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A Start in Life-Part18_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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been kept from a knowledge of the trials and poverty of the home, he

was ignorant of the necessity of earning his living. The word



"commerce" presented no idea whatever to his mind; "public employment"

said almost as little, for he saw no results of it. He listened,



therefore, with a submissive air, which he tried to make humble, to

his mother's exhortations, but they were lost in the void, and did not



reach his mind. Nevertheless, the word "army," the thought of being a

soldier, and the sight of his mother's tears did at last make him cry.



No sooner did Madame Clapart see the drops coursing down his cheeks

than she felt herself helpless, and, like most mothers in such cases,



she began the peroration which terminates these scenes,--scenes in

which they suffer their own anguish and that of their children also.



"Well, Oscar, PROMISE me that you will be more discreet in future,--

that you will not talk heedlessly any more, but will strive to repress



your silly vanity," et cetera, et cetera.

Oscar of course promised all his mother asked him to promise, and



then, after gentlydrawing him to her, Madame Clapart ended by kissing

him to console him for being scolded.



"In future," she said, "you will listen to your mother, and will

follow her advice; for a mother can give nothing but good counsel to



her child. We will go and see your uncle Cardot; that is our last

hope. Cardot owed a great deal to your father, who gave him his



sister, Mademoiselle Husson, with an enormous dowry for those days,

which enabled him to make a large fortune in the silk trade. I think



he might, perhaps, place you with Monsieur Camusot, his successor and

son-in-law, in the rue des Bourdonnais. But, you see, your uncle



Cardot has four children. He gave his establishment, the Cocon d'Or,

to his eldest daughter, Madame Camusot; and though Camusot has



millions, he has also four children by two wives; and, besides, he

scarcely knows of our existence. Cardot has married his second



daughter, Mariane, to Monsieur Protez, of the firm of Protez and

Chiffreville. The practice of his eldest son, the notary, cost him



four hundred thousand francs; and he has just put his second son,

Joseph, into the drug business of Matifat. So you see, your uncle



Cardot has many reasons not to take an interest in you, whom he sees

only four times a year. He has never come to call upon me here, though



he was ready enough to visit me at Madame Mere's when he wanted to

sell his silks to the Emperor, the imperial highnesses, and all the



great people at court. But now the Camusots have turned ultras. The

eldest son of Camusot's first wife married a daughter of one of the



king's ushers. The world is mighty hump-backed when it stoops!

However, it was a clever thing to do, for the Cocon d'Or has the



custom of the present court as it had that of the Emperor. But to-

morrow we will go and see your uncle Cardot, and I hope that you will



endeavor to behaveproperly; for, as I said before, and I repeat it,

that is our last hope."



Monsieur Jean-Jerome-Severin Cardot had been a widower six years. As

head-clerk of the Cocon d'Or, one of the oldest firms in Paris, he had



bought the establishment in 1793, at a time when the heads of the

house were ruined by the maximum; and the money of Mademoiselle



Husson's dowry had enabled him to do this, and so make a fortune that

was almost colossal in ten years. To establish his children richly



during his lifetime, he had conceived the idea of buying an annuity

for himself and his wife with three hundred thousand francs, which



gave him an income of thirty thousand francs a year. He then divided

his capital into three shares of four hundred thousand francs each,



which he gave to three of his children,--the Cocon d'Or, given to his

eldest daughter on her marriage, being the equivalent of a fourth



share. Thus the worthy man, who was now nearly seventy years old,

could spend his thirty thousand a year as he pleased, without feeling



that he injured the prospects of his children, all finely provided

for, whose attentions and proofs of affection were, moreover, not



prompted by self-interest.

Uncle Cardot lived at Belleville, in one of the first houses above the



Courtille. He there occupied, on the first floor, an apartment

overlooking the valley of the Seine, with a southern exposure, and the



exclusive enjoyment of a large garden, for the sum of a thousand

francs a year. He troubled himself not at all about the three or four



other tenants of the same vast country-house. Certain, through a long




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