de la Garde.A concise history of certain events in the cashier's past life must be given in order to explain these facts, and to give a complete presentment of the crisis when he yielded to temptation.
Mme.de la Garde said that she was a Piedmontese.No one, not even Castanier, knew her real name.She was one of those young girls, who are driven by dire misery, by inability to earn a living, or by fear of starvation, to have recourse to a trade which most of them loathe, many regard with indifference, and some few follow in obedience to the laws of their constitution.But on the brink of the gulf of prostitution in Paris, the young girl of sixteen, beautiful and pure as the Madonna, had met with Castanier.The old dragoon was too rough and homely to make his way in society, and he was tired of tramping the boulevard at night and of the kind of conquests made there by gold.For some time past he had desired to bring a certain regularity into an irregular life.He was struck by the beauty of the poor child who had drifted by chance into his arms, and his determination to rescue her from the life of the streets was half benevolent, half selfish, as some of the thoughts of the best of men are apt to be.
Social conditions mingle elements of evil with the promptings of natural goodness of heart, and the mixture of motives underlying a man's intentions should be leniently judged.Castanier had just cleverness enough to be very shrewd where his own interests were concerned.So he concluded to be a philanthropist on either count, and at first made her his mistress.
"Hey! hey!" he said to himself, in his soldierly fashion."I am an old wolf, and a sheep shall not make a fool of me.Castanier, old man, before you set up housekeeping, reconnoitre the girl's character for a bit, and see if she is a steady sort."This irregular union gave the Piedmontese a status the most nearly approaching respectability among those which the world declines to recognize.During the first year she took the nom de guerre of Aquilina, one of the characters in Venice Preserved which she had chanced to read.She fancied that she resembled the courtesan in face and general appearance, and in a certain precocity of heart and brain of which she was conscious.When Castanier found that her life was as well regulated and virtuous as was possible for a social outlaw, he manifested a desire that they should live as husband and wife.So she took the name of Mme.de la Garde, in order to approach, as closely as Parisian usages permit, the conditions of a real marriage.As a matter of fact, many of these unfortunate girls have one fixed idea, to be looked upon as respectable middle-class women, who lead humdrum lives of faithfulness to their husbands; women who would make excellent mothers, keepers of household accounts, and menders of household linen.This longing springs from a sentiment so laudable, that society should take it into consideration.But society, incorrigible as ever, will assuredly persist in regarding the married woman as a corvette duly authorized by her flag and papers to go on her own course, while the woman who is a wife in all but name is a pirate and an outlaw for lack of a document.A day came when Mme.de la Garde would fain have signed herself "Mme.Castanier." The cashier was put out by this.
"So you do not love me well enough to marry me?" she said.
Castanier did not answer; he was absorbed by his thoughts.The poor girl resigned herself to her fate.The ex-dragoon was in despair.
Naqui's heart softened towards him at the sight of his trouble; she tried to soothe him, but what could she do when she did not know what ailed him? When Naqui made up her mind to know the secret, although she never asked him a question, the cashier dolefully confessed to the existence of a Mme.Castanier.This lawful wife, a thousand times accursed, was living in a humble way in Strasbourg on a small property there; he wrote to her twice a year, and kept the secret of her existence so well, that no one suspected that he was married.The reason of this reticence? If it is familiar to many military men who may chance to be in a like predicament, it is perhaps worth while to give the story.
Your genuine trooper (if it is allowable here to employ the word which in the army signifies a man who is destined to die as a captain) is a sort of serf, a part and parcel of his regiment, an essentially simple creature, and Castanier was marked out by nature as a victim to the wiles of mothers with grown-up daughters left too long on their hands.
