"De Balzac, Honore - Modeste Mignon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Balzac Honore De)

While unanimous regrets for the disaster were expressed in counting-
rooms, on the wharves, and in private houses, where praises of a man
so irreproachable, honorable, and beneficent filled every mouth,
Latournelle and Dumay, silent and active as ants, sold land, turned
property into money, paid the debts, and settled up everything.
Vilquin showed a good deal of generosity in purchasing the villa, the
town-house, and a farm; and Latournelle made the most of his
liberality by getting a good price out of him. Society wished to show
civilities to Madame and Mademoiselle Mignon; but they had already
obeyed the father's last wishes and taken refuge in the Chalet, where
they went on the very morning of his departure, the exact hour of
which had been concealed from them. Not to be shaken in his resolution
by his grief at parting, the brave man said farewell to his wife and
daughter while they slept. Three hundred visiting cards were left at
the house. A fortnight later, just as Charles had predicted, complete
forgetfulness settled down upon the Chalet, and proved to these women
the wisdom and dignity of his command.

Dumay sent agents to represent his master in New York, Paris, and
London, and followed up the assignments of the three banking-houses
whose failure had caused the ruin of the Havre house, thus realizing
five hundred thousand francs between 1826 and 1828, an eighth of
Charles's whole fortune; then, according to the latter's directions
given on the night of his departure, he sent that sum to New York
through the house of Mongenod to the credit of Monsieur Charles
Mignon. All this was done with military obedience, except in a matter
of withholding thirty thousand francs for the personal expenses of
Madame and Mademoiselle Mignon as the colonel had ordered him to do,
but which Dumay did not do. The Breton sold his own little house for
twenty thousand francs, which sum he gave to Madame Mignon, believing
that the more capital he sent to his colonel the sooner the latter
would return.

"He might perish for the want of thirty thousand francs," Dumay
remarked to Latournelle, who bought the little house at its full
value, where an apartment was always kept ready for the inhabitants of
the Chalet.



CHAPTER IV

A SIMPLE STORY

Such was the result to the celebrated house of Mignon at Havre of the
crisis of 1825-26, which convulsed many of the principal business
centres in Europe and caused the ruin of several Parisian bankers,
among them (as those who remember that crisis will recall) the
president of the chamber of commerce.