CHAPTER X

IN WHICH CERIZET PRACTISES THE HEALING ART AND
THE ART OF POISONING ON THE SAME DAY

While this regeneration was going on, Cerizet went one morning to see du Portail, with whom la Peyrade was now more than ever determined to hold no communication.

“Well,” said the little old man to the poor man’s banker, “what effect did the news we gave to the president of the bar produce on our man?  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.  He has quarrelled with the bar, and is in better odor than ever with Thuillier.  ‘Necessity,’ says Figaro, ’obliterates distance.’  Thuillier needs him to push his candidacy in the quartier Saint-Jacques, so they kissed and made up.”

“And no doubt,” said du Portail, without much appearance of feeling, “the marriage is fixed for an early day?”

“Yes,” replied Cerizet, “but there’s another piece of work on hand.  That crazy fellow has persuaded Thuillier to buy a newspaper, and he’ll make him sink forty thousand francs in it.  Thuillier, once involved, will want to get his money back, and in my opinion they are bound together for the rest of their days.”

“What paper is it?”

“Oh, a cabbage-leaf that calls itself the ’Echo de la Bievre’!” replied Cerizet with great scorn; “a paper which an old hack of a journalist on his last legs managed to set up in the Mouffetard quarter by the help of a lot of tanners—­that, you know, is the industry of the quarter.  From a political and literary point of view the affair is nothing at all, but Thuillier has been made to think it a masterly stroke.”

“Well, for local service to the election the instrument isn’t so bad,” remarked du Portail.  “La Peyrade has talent, activity, and much resource of mind; he may make something out of that ‘Echo.’  Under what political banner will Thuillier present himself?”

“Thuillier,” replied the beggars’ banker, “is an oyster; he hasn’t any opinions.  Until the publication of his pamphlet he was, like all those bourgeois, a rabid conservative; but since the seizure he has gone over to the Opposition.  His first stage will probably be the Left-centre; but if the election wind should blow from another quarter, he’ll go straight before it to the extreme left.  Self-interest, for those bourgeois, that’s the measure of their convictions.”

“Dear, dear!” said du Portail, “this new combination of la Peyrade’s may assume the importance of a political danger from the point of view of my opinions, which are extremely conservative and governmental.”  Then, after a moment’s reflection, he added, “I think you did newspaper work once upon a time; I remember ‘the courageous Cerizet.’”