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The Ink-Stain (Tache d'encre) — Complete

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Title: The Ink-Stain (Tache d'encre) — Complete

Author: René Bazin


        
Release date: October 30, 2004 [eBook #3975]
                Most recently updated: January 9, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3975

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INK-STAIN (TACHE D'ENCRE) — COMPLETE ***



Produced by David Widger





THE INK STAIN

(Tache d’Encre)

By RENE BAZIN


Preface by E. LAVISSE




RENE BAZIN

RENE-NICHOLAS-MARIE BAZIN was born at Angers, December 26, 1853. He
studied for the bar, became a lawyer and professor of jurisprudence at
the Catholic University in his native city, and early contributed to
‘Le Correspondant, L’Illustration, Journal des Debats, Revue du Deux
Mondes,’ etc. Although quietly writing fiction for the last fifteen
years or so, he was not well known until the dawn of the twentieth
century, when his moral studies of provincial life under the form of
novels and romances became appreciated. He is a profound psychologist,
a force in literature, and his style is very pure and attractive.
He advocates resignation and the domestic virtues, yet his books are
neither dull, nor tiresome, nor priggish; and as he has advanced in
years and experience M. Bazin has shown an increasing ambition to deal
with larger problems than are involved for instance, in the innocent
love-affairs of ‘Ma Tante Giron’ (1886), a book which enraptured Ludovic
Halevy. His novel, ‘Une Tache d’Encre’ (1888), a romance of scholarly
life, was crowned by the French Academy, to which he was elected in
1903.

It is safe to say that Bazin will never develop into an author dangerous
to morals. His works may be put into the hands of cloistered virgins,
and there are not, to my knowledge, many other contemporary French
imaginative writers who could endure this stringent test. Some critics,
indeed, while praising him, scoff at his chaste and surprising optimism;
but it is refreshing to recommend to English readers, in these days of
Realism and Naturalism, the works of a recent French writer which do not
require maturity of years in the reader. ‘Une Tache d’Encre’, as I have
said, was crowned by the French Academy; and Bazin received from the
same exalted body the “Prix Vitet” for the ensemble of his writings in
1896, being finally admitted a member of the Academy in June, 1903. He
occupies the chair of Ernest Legouve.

Bazin’s first romance, ‘Stephanette’, was published under the pseudonym
“Bernard Seigny,” in 1884; then followed ‘Victor Pavie (1887); Noellet
(1890); A l’Aventure (1891) and Sicile (1892)’, two books on Italy, of
which the last mentioned was likewise crowned by the French Academy;
‘La Legende de Sainte-Bega (1892); La Sarcelle Bleue (1892); Madame
Corentine (1893); Les Italiens d’aujourd’hui (1894); Humble Amour
(1894); En Province (1896); De toute son Ame (1897)’, a realistic but
moderate romance of a workingman’s life; ‘Les Contes de Perrette (1898);
La Terre qui Meurt (1899); Le Guide de l’Empereur (1901); Les Oberle
(1902), a tale from Alsace of to-day, sketching the political situation,
approximately correct, and lately adapted for the stage; ‘Donatienne’
(1903).

With Bazin literary life does not become a mirage obscuring the vision
of real life. Before being an author Rene Bazin is a man, with a family
attached to the country, rooted in the soil; a guaranty of the dignity
of his work as well as of the writer, and a safeguard against many
extravagances. He has remained faithful to his province. He lives in the
attractive city of Angers. When he leaves it, it is for a little tour
through France, or a rare journey-once to Sicily and once to Spain.
He is seldom to be met on the Parisian boulevards. Not that he has any
prejudice against Paris, or fails to appreciate the tone of its society,
or the quality of its diversions; but he is conscious that he has
nothing to gain from a residence in the capital, but, on the contrary,
would run a risk of losing his intense originality and the freshness of
his genius.

                  E. LAVISSE
               de l’Academie Francaise.



THE INK-STAIN




BOOK 1.




CHAPTER I. THE ACCIDENT

All I have to record of the first twenty-three years of my life is the
enumeration of them. A simple bead-roll is enough; it represents their
family likeness and family monotony.

I lost my parents when I was very young. I can hardly recall their
faces; and I should keep no memories of La Chatre, our home, had I not
been brought up quite close to it. It was sold, however, and lost to
me, like all the rest. Yes, fate is hard, sometimes. I was born at La
Chatre; the college of La Chatre absorbed eighteen years of my life. Our
head master used to remark that college is a second home; whereby I have
always fancied he did some injustice to the first.

My school-days were hardly over when my uncle and guardian, M. Brutus
Mouillard, solicitor, of Bourges, packed me off to Paris to go through
my law course. I took three years over it: At the end of that time,
just eighteen months ago, I became a licentiate, and “in the said
capacity”--as my uncle would say took an oath that transformed me into
a probationary barrister. Every Monday, regularly, I go to sign my name
among many others on an attendance list, and thereby, it appears, I am
establishing a claim upon the confidence of the widow and the orphan.

In the intervals of my legal studies I have succeeded in taking my Arts
Degree. At present I am seeking that of Doctor of Law. My examinations
have been passed meritoriously, but without brilliance; my tastes run
too much after letters. My professor, M. Flamaran, once told me the
truth of the matter: “Law, young man, is a jealous mistress; she allows
no divided affection.” Are my affections divided? I think not, and I
certainly do not confess any such thing to M. Mouillard, who has not yet
forgotten what he calls “that freak” of a Degree in Arts. He builds some
hopes upon me, and, in return, it is natural that I should build a few
upon him.

Really, that sums up all my past: two certificates! A third diploma
in prospect and an uncle to leave me his money--that is my future. Can
anything more commonplace be imagined?

I may add that I never felt any temptation at all to put these things
on record until to-day, the tenth of December, 1884. Nothing had ever
happened to me; my history was a blank. I might have died thus. But who
can foresee life’s sudden transformations? Who can foretell that the
skein, hitherto so tranquilly unwound, will not suddenly become tangled?
This afternoon a serious adventure befell me. It agitated me at the
time, and it agitates me still more upon reflection. A voice within me
whispers that this cause will have a series of effects, that I am on
the threshold of an epoch, or, as the novelists say, a crisis in my
existence. It has struck me that I owe it to myself to write my
Memoirs, and that is the reason why I have just purchased this brown
memorandum-book in the Odeon Arcade. I intend to make a detailed
and particular entry of the event, and, as time goes on, of its
consequences, if any should happen to flow from it.

“Flow from it” is just the phrase; for it has to do with a blot of ink.

My blot of ink is hardly dry. It is a large one, too; of abnormal shape,
and altogether monstrous, whether one considers it from the physical
side or studies it in its moral bearings. It is very much more than an
accident; it has something of the nature of an outrage. It was at
the National Library that I perpetrated it, and upon--But I must not
anticipate.

I often work in the National Library; not in the main hall, but in that
reserved for literary men who have a claim, and are provided with a
ticket, to use it. I never enter it without a gentle thrill, in which
respect is mingled with satisfied vanity. For not every one who chooses
may walk in. I must pass before the office of the porter, who retains my
umbrella, before I make my way to the solemn beadle who sits just inside
the doorway--a double precaution, attesting to the majesty of the place.
The beadle knows me. He no longer demands my ticket. To be sure, I am
not yet one of those old acquaintances on whom he smiles; but I am
no longer reckoned among those novices whose passport he exacts. An
inclination of his head makes me free of the temple, and says, as
plainly as words, “You are one of us, albeit a trifle young. Walk in,
sir.”

And in I walk, and admire on each occasion the vast proportions of the
interior, the severe decoration of the walls, traced with broad foliated
pattern and wainscoted with books of reference as high as hand can
reach; the dread tribunal of librarians and keepers in session down
yonder, on a kind of judgment-seat, at the end of the avenue whose
carpet deadens all footsteps; and behind again, that holy of holies
where work the doubly privileged--the men, I imagine, who are members
of two or three academies. To right and left of this avenue are rows of
tables and armchairs, where scatters, as caprice has chosen and habit
consecrated, the learned population of the library. Men form the large
majority. Viewed from the rear, as they bend over their work, they
suggest reflections on the ravages wrought by study upon hair-clad
cuticles. For every hirsute Southerner whose locks turn gray without
dropping off, heavens, what a regiment of bald heads! Visitors who look
in through the glass doors see only this aspect of devastation. It gives
a wrong impression. Here and there, at haphazard, you may find a few
women among these men. George Sand used to come here. I don’t know the
names of these successors of hers, nor their business; I have merely
observed that they dress in sober colors, and that each carries a
number of shawls and a thick veil. You feel that love is far from their
thoughts. They have left it outside, perhaps--with the porter.

Several of these learned folk lift their heads as I pass, and follow
me with the dulled eye of the student, an eye still occupied with the
written thought and inattentive to what it looks on. Then, suddenly,
remorse seizes them for their distraction, they are annoyed with me, a
gloomy impatience kindles in their look, and each plunges anew into his
open volume. But I have had time to guess their secret ejaculations:
“I am studying the Origin of Trade Guilds!” “I, the Reign of Louis the
Twelfth!” “I, the Latin Dialects!” “I, the Civil Status of Women
under Tiberius!” “I am elaborating a new translation of Horace!” “I am
fulminating a seventh article, for the Gazette of Atheism and Anarchy,
on the Russian Serfs!” And each one seems to add, “But what is thy
business here, stripling? What canst thou write at thy age? Why
troublest thou the peace of these hallowed precincts?” My business,
sirs? Alas! it is the thesis for my doctor’s degree. My uncle and
venerated guardian, M. Brutus Mouillard, solicitor, of Bourges,
is urging me to finish it, demands my return to the country, grows
impatient over the slow toil of composition. “Have done with theories,”
 he writes, “and get to business! If you must strive for this degree,
well and good; but what possessed you to choose such a subject?”

I must own that the subject of my thesis in Roman law has been
artistically chosen with a view to prolonging my stay in Paris: “On the
‘Latini Juniani.’” Yes, gentle reader, a new subject, almost incapable
of elucidation, having no connection--not the remotest--with the
exercise of any profession whatsoever, entirely devoid of practical
utility. The trouble it gives me is beyond conception.

It is true that I intersperse my researches with some more attractive
studies, and one or two visits to the picture-galleries, and more than
an occasional evening at the theatre. My uncle knows nothing of this.
To keep him soothed I am careful to get my reader’s ticket renewed every
month, and every month to send him the ticket just out of date, signed
by M. Leopold Delisle. He has a box full of them; and in the simplicity
of his heart Monsieur Mouillard has a lurking respect for this nephew,
this modern young anchorite, who spends his days at the National
Library, his nights with Gaius, wholly absorbed in the Junian Latins,
and indifferent to whatsoever does not concern the Junian Latins in this
Paris which my uncle still calls the Modern Babylon.

I came down this morning in the most industrious mood, when the
misfortune befell. Close by the sanctum where the librarians sit are two
desks where you write down the list of the books you want. I was doing
so at the right-hand desk, on which abuts the first row of tables. Hence
all the mischief. Had I written at the left-hand desk, nothing would
have happened. But no; I had just set down as legibly as possible the
title, author, and size of a certain work on Roman Antiquities, when, in
replacing the penholder, which is attached there by a small brass chain,
some inattentiveness, some want of care, my ill-luck, in short, led
me to set it down in unstable equilibrium on the edge of the desk. It
tumbled-I heard the little chain rattle-it tumbled farther-then stopped
short. The mischief was done. The sudden jerk, as it pulled up, had
detached an enormous drop of ink from the point of the pen, and that
drop--Ah! I can see him yet, as he rose from the shadow of the desk,
that small, white-haired man, so thin and so very angry!

“Clumsy idiot! To blot an Early Text!”

I leaned over and looked. Upon the page of folio, close to an
illuminated capital, the black drop had flattened itself. Around the
original sphere had been shed splashes of all conceivable shapes-rays,
rockets, dotted lines, arrowheads, all the freakish impromptu of chaos.
Next, the slope lending its aid, the channels had drained into one, and
by this time a black rivulet was crawling downward to the margin. One or
two readers near had risen, and now eyed me like examining magistrates.
I waited for an outbreak, motionless, dazed, muttering words that did
not mend the case at all. “What a pity! Oh, I’m so sorry! If I had only
known--” The student of the Early Text stood motionless as I. Together
we watched the ink trickle. Suddenly, summoning his wits together, he
burrowed with feverish haste in his morocco writing-case, pulled out
a sheet of blotting-paper, and began to soak up the ink with the
carefulness of a Sister of Mercy stanching a wound. I seized the
opportunity to withdraw discreetly to the third row of tables, where
the attendant had just deposited my books. Fear is so unreasoning. Very
likely by saying no more about it, by making off and hiding my head
in my hands, like a man crushed by the weight of his remorse, I might
disarm this wrath. I tried to think so. But I knew well enough that
there was more to come. I had hardly taken my seat when, looking up,
I could see between my fingers the little man standing up and
gesticulating beside one of the keepers. At one moment he rapped the
damning page with his forefinger; the next, he turned sidewise and flung
out a hand toward me; and I divined, without hearing a word, all the
bitterness of his invective. The keeper appeared to take it seriously.
I felt myself blushing. “There must be,” thought I, “some law against
ink-stains, some decree, some regulation, something drawn up for the
protection of Early Texts. And the penalty is bound to be terrible,
since it has been enacted by the learned; expulsion, no doubt, besides a
fine--an enormous fine. They are getting ready over there to fleece me.
That book of reference they are consulting is of course the catalogue of
the sale where this treasure was purchased. I shall have to replace the
Early Text! O Uncle Mouillard!”

I sat there, abandoned to my sad reflections, when one of the
attendants, whom I had not seen approaching, touched me on the shoulder.

“The keeper wishes to speak to you.”

I rose up and went. The terrible reader had gone back to his seat.

“It was you, sir, I believe, who blotted the folio just now?”

“It was, sir.”

“You did not do so on purpose?”

“Most certainly not, sir! I am indeed sorry for he accident.”

“You ought to be. The volume is almost unique; and the blot, too, for
that matter. I never saw such a blot! Will you, please, leave me your
Christian name, surname, profession, and address?”

I wrote down, “Fabien Jean Jacques Mouillard, barrister, 91 Rue de
Rennes.”

“Is that all?” I asked.

