But already, at this time, M. Vincent Favoral's situation had been singularly modified.
The revolution of 1848 had just taken place. The factory in the Faubourg St. Antoine, where he was employed, had been compelled to close its doors.
One evening, as he came home at the usual hour, he announced that he had been discharged.
Mme. Favoral shuddered at the thought of what her husband might be, without work, and deprived of his salary.
"What is to become of us?" she murmured.
He shrugged his shoulders. Visibly he was much excited. His cheeks were flushed; his eyes sparkled.
"Bash!" he said: "we shan't starve for all that." And, as his wife was gazing at him in astonishment:
Well, he went o what are looking at? It is so: I know many a one who affects to live on his income, and who are not as well off as we are."
It was, for over six years since he was married, the first time that he spoke of his business otherwise than to groan and complain, to accuse fate, and curse the high price of living. The very day before, he had declared himself ruined by the purchase of a pair of shoes for Maxence. The change was so sudden and so great, that she hardly knew what to think, and wondered if grief at the loss of his situation had not somewhat disturbed his mind.
"Such are women," he went on with a giggle. "Results astonish them, because they know nothing of the means used to bring them about. Am I a fool, then? Would I impose upon myself privations of all sorts, if it were to accomplish nothing? Parbleu! I love fine living too, I do, and good dinners at the restaurant, and the theatre, and the nice little excursions in the country. But I want to be rich.
At the price of all the comforts which I have not had, I have saved a capital, the income of which will support us all. Eh, eh! That's the power of the little penny put out to fatten!"
As she went to bed that night, Mme. Favoral felt more happy than she had done since her mother's death. She almost forgave her husband his sordid parsimony, and the humiliations he had heaped upon her.
"Well, be it so," she thought. "I shall have lived miserably, I shall have endured nameless sufferings; but my children shall be rich, their life shall be easy and pleasant."
The next day M. Favoral's excitement had completely abated.
Manifestly he regretted his confidences.
"You must not think on that account that you can waste and pillage every thing," he declared rudely. "Besides, I have greatly exaggerated."
And he started in search of a situation.
To find one was likely to be difficult. Times of revolution are not exactly propitious to industry. Whilst the parties discussed in the Chamber, there were on the street twenty thousand clerks, who, every morning as they rose, wondered where they would dine that day.
For want of any thing better, Vincent Favoral undertook to keep books in various places, - an hour here, an hour there, twice a week in one house, four times in another.
In this way he earned as much and more than he did at the factory; but the business did not suit him.
What he liked was the office from which one does not stir, the stove-heated atmosphere, the elbow-worn desk, the leather-cushioned chair, the black alpaca sleeves over the coat. The idea that he should on one and the same day have to do with five or six different houses, and be compelled to walk an hour, to go and work another hour at the other end of Paris, fairly irritated him. He found himself out of his reckoning, like a horse who has turned a mill for ten years; if he is made to trot straight before him.
So, one morning, he gave up the whole thing, swearing that he would rather remain idle until he could find a place suited to his taste and his convenience; and, in the mean time, all they would have to do would be to put a little less butter in the soup, and a little more water in the wine.
He went out, nevertheless, and remained until dinner-time. And he did the same the next and the following days.
He started off the moment he had swallowed the last mouthful of his breakfast, came home at six o'clock, dined in haste, and disappeared again, not to return until about midnight. He had hours of delirious joy, and moments of frightful discouragement. Sometimes he seemed horribly uneasy.
"What can he be doing?" thought Mme. Favoral.
She ventured to ask him the question one morning, when he was in fine humor.
"Well," he answered, "am I not the master? I am operating at the bourse, that's all!"
He could hardly have owned to any thing that would have frightened the poor woman as much.
"Are you not afraid," she objected, "to lose all we have so painfully accumulated? We have children -"
He did not allow her to proceed.
"Do you take me for a child?" he exclaimed; "or do I look to you like a man so easy to be duped? Mind to economize in your household expenses, and don't meddle with my business."
And he continued. And he must have been lucky in his operations; for he had never been so pleasant at home. All his ways had changed.
He had had clothes made at a first-class tailor's, and was evidently trying to look elegant. He gave up his pipe, and smoked only cigars.
He got tired of giving every morning the money for the house, and took the habit of handing it to his wife every week, on Sunday. A mark of vast confidence, as he observed to her. And so, the first time:
"Be careful," he said, "that you don't find yourself penniless before Thursday."
He became also more communicative. Often during the dinner, he would tell what he had heard during the day, anecdotes, gossip.
He enumerated the persons with whom he had spoken. He named a number of people whom he called his friends, and whose names Mme.
Favoral carefully stored away in her memory.
There was one especially, who seemed to inspire him with a profound respect, a boundless admiration, and of whom he never tired of talking. He was, said he, a man of his age, - M. de Thaller, the Baron de Thaller.
"This one," he kept repeating, "is really mad: he is rich, he has ideas, he'll go far. It would be a great piece of luck if I could get him to do something for me!"
Until at last one day:
