for the tenants of the Chalet by the Norman Vilquin, a man worth three millions! What criminal leze-million on the part of a cashier, to hold up to the eyes of such a man the impotence of his wealth! Vilquin, whose desperation in the matter made him the talk of Havre, had just proposed to give Dumay a pretty house of his own, and had again been refused. Havre itself began to grow uneasy at the man’s obstinacy, and a good many persons explained it by the phrase, “Dumay is a Breton.” As for the cashier, he thought Madame and Mademoiselle Mignon would be ill-lodged elsewhere. His two idols now inhabited a temple worthy of them; the sumptuous little cottage gave them a home, where these dethroned royalties could keep the semblance of majesty about them—a species of dignity usually denied to those who have seen better days.
Perhaps as the story goes on, the reader will not regret having learned in advance a few particulars as to the home and the habitual companions of Modeste Mignon, for, at her age, people and things have as much influence upon the future life as a person’s own character—indeed, character often receives ineffaceable impressions from its surroundings.
CHAPTER II. A PORTRAIT FROM LIFE
From the manner with which the Latournelles entered the Chalet a stranger would readily have guessed that they came there every evening.
“Ah, you are here already,” said the notary, perceiving the young banker Gobenheim, a connection of Gobenheim-Keller, the head of the great banking house in Paris.
This young man with a livid face—a blonde of the type with black eyes, whose immovable glance has an indescribable fascination, sober in speech as in conduct, dressed in black, lean as a consumptive, but nevertheless vigorously framed—visited the family of his former master and the house of his cashier less from affection than from self-interest. Here they played whist at two sous a point; a dress-coat was not required; he accepted no refreshment except “eau sucree,” and consequently had no civilities to return. This apparent devotion to the Mignon family allowed it to be supposed that Gobenheim had a heart; it also released him from the necessity of going into the society of Havre and incurring useless expenses, thus upsetting the orderly economy of his domestic life. This disciple of the golden calf went to bed at half-past ten o’clock and got up at five in the morning. Moreover, being perfectly sure of Latournelle’s and Butscha’s discretion, he could talk over difficult business matters, obtain the advice of the notary gratis, and get an inkling of the real truth of the gossip of the street. This stolid gold-glutton (the epithet is Butscha’s) belonged by nature to the class of substances which chemistry terms absorbents. Ever since the catastrophe of the house of Mignon, where the Kellers had placed him to learn the principles of maritime commerce, no one at the Chalet had ever asked him to do