“Yes, sir, that is all for the present. But I warn you that Monsieur
Charnot is exceedingly annoyed. It might be as well to offer him some
apology.”

“Monsieur Charnot?”

“Yes. It is Monsieur Charnot, of the Institute, who was reading the
Early Text.”

“Merciful Heavens!” I ejaculated, as I went back to my seat; “this must
be the man of whom my tutor spoke, the other day! Monsieur Flamaran
belongs to the Academy of Moral and Political Science, the other to the
Institute of Inscriptions and the Belles-Lettres. Charnot? Yes, I
have those two syllables in my ear. The very last time I saw
Monsieur Flamaran he let fall ‘my very good friend Charnot, of the
‘Inscriptions.’ They are friends. And I am in a pretty situation;
threatened with I don’t know what by the Library--for the keeper told me
positively that this was all ‘for the present’--but not for the future;
threatened to be disgraced in my tutor’s eyes; and all because this
learned man’s temper is upset.

“I must apologize. Let me see, what could I say to Monsieur Charnot? As
a matter of fact, it’s to the Early Text that I ought to apologize. I
have spilled no ink over Monsieur Charnot. He is spotless, collar and
cuffs; the blot, the splashes, all fell on the Text. I will say to him,
‘Sir, I am exceedingly sorry to have interrupted you so unfortunately
in your learned studies! ‘Learned studies’ will tickle his vanity, and
should go far to appease him.”

I was on the point of rising. M. Charnot anticipated me.

Grief is not always keenest when most recent. As he approached I saw he
was more irritated and upset than at the moment of the accident. Above
his pinched, cleanshaven chin his lips shot out with an angry twitch.
The portfolio shook under his arm. He flung me a look full of tragedy
and went on his way.

Well, well; go your way, M. Charnot! One doesn’t offer apologies to a
man in his wrath. You shall have them by-and-bye, when we meet again.




CHAPTER II. THE JUNIAN LATINS

                       December 28, 1884.

This afternoon I paid M. Flamaran a visit. I had been thinking about
it for the last week, as I wanted him to help my Junian Latins out of a
mess. I am acquiring a passion for that interesting class of freedmen.
And really it is only natural. These Junian Latins were poor slaves,
whose liberation was not recognized by the strict and ancient laws of
Rome, because their masters chose to liberate them otherwise than by
‘vindicta, census, or testamentum’. On this account they lost their
privileges, poor victims of the legislative intolerance of the haughty
city. You see, it begins to be touching, already. Then came on the scene
Junius Norbanus, consul by rank, and a true democrat, who brought in a
law, carried it, and gave them their freedom. In exchange, they gave him
immortality. Henceforward, did a slave obtain a few kind words from his
master over his wine? he was a Junian Latin. Was he described as
‘filius meus’ in a public document? Junian Latin. Did he wear the cap
of liberty, the pileus, at his master’s funeral? Junian Latin. Did
he disembowel his master’s corpse? Junian Latin, once more, for his
trouble.

What a fine fellow this Norbanus must have been! What an eye for
everything, down to the details of a funeral procession, in which he
could find an excuse for emancipation! And that, too, in the midst of
the wars of Marius and Sylla in which he took part. I can picture
him seated before his tent, the evening after the battle. Pensive, he
reclines upon his shield as he watches the slave who is grinding notches
out of his sword. His eyes fill with tears, and he murmurs, “When peace
is made, my faithful Stychus, I shall have a pleasant surprise for you.
You shall hear talk of the Lex Junia Norband, I promise you!”

Is not this a worthy subject for picture or statue in a competition for
the Prix de Rome?

A man so careful of details must have assigned a special dress to these
special freedmen of his creation; for at Rome even freedom had its
livery. What was this dress? Was there one at all? No authority that
I know of throws any light on the subject. Still one hope remains: M.
Flamaran. He knows so many things, he might even know this.

M. Flamaran comes from the south-Marseilles, I think. He is not a
specialist in Roman law; but he is encyclopedic, which comes to the same
thing. He became known while still young, and deservedly; few lawyers
are so clear, so safe, so lucid. He is an excellent lecturer, and his
opinions are in demand. Yet he owes much of his fame to the works which
he has not written. Our fathers, in their day, used to whisper to one
another in the passages of the Law School, “Have you heard the news?
Flamaran is going to bring out the second volume of his great work. He
means to publish his lectures. He has in the press a treatise which will
revolutionize the law of mortgages; he has been working twenty years at
it; a masterpiece, I assure you.” Day follows day; no book appears,
no treatise is published, and all the while M. Flamaran grows in
reputation. Strange phenomenon! like the aloe in the Botanical Gardens.
The blossoming of the aloe is an event. “Only think!” says the gaping
public, “a flower which has taken twenty springs, twenty summers, twenty
autumns, and twenty winters to make up its mind to open!” And meanwhile
the roses bloom unnoticed by the town. But M. Flamaran’s case is still
more strange. Every year it is whispered that he is about to bloom
afresh; he never does bloom; and his reputation flourishes none the
less. People make lists of the books he might have written. Lucky
author!

M. Flamaran is a professor of the old school, stern, and at examination
a terror to the candidates. Clad in cap and gown, he would reject his
own son. Nothing will serve. Recommendations defeat their object. An
unquestioned Roumanian ancestry, an extraction indisputably Japanese,
find no more favor in his eyes than an assumed stammer, a sham deafness,
or a convalescent pallor put on for the occasion. East and west are
alike in his sight. The retired registrar, the pensioned usher aspiring
late in life to some petty magistrature, are powerless to touch his
heart. For him in vain does the youthful volunteer allow his uniform to
peep out beneath his student’s gown: he will not profit by the patriotic
indulgence he counted on inspiring. His sayings in the examination-room
are famous, and among them are some ghastly pleasantries. Here is one,
addressed to a victim: “And you, sir, are a law student, while our
farmers are in want of hands!”

For my own part I won his favor under circumstances that I never shall
forget. I was in for my first examination. We were discussing, or rather
I was allowing him to lecture on, the law of wardship, and nodding my
assent to his learned elucidations. Suddenly he broke off and asked,
“How many opinions have been formulated upon this subject?”

“Two, sir.”

“One is absurd. Which? Beware how you give the wrong answer!”

I considered for three agonizing seconds, and hazarded a guess. “The
first, sir.” I had guessed right. We were friends. At bottom the
professor is a capital fellow; kindly, so long as the dignity of
the Code is not in question, or the extent of one’s legal knowledge;
proverbially upright and honorable in his private life.

At home he may be seen at his window tending his canaries, which, he
says, is no change of occupation. To get to his house I have only to go
by my favorite road through the Luxembourg. I am soon at his door.

“Is Monsieur Flamaran at home?”

The old servant who opened the door eyed me solemnly. So many young
freshmen come and pester her master under the pretext of paying their
respects. Their respects, indeed! They would bore him to death if he
had to see them all. The old woman inferred, probably from my moustache,
that I had taken at least my bachelor’s degree.

“I think he is.”

He was very much at home in his overheated study, where he sat wrapped
up in a dressing-gown and keeping one eye shut to strengthen the other.

After a moment’s hesitation he recognized me, and held out his hand.

“Ah! my Junian Latin. How are you getting on?”

“I am all right, sir; it’s my Junian Latins who are not getting on.”

“You don’t say so. We must look into that. But before we begin--I forget
where you come from. I like to know where people come from.”

“From La Chatre. But I spend my vacations at Bourges with my Uncle
Mouillard.”

“Yes, yes, Mouillart with a t, isn’t it?”

“No, with a d.”

“I asked, you know, because I once knew a General Mouillart who had been
through the Crimea, a charming man. But he can not have been a relative,
for his name ended with a t.”

My good tutor spoke with a delightful simplicity, evidently wishing to
be pleasant and to show some interest in me.

“Are you married, young man?”

“No, sir; but I have no conscientious objections.”

“Marry young. Marriage is the salvation of young men. There must be
plenty of pretty heiresses in Bourges.”

“Heiresses, yes. As to their looks, at this distance--”

“Yes, I understand, at this distance of course you can’t tell. You
should do as I did; make inquiries, go and see. I went all the way to
Forez myself to look for my wife.”

“Madame Flamaran comes from Forez?”

“Just so; I stayed there a fortnight, fourteen days exactly, in the
middle of term-time, and brought back Sidonie. Bourges is a nice town.”

“Yes, in summer.”

“Plenty of trees. I remember a grand action I won there. One of my
learned colleagues was against me. We had both written opinions,
diametrically opposed, of course. But I beat him--my word, yes!”

“I dare say.”

“My boy, there was nothing left of him. Do you know the case?”

“No.”

“A magnificent case! My notes must be somewhere about; I will get them
out for you.”

The good man beamed. Evidently he had not had a talk all day, and felt
he must expand and let himself out to somebody. I appeared in the nick
of time, and came in for all his honey. He rose, went to a bookcase,
ran his eye along a shelf, took down a volume, and began, in a low tone:
“‘Cooperation is the mighty lever upon which an effete society relies to
extricate itself from its swaddling-clothes and take a loftier flight.’
Tut, tut! What stuff is this? I beg your pardon. I was reading from a
work on moral philosophy. Where the deuce is my opinion?”

He found it and, text in hand, began a long account of the action, with
names, dates, moments of excitement, and many quotations in extenso.

“Yes, my young friend, two hundred and eighteen thousand francs did I
win in that action for Monsieur Prebois, of Bourges; you know Prebois,
the manufacturer?”

“By name.”

At last he put the note-book back on its shelf, and deigned to remember
that I had come about the Junian Latins.

“In which of the authorities do you find a difficulty?”

“My difficulty lies in the want of authorities, sir, I wish to find out
whether the Junian Latins had not a special dress.”

“To be sure.” He scratched his head. “Gaius says nothing on the point?”

“No.”

“Papinian?”

“No.”

“Justinian?”

“No.”

“Then I see only one resource.”

“What is that?”

“Go to see Charnot.”

I felt myself growing pale, and stammered, with a piteous look:

“Monsieur Charnot, of the Acad--”

“The Academy of Inscriptions; an intimate friend of mine, who will
welcome you like a son, for he has none himself, poor man!”

“But perhaps the question is hardly important enough for me to trouble
him like this--”

“Hey? Not important enough? All new questions are important. Charnot
specializes on coins. Coins and costumes are all one. I will write to
tell him you are coming.”

“I beg, sir--”

“Nonsense; Nonsense; I’ll write him this very evening. He will be
delighted to see you. I know him well, you understand. He is like me; he
likes industrious young men.”

M. Flamaran held out his hand.

“Good-by, young man. Marry as soon as you have taken your degree.”

I did not recover from the shock till I was halfway across the
Luxembourg Gardens, near the Tennis Court, when I sat down, overcome.
See what comes of enthusiasm and going to call on your tutor! Ah, young
three-and-twenty, when will you learn wisdom?




CHAPTER III. AN APOLOGY

                            9 P.M.

I have made up my mind. I shall go to see M. Charnot. But before that
I shall go to his publisher’s and find out something about this famous
man’s works, of which I know nothing whatever.

                         December 31st

He lives in the Rue de l’Universite.

I have called. I have seen him. I owe this to an accident, to the
servant’s forgetting her orders.

As I entered, on the stroke of five, he was spinning a spiral twist of
paper beneath the lamplight to amuse his daughter--he a member of the
Institute, she a girl of eighteen. So that is how these big-wigs employ
their leisure moments!

The library where I found them was full of book cases-open bookcases,
bookcases with glass doors, tall bookcases, dwarf bookcases, bookcases
standing on legs, bookcases standing on the floor--of statuettes yellow
with smoke, of desks crowded with paper-weights, paper-knives, pens, and
inkstands of “artistic” pat terns. He was seated at the table, with his
back to the fire, his arm lifted, and a hairpin between his finger
and thumb--the pivot round which his paper twist was spinning briskly.
Across the table stood his daughter, leaning forward with her chin on
her hands and her white teeth showing as she laughed for laughing’s
sake, to give play to her young spirits and gladden her old father’s
heart as he gazed on her, delighted.

I must confess it made a pretty picture; and M. Charnot at that moment
was extremely unlike the M. Charnot who had confronted me from behind
the desk.

I was not left long to contemplate.

The moment I lifted the ‘portiere’ the girl jumped up briskly and
regarded me with a touch of haughtiness, meant, I think, to hide a
slight confusion. To compare small things with great, Diana must have
worn something of that look at sight of Actaeon. M. Charnot did not
rise, but hearing somebody enter, turned half-round in his armchair,
while his eyes, still dazzled with the lamplight, sought the intruder in
the partial shadow of the room.

I felt myself doubly uneasy in the presence of this reader of the Early
Text and of this laughing girl.

“Sir,” I began, “I owe you an apology--”

He recognized me. The girl moved a step.

“Stay, Jeanne, stay. We shall not take long. This gentleman has come to
offer an apology.”

This was a cruel beginning.

She thought so, too, perhaps, and withdrew discreetly into a dim corner,
near the bookcase at the end of the room.

“I have felt deep regret, sir, for that accident the other day--I
set down the penholder clumsily, in equilibrium--unstable
equilibrium--besides, I had no notion there was a reader behind the
desk. Of course, if I had been aware, I should--I should have acted
differently.”

M. Charnot allowed me to flounder on with the contemplative satisfaction
of an angler who has got a fish at the end of his line. He seemed to
find me so very stupid, that as a matter of fact I became stupid. And
then, there was no answer--not a word. Silence, alas! is not the reproof
of kings alone. It does pretty well for everybody. I stumbled on two or
three more phrases quite as flatly infelicitous, and he received them
with the same faint smile and the same silence.

To escape from my embarrassment:

“Sir,” I said, “I came also to ask for a piece of information.”

“I am at your service, sir.”

“Monsieur Flamaran has probably written to you on the matter?”

“Flamaran?”

“Yes, three days ago.”

“I have received no letter; have I, Jeanne?”

“No, father.”

“This is not the first time that my excellent colleague has promised
to write a letter and has not written it. Never mind, sir; your own
introduction is sufficient.”

“Sir, I am about to take my doctor’s degree.”

“In arts?”

“No, in law; but I have a bachelor’s degree in arts.”

“You will follow it up with a degree in medicine, no doubt?”

“Really, sir--”

“Why--Why not, since you are collecting these things? You have, then, a
bent toward literature?”

“So I have been told.”

“A pronounced inclination--hey? to scribble verse.”

