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The nuts are bought, the hydraulic press is ready to go to work, the land affair is settled. Here, lock up that cheque on the Bank of France," he added, handing her Pillerault's paper. "The improvements in the house are ordered, the dignity of our appartement is about to be increased. Bless me! I saw, down in the Cour Batave, a very singular man," and he told the tale of Monsieur Molineux.
We guess at once the little tyrant of the Cour Batave, arrayed with linen yellowed by lying by in a cupboard, and exhibiting to the eye a shirt-frill of lace that had been an heirloom, fastened with a bluish cameo set as a pin; he wore short black-silk breeches which revealed the skinny legs on which he boldly stood.
One of the cruellest scenes of Cesar's life was his forced conference with little Molineux, the being he had once regarded as a nonentity, who now by a fiction of law had become Cesar Birotteau. He was compelled to go to the Cour Batave, to mount the six flights, and re-enter the miserable appartement of the old man, now his custodian, his quasi judge, the representative of his creditors.
But my table cloths are well worth it, they were the very last that were left at the Cour Batave. I doubt if any finer quality will ever be woven." "Your daughter will have a wonderful trousseau." "She will have something durable at least, Madame, a trousseau that will stand the test of time and washing," replied the good mother smiling blandly, touched by my appreciation.
At No. 121 is the Cour Batave, so called from being erected by a company of Dutch merchants, in 1791; it is disfigured now by shops, but had the original design been carried out, instead of having been disturbed by the Revolution, it would have been one of the handsomest monuments of the capital. A short distance northward, in the same street, is the church of St. Leu and St.
I'll speak of it to my uncle Pillerault this morning; it is only a step from the Cour Batave, where Monsieur Molineux lives, to the Rue des Bourdonnais."
At these words, taken from the "Constitutionnel," Birotteau could not keep from inviting little Molineux to the ball, who thanked him profusely and felt like forgiving the disdainful look. The old man conducted his new tenant as far as the landing, and overwhelmed him with politeness. When Birotteau reached the middle of the Cour Batave he gave Cayron a merry look.
The Cour Batave, where the little old man lived, is the product of one of those fantastic speculations of which no man can explain the meaning after they are once completed.
Molineux received anonymous letters, no doubt from Gendrin, which threatened him with assassination some night in the passages about the Cour Batave. The little old man got up and fetched the pistols. "There they are!" he cried. "But, monsieur, you have nothing to fear from me," said Birotteau, looking at Cayron, and giving him a glance and a smile intended to express pity for such a man.
The familiarity of the man, and his grotesque gabble excited by champagne, seemed to tarnish the soul of the honest bourgeois as though he came from a house of financial ill-fame. He went down the stairway and found himself in the streets without knowing where he was going. As he walked along the boulevards and reached the Rue Saint-Denis, he recollected Molineux, and turned into the Cour Batave.
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