President du Ronceret held a permanent post; it was impossible to turn him out.The aristocratic party declined to give him what he considered to be his due, socially speaking; so he declared for the bourgeoisie, glossed over his disappointment with the name of independence, and failed to realize that his opinions condemned him to remain a president of a court of the first instance for the rest of his life.Once started in this track the sequence of events led du Ronceret to place his hopes of advancement on the triumph of du Croisier and the Left.He was in no better odor at the Prefecture than at the Court-Royal.He was compelled to keep on good terms with the authorities; the Liberals distrusted him, consequently he belonged to neither party.He was obliged to resign his chances of election to du Croisier, he exercised no influence, and played a secondary part.The false position reacted on his character; he was soured and discontented; he was tired of political ambiguity, and privately had made up his mind to come forward openly as leader of the Liberal party, and so to strike ahead of du Croisier.His behavior in the d'Esgrignon affair was the first step in this direction.To begin with, he was an admirable representative of that section of the middle classes which allows its petty passions to obscure the wider interests of the country; a class of crotchety politicians, upholding the government one day and opposing it the next, compromising every cause and helping none; helpless after they have done the mischief till they set about brewing more; unwilling to face their own incompetence, thwarting authority while professing to serve it.With a compound of arrogance and humility they demand of the people more submission than kings expect, and fret their souls because those above them are not brought down to their level, as if greatness could be little, as if power existed without force.
President du Ronceret was a tall, spare man with a receding forehead and scanty, auburn hair.He was wall-eyed, his complexion was blotched, his lips thin and hard, his scarcely audible voice came out like the husky wheezings of asthma.He had for a wife a great, solemn, clumsy creature, tricked out in the most ridiculous fashion, and outrageously overdressed.Mme.la Presidente gave herself the airs of a queen; she wore vivid colors, and always appeared at balls adorned with the turban, dear to the British female, and lovingly cultivated in out-of-the-way districts in France.Each of the pair had an income of four or five thousand francs, which with the President's salary, reached a total of some twelve thousand.In spite of a decided tendency to parsimony, vanity required that they should receive one evening in the week.Du Croisier might import modern luxury into the town, M.and Mme.de Ronceret were faithful to the old traditions.
They had always lived in the old-fashioned house belonging to Mme.du Ronceret, and had made no changes in it since their marriage.The house stood between a garden and a courtyard.The gray old gable end, with one window in each story, gave upon the road.High walls enclosed the garden and the yard, but the space taken up beneath them in the garden by a walk shaded with chestnut trees was filled in the yard by a row of outbuildings.An old rust-devoured iron gate in the garden wall balanced the yard gateway, a huge, double-leaved carriage entrance with a buttress on either side, and a mighty shell on the top.The same shell was repeated over the house-door.
The whole place was gloomy, close, and airless.The row of iron-gated openings in the opposite wall, as you entered, reminded you of prison windows.Every passer-by could look in through the railings to see how the garden grew; the flowers in the little square borders never seemed to thrive there.
The drawing-room on the ground floor was lighted by a single window on the side of the street, and a French window above a flight of steps, which gave upon the garden.The dining-room on the other side of the great ante-chamber, with its windows also looking out into the garden, was exactly the same size as the drawing-room, and all three apartments were in harmony with the general air of gloom.It wearied your eyes to look at the ceilings all divided up by huge painted crossbeams and adorned with a feeble lozenge pattern or a rosette in the middle.The paint was old, startling in tint, and begrimed with smoke.The sun had faded the heavy silk curtains in the drawing-room;the old-fashioned Beauvais tapestry which covered the white-painted furniture had lost all its color with wear.A Louis Quinze clock on the chimney-piece stood between two extravagant, branched sconces filled with yellow wax candles, which the Presidente only lighted on occasions when the old-fashioned rock-crystal chandelier emerged from its green wrapper.Three card-tables, covered with threadbare baize, and a backgammon box, sufficed for the recreations of the company; and Mme.du Ronceret treated them to such refreshments as cider, chestnuts, pastry puffs, glasses of eau sucree, and home-made orgeat.
For some time past she had made a practice of giving a party once a fortnight, when tea and some pitiable attempts at pastry appeared to grace the occasion.
Once a quarter the du Roncerets gave a grand three-course dinner, which made a great sensation in the town, a dinner served up in execrable ware, but prepared with the science for which the provincial cook is remarkable.It was a Gargantuan repast, which lasted for six whole hours, and by abundance the President tried to vie with du Croisier's elegance.