“Ah, yes!”

“The old story; the family driving a lad into law; his heart leaning
toward letters; the Digest open on the table, and the drawers stuffed
with verses! Isn’t that so?”

I bowed. He glanced toward his daughter.

“Well, sir, I confess to you that I don’t understand--don’t understand
at all--this behavior of yours. Why not follow your natural bent? You
youngsters nowadays--I mean no offence--you youngsters have no longer
any mind of your own. Take my case; I was seventeen when I began to take
an interest in numismatics. My family destined me for the Stamp Office;
yes, sir, the Stamp Office. I had against me two grandfathers, two
grandmothers, my father, my mother, and six uncles--all furious. I held
out, and that has led me to the Institute. Hey, Jeanne?”

Mademoiselle Jeanne had returned to the table, where she was standing
when I entered, and seemed, after a moment, to busy herself in arranging
the books scattered in disarray on the green cloth. But she had a
secret object--to regain possession of the paper spiral that lay there
neglected, its pin sticking up beside the lamp-stand. Her light hand,
hovering hither and thither, had by a series of cunning manoeuvres
got the offending object behind a pile of duodecimos, and was now
withdrawing it stealthily among the inkstands and paperweights.

M. Charnot interrupted this little stratagem.

She answered very prettily, with a slight toss of the head:

“But, father, not everybody can be in the Institute.”

“Far from it, Jeanne. This gentleman, for instance, devotes himself to
one method of inking parchment that never will make him my colleague.
Doctor of Laws and Master of Arts,--I presume, sir, you are going to be
a notary?”

“Excuse me, an advocate.”

“I was sure of it. Jeanne, my dear, in country families it is a standing
dilemma; if not a notary, then an advocate; if not an advocate, then a
notary.”

M. Charnot spoke with an exasperating half-smile.

I ought to have laughed, to be sure; I ought to have shown sense enough
at any rate to hold my tongue and not to answer the gibes of this
vindictive man of learning. Instead, I was stupid enough to be nettled
and to lose my head.

“Well,” I retorted, “I must have a paying profession. That one or
another--what does it matter? Not everybody can belong to the Institute,
as your daughter remarked; not everybody can afford himself the luxury
of publishing, at his own expense, works that sell twenty-seven copies
or so.”

I expected a thunderbolt, an explosion. Not a bit of it. M. Charnot
smiled outright with an air of extreme geniality.

“I perceive, sir, that you are given to gossiping with the booksellers.”

“Why, yes, sir, now and then.”

“It’s a very pretty trait, at your age, to be already so strong in
bibliography. You will permit me, nevertheless, to add something to your
present stock of notions. A large sale is one thing to look at, but
not the right thing. Twenty-seven copies of a book, when read by
twenty-seven men of intelligence, outweigh a popular success. Would you
believe that one of my friends had no more than eight copies printed
of a mathematical treatise? Three of these he has given away. The other
five are still unsold. And that man, sir, is the first mathematician in
France!”

Mademoiselle Jeanne had taken it differently. With lifted chin and
reddened cheek she shot this sentence at me from the edge of a lip
disdainfully puckered:

“There are such things as ‘successes of esteem,’ sir!”

Alas! I knew that well, and I had no need of this additional lesson to
teach me the rudeness of my remark, to make me feel that I was a brute,
an idiot, hopelessly lost in the opinion of M. Charnot and his daughter.
It was cruel, all the same. Nothing was left for me but to hurry my
departure. I got up to go.

“But,” said M. Charnot in the smoothest of tones, “I do not think we
have yet discussed the question that brought you here.”

“I should hesitate, sir, to trespass further on your time.”

“Never mind that. Your question concerns?”

“The costume of the Latini Juniani.”

“Difficult to answer, like most questions of dress. Have you read the
work, in seventeen volumes, by the German, Friedchenhausen?”

“No.”

“You must have read, at any rate, Smith, the Englishman, on ancient
costume?”

“Nor that either. I only know Italian.”

“Well, then, look through two or three treatises on numismatics, the
‘Thesaurus Morellianus’, or the ‘Praestantiora Numismata’, of Valliant,
or Banduri, or Pembrock, or Pellerin. You may chance upon a scent.”

“Thank you, thank you, sir!”

He saw me to the door.

As I turned to go I noticed that his daughter was standing motionless
still, with the face of an angry Diana. She held between her fingers the
recovered spiral.

I found myself in the street.

I could not have been more clumsy, more ill-bred, or more unfortunate. I
had come to make an apology and had given further offence. Just like
my luck! And the daughter, too--I had hurt her feelings. Still, she had
stood up for me; she had said to her father, “Not every one can be in
the Institute,” evidently meaning, “Why are you torturing this poor
young man? He is bashful and ill at ease. I feel sorry for him.”
 Sorry--yes; no doubt she felt sorry for me at first. But then I came out
with that impertinence about the twenty-seven copies, and by this time
she hates me beyond a doubt. Yes, she hates me. It is too painful to
think of.

Mademoiselle Charnot will probably remain but a stranger to me, a
fugitive apparition in my path of life; yet her anger lies heavy upon
me, and the thought of those disdainful lips pursues me.

I had rarely been more thoroughly disgusted with myself, and with all
about me. I needed something to divert me, to distract me, to make me
forget, and so I set off for home by the longest way, going down the Rue
de Beaune to the Seine.

I declare, we get some perfect winter days in Paris! Just now, the folks
who sit indoors believe that the sun is down and have lighted their
lamps; but outside, the sky--a pale, rain-washed blue--is streaked with
broad rays of rose-pink. It is freezing, and the frost has sprinkled
diamonds everywhere, on the trees, the roofs, the parapets, even on the
cabmen’s hats, that gather each a sparkling cockade as they pass along
through the mist. The river is running in waves, white-capped here and
there. On the penny steamers no one but the helmsman is visible. But
what a crowd on the Pont de Carrousel! Fur cuffs and collars pass and
repass on the pavements; the roadway trembles beneath the endless line
of Batignolles--Clichy omnibuses and other vehicles. Every one seems in
a hurry. The pedestrians are brisk, the drivers dexterous. Two lines of
traffic meet, mingle without jostling, divide again into fresh lines
and are gone like a column of smoke. Although slips are common in this
crowd, its intelligent agility is all its own. Every face is ruddy,
and almost all are young. The number of young men, young maidens, young
wives, is beyond belief, Where are the aged? At home, no doubt, by the
chimney-corner. All the city’s youth is out of doors.

Its step is animated; that is the way of it. It is wide-eyed, and in its
eyes is the sparkle of life. The looks of the young are always full of
the future; they are sure of life. Each has settled his position, his
career, his dream of commonplace well-being. They are all alike; and
they might all be judges, so serious they appear about it. They walk in
pairs, bolt upright, looking neither right nor left, talking little as
they hurry along toward the old Louvre, and are soon swallowed out of
sight in the gathering mist, out of which the gaslights glimmer faintly.

They are all on their way to dine on the right bank.

I am going to dine on the left bank, at Carre’s, where one sees many odd
customers. Farewell, river! Good night, old Charnot! Blessings on you,
Mademoiselle Jeanne!




CHAPTER IV. THE STORY OF SYLVESTRE

                            8 P.M.

I am back in my study. It is very cold; Madame Menin, my housekeeper,
has let the fire out. Hallo! she has left her duster, too, lying on the
manuscript of my essay.

Is it an omen, a presage of that dust which awaits my still unfinished
work? Who can fathom Dame Fortune’s ironic humor?

Eight o’clock.... Counsellor Mouillard has finished his pleadings and
must be sitting down to a game of whist with Counsellors Horlet and
Hublette, of the Court of Bourges. They wait for me to make up the four.
Perish the awful prospect!

And M. Charnot? He, I suppose, is still spinning the paper spiral. How
easily serious people are amused! Perhaps I am a serious person. The
least thing amuses me. By the way, is Mademoiselle Jeanne fair or dark?
Let me try to recollect. Why, fair, of course. I remember the glint of
gold in the little curls about her temples, as she stood by the lamp.
A pleasant face, too; not exactly classic, but rosy and frank; and then
she has that animation which so many pretty women lack.

Madame Menin has forgotten something else. She has forgotten to shut my
window. She has designs upon my life!

I have just shut the window. The night is calm, its stars twinkling
through a haze. The year ends mournfully.

I remember at school once waking suddenly on such a night as this, to
find the moonlight streaming into my eyes. At such a moment it is
always a little hard to collect one’s scattered senses, and take in the
midnight world around, so unhomely, so absolutely still. First I cast
my eyes along the two rows of beds that stretched away down the
dormitory--two parallel lines in long perspective; my comrades huddled
under their blankets in shapeless masses, gray or white according as
they lay near or far from the windows; the smoky glimmer of the oil
lamp half-way down the room; and at the end, in the deeper shadows, the
enclosure of yellow curtains surrounding the usher’s bed.

Not a sound about me; all was still. But without, my ear, excited and
almost feverishly awake, caught the sound of a strange call, very sweet,
again and again repeated--fugitive notes breathing appeal, tender
and troubled. Now they grew quite distant, and I heard no more than a
phantom of sound; now they came near, passed over my head, and faded
again into the distance. The moon’s clear rays invited me to clear up
the mystery. I sprang from my bed, and ran in my nightshirt to open the
window. It was about eleven o’clock. Together the keen night-air and
the moonlight wrapped me round, thrilling me with delight. The large
courtyard lay deserted with its leafless poplars and spiked railings.
Here and there a grain of sand sparkled. I raised my eyes, and from one
constellation to another I sought the deep blue of heaven in vain; not
a shadow upon it, not one dark wing outlined. Yet all the while the
same sad and gentle cry wandered and was lost in air, the chant of an
invisible soul which seemed in want of me, and had perhaps awakened me.

The thought came upon me that it was the soul of my mother calling to
me--my mother, whose voice was soft and very musical.

“I am caring for thee,” said the voice. “I am caring for thee; I can see
thee,” it said, “I can see thee. I love thee! I love thee!”

“Reveal thyself!” I called back. “Oh, mother, reveal thyself!” And I
strove feverishly to catch sight of her, following the voice as it swept
around in circles; and seeing nothing, I burst into tears.

Suddenly I was seized roughly by the ear.

“What are you doing here, you young rascal? Are you mad? The wind is
blowing right on to my bed. Five hundred lines!”

The usher, in nightdress and slippers, was rolling his angry eyes on me.

“Yes, sir; certainly, sir! But don’t you hear her?”

“Who is it?”

“My mother.”

He looked to see whether I were awake; cocked his head to one side
and listened; then shut the window angrily and went off shrugging his
shoulders.

“It’s only the plovers flying about the moon,” said he. “Five hundred
lines!”

I did my five hundred lines. They taught me that dreaming was illegal
and dangerous, but they neither convinced nor cured me.

I still believe that there are scattered up and down in nature voices
that speak, but which few hear; just as there are millions of flowers
that bloom unseen by man. It is sad for those who catch a hint of it.
Perforce they come back and seek the hidden springs. They waste their
youth and vigor upon empty dreams, and in return for the fleeting
glimpses they have enjoyed, for the perfect phrase half caught and
lost again, will have given up the intercourse of their kind, and even
friendship itself. Yes, it is sad for the schoolboys who open their
windows to gaze at the moon, and never drop the habit! They will find
themselves, all too soon, solitaries in the midst of life, desolate as I
am desolate tonight, beside my dead fire.

No friend will come to knock at my door; not one. I have a few comrades
to whom I give that name. We do not loathe one another. At need they
would help me. But we seldom meet. What should they do here? Dreamers
make no confidences; they shrivel up into themselves and are caught away
on the four winds of heaven. Politics drive them mad; gossip fails to
interest them; the sorrows they create have no remedy save the joys that
they invent; they are natural only when alone, and talk well only to
themselves.

The only man who can put up with this moody contrariety of mine is
Sylvestre Lampron. He is nearly twenty years older than I. That explains
his forbearance. Besides, between an artist like him and a dreamer like
myself there is only the difference of handiwork. He translates his
dreams. I waste mine; but both dream. Dear old Lampron! Kindly, stalwart
heart! He has withstood that hardening of the moral and physical fibre
which comes over so many men as they near their fortieth year. He
shows a brave front to work and to life. He is cheerful, with the manly
cheerfulness of a noble heart resigned to life’s disillusions.

When I enter his home, I nearly always find him sitting before a
small ground-glass window in the corner of his studio, bent over some
engraving. I have leave to enter at all hours. He is free not to stir
from his work. “Good-day,” he calls out, without raising his head,
without knowing for certain who has come in, and goes on with the
engraving he has in hand. I settle down at the end of the room, on
the sofa with the faded cover, and, until Lampron deigns to grant me
audience, I am free to sleep, or smoke, or turn over the wonderful
drawings that lean against the walls. Among them are treasures beyond
price; for Lampron is a genius whose only mistake is to live and act
with modesty, so that as yet people only say that he has “immense
talent.” No painter or engraver of repute--and he is both--has served a
more conscientious apprenticeship, or sets greater store on thoroughness
in his art. His drawing is correct beyond reproach--a little stiff, like
the early painters. You can guess from his works his partiality for the
old masters--Perugino, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Memling, Holbein--who,
though not the masters in fashion, will always be masters in vigor of
outline, directness, in simple grace, and genuine feeling. He has copied
in oils, water-colors, pen, or pencil, nearly all the pictures of these
masters in the Louvre, in Germany, in Holland, and especially in Italy,
where he lived for many years. With tastes such as his came the habit,
or rather the fixed determination, never to paint or engrave any but
sacred subjects. Puffs and cliques are his abomination. His ideal is
the archaic rendered by modern methods. An artist of this type can but
obtain the half-grudging esteem of his own profession, and of the few
critics who really understand something about art. Gladly, and with
absolute disdain, he leaves to others the applause of the mob, the
gilded patronage of American purchasers, and the right to wear lace
cuffs. In short, in an age when the artist is often half a manufacturer
and half a charlatan, he is an artist only.

Now and then he is rich, but never for long. Half of his earnings goes
in alms; half into the pockets of his mendicant brethren. They hear the
gold jingle before it is counted, and run with outstretched palms. Each
is in the depths of misfortune; on the eve of ascending the fatal slope;
lost, unless the helpful hand of Lampron will provide, saved if he will
lend wherewithal to buy a block of marble, to pay a model, to dine that
evening. He lends--I should say gives; the words mean the same in many
societies. Of all that he has gained, fame alone remains, and even this
he tries to do without--modest, retiring, shunning all entertainments.
I believe he would often be without the wherewithal to live were it not
for his mother, whom he supports, and who does him the kindness to need
something to live on. Madame Lampron does not hoard; she only fills the
place of those dams of cut turf which the peasants build in the channels
of the Berry in spring; the water passes over them, beneath them, even
through them, but still a little is left for the great droughts.

I love my friend Lampron, though fully aware of his superiority. His
energy sets me up, his advice strengthens me, he peoples for me the vast
solitude of Paris.

Suppose I go to see him? A lonely watch to-night would be gloomier than
usual. The death of the year brings gloomy thoughts, the thirty-first of
December, St. Sylvester’s day--St. Sylvester! Why, that is his birthday!
Ungrateful friend, to give no thought to it! Quick! my coat, my stick,
my hat, and let me run to see these two early birds before they seek
their roost.

When I entered the studio, Lampron was so deep in his work that he did
not hear me. The large room, lighted only in one corner, looked weird
enough. Around me, and among the medley of pictures and casts and the
piles of canvases stacked against the wall, the eye encountered only
a series of cinder-gray tints and undetermined outlines casting long
amorphous shadows half-way across the ceiling. A draped lay figure
leaning against a door seemed to listen to the whistling of the wind
outside; a large glass bay opened upon the night. Nothing was alive in
this part of the room, nothing alight except a few rare glints upon
the gold of the frames, and the blades of two crossed swords. Only in
a corner, at the far end, at a distance exaggerated by the shadows, sat
Lampron engraving, solitary, motionless, beneath the light of a lamp.
His back was toward me. The lamp’s rays threw a strong light on his
delicate hand, on the workmanlike pose of his head, which it surrounded
with a nimbus, and on a painting--a woman’s head--which he was copying.
He looked superb like that, and I thought how doubly tempted Rembrandt
would have been by the deep significance as well as by the chiaroscuro
of this interior.

I stamped my foot. Lampron started, and turned half around, narrowing
his eyes as he peered into the darkness.

“Ah, it’s you,” he said. He rose and came quickly toward me, as if to
prevent me from approaching the table.

“You don’t wish me to look?”

He hesitated a moment.

“After all, why not?” he answered.

The copper plate was hardly marked with a few touches of the needle. He
turned the reflector so as to throw all its rays upon the painting.

“O Lampron, what a charming head!”

It was indeed a lovely head; an Italian girl, three quarter face,
painted after the manner of Leonardo, with firm but delicate touches,
and lights and shades of infinite subtlety, and possessing, like all
that master’s portraits of women, a straightforward look that responds
to the gazer’s, but which he seeks to interrogate in vain. The hair,
brown with golden lights, was dressed in smooth plaits above the
temples. The neck, somewhat long, emerged from a dark robe broadly
indicated.

“I do not know this, Sylvestre?”

“No, it’s an old thing.”

“A portrait, of course?”

“My first.”

“You never did better; line, color, life, you have got them all.”

“You need not tell me that! In one’s young days, look you, there are
moments of real inspiration, when some one whispers in the ear and
guides the hand; a lightness of touch, the happy audacity of the
beginner, a wealth of daring never met with again. Would you believe
that I have tried ten times to reproduce that in etching without
success?”

“Why do you try?”

“Yes, that is the question. Why? It’s a bit foolish.”

“You never could find such a model again; that is one reason.”

“Ah, no, you are right. I never could find her again.”

“An Italian of rank? a princess, eh?”

“Something like it.”

“What has become of her?”

“Ah, no doubt what becomes of all princesses. Fabien, my young friend,
you who still see life through fairy-tales, doubtless you imagine her
happy in her lot--wealthy, spoiled, flattered, speaking with disdainful
lips at nightfall, on the terrace of her villa among the great pines, of
the barbarian from across the Alps who painted her portrait twenty years
since; and, in the same sentence, of her--last new frock from Paris?”

“Yes, I see her so--still beautiful.”

“You are good at guessing, Fabien. She is dead, my friend, and that
ideal beauty is now a few white bones at the bottom of a grave.”

“Poor girl!”

Sylvestre had used a sarcastic tone which was not usual with him. He
was contemplating his work with such genuine sadness that I was awed.
I divined that in his past, of which I knew but little, Lampron kept a
sorrow buried that I had all unwittingly revived.

“My friend,” said I, “let that be; I come to wish you many happy
returns.”

“Many happy returns? Ah, yes, my poor mother wished me that this
morning; then I set to work and forgot all about it. I am glad you
came. She would feel hurt, dear soul, if I forgot to pass a bit of this
evening with her. Let us go and find her.”

“With all my heart, Sylvestre, but I, too, have forgotten something.”

“What?”

“I have brought no flowers.”

“Never mind, she has plenty; strong-scented flowers of the south, a
whole basketful, enough to keep a hive of bees or kill a man in
his sleep, which you will. It is a yearly attention from an unhappy
creditor.”

“Debtor, you mean.”

“I mean what I say--a creditor.”

He lifted the lamp. The shadows shifted and ran along the walls like
huge spiders, the crossed swords flashed, the Venus of Milo threw us a
lofty glance, Polyhymnia stood forth pensive and sank back into shadow.
At the door I took the draped lay figure in my arms. “Excuse me,” I
said as I moved it--and we left the studio for Madame Lampron’s little
sitting-room.

She was seated near a small round table, knitting socks, her feet on a
hot-water bottle. Her kind old rough and wrinkled face beamed upon us.
She thrust her needles under the black lace cap she always wore, and
drew them out again almost immediately.

“It needed your presence, Monsieur Mouillard,” said she, “to drag him
from his work.”

“Saint Sylvester’s day, too. It is fearful! Love for his art has changed
your son’s nature, Madame Lampron.”

She gave him a tender look, as on entering the room he bent over the
fire and shook out his half-smoked pipe against the bars, a thing he
never failed to do the moment he entered his mother’s room.

“Dear child!” said she.

Then turning to me:

“You are a good friend, Monsieur Fabien. Never have we celebrated a
Saint Sylvester without you since you came to Paris.”

“Yet this evening, Madame, I have failed in my traditions, I have no
flowers. But Sylvestre tells me that you have just received flowers from
the south, from an unfortunate creditor.”

My words produced an unusual effect upon her. She, who never stopped
knitting to talk or to listen, laid her work upon her knees, and fixed
her eyes upon me, filled with anxiety.

“Has he told you?”

Lampron who was poking the fire, his slippered feet stretched out toward
the hearth, turned his head.

“No, mother, I merely told him that we had received a basket of flowers.
Not much to confide. Yet why should he not know all? Surely he is our
friend enough to know all. He should have known it long since were it
not cruel to share between three a burden that two can well bear.”

She made no answer, and began again to twist the wool between her
needles, but nervously and as if her thoughts were sad.

To change the conversation I told them the story of my twofold mishap
at the National Library and at M. Charnot’s. I tried to be funny, and
fancied I succeeded. The old lady smiled faintly. Lampron remained
grave, and tossed his head impatiently. I summed my story thus:

“Net gain: two enemies, one of them charming.”

“Oh, enemies!” said Sylvestre, “they spring up like weeds. One can not
prevent them, and great sorrows do not come from them. Still, beware of
charming enemies.”

“She hates me, I swear. If you could have seen her!”

“And you?”

“Me? She is nothing to me.”

“Are you sure?”

He put the question gravely, without looking in my face, as he twisted a
paper spill.

I laughed.

“What is the matter with you to-day, misanthrope? I assure you that she
is absolutely indifferent to me. But even were it otherwise, Sylvestre,
where would be the wrong?”

“Wrong? No wrong at all; but I should be anxious for you; I should be
afraid. See here, my friend. I know you well. You are a born man of
letters, a dreamer, an artist in your way. You have to help you on
entering the redoubtable lists of love neither foresight, nor a cool
head, nor determination. You are guided solely by your impressions; by
them you rise or fall. You are no more than a child.”

“I quite agree. What next?”

“What next?” He had risen, and was speaking with unusual vehemence.
“I once knew some one like you, whose first passion, rash, but deep as
yours would be, broke his heart forever. The heart, my friend, is liable
to break, and can not be mended like china.”

Lampron’s mother interrupted him afresh, reproachfully.

“He came to wish you a happy birthday, my child.”

“One day, mother, is as good as another to listen to good advice.
Besides, I am only talking of one of my friends. ‘Tis but a short story,
Fabien, and instructive. I will give it you in very few words. My friend
was very young and enthusiastic. He was on his way through the galleries
of Italy, brush in hand, his heart full of the ceaseless song of youth
in holiday. The world never had played him false, nor balked him. He
made the future bend to the fancy of his dreams. He seldom descended
among common men from those loftier realms where the contemplation of
endless masterpieces kept his spirit as on wings. He admired, copied,
filled his soul with the glowing beauty of Italian landscape and
Italian art. But one day, without reflection, without knowledge, without
foresight, he was rash enough to fall in love with a girl of noble birth
whose portrait he was painting; to speak to her and to win her love. He
thought then, in the silly innocence of his youth, that art abridges all
distance and that love effaces it. Crueller nonsense never was uttered,
my poor Fabien. He soon found this; he tried to struggle against the
parent’s denial, against himself, against her, powerless in all alike,
beaten at every point.... The end was--Do you care to learn the end?
The girl was carried off, struck down by a brief illness, soon dead; the
man, hurled out of heaven, bruised, a fugitive also, is still so weak in
presence of his sorrow that even after these long years he can not think
of it without weeping.”

Lampron actually was weeping, he who was so seldom moved. Down his brown
beard, tinged already with gray, a tear was trickling. I noticed that
Madame Lampron was stooping lower and lower over her needles. He went
on:

“I have kept the portrait, the one you saw, Fabien. They would like to
have it over yonder. They are old folk by now. Every year they ask me
for this relic of our common sorrow; every year they send me, about this
time a basket of white flowers, chiefly lilacs, the dead girl’s
flower, and their meaning is, ‘Give up to us what is left of her, the
masterpiece built up of your youth and hers.’ But I am selfish, Fabien.
I, like them, am jealous of all the sorrows this portrait recalls to me,
and I deny them. Come, mother, where are the flowers? I have promised
Fabien to show them to him.”

But his old mother could not answer. Having no doubt bewept this sorrow
too often to find fresh tears, her eyes followed her son with restless
compassion. He, beside the window, was hunting among the chairs and
lounges crowded in this corner of the little sitting-room.

He brought us a box of white wood. “See,” said he, “‘tis my wedding
bouquet.”

And he emptied it on the table. Parma violets, lilacs, white camellias
and moss rolled out in slightly faded bunches, spreading a sweet smell
in which there breathed already a vague scent of death and corruption. A
violet fell on my knees. I picked it up.

He looked for a moment at the heap on the table.

“I keep none,” said he: “I have too many reminders without them. Cursed
flowers!”

With one motion of his arm he swept them all up and cast them upon
the coals in the hearth. They shrivelled, crackled, grew limp and
discolored, and vanished in smoke.

“Now I am going back to my etching. Good-by, Fabien. Good-night,
mother.”

Without turning his head, he left the room and went back to his studio.

I made a movement to follow him and bring him back.

Madame Lampron stopped me. “I will go myself,” said she, “later--much
later.”

We sat awhile in silence. When she saw me somewhat recovered from the
shock of my feelings she went on:

“You never have seen him like this, but I have seen it often. It is so
hard! I knew her whom he loved almost as soon as he, for he never hid
anything from me. You can judge from her portrait whether hers was not
the face to attract an artist like Sylvestre. I saw at once that it
was a trial, in which I could do nothing. They were very great people;
different from us, you know.”

“They refused to let them marry?”

“Oh, no! Sylvestre did not ask; they never had the opportunity of
refusing. No, no; it was I. I said to him: ‘Sylvestre, this can never
be-never!’ He was convinced against his will. Then she spoke to her
parents on her own account. They carried her off, and there was an end
of it.”

“He never saw her again.”

“Never; he would not have wished it; and then she lived a very little
time. I went back there two years later, when they wanted to buy the
picture. We were still living in Italy. That was one of the hardest
hours of my life. I was afraid of their reproaches, and I did not feel
sure of myself. But no, they suffered for their daughter as I for
my son, and that brought us together. Still, I did not give up the
portrait; Sylvestre set too great store by it. He insists on keeping
it, feeding his eyes on it, reopening his wound day by day. Poor child!
Forget all this, Monsieur Fabien; you can do nothing to help. Be true to
your youth, and tell us next time of Monsieur Charnot and Mademoiselle
Jeanne.”

Dear Madame Lampron! I tried to console her; but as I never knew my
mother, I could find but little to say. All the same, she thanked me and
assured me I had done her good.




CHAPTER V. A FRUITLESS SEARCH

                       January 1, 1885.

The first of January! When one is not yet an uncle and no longer a
godson, if one is in no government employ and goes out very little, the
number of one’s calls on New Year’s Day is limited. I shall make five or
six this afternoon. It will be “Not at home” in each case; and that will
be all my compliments of the season.

No, I am wrong. I have received the compliments of the season. My
porter’s wife came up just now, wreathed in smiles.

“Monsieur Mouillard, I wish you a Happy New Year, good health, and
Heaven to end your days.” She had just said the same to the tenants on
the first, second, and third floors. My answer was the same as theirs.
I slipped into her palm (with a “Many thanks!” of which she took no
notice) a piece of gold, which brought another smile, a curtsey, and she
is gone.

This smile comes only once a year; it is not reproduced at any other
period, but is a dividend payable in one instalment. This, and a tear on
All Souls’ Day, when she has been to place a bunch of chrysanthemums on
her baby’s grave, are the only manifestations of sensibility that I have
discovered in her. From the second of January to the second of November
she is a human creature tied to a bell-rope, with an immovably stolid
face and a monosyllabic vocabulary in which politer terms occur but
sparsely.

This morning, contrary to her habits, she has brought up by post two
letters; one from my Uncle Mouillard (an answer), and the other--I don’t
recognize the other. Let’s open it first: big envelope, ill-written
address, Paris postmark. Hallo! a smaller envelope inside, and on it:

          ANTOINE AND MARIE PLUMET.

Poor souls! they have no visiting-cards. But kind hearts are more than
pasteboard.

Ten months ago little Madame Plumet, then still unmarried, was in a
terrible bother. I remember our first meeting, on a March day, at the
corner of the Rue du Quatre-Septembre and the Rue Richelieu. I was
walking along quickly, with a bundle of papers under my arm, on my
way back to the office where I was head clerk. Suddenly a dressmaker’s
errand-girl set down her great oilcloth-covered box in my way. I nearly
went head first over it, and was preparing to walk around it, when the
little woman, red with haste and blushes, addressed me. “Excuse me, sir,
are you a lawyer?”

“No, Mademoiselle, not yet.”

“Perhaps, sir, you know some lawyers?”

“To be sure I do; my master, to begin with, Counsellor Boule. He is
quite close, if you care to follow me.”

“I am in a terrible hurry, but I can spare a minute or two. Thank you
very much, Monsieur.”

And thus I found myself escorted by a small dressmaker and a box of
fashions. I remember that I walked a little ahead for fear of being
seen in such company by a fellow-clerk, which would have damaged my
reputation.

We got to the office. Down went the box again. The little dressmaker
told me that she was engaged to M. Plumet, frame-maker. She told her
tale very clearly; a little money put by, you see, out of ten years’
wages; one may be careful and yet be taken in; and, alas! all has been
lent to a cousin in the cabinetmaking trade, who wanted to set up shop;
and now he refuses to pay up. The dowry is in danger, and the marriage
in suspense.

“Do not be alarmed, Mademoiselle; we will summons this atrocious
cabinet-maker, and get a judgment against him. We shall not let him go
until he has disgorged, and you shall be Madame Plumet.”

We kept our word. Less than two months later--thanks to my efforts--the
dowry was recovered; the banns were put up; and the little dressmaker
paid a second visit to the office, this time with M. Plumet, who was
even more embarrassed than she.

“See, Antoine! this is Monsieur Mouillard, who undertook our case! Thank
you again and again, Monsieur Mouillard, you really have been too kind!
What do I owe you for your trouble?”

“You must ask my master what his fees come to, Mademoiselle.”

“Yes, but you? What can I do for you?”

The whole office, from the messenger to the clerk who came next to me,
had their eyes upon me. I rose to the occasion, and in my uncle’s best
manner I replied:

“Be happy, Mademoiselle, and remember me.”

We laughed over it for a week.

She has done better, she has remembered it after eight months. But she
has not given her address. That is a pity. I should have liked to see
them both again. These young married folk are like the birds; you hear
their song, but that does not tell you the whereabouts of their nest.

Now, uncle, it’s your turn.

Here it is again, your unfailing letter anticipated, like the return of
the comets, but less difficult to analyze than the weird substance of
which comets are composed. Every year I write to you on December 28th,
and you answer me on the 31st in time for your letter to reach me on New
Year’s morning. You are punctual, dear uncle; you are even attentive;
there is something affectionate in this precision. But I do not know
why your letters leave me unmoved. The eighteen to twenty-five lines of
which each is composed are from your head, rather than your heart. Why
do you not tell me of my parents, whom you knew; of your daily life; of
your old servant Madeleine, who nursed me as a baby; of the Angora cat
almost as old as she; of the big garden, so green, so enticing, which
you trim with so much care, and which rewards your attention with
such luxuriance. It would be so nice, dear uncle, to be a shade more
intimate.

Ah, well! let us see what he writes:

                  “BOURGES, December 31, 1884.

   “MY DEAR NEPHEW:

   “The approach of the New Year does not find me with the same
   sentiments with which it leaves you. I make up my yearly accounts
   from July 31st, so the advent of the 31st of December finds me as
   indifferent as that of any other day of the said month. Your
   repinings appear to me the expressions of a dreamer.

   “It would, however, not be amiss if you made a start in practical
   life. You come of a family not addicted to dreaming. Three
   Mouillards have, if I may say so, adorned the legal profession at
   Bourges. You will be the fourth.

   “As soon as you have taken your doctor’s degree-which I presume
   should not be long--I shall expect you the very next day, or the day
   after that at the furthest; and I shall place you under my
   supervision.

   “The practice is not falling off, I can assure you. In spite of
   age, I still possess good eyes and good teeth, the chief
   qualifications for a lawyer. You will find everything ready and in
   good order here.

   “I am obliged to you for your good wishes, which I entirely
   reciprocate.

        “Your affectionate uncle,

                    “BRUTUS MOUILLARD.”

   “P. S.--The Lorinet family have been to see me. Mademoiselle Berthe
   is really quite pretty. They have just inherited 751,351 francs.

   “I was employed by them in an action relating thereto.”

Yes, my dear uncle, you were employed, according to the formula, “in
virtue of these and subsequent engagements,” and among the “subsequent
engagements” you are kind enough to reckon one between Mademoiselle
Berthe Lorinet, spinster, of no occupation, and M. Fabien Mouillard,
lawyer. “Fabien Mouillard, lawyer”--that I may perhaps endure, but
“Fabien Mouillard, son-in-law of Lorinet,” never! One pays too dear for
these rich wives. Mademoiselle Berthe is half a foot taller than I, who
am moderately tall, and she has breadth in proportion. Moreover, I
have heard that her wit is got in proportion. I saw her when she was
seventeen, in a short frock of staring blue; she was very thin then, and
was escorted by a brother, squeezed inside a schoolboy’s suit; they
were out for their first walk alone, both red-faced, flurried, shuffling
along the sidewalks of Bourges. That was enough. For me she will always
wear that look, that frock, that clumsy gait. Recollections, my good
uncle, are not unlike instantaneous photographs; and this one is a
distinct negative to your designs.

                    March 3d.

The year is getting on. My essay is growing. The Junian Latin emerges
from the fogs of Tiber.

I have had to return to the National Library. My first visits were not
made without trepidation. I fancied that the beadle was colder, and that
the keepers were shadowing me like a political suspect. I thought
it wise to change my side, so now I make out my list of books at the
left-hand desk and occupy a seat on the left side of the room.

M. Charnot remains faithful to his post beneath the right-hand inkstand.

I have been watching him. He is usually one of the first to arrive, with
nimble, almost springy, step. His hair, which he wears rather long, is
always carefully parted in the middle, and he is always freshly shaven.
His habit of filling the pockets of his frock-coat with bundles of notes
has made that garment swell out at the top into the shape of a basket.
He puts on a pair of spectacles mounted in very thin gold, and reads
determinedly, very few books it is true, but they are all bound in
vellum, and that fixes their date. In his way of turning the leaves
there is something sacerdotal. He seems popular with the servants. Some
of the keepers worship him. He has very good manners toward every one.
Me he avoids. Still I meet him, sometimes in the cloakroom, oftener in
the Rue Richelieu on his way to the Seine. He stops, and so do I, near
the Fontaine Moliere, to buy chestnuts. We have this taste in common.
He buys two sous’ worth, I buy one; thus the distinctions of rank are
preserved. If he arrives after me, I allow him the first turn to be
served; if he is before me, I await my turn with a patience which
betokens respect. Yet he never seems to notice it. Once or twice,
certainly, I fancied I caught a smile at the corners of his mouth, and a
sly twinkle in the corners of his eyes; but these old scholars smile so
austerely.

He must have guessed that I wish to meet him. For I can not deny it. I
am looking out for an opportunity to repair my clumsy mistake and show
myself in a less unfavorable light than I did at that ill-starred visit.
And she is the reason why I haunt his path!

Ever since M. Mouillard threatened me with Mademoiselle Berthe Lorinet,
the graceful outlines of Mademoiselle Jeanne have haunted me with a
persistence to which I have no objection.

It is not because I love her. It does not go as far as that. I am
leaving her and leaving Paris forever in a few months. No; the height of
my desire is to see her again--in the street, at the theatre, no matter
where--to show her by my behavior and, if possible, by my words that I
am sorry for the past, and implore her forgiveness. Then there will no
longer be a gulf betwixt her and me, I shall be able to meet her without
confusion, to invoke her image to put to flight that of Mademoiselle
Lorinet without the vision of those disdainful lips to dash me. She will
be for me at once the type of Parisian grace and of filial affection. I
will carry off her image to the country like the remembered perfume of
some rare flower; and if ever I sing ‘Hymen Hymnaee’! it shall be with
one who recalls her face to me.

I do not think my feelings overpass these bounds. Yet I am not quite
sure. I watch for her with a keenness and determination which surprise
me, and the disappointment which follows a fruitless search is a shade
too lively to accord with cool reason.

After all, perhaps my reason is not cool.

Let me see, I will make up the account of my ventures.

One January afternoon I walked up and down the Rue de l’Universite eight
times in succession, from No. 1 to No. 107, and from No. 107 to No. 1.
Jeanne did not come out in spite of the brilliancy of the clear winter
day.

On the nineteenth of the same month I went to see Andromache, although
the classic writers, whom I swear by, are not the writers I most care to
hear. I renewed this attempt on the twenty-seventh. Neither on the first
nor on the second occasion did I see Mademoiselle Charnot.

And yet if the Institute does not escort its daughters in shoals to
applaud Andromache, where on earth does it take them?

Perhaps nowhere.

Every time I cross the Tuileries Garden I run my eyes over the groups
scattered among the chestnut-trees. I see children playing and falling
about; nursemaids who leave them crying; mothers who pick them up again;
a vagrant guardsman. No Jeanne.

To wind up, yesterday I spent five hours at the Bon Marche.

The spring show was on, one of the great occasions of the year; and I
presumed, not without an apparent foundation of reason, that no young
or pretty Parisian could fail to be there. When I arrived, about one
o’clock, the crowd already filled the vast bazaar. It was not easy
to stand against certain currents that set toward the departments
consecrated to spring novelties. Adrift like a floating spar I was swept
away and driven ashore amid the baby-linen. There it flung me high
and dry among the shop-girls, who laughed at the spectacle of an
undergraduate shipwrecked among the necessaries of babyhood. I felt shy,
and attaching myself to the fortunes of an Englishwoman, who worked her
elbows with the vigor of her nation, I was borne around nearly twenty
counters. At last, wearied, mazed, dusty as with a long summer walk, I
took refuge in the reading-room.

Poor simpleton! I said to myself, you are too early; you might have
known that. She can not come with her father before the National Library
closes. Even supposing they take an omnibus, they will not get here
before a quarter past four.

I had to find something to fill up the somewhat long interval which
separated me from that happy moment. I wrote a letter to my Uncle
Mouillard, taking seven minutes over the address alone. I had not shown
such penmanship since I was nine years old. When the last flourish was
completed I looked for a paper; they were all engaged. The directory was
free. I took it, and opened it at Ch. I discovered that there were
many Charnots in Paris without counting mine: Charnot, grocer; Charnot,
upholsterer; Charnot, surgical bandage-maker. I built up a whole family
tree for the member of the Institute, choosing, of course, those persons
of the name who appeared most worthy to adorn its branches. Of what
followed I retain but a vague recollection. I only remember that I felt
twice as if some inquisitive individual were looking over my shoulder.
The third time I woke up with a start.

“Sir,” said a shopwalker, with the utmost politeness, “a gentleman has
been waiting three quarters of an hour for the directory. Would you
kindly hand it to him if you have quite finished with it?”

It was a quarter to six. I still waited a little while, and then I left,
having wasted my day.

O Jeanne! where do you hide yourself? Must I, to meet you, attend mass
at St. Germain des Pres? Are you one of those early birds who, before
the world is up, are out in the Champs Elysees catching the first rays
of the morning, and the country breeze before it is lost in the smoke of
Paris? Are you attending lectures at the Sorbonne? Are you learning to
sing? and, if so, who is your teacher?

You sing, Jeanne, of course. You remind me of a bird. You have all
the quick and easy graces of the skylark. Why should you not have the
skylark’s voice?

Fabien, you are dropping into poetry!




CHAPTER VI. THE FLOWER-SHOW

                         April 3d.

For a month I have written nothing in this brown notebook. But to-day
there is plenty to put down, and worth the trouble too.

Let me begin with the first shock. This morning, my head crammed with
passages from Latin authors, I leaned my brow against the pane of my
window which looks on the garden. The garden is not mine, of course,
since I live on the fourth floor; but I have a view of the big
weeping-willow in the centre, the sanded path that runs around it, and
the four walls lined with borders, one of which separates it from the
huge premises of the Carmelites. It is an almost deserted garden. The
first-floor tenant hardly ever walks there. His son, a schoolboy of
seventeen, was there this morning. He stood two feet from the street
wall, motionless, with head thrown back, whistling a monotonous air,
which seemed to me like a signal. Before him, however, was nothing but
the moss on the old wall gleaming like golden lights. People do not
whistle to amuse stones nor yet moss. Farther off, on the other side of
the street, the windows of the opposite houses stretched away in long
straight lines, most of them standing open.

I thought: “The bird is somewhere there. Some small Abigail with her
white cap will look out in a moment.”

The suspicion was stupid and ill-natured. How rash are our lightest
judgments! Suddenly the school-boy took one step forward, swept his hand
quickly along the moss as if he were trying to catch a fly, and ran off
to his mother triumphant, delighted, beside himself, with an innocent
gray lizard on the tips of his fingers.

“I’ve got him! I’ve got him! He was basking in the sun and I charmed
him!”

“Basking in the sun!” This was a revelation to me. I flung up the
window. Yes, it was true. Warmth and light lay everywhere: on the roofs
still glistening with last night’s showers; across the sky, whose gay
blue proclaimed that winter was done. I looked downward and saw what
I had not seen before: the willow bursting into bud; the hepatica in
flower at the foot of the camellias, which had ceased to bloom; the
pear-trees in the Carmelites’ garden flushing red as the sap rose within
them; and upon the dead trunk of a fig-tree was a blackbird, escaped
from the Luxembourg, who, on tiptoe, with throat outstretched, drunk
with delight, answered some far-off call that the wind brought to him,
singing, as if in woodland depths, the rapturous song of the year’s new
birth. Then, oh! then, I could contain myself no longer. I ran down the
stairs four at a time, cursing Paris and the Junian Latins who had been
cheating me of the spring. What! live there cut off from the world which
was created for me, tread an artificial earth of stone or asphalt, live
with a horizon of chimneys, see only the sky chopped into irregular
strips by roofs smirched with smoke, and allow this exquisite spring to
fleet by without drinking in her bountiful delight, without renewing
in her youthfulness our youth, always a little staled and overcast by
winter! No, that can not be; I mean to see the spring.

