← catalogue

A Romance of Youth — Complete

by François Coppée · English · Gutenberg #3962 · 386,152 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Romance of Youth — Complete
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: A Romance of Youth — Complete

Author: François Coppée


        
Release date: October 30, 2004 [eBook #3962]
                Most recently updated: January 9, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3962

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A ROMANCE OF YOUTH — COMPLETE ***



Produced by David Widger





A ROMANCE OF YOUTH

By Francois Coppee


With a Preface by JOSE DE HEREDIA, of the French Academy




FRANCOIS COPPEE

FRANCOIS EDOUARD JOACHIM COPPEE was born in Paris, January 12, 1842.
His father was a minor ‘employe’ in the French War Office; and, as the
family consisted of six the parents, three daughters, and a son (the
subject of this essay)--the early years of the poet were not spent in
great luxury. After the father’s death, the young man himself entered
the governmental office with its monotonous work. In the evening he
studied hard at St. Genevieve Library. He made rhymes, had them even
printed (Le Reliquaire, 1866); but the public remained indifferent until
1869, when his comedy in verse, ‘Le Passant’, appeared. From this period
dates the reputation of Coppee--he woke up one morning a “celebrated
man.”

Like many of his countrymen, he is a poet, a dramatist, a novelist,
and a writer of fiction. He was elected to the French Academy in 1884.
Smooth shaven, of placid figure, with pensive eyes, the hair brushed
back regularly, the head of an artist, Coppee can be seen any day
looking over the display of the Parisian secondhand booksellers on
the Quai Malaquais; at home on the writing-desk, a page of carefully
prepared manuscript, yet sometimes covered by cigarette-ashes; upon
the wall, sketches by Jules Lefebvre and Jules Breton; a little in the
distance, the gaunt form of his attentive sister and companion, Annette,
occupied with household cares, ever fearful of disturbing him. Within
this tranquil domicile can be heard the noise of the Parisian faubourg
with its thousand different dins; the bustle of the street; the clatter
of a factory; the voice of the workshop; the cries of the pedlers
intermingled with the chimes of the bells of a near-by convent-a
confusing buzzing noise, which the author, however, seems to enjoy; for
Coppee is Parisian by birth, Parisian by education, a Parisian of the
Parisians.

If as a poet we contemplate him, Coppee belongs to the group commonly
called “Parnassiens”--not the Romantic School, the sentimental lyric
effusion of Lamartine, Hugo, or De Musset! When the poetical lute
was laid aside by the triad of 1830, it was taken up by men of quite
different stamp, of even opposed tendencies. Observation of exterior
matters was now greatly adhered to in poetry; it became especially
descriptive and scientific; the aim of every poet was now to render
most exactly, even minutely, the impressions received, or faithfully to
translate into artistic language a thesis of philosophy, a discovery of
science. With such a poetical doctrine, you will easily understand the
importance which the “naturalistic form” henceforth assumed.

Coppee, however, is not only a maker of verses, he is an artist and a
poet. Every poem seems to have sprung from a genuine inspiration. When
he sings, it is because he has something to sing about, and the result
is that his poetry is nearly always interesting. Moreover, he respects
the limits of his art; for while his friend and contemporary, M.
Sully-Prudhomme, goes astray habitually into philosophical speculation,
and his immortal senior, Victor Hugo, often declaims, if one may venture
to say so, in a manner which is tedious, Coppee sticks rigorously to
what may be called the proper regions of poetry.

Francois Coppee is not one of those superb high priests disdainful
of the throng: he is the poet of the “humble,” and in his work, ‘Les
Humbles’, he paints with a sincere emotion his profound sympathy for
the sorrows, the miseries, and the sacrifices of the meek. Again, in
his ‘Grave des Forgerons, Le Naufrage, and L’Epave’, all poems of great
extension and universal reputation, he treats of simple existences, of
unknown unfortunates, and of sacrifices which the daily papers do not
record. The coloring and designing are precise, even if the tone be
somewhat sombre, and nobody will deny that Coppee most fully possesses
the technique of French poetry.

But Francois Coppee is known to fame as a prosewriter, too. His
‘Contes en prose’ and his ‘Vingt Contes Nouveaux’ are gracefully and
artistically told; scarcely one of the ‘contes’ fails to have a moral
motive. The stories are short and naturally slight; some, indeed,
incline rather to the essay than to the story, but each has that
enthralling interest which justifies its existence. Coppee possesses
preeminently the gift of presenting concrete fact rather than
abstraction. A sketch, for instance, is the first tale written by him,
‘Une Idylle pendant le Seige’ (1875). In a novel we require strong
characterization, great grasp of character, and the novelist should
show us the human heart and intellect in full play and activity. In 1875
appeared also ‘Olivier’, followed by ‘L’Exilee (1876); Recits et Elegies
(1878); Vingt Contes Nouveaux (1883); and Toute une Jeunesse’, mainly
an autobiography, crowned by acclaim by the Academy. ‘Le Coupable’ was
published in 1897. Finally, in 1898, appeared ‘La Bonne Souffrance’.
In the last-mentioned work it would seem that the poet, just recovering
from a severe malady, has returned to the dogmas of the Catholic Church,
wherefrom he, like so many of his contemporaries, had become estranged
when a youth. The poems of 1902, ‘Dans la Priere et dans la Lutte’, tend
to confirm the correctness of this view.

Thanks to the juvenile Sarah Bernhardt, Coppee became, as before
mentioned, like Byron, celebrated in one night. This happened through
the performance of ‘Le Passant’.

As interludes to the plays there are “occasional” theatrical pieces,
written for the fiftieth anniversary of the performance of ‘Hernani’
or the two-hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the “Comedie
Francaise.” This is a wide field, indeed, which M. Coppee has cultivated
to various purposes.

Take Coppee’s works in their sum and totality, and the world-decree is
that he is an artist, and an admirable one. He plays upon his instrument
with all power and grace. But he is no mere virtuoso. There is something
in him beyond the executant. Of Malibran, Alfred de Musset says, most
beautifully, that she had that “voice of the heart which alone has power
to reach the heart.” Here, also, behind the skilful player on language,
the deft manipulator of rhyme and rhythm, the graceful and earnest
writer, one feels the beating of a human heart. One feels that he is
giving us personal impressions of life and its joys and sorrows; that
his imagination is powerful because it is genuinely his own; that the
flowers of his fancy spring spontaneously from the soil. Nor can I
regard it as aught but an added grace that the strings of his instrument
should vibrate so readily to what is beautiful and unselfish and
delicate in human feeling.

               JOSE DE HEREDIA
             de l’Academie Francaise.




A ROMANCE OF YOUTH




BOOK 1.




CHAPTER I. ON THE BALCONY

As far back as Amedee Violette can remember, he sees himself in an
infant’s cap upon a fifth-floor balcony covered with convolvulus; the
child was very small, and the balcony seemed very large to him. Amedee
had received for a birthday present a box of water-colors, with which
he was sprawled out upon an old rug, earnestly intent upon his work of
coloring the woodcuts in an odd volume of the ‘Magasin Pittoresque’, and
wetting his brush from time to time in his mouth. The neighbors in the
next apartment had a right to one-half of the balcony. Some one in there
was playing upon the piano Marcailhou’s Indiana Waltz, which was all the
rage at that time. Any man, born about the year 1845, who does not feel
the tears of homesickness rise to his eyes as he turns over the pages of
an old number of the ‘Magasin Pittoresque’, or who hears some one play
upon an old piano Marcailhou’s Indiana Waltz, is not endowed with much
sensibility.

When the child was tired of putting the “flesh color” upon the faces of
all the persons in the engravings, he got up and went to peep through
the railings of the balustrade. He saw extending before him, from right
to left, with a graceful curve, the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, one of
the quietest streets in the Luxembourg quarter, then only half built up.
The branches of the trees spread over the wooden fences, which enclosed
gardens so silent and tranquil that passers by could hear the birds
singing in their cages.

It was a September afternoon, with a broad expanse of pure sky across
which large clouds, like mountains of silver, moved in majestic
slowness.

Suddenly a soft voice called him:

“Amedee, your father will return from the office soon. We must wash your
hands before we sit down to the table, my darling.”

His mother came out upon the balcony for him. His mother; his dear
mother, whom he knew for so short a time! It needs an effort for him to
call her to mind now, his memories are so indistinct. She was so modest
and pretty, so pale, and with such charming blue eyes, always carrying
her head on one side, as if the weight of her lovely chestnut hair was
too heavy for her to bear, and smiling the sweet, tired smile of those
who have not long to live! She made his toilette, kissed him upon his
forehead, after brushing his hair. Then she laid their modest table,
which was always decorated with a pretty vase of flowers. Soon the
father entered. He was one of those mild, unpretentious men who let
everybody run over them.

He tried to be gay when he entered his own house. He raised his little
boy aloft with one arm, before kissing him, exclaiming, “Houp la!”
 A moment later he kissed his young wife and held her close to him,
tenderly, as he asked, with an anxious look:

“Have you coughed much to-day?”

She always replied, hanging her head like a child who tells an untruth,
“No, not very much.”

The father would then put on an old coat--the one he took off was not
very new. Amedee was then seated in a high chair before his mug, and the
young mother, going into the kitchen, would bring in the supper. After
opening his napkin, the father would brush back behind his ear with his
hand a long lock on the right side, that always fell into his eyes.

“Is there too much of a breeze this evening? you afraid to go out upon
the balcony, Lucie? Put a shawl on, then,” said M. Violette, while his
wife was pouring the water remaining in the carafe upon a box where some
nasturtiums were growing.

“No, Paul, I am sure--take Amedee down from his chair, and let us go out
upon the balcony.”

It was cool upon this high balcony. The sun had set, and now the great
clouds resembled mountains of gold, and a fresh odor came up from the
surrounding gardens.

“Good-evening, Monsieur Violette,” suddenly said a cordial voice. “What
a fine evening!”

It was their neighbor, M. Gerard, an engraver, who had also come to take
breath upon his end of the balcony, having spent the entire day bent
over his work. He was large and bald-headed, with a good-natured face,
a red beard sprinkled with white hairs, and he wore a short, loose coat.
As he spoke he lighted his clay pipe, the bowl of which represented
Abd-el-Kader’s face, very much colored, save the eyes and turban, which
were of white enamel.

The engraver’s wife, a dumpy little woman with merry eyes, soon joined
her husband, pushing before her two little girls; one, the smaller of
the two, was two years younger than Amedee; the other was ten years old,
and already had a wise little air. She was the pianist who practised one
hour a day Marcailhou’s Indiana Waltz.

The children chattered through the trellis that divided the balcony in
two parts. Louise, the elder of the girls, knew how to read, and told
the two little ones very beautiful stories: Joseph sold by his brethren;
Robinson Crusoe discovering the footprints of human beings.

Amedee, who now has gray hair upon his temples, can still remember the
chills that ran down his back at the moment when the wolf, hidden under
coverings and the grandmother’s cap, said, with a gnashing of teeth, to
little Red Riding Hood: “All the better to eat you with, my child.”

It was almost dark then upon the terrace. It was all delightfully
terrible!

During this time the two families, in their respective parts of the
balcony, were talking familiarly together. The Violettes were quiet
people, and preferred rather to listen to their neighbors than to talk
themselves, making brief replies for politeness’ sake--“Ah!” “Is it
possible?” “You are right.”

The Gerards liked to talk. Madame Gerard, who was a good housekeeper,
discussed questions of domestic economy; telling, for example, how she
had been out that day, and had seen, upon the Rue du Bac, some merino:
“A very good bargain, I assure you, Madame, and very wide!” Or perhaps
the engraver, who was a simple politician, after the fashion of 1848,
would declare that we must accept the Republic, “Oh, not the red-hot,
you know, but the true, the real one!” Or he would wish that Cavaignac
had been elected President at the September balloting; although he
himself was then engraving--one must live, after all--a portrait of
Prince Louis Napoleon, destined for the electoral platform. M. and
Madame Violette let them talk; perhaps even they did not always pay
attention to the conversation. When it was dark they held each other’s
hands and gazed at the stars.

These lovely, cool, autumnal evenings, upon the balcony, under the
starry heavens, are the most distant of all Amedee’s memories. Then
there was a break in his memory, like a book with several leaves torn
out, after which he recalls many sad days.

Winter had come, and they no longer spent their evenings upon the
balcony. One could see nothing now through the windows but a dull, gray
sky. Amedee’s mother was ill and always remained in her bed. When he was
installed near the bed, before a little table, cutting out with scissors
the hussars from a sheet of Epinal, his poor mamma almost frightened
him, as she leaned her elbow upon the pillow and gazed at him so long
and so sadly, while her thin white hands restlessly pushed back her
beautiful, disordered hair, and two red hectic spots burned under her
cheekbones.

It was not she who now came to take him from his bed in the morning, but
an old woman in a short jacket, who did not kiss him, and who smelled
horribly of snuff.

His father, too, did not pay much attention to him now. When he returned
in the evening from the office he always brought bottles and little
packages from the apothecary. Sometimes he was accompanied by the
physician, a large man, very much dressed and perfumed, who panted for
breath after climbing the five flights of stairs. Once Amedee saw this
stranger put his arms around his mother as she sat in her bed, and lay
his head for a long time against her back. The child asked, “What for,
mamma?”

M. Violette, more nervous than ever, and continually throwing back the
rebellious lock behind his ear, would accompany the doctor to the door
and stop there to talk with him. Then Amedee’s mother would call to him,
and he would climb upon the bed, where she would gaze at him with her
bright eyes and press him to her breast, saying, in a sad tone, as if
she pitied him: “My poor little Medee! My poor little Medee!” Why was
it? What did it all mean?

His father would return with a forced smile which was pitiful to see.

“Well, what did the doctor say?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing! You are much better. Only, my poor Lucie, we must
put on another blister to-night.”

Oh, how monotonous and slow these days were to the little Amedee, near
the drowsy invalid, in the close room smelling of drugs, where only
the old snuff-taker entered once an hour to bring a cup of tea or put
charcoal upon the fire!

Sometimes their neighbor, Madame Gerard, would come to inquire after the
sick lady.

“Still very feeble, my good Madame Gerard,” his mother would respond.
“Ah, I am beginning to get discouraged.”

But Madame Gerard would not let her be despondent.

“You see, Madame Violette, it is this horrible, endless winter. It is
almost March now; they are already selling boxes of primroses in little
carts on the sidewalks. You will surely be better as soon as the sun
shines. If you like, I will take little Amedee back with me to play with
my little girls. It will amuse the child.”

So it happened that the good neighbor kept the child every afternoon,
and he became very fond of the little Gerard children.

Four little rooms, that is all; but with a quantity of old, picturesque
furniture; engravings, casts, and pictures painted by comrades were on
the walls; the doors were always open, and the children could always
play where they liked, chase each other through the apartments or
pillage them. In the drawing-room, which had been transformed into a
work-room, the artist sat upon a high stool, point in hand; the light
from a curtainless window, sifting through the transparent paper, made
the worthy man’s skull shine as he leaned over his copper plate. He
worked hard all day; with an expensive house and two girls to bring up,
it was necessary. In spite of his advanced opinions, he continued to
engrave his Prince Louis--“A rogue who is trying to juggle us out of a
Republic.” At the very most, he stopped only two or three times a day to
smoke his Abu-el-Kader. Nothing distracted him from his work; not even
the little ones, who, tired of playing their piece for four hands upon
the piano, would organize, with Amedee, a game of hide-and-seek close by
their father, behind the old Empire sofa ornamented with bronze lions’
heads. But Madame Gerard, in her kitchen, where she was always cooking
something good for dinner, sometimes thought they made too great an
uproar. Then Maria, a real hoyden, in trying to catch her sister, would
push an old armchair against a Renaissance chest and make all the Rouen
crockery tremble.

“Now then, now then, children!” exclaimed Madame Gerard, from the depths
of her lair, from which escaped a delicious odor of bacon. “Let your
father have a little quiet, and go and play in the dining-room.”

They obeyed; for there they could move chairs as they liked, build
houses of them, and play at making calls. Did ever anybody have such
wild ideas at five years of age as this Maria? She took the arm of
Amedee, whom she called her little husband, and went to call upon her
sister and show her her little child, a pasteboard doll with a large
head, wrapped up in a napkin.

“As you see, Madame, it is a boy.”

“What do you intend to make of him when he grows up?” asked Louise, who
lent herself complacently to the play, for she was ten years old and
quite a young lady, if you please.

“Why, Madame,” replied Maria, gravely, “he will be a soldier.”

At that moment the engraver, who had left his bench to stretch his legs
a little and to light his Abd-el-Kader for the third time, came and
stood at the threshold of his room. Madame Gerard, reassured as to the
state of her stew, which was slowly cooking--and oh, how good it smelled
in the kitchen!--entered the dining-room. Both looked at the children,
so comical and so graceful, as they made their little grimaces! Then the
husband glanced at his wife, and the wife at the husband, and both burst
out into hearty laughter.

There never was any laughter in the apartment of the Violettes. It was
cough! cough! cough! almost to suffocation, almost to death! This gentle
young woman with the heavy hair was about to die! When the beautiful
starry evenings should come again, she would no longer linger on the
balcony, or press her husband’s hand as they gazed at the stars. Little
Amedee did not understand it; but he felt a vague terror of something
dreadful happening in the house. Everything alarmed him now. He was
afraid of the old woman who smelled of snuff, and who, when she dressed
him in the morning, looked at him with a pitying air; he was afraid of
the doctor, who climbed the five flights of stairs twice a day now, and
left a whiff of perfume behind him; afraid of his father, who did not
go to his office any more, whose beard was often three days old, and
who feverishly paced the little parlor, tossing back with a distracted
gesture the lock of hair behind his ear. He was afraid of his mother,
alas! of his mother, whom he had seen that evening, by the light from
the night-lamp, buried in the pillows, her delicate nose and chin thrown
up, and who did not seem to recognize him, in spite of her wide-open
eyes, when his father took her child in his arms and leaned over her
with him that he might kiss her cold forehead covered with sweat!

At last the terrible day arrived, a day that Amedee never will forget,
although he was then a very small child.

What awakened him that morning was his father’s embrace as he came and
took him from his bed. His father’s eyes were wild and bloodshot from
so much crying. Why was their neighbor, M. Gerard, there so early in
the morning, and with great tears rolling down his cheeks too? He kept
beside M. Violette, as if watching him, and patted him upon the back
affectionately, saying:

“Now then, my poor friend! Have courage, courage!”

But the poor friend had no more. He let M. Gerard take the child
from him, and then his head fell like a dead person’s upon the good
engraver’s shoulder, and he began to weep with heavy sobs that shook his
whole body.

“Mamma! See mamma!” cried the little Amedee, full of terror.

Alas! he never will see her again! At the Gerards, where they carried
him and the kind neighbor dressed him, they told him that his mother had
gone for a long time, a very long time; that he must love his papa
very much and think only of him; and other things that he could not
understand and dared not ask the meaning of, but which filled him with
consternation.

It was strange! The engraver and his wife busied themselves entirely
with him, watching him every moment. The little ones, too, treated him
in a singular, almost respectful manner. What had caused such a change?
Louise did not open her piano, and when little Maria wished to take
her “menagerie” from the lower part of the buffet, Madame Gerard said
sharply, as she wiped the tears from her eyes: “You must not play
to-day.”

After breakfast Madame Gerard put on her hat and shawl and went out,
taking Amedee with her. They got into a carriage that took them through
streets that the child did not know, across a bridge in the middle of
which stood a large brass horseman, with his head crowned with laurel,
and stopped before a large house and entered with the crowd, where a
very agile and rapid young man put some black clothes on Amedee.

On their return the child found his father seated at the dining-room
table with M. Gerard, and both of them were writing addresses upon large
sheets of paper bordered with black. M. Violette was not crying, but his
face showed deep lines of grief, and he let his lock of hair fall over
his right eye.

At the sight of little Amedee, in his black clothes, he uttered a groan,
and arose, staggering like a drunken man, bursting into tears again.

Oh, no! he never will forget that day, nor the horrible next day, when
Madame Gerard came and dressed him in the morning in his black clothes,
while he listened to the noise of heavy feet and blows from a hammer in
the next room. He suddenly remembered that he had not seen his mother
since two days before.

“Mamma! I want to see mamma!”

It was necessary then to try to make him understand the truth. Madame
Gerard repeated to him that he ought to be very wise and good, and try
to console his father, who had much to grieve him; for his mother had
gone away forever; that she was in heaven.

In heaven! heaven is very high up and far off. If his mother was in
heaven, what was it that those porters dressed in black carried away in
the heavy box that they knocked at every turn of the staircase? What did
that solemn carriage, which he followed through all the rain, quickening
his childish steps, with his little hand tightly clasped in his
father’s, carry away? What did they bury in that hole, from which an
odor of freshly dug earth was emitted--in that hole surrounded by men
in black, and from which his father turned away his head in horror? What
was it that they hid in this ditch, in this garden full of crosses and
stone urns, where the newly budded trees shone in the March sun after
the shower, large drops of water still falling from their branches like
tears?

