It was the only thing in which he was in a manner intolerant.
He was all the more firmly set on this severity, since M. sur M., being a garrison town, opportunities for corruption abounded.
However, his coming had been a boon, and his presence was a godsend.
Before Father Madeleine’s arrival, everything had languished in the country; now everything lived with a healthy life of toil.
A strong circulation warmed everything and penetrated everywhere.
Slack seasons and wretchedness were unknown.
There was no pocket so obscure that it had not a little money in it; no dwelling so lowly that there was not some little joy within it.
Father Madeleine gave employment to every one.
He exacted but one thing: Be an honest man.
Be an honest woman.
As we have said, in the midst of this activity of which he was the cause and the pivot, Father Madeleine made his fortune; but a singular thing in a simple man of business, it did not seem as though that were his chief care.
He appeared to be thinking much of others, and little of himself.
In 1820 he was known to have a sum of six hundred and thirty thousand francs lodged in his name with Laffitte; but before reserving these six hundred and thirty thousand francs, he had spent more than a million for the town and its poor.
The hospital was badly endowed; he founded six beds there.
M. sur M. is divided into the upper and the lower town.
The lower town, in which he lived, had but one school, a miserable hovel, which was falling to ruin: he constructed two, one for girls, the other for boys.
He allotted a salary from his own funds to the two instructors, a salary twice as large as their meagre official salary, and one day he said to some one who expressed surprise,
“The two prime functionaries of the state are the nurse and the schoolmaster.”
He created at his own expense an infant school, a thing then almost unknown in France, and a fund for aiding old and infirm workmen.
As his factory was a centre, a new quarter, in which there were a good many indigent families, rose rapidly around him; he established there a free dispensary.
At first, when they watched his beginnings, the good souls said,
“He’s a jolly fellow who means to get rich.”
When they saw him enriching the country before he enriched himself, the good souls said,
“He is an ambitious man.”
This seemed all the more probable since the man was religious, and even practised his religion to a certain degree, a thing which was very favorably viewed at that epoch.
He went regularly to low mass every Sunday.
The local deputy, who nosed out all rivalry everywhere, soon began to grow uneasy over this religion.
This deputy had been a member of the legislative body of the Empire, and shared the religious ideas of a father of the Oratoire, known under the name of Fouche, Duc d’Otrante, whose creature and friend he had been.
He indulged in gentle raillery at God with closed doors.
But when he beheld the wealthy manufacturer Madeleine going to low mass at seven o’clock, he perceived in him a possible candidate, and resolved to outdo him; he took a Jesuit confessor, and went to high mass and to vespers.
Ambition was at that time, in the direct acceptation of the word, a race to the steeple.
The poor profited by this terror as well as the good God, for the honorable deputy also founded two beds in the hospital, which made twelve.
Nevertheless, in 1819 a rumor one morning circulated through the town to the effect that, on the representations of the prefect and in consideration of the services rendered by him to the country, Father Madeleine was to be appointed by the King, mayor of M. sur M. Those who had pronounced this newcomer to be “an ambitious fellow,” seized with delight on this opportunity which all men desire, to exclaim,
“There! what did we say!”
All M. sur M. was in an uproar.
The rumor was well founded. Several days later the appointment appeared in the Moniteur.
On the following day Father Madeleine refused.
In this same year of 1819 the products of the new process invented by Madeleine figured in the industrial exhibition; when the jury made their report, the King appointed the inventor a chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
A fresh excitement in the little town.
Well, so it was the cross that he wanted!
Father Madeleine refused the cross.
Decidedly this man was an enigma.
The good souls got out of their predicament by saying,
“After all, he is some sort of an adventurer.”
We have seen that the country owed much to him; the poor owed him everything; he was so useful and he was so gentle that people had been obliged to honor and respect him. His workmen, in particular, adored him, and he endured this adoration with a sort of melancholy gravity.
When he was known to be rich, “people in society” bowed to him, and he received invitations in the town; he was called, in town, Monsieur Madeleine; his workmen and the children continued to call him Father Madeleine, and that was what was most adapted to make him smile.
In proportion as he mounted, throve, invitations rained down upon him.
“Society” claimed him for its own.
The prim little drawing-rooms on M. sur M., which, of course, had at first been closed to the artisan, opened both leaves of their folding-doors to the millionnaire.
They made a thousand advances to him.