And I have seen it, in truth, though cut and tied into bouquets, for my
aimless steps led me to the Place St. Sulpice, where the flower-sellers
were. There were flowers in plenty, but very few people; it was already
late. None the less did I enjoy the sight of all the plants arranged by
height and kind, from the double hyacinths, dear to hall-porters, to the
first carnations, scarcely in bud, whose pink or white tips just peeped
from their green sheaths; then the bouquets, bundles of the same kinds
and same shades of flowers wrapped up in paper: lilies-of-the-valley,
lilacs, forget-me-nots, mignonette, which being grown under glass has
guarded its honey from the bees to scent the air here. Everyone had
a look of welcome for those exiles. The girls smiled at them without
knowing the reason why. The cabdrivers in line along the sidewalk seemed
to enjoy their neighborhood. I heard one of them, with a face like
a halfripened strawberry, red, with a white nose, say to a comrade,
“Hallo, Francis! that smells good, doesn’t it!”

I was walking along slowly, looking into every stall, and when I came to
the end I turned right about face.

Great Heavens! Not ten feet off! M. Flamaran, M. Charnot, and
Mademoiselle Jeanne!

They had stopped before one of the stalls that I had just left. M.
Flamaran was carrying under his arm a pot of cineraria, which made his
stomach a perfect bower. M. Charnot was stooping, examining a superb
pink carnation. Jeanne was hovering undecided between twenty bunches of
flowers, bending her pretty head in its spring hat over each in turn.

“Which, father?”

“Whichever you like; but make up your mind soon; Flamaran is waiting.”

A moment more, and the elective affinities carried the day.

“This bunch of mignonette,” she said.

I would have wagered on it. She was sure to choose the mignonette--a
fair, well-bred, graceful plant like herself. Others choose their
camellias and their hyacinths; Jeanne must have something more refined.

She put down her money, caught up the bunch, looked at it for a moment,
and held it close to her breast as a mother might hold her child, while
all its golden locks drooped over her arm. Then off she ran after her
father, who had only changed one carnation for another. They went on
toward St. Sulpice--M. Flamaran on the right, M. Charnot in the middle,
Jeanne on the left. She brushed past without seeing me. I followed
them at a distance. All three were laughing. At what? I can guess; she
because she was eighteen, they for joy to be with her. At the end of
the marketplace they turned to the left, followed the railings of the
church, and bent their steps toward the Rue St. Sulpice, doubtless to
take home M. Flamaran, whose cineraria blazed amid the crowd. I
was about to turn in the same direction when an omnibus of the
Batignolles-Clichy line stopped my way. In an instant I was overwhelmed
by the flood of passengers which it poured on the pavements.

“Hallo, you here! How goes it? What are you staring at? My stovepipe?
Observe it well, my dear fellow--the latest invention of Leon; the
patent ventilating, anti-sudorific, and evaporating hat!”

It was Larive who had just climbed down from the knifeboard.

Every one knows Larive, head clerk in Machin’s office. He is to be
seen everywhere--a tall, fair man, with little closetrimmed beard, and
moustache carefully twisted. He is always perfectly dressed, always in a
tall hat and new gloves, full of all the new stories, which he tells
as his own. If you believe him, he is at home in all the ministries,
whatever party is in power; he has cards for every ball, and tickets for
every first night. With all that he never misses a funeral, is a good
lawyer, and as solemn when in court as a dozen old mandarins.

“Come, Fabien, will you answer? What are you staring at?”

He turned his head.

“Oh, I see--pretty Mademoiselle Charnot.”

“You know her?”

“Of course I do, and her father, too. A pretty little thing!”

I blushed with pleasure.

“Yes, a very pretty little thing; but wants style--dances poorly.”

“An admirable defect.”

“A little big, too, for her eyes.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Her eyes are a little too small, you understand me?”

“What matters that if they are bright and loving?”

“No matter at all to me; but it seems to have some effect on you. Might
you be related?”

“No.”

“Or connected by marriage?”

“No.”

“So much the better--eh, my boy? And how’s uncle? Still going strong?”

“Yes; and longing to snatch me from this Babylon.”

“You mean to succeed him?”

“As long hence as possible.”

“I had heard you were not enthusiastic. A small practice, isn’t it?”

“Not exactly. A matter of a thousand a year!”

“Clear profit?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good enough. But in the country, my poor fellow, in the
country!”

“It would be the death of you, wouldn’t it?”

“In forty-eight hours.”

“However did you manage to be born there, Larive? I’m surprised at you.”

“So am I. I often think about it. Good-by. I must be off.”

I caught him by the hand which he held out to me.

“Larive, tell me where you have met Mademoiselle Charnot?”

“Oh, come!--I see it’s serious. My dear fellow, I am so sorry I did not
tell you she was perfection. If I had only known!”

“That’s not what I asked you. Where have you seen her?”

“In society, of course. Where do you expect me to see young girls except
in society? My dear Fabien!”

He went off laughing. When he was about ten yards off he turned, and
making a speaking-trumpet of his hands, he shouted through them:

“She’s perfection!”

Larive is decidedly an ass. His jokes strike you as funny at first;
but there’s nothing in him, he’s a mere hawker of stale puns; there’s
nothing but selfishness under his jesting exterior. I have no belief
in him. Yet he is an old school friend; the only one of my twenty-eight
classmates whose acquaintance I have kept up. Four are dead,
twenty-three others are scattered about in obscure country places; lost
for want of news, as they say at the private inquiry offices. Larive
makes up the twenty-eight. I used to admire him, when we were low in the
school, because of his long trousers, his lofty contempt of discipline,
and his precocious intimacy with tobacco. I preferred him to the good,
well-behaved boys. Whenever we had leave out I used to buy gum-arabic at
the druggist’s in La Chatre, and break it up with a small hammer at the
far end of my room, away from prying eyes. I used there to distribute
it into three bags ticketed respectively: “large pieces,” “middle-sized
pieces,” “small pieces.” When I returned to school with the three bags
in my pocket, I would draw out one or the other to offer them to my
friends, according to the importance of the occasion, or the degrees of
friendship. Larive always had the big bits, and plenty of them. Yet
he was none the more grateful to me, and even did not mind chaffing me
about these petty attentions by which he was the gainer. He used to make
fun of everything, and I used to look up to him. He still makes fun
of everything; but for me the age of gumarabic is past and my faith in
Larive is gone.

If he believes that he will disparage this charming girl in my eyes by
telling me that she is a bad dancer, he is wrong. Of great importance it
is to have a wife who dances well! She does not dance in her own house,
nor with her husband from the wardrobe to the cradle, but at others’
houses, and with other men. Besides, a young girl who dances much has
a lot of nonsense talked to her. She may acquire a taste for Larive’s
buffooneries, for a neat leg, or a sharp tongue. In that case what
welcome can she give to simple, timid affection? She will only laugh
at it. But you would not laugh, Jeanne, were I to tell you that I loved
you. No, I am quite convinced that you would not laugh. And if you loved
me, Jeanne, we should not go into society. That would just suit me. I
should protect you, yet not hide you. We should have felicity at home
instead of running after it to balls and crushes, where it is never to
be found. You could not help being aware of the fascination you exert;
but you would not squander it on a mob of dancers, and bring home only
the last remnants of your good spirits, with the last remnants of your
train. Jeanne, I am delighted to hear that you dance badly.

Whither away, Fabien, my friend, whither away? You are letting your
imagination run away with you again. A hint from it, and off you go.
Come, do use your reason a little. You have seen this young lady again,
that is true. You admired her; that was for the second time. But she,
whom you so calmly speak of as “Jeanne,” as if she were something to
you, never even noticed you. You know nothing about her but what you
suspect from her maiden grace and a dozen words from her lips. You do
not know whether she is free, nor how she would welcome the notions
you entertain if you gave them utterance, yet here you are saying, “We
should go here,” “We should do this and that.” Keep to the singular,
my poor fellow. The plural is far away, very far away, if not entirely
beyond your reach.




CHAPTER VII. A WOODLAND SKETCH

April 27th.

The end of April. Students, pack and be off! The first warm breezes
burst the buds. Meudon is smiling; Clamart breaks into song; the air in
the valley of Chevreuse is heavy with violets; the willows shower their
catkins on the banks of the Yvette; and farther yet, over yonder beneath
the green domes of the forest of Fontainebleau, the deer prick their
ears at the sound of the first riding-parties. Off with you! Flowers
line the pathways, the moors are pink with bloom, the undergrowth teems
with darting wings. All the town troops out to see the country in its
gala dress. The very poorest have a favorite nook, a recollection of the
bygone year to be revived and renewed; a sheltered corner that invited
sleep, a glade where the shade was grateful, a spot beside the river’s
brink where the fish used to bite. Each one says, “Don’t you remember?”
 Each one seeks his nest like a home-coming swallow. Does it still hold
together? What havoc has been made by the winter’s winds, and the rain,
and the frost? Will it welcome us, as of old?

I, too, said to Lampron, “Don’t you remember?” for we, too, have our
nest, and summer days that smile to us in memory. He was in the mood for
work, and hesitated. I added in a whisper, “The blackbird’s pool!” He
smiled, and off we went.

Again, as of old, our destination was St. Germain--not the town, nor the
Italian palace, nor yet the terrace whence the view spreads so wide over
the Seine, the country dotted with villas, to Montmartre blue in the
distance--not these, but the forest. “Our forest,” we call it; for we
know all its young shoots, all its giant trees, all its paths where
poachers and young lovers hide. With my eyes shut I could find the
blackbird’s pool, the way to which was first shown us by a deer.

Imagine at thirty paces from an avenue, a pool--no, not a pool (the
word is incorrect), nor yet a pond--but a fountain hollowed out by the
removal of a giant oak. Since the death of this monarch the birches
which its branches kept apart have never closed together, and the
fountain forms the centre of a little clearing where the moss is thick
at all seasons and starred in August with wild pinks. The water, though
deep, is deliciously clear. At a depth of more than six feet you can
distinguish the dead leaves at the bottom, the grass, the twigs, and
here and there a stone’s iridescent outline. They all lie asleep there,
the waste of seasons gone by, soon to be covered by others in their
turn. From time to time out of the depths of these submerged thickets
an eft darts up. He comes circling up, quivering his yellowbanded tail,
snatches a mouthful of air, and goes down again head first. Save for
these alarms the pool is untroubled. It is guarded from the winds by a
juniper, which an eglantine has chosen for its guardian and crowns each
year with a wreath of roses. Each year, too, a blackbird makes his nest
here. We keep his secret. He knows we shall not disturb him. And when I
come back to this little nook in the woods, which custom has endeared to
us, merely by looking in the water I feel my very heart refreshed.

“What a spot to sleep in!” cried Lampron. “Keep sentry, Fabien; I am
going to take a nap.”

We had walked fast. It was very hot. He took off his coat, rolled it
into a pillow, and placed it beneath his head as he lay down on the
grass. I stretched myself prone on a velvety carpet of moss, and gave
myself up to a profound investigation of the one square foot of ground
which lay beneath my eyes. The number of blades of grass was
prodigious. A few, already awned, stood above their fellows, waving
like palms-meadowgrass, fescue, foxtail, brome-grass--each slender stalk
crowned with a tuft. Others were budding, only half unfolded, amid
the darker mass of spongy moss which gave them sustenance. Amid
the numberless shafts thus raised toward heaven a thousand paths
crisscrossed, each full of obstacles-chips of bark, juniper-berries,
beech-nuts, tangled roots, hills raised by burrowing insects, ravines
formed by the draining off of the rains. Ants and beetles bustled along
them, pressing up hill and down to some mysterious goal. Above them a
cunning red spider was tying a blade of grass to an orchid leaf, the
pillars it had chosen for its future web; and when the wind shook the
leaves and the sun pierced through to this spot, I saw the delicate roof
already mapped out.

I do not know how long my contemplation lasted. The woods were still.
Save for a swarm of gnats which hummed in a minor key around the
sleeping Lampron, nothing stirred, not a leaf even. All nature was
silent as it drank in the full sunshine.

A murmur of distant voices stole on my ear. I rose, and crept through
the birches and hazels to the edge of the glade.

At the top of the slope, on the green margin of the glade, shaded by the
tall trees, two pedestrians were slowly advancing. At the distance they
still were I could distinguish very little except that the man wore a
frock-coat, and that the girl was dressed in gray, and was young, to
judge by the suppleness of her walk. Nevertheless I felt at once that it
was she!

I hid at they came near, and saw her pass on her father’s arm, chatting
in low tones, full of joy to have escaped from the Rue de l’Universite.
She was looking before her with wide-open eyes. M. Charnot kept his
eyes on his daughter, more interested in her than in all the wealth of
spring. He kept well to the right of the path as the sun ate away the
edge of the shadows; and asked, from time to time:

“Are you tired?”

“Oh, no!”

“As soon as you are tired, my dear, we will sit down. I am not walking
too fast?”

She answered “No” again, and laughed, and they went on.

Soon they left the avenue and were lost in a green alley. Then a sudden
twilight seemed to have closed down on me, an infinite sadness swelled
in my heart. I closed my eyes, and--God forgive my weakness, but the
tears came.

“Hallo! What part do you intend me to play in all this?” said Lampron
behind me.

“‘What part’?”

“Yes. It’s an odd notion to invite me to your trysting-place.”

“Trysting-place? I haven’t one.”

“You mean to tell me, perhaps, that you came here by chance?”

“Certainly.”

“And chanced upon the very moment and the spot where she was passing?”

“Do you want a proof? That young lady is Mademoiselle Charnot.”

“Well?”

“Well, I never have said another word to her since my one visit to her
father; I have only seen her once, for a moment, in the street. You
see there can be no question of trysting-places in this case. I was
wondering at her appearance when you awoke. It is luck, or a friendly
providence, that has used the beauty of the sunlight, the breeze, and
all the sweets of April to bring her, as it brought us, to the forest.”

“And that is what fetched the tears?”

“Well, no.”

“What, then?”

“I don’t know.”

“My full-grown baby, I will tell you. You are in love with her!”

