For a year past I had beheld myself well dressed, in a carriage, with a pretty woman by my side, playing the great lord, dining at Very's, deciding not to go back home till the morrow; but was prepared for my father with a plot more intricate than the Marriage of Figaro, which he could not possibly have unraveled.
All this bliss would cost, I estimated, fifty crowns.
Was it not the artless idea of playing truant that still had charms for me?
"I went into a small adjoining room, and when alone counted my father's money with smarting eyes and trembling fingers—a hundred crowns!
The joys of my escapade rose before me at the thought of the amount; joys that flitted about me like Macbeth's witches round their caldron; joys how alluring! how thrilling! how delicious!
I became a deliberate rascal.
I heeded neither my tingling ears nor the violent beating of my heart, but took out two twenty-franc pieces that I seem to see yet.
The dates had been erased, and Bonaparte's head simpered upon them.
After I had put back the purse in my pocket, I returned to the gaming-table with the two pieces of gold in the palms of my damp hands, prowling about the players like a sparrow-hawk round a coop of chickens.
Tormented by inexpressible terror, I flung a sudden clairvoyant glance round me, and feeling quite sure that I was seen by none of my acquaintance, betted on a stout, jovial little man, heaping upon his head more prayers and vows than are put up during two or three storms at sea.
Then, with an intuitive scoundrelism, or Machiavelism, surprising in one of my age, I went and stood in the door, and looked about me in the rooms, though I saw nothing; for both mind and eyes hovered about that fateful green cloth.
"That evening fixes the date of a first observation of a physiological kind; to it I owe a kind of insight into certain mysteries of our double nature that I have since been enabled to penetrate.
I had my back turned on the table where my future felicity lay at stake, a felicity but so much the more intense that it was criminal. Between me and the players stood a wall of onlookers some five feet deep, who were chatting; the murmur of voices drowned the clinking of gold, which mingled in the sounds sent up by this orchestra; yet, despite all obstacles, I distinctly heard the words of the two players by a gift accorded to the passions, which enables them to annihilate time and space. I saw the points they made; I knew which of the two turned up the king as well as if I had actually seen the cards; at a distance of ten paces, in short, the fortunes of play blanched my face.
"My father suddenly went by, and then I knew what the Scripture meant by
'The Spirit of God passed before his face.'
I had won.
I slipped through the crowd of men who had gathered about the players with the quickness of an eel escaping through a broken mesh in a net.
My nerves thrilled with joy instead of anguish.
I felt like some criminal on the way to torture released by a chance meeting with the king.
It happened that a man with a decoration found himself short by forty francs.
Uneasy eyes suspected me; I turned pale, and drops of perspiration stood on my forehead, I was well punished, I thought, for having robbed my father.
Then the kind little stout man said, in a voice like an angel's surely,
'All these gentlemen have paid their stakes,' and put down the forty francs himself.
I raised my head in triumph upon the players.
After I had returned the money I had taken from it to my father's purse, I left my winnings with that honest and worthy gentleman, who continued to win.
As soon as I found myself possessed of a hundred and sixty francs, I wrapped them up in my handkerchief, so that they could neither move or rattle on the way back; and I played no more.
"'What were you doing at the card-table?' said my father as we stepped into the carriage.
"'I was looking on,' I answered, trembling.
"'But it would have been nothing out of the common if you had been prompted by self-love to put some money down on the table.
In the eyes of men of the world you are quite old enough to assume the right to commit such follies.
So I should have pardoned you, Raphael, if you had made use of my purse.....'
"I did not answer.
When we reached home, I returned the keys and money to my father.
As he entered his study, he emptied out his purse on the mantelpiece, counted the money, and turned to me with a kindly look, saying with more or less long and significant pauses between each phrase:
"'My boy, you are very nearly twenty now.
I am satisfied with you.
You ought to have an allowance, if only to teach you how to lay it out, and to gain some acquaintance with everyday business.
Henceforward I shall let you have a hundred francs each month.
Here is your first quarter's income for this year,' he added, fingering a pile of gold, as if to make sure that the amount was correct. 'Do what you please with it.'
"I confess that I was ready to fling myself at his feet, to tell him that I was a thief, a scoundrel, and, worse than all, a liar!
But a feeling of shame held me back.
I went up to him for an embrace, but he gently pushed me away.
"'You are a man now, my child,' he said.
'What I have just done was a very proper and simple thing, for which there is no need to thank me.
If I have any claim to your gratitude, Raphael,' he went on, in a kind but dignified way, 'it is because I have preserved your youth from the evils that destroy young men in Paris.
We will be two friends henceforth.
In a year's time you will be a doctor of law.
Not without some hardship and privations you have acquired the sound knowledge and the love of, and application to, work that is indispensable to public men.
You must learn to know me, Raphael.
I do not want to make either an advocate or a notary of you, but a statesman, who shall be the pride of our poor house.... Good-night,' he added.