His mother was in heaven! On the evening of that dreadful day Amedee
dared not ask to “see mamma” when he was seated before his father at
the table, where, for a long time, the old woman in a short jacket had
placed only two plates. The poor widower, who had just wiped his eyes
with his napkin, had put upon one of the plates a little meat cut up in
bits for Amedee. He was very pale, and as Amedee sat in his high
chair, he asked himself whether he should recognize his mother’s sweet,
caressing look, some day, in one of those stars that she loved to watch,
seated upon the balcony on cool September nights, pressing her husband’s
hand in the darkness.




CHAPTER II. SAD CHANGES

Trees are like men; there are some that have no luck. A genuinely
unfortunate tree was the poor sycamore which grew in the playground of
an institution for boys on the Rue de la Grande-Chaumiere, directed by
M. Batifol.

Chance might just as well have made it grow upon the banks of a river,
upon some pretty bluff, where it might have seen the boats pass; or,
better still, upon the mall in some garrison village, where it could
have had the pleasure of listening twice a week to military music. But,
no! it was written in the book of fate that this unlucky sycamore should
lose its bark every summer, as a serpent changes its skin, and should
scatter the ground with its dead leaves at the first frost, in the
playground of the Batifol institution, which was a place without any
distractions.

This solitary tree, which was like any other sycamore, middle-aged and
without any singularities, ought to have had the painful feeling that
it served in a measure to deceive the public. In fact, upon the
advertisement of the Batifol institution (Cours du lycee Henri IV.
Preparation au baccalaureat et aux ecoles de l’Etat), one read these
fallacious words, “There is a garden;” when in reality it was only a
vulgar court graveled with stones from the river, with a paved gutter in
which one could gather half a dozen of lost marbles, a broken top, and
a certain number of shoe-nails, and after recreation hours still more.
This solitary sycamore was supposed to justify the illusion and fiction
of the garden promised in the advertisement; but as trees certainly
have common sense, this one should have been conscious that it was not a
garden of itself.

It was a very unjust fate for an inoffensive tree which never had harmed
anybody; only expanding, at one side of the gymnasium portico, in a
perfect rectangle formed by a prison wall, bristling with the glass
of broken bottles, and by three buildings of distressing similarity,
showing, above the numerous doors on the ground floor, inscriptions
which merely to read induced a yawn: Hall 1, Hall 2, Hall 3, Hall
4, Stairway A, Stairway B, Entrance to the Dormitories, Dining-room,
Laboratory.

The poor sycamore was dying of ennui in this dismal place. Its only
happy seasons--the recreation hours, when the court echoed with the
shouts and the laughter of the boys--were spoiled for it by the sight of
two or three pupils who were punished by being made to stand at the foot
of its trunk. Parisian birds, who are not fastidious, rarely lighted
upon the tree, and never built their nests there. It might even be
imagined that this disenchanted tree, when the wind agitated its
foliage, would charitably say, “Believe me! the place is good for
nothing. Go and make love elsewhere!”

In the shade of this sycamore, planted under an unlucky star, the
greater part of Amedee’s infancy was passed.

M. Violette was an employe of the Ministry, and was obliged to work
seven hours a day, one or two hours of which were devoted to going
wearily through a bundle of probably superfluous papers and documents.
The rest of the time was given to other occupations as varied as they
were intellectual; such as yawning, filing his nails, talking about his
chiefs, groaning over the slowness of promotion, cooking a potato or a
sausage in the stove for his luncheon, reading the newspaper down to
the editor’s signature, and advertisements in which some country cure
expresses his artless gratitude at being cured at last of an obstinate
disease. In recompense for this daily captivity, M. Violette received,
at the end of the month, a sum exactly sufficient to secure his
household soup and beef, with a few vegetables.

In order that his son might attain such a distinguished position, M.
Violette’s father, a watch-maker in Chartres, had sacrificed everything,
and died penniless. The Silvio Pellico official, during these
exasperating and tiresome hours, sometimes regretted not having simply
succeeded his father. He could see himself, in imagination, in the light
little shop near the cathedral, with a magnifying-glass fixed in his
eye, ready to inspect some farmer’s old “turnip,” and suspended over his
bench thirty silver and gold watches left by farmers the week before,
who would profit by the next market-day to come and get them, all going
together with a merry tick. It may be questioned whether a trade as low
as this would have been fitting for a young man of education, a Bachelor
of Arts, crammed with Greek roots and quotations, able to prove the
existence of God, and to recite without hesitation the dates of the
reigns of Nabonassar and of Nabopolassar. This watch-maker, this simple
artisan, understood modern genius better. This modest shopkeeper acted
according to the democratic law and followed the instinct of a noble
and wise ambition. He made of his son--a sensible and intelligent boy--a
machine to copy documents, and spend his days guessing the conundrums in
the illustrated newspapers, which he read as easily as M. Ledrain would
decipher the cuneiform inscriptions on an Assyrian brick. Also--an
admirable result, which should rejoice the old watch-maker’s shade--his
son had become a gentleman, a functionary, so splendidly remunerated by
the State that he was obliged to wear patches of cloth, as near like the
trousers as possible, on their seat; and his poor young wife, during
her life, had always been obliged, as rent-day drew near, to carry the
soup-ladle and six silver covers to the pawn-shop.

At all events, M. Violette was a widower now, and being busy all day was
very much embarrassed with the care of his little son. His neighbors,
the Gerards, were very kind to Amedee, and continued to keep him with
them all the afternoon. This state of affairs could not always continue,
and M. Violette hesitated to abuse his worthy friends’ kindness in that
way.

However, Amedee gave them little trouble, and Mamma Gerard loved him as
if he were her own. The orphan was now inseparable from little Maria,
a perfect little witch, who became prettier every day. The engraver,
having found in a cupboard the old bearskin cap which he had worn as a
grenadier in the National Guard, a headdress that had been suppressed
since ‘98, gave it to the children. What a magnificent plaything it was,
and how well calculated to excite their imagination! It was immediately
transformed in their minds into a frightfully large and ferocious bear,
which they chased through the apartment, lying in wait for it behind
armchairs, striking at it with sticks, and puffing out their little
cheeks with all their might to say “Boum!” imitating the report of
a gun. This hunting diversion completed the destruction of the old
furniture. Tranquil in the midst of the joyous uproar and disorder, the
engraver was busily at work finishing off the broad ribbon of the Legion
of Honor, and the large bullion epaulettes of the Prince President,
whom, as a suspicious republican and foreseeing the ‘coup d’etat’, he
detested with all his heart.

“Truly, Monsieur Violette,” said Mother Gerard to the employe, when he
came for his little son upon his return from the office, and excused
himself for the trouble that the child must give his neighbors, “truly,
I assure you, he does not disturb us in the least. Wait a little before
you send him to school. He is very quiet, and if Maria did not excite
him so--upon my word, she is more of a boy than he--your Amedee would
always be looking at the pictures. My Louise hears him read every day
two pages in the Moral Tales, and yesterday he amused Gerard by telling
him the story of the grateful elephant. He can go to school later--wait
a little.”

But M. Violette had decided to send Amedee to M. Batifol’s. “Oh, yes, as
a day scholar, of course! It is so convenient; not two steps’ distance.
This will not prevent little Amedee from seeing his friends often. He is
nearly seven years old, and very backward; he hardly knows how to make
his letters. One can not begin with children too soon,” and much more to
the same effect.

This was the reason why, one fine spring day, M. Violette was ushered
into M. Batifol’s office, who, the servant said, would be there
directly.

M. Batifol’s office was hideous. In the three bookcases which the master
of the house--a snob and a greedy schoolmaster--never opened, were some
of those books that one can buy upon the quays by the running yard;
for example, Laharpe’s Cours de Litterature, and an endless edition of
Rollin, whose tediousness seems to ooze out through their bindings. The
cylindrical office-table, one of those masterpieces of veneered mahogany
which the Faubourg St. Antoine still keeps the secret of making, was
surmounted by a globe of the world.

Suddenly, through the open window, little Amedee saw the sycamore in the
yard. A young blackbird, who did not know the place, came and perched
for an instant only upon one of its branches.

We may fancy the tree saying to it:

“What are you doing here? The Luxembourg is only a short distance from
here, and is charming. Children are there, making mud-pies, nurses upon
the seats chattering with the military, lovers promenading, holding
hands. Go there, you simpleton!”

The blackbird flew away, and the university tree, once more solitary and
alone, drooped its dispirited leaves. Amedee, in his confused childish
desire for information, was just ready to ask why this sycamore looked
so morose, when the door opened and M. Batifol appeared. The master of
the school had a severe aspect, in spite of his almost indecorous name.
He resembled a hippopotamus clothed in an ample black coat. He entered
slowly and bowed in a dignified way to M. Violette, then seated himself
in a leather armchair before his papers, and, taking off his velvet
skull-cap, revealed such a voluminous round, yellow baldness that little
Amedee compared it with terror to the globe on the top of his desk.

It was just the same thing! These two round balls were twins! There
was even upon M. Batifol’s cranium an eruption of little red pimples,
grouped almost exactly like an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean.

“Whom have I the honor--?” asked the schoolmaster, in an unctuous voice,
an excellent voice for proclaiming names at the distribution of prizes.

M. Violette was not a brave man. It was very foolish, but when the
senior clerk called him into his office to do some work, he was always
seized with a sort of stammering and shaking of the limbs. A person so
imposing as M. Batifol was not calculated to give him assurance. Amedee
was timid, too, like his father, and while the child, frightened by
the resemblance of the sphere to M. Batifol’s bald head, was already
trembling, M. Violette, much agitated, was trying to think of something
to say, consequently, he said nothing of any account. However, he ended
by repeating almost the same things he had said to Mamma Gerard: “My son
is nearly seven years old, and very backward, etc.”

The teacher appeared to listen to M. Violette with benevolent interest,
inclining his geographical cranium every few seconds. In reality, he was
observing and judging his visitors. The father’s scanty overcoat, the
rather pale face of the little boy, all betokened poverty. It simply
meant a day scholar at thirty francs a month, nothing more. So M.
Batifol shortened the “speech” that under like circumstances he
addressed to his new pupils.

He would take charge of his “young friend” (thirty francs a month, that
is understood, and the child will bring his own luncheon in a little
basket) who would first be placed in an elementary class. Certain
fathers prefer, and they have reason to do so, that their sons should
be half-boarders, with a healthful and abundant repast at noon. But M.
Batifol did not insist upon it. His young friend would then be placed in
the infant class, at first; but he would be prepared there at once, ‘ab
ovo’, one day to receive lessons in this University of France, ‘alma
parens’ (instruction in foreign languages not included in the ordinary
price, naturally), which by daily study, competition between scholars
(accomplishments, such as dancing, music, and fencing, to be paid for
separately; that goes without saying) prepare children for social life,
and make men and citizens of them.

M. Violette contented himself with the day school at thirty francs, and
for a good reason. The affair was settled. Early the next morning Amedee
would enter the “ninth preparatory.”

“Give me your hand, my young friend,” said the master, as father and son
arose to take their leave.

Amedee reached out his hand, and M. Batifol took it in his, which was
so heavy, large, and cold that the child shivered at the contact, and
fancied he was touching a leg of mutton of six or seven pounds’ weight,
freshly killed, and sent from the butcher’s.

Finally they left. Early the next morning, Amedee, provided with a
little basket, in which the old snuff-taker had put a little bottle of
red wine, and some sliced veal, and jam tarts, presented himself at the
boarding-school, to be prepared without delay for the teaching of the
‘alma parens’.

The hippopotamus clothed in black did not take off his skullcap this
time, to the child’s great regret, for he wished to assure himself if
the degrees of latitude and longitude were checked off in squares on M.
Batifol’s cranium as they were on the terrestrial globe. He conducted
his pupil to his class at once and presented him to the master.

“Here is a new day scholar, Monsieur Tavernier. You will find out how
far advanced he is in reading and writing, if you please.” M. Tavernier
was a tall young man with a sallow complexion, a bachelor who, had he
been living like his late father, a sergeant of the gendarmes, in a
pretty house surrounded by apple trees and green grass, would not,
perhaps, have had that ‘papier-mache’ appearance, and would not have
been dressed at eight o’clock in the morning in a black coat of the kind
we see hanging in the Morgue. M. Tavernier received the newcomer with a
sickly smile, which disappeared as soon as M. Batifol left the room.

“Go and take your place in that empty seat there, in the third row,”
 said M. Tavernier, in an indifferent tone.

He deigned, however, to conduct Amedee to the seat which he was to
occupy. Amedee’s neighbor, one of the future citizens preparing for
social life--several with patches upon their trousers--had been naughty
enough to bring into class a handful of cockchafers. He was punished by
a quarter of an hour’s standing up, which he did soon after, sulking at
the foot of the sycamore-tree in the large court.

“You will soon see what a cur he is,” whispered the pupil in disgrace;
as soon as the teacher had returned to his seat.

M. Tavernier struck his ruler on the edge of his chair, and, having
reestablished silence, invited pupil Godard to recite his lesson.

Pupil Godard, who was a chubby-faced fellow with sleepy eyes, rose
automatically and in one single stream, like a running tap, recited,
without stopping to take breath, “The Wolf and the Lamb,” rolling off La
Fontaine’s fable like the thread from a bobbin run by steam.


“The-strongest-reason-is-always-the-best-and-we-will-prove-it-at-once,
a-lamb-was-quenching-his-thirst-in-a-stream-of-pure-running-water--”

Suddenly Godard was confused, he hesitated. The machine had been badly
oiled. Something obstructed the bobbin.

“In-a-stream-of-pure-running-water-in-a stream--”

Then he stopped short, the tap was closed. Godard did not know his
lesson, and he, too, was condemned to remain on guard under the sycamore
during recess.

After pupil Godard came pupil Grosdidier; then Blanc, then Moreau
(Gaston), then Moreau (Ernest), then Malepert; then another, and
another, who babbled with the same intelligence and volubility, with the
same piping voice, this cruel and wonderful fable. It was as irritating
and monotonous as a fine rain. All the pupils in the “ninth preparatory”
 were disgusted for fifteen years, at least, with this most exquisite of
French poems.

Little Amedee wanted to cry; he listened with stupefaction blended with
fright as the scholars by turns unwound their bobbins. To think that
to-morrow he must do the same! He never would be able. M. Tavernier
frightened him very much, too. The yellow-complexioned usher, seated
nonchalantly in his armchair, was not without pretension; in spite of
his black coat with the “take-me-out-of-pawn” air, polished his nails,
and only opened his mouth at times to utter a reprimand or pronounce
sentence of punishment.

This was school, then! Amedee recalled the pleasant reading-lessons that
the eldest of the Gerards had given him--that good Louise, so wise and
serious and only ten years old, pointing out his letters to him in a
picture alphabet with a knitting-needle, always so patient and kind.
The child was overcome at the very first with a disgust for school,
and gazed through the window which lighted the room at the noiselessly
moving, large, indented leaves of the melancholy sycamore.




CHAPTER III. PAPA AND MAMMA GERARD

One, two, three years rolled by without anything very remarkable
happening to the inhabitants of the fifth story.

The quarter had not changed, and it still had the appearance of a
suburban faubourg. They had just erected, within gunshot of the house
where the Violettes and Gerards lived, a large five-story building, upon
whose roof still trembled in the wind the masons’ withered bouquets.
But that was all. In front of them, on the lot “For Sale,” enclosed by
rotten boards, where one could always see tufts of nettles and a goat
tied to a stake, and upon the high wall above which by the end of April
the lilacs hung in their perfumed clusters, the rains had not effaced
this brutal declaration of love, scraped with a knife in the plaster:
“When Melie wishes she can have me,” and signed “Eugene.”

Three years had passed, and little Amedee had grown a trifle. At that
time a child born in the centre of Paris--for example, in the labyrinth
of infected streets about the Halles--would have grown up without
having any idea of the change of seasons other than by the state of the
temperature and the narrow strip of sky which he could see by raising
his head. Even today certain poor children--the poor never budge from
their hiding-places--learn of the arrival of winter only by the odor
of roasted chestnuts; of spring, by the boxes of gilly-flowers in the
fruiterer’s stall; of summer, by the water-carts passing, and of autumn,
by the heaps of oyster-shells at the doors of wine-shops. The broad sky,
with its confused shapes of cloud architecture, the burning gold of
the setting sun behind the masses of trees, the enchanting stillness of
moonlight upon the river, all these grand and magnificent spectacles are
for the delight of those who live in suburban quarters, or play there
sometimes. The sons of people who work in buttons and jet spend their
infancy playing on staircases that smell of lead, or in courts that
resemble wells, and do not suspect that nature exists. At the outside
they suspect that nature may exist when they see the horses on Palm
Sunday decorated with bits of boxwood behind each ear. What matters it,
after all, if the child has imagination? A star reflected in a gutter
will reveal to him an immense nocturnal poem; and he will breathe all
the intoxication of summer in the full-blown rose which the grisette
from the next house lets fall from her hair.

Amedee had had the good fortune of being born in that delicious and
melancholy suburb of Paris which had not yet become “Haussmannized,” and
was full of wild and charming nooks.

His father, the widower, could not be consoled, and tried to wear out
his grief in long promenades, going out on clear evenings, holding his
little boy by the hand, toward the more solitary places. They followed
those fine boulevards, formerly in the suburbs, where there were giant
elms, planted in the time of Louis XIV, ditches full of grass, ruined
palisades, showing through their opening market-gardens where melons
glistened in the rays of the setting sun. Both were silent; the father
lost in reveries, Amedee absorbed in the confused dreams of a child.
They went long distances, passing the Barriere d’Enfer, reaching
unknown parts, which produced the same effect upon an inhabitant of Rue
Montmartre as the places upon an old map of the world, marked with the
mysterious words ‘Mare ignotum’, would upon a savant of the Middle Ages.
There were many houses in this ancient suburb; curious old buildings,
nearly all of one story.

Sometimes they would pass a public-house painted in a sinister
wine-color; or else a garden hedged in by acacias, at the fork of two
roads, with arbors and a sign consisting of a very small windmill at
the end of a pole, turning in the fresh evening breeze. It was almost
country; the grass grew upon the sidewalks, springing up in the road
between the broken pavements. A poppy flashed here and there upon the
tops of the low walls. They met very few people; now and then some
poor person, a woman in a cap dragging along a crying child, a workman
burdened with his tools, a belated invalid, and sometimes in the
middle of the sidewalk, in a cloud of dust, a flock of exhausted sheep,
bleating desperately, and nipped in the legs by dogs hurrying them
toward the abattoir. The father and son would walk straight ahead until
it was dark under the trees; then they would retrace their steps, the
sharp air stinging their faces. Those ancient hanging street-lamps,
the tragic lanterns of the time of the Terror, were suspended at long
intervals in the avenue, mingling their dismal twinkle with the pale
gleams of the green twilight sky.

These sorrowful promenades with his melancholy companion would commonly
end a tiresome day at Batifol’s school. Amedee was now in the “seventh,”
 and knew already that the phrase, “the will of God,” could not be
turned into Latin by ‘bonitas divina’, and that the word ‘cornu’ was not
declinable. These long, silent hours spent at his school-desk, or beside
a person absorbed in grief, might have become fatal to the child’s
disposition, had it not been for his good friends, the Gerards. He went
to see them as often as he was able, a spare hour now and then, and
most of the day on Thursdays. The engraver’s house was always full of
good-nature and gayety, and Amedee felt comfortable and really happy
there.

The good Gerards, besides their Louise and Maria, to say nothing of
Amedee, whom they looked upon as one of the family, had now taken charge
of a fourth child, a little girl, named Rosine, who was precisely the
same age as their youngest.

This was the way it happened. Above the Gerards, in one of the mansards
upon the sixth floor, lived a printer named Combarieu, with his wife or
mistress--the concierge did not know which, nor did it matter much. The
woman had just deserted him, leaving a child of eight years. One could
expect nothing better of a creature who, according to the concierge, fed
her husband upon pork-butcher’s meat, to spare herself the trouble
of getting dinner, and passed the entire day with uncombed hair, in a
dressing-sacque, reading novels, and telling her fortune with cards.
The grocer’s daughter declared she had met her one evening, at a
dancing-hall, seated with a fireman before a salad-bowl full of wine,
prepared in the French fashion.

During the day Combarieu, although a red-hot Republican, sent his little
girl to the Sisters; but he went out every evening with a mysterious
air and left the child alone. The concierge even uttered in a low
voice, with the romantic admiration which that class of people have for
conspirators, the terrible word “secret society,” and asserted that the
printer had a musket concealed under his straw bed.

These revelations were of a nature to excite M. Gerard’s sympathy in
favor of his neighbor, for the coup d’etat and the proclamation of the
Empire had irritated him very much. Had it not been his melancholy
duty to engrave, the day after the second of December--he must feed his
family first of all--a Bonapartist allegory entitled, “The Uncle and
the Nephew,” where one saw France extending its hand to Napoleon I and
Prince Louis, while soaring above the group was an eagle with spreading
wings, holding in one of his claws the cross of the Legion of Honor?

One day the engraver asked his wife, as he lighted his pipe--he had
given up Abd-el-Kader and smoked now a Barbes--if they ought not to
interest themselves a little in the abandoned child. It needed nothing
more to arouse the good woman, who had already said more than once:
“What a pity!” as she saw little Rosine waiting for her father in the
lodge of the concierge, asleep in a chair before the stove. She coaxed
the child to play with her children. Rosine was very pretty, with bright
eyes, a droll little Parisian nose, and a mass of straw-colored curly
hair escaping from her cap. The little rogue let fly quite often some
gutter expression, such as “Hang it!” or “Tol-derol-dol!” at which
Madame Gerard would exclaim, “What do I hear, Mademoiselle?” but she was
intelligent and soon corrected herself.

One Sunday morning, Combarieu, having learned of their kindness to his
child, made a visit to thank them.

Very dark, with a livid complexion, all hair and beard, and trying to
look like the head of Jesus Christ, in his long black blouse he embodied
the type of a club conspirator, a representative of the workingmen. A
Freemason, probably; a solemn drunkard, who became intoxicated oftener
on big words than on native wine, and spoke in a loud, pretentious
voice, gazing before him with large, stupid eyes swimming in a sort
of ecstasy; his whole person made one think of a boozy preacher. He
immediately inspired the engraver with respect, and dazzled him by the
fascination which the audacious exert over the timid. M. Gerard thought
he discerned in Combarieu one of those superior men whom a cruel fate
had caused to be born among the lower class and in whom poverty had
stifled genius.

Enlightened as to the artist’s political preferences by the bowl of his
pipe, Combarieu complacently eulogized himself. Upon his own admission
he had at first been foolish enough to dream of a universal brotherhood,
a holy alliance of the people. He had even written poems which he
had published himself, notably an “Ode to Poland,” and an “Epistle
to Beranger,” which latter had evoked an autograph letter from the
illustrious song-writer. But he was no longer such a simpleton.

“When one has seen what we have seen during June, and on the second
of December, there is no longer any question of sentiment.” Here
the engraver, as a hospitable host, brought a bottle of wine and two
glasses. “No, Monsieur Gerard, I thank you, I take nothing between my
meals. The workingmen have been deceived too often, and at the next
election we shall not let the bourgeoisie strangle the Republic.” (M.
Gerard had now uncorked the bottle.) “Only a finger! Enough! Enough!
simply so as not to refuse you. While waiting, let us prepare ourselves.
Just now the Eastern question muddles us, and behold ‘Badinguet,’--[A
nickname given to Napoleon III.]--with a big affair upon his hands. You
have some wine here that is worth drinking. If he loses one battle he
is done for. One glass more? Ah! you make me depart from my usual
custom--absolutely done for. But this time we shall keep our eyes
open. No half measures! We will return to the great methods of
‘ninety-three--the Committee of Public Safety, the Law of Suspects,
the Revolutionary Tribunal, every damned one of them! and, if it is
necessary, a permanent guillotine! To your good health!”

So much energy frightened Father Gerard a little; for in spite of his
Barbes pipe-bowl he was not a genuine red-hot Republican. He dared not
protest, however, and blushed a little as he thought that the night
before an editor had proposed to him to engrave a portrait of the new
Empress, very decollete, and showing her famous shoulders, and that he
had not said No; for his daughters needed new shoes, and his wife had
declared the day before that she had not a gown to put on.

So for several months he had four children--Amedee, Louise, Maria, and
little Rose Combarieu--to make a racket in his apartment. Certainly they
were no longer babies; they did not play at making calls nor chase
the old fur hat around the room; they were more sensible, and the old
furniture had a little rest. And it was time, for all the chairs were
lame, two of the larger ones had lost an arm each, and the Empire
sofa had lost the greater part of its hair through the rents in its
dark-green velvet covering. The unfortunate square piano had had no pity
shown it; more out of tune and asthmatic than ever, it was now always
open, and one could read above the yellow and worn-out keyboard a once
famous name-“Sebastian Erard, Manufacturer of Pianos and Harps for
S.A.R. Madame la Duchesse de Berri.” Not only Louise, the eldest of the
Gerards--a large girl now, having been to her first communion, dressing
her hair in bands, and wearing white waists--not only Louise, who had
become a good musician, had made the piano submit to long tortures, but
her sister Maria, and Amedee also, already played the ‘Bouquet de Bal’
or ‘Papa, les p’tits bateaux’. Rosine, too, in her character of street
urchin, knew all the popular songs, and spent entire hours in picking
out the airs with one finger upon the old instrument.

Ah! the songs of those days, the last of romanticism, the make-believe
‘Orientales’; ‘Odes’ and ‘Ballads’, by the dozen; ‘Comes d’Espagne
et d’Italie’, with their pages, turrets, chatelaines; bull-fighters,
Spanish ladies; vivandieres, beguiled away from their homes under
the pale of the church, “near a stream of running water, by a gay and
handsome chevalier,” and many other such silly things--Amedee will
remember them always! They bring back to him, clearly and strongly,
certain happy hours in his childhood! They make him smell again at times
even the odor that pervaded the Gerards’ house. A mule-driver’s song
will bring up before his vision the engraver working at his plate before
the curtainless window on a winter’s day. It snows in the streets, and
large white flakes are slowly falling behind the glass; but the room,
ornamented with pictures and busts, is lighted and heated by a bright
coke fire. Amedee can see himself seated in a corner by the fire,
learning by heart a page of the “Epitome” which he must recite the next
morning at M. Batifol’s. Maria and Rosine are crouched at his feet, with
a box of glass beads, which they are stringing into a necklace. It was
comfortable; the whole apartment smelled of the engraver’s pipe, and
in the dining-room, whose door is half opened, Louise is at the piano,
singing, in a fresh voice, some lines where “Castilla” rhymes with
“mantilla,” and “Andalousie” with “jealousy,” while her agile fingers
played on the old instrument an accompaniment supposed to imitate bells
and castanets.

Or perhaps it is a radiant morning in June, and they are in the
dining-room; the balcony door is open wide, and a large hornet buzzes
loudly in the vine. Louise is still at the piano; she is singing this
time, and trying to reach the low tones of a dramatic romance where a
Corsican child is urged on to vengeance by his father:

          Tiens, prends ma carabiue!
          Sur toi veillera Dieu--

This is a great day, the day when Mamma Gerard makes her gooseberry
preserves. There is a large basin already full of it on the table. What
a delicious odor! A perfume of roses mingled with that of warm sugar.
Maria and Rosine have just slipped into the kitchen, the gourmands! But
Louise is a serious person, and will not interrupt her singing for such
a trifle. She continues to sing in a low voice: and at the moment when
Amedee stands speechless with admiration before her, as she is scolding
in a terrible tone and playing dreadful chords, to and behold! here
come the children, both with pink moustaches, and licking their lips
voluptuously.

Ah! these were happy hours to Amedee. They consoled him for the
interminable days at M. Batifol’s.

Having passed the ninth preparatory grade, under the direction of the
indolent M. Tavernier, always busy polishing his nails, like a Chinese
mandarin, the child had for a professor in the eighth grade Pere
Montandeuil, a poor fellow stupefied by thirty years of teaching, who
secretly employed all his spare hours in composing five-act tragedies,
and who, by dint of carrying to and going for his manuscripts at the
Odeon, ended by marrying the stagedoor-keeper’s daughter. In the seventh
grade Amedee groaned under the tyranny of M. Prudhommod, a man from
the country, with a smattering of Latin and a terribly violent temper,
throwing at the pupils the insults of a plowboy. Now he had entered the
sixth grade, under M. Bance, an unfortunate fellow about twenty years
old, ugly, lame, and foolishly timid, whom M. Batifol reproached
severely with not having made himself respected, and whose eyes filled
with tears every morning when, upon entering the schoolroom, he was
obliged to efface with a cloth a caricature of himself made by some of
his pupils.

Everything in M. Batifol’s school--the grotesque and miserable teachers,
the ferocious and cynical pupils, the dingy, dusty, and ink-stained
rooms--saddened and displeased Amedee. Although very intelligent, he was
disgusted with the sort of instruction there, which was served out in
portions, like soldier’s rations, and would have lost courage but for
his little friend, Louise Gerard, who out of sheer kindness constituted
herself his school-mistress, guiding and inspiriting him, and working
hard at the rudiments of L’homond’s Grammar and Alexandre’s Dictionary,
to help the child struggle with his ‘De Viris’. Unfortunate indeed is
he who has not had, during his infancy, a petticoat near him--the sweet
influence of a woman. He will always have something coarse in his mind
and hard in his heart. Without this excellent and kind Louise, Amedee
would have been exposed to this danger. His mother was dead, and M.
Violette, alas! was always overwhelmed with his grief, and, it must be
admitted, somewhat neglected his little son.

The widower could not be consoled. Since his wife’s death he had grown
ten years older, and his refractory lock of hair had become perfectly
white. His Lucie had been the sole joy in his commonplace and obscure
life. She was so pretty, so sweet! such a good manager, dressing upon
nothing, and making things seem luxurious with only one flower! M.
Violette existed only on this dear and cruel souvenir, living his humble
idyll over again in his mind.

He had had six years of this happiness. One of his comrades took him to
pass an evening with an old friend who was captain in the Invalides. The
worthy man had lost an arm at Waterloo; he was a relative of Lucie, a
good-natured old fellow, amiable and lively, delighting in arranging
his apartments into a sort of Bonapartist chapel and giving little
entertainments with cake and punch, while Lucie’s mother, a cousin of
the captain, did the honors. M. Violette immediately observed the young
girl, seated under a “Bataille des Pyramides” with two swords crossed
above it, a carnation in her hair. It was in midsummer, and through the
open window one could see the magnificent moonlight, which shone
upon the esplanade and made the huge cannon shine. They were playing
charades, and when it came Lucie’s turn to be questioned among all the
guests, M. Violette, to relieve her of her embarrassment, replied so
awkwardly that they all exclaimed, “Now, then, that is cheating!” With
what naive grace and bashful coquetry she served the tea, going from one
table to another, cup in hand, followed by the one-armed captain with
silver epaulets, carrying the plum-cake! In order to see her again, M.
Violette paid the captain visit after visit. But the greater part of
the time he saw only the old soldier, who told him of his victories and
conquests, of the attack of the redoubt at Borodino, and the frightful
swearing of the dashing Murat, King of Naples, as he urged the squadrons
on to the rescue. At last, one beautiful Sunday in autumn, he found
himself alone with the young girl in the private garden of the veteran
of the Old Guard. He seated himself beside Lucie on a stone bench: he
told her his love, with the profound gaze of the Little Corporal, in
bronzed plaster, resting upon them; and, full of delicious confusion,
she replied, “Speak to mamma,” dropping her bewildered eyes and gazing
at the bed of china-asters, whose boxwood border traced the form of a
cross of the Legion of Honor.

And all this was effaced, lost forever! The captain was dead; Lucie’s
mother was dead, and Lucie herself, his beloved Lucie, was dead, after
giving him six years of cloudless happiness.

Certainly, he would never marry again. Oh, never!

No woman had ever existed or ever would exist for him but his poor
darling, sleeping in the Montparnasse Cemetery, whose grave he visited
every Sunday with a little watering-pot concealed under his coat.

He recalled, with a shiver of disgust, how, a few months after Lucie’s
death, one stifling evening in July, he was seated upon a bench in the
Luxembourg, listening to the drums beating a retreat under the trees,
when a woman came and took a seat beside him and looked at him steadily.
Surprised by her significant look, he replied, to the question that she
addressed to him, timidly and at the same time boldly: “So this is the
way that you take the air?” And when she ended by asking him, “Come to
my house,” he had followed her. But he had hardly entered when the past
all came back to him, and he felt a stifled feeling of distress. Falling
into a chair, he sobbed, burying his face in his hands. His grief was so
violent that, by a feminine instinct of pity, the wretched creature took
his head in her arms, saying, in a consoling tone, “There, cry, cry, it
will do you good!” and rocked him like an infant. At last he disengaged
himself from this caress, which made him ashamed of himself, and
throwing what little money he had about him upon the top of the bureau,
he went away and returned to his home, where he went hastily to bed
and wept to his heart’s content, as he gnawed his pillow. Oh, horrible
memories!

No! never a wife, no mistress, nothing! Now his grief was his wife, and
lived with him.

The widower’s morning awakening was frightful above all things else-his
awakening in the large bed that now had but one pillow. It was there
that he had once had the exquisite pleasure of watching his dear Lucie
every morning when asleep; for she did not like to get up early, and
sometimes he had jokingly scolded her for it. What serenity upon
this delicate, sweet face, with its closed eyes, nestling among her
beautiful, disordered hair! How chaste this lovely young wife was in her
unconstraint! She had thrown one of her arms outside of the covering,
and the neck of her nightrobe, having slipped down, showed such a pure
white shoulder and delicate neck. He leaned over the half-opened mouth,
which exhaled a warm and living odor, something like the perfume of a
flower, to inhale it, and a tender pride swept over him when he thought
that she was his, his wife, this delicious creature who was almost a
child yet, and that her heart was given to him forever. He could not
resist it; he touched his young wife’s lips with his own. She trembled
under the kiss and opened her eyes, when the astonishment of the
awakening was at once transformed into a happy smile as she met her
husband’s glance. Oh, blissful moment! But in spite of all, one must be
sensible. He recalled that the milk-maid had left at daybreak her pot of
milk at the door of their apartment; that the fire was not lighted,
and that he must be at the office early, as the time for promotions was
drawing near. Giving another kiss to the half-asleep Lucie, he said
to her, in a coaxing tone, “Now then, Lucie, my child, it is half-past
eight. Up, up with you, lazy little one!”

How could he console himself for such lost happiness? He had his son,
yes--and he loved him very much--but the sight of Amedee increased M.
Violette’s grief; for the child grew to look more like his mother every
day.




CHAPTER IV. THE DEMON ABSINTHE

Three or four times a year M. Violette, accompanied by his son, paid a
visit to an uncle of his deceased wife, whose heir Amedee might some day
become.

M. Isidore Gaufre had founded and made successful a large house for
Catholic books and pictures, to which he had added an important agency
for the sale of all kinds of religious objects. This vast establishment
was called, by a stroke of genius of its proprietor, “Bon Marche des
Paroisses,” and was famous among all the French clergy. At last it
occupied the principal part of the house and all the out-buildings of
an old hotel on the Rue Servandoni, constructed in the pompous and
magnificent style of the latter part of the seventeenth century. He did
a great business there.

All day long, priests and clerical-looking gentlemen mounted the long
flight of steps that led to a spacious first floor, lighted by large,
high windows surmounted by grotesque heads. There the long-bearded
missionaries came to purchase their cargoes of glass beads or imitation
coral rosaries, before embarking for the East, or the Gaboon, to convert
the negroes and the Chinese.

The member of the third estate, draped in a long chocolate-colored,
straight frock-coat, holding a gigantic umbrella under his arm,
procured, dirt cheap and by the thousand, pamphlets of religious tenets.
The country curate, visiting Paris, arranged for the immediate delivery
of a remonstrance, in electrotype, Byzantine style, signing a series of
long-dated bills, contracting, by zeal supplemented by some ready cash,
to fulfil his liabilities, through the generosity of the faithful ones.

There, likewise, a young director of consciences came to look for some
devotional work--for example, the 12mo entitled “Widows’ Tears Wiped
Away,” by St. Francois de Sales--for some penitent. The representative
from some deputation from a devoutly Catholic district would solicit
a reduction upon a purchase of the “Twelve Stations of the Cross,”
 hideously daubed, which he proposed to present to the parishes which his
adversaries had accused of being Voltairians. A brother of the Christian
Doctrine, or a sister of St. Vincent de Paul, would bargain for
catechisms for their schools. From time to time, even a prince of the
church, a bishop with aristocratic mien, enveloped in an ample gown,
with his hat surrounded with a green cord and golden tassels, would
mysteriously shut himself up in M. Isidore Gaufre’s office for an hour;
and then would be reconducted to the top of the steps by the cringing
proprietor, profuse with his “Monseigneur,” and obsequiously bowing
under the haughty benediction of two fingers in a violet glove.

It was certainly not from sympathy that M. Violette had kept up his
relations with his wife’s uncle; for M. Gaufre, who was servilely
polite to all those in whom he had an interest, was usually disdainful,
sometimes even insolent, to those who were of no use to him. During
his niece’s life he had troubled himself very little about her, and had
given her for a wedding present only an ivory crucifix with a shell
for holy water, such as he sold by the gross to be used in convents.
A self-made man, having already amassed--so they said--a considerable
fortune, M. Gaufre held in very low estimation this poor devil of a
commonplace employe whose slow advancement was doubtless due to the fact
that he was lazy and incapable. From the greeting that he received, M.
Violette suspected the poor opinion that M. Gaufre had of him. If
he went there in spite of his natural pride it was only on his son’s
account. For M. Gaufre was rich, and he was not young. Perhaps--who
could tell?--he might not forget Amedee, his nephew, in his will? It
was necessary for him to see the child occasionally, and M. Violette, in
pursuance of his paternal duty, condemned himself, three or four times a
year, to the infliction of a visit at the “Bon Marche des Paroisses.”

The hopes that M. Violette had formed as to his son’s inheriting from M.
Gaufre were very problematical; for the father, whom M. Gaufre had not
been able to avoid receiving at his table occasionally, had been struck,
even shocked, by the familiar and despotic tone of the old merchant’s
servant, a superb Normandy woman of about twenty-five years, answering
to the royal name of Berenice. The impertinent ways of this robust woman
betrayed her position in her master’s house, as much as the diamonds
that glittered in her ears. This creature would surely watch the will
of her patron, a sexagenarian with an apoplectic neck, which became the
color of dregs of wine after a glass of brandy.

M. Gaufre, although very practical and a churchwarden at St. Sulpice,
had always had a taste for liaisons. His wife, during her life--he had
been a widower for a dozen years--had been one of those unfortunate
beings of whom people said, “That poor lady is to be pitied; she never
can keep a servant.” She had in vain taken girls from the provinces,
without beauty and certified to be virtuous. One by one--a Flemish girl,
an Alsatian, three Nivernaise, two from Picardy; even a young girl from
Beauce, hired on account of her certificate as “the best-behaved girl in
the village”--they were unsparingly devoured by the minotaur of the Rue
Servandoni. All were turned out of doors, with a conscientious blow in
the face, by the justly irritated spouse. When he became a widower
he gave himself up to his liaisons in perfect security, but without
scandal, of course, as to his passion for servants. New country-girls,
wearing strange headdresses, responded favorably, in various patois, to
his propositions. An Alsatian bow reigned six months; a Breton cap more
than a year; but at last what must inevitably take place happened.
The beautiful Berenice definitely bound with fetters of iron the old
libertine. She was now all-powerful in the house, where she reigned
supreme through her beauty and her talent for cooking; and as she saw
her master’s face grow more congested at each repast, she made her
preparations for the future. Who could say but that M. Gaufre, a real
devotee after all, would develop conscientious scruples some day, and
end in a marriage, in extremis?

M. Violette knew all this; nevertheless it was important that Amedee
should not be forgotten by his old relative, and sometimes, though
rarely, he would leave his office a little earlier than usual, call for
his son as he left the Batifol boarding-school, and take him to the Rue
Servandoni.

The large drawing-rooms, transformed into a shop, where one could still
see, upon forgotten panels, rococo shepherds offering doves to their
shepherdesses, were always a new subject of surprise to little Amedee.
After passing through the book-shop, where thousands of little volumes
with figured gray and yellow covers crowded the shelves, and boys
in ecru linen blouses were rapidly tying up bundles, one entered the
jewellery department. There, under beautiful glass cases, sparkled
all the glittering display and showy luxury of the Church, golden
tabernacles where the Paschal Lamb reposed in a flaming triangle,
censers with quadruple chains, stoles and chasubles, heavy with
embroidery, enormous candelabra, ostensories and drinking-cups incrusted
with enamel and false precious stones-before all these splendors the
child, who had read the Arabian Nights, believed that he had entered
Aladdin’s cave, or Aboul-Cassem’s pit. From this glittering array one
passed, without transition, into the sombre depot of ecclesiastical
vestments. Here all was black. One saw only piles of cassocks and
pyramids of black hats. Two manikins, one clothed in a cardinal’s purple
robe, the other in episcopalian violet, threw a little color over the
gloomy show.

But the large hall with painted statues amazed Amedee. They were all
there, statues of all the saints in little chapels placed promiscuously
upon the shelves in rows.

No more hierarchy. The Evangelist had, for a neighbor a little Jesuit
saint--an upstart of yesterday. The unfortunate Fourier had at his side
the Virgin Mary. The Saviour of men elbowed St. Labre. They were of
plaster run into moulds, or roughly carved in wood, and were colored
with paint as glaring as the red and blue of a barber’s pole, and
covered with vulgar gildings. Chins in the air, ecstatic eyes shining
with varnish, horribly ugly and all new, they were drawn up in line like
recruits at the roll-call, the mitred bishop, the martyr carrying his
palm, St. Agnes embracing her lamb, St. Roch with his dog and shells,
St. John the Baptist in his sheepskin, and, most ridiculous of all,
poor Vincent de Paul carrying three naked children in his arms, like a
midwife’s advertisement.

This frightful exhibition, which was of the nature of the Tussaud Museum
or a masquerade, positively frightened Amedee. He had recently been to
his first communion, and was still burning with the mystical fever, but
so much ugliness offended his already fastidious taste and threw him
into his first doubt.

One day, about five o’clock, M. Violette and his son arrived at the “Bon
Marche des Paroisses,” and found Uncle Isidore in the room where the
painted statues were kept, superintending--the packing of a St. Michel.
The last customer of the day was just leaving, the Bishop ‘in partibus’
of Trebizonde, blessing M. Gaufre. The little apoplectic man, the giver
of holy water, left alone with his clerks, felt under restraint no
longer.

“Pay attention, you confounded idiot!” he cried to the young man just
ready to lay the archangel in the shavings. “You almost broke the
dragon’s tail.”

Then, noticing Amedee and M. Violette who had just entered:

“Ah! It is you, Violate! Good-day! Good-day, Amedee! You come at an
unlucky time. It is shipping-day with us. I am in a great hurry--Eh!
Monsieur Combier, by your leave, Monsieur Combier! Do not forget the
three dozen of the Apparition de la Salette in stucco for Grenoble, with
twenty-five per cent. reduction upon the bill. Are you working hard,
Amedee? What do you say? He was first and assisted at the feast of
St. Charlemagne! So much the better!--Jules, did you send the six
chandeliers and the plated pyx and the Stations of the Cross, Number
Two, to the Dames du Sacre-Coeur d’Alencons? What, not yet? But the
order came three days ago! You must hurry, I tell you!--You can see,
Violette, I am overflowing with work--but come in here a moment.”

And once more ordering his bookkeeper, a captive in his glass case, to
send the officers the notes that the cure of Sourdeval had allowed to
go to protest, Uncle Isidore ushered M. Violette and his son into his
office.

It was an ancient room, and M. Gaufre, who aimed at the austere, had
made it gloomier still by a safe, and black haircloth furniture,
which looked as if taken from a vestryroom. The pretty, high, and oval
apartment, with its large window, opening upon a garden, its ceiling
painted in light rosy clouds, its woodwork ornamented with wreaths and
quivers, still preserved some of the charm and elegance of former days.
Amedee would have been amused there, had not Uncle Isidore, who had
seated himself before his desk, launched at once an unkind question at
M. Violette.

“By the way, have you obtained the promotion that you counted so much
upon last year?”

“Unfortunately, no, Monsieur Gaufre. You know what the Administration
is.”

“Yes, it is slow; but you are not overwhelmed with work, however. While
in a business like this--what cares, what annoyances! I sometimes envy
you. You can take an hour to cut your pens. Well, what is wanted of me
now?”

The head of a clerk with a pencil behind his ear, appeared through the
half-open door.

“Monsieur le Superieur of Foreign Missions wishes to speak with
Monsieur.”

“You can see! Not one minute to myself. Another time, my dear Violette.
Adieu, my little man--it is astonishing how much he grows to look like
Lucie! You must come and dine with me some Sunday, without ceremony.
Berenice’s ‘souffle au fromage’ is something delicious! Let Monsieur le
Superieur come in.”

M. Violette took his departure, displeased at his useless visit and
irritated against Uncle Isidore, who had been hardly civil.

“That man is a perfect egotist,” thought he, sadly; “and that girl has
him in her clutches. My poor Amedee will have nothing from him.”

Amedee himself was not interested in his uncle’s fortune. He was just
then a pupil in the fourth grade, which follows the same studies as
at the Lycee Henri IV. Having suddenly grown tall, he was annoyed at
wearing short trousers, and had already renounced all infantile games.
The dangling crows which illustrated the pages of his Burnouf grammar
were all dated the previous year, and he had entirely renounced feeding
silkworms in his desk. Everything pointed to his not being a very
practical man. Geometry disgusted him, and as for dates, he could not
remember one. On holidays he liked to walk by himself through quiet
streets; he read poems at the bookstalls, and lingered in the
Luxembourg Gardens to see the sun set. Destined to be a dreamer and a
sentimentalist--so much the worse for you, poor Amedee!

He went very often to the Gerards, but he no longer called his little
friends “thou.” Louise was now seventeen years old, thin, without color,
and with a lank figure; decidedly far from pretty. People, in speaking
of her, began to say, “She has beautiful eyes and is an excellent
musician.” Her sister Maria was twelve years old and a perfect little
rosebud.

As to the neighbor’s little girl, Rosine Combarieu, she had disappeared.
One day the printer suddenly departed without saying a word to anybody,
and took his child with him. The concierge said that he was concerned
in some political plot, and was obliged to leave the house in the night.
They believed him to be concealed in some small town.

Accordingly, Father Gerard was not angry with him for fleeing without
taking leave of him. The conspirator had kept all his prestige in the
eyes of the engraver, who, by a special run of ill-luck, was always
engaged by a publisher of Bonapartist works, and was busy at that moment
upon a portrait of the Prince Imperial, in the uniform of a corporal of
the Guards, with an immense bearskin cap upon his childish head.

Father Gerard was growing old. His beard, formerly of a reddish shade,
and what little hair there was remaining upon his head, had become
silvery white; that wonderful white which, like a tardy recompense to
red-faced persons, becomes their full-blooded faces so well. The good
man felt the weight of years, as did his wife, whose flesh increased
in such a troublesome way that she was forced to pant heavily when she
seated herself after climbing the five flights. Father Gerard grew old,
like everything that surrounded him; like the house opposite, that he
had seen built, and that no longer had the air of a new building; like
his curious old furniture, his mended crockery, and his engravings,
yellow with age, the frames of which had turned red; like the old Erard
piano, upon which Louise, an accomplished performer, now was playing a
set of Beethoven’s waltzes and Mendelssohn’s “Songs Without Words.”
 This poor old servant now had only the shrill, trembling tones of a
harmonica.

The poor artist grew old, and he was uneasy as to the future; for he
had not known how to manage like his school-friend, the intriguing
Damourette, who had formerly cheated him out of the ‘prix de Rome’ by
a favor, and who now played the gentleman at the Institute, in his
embroidered coat, and received all the good orders. He, the simpleton,
had saddled himself with a family, and although he had drudged like
a slave he had laid nothing aside. One day he might be stricken with
apoplexy and leave his widow without resources, and his two daughters
without a dowry. He sometimes thought of all this as he filled his pipe,
and it was not pleasant.

If M. Gerard grew gloomy as he grew older, M. Violette became mournful.
He was more than forty years old now. What a decline! Does grief make
the years count double? The widower was a mere wreck. His rebellious
lock of hair had become a dirty gray, and always hung over his right
eye, and he no longer took the trouble to toss it behind his ear. His
hands trembled and he felt his memory leaving him. He grew more taciturn
and silent than ever, and seemed interested in nothing, not even in his
son’s studies. He returned home late, ate little at dinner, and then
went out again with a tottering step to pace the dark, gloomy streets.
At the office, where he still did his work mechanically, he was a doomed
man; he never would be elected chief assistant. “What depravity!” said
one of his fellow clerks, a young man with a bright future, protected by
the head of the department, who went to the races and had not his equal
in imitating the “Gnouf! gnouf!” of Grassot, the actor. “A man of his
age does not decline so rapidly without good cause. It is not natural!”
 What is it, then, that has reduced M. Violette to such a degree of
dejection and wretchedness?

Alas! we must admit it. The unhappy man lacked courage, and he sought
consolation in his despair, and found it in a vice.

Every evening when he left his office he went into a filthy little cafe
on the Rue du Four. He would seat himself upon a bench in the back of
the room, in the darkest corner, as if ashamed; and would ask in a low
tone for his first glass of absinthe. His first! Yes, for he drank two,
three even. He drank them in little sips, feeling slowly rise within
him the cerebral rapture of the powerful liquor. Let those who are happy
blame him if they will! It was there, leaning upon the marble table,
looking at, without seeing her, through the pyramids of lump sugar and
bowls of punch, the lady cashier with her well oiled hair reflected in
the glass behind her--it was there that the inconsolable widower found
forgetfulness of his trouble. It was there that for one hour he lived
over again his former happiness.

For, by a phenomenon well known to drinkers of absinthe, he regulated
and governed his intoxication, and it gave him the dream that he
desired.

“Boy, one glass of absinthe!”

And once more he became the young husband, who adores his dear Lucie and
is adored by her.

It is winter, he is seated in the corner by the fire, and before him,
sitting in the light reflected by a green lampshade upon which dark
silhouettes of jockey-riders are running at full speed, his wife is
busying herself with some embroidery. Every few moments they look at
each other and smile, he over his book and she over her work; the lover
never tired of admiring Lucie’s delicate fingers. She is too pretty!
Suddenly he falls at her feet, slips his arm about her waist, and gives
her a long kiss; then, overcome with languor, he puts his head upon
his beloved’s knees and hears her say to him, in a low voice: “That is
right! Go to sleep!” and her soft hands lightly stroke his hair.

“Boy, one glass of absinthe!”

They are in that beautiful field filled with flowers, near the woods in
Verrieres, upon a fine June afternoon when the sun is low. She has made
a magnificent bouquet of field flowers. She stops at intervals to add
a cornflower, and he follows, carrying her mantle and umbrella. How
beautiful is summer and how sweet it is to love! They are a little
tired; for during the whole of this bright Sunday they have wandered
through the meadows. It is the hour for dinner, and here is a little
tavern under some lindens, where the whiteness of the napkins rivals
the blossoming thickets. They choose a table and order their repast of
a moustached youth. While waiting for their soup, Lucie, rosy from being
out all day in the open air and silent from hunger, amuses herself in
looking at the blue designs on the plates, which represented battles
in Africa. What a joyous dinner! There were mushrooms in the omelet,
mushrooms in the stewed kidneys, mushrooms in the filet. But so much the
better! They are very fond of them. And the good wine! The dear child is
almost intoxicated at dessert! She takes it into her head to squeeze a
cherry-stone between her thumb and first finger and makes it pop-slap!
into her husband’s face! And the naughty creature laughs! But he will
have his revenge--wait a little! He rises, and leaning over the table
buries two fingers between her collar and her neck, and the mischievous
creature draws her head down into her shoulders as far as she can,
begging him, with a nervous laugh, “No, no, I beseech you!” for she is
afraid of being tickled. But the best time of all is the return through
the country at night, the exquisite odor of new-mown hay, the road
lighted by a summer sky where the whole zodiac twinkles, and through
which, like a silent stream, the Chemin de St. Jacques rolls its diamond
smoke.

Tired and happy she hangs upon her husband’s arm. How he loves her!
It seems to him that his love for Lucie is as deep and profound as the
night. “Nobody is coming let me kiss your dear mouth!” and their kisses
are so pure, so sincere, and so sweet, that they ought to rejoice the
stars!

“Another glass of absinthe, boy--one more!”

And the unhappy man would forget for a few moments longer that he ought
to go back to his lonely lodging, where the servant had laid the table
some time before, and his little son awaited him, yawning with hunger
and reading a book placed beside his plate. He forgot the horrible
moment of returning, when he would try to hide his intoxicated condition
under a feint of bad humor, and when he would seat himself at table
without even kissing Amedee, in order that the child should not smell
his breath.




BOOK 2.




CHAPTER V. AMEDEE MAKES FRIENDS

Meanwhile the allegorical old fellow with the large wings and white
beard, Time, had emptied his hour-glass many times; or, to speak
plainer, the postman, with a few flakes of snow upon his blue cloth
coat, presents himself three or four times a day at his customers’
dwelling to offer in return for a trifling sum of money a calendar
containing necessary information, such as the ecclesiastical
computation, or the difference between the Gregorian and the Arabic
Hegira; and Amedee Violette had gradually become a young man.

A young man! that is to say, a being who possesses a treasure without
knowing its value, like a Central African negro who picks up one of M.
Rothschild’s cheque-books; a young man ignorant of his beauty or charms,
who frets because the light down upon his chin has not turned into
hideous bristles, a young man who awakes every morning full of hope, and
artlessly asks himself what fortunate thing will happen to him to-day;
who dreams, instead of living, because he is timid and poor.

It was then that Amedee made the acquaintance of one of his comrades--he
no longer went to M. Batifol’s boarding-school, but was completing his
studies at the Lycee Henri IV--named Maurice Roger. They soon formed an
affectionate intimacy, one of those eighteen-year-old friendships which
are perhaps the sweetest and most substantial in the world.

Amedee was attracted, at first sight, by Maurice’s handsome, blond,
curly head, his air of frankness and superiority, and the elegant
jackets that he wore with the easy, graceful manners of a gentleman.
Twice a day, when they left the college, they walked together through
the Luxembourg Gardens, confiding to each other their dreams and hopes,
lingering in the walks, where Maurice already gazed at the grisettes in
an impudent fashion, talking with the charming abandon of their age, the
sincere age when one thinks aloud.

Maurice told his new friend that he was the son of an officer killed
before Sebastopol, that his mother had never married again, but adored
him and indulged him in all his whims. He was patiently waiting for his
school-days to end, to live independently in the Latin Quarter, to study
law, without being hurried, since his mother wished him to do so, and he
did not wish to displease her. But he wished also to amuse himself with
painting, at least as an amateur; for he was passionately fond of it.
All this was said by the handsome, aristocratic young man with a happy
smile, which expanded his sensual lips and nostrils; and Amedee admired
him without one envious thought; feeling, with the generous warmth of
youth, an entire confidence in the future and the mere joy of living. In
his turn he made a confidant of Maurice, but not of everything. The
poor boy could not tell anybody that he suspected his father of a secret
vice, that he blushed over it, was ashamed of it, and suffered from it
as much as youth can suffer. At least, honest-hearted fellow that he
was, he avowed his humble origin without shame, boasted of his
humble friends the Gerards, praised Louise’s goodness, and spoke
enthusiastically of little Maria, who was just sixteen and so pretty.

“You will take me to see them some time, will you not?” said Maurice,
who listened to his friend with his natural good grace. “But first of
all, you must come to dinner some day with me, and I will present you to
my mother. Next Sunday, for instance. Is it agreeable?”

Amedee would have liked to refuse, for he suddenly recalled--oh! the
torture and suffering of poor young men! that his Sunday coat was almost
as seedy as his everyday one, that his best pair of shoes were run-over
at the heels, and that the collars and cuffs on his six white shirts
were ragged on the edges from too frequent washings. Then, to go to
dinner in the city, what an ordeal! What must he do to be presented in
a drawing-room? The very thought of it made him shiver. But Maurice
invited him so cordially that he was irresistible, and Amedee accepted.

The following Sunday, then, spruced up in his best-what could have
possessed the haberdasher to induce him to buy a pair of red dog-skin
gloves? He soon saw that they were too new and too startling for the
rest of his costume--Amedee went up to the first floor of a fine house
on the Faubourg St. Honore and rang gently at the door on the left. A
young and pretty maid--one of those brunettes who have a waist that one
can clasp in both hands, and a suspicion of a moustache--opened the door
and ushered the young man into a drawing-room furnished in a simple but
luxurious manner. Maurice was alone, standing with his back to the fire,
in the attitude of master of the house. He received his friend with warm
demonstrations of pleasure. Amedee’s eyes were at once attracted by
the portrait of a handsome lieutenant of artillery, dressed in the
regimental coat, with long skirts, of 1845, and wearing a sword-belt
fastened by two lion’s heads. This officer, in parade costume, was
painted in the midst of a desert, seated under a palm-tree.

“That is my father,” said Maurice. “Do I not resemble him?”

The resemblance was really striking. The same warm, pleasant smile, and
even the same blond curls. Amedee was admiring it when a voice repeated
behind him, like an echo:

“Maurice resembles him, does he not?”

It was Madame Roger who had quietly entered. When Amedee saw this
stately lady in mourning, with a Roman profile, and clear, white
complexion, who threw such an earnest glance at her son, then at her
husband’s portrait, Amedee comprehended that Maurice was his mother’s
idol, and, moved by the sight of the widow, who would have been
beautiful but for her gray hair and eyelids, red from so much weeping,
he stammered a few words of thanks for the invitation to dinner.

“My son has told me,” said she, “that you are the one among all his
comrades that he cares for most. I know what affection you have shown
him. I am the one who should thank you, Monsieur Amedee.”

They seated themselves and talked; every few moments these words were
spoken by Madame Roger with an accent of pride and tenderness, “My son
.... my son Maurice.” Amedee realized how pleasant his friend’s life
must be with such a good mother, and he could not help comparing his
own sad childhood, recalling above all things the lugubrious evening
repasts, when, for several years now, he had buried his nose in his
plate so as not to see his father’s drunken eyes always fastened upon
him as if to ask for his pardon.

Maurice let his mother praise him for a few moments, looking at her with
a pleasant smile which became a trifle saddened. Finally he interrupted
her:

“It is granted, mamma, that I am a perfect phoenix,” and he gayly
embraced her.

At this moment the pretty maid announced, “Monsieur and Mesdemoiselles
Lantz,” and Madame Roger arose hastily to receive the newcomers.
Lieutenant-Colonel Lantz, of the Engineer Corps, was with Captain Roger
when he died in the trench before Mamelon Vert; and might have been at
that time pleasant to look upon, in his uniform with its black velvet
breastplate; but, having been promoted some time ago to the office,
he had grown aged, leaning over the plans and draughts on long tables
covered with rules and compasses. With a cranium that looked like a
picked bird, his gray, melancholy imperial, his stooping shoulders,
which shortened still more his tightly buttoned military coat, there
was nothing martial in his appearance. With his head full of whims, no
fortune, and three daughters to marry, the poor Colonel, who put on only
two or three times a year, for official solemnities, his uniform, which
he kept in camphor, dined every Sunday night with Madame Roger, who
liked this estimable man because he was her husband’s best friend, and
had invited him with his three little girls, who looked exactly alike,
with their turned-up noses, florid complexions, and little, black,
bead-like eyes, always so carefully dressed that one involuntarily
compared them to three pretty cakes prepared for some wedding or festive
occasion. They sat down at the table.

Madame Roger employed an excellent cook, and for the first time in his
life Amedee ate a quantity of good things, even more exquisite
than Mamma Gerard’s little fried dishes. It was really only a very
comfortable and nice dinner, but to the young man it was a revelation of
unsuspected pleasures. This decorated table, this cloth that was so soft
when he put his hand upon it; these dishes that excited and satisfied
the appetite; these various flavored wines which, like the flowers,
were fragrant--what new and agreeable sensations! They were quickly and
silently waited upon by the pretty maid. Maurice, seated opposite his
mother, presided over the repast with his elegant gayety. Madame Roger’s
pale face would light up with a smile at each of his good-natured jokes,
and the three young ladies would burst into discreet little laughs, all
in unison, and even the sorrowful Colonel would arouse from his torpor.

He became animated after his second glass of burgundy, and was very
entertaining. He spoke of the Crimean campaign; of that chivalrous
war when the officers of both armies, enemies to each other, exchanged
politenesses and cigars during the suspension of arms. He told fine
military anecdotes, and Madame Roger, seeing her son’s face excited with
enthusiasm at these heroic deeds, became gloomy at once. Maurice noticed
it first.

“Take care, Colonel,” said he. “You will frighten mamma, and she will
imagine at once that I still wish to enter Saint-Cyr. But I assure you,
little mother, you may be tranquil. Since you wish it, your respectful
and obedient son will become a lawyer without clients, who will paint
daubs during his spare moments. In reality, I should much prefer a horse
and a sword and a squadron of hussars. But no matter! The essential
thing is not to give mamma any trouble.”

This was said with so much warmth and gentleness, that Madame Roger and
the Colonel exchanged softened looks; the young ladies were also moved,
as much as pastry can be, and they all fixed upon Maurice their little
black eyes, which had suddenly become so soft and tender that Amedee did
not doubt but that they all had a sentimental feeling for Maurice, and
thought him very fortunate to have the choice between three such pretty
pieces for dessert.

How all loved this charming and graceful Maurice, and how well he knew
how to make himself beloved!

Later, when they served the champagne, he arose, glass in hand, and
delivered a burlesque toast, finding some pleasant word for all his
guests. What frank gayety! what a hearty laugh went around the table!
The three young ladies giggled themselves as red as peonies. A sort of
joyous chuckle escaped from the Colonel’s drooping moustache. Madame
Roger’s smile seemed to make her grow young; and Amedee noticed, in a
corner of the dining-room, the pretty maid, who restrained herself no
more than the others; and when she showed her teeth, that were like a
young puppy’s, she was charming indeed.

After the tea the Colonel, who lived at some distance, near the Military
School, and who, as the weather was fine, wished to walk home and avoid
the expense of a cab, left with his three marriageable daughters, and
Amedee in his turn took his departure.

In the ante-chamber, the maid said to Maurice, as she helped him on with
his topcoat.

“I hope that you will not come in very late this evening, Monsieur
Maurice.”

“What is that, Suzanne?” replied the young man, without anger, but a
trifle impatiently. “I shall return at the hour that pleases me.”

As he descended the stairs ahead of Amedee, he said, with a laugh

“Upon my word! she will soon make her jealousy public.”

“What!” exclaimed Amedee, glad that his companion could not see his
blushes.

“Well, yes! Is she not pretty? I admit it, Violette; I have not, like
you, the artlessness of the flower whose name you bear. You will have
to resign yourself to it; you have a very bad fellow for a friend. As to
the rest, be content. I have resolved to scandalize the family roof no
longer. I have finished with this bold-faced creature. You must know
that she began it, and was the first to kiss me on the sly. Now, I am
engaged elsewhere. Here we are outside, and here is a carriage. Here,
driver! You will allow me to bid you adieu. It is only a quarter past
ten. I still have time to appear at Bullier’s and meet Zoe Mirilton.
Until tomorrow, Violette.”

Amedee returned home very much troubled. So, then, his friend was a
libertine. But he made excuses for him. Had he not just seen him so
charming to his mother and so respectful to the three young ladies?
Maurice had allowed himself to be carried away by his youthful
impetuosity, that was all! Was it for him, still pure, but tormented by
the temptations and curiosity of youth, to be severe? Would he not have
done as much had he dared, or if he had had the money in his pocket? To
tell the truth, Amedee dreamed that very night of the pretty maid with
the suspicion of a moustache.

The next day, when Amedee paid his visit to the Gerards, all they could
talk of was the evening before. Amedee spoke with the eloquence of a
young man who had seen for the first time a finger-bowl at dessert.

Louise, while putting on her hat and getting her roll of music--she gave
lessons now upon the piano in boarding-schools--was much interested in
Madame Roger’s imposing beauty. Mamma Gerard would have liked to know
how the chicken-jelly was made; the old engraver listened with pleasure
to the Colonel’s military anecdotes; while little Maria exacted a
precise description of the toilettes of the three demoiselles Lantz, and
turned up her nose disdainfully at them.

“Now, then, Amedee,” said the young girl, suddenly, as she looked at
herself in a mirror that was covered with flyspecks, “tell me honestly,
were these young ladies any prettier than I?”

“Do you see the coquette?” exclaimed Father Gerard, bursting into
laughter without raising his eyes from his work. “Do people ask such
questions as that, Mademoiselle?”

There was a general gayety, but Amedee blushed without knowing why. Oh!
no, certainly those three young ladies in their Savoy-cake skirts and
nougat waists were not as pretty as little Maria in her simple brown
frock. How she improved from day to day! It seemed to Amedee as if he
never had seen her before until this minute. Where had she found that
supple, round waist, that mass of reddish hair which she twisted upon
the top of her head, that lovely complexion, that mouth, and those eyes
that smiled with the artless tenderness of young flowers?

Mamma Gerard, while laughing like the others, scolded her daughter a
little for her attack of feminine vanity, and then began to talk of
Madame Roger in order to change the conversation.

Amedee did not cease to praise his friend. He told how affectionate he
was to his mother, how he resisted the military blood that burned in
him, how graceful he was, and how, at eighteen years, he did the honor
of the drawing-room and table with all the manner of a grand seigneur.

Maria listened attentively.

“You have promised to bring him here, Amedee,” said the spoiled child,
with a serious air. “I should like very much to see him once.”

Amedee repeated his promise; but on his way to the Lycee, for his
afternoon class, he recalled the incident of the pretty maid and the
name of Zoe Mirilton, and, seized with some scruples, he asked himself
whether he ought to introduce his friend to the young Gerard girls. At
first this idea made him uneasy, then he thought that it was ridiculous.
Was not Maurice a good-hearted young man and well brought up? Had he not
seen him conduct himself with tact and reserve before Colonel Lantz’s
daughters?

Some days later Maurice reminded him of the promised visit to the
Gerards, and Amedee presented him to his old friends.

Louise was not at home; she had been going about teaching for some time
to increase the family’s resources, for the engraver was more red-faced
than ever, and obliged to change the number of his spectacles every
year, and could not do as much work as formerly.

But the agreeable young man made a conquest of the rest of the family
by his exquisite good-nature and cordial, easy manner. Respectful and
simple with Madame Gerard, whom he intimidated a little, he paid very
little attention to Maria and did not appear to notice that he was
exciting her curiosity to the highest pitch. He modestly asked Father
Gerard’s advice upon his project of painting, amusing himself with
the knickknacks about the apartments, picking out by instinct the
best engravings and canvases of value. The good man was enchanted with
Maurice and hastened to show him his private museum, forgetting all
about his pipe--he was smoking at present a Garibaldi--and presented
him his last engraving, where one saw--it certainly was a fatality
that pursued the old republican!--the Emperor Napoleon III, at Magenta,
motionless upon his horse in the centre of a square of grenadiers, cut
down by grape and canister.

Maurice’s visit was short, and as Amedee had thought a great deal about
little Maria for several days, he asked his friend, as he conducted him
a part of the way:

“What did you think of her?”

Maurice simply replied, “Delicious!” and changed the conversation.




CHAPTER VI. DREAMS OF LOVE

Solemn moment approached for the two friends. They were to take their
examinations for graduation. Upon the days when M. Violette--they now
called him at the office “Father Violette,” he had grown so aged and
decrepit--was not too much “consoled” in the cafe in the Rue du Four,
and when he was less silent and gloomy than usual, he would say to his
son, after the soup:

“Do you know, Amedee, I shall not be easy in my mind until you have
received your degree. Say what they may, it leads to everything.”

To everything indeed! M. Violette had a college friend upon whom all
the good marks had been showered, who, having been successively
schoolmaster, journalist, theatrical critic, a boarder in Mazas prison,
insurance agent, director of an athletic ring--he quoted Homer in his
harangue--at present pushed back the curtains at the entrance to the
Ambigu, and waited for his soup at the barracks gate, holding out an old
tomato-can to be filled.

But M. Violette had no cause to fear! Amedee received his degree on the
same day with his friend Maurice, and both passed honorably. A little
old man with a head like a baboon--the scientific examiner--tried to
make Amedee flounder on the subject of nitrogen, but he passed all the
same. One can hope for everything nowadays.

But what could Amedee hope for first? M. Violette thought of it when
he was not at his station at the Rue du Four. What could he hope for?
Nothing very great.

Probably he could enter the ministry as an auxiliary. One hundred
francs a month, and the gratuities, would not be bad for a beginner! M.
Violette recalled his endless years in the office, and all the trouble
he had taken to guess a famous rebus that was celebrated for never
having been solved. Was Amedee to spend his youth deciphering enigmas?
M. Violette hoped for a more independent career for his son, if it were
possible. Commerce, for example! Yes! there was a future in commerce.
As a proof of it there was the grocer opposite him, a simpleton who
probably did not put the screws on enough and had just hanged himself
rather than go into bankruptcy. M. Violette would gladly see his son in
business. If he could begin with M. Gaufre? Why not? The young man might
become in the end his uncle’s partner and make his fortune. M. Violette
spoke of it to Amedee.

“Shall we go to see your uncle Sunday morning?”

The idea of selling chasubles and Stations of the Cross did not greatly
please Amedee, who had concealed in his drawer a little book full of
sonnets, and had in his mind the plan of a romantic drama wherein one
would say “Good heavens!” and “My lord!” But first of all, he must
please his father. He was glad to observe that for some time M. Violette
had interested himself more in him, and had resisted his baneful habit
somewhat. The young man offered no resistance. The next day at noon he
presented himself at the Rue Servandoni, accompanied by his father.

The “dealer in pious goods” received them with great good-humor. He had
just come from high mass and was about to sit down at the table. He even
invited them to follow his example and taste of his stewed kidneys, one
of Berenice’s triumphs, who served the dinner with her hands loaded with
rings. The Violettes had dined, and the father made known his desire.

“Yes,” said Uncle Isidore, “Amedee might enter the house. Only you know,
Violette, it will be another education to be learned over again. He must
begin at the very beginning and follow the regular course. Oh! the boy
will not be badly treated! He may take his meals with us, is not that
so, Berenice? At first he would be obliged to run about a little, as
I did when I came from the province to work in the shop and tie up
parcels.”

M. Violette looked at his son and saw that he was blushing with shame.
The poor man understood his mistake. What good to have dazzled M. Patin
before the whole University by reciting, without hesitation, three
verses of Aristophanes, only to become a drudge and a packer? Well!
so Amedee would yawn over green boxes and guess at enigmas in the
Illustration. It had to be so.

They took leave of Uncle Isidore.

“We will reflect over it, Monsieur Gaufre, and will come to see you
again.”

But Berenice had hardly shut the door upon them when M. Violette said to
his son:

“Nothing is to be expected of that old egotist. Tomorrow we will go
to see the chief of my department, I have spoken of you to him, at all
events.”

He was a good sort of fellow, this M. Courtet, who was head clerk,
though too conceited and starched up, certainly. His red rosette, as
large as a fifty-cent piece, made one’s eyes blink, and he certainly was
very imprudent to stand so long backed up to the fireplace with limbs
spread apart, for it seemed that he must surely burn the seat of his
trousers. But no matter, he has stomach enough. He has noticed M.
Violette’s pitiful decline--“a poor devil who never will live to be
promoted.” Having it in his power to distribute positions, M. Courtet
had reserved a position for Amedee. In eight days the young man would be
nominated an auxiliary employe at fifteen hundred francs a year. It is
promised and done.

Ugh! the sickening heat from the stove! the disgusting odor of musty
papers! However, Amedee had nothing to complain of; they might have
given him figures to balance for five hours at a time. He owed it to
M. Courtet’s kindness, that he was put at once into the correspondence
room. He studied the formulas, and soon became skilful in official
politeness. He now knew the delicate shades which exist between “yours
respectfully” and “most respectfully yours;” and he measured the abyss
which separates an “agreeable” and “homage.”

To sum it all up, Amedee was bored, but he was not unhappy; for he had
time to dream.

He went the longest way to the office in the morning, while seeking to
make “amour” rhyme with “jour” without producing an insipid thing; or
else he thought of the third act of his drama after the style of 1830,
and the grand love scene which should take place at the foot of the
Montfaucon gallows. In the evening he went to the Gerards, and they
seated themselves around--the lamp which stood on the dining-room table,
the father reading his journal, the women sewing. He chatted with Maria,
who answered him the greater part of the time without raising her eyes,
because she suspected, the coquette! that he admired her beautiful,
drooping lids.

Amedee composed his first sonnets in her honor, and he adored her, of
course, but he was also in love with the Lantz young ladies, whom he saw
sometimes at Madame Roger’s, and who each wore Sunday evenings roses in
her hair, which made them resemble those pantheons in sponge-cake that
pastry-cooks put in their windows on fete days.

If Amedee had been presented to twelve thousand maidens successively,
they would have inspired twelve thousand wishes. There was the servant
of the family on the first floor, whose side-glance troubled him as he
met her on the staircase; and his heart sank every time he turned the
handle of the door of a shop in the Rue Bonaparte, where an insidious
clerk always forced him to choose ox-colored kid gloves, which he
detested. It must not be forgotten that Amedee was very young, and was
in love with love.

He was so extremely timid that he never had had the audacity to tell the
girl at the glove counter that he preferred bronze-green gloves, nor the
boldness to show Maria Gerard his poems composed in her honor, in which
he now always put the plural “amours,” so as to make it rhyme with
“toujours,” which was an improvement. He never had dared to reply to the
glance of the little maid on the second floor; and he was very wrong to
be embarrassed, for one morning, as he passed the butcher’s shop, he saw
the butcher’s foreman put his arm about the girl’s waist and whisper a
love speech over a fine sirloin roast.

Sometimes, in going or coming from the office, Amedee would go to see
his friend Maurice, who had obtained from Madame Roger permission to
install himself in the Latin Quarter so as to be near the law school.

In a very low-studded first-floor room in the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince,
Amedee perceived through a cloud of tobacco-smoke the elegant Maurice
in a scarlet jacket lying upon a large divan. Everything was rich and
voluptuous, heavy carpets, handsomely bound volumes of poems, an open
piano, and an odor of perfumery mingled with that of cigarettes. Upon
the velvet-covered mantel Mademoiselle Irma, the favorite of the master
of the apartment, had left the last fashionable novel, marking, with
one of her hairpins, where she had left off reading. Amedee spent a
delightful hour there. Maurice always greeted him with his joyful, kind
manner, in which one hardly minded the slight shade of patronage.
He walked up and down his room, expanding his finely moulded chest,
lighting and throwing away his cigarettes, seating himself for two
minutes at the piano and playing one of Chopin’s sad strains, opening
a book and reading a page, showing his albums to his friend, making
him repeat some of his poems, applauding him and touching lightly upon
different subjects, and charming Amedee more and more by his grace and
manners.

However, Amedee could not enjoy his friend much, as he rarely found him
alone. Every few moments--the key was in the door--Maurice’s comrades,
young pleasure-seekers like himself, but more vulgar, not having his
gentlemanly bearing and manners, would come to talk with him of some
projected scheme or to remind him of some appointment for the evening.

Often, some one of them, with his hat upon his head, would dash off a
polka, after placing his lighted cigar upon the edge of the piano. These
fast fellows frightened Amedee a little, as he had the misfortune to be
fastidious.

After these visitors had left, Maurice would ask his friend to dinner,
but the door would open again, and Mademoiselle Irma, in her furs and
small veil--a comical little face--would enter quickly and throw her
arms about Amedee’s neck, kissing him, while rumpling his hair with her
gloved hands.

“Bravo! we will all three dine together.”

No! Amedee is afraid of Mademoiselle Irma, who has already thrown her
mantle upon the sofa and crowned the bronze Venus de Milo with her otter
toque. The young man excuses himself, he is expected at home.

“Timid fellow, go!” said Maurice to him, as he conducted him to the
door, laughing.

What longings! What dreams! They made up all of poor Amedee’s life.
Sometimes they were sad, for he suffered in seeing his father indulge
himself more and more in his vice. No woman loved him, and he never
had one louis in his pocket for pleasure or liberty. But he did not
complain. His life was noble and happy! He smiled with pleasure as
he thought of his good friends; his heart beat in great throbs as
he thought of love; he wept with rapture over beautiful verses.
The spectacle of life, through hope and the ideal, seemed to him
transfigured. Happy Amedee! He was not yet twenty years old!




CHAPTER VII. A GENTLE COUNSELLOR

One sombre, misty, winter morning, as Amedee lingered in his bed, his
father entered, bringing him a letter that the wife of the concierge
had just brought up. The letter was from Maurice, inviting his friend
to dinner that evening at seven o’clock at Foyots, to meet some of his
former companions at the Lycee Henri IV.

“Will you excuse me for not dining with you this evening, papa?” said
Amedee, joyfully. “Maurice Roger entertains us at a restaurant.”

The young man’s gayety left him suddenly when he looked at his father,
who had seated himself on the side of the bed. He had become almost
frightful to look at; old before his time, livid of complexion, his eyes
bloodshot, the rebellious lock of hair straggling over his right temple.
Nothing was more heartbreaking than his senile smile when he placed his
bony trembling hands upon his thighs. Amedee, who knew, alas, why his
father had reached such a pass, felt his heart moved with pity and
shame.

“Are you suffering to-day?” asked the young man. “Would you prefer that
we should dine together as usual? I will send word to Maurice. Nothing
is easier.”

“No, my child, no!” replied M. Violette, in a hollow tone. “Go and amuse
yourself with your friends. I know perfectly well that the life you
lead with me is too monotonous. Go and amuse yourself, it will please
me--only there is an idea that troubles me more than usual--and I want
to confide it to you.”

“What is it then, dear papa?”

“Amedee, last March your mother had been dead fifteen years. You hardly
knew her. She was the sweetest and best of creatures, and all that I can
wish you is, that you may meet such a woman, make her your companion for
life, and be more fortunate than I, my poor Amedee, and keep her always.
During these frightful years since your mother’s death I have suffered,
do you see? suffered horribly, and I have never, never been consoled.
If I have lived--if I have had the strength to live, in spite of all,
it was only for you and in remembrance of her. I think I have nearly
finished my task. You are a young man, intelligent and honest, and you
have now an employment which will give you your bread. However, I often
ask myself--oh, very often--whether I have fulfilled my duty toward you.
Ah! do not protest,” added the unhappy man, whom Amedee had clasped in
his arms. “No, my poor child, I have not loved you sufficiently; grief
has filled too large a place in my heart; above all, during these last
few years I have not been with you enough. I have sought solitude. You
understand me, Amedee, I can not tell you more,” he said, with a sob.
“There are some parts of my life that you must ignore, and if it grieves
you to know what I have become during that time, you must never think of
it; forget it. I beg of you, my child, do not judge me severely. And one
of these days, if I die-ah! we must expect it--the burden of my grief
is too heavy for me to bear, it crushes me! Well, my child, if I die,
promise me to be indulgent to my memory, and when you think of your
father only say: ‘He was very unhappy!’”

Amedee shed tears upon his father’s shoulder, who softly stroked his
son’s beautiful hair with his trembling hands.

“My father, my good father!” sobbed Amedee, “I love and respect you with
all my heart. I will dress myself quickly and we will go to the office
together; we will return the same way and dine like a pair of good
friends. I beg of you, do not ask me to leave you to-day!”

But M. Violette suddenly arose as if he had formed some resolution.

“No, Amedee,” said he, firmly. “I have said what I had to say to you,
and you will remember it. That is sufficient. Go and amuse yourself
this evening with your friends. Sadness is dangerous at your age. As for
myself, I shall go to dine with Pere Bastide, who has just received his
pension, and has invited me more than twenty times to come and see his
little house at Grand Montrouge. It is understood; I wish it. Now then,
wipe your eyes and kiss me.”

Having tenderly embraced his son, M. Violette left the room. Amedee
could hear him in the vestibule take down his hat and cane, open and
close the door, and go down the stairs with a heavy step. A quarter of
an hour after, as the young man was crossing the Luxembourg to go to the
office, he met Louise Gerard with her roll of music in her hand, going
to give some lessons in the city. He walked a few steps beside her, and
the worthy girl noticed his red eyes and disturbed countenance.

“What is the matter with you, Amedee?” she inquired, anxiously.

“Louise,” he replied, “do you not think that my father has changed very
much in the last few months?”

She stopped and looked at him with eyes shining with compassion.

“Very much changed, my poor Amedee. You would not believe me if I told
you that I had not remarked it. But whatever may be the cause--how shall
I say it?--that has affected your father’s health, you should think of
only one thing, my friend; that is, that he has been tender and devoted
to you; that he became a widower very young and he did not remarry; that
he has endured, in order to devote himself to his only child, long years
of solitude and unhappy memories. You must think of that, Amedee, and
that only.”

“I never shall forget it, Louise, never fear; my heart is full of
gratitude. This morning, even, he was so affectionate and kind to
me--but his health is ruined; he is now a weak old man. Soon--I not only
fear it, but I am certain of it--soon he will be incapable of work. I
can see his poor hands tremble now. He will not even have a right to a
pension. If he could not continue to work in the office he could hardly
obtain a meagre relief, and that by favor only. And for long years I can
only hope for an insufficient salary. Oh! to think that the catastrophe
draws near, that one of these days he may fall ill and become infirm,
perhaps, and that we shall be almost needy and I shall be unable to
surround him with care in his old age. That is what makes me tremble!”

They walked along side by side upon the moist, soft ground of the large
garden, under the leafless trees, where hung a slight penetrating mist
which made them shiver under their wraps.

“Amedee,” said she, looking at the young man with a serious gentleness,
“I have known you from a child, and I am the elder. I am twenty-two;
that makes me almost an old maid, Amedee, and gives me the right to
scold you a little. You lack confidence in life, my friend, and it is
wrong at your age. Do you think I do not see that my father has aged
very much, that his eyesight fails, that we are much more cramped in
circumstances in the house than formerly? Are we any the more sad? Mamma
makes fewer little dishes and I teach in Paris, that is all. We live
nearly the same as before, and our dear Maria--she is the pet of us all,
the joy and pride of the house-well, our Maria, all the same, has from
time to time a new frock or a pretty hat. I have no experience, but it
seems to me that in order to feel really unhappy I must have nobody to
love--that is the only privation worth the trouble of noticing. Do you
know that I have just had one of the greatest pleasures of my life?
I noticed that papa did not smoke as much as usual, in order to be
economical, poor man! Fortunately I found a new pupil at Batignolles,
and as soon as I had the first month’s pay in my pocket I bought a large
package of tobacco and put it beside his work. One must never complain
so long as one is fortunate enough to keep those one loves. I know the
secret grief that troubles you regarding your father; but think what he
has suffered, that he loves you, that you are his only consolation. And
when you have gloomy thoughts, come and see your old friends, Amedee.
They will try to warm your heart at the fireside of their friendship,
and to give you some of their courage, the courage of poor people which
is composed of a little indifference and a little resignation.”

They had reached the Florentine Terrace, where stand the marble
statues of queens and ladies, and on the other side of the balustrade,
ornamented with large vases, they could see through the mist the
reservoir with its two swans, the solitary gravel walks, the empty
grass-plots of a pale green, surrounded by the skeletons of lilac-trees,
and the facade of the old palace, whose clock-hands pointed to ten.

“Let us hasten,” said Louise, after a glance at the dial. “Escort me as
far at the Odeon omnibus. I am a little late.”

As he walked by her side he looked at her. Alas! Poor Louise was not
pretty, in spite of her large eyes, so loving but not coquettish. She
wore a close, ugly hat, a mantle drawn tightly about her shoulders,
colored gloves, and heavy walking-shoes. Yes, she was a perfect picture
of a “two francs an hour” music-teacher. What a good, brave girl! With
what an overflowing heart she had spoken of her family! It was to earn
tobacco for her father and a new frock for her pretty sister that
she left thus, so early in the misty morning, and rode in public
conveyances, or tramped through the streets of Paris in the mud. The
sight of her, more than what she said, gave the weak and melancholy
Amedee courage and desire for manly resolutions.

“My dear Louise,” said he, with emotion, “I am very fortunate to have
such a friend as you, and for so many years! Do you remember when we
used to have our hunts after the bearskin cap when we were children?”

They had just left the garden and found themselves behind the Odeon. Two
tired-out omnibus horses, of a yellowish-white, and showing their ribs,
were rubbing their noses against each other like a caress; then the
horse on the left raised his head and placed it in a friendly way upon
the other’s mane. Louise pointed to the two animals and said to Amedee,
smilingly:

“Their fate is hard, is it not? No matter! they are good friends, and
that is enough to help them endure it.”

Then, shaking hands with Amedee, she climbed lightly up into the
carriage.

All that day at the office Amedee was uneasy about his father, and about
four o’clock, a little before the time for his departure, he went to M.
Violette’s office. There they told him that his father had just left,
saying that he would dine at Grand Montrouge with an old friend; and
Amedee, a trifle reassured, decided to rejoin his friend Maurice at the
Foyot restaurant.




CHAPTER VIII. BUTTERFLIES AND GRASSHOPPERS

Amedee was the first to arrive at the rendezvous. He had hardly
pronounced Maurice Roger’s name when a voice like a cannon bellowed out,
“Now then! the yellow parlor!” and he was conducted into a room where
a dazzling table was laid by a young man, with a Yankee goatee and
whiskers, and the agility of a prestidigitateur. This frisky person
relieved Amedee at once of his hat and coat, and left him alone in the
room, radiant with lighted candles.

Evidently it was to be a banquet. Piled up in the centre of the table
was a large dish of crayfish, and at each plate--there were five--were
groups of large and small glasses.

Maurice came in almost immediately, accompanied by his other guests,
three young men dressed in the latest fashion, whom Amedee did not at
first recognize as his former comrades, who once wore wrinkled stockings
and seedy coats, and wore out with him the seats of their trousers on
the benches of the Lycee Henri IV.

After the greetings, “What! is it you?” “Do you remember me?” and a
shaking of hands, they all seated themselves around the table.

What! is that little dumpy fellow with the turned-up nose, straight
as an arrow and with such a satisfied air, Gorju, who wanted to be an
actor? He is one now, or nearly so, since he studies with Regnier at the
Conservatoire. A make-believe actor, he puts on airs, and in the three
minutes that he has been in the room he has looked at his retrousse nose
and his coarse face, made to be seen from a distance, ten times in the
mirror. His first care is to inform Amedee that he has renounced his
name Gorju, which was an impossible one for the theatre, and has taken
that of Jocquelet. Then, without losing a moment, he refers to his
“talents,” “charms,” and “physique.”

Who is this handsome fellow with such neat side-whiskers, whose finely
cut features suggest an intaglio head, and who has just placed a
lawyer’s heavy portfolio upon the sofa? It is Arthur Papillon, the
distinguished Latin scholar who wished to organize a debating society at
the Lycee, and to divide the rhetoric class into groups and sub-groups
like a parliament. “What have you been doing, Papillon?” Papillon had
studied law, and was secretary of the Patru Conference, of course.

Amedee immediately recognized the third guest.

“What! Gustave!” exclaimed he, joyously.

Yes! Gustave, the former “dunce,” the one they had called “Good-luck”
 because his father had made an immense fortune in guano. Not one bit
changed was Gustave! The same deep-set eyes and greenish complexion. But
what style! English from the tips of his pointed shoes to the horseshoe
scarfpin in his necktie. One would say that he was a horse-jockey
dressed in his Sunday best. What was this comical Gustave doing now?
Nothing. His father has made two hundred thousand pounds’ income
dabbling in certain things, and Gustave is getting acquainted with that
is all--which means to wake up every morning toward noon, with a bitter
mouth caused from the last night’s supper, and to be surprised every
morning at dawn at the baccarat table, after spending five hours saying
“Bac!” in a stifled, hollow voice. Gustave understands life, and, taking
into consideration his countenance like a death’s-head, it may lead him
to make the acquaintance of something entirely different. But who thinks
of death at his age? Gustave wishes to know life, and when a fit of
coughing interrupts him in one of his idiotic bursts of laughter, his
comrades at the Gateux Club tell him that he has swallowed the wrong
way. Wretched Gustave, so be it!

Meanwhile the boy with the juggler’s motions appeared with the soup, and
made exactly the same gestures when he uncovered the tureen as Robert
Houdin would have made, and one was surprised not to see a bunch of
flowers or a live rabbit fly out. But no! it was simply soup, and the
guests attacked it vigorously and in silence. After the Rhine wine all
tongues were unloosened, and as soon as they had eaten the Normandy
sole-oh! what glorious appetites at twenty years of age!--the five young
men all talked at once. What a racket! Exclamations crossed one
another like rockets. Gustave, forcing his weak voice, boasted of the
performances of a “stepper” that he had tried that morning in the Allee
des Cavaliers. He would have been much better off had he stayed in his
bed and taken cod-liver oil. Maurice called out to the boy to uncork
the Chateau-Leoville. Amedee, having spoken of his drama to the comedian
Gorju, called Jocquelet, that person, speaking in his bugle-like voice
that came through his bugle-shaped nose, set himself up at once as a man
of experience, giving his advice, and quoting, with admiration, Talma’s
famous speech to a dramatic poet: “Above all, no fine verses!” Arthur
Papillon, who was destined for the courts, thought it an excellent time
to lord it over the tumult of the assembly himself, and bleated out
a speech of Jules Favre that he had heard the night before in the
legislative assembly.

The timid Amedee was defeated at the start in this melee of
conversation. Maurice also kept silent, with a slightly disdainful smile
under his golden moustache, and an attack of coughing soon disabled
Gustave. Alone, like two ships in line who let out, turn by turn, their
volleys, the lawyer and the actor continued their cannonading. Arthur
Papillon, who belonged to the Liberal opposition and wished that
the Imperial government should come around to “a pacific and regular
movement of parliamentary institutions,” was listened to for a time, and
explained, in a clear, full voice the last article in the ‘Courrier du
Dimanche’. But, bursting out in his terrible voice, which seemed like
all of Gideon’s trumpets blowing at once, the comedian took up the
offensive, and victoriously declared a hundred foolish things--saying,
for example, that the part of Alceste should be made a comic one;
making fun of Shakespeare and Hugo, exalting Scribe, and in spite of
his profile and hooked nose, which should have opened the doors of the
Theatre-Francais and given him an equal share for life in its benefits,
he affirmed that he intended to play lovers’ parts, and that he meant to
assume the responsibility of making “sympathetic” the role of Nero, in
Britannicus.

This would have become terribly tiresome, but for the entrance upon
the scene of some truffled partridges, which the juggler carved and
distributed in less time than it would take to shuffle a pack of cards.
He even served the very worst part of the bird to the simple Amedee, as
he would force him to choose the nine of spades. Then he poured out the
chambertin, and once more all heads became excited, and the conversation
fell, as was inevitable, upon the subject of women.

Jocquelet began it, by speaking the name of one of the prettiest
actresses in Paris. He knew them all and described them exactly,
detailing their beauties like a slave-dealer.

“So little Lucille Prunelle is a friend of the great Moncontour--”

“Pardon me,” interrupted Gustave, who was looking badly, “she has
already left him for Cerfbeer the banker.”

“I say she has not.”

“I say that she has.”

They would have quarrelled if Maurice, with his affable, bantering air,
had not attacked Arthur Papillon on the subject of his love-affairs; for
the young advocate drank many cups of Orleanist tea, going even into
the same drawing-rooms as Beule and Prevost-Paradol, and accompanying
political ladies to the receptions at the Academie Francaise.

“That is where you must make havoc, you rascal!”

But Papillon defends himself with conceited smiles and meaning looks.
According to him--and he puts his two thumbs into the armholes of his
vest--the ambitious must be chaste.

“Abstineo venere,” said he, lowering his eyes in a comical manner, for
he did not fear Latin quotations. However, he declared himself very hard
to please in that matter; he dreamed of an Egeria, a superior mind. What
he did not tell them was, that a dressmaker’s little errand-girl, with
whom he had tried to converse as he left the law-school, had surveyed
him from head to foot and threatened him with the police.

Upon some new joke of Maurice’s, the lawyer gave his amorous programme
in the following terms:

“Understand me, a woman must be as intelligent as Hypatia, and have
the sensibility of Heloise; the smile of a Joconde, and the limbs of
an Antiope; and, even then, if she had not the throat of a Venus de
Medicis, I should not love her.”

Without going quite so far, the actor showed himself none the less
exacting. According to his ideas, Deborah, the tragedienne at the
Odeon--a Greek statue!--had too large hands, and the fascinating Blanche
Pompon at the Varietes was a mere wax doll.

Gustave, after all, was the one who is most intractable; excited by
the Bordeaux wine--a glass of mineral water would be best for him--he
proclaimed that the most beautiful creature was agreeable to him only
for one day; that it was a matter of principle, and that he had never
made but one exception, in favor of the illustrious dancer at the Casino
Cadet, Nina l’Auvergnate, because she was so comical! “Oh! my friends,
she is so droll, she is enough to kill one!”

“To kill one!” Yes! my dear Monsieur Gustave, that is what will happen
to you one of these fine mornings, if you do not decide to lead a more
reasonable life--and on the condition that you pass your winters in the
South, also!

Poor Amedee was in torture; all his illusions--desires and sentiments
blended--were cruelly wounded. Then, he had just discovered a deplorable
faculty; a new cause for being unhappy. The sight of this foolishness
made him suffer. How these coarse young men lied! Gustave seemed to him
a genuine idiot, Arthur Papillon a pedant, and as to Jocquelet, he was
as unbearable as a large fly buzzing between the glass and the curtain
of a nervous man’s room. Fortunately, Maurice made a little diversion by
bursting into a laugh.

“Well, my friends, you are all simpletons,” he exclaimed. “I am not like
you, thank fortune! I do not sputter over my soup. Long life to women!
Yes, all of them, pretty and otherwise! For, upon my word, there are no
ugly ones. I do not notice that Miss Keepsake has feet like the English,
and I forget the barmaid’s ruddy complexion, if she is attractive
otherwise. Now do not talk in this stupid fashion, but do as I do;
nibble all the apples while you have teeth. Do you know the reason why,
at the moment that I am talking to the lady of the house, I notice the
nose of the pretty waitress who brings in a letter on a salver? Do you
know the reason why, just as I am leaving Cydalize’s house, who has put
a rose in my buttonhole, that I turn my head at the passing of Margoton,
who is returning from the market with a basket upon her arm? It is
because it is one other of my children. One other! that is a great
word! Yes, one thousand and three. Don Juan was right. I feel his blood
coursing in my veins. And now the boy shall uncork some champagne, shall
he not? to drink to the health of love!”

Maurice was cynical, but this exposition of his philosophy served a good
purpose all the same. Everybody applauded him. The prestidigitateur, who
moved about the table like a schoolboy in a monkey-house, drew the cork
from a bottle of Roederer--it was astonishing that fireworks did not
dart out of it--and good-humor was restored. It reigned noisily until
the end of the repast, when the effect was spoiled by that fool of a
Gustave. He insisted upon drinking three glasses of kummel--why had they
not poured in maple sirup?--and, imagining that Jocquelet looked at him
askance, he suddenly manifested the intention of cutting his head open
with the carafe. The comedian, who was very pale, recalled all the
scenes of provocation that he had seen in the theatre; he stiffened
in his chair, swelled out his chest, and stammered, “At your orders!”
 trying to “play the situation.” But it was useless.

Gustave, restrained by Maurice and Amedee, and as drunk as a Pole,
responded to his friend’s objurgations by a torrent of tears, and fell
under the table, breaking some of the dishes.

“Now, then, we must take the baby home,” said Maurice, signing to the
boy. In the twinkling of an eye the human rag called Gustave was lifted
into a chair, clothed in his topcoat and hat, dressed and spruced
up, pushed down the spiral staircase, and landed in a cab. Then the
prestidigitateur returned and performed his last trick by making the
plate disappear upon which Maurice had thrown some money to pay the
bill.

It was not far from eleven o’clock when the comrades shook hands, in a
thick fog, in which the gaslights looked like the orange pedlers’ paper
lanterns. Ugh! how damp it was!

“Good-by.”

“I will see you again soon.”

“Good-night to the ladies.”

Arthur Papillon was in evening dress and white cravat, his customary
attire every evening, and still had time to show himself in a political
salon on the left side, where he met Moichod, the author of that famous
Histoire de Napoleon, in which he proves that Napoleon was only
a mediocre general, and that all his battles were gained by his
lieutenants. Jocquelet wished to go to the Odeon and hear, for the tenth
time, the fifth act of a piece of the common-sense school, in which
the hero, after haranguing against money for four acts in badly rhymed
verse, ends by marrying the young heiress, to the great satisfaction of
the bourgeois. As to Maurice, before he went to rejoin Mademoiselle Irma
at the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, he walked part of the way with Amedee.

“These comrades of ours are a little stupid, aren’t they?” said he to
his friend.

“I must say that they almost disgust me,” replied the young man. “Their
brutal way of speaking of women and love wounded me, and you too,
Maurice. So much the worse! I will be honest; you, who are so refined
and proud, tell me that you did not mean what you said--that you made a
pretence of vice just to please the others. It is not possible that you
are content simply to gratify your appetite and make yourself a slave
to your passions. You ought to have a higher ideal. Your conscience must
reproach you.”

Maurice brusquely interrupted this tirade, laughing in advance at what
he was about to say.

“My conscience? Oh, tender and artless Violette; Oh, modest wood-flower!
Conscience, my poor friend, is like a Suede glove, you can wear it
soiled. Adieu! We will talk of this another day, when Mademoiselle Irma
is not waiting for me.”

Amedee walked on alone, shivering in the mist, weary and sad, to the Rue
Notre-Dame-des-Champs.

No! it could not be true. There must be another love than that known to
these brutes. There were other women besides the light creatures they
had spoken of. His thoughts reverted to the companion of his childhood,
to the pretty little Maria, and again he sees her sewing near the family
lamp, and talking with him without raising her eyes, while he admires
her beautiful, drooping lashes. He is amazed to think that this
delicious child’s presence has never given him the slightest uneasiness;
that he has never thought of any other happiness than that of being near
her. Why should not a love like that he has dreamed of some day spring
up in her own heart? Have they not grown up together? Is he not the
only young man that she knows intimately? What happiness to become her
fiancee! Yes, it was thus that one should love! Hereafter he would flee
from all temptations; he would pass all his evenings with the Gerards;
he would keep as near as possible to his dear Maria, content to hear
her speak, to see her smile; and he would wait with a heart full of
tenderness for the moment when she would consent to become his wife.
Oh! the exquisite union of two chaste beings! the adorable kiss of two
innocent mouths! Did such happiness really exist?

This beautiful dream warmed the young man’s heart, and he reached his
home joyous and happy. He gave a vigorous pull to the bell, climbed
quickly up the long flights of stairs and opened the door to their
apartment. But what was this? His father must have come home very late,
for a stream of light shines under the door of his sleeping-room.

“Poor man!” thought Amedee, recalling the scene of the morning. “He may
be ill. Let us see.”

He had hardly opened the door, when he drew back uttering a shriek
of horror and distress. By the light of a candle that burned upon the
mantel, Amedee had caught sight of his father extended upon the floor,
his shirt disordered and covered with blood, holding in his clenched
right hand the razor with which he had cut his throat.

Yes! the union of two loving hearts had at last taken place. Their love
was happiness on earth; but if one of the two dies the other can never
be consoled while life lasts.

M. Violette never was consoled.




CHAPTER IX. THORNS OF JEALOUSY

Now Amedee had no family. The day after his father’s death he had a
violent rupture with M. Isidore Gaufre. Under the pretext that a suicide
horrified him, he allowed his niece’s husband to be carried to the
cemetery in a sixth-class hearse, and did not honor with his presence
the funeral, which was even prohibited from using the parish road. But
the saintly man was not deterred from swallowing for his dinner that
same day, while thundering against the progress of materialism, tripe
cooked after the Caen fashion, one of Berenice’s weekly works of art.

Amedee had now no family, and his friends were dispersed. As a reward
for passing his examinations in law, Madame Roger took her son with her
on a trip to Italy, and they had just left France together.

As to the poor Gerards, just one month after M. Violette’s death, the
old engraver died suddenly, of apoplexy, at his work; and on that day
there were not fifty francs in the house. Around the open grave where
they lowered the obscure and honest artist, there was only a group of
three women, in black, who were weeping, and Amedee in mourning for his
father, with a dozen of Gerard’s old comrades, whose romantic heads had
become gray. The family was obliged to sell at once, in order to get
a little money, what remained of proof-sheets in the boxes, some small
paintings, old presents from artist friends who had become celebrated,
and the last of the ruined knickknacks--indeed, all that constituted the
charm of the house. Then, in order that her eldest daughter might not
be so far from the boarding-school where she was employed as teacher of
music, Madame Gerard went to live in the Rue St.-Pierre, in Montmartre,
where they found a little cheap, first-floor apartment, with a garden as
large as one’s hand.

Now that he was reduced to his one hundred and twenty-five francs,
Amedee was obliged to leave his too expensive apartment in the Rue
Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and to sell the greater part of his family
furniture. He kept only his books and enough to furnish his little room,
perched under the roof of an old house in the Faubourg St.-Jacques.

It was far from Montmartre, so he could not see his friends as often as
he would have liked, those friends whom grief in common had made dearer
than ever to him. One single consolation remained for him--literary
work. He threw himself into it blindly, deadening his sorrow with the
fruitful and wonderful opiate of poetry and dreams. However, he had now
begun to make headway, feeling that he had some thing new to say. He
had long ago thrown into the fire his first poems, awkward imitations of
favorite authors, also his drama after the style of 1830, where the two
lovers sang a duet at the foot of the scaffold. He returned to truth
and simplicity by the longest way, the schoolboy’s road. Taste and
inclination both induced him to express simply and honestly what he saw
before him; to express, so far as he could, the humble ideal of the poor
people with whom he had lived in the melancholy Parisian suburbs where
his infancy was passed; in a word, to paint from nature. He tried,
feeling that he could succeed; and in those days lived the most
beautiful and perfect hours of his life--those in which the artist,
already master of his instrument, having still the abundance and
vivacity of youthful sensations, writes the first words that he knows
to be good, and writes them with entire disinterestedness, not even
thinking that others will see them; working for himself alone and for
the sole joy of putting in visible form and spreading abroad his ideas,
his thoughts-all his heart. Those moments of pure enthusiasm and perfect
happiness he never could know again, even after he had nibbled at the
savory food of success and had experienced the feverish desire for
glory. Delicious hours they were, and sacred, too, such as can only be
compared to the divine intoxication of first love.

Amedee worked courageously during the winter months that followed his
father’s death. He arose at six o’clock in the morning, lighted his lamp
and the little stove which heated his room, and, walking up and down,
leaning over his page, the poet would vigorously begin his struggle with
fancies, ideas, and words. At nine o’clock he would go out and breakfast
at a neighboring creamery; after which he would go to his office. There,
his tiresome papers once written, he had two or three hours of leisure,
which he employed in reading and taking notes from the volumes borrowed
by him every morning at a reading-room on the Rue Rorer-Collard; for he
had already learned that one leaves college almost ignorant, having,
at best, only learned how to study. He left the office at nightfall and
reached his room through the Boulevard des Invalides, and Montparnasse,
which at this time was still planted with venerable elms; sometimes the
lamplighter would be ahead of him, making the large gas-jets shoot
out under the leafless old trees. This walk, that Amedee imposed
upon himself for health’s sake, would bring him, about six o’clock, a
workman’s appetite for his dinner,--in the little creamery situated in
front of Val-de-Grace, where he had formed the habit of going. Then he
would return to his garret, and relight his stove and lamp, and work
until midnight. This ardent, continuous effort, this will-tension kept
in his mind the warmth, animation, and excitement indispensable for
poetical production. His mind expanded rapidly, ready to receive the
germs that were blown to him by the mysterious winds of inspiration. At
times he was astonished to see his pen fill the sheet so rapidly that he
would stop, filled with pride at having thus reduced to obedience words
and rhythms, and would ask himself what supernatural power had permitted
him to arm these divine wild birds.

On Sundays, he had his meals brought him by the concierge, working all
day and not going out until nearly five o’clock in the afternoon, to
dine with Mamma Gerard. It was the only distraction that he allowed
himself, or rather the only recompense that he permitted himself. He
walked halfway across Paris to buy a cake in the Rue Fontaine for their
dessert; then he climbed without fatigue, thanks to his young legs, to
the top of Montmartre, lighted by swinging lamps, where one could almost
believe one’s self in the distant corner of some province. They would be
waiting for him to serve the soup, and the young man would seat himself
between the widow and the two orphans.

Alas, how hard these poor ladies’ lives had become! Damourette, a member
of the Institute, remembered that he had once joked in the studios with
Gerard, and obtained a small annual pension for the widow; but it was
charity--hardly enough to pay the rent. Fortunately Louise, who already
looked like an old maid at twenty-three, going about the city all day
with her roll of music under her black shawl, had many pupils, and
more than twenty houses had well-nigh become uninhabitable through her
exertions with little girls, whose red hands made an unendurable racket
with their chromatic scales. Louise’s earnings constituted the surest
part of their revenue. What a strange paradox is the social life
in large cities, where Weber’s Last Waltz will bring the price of a
four-pound loaf of bread, and one pays the grocer with the proceeds of
Boccherini’s Minuet!

In spite of all, they had hard work to make both ends meet at the
Gerards. The pretty Maria wished to make herself useful and aid her
mother and sister. She had always shown great taste for drawing, and her
father used to give her lessons in pastel. Now she went to the Louvre to
work, and tried to copy the Chardins and Latours. She went there alone.
It was a little imprudent, she was so pretty; but Louise had no time to
go with her, and her mother had to be at home to attend to the housework
and cooking. Maria’s appearance had already excited the hearts of
several young daubers. There were several cases of persistent sadness
and loss of appetite in Flandrin’s studio; and two of Signol’s pupils,
who were surprised hovering about the young artist, were hated secretly
as rivals; certain projects of duels, after the American fashion, were
profoundly considered. To say that Maria was not a little flattered
to see all these admirers turn timidly and respectfully toward her; to
pretend that she took off her hat and hung it on one corner of her easel
because the heat from the furnace gave her neuralgia and not to show
her beautiful hair, would be as much of a lie as a politician’s promise.
However, the little darling was very serious, or at least tried to be.
She worked conscientiously and made some progress. Her last copy of the
portrait of that Marquise who holds a pug dog in her lap, with a ribbon
about his neck, was not very bad. This copy procured a piece of good
luck for the young artist.

Pere Issacar, a bric-a-brac merchant on the Quay Voltairean--an
old-fashioned Jew with a filthy overcoat, the very sight of which made
one long to tear it off--approached Maria one day, just as she was about
to sketch a rose in the Marquise’s powdered wig, and after raising a hat
greasy enough to make the soup for a whole regiment, said to her:

“Matemoiselle, vould you make me von dozen vamily bordraits?”

The young girl did not at first understand his abominable language, but
at last he made her comprehend.

Every thing is bought nowadays, even rank, provided, of course, that one
has a purse sufficiently well filled. Nothing is simpler! In return for
a little money you can procure at the Vatican--second corridor on your
right, third door at the left--a brand-new title of Roman Count. A
heraldic agency--see advertisement--will plant and make grow at your
will a genealogical tree, under whose shade you can give a
country breakfast to twenty-five people. You buy a castle with
port-holes--port-holes are necessary--in a corner of some reactionary
province. You call upon the lords of the surrounding castles with a
gold fleur-de-lys in your cravat. You pose as an enraged Legitimist and
ferocious Clerical. You give dinners and hunting parties, and the
game is won. I will wager that your son will marry into a Faubourg
St.-Germain family, a family which descends authentically from the
Crusaders.

In order to execute this agreeable buffoonery, you must not forget
certain accessories--particularly portraits of your ancestors. They
should ornament the castle walls where you regale the country nobles.
One must use tact in the selection of this family gallery. There must be
no exaggeration. Do not look too high. Do not claim as a founder of your
race a knight in armor hideously painted, upon wood, with his coat of
arms in one corner of the panel. Bear in mind the date of chivalry.
Be satisfied with the head of a dynasty whose gray beard hangs over a
well-crimped ruff. I saw a very good example of that kind the other day
on the Place Royale. A dog was just showing his disrespect for it as
I passed. You can obtain an ancestor like this in the outskirts of the
city for fifteen francs, if you haggle a little. Or you need not give
yourself so much trouble. Apply to a specialist, Pere Issacar, for
instance. He will procure magnificent ancestors for you; not dear
either! If you will consent to descend to simple magistrates, the price
will be insignificant. Chief justices are dirt cheap. Naturally, if you
wish to be of the military profession, to have eminent clergy among your
antecedents, the price increases. Pere Issacar is the only one who can
give you, at a reasonable rate, ermine-draped bishops, or a colonel with
a Louis XIV wig, and, if you wish it, a blue ribbon and a breast-plate
under his red coat. What produces a good effect in a series of family
portraits is a series of pastels. What would you say to a goggle-eyed
abbe, or an old lady indecently decolletee, or a captain of dragoons
wearing a tigerskin cap (it is ten francs more if he has the cross of
St. Louis)? Pere Issacar knows his business, and always has in reserve
thirty of these portraits in charming frames of the period, made
expressly for him in the Faubourg St.-Antoine, and which have all been
buried fifteen days and riddled with shot, in order to have the musty
appearance and indispensable worm holes.

You can understand now why the estimable Jew, in passing through the
Louvre for his weekly promenade, took an interest in little Maria
copying the charming Marquise de Latour. He was just at this time short
of powdered marquises, and they are always very much in demand. He
begged the young woman to take her copy home and make twelve more of it,
varying, only the color of the dress and some particular detail in each
portrait. Thus, instead of the pug dog, marquise No. 2 would hold a King
Charles spaniel, No. 2 a monkey, No. 3 a bonbon box, No. 4 a fan. The
face could remain the same. All marquises looked alike to Pere Issacar;
he only exacted that they should all be provided with two black patches,
one under the right eye, the other on the left shoulder. This he
insisted upon, for the patch, in his eyes, was a symbol of the
eighteenth century.

Pere Issacar was a fair man and promised to furnish frames, paper, and
pastels, and to pay the young girl fifteen francs for each marquise.
What was better yet, he promised, if he was pleased with the first work,
to order of the young artist a dozen canonesses of Remiremont and a
half-dozen of royal gendarmes.

I wish you could have seen those ladies when Maria went home to tell the
good news. Louise had just returned from distributing semiquavers in the
city; her eyes and poor Mother Gerard’s were filled with tears of joy.

“What, my darling,” said the mother, embracing her child, “are you going
to trouble yourself about our necessaries of life, too?”

“Do you see this little sister?” said Louise, laughing cordially. “She
is going to earn a pile of money as large as she is herself. Do you
know that I am jealous--I, with my piano and my displeasing profession?
Good-luck to pastel! It is not noisy, it will not annoy the neighbors,
and when you are old you can say, ‘I never have played for anybody.’”

But Maria did not wish them to joke. They had always treated her like a
doll, a spoiled child, who only knew how to curl her hair and tumble her
frocks. Well, they should see!

When Amedee arrived on Sunday with his cake, they told him over several
times the whole story, with a hundred details, and showed him the two
marquises that Maria had already finished, who wore patches as large as
wafers.

She appeared that day more attractive and charming than ever to the
young man, and it was then that he conceived his first ambition. If
he only had enough talent to get out of his obscurity and poverty, and
could become a famous writer and easily earn his living! It was
not impossible, after all. Oh, with what pleasure he would ask this
exquisite child to be his wife! How sweet it would be to know that she
was happy with, and proud of, him! But he must not think of it now, they
were too poor; and then, would Maria love him?

He often asked himself that question, and with uneasiness. In his own
heart he felt that the childish intimacy had become a sincere affection,
a real love. He had no reason to hope that the same transformation
had taken place in the young girl’s heart. She always treated him very
affectionately, but rather like a good comrade, and she was no more
stirred by his presence now than she was when she had lain in wait with
him behind the old green sofa to hunt Father Gerard’s battered fur hat.

Amedee had most naturally taken the Gerard family into his confidence
regarding his work. After the Sunday dinner they would seat themselves
around the table where Mamma Gerard had just served the coffee, and the
young man would read to his friends, in a grave, slow voice, the poem he
had composed during the week. A painter having the taste and inclination
for interior scenes, like the old masters of the Dutch school, would
have been stirred by the contemplation of this group of four persons in
mourning. The poet, with his manuscript in his right hand and marking
the syllables with a rhythmical movement of his left, was seated between
the two sisters. But while Louise--a little too thin and faded for
her years--fixes her attentive eyes upon the reader and listens with
avidity, the pretty Maria is listless and sits with a bored little face,
gazing mechanically at the other side of the table. Mother Gerard knits
with a serious air and her spectacles perched upon the tip of her nose.

Alas! during these readings Louise was the only one who heaved sighs
of emotion; and sometimes even great tear-drops would tremble upon her
lashes. She was the only one who could find just the right delicate word
with which to congratulate the poet, and show that she had understood
and been touched by his verses. At the most Maria would sometimes
accord the young poet, still agitated by the declamation of his lines, a
careless “It is very pretty!” with a commonplace smile of thanks.

She did not care for poetry, then? Later, if he married her, would she
remain indifferent to her husband’s intellectual life, insensible even
to the glory that he might reap? How sad it was for Amedee to have to
ask himself that question!

Soon Maria inspired a new fear within him. Maurice and his mother had
been already three months in Italy, and excepting two letters that he
had received from Milan, at the beginning of his journey, in the first
flush of his enthusiasm, Amedee had had no news from his friend.
He excused this negligence on the part of the lazy Maurice, who had
smilingly told him, on the eve of departure, not to count upon hearing
from him regularly. At each visit that Amedee paid the Gerards, Maria
always asked him:

“Have you received any news from your friend Maurice?”

At first he had paid no attention to this, but her persistency at length
astonished him, planting a little germ of suspicion and alarm in his
heart. Maurice Roger had only paid the Gerards a few visits during the
father’s lifetime, and accompanied on each occasion by Amedee. He had
always observed the most respectful manner toward Maria, and they
had perhaps exchanged twenty words. Why should Maria preserve such a
particular remembrance of a person so nearly a stranger to her? Was it
possible that he had made a deep impression, perhaps even inspired a
sentiment of love? Did she conceal in the depths of her heart, when she
thought of him, a tender hope? Was she watching for him? Did she wish
him to return?

When these fears crossed Amedee’s mind, he felt a choking sensation,
and his heart was troubled. Happy Maurice, who had only to be seen to
please! But immediately, with a blush of shame, the generous poet chased
away this jealous fancy. But every Sunday, when Maria, lowering her
eyes, and with a slightly embarrassed voice, repeated her question,
“Have you received any news from Monsieur Maurice?” Amedee felt a
cruelly discouraged feeling, and thought, with deep sadness:

“She never will love me!”

To conquer this new grief, he plunged still more deeply into work; but
he did not find his former animation and energy. After the drizzling
rain of the last days of March, the spring arrived. Now, when Amedee
awoke, it was broad daylight at six o’clock in the morning. Opening
his mansard window, he admired, above the tops of the roofs, the large,
ruddy sun rising in the soft gray sky, and from the convent gardens
beneath came a fresh odor of grass and damp earth. Under the shade of
the arched lindens which led to the shrine of a plaster Virgin, a first
and almost imperceptible rustle, a presentiment of verdure, so to
speak, ran through the branches, and the three almond trees in the
kitchen-garden put forth their delicate flowers. The young poet was
invaded by a sweet and overwhelming languor, and Maria’s face, which
was commonly before his inner vision upon awakening, became confused and
passed from his mind. He seated himself for a moment before a table
and reread the last lines of a page that he had begun; but he was
immediately overcome by physical lassitude, and abandoned himself to
thought, saying to himself that he was twenty years old, and that it
would be very good, after all, to enjoy life.




CHAPTER X. A BUDDING POET

It is the first of May, and the lilacs in the Luxembourg Gardens are in
blossom. It has just struck four o’clock. The bright sun and the pure
sky have rendered more odious than ever the captivity of the office to
Amedee, and he departs before the end of the sitting for a stroll in the
Medicis garden around the pond, where, for the amusement of the children
in that quarter, a little breeze from the northeast is pushing on a
miniature flotilla. Suddenly he hears himself called by a voice which
bursts out like a brass band at a country fair.

“Good-day, Violette.”

It is Jocquelet, the future comedian, with his turned-up nose,
which cuts the air like the prow of a first-class ironclad, superb,
triumphant, dressed like a Brazilian, shaved to the quick, the dearest
hope of Regnier’s class at the Conservatoire-Jocquelet, who has made an
enormous success in an act from the “Precieuses,” at the last quarter’s
examination--he says so himself, without any useless modesty--Jocquelet,
who will certainly have the first comedy prize at the next examination,
and will make his debut with out delay at the Comedie Francaise! All
this he announces in one breath, like a speech learned by heart, with
his terrible voice, like a quack selling shaving-paste from a gilded
carriage. In two minutes that favorite word of theatrical people had
been repeated thirty times, punctuating the phrases: “I! I! I! I!”

Amedee is only half pleased at the meeting. Jocquelet was always a
little too noisy to please him. After all, he was an old comrade, and
out of politeness the poet congratulated him upon his success.

Jocquelet questioned him. What was Amedee doing? What had become of him?
Where was his literary work? All this was asked with such cordiality
and warmth of manner that one would have thought that Jocquelet was
interested in Amedee, and had a strong friendship for him. Nothing of
the sort. Jocquelet was interested in only one person in this world,
and that person was named Jocquelet. One is either an actor or he is
not. This personage was always one wherever he was--in an omnibus, while
putting on his suspenders, even with the one he loved. When he said to
a newcomer, “How do you do?” he put so much feeling into this very
original question, that the one questioned asked himself whether he
really had not just recovered from a long and dangerous illness. Now, at
this time Jocquelet found himself in the presence of an unknown and poor
young poet. What role ought such an eminent person as himself to play
in such circumstances? To show affection for the young man, calm his
timidity, and patronize him without too much haughtiness; that was the
position to take, and Jocquelet acted it.

Amedee was an artless dupe, and, touched by the interest shown him, he
frankly replied:

“Well, my dear friend, I have worked hard this winter. I am not
dissatisfied. I think that I have made some progress; but if you knew
how hard and difficult it is!”

He was about to confide to Jocquelet the doubts and sufferings of a
sincere artist, but Jocquelet, as we have said, thought only of himself,
and brusquely interrupted the young poet:

“You do not happen to have a poem with you--something short, a hundred
or a hundred and fifty lines--a poem intended for effect, that one could
recite?”

Amedee had copied out that very day, at the office, a war story, a
heroic episode of Sebastopol that he had heard Colonel Lantz relate not
long since at Madame Roger’s, and had put into verse with a good French
sentiment and quite the military spirit, verse which savored of powder,
and went off like reports of musketry. He took the sheets out of his
pocket, and, leading the comedian into a solitary by-path of sycamores
which skirted the Luxembourg orangery, he read his poem to him in a low
voice. Jocquelet, who did not lack a certain literary instinct, was
very enthusiastic, for he foresaw a success for himself, and said to the
poet:

“You read those verses just like a poet, that is, very badly. But no
matter, this battle is very effective, and I see what I could do with
it-with my voice. But what do you mean?” added he, planting himself in
front of his friend. “Do you write verses like these and nobody knows
anything about them? It is absurd. Do you wish, then, to imitate
Chatterton? That is an old game, entirely used up! You must push
yourself, show yourself. I will take charge of that myself! Your evening
is free, is it not? Very well, come with me; before six o’clock I
shall have told your name to twenty trumpeters, who will make all
Paris resound with the news that there is a poet in the Faubourg
Saint-Jacques. I will wager, you savage, that you never have put your
foot into the Cafe de Seville. Why, my dear fellow, it is our first
manufactory of fame! Here is the Odeon omnibus, get on! We shall be
at the Boulevard Montmartre in twenty minutes, and I shall baptize you
there, as a great man, with a glass of absinthe.”

Dazzled and carried away, Amedee humored him and climbed upon the
outside of the omnibus with his comrade. The vehicle hurried them
quickly along toward the quay, crossed the Seine, the Carrousel, and
passed before the Theatre-Francais, at which Jocquelet, thinking of his
approaching debut, shook his fist, exclaiming, “Now I am ready for you!”
 Here the young men were planted upon the asphalt boulevard, in front of
the Cafe de Seville.

Do not go to-day to see this old incubator, in which so many political
and literary celebrities have been hatched; for you will only find
a cafe, just like any other, with its groups of ugly little Jews who
discuss the coming races, and here and there a poor creature, painted
like a Jezebel, dying of chagrin over her pot of beer.

At the decline of the Second Empire--it was May 1, 1866, that Amedee
Violette entered there for the first time--the Cafe de, Seville passed
for, and with reason too, one of the most remarkable places in Paris.
For this glorious establishment had furnished by itself, or nearly so,
the eminent staff of our third Republic! Be honest, Monsieur le Prefet,
you who presided at the opening of the agricultural meeting in our
province, and who played the peacock in your dress-coat, embroidered
in silver, before an imposing line of horned creatures; be honest and
admit, that, at the time when you opposed the official candidates in
your democratic journal, you had your pipe in the rack of the Cafe
de Seville, with your name in white enamel upon the blackened bowl!
Remember, Monsieur le Depute, you who voted against all the exemption
cases of the military law, remember who, in this very place, at your
daily game of dominoes for sixty points, more than a hundred times
ranted against the permanent army--you, accustomed to the uproar of
assemblies and the noise of the tavern--contributed to the parliamentary
victories by crying, “Six all! count that!” And you too, Monsieur le
Ministre, to whom an office-boy, dating from the tyrants, still says,
“Your excellency,” without offending you; you also have been a constant
frequenter of the Cafe de Seville, and such a faithful customer that the
cashier calls you by your Christian name. And do you recall, Monsieur
the future president of the Council, that you did not acquit yourself
very well when the sedentary dame, who never has been seen to rise from
her stool, and who, as a joker pretended, was afflicted with two wooden
legs, called you by a little sign to the desk, and said to you, not
without a shade of severity in her tone: “Monsieur Eugene, we must be
thinking of this little bill.”

Notwithstanding his title of poet, Amedee had not the gift of prophecy.
While seeing all these negligently dressed men seated outside at
the Cafe de Seville’s tables, taking appetizers, the young man never
suspected that he had before him the greater part of the legislators
destined to assure, some years later, France’s happiness. Otherwise he
would have respectfully taken note of each drinker and the color of his
drink, since at a later period this would have been very useful to
him as a mnemonical method for the understanding of our parliamentary
combinations, which are a little complicated, we must admit. For
example, would it not have been handy and agreeable to note down
that the recent law on sugars had been voted by the solid majority of
absinthe and bitters, or to know that the Cabinet’s fall, day before
yesterday, might be attributed simply to the disloyal and perfidious
abandonment of the bitter mints or blackcurrant wine?

Jocquelet, who professed the most advanced opinions in politics,
distributed several riotous and patronizing handshakes among these
future statesmen as he entered the establishment, followed by Amedee.

Here, there were still more of politics, and also poets and literary
men. They lived a sort of hurly-burly life, on good terms, but one
could not get them confounded, for the politicians were all beard, the
litterateurs, all hair.

Jocquelet directed his steps without hesitation toward the magnificent
red head of the whimsical poet, Paul Sillery, a handsome young fellow
with a wide-awake face, who was nonchalantly stretched upon the red
velvet cushion of the window-seat, before a table, around which were
three other heads of thick hair worthy of our early kings.

“My dear Paul,” said Jocquelet, in his most thrilling voice, handing
Sillery Amedee’s manuscript, “here are some verses that I think
are superb, and I am going to recite them as soon as I can, at some
entertainment or benefit. Read them and give us your opinion of them. I
present their author to you, Monsieur Amedee Violette. Amedee, I present
you to Monsieur Paul Sillery.”

All the heads of hair, framing young and amiable faces, turned curiously
toward the newcomer, whom Paul Sillery courteously invited to be seated,
with the established formula, “What will you take?” Then he began to
read the lines that the comedian had given him.

Amedee, seated on the edge of his chair, was distracted with timidity,
for Paul Sillery already enjoyed a certain reputation as a rising
poet, and had established a small literary sheet called La Guepe, which
published upon its first page caricatures of celebrated men with large
heads and little bodies, and Amedee had read in it some of Paul’s poems,
full of impertinence and charm. An author whose work had been published!
The editor of a journal! The idea was stunning to poor innocent
Violette, who was not aware then that La Guepe could not claim forty
subscribers. He considered Sillery something wonderful, and waited with
a beating heart for the verdict of so formidable a judge. At the end
of a few moments Sillery said, without raising his eyes from the
manuscript:

“Here are some fine verses!”

A flood of delight filled the heart of the poet from the Faubourg
St.-Jacques.