“Indeed, Sylvestre, I believe you’re right. I confess it frankly to you
as to my best friend. It is an old story already; as old, perhaps,
as the day I first met her. At first her figure would rise in my
imagination, and I took pleasure in contemplating it. Soon this phantom
ceased to satisfy; I longed to see her in person. I sought her in the
streets, the shops, the theatre. I still blinded myself, and pretended
that I only wanted to ask her pardon, so as to remove, before I left
Paris, the unpleasant impression I had made at our first meeting. But
now, Sylvestre, all these false reasons have disappeared, and the true
one is clear. I love her!”

“Not a doubt of it, my friend, not a doubt of it. I have been through it
myself.”

He was silent, and his eyes wandered away to the faroff woods, perhaps
back to those distant memories of his. A shadow rested on his strong
face, but only for an instant. He shook off his depression, and his old
smile came back as he said:

“It’s serious, then?”

“Yes, very serious.”

“I’m not surprised; she is a very pretty girl.”

“Isn’t she lovely?”

“Better than that, my friend; she is good. What do you know about her?”

“Only that she is a bad dancer.”

“That’s something, to be sure.”

“But it isn’t all.”

“Well, no. But never mind, find out the rest, speak to her, declare your
passion, ask for her hand, and marry her.”

“Good heavens, Sylvestre, you are going ahead!”

“My dear fellow, that is the best and wisest plan; these vague idyls
ought to be hurried on, either to a painless separation or an honorable
end in wedlock. In your place I should begin to-morrow.”

“Why not to-day?”

“How so?”

“Let’s catch them up, and see her again at least.”

He began to laugh.

“Run after young girls at my age! Well, well, it was my advice. Come
along!”

We crossed the avenue, and plunged into the forest.

Lampron had formerly acquired a reputation for tireless agility among
the fox-hunters of the Roman Campagna. He still deserves it. In twenty
strides he left me behind. I saw him jumping over the heather, knocking
off with his cane the young shoots on the oaks, or turning his head to
look at me as I struggled after, torn by brambles and pricked by gorse.
A startled pheasant brought him to a halt. The bird rose under his feet
and soared into the full light.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” said he. “Look out, we must be more careful; we
are scaring the game. We should come upon the path they took, about
sixty yards ahead.”

Five minutes later he was signalling to me from behind the trunk of a
great beech.

“Here they are.”

Jeanne and M. Charnot were seated on a fallen trunk beside the path,
which here was almost lost beneath the green boughs. Their backs were
toward us. The old man, with his shoulders bent and his gold-knobbed cane
stuck into the ground beside him, was reading out of a book which we
could not see, while Jeanne, attentive, motionless, her face half turned
toward him, was listening. Her profile was outlined against a strip of
clear sky. The deep silence of the wood wrapped us round, and we could
hear the old scholar’s voice; it just reached us.

“Straightway the godlike Odysseus spake these cunning words to the fair
Nausicaa: ‘Be thou goddess or mortal, O queen, I bow myself before thee!
If thou art one of the deities who dwell in boundless heaven, by thy
loveliness and grace and height I guess thee to be Artemis, daughter of
high Zeus. If thou art a mortal dwelling upon earth, thrice blessed thy
father and thy queenly mother, thrice blessed thy dear brothers! Surely
their souls ever swell with gladness because of thee, when they see a
maiden so lovely step into the circle of the dance. But far the most
blessed of all is he who shall prevail on thee with presents and lead
thee to his home!’”

I turned to Lampron, who had stopped a few steps in front of me, a
little to the right. He had got out his sketch-book, and was drawing
hurriedly. Presently he forgot all prudence, and came forth from the
shelter of a beech to get nearer to his model. In vain I made sign upon
sign, and tried to remind him that we were not thereto paint or sketch.
It was useless; the artist within him had broken loose. Sitting down at
the required distance on a gnarled root, right in the open, he went on
with his work with no thought but for his art.

The inevitable happened. Growing impatient over some difficulty in
his sketch, Lampron shuffled his feet; a twig broke, some leaves
rustled-Jeanne turned round and saw me looking at her, Lampron sketching
her.

What are the feelings of a young girl who in the middle of a forest
suddenly discovers that two pairs of eyes are busy with her? A little
fright at first; then--when the idea of robbers is dismissed, and a
second glance has shown her that it is her beauty, not her life, they
want--a touch of satisfied vanity at the compliment, not unmixed with
confusion.

This is exactly what we thought we saw. At first she slightly drew
back, with brows knitted, on the verge of an exclamation; then her brows
unbent, and the pleasure of finding herself admired, confusion at being
taken unawares, the desire of appearing at ease, all appeared at once on
her rosy cheeks and in her faintly troubled smile.

I bowed. Sylvestre pulled off his cap.

M. Charnot never stirred.

“Another squirrel?” he said.

“Two this time, I think, father,” she answered, in a low voice.

He went on reading.

“‘My guest,’ made answer the fair Nausicaa, ‘for I call thee so since
thou seemest not base nor foolish, it is Zeus himself that giveth weal
to men--’”

Jeanne was no longer listening. She was thinking. Of what? Of several
things, perhaps, but certainly of how to beat a retreat. I guessed it by
the movement of her sunshade, which was nervously tracing figures in the
turf. I signalled to Lampron. We retired backward. Yet it was in vain;
the charm was broken, the peace had been disturbed.

She gave two coughs--musical little coughs, produced at will.

M. Charnot broke off his reading.

“You are cold, Jeanne?”

“Why, no, father.”

“Yes, yes, you’re cold. Why did you not say so before? Lord, Lord, these
children! Always the same--think of nothing!”

He rose without delay, put his book in his pocket, buttoned up his coat,
and, leaning on his stick, glanced up a moment at the tree-tops. Then,
side by side, they disappeared down the path, Jeanne stepping briskly,
upright and supple, between the young branches which soon concealed her.

Still Lampron continued to watch the turning in the path down which she
had vanished.

“What are you thinking about?” said I.

He stroked his beard, where lurked a few gray hairs.

“I am thinking, my friend, that youth leaves us in this same way, at
the time when we love it most, with a faint smile, and without a word to
tell us whither. Mine played me this trick.”

“What a good idea of yours to sketch them both. Let me see the sketch.”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“It can scarcely be called a sketch; it’s a mere scratch.”

“Show it, all the same.”

“My good Fabien, you ought to know that when I am obstinate I have my
reasons, like Balaam’s ass. You will not see my sketch-book to-day, nor
to-morrow, nor the day after.”

I answered with foolish warmth:

“Please yourself; I don’t care.”

Really I was very much annoyed, and I was rather cool with Lampron when
we parted on the platform.

What has come to the fellow? To refuse to show me a sketch he had made
before my eyes, and a sketch of Jeanne, too!

                    April 28th, 9 A.M.

Hide your sketches, Sylvestre; stuff them away in your portfolios, or
your pockets; I care little, for I bear Jeanne’s image in my heart, and
can see it when I will, and I love her, I love her, I love her!

What is to become of her and of me I can not tell. I hope without
knowing what or why, or when, and hope alone is comforting.

                       9 P.M.

This afternoon, at two o’clock, I met Lampron in the Boulevard St.
Michel. He was walking fast with a portfolio under his arm. I went up
to him. He looked annoyed, and hardly seemed pleased when I offered to
accompany him. I grew red and angry.

“Oh, very well,” I said; “good-by, then, since you don’t care to be seen
with me.”

He pondered a moment.

“Oh, come along if you like; I am going to my framemaker’s.”

“A picture?”

“Something of the kind.”

“And that’s all the mystery! Yesterday it was a sketch I mustn’t
look at; to-day it’s a picture. It is not nice of you, Sylvestre; no,
decidedly it is not nice.”

He gave me a look of friendly compassion.

“Poor little chap!” said he.

Then, in his usual clear, strong voice:

“I am in a great hurry; but come if you like. I would rather it were
four days later; but as it is, never mind; it is never too soon to be
happy.”

When Lampron chooses to hold his tongue it is useless to ask him
questions. I gave myself up to meditating on the words, “It is never too
soon to be happy.”

We went down the boulevard, past the beer-houses. There is distinction
in my friend’s walk; he is not to be confused with the crowd through
which he passes. You can tell, from the simple seriousness of the man,
his indifference to the noise and petty incidents of the streets, that
he is a stout and noble soul. Among the passers-by he is a somebody. I
heard from a group of students seated before a cafe the following words,
which Sylvestre did not seem to notice:

“Look, do you see the taller of those two there? That’s Sylvestre
Lampron.”

“Prix du Salon two years ago?”

“A great gun, you know.”

“He looks it.”

“To the left,” said Lampron.

We turned to the left, and found ourselves in the Rue Hautefeuille,
before a shabby house, within the porch of which hung notices of
apartments to let; this was the framemaker’s. The passage was dark, the
walls were chipped by the innumerable removals of furniture they had
witnessed. We went upstairs. On the fourth floor a smell of glue and
sour paste on the landing announced the tenant’s profession. To
make quite certain there was a card nailed to the door with “Plumet,
Frame-Maker.”

“Plumet? A newly-married couple?”

But already Madame Plumet is at the door. It is the same little woman
who came to Boule’s office. She recognizes me in the dim light of the
staircase.

“What, Monsieur Lampron, do you know Monsieur Mouillard?”

“As you apparently do, too, Madame Plumet.”

“Oh, yes! I know him well; he won my action, you know.”

“Ah, to be sure-against the cabinet-maker. Is your husband in?”

“Yes, sir, in the workshop. Plumet!”

Through the half-opened door giving access to an inner room we could
see-in the midst of his molders, gilders, burnishers, and framers--a
little dark man with a beard, who looked up and hurriedly undid the
strings of his working-apron.

“Coming, Marie!”

Little Madame Plumet was a trifle upset at having to receive us in
undress, before she had tidied up her rooms. I could see it by
her blushes and by the instinctive movement she made to smooth her
disordered curls.

The husband had hardly answered her call before she left us and went
off to the end of the room, into the obscure recesses of an alcove
overcrowded with furniture. There she bent over an oblong object, which
I could not quite see at first, and rocked it with her hand.

“Monsieur Mouillard,” said she, looking up to me--“Monsieur Mouillard,
this is my son, Pierre!”

What tender pride in those words, and the smile which accompanied them!
With a finger she drew one of the curtains aside. Under the blue muslin,
between the pillow and the white coverlet, I discovered two little black
eyes and a tuft of golden hair.

“Isn’t he a little rogue!” she went on, and began to caress the waking
baby.

Meanwhile Sylvestre had been talking to Plumet at the other end of the
room.

“Out of the question,” said the frame-maker; “we are up to our knees in
arrears; twenty orders waiting.”

“I ask you to oblige me as a friend.”

“I wish I could oblige you, Monsieur Lampron; but if I made you a
promise, I should not be able to keep it.”

“What a pity! All was so well arranged, too. The sketch was to have been
hung with my two engravings. Poor Fabien! I was saving up a surprise for
you. Come and look here.”

I went across. Sylvestre opened his portfolio.

“Do you recognize it?”

At once I recognized them. M. Charnot’s back; Jeanne’s profile, exactly
like her; a forest nook; the parasol on the ground; the cane stuck into
the grass; a bit of genre, perfect in truth and execution.

“When did you do that?”

“Last night.”

“And you want to exhibit it?”

“At the Salon.”

“But, Sylvestre, it is too late to send in to the Salon. The Ides of
March are long past.”

“Yes, for that very reason I have had the devil of a time, intriguing
all the morning. With a large picture I never should have succeeded; but
with a bit of a sketch, six inches by nine--”

“Bribery of officials, then?”

“Followed by substitution, which is strictly forbidden. I happened to
have hung there between two engravings a little sketch of underwoods not
unlike this; one comes down, the other is hung instead--a little bit
of jobbery of which I am still ashamed. I risked it all for you, in the
hope that she would come and recognize the subject.”

“Of course she will recognize it, and understand; how on earth could she
help it? My dear Sylvestre, how can I thank you?”

I seized my friend’s hand and begged his forgiveness for my foolish
haste of speech.

He, too, was a little touched and overcome by the pleasure his surprise
had given me.

“Look here, Plumet,” he said to the frame-maker, who had taken the
sketch over to the light, and was studying it with a professional eye.
“This young man has even a greater interest than I in the matter. He is
a suitor for the lady’s hand, and you can be very useful to him. If you
do not frame the picture his happiness is blighted.”

The frame-maker shook his head.

“Let’s see, Antoine,” said a coaxing little voice, and Madame Plumet
left the cradle to come to our aid.

I considered our cause as won. Plumet repeated in vain, as he pulled his
beard, that it was impossible; she declared it was not. He made a move
for his workshop; she pulled him back by the sleeve, made him laugh and
give his consent.

“Antoine,” she insisted, “we owe our marriage to Monsieur Mouillard; you
must at least pay what you owe.”

I was delighted. Still, a doubt seized me.

“Sylvestre,” I said to Lampron, who already had his hand upon the
door-handle, “do you really think she will come?”

“I hope so; but I will not answer for it. To make certain, some one must
send word to her: ‘Mademoiselle Jeanne, your portrait is at the Salon.’
If you know any one who would not mind taking this message to the Rue de
l’Universite--”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Come on, then, and trust to luck.”

“Rue de l’Universite, did you say?” broke in little Madame Plumet, who
certainly took the liveliest interest in my cause.

“Yes; why?”

“Because I have a friend in the neighborhood, and perhaps--”

I risked giving her the number and name under the seal of secrecy; and
it was a good thing I did so.

In three minutes she had concocted a plan. It was like this: her friend
lived near the hotel in the Rue de l’Universite, a porter’s wife of
advanced years, and quite safe; by means of her it might be possible to
hint to Mademoiselle Jeanne that her portrait, or something like it, was
to be seen at the Salon--discreetly, of course, and as if it were the
merest piece of news.

What a plucky, clever little woman it is! Surely I was inspired when I
did her that service. I never thought I should be repaid. And here I am
repaid both capital and interest.

Yet I hesitated. She snatched my consent.

“No, no,” said she, “leave me to act. I promise you, Monsieur Mouillard,
that she shall hear of it, and you, Monsieur Lampron, that the picture
shall be framed.”

She showed us to the top of the stairs, did little Madame Plumet,
pleased at having won over her husband, at having shown herself so
cunning, and at being employed in a conspiracy of love. In the street
Lampron shook me by the hand. “Good-by, my friend,” he said; “happy men
don’t need company. Four days hence, at noon, I shall come to fetch you,
and we will pay our first visit to the Salon together.”

