He is a man about fifty, preoccupied, and good. That is all that can be said about him. Spain buys the jet. At the end of the second year he erects a large factory with two vast workrooms, one for men and one for women. Anyone who is hungry may present himself and is sure of employment and bread. He requires of the men good will, of the women pure morals, and of all, probity. The town is a garrison; opportunities for corruption abound; on this point he is inflexible. Before his arrival everything languished. Now there is no pocket so obscure that it has not a little money in it, no dwelling so lowly that there is not some little joy within it. He exacts one thing: Be an honest man. Be an honest woman.
He makes his fortune, but it does not seem his chief care. In 1820 he has six hundred and thirty thousand francs lodged with Laffitte; before reserving them he has spent more than a million for the town and its poor. The hospital is badly endowed; he founds six beds. The lower town has one school, a hovel falling to ruin; he constructs two, and pays the instructors twice their official salary. The two prime functionaries of the state, he says, are the nurse and the schoolmaster. He creates an infant school, then almost unknown in France, a fund for old workmen, a free dispensary in the new quarter. The good souls say, in order: he means to get rich; he is ambitious; he goes to low mass. The local deputy, a creature of Fouché, takes a Jesuit confessor and goes to high mass. Ambition is a race to the steeple. The poor profit by this terror: the deputy founds two beds, which makes twelve.
In 1819, on the prefect's representations, the King appoints him mayor. There, what did we say. He refuses. The same year the inventor is named a chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Well, so it was the cross that he wanted. He refuses the cross. Decidedly this man is an enigma. After all, he is some sort of adventurer. Society opens both leaves of its folding-doors to the millionaire. He refuses. He is an ignorant man; it has not been absolutely proved that he knows how to read. When they saw him making money, a man of business. Scattering it, ambitious. Declining honours, adventurer. Repulsing society, a brute. In 1820 the King appoints him mayor again. He declines; the prefect resists; the street beseeches. An old woman calls from her threshold, almost irritated: A good mayor is a useful thing. Is he drawing back before the good which he can do? He accepts. Father Madeleine has become Monsieur Madeleine. Monsieur Madeleine becomes Monsieur le Maire.
Coming Up in Chapter 42
On the other hand he remains as simple as on the first day: gray hair, a wide-brimmed hat, a long coat buttoned to the chin. The women say, What a good-natured bear. He smiles to avoid talking, and gives to avoid the need to smile.