As soon as he had finished his reading, Paul arose from his seat, and,
extending both hands over the carafes and glasses to Amedee, said,
enthusiastically:

“Let me shake hands with you! Your description of the battle-scene is
astonishing! It is admirable! It is as clear and precise as Merimee, and
it has all the color and imagination that he lacks to make him a
poet. It is something absolutely new. My dear Monsieur Violette, I
congratulate you with all my heart! I can not ask you for this beautiful
poem for La Guepe that Jocquelet is so fortunate as to have to recite,
and of which I hope he will make a success. But I beg of you, as a great
favor, to let me have some verses for my paper; they will be, I am sure,
as good as these, if not better. To be sure, I forgot to tell you that
we shall not be able to pay you for the copy, as La Guepe does not
prosper; I will even admit that it only stands on one leg. In order to
make it appear for a few months longer, I have recently been obliged to
go to a money-lender, who has left me, instead of the classical stuffed
crocodile, a trained horse which he had just taken from an insolvent
circus. I mounted the noble animal to go to the Bois, but at the Place
de la Concorde he began to waltz around it, and I was obliged to get rid
of this dancing quadruped at a considerable loss. So your contribution
to La Guepe would have to be gratuitous, like those of all the rest.
You will give me the credit of having saluted you first of all, my dear
Violette, by the rare and glorious title of true poet. You will let me
reserve the pleasure of intoxicating you with the odor that a printer’s
first proofs give, will you not? Is it agreed?”

Yes, it was agreed! That is to say, Amedee, touched to the depths of his
heart by so much good grace and fraternal cordiality, was so troubled in
trying to find words to express his gratitude, that he made a terrible
botch of it.

“Do not thank me,” said Paul Sillery, with his pleasant but rather
sceptical smile, “and do not think me better than I am. If all your
verses are as strong as these that I have just read, you will soon
publish a volume that will make a sensation, and--who knows?--perhaps
will inspire me first of all with an ugly attack of jealousy. Poets are
no better than other people; they are like the majority of Adam’s sons,
vain and envious, only they still keep the ability to admire, and the
gift of enthusiasm, and that proves their superiority and is to their
credit. I am delighted to have found a mare’s nest to-day, an original
and sincere poet, and with your permission we will celebrate this happy
meeting. The price of the waltzing horse having hardly sufficed to
pay off the debt to the publisher of La Guepe, I am not in funds this
evening; but I have credit at Pere Lebuffle’s, and I invite you all to
dinner at his pot-house; after which we will go to my rooms, where I
expect a few friends, and there you will read us your verses, Violette;
we will all read some of them, and have a fine orgy of rich rhymes.”

This proposition was received with favor by the three young men with the
long hair, a la Clodion and Chilperic. As for Violette, he would have
followed Paul Sillery at that moment, had it been into the infernal
regions.

Jocquelet could not go with them, he had promised his evening to a lady,
he said, and he gave this excuse with such a conceited smile that all
were convinced he was going to crown himself with the most flattering of
laurels at the mansion of some princess of the royal blood. In reality,
he was going to see one of his Conservatoire friends, a large, lanky
dowdy, as swarthy as a mole and full of pretensions, who was destined
for the tragic line of character, and inflicted upon her lover Athalie’s
dream, Camille’s imprecations, and Phedre’s monologue.

After paying for the refreshments, Sillery gave his arm to Amedee, and,
followed by the three Merovingians, they left the cafe. Forcing a
way through the crowd which obstructed the sidewalk of the Faubourg
Montmartre he conducted his guests to Pere Lebuffle’s table d’hote,
which was situated on the third floor of a dingy old house in the Rue
Lamartine, where a sickening odor of burnt meat greeted them as soon as
they reached the top of the stairs. They found there, seated before a
tablecloth remarkable for the number of its wine-stains, two or three
wild-looking heads of hair, and four or five shaggy beards, to whom Pere
Lebuffle was serving soup, aided by a tired-looking servant. The name
under which Sillery had designated the proprietor of the table d’hote
might have been a nickname, for this stout person in his shirt-sleeves
recommended himself to one’s attentions by his bovine face and his
gloomy, wandering eyes. To Amedee’s amazement, Pere Lebuffle called the
greater part of his clients “thou,” and as soon as the newcomers were
seated at table, Amedee asked Sillery, in a low voice, the cause of this
familiarity.

“It is caused by the hard times, my dear Violette,” responded the
editor of ‘La Guepe’ as he unfolded his napkin. “There is no longer a
‘Maecenas’ or ‘Lawrence the Magnificent.’ The last patron of literature
and art is Pere Lebufle. This wretched cook, who has perhaps never read
a book or seen a picture, has a fancy for painters and poets, and allows
them to cultivate that plant, Debt, which, contrary to other vegetables,
grows all the more, the less it is watered with instalments. We must
pardon the good man,” said he, lowering his voice, “his little sin--a
sort of vanity. He wishes to be treated like a comrade and friend by
the artists. Those who have several accounts brought forward upon his
ledger, arrive at the point of calling him ‘thou,’ and I, alas! am of
that number. Thanks to that, I am going to make you drink something a
little less purgative than the so-called wine which is turning blue
in that carafe, and of which I advise you to be suspicious. I say,
Lebuffle, my friend here, Monsieur Amedee Violette, will be, sooner or
later, a celebrated poet. Treat him accordingly, my good fellow, and go
and get us a bottle of Moulins-Vent.”

The conversation meanwhile became general between the bearded and
long-haired men. Is it necessary to say that they were all animated,
both politicians and ‘litterateurs’, with the most revolutionary
sentiments? At the very beginning, with the sardines, which evidently
had been pickled in lamp-oil, a terribly hairy man, the darkest of them
all, with a beard that grew up into its owner’s eyes and then sprung out
again in tufts from his nose and ears, presented some elegiac regrets to
the memory of Jean-Paul Marat, and declared that at the next revolution
it would be necessary to realize the programme of that delightful friend
of the people, and make one hundred thousand heads fall.

“By thunder, Flambard, you have a heavy hand!” exclaimed one of
the least important of beards, one of those that degenerate into
side-whiskers as they become conservative. “One hundred thousand heads!”

“It is the minimum,” replied the sanguinary beard.

Now, it had just been revealed to Amedee that under this ferocious beard
was concealed a photographer, well known for his failures, and the young
man could not help thinking that if the one hundred thousand heads in
question had posed before the said Flambard’s camera, he would not show
such impatience to see them fall under the guillotine.

The conversation of the men with the luxuriant hair was none the less
anarchical when the roast appeared, which sprung from the legendary
animal called ‘vache enragee’. The possessor of the longest and thickest
of all the shock heads, which spread over the shoulders of a young story
writer--between us, be it said, he made a mistake in not combing it
oftener--imparted to his brothers the subject for his new novel, which
should have made the hair of the others bristle with terror; for the
principal episode in this agreeable fiction was the desecration of a
dead body in a cemetery by moonlight. There was a sort of hesitation in
the audience, a slight movement of recoil, and Sillery, with a dash of
raillery in his glance, asked the novelist:

“Why the devil do you write such a story?”

The novelist replied, in a thundering tone:

“To astonish the bourgeoisie!”

And nobody made the slightest objection.

To “astonish the bourgeoisie” was the dearest hope and most ardent wish
of these young men, and this desire betrayed itself in their slightest
word; and doubtless Amedee thought it legitimate and even worthy
of praise. However, he did not believe--must we admit his lack of
confidence?--that so many glorious efforts were ever crowned with
success. He went so far as to ask himself whether the character and
cleverness of these bourgeoisie would not lead them to ignore not
only the works, but even the existence, of the authors who sought to
“astonish” them; and he thought, not without sadness, that when La Guepe
should have published this young novelist’s ghostly composition,
the unconquerable bourgeoisie would know nothing about it, and would
continue to devote itself to its favorite customs, such as tapping the
barometer to know whether there was a change, or to heave a deep sigh
after guzzling its soup, saying, “I feel better!” without being the
least astonished in the world.

In spite of these mental reservations, which Amedee reproached himself
with, being himself an impure and contemptible Philistine, the poet was
delighted with his new friends and the unknown world opening before him.
In this Bohemian corner, where one got intoxicated with wild excesses
and paradoxes, recklessness and gayety reigned. The sovereign charm
of youth was there, and Amedee, who had until now lived in a dark
hiding-place, blossomed out in this warm atmosphere.

After a horrible dessert of cheese and prunes, Pere Lebuffle’s guests
dispersed. Sillery escorted Amedee and the three Merovingians to the
little, sparsely furnished first floor in the Rue Pigalle, where he
lived; and half a dozen other lyric poets, who might have furnished some
magnificent trophies for an Apache warrior’s scalping-knife, soon came
to reenforce the club which met there every Wednesday evening.

Seats were wanting at the beginning, but Sillery drew from a closet an
old black trunk which would hold two, and contented himself, as master
of the house, with sitting from time to time, with legs dangling, upon
the marble mantel. The company thus found themselves very comfortable;
still more so when an old woman with a dirty cap had placed upon the
table, in the middle of the room, six bottles of beer, some odd glasses,
and a large flowered plate upon which was a package of cut tobacco with
cigarette paper. They began to recite their verses in a cloud of smoke.
Each recited his own, called upon by Sillery; each would rise without
being urged, place his chair in front of him, and leaning one hand upon
its back, would recite his poem or elegy. Certainly some of them were
wanting in genius, some were even ludicrous. Among the number was a
little fellow with a cadaverous face, about as large as two farthings’
worth of butter, who declared, in a long speech with flat rhymes,
that an Asiatic harem was not capable of quenching his ardent love of
pleasure. A fat-faced fellow with a good, healthy, country complexion,
announced, in a long story, his formal intention of dying of a decline,
on account of the treason of a courtesan with a face as cold as marble;
while, if the facts were known, this peaceable boy lived with an artless
child of the people, brightening her lot by reducing her to a state of
slavery; she blacked his boots for him every morning before he left the
house.

In spite of these ridiculous things, there were present some genuine
poets who knew their business and had real talent. These filled Amedee
with respect and fear, and when Sillery called his name, he arose with a
dry mouth and heavy heart.

“It is your turn now, you newcomer! Recite us your ‘Before Sebastopol.’”

And so, thoroughbred that he was, Amedee overcame his emotion and
recited, in a thrilling voice, his military rhymes, that rang out like
the report of a veteran’s gun.

The last stanza, was greeted with loud applause, and all the auditors
arose and surrounded Amedee to offer him their congratulations.

“Why, it is superb!”

“Entirely new!”

“It will make an enormous success!”

“It is just what is needed to arouse the public!”

“Recite us something else!--something else!”

Reassured and encouraged, master of himself, he recited a popular scene
in which he had freely poured out his love for the poor people. He
next recited some of his Parisian suburban scenes, and then a series
of sonnets, entitled “Love’s Hopes,” inspired by his dear Maria; and
he astonished all these poets by the versatility and variety of his
inspirations.

At each new poem bravos were thundered out, and the young man’s heart
expanded with joy under this warm sunshine of success. His audience vied
with each other to approach Amedee first, and to shake his hand. Alas!
some of those who were there would, later, annoy him by their low envy
and treason; but now, in the generous frankness of their youth, they
welcomed him as a master.

What an intoxicating evening! Amedee reached his home about two o’clock
in the morning, his hands burning with the last grasps, his brain and
heart intoxicated with the strong wine of praise. He walked with long
and joyful strides through the fairy scene of a beautiful moonlight, in
the fresh morning wind which made his clothes flutter and caressed his
face. He thought he even felt the breath of fame.




BOOK 3.




CHAPTER XI. SUCCESS

Success, which usually is as fickle as justice, took long strides and
doubled its stations in order to reach Amedee. The Cafe de Seville, and
the coterie of long-haired writers, were busying themselves with the
rising poet already. His suite of sonnets, published in La Guepe,
pleased some of the journalists, who reproduced them in portions
in well-distributed journals. Ten days after Amedee’s meeting with
Jocquelet, the latter recited his poem “Before Sebastopol” at a
magnificent entertainment given at the Gaite for the benefit of an
illustrious actor who had become blind and reduced to poverty.

This “dramatic solemnity,” to use the language of the advertisement,
began by being terribly tiresome. There was an audience present who were
accustomed to grand Parisian soirees, a blase and satiated public, who,
upon this warm evening in the suffocating theatre, were more fatigued
and satiated than ever. The sleepy journalists collapsed in their
chairs, and in the back part of the stage-boxes, ladies’ faces, almost
green under paint, showed the excessive lassitude of a long winter of
pleasure. The Parisians had all come there from custom, without
having the slightest desire to do so, just as they always came, like
galley-slaves condemned to “first nights.” They were so lifeless that
they did not even feel the slightest horror at seeing one another grow
old. This chloroformed audience was afflicted with a long and too heavy
programme, as is the custom in performances of this kind. They played
fragments of the best known pieces, and sang songs from operas long
since fallen into disuse even on street organs. This public saw the
same comedians march out; the most famous are the most monotonous;
the comical ones abused their privileges; the lover spoke distractedly
through his nose; the great coquette--the actress par excellence, the
last of the Celimenes--discharged her part in such a sluggish way that
when she began an adverb ending in “ment,” one would have almost had
time to go out and smoke a cigarette or drink a glass of beer before she
reached the end of the said adverb.

But at the most lethargic moment of this drowsy soirees, after the
comedians from the Francais had played in a stately manner one act
from a tragedy, Jocquelet appeared. Jocquelet, still a pupil at the
Conservatoire, showed himself to the public for the first time and by
an exceptional grace--Jocquelet, absolutely unknown, too short in his
evening clothes, in spite of the two packs of cards that he had put in
his boots. He appeared, full of audacity, riding his high horse, raising
his flat-nosed, bull-dog face toward the “gallery gods,” and, in his
voice capable of making Jericho’s wall fall or raising Jehoshaphat’s
dead, he dashed off in one effort, but with intelligence and heroic
feeling, his comrade’s poem.

The effect was prodigious. This bold, common, but powerful actor, and
these picturesque and modern verses were something entirely new to this
public satiated with old trash. What a happy surprise! Two novelties
at once! To think of discovering an unheard-of poet and an unknown
comedian! To nibble at these two green fruits! Everybody shook off his
torpor; the anaesthetized journalists aroused themselves; the colorless
and sleepy ladies plucked up a little animation; and when Jocquelet
had made the last rhyme resound like a grand flourish of trumpets, all
applauded enough to split their gloves.

In one of the theatre lobbies, behind a bill-board pasted over with old
placards, Amedee Violette heard with delight the sound of the applause
which seemed like a shower of hailstones. He dared not think of it! Was
it really his poem that produced so much excitement, which had thawed
this cold public? Soon he did not doubt it, for Jocquelet, who had just
been recalled three times, threw himself into the poet’s arms and glued
his perspiring, painted face to his.

“Well, my little one, I have done it!” he exclaimed, bursting with
gratification and vanity. “You heard how I caught them!”

Immediately twenty, thirty, a hundred spectators appeared, most of
them very correct in white cravats, but all eager and with beaming
countenances, asking to see the author and the interpreter, and to
be presented to them, that they might congratulate them with an
enthusiastic word and a shake of the hand. Yes! it was a success, an
instantaneous one. It was certainly that rare tropical flower of the
Parisian greenhouse which blossoms out so seldom, but so magnificently.

One large, very common-looking man, wearing superb diamond
shirt-buttons, came in his turn to shake Amedee’s hand, and in a hoarse,
husky voice which would have been excellent to propose tickets “cheaper
than at the office!” he asked for the manuscript of the poem that had
just been recited.

“It is so that I may put you upon the first page of my tomorrow’s
edition, young man, and I publish eighty thousand. Victor Gaillard,
editor of ‘Le Tapage’. Does that please you?”

He took the manuscript without listening to the thanks of the poet, who
trembled with joy at the thought that his work had caught the fancy of
this Barnum of the press, the foremost advertiser in France and Europe,
and that his verses would meet the eyes of two hundred thousand readers.

Yes, it was certainly a success, and he experienced the first bitterness
of it as soon as he arrived the next morning at the Cafe de Seville,
where he now went every two or three days at the hour for absinthe. His
verses had appeared in that morning’s Tapage, printed in large type and
headed by a few lines of praise written by Victor Gaillard, a la Barnum.
As soon as Amedee entered the cafe he saw that he was the object of
general attention, and the lyric gentlemen greeted him with acclamations
and bravos; but at certain expressions of countenance, constrained
looks, and bitter smiles, the impressionable young man felt with a
sudden sadness that they already envied him.

“I warned you of it,” said Paul Sillery to him, as he led him into a
corner of the cafe. “Our good friends are not pleased, and that is very
natural. The greater part of these rhymers are ‘cheap jewellers,’ and
they are jealous of a master workman. Above all things, pretend not
to notice it; they will never forgive you for guessing their bad
sentiments. And then you must be indulgent to them. You have your
beautiful lieutenant’s epaulettes, Violette, do not be too hard upon
these poor privates. They also are fighting under the poetic flag, and
ours is a poverty-stricken regiment. Now you must profit by your good
luck. Here you are, celebrated in forty-eight hours. Do you see, even
the political people look at you with curiosity, although a poet in the
estimation of these austere persons is an inferior and useless being.
It is all they will do to accept Victor Hugo, and only on account of his
‘Chatiments.’ You are the lion of the day. Lose no time. I met just now
upon the boulevard Massif, the publisher. He had read ‘Le Tapage’ and
expects you. Carry him all your poems to-morrow; there will be enough to
make a volume. Massif will publish it at his own expense, and you will
appear before the public in one month. You never will inveigle a second
time that big booby of a Gaillard, who took a mere passing fancy for
you. But no matter! I know your book, and it will be a success. You are
launched. Forward, march! Truly, I am better than I thought, for your
success gives me pleasure.”

This amiable comrade’s words easily dissipated the painful feelings
that Amedee had just experienced. However, it was one of those exalted
moments when one will not admit that evil exists. He spent some time
with the poets, forcing himself to be more gracious and friendly than
ever, and left them persuaded--the unsuspecting child!--that he had
disarmed them by his modesty; and very impatient to share his joy with
his friends, the Gerards, he quickly walked the length of Montmartre and
reached them just at their dinner hour.

They did not expect him, and only had for their dinner the remains of
the boiled beef of the night before, with some cucumbers. Amedee carried
his cake, as usual, and, what was better still, two sauces that always
make the poorest meal palatable--hope and happiness.

They had already read the journals and knew that the poem had been
applauded at the Gaite, and that it had at once been printed on the
first page of the journal; and they were all so pleased, so glad, that
they kissed Amedee on both cheeks. Mamma Gerard remembered that she had
a few bottles--five or six--of old chambertin in the cellar, and you
could not have prevented the excellent woman from taking her key and
taper at once, and going for those old bottles covered with cobwebs and
dust, that they might drink to the health of the triumphant one. As to
Louise, she was radiant, for in several houses where she gave lessons
she had heard them talk of the fine and admirable verses published in Le
Tapage, and she was very proud to think that the author was a friend of
hers. What completed Amedee’s pleasure was that for the first time Maria
seemed to be interested in his poem, and said several times to him, with
such a pretty, vain little air:

“Do you know, your battle is very nice. Amedee, you are going to become
a great poet, a celebrated man! What a superb future you have before
you!”

Ah! what exquisitely sweet hopes he carried away that evening to his
room in the Faubourg St.-Jacques! They gave him beautiful dreams, and
pervaded his thoughts the next morning when the concierge brought him
two letters.

Still more happiness! The first letter contained two notes of a hundred
francs each, with Victor Gaillard’s card, who congratulated Amedee anew
and asked him to write something for his journal in the way of prose;
a story, or anything he liked. The young poet gave a cry of joyful
surprise when he recognized the handwriting of Maurice Roger upon the
other envelope.

“I have just returned to Paris, my dear Amedee,” wrote the traveller,
“and your success was my first greeting. I must embrace you quickly and
tell you how happy I am. Come to see me at four o’clock in my den in the
Rue Monsieur-le-Prince. We will dine and pass the evening together.”

Ah! how the poet loved life that morning, how good and sweet it seemed
to him! Clothed in his best, he gayly descended the Rue St.-Jacques,
where boxes of asparagus and strawberries perfumed the fruit-stalls,
and went to the Boulevard St. Michel, where he purchased an elegant gray
felt hat and a new cravat. Then he went to the Cafe Voltaire, where
he lunched. He changed his second hundred-franc bill, so that he might
feel, with the pleasure of a child, the beautiful louis d’or which he
owed to his work and its success. At the office the head clerk--a good
fellow, who sang well at dinners--complimented Amedee upon his poem. The
young man had only made his appearance to ask for leave that afternoon,
so as to take his manuscript to the publisher.

Once more in the street in the bright May sun, after the fashion of
nabobs, he took an open carriage and was carried to Massif, in the
Passage des Princes. The editor of the Jeunes was seated in his office,
which was decorated with etchings and beautiful bindings. He is well
known by his magnificent black beard and his large bald head, upon
which a wicked jester once advised him to paste his advertisements; he
publishes the works of audacious authors and sensational books, and had
the honor of sharing with Charles Bazile, the poet, an impris

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/3962