Yes, I was a happy man! I walked fast, without seeing anything, my eyes
lost in day dreams, my ears listening to celestial harmonies. I seemed
to wear a halo. It abashed me somewhat; for there is something insolent
in proclaiming on the housetops: “Look up at me, my heart is full,
Jeanne is going to love me!” Decidedly, my brain was affected.

Near the fountain in the Luxembourg, in front of the old palace where
the senate sits, two little girls were playing. One pushed the other,
who fell down crying,

“Naughty Jeanne, naughty girl!” I rushed to pick her up, and kissed her
before the eyes of her astonished nurse, saying, “No, Mademoiselle, she
is the most charming girl in the world!”

And M. Legrand! I still blush when I think of my conversation with M.
Legrand. He was standing in a dignified attitude at the door of his
shop.

        “ITALIAN WAREHOUSE; DRESSED PROVISIONS;
          SPECIALTY IN COLONIAL PRODUCE.”

He and I are upon good terms; I buy oranges, licorice from him, and rum
when I want to make punch. But there are distinctions. Well, to-day
I called him “Dear Monsieur Legrand;” I addressed him, though I had
nothing to buy; I asked after his business; I remarked to him, “What
a heavenly day, Monsieur Legrand! We really have got fine weather at
last!”

He looked up to the top of the street, and looked down again at me, but
refrained from differing, out of respect.

And, as a matter of fact, I noticed afterward that there was a most
unpleasant drizzle.

To wind up with, just now as I was coming home after dinner, I passed a
workman and his family in the Rue Bonaparte, and the man pointed after
me, saying:

“Look! there goes a poet.”

He was right. In me the lawyer’s clerk is in abeyance, the lawyer of
to-morrow has disappeared, only the poet is left--that is to say, the
essence of youth freed from the parasitic growths of everyday life.
I feel it roused and stirring. How sweet life is, and what wonderful
instruments we are, that Hope can make us thus vibrate by a touch of her
little finger!




BOOK 2.




CHAPTER VIII. JOY AND MADNESS

                         May 1st.

These four days have seemed as if they never would end--especially the
last. But now it wants only two minutes of noon. In two minutes, if
Lampron is not late--

Rat-a-tat-tat!

“Come in.”

“It is twelve o’clock, my friend; are you coming?”

It was Lampron.

For the last hour I had had my hat on my head, my stick between my legs,
and had been turning over my essay with gloved hands. He laughed at me.
I don’t care. We walked, for the day was clear and warm. All the world
was out and about. Who can stay indoors on May Day? As we neared the
Chamber of Deputies, perambulators full of babies in white capes came
pouring from all the neighboring streets, and made their resplendent way
toward the Tuileries. Lampron was in a talkative mood. He was pleased
with the hanging of his pictures, and his plan of campaign against
Mademoiselle Jeanne.

“She is sure to have heard of it, Fabien, and perhaps is there already.
Who can tell?”

“Oh, cease your humbug! Yes, very possibly she is there before us. I
have had a feeling that she would be for these last four days.”

“You don’t say so!”

“I have pictured her a score of times ascending the staircase on
her father’s arm. We are at the foot, lost in the crowd. Her noble,
clear-cut profile stands out against the Gobelin tapestries which frame
it with their embroidered flowers; one would say some maiden of bygone
days had come to life, and stepped down from her tapestried panel.”

“Gentlemen!” said Lampron, with a sweep of his arm which took in the
whole of the Place de la Concorde, “allow me to present to you the
intending successor of Counsellor Mouillard, lawyer, of Bourges. Every
inch of him a man of business!”

We were getting near. Crowds were on their way to the exhibition from
all sides, women in spring frocks, many of the men in white waistcoats,
one hand in pocket, gayly flourishing their canes with the other,
as much as to say, “Look at me-well-to-do, jaunty, and out in fine
weather.” The turnstiles were crowded, but at last we got through. We
made but one step across the gravel court, the realm of sculpture where
antique gods in every posture formed a mythological circle round the
modern busts in the central walk. There was no loitering here, for my
heart was elsewhere. We cast a look at an old wounded Gaul, an ancestor
unhonored by the crowd, and started up the staircase--no Jeanne to lead
the way. We came to the first room of paintings. Sylvestre beamed like a
man who feels at home.

“Quick, Sylvestre, where is the sketch? Let’s hurry to it.”

But he dragged me with him around several rooms.

Have you ever experienced the intoxication of color which seizes the
uninitiated at the door of a picture-gallery? So many staring hues
impinge upon the eyes, so many ideas take confused shape and struggle
together in the brain, that the eyes grow weary and the brain harassed.
It hovers undecided like an insect in a meadow full of flowers. The
buzzing remarks of the crowd add to the feeling of intoxication. They
distract one’s attention before it can settle anywhere, and carry it off
to where some group is gathered before a great name, a costly frame, an
enormous canvas, or an outrage on taste; twenty men on a gallows
against a yellow sky, with twenty crows hovering over them, or an aged
antediluvian, some mighty hunter, completely nude and with no property
beyond a loaded club. One turns away, and the struggle begins again
between the eye, attracted by a hundred subjects, and the brain, which
would prefer to study one.

With Lampron this danger has no existence; he takes in a room at a
glance. He has the sportsman’s eye which, in a covey of partridges,
marks its bird at a glance. He never hesitates. “That is the thing to
make for,” he says, “come along”--and we make for it. He plants himself
right in front of the picture, with both hands in his overcoat pockets,
and his chin sunk in his collar; says nothing, but is quite happy
developing an idea which has occurred to him on his way to it; comparing
the picture before him with some former work by the same artist which
he remembers. His whole soul is concentrated on the picture. And when he
considers that I have understood and penetrated the meaning of the work,
he gives his opinion in few words, but always the right ones, summing up
a long sequence of ideas which I must have shared with him, since I see
exactly as he does.

In this way we halted before the “Martyrdom of Saint Denis,” by Bonnat,
the two “Adorations,” by Bouguereau, a landscape of Bernier’s, some
other landscapes, sea pieces, and portraits.

At last we left the oil paintings.

In the open gallery, which runs around the inside of the huge oblong and
looks on the court, the watercolors, engravings, and drawings slumbered,
neglected. Lampron went straight to his works. I should have awarded
them the medaille d’honneur; an etching of a man’s head, a large
engraving of the Virgin and Infant Jesus from the Salon Carre at the
Louvre, and the drawing which represents--

“Great Heavens! Sylvestre, she’s perfectly lovely; she will make a great
mistake if she does not come and see herself!”

“She will come, my dear sir; but I shall not be there to see her.”

“Are you going?”

“I leave you to stalk your game; be patient, and do not forget to come
and tell me the news this evening.”

“I promise.”

And Lampron vanished.

The drawing was hung about midway between two doorways draped with
curtains, that opened into the big galleries. I leaned against the
woodwork of one of them, and waited. On my left stretched a solitude
seldom troubled by the few visitors who risk themselves in the realms of
pen and pencil. These, too, only came to get fresh air, or to look down
on the many-colored crowd moving among the white statues below.

At my right, on the contrary, the battling currents of the crowd kept
passing and repassing, the provincial element easily distinguished by
its jaded demeanor. Stout, exhausted matrons, breathless fathers of
families, crowded the sofas, raising discouraged glances to the walls,
while around them turned and tripped, untiring as at a dance, legions
of Parisiennes, at ease, on their high heels, equally attentive to the
pictures, their own carriage, and their neighbors’ gowns.

O peaceful functionaries, you whose business it is to keep an eye upon
this ferment! unless the ceaseless flux of these human phenomena lull
you to a trance, what a quantity of silly speeches you must hear! I
picked up twenty in as many minutes.

Suddenly there came a sound of little footsteps in the gallery. Two
little girls had just come in, two sisters, doubtless, for both had
the same black eyes, pink dresses, and white feathers in their hats.
Hesitating, with outstretched necks, like fawns on the border of a
glade, they seemed disappointed at the unexpected length of the gallery.
They looked at each other and whispered. Then both smiled, and turning
their backs on each other, they set off, one to the right, the other to
the left, to examine the drawings which covered the walls. They made a
rapid examination, with which art had obviously little to do; they were
looking for something, and I thought it might be for Jeanne’s portrait.
And so it turned out; the one on my side soon came to a stop, pointed
a finger to the wall, and gave a little cry. The other ran up; they
clapped their hands.

“Bravo, bravo!”

Then off they went again through the farther door.

I guessed what they were about to do.

I trembled from head to foot, and hid myself farther behind the
curtains.

Not a minute elapsed before they were back, not two this time, but
three, and the third was Jeanne, whom they were pulling along between
them.

They brought her up to Lampron’s sketch, and curtsied neatly to her.

Jeanne bent down, smiled, and seemed pleased. Then, a doubt seizing her,
she turned her head and saw me. The smile died away; she blushed, a tear
seemed ready to start to her eyes. Oh, rapture! Jeanne, you are touched;
Jeanne, you understand!

A deep joy surged across my soul, so deep that I never have felt its
like.

Alas! at that instant some one called, “Jeanne!”

She stood up, took the two little girls by the hand, and was gone.

Far better had it been had I too fled, carrying with me that dream of
delight!

But no, I leaned forward to look after them. In the doorway beyond I saw
M. Charnot. A young man was with him, who spoke to Jeanne. She answered
him. Three words reached me:

“It’s nothing, George.”

The devil! She loves another!

                         May 2d.

In what a state of mind did I set out this morning to face my examiners!
Downhearted, worn out by a night of misery, indifferent to all that
might befall me, whether for good or for evil.

I considered myself, and indeed I was, very wretched, but I never
thought that I should return more wretched than I went.

It was lovely weather when at half past eleven I started for the Law
School with an annotated copy of my essay under my arm, thinking more
of the regrets for the past and plans for the future with which I had
wrestled all night, than of the ordeal I was about to undergo. I met in
the Luxembourg the little girl whom I had kissed the week before. She
stopped her hoop and stood in my way, staring with wideopen eyes and
a coaxing, cunning look, which meant, “I know you, I do!” I passed by
without noticing. She pouted her lip, and I saw that she was thinking,
“What’s the matter with him?”

What was the matter? My poor little golden-locks, when you are grown a
fair woman I trust you may know as little of it as you do to-day.

I went up the Rue Soufliot, and entered the stuffy courtyard on the
stroke of noon.

The morning lectures were over. Beneath the arcades a few scattered
students were walking up and down. I avoided them for fear of meeting
a friend and having to talk. Several professors came running from their
lunch, rather red in the face, at the summons of the secretary. These
were my examiners.

It was time to get into costume, for the candidate, like the criminal,
has his costume. The old usher, who has dressed me up I don’t know how
many times in his hired gowns, saw that I was downcast, and thought I
must be suffering from examination fever, a peculiar malady, which is
like what a young soldier feels the first time he is under fire.

We were alone in the dark robing-room; he walked round me, brushing and
encouraging me; doctors of law have a moral right to this touch of the
brush.

“It will be all right, Monsieur Mouillard, never fear. No one has been
refused a degree this morning.”

“I am not afraid, Michu.”

“When I say ‘no one,’ there was one refused--you never heard the
like. Just imagine--a little to the right, please, Monsieur
Mouillard--imagine, I say, a candidate who knew absolutely nothing. That
is nothing extraordinary. But this fellow, after the examination was
over, recommended himself to mercy. ‘Have compassion on me, gentlemen,’
he said, ‘I only wish to be a magistrate!’ Capital, isn’t it?”

“Yes, yes.”

“You don’t seem to think so. You don’t look like laughing this morning.”

“No, Michu, every one has his bothers, you know.”

“I said to myself as I looked at you just now, Monsieur Mouillard has
some bother. Button up all the way, if you please, for a doctor’s essay;
if-you-please. It’s a heartache, then?”

“Something of the kind.”

He shrugged his shoulders and went before me, struggling with an
asthmatic chuckle, until we came to the room set apart for the
examination.

It was the smallest and darkest of all, and borrowed its light from
a street which had little enough to spare, and spared as little as it
could. On the left against the wall is a raised desk for the candidate.
At the end, on a platform before a bookcase, sit the six examiners
in red robes, capes with three bands of ermine, and gold-laced caps.
Between the candidate’s desk and the door is a little enclosure for
spectators, of whom there were about thirty when I entered.

My performance, which had a chance of being brilliant, was only fair.

The three first examiners had read my essay, especially M. Flamaran, who
knew it well and had enjoyed its novel and audacious propositions. He
pursed up his mouth preparatory to putting the first question, like an
epicure sucking a ripe fruit. And when at length he opened it, amid
the general silence, it was to carry the discussion at once up to
such heights of abstraction that a good number of the audience, not
understanding a word of it, stealthily made for the door.

Each successive answer put fresh spirit into him.

“Very good,” he murmured, “very good; let us carry it a step farther.
Now supposing--”

And, the demon of logic at his heels, we both went off like inspired
lunatics into a world of hypotheses where never man had set foot. He
was examining no longer, he was inventing and intoxicating himself with
deductions. No one was right or wrong. We were reasoning about chimeras,
he radiant, I cool, before his gently tickled colleagues. I never
realized till then what imagination a jurist’s head could contain.

Perspiring freely, he set down a white mark, having exceeded by ten
minutes the recognized time for examination.

The second examiner was less enthusiastic. He made very few
suppositions, and devoted all his art to convicting me of a
contradiction between page seventeen and page seventy-nine. He
kept repeating, “It’s a serious matter, sir, very serious.” But,
nevertheless, he bestowed a second white mark on me. I only got half
white from the third. The rest of the examination was taken up in
matters extraneous to the subject of my essay, a commonplace trial
of strength, in which I replied with threadbare arguments to outworn
objections.

And then it ended. Two hours had passed.

I left the room while the examiners made up their minds.

A few friends came up to me.

“Congratulations, old man, I bet on six whites.”

“Hallo, Larive! I never noticed you.”

“I quite believe you; you didn’t notice anybody, you still look
bewildered. Is it the emotion inseparable from--”

“I dare say.”

“The candidate is requested to return to the examination room!” said the
usher.

And old Michu added, in a whisper, “You have passed. I told you so. You
won’t forget old Michu, sir.”

M. Flamaran conferred my degree with a paternal smile, and a few kind
words for “this conscientious study, full of fresh ideas on a difficult
subject.”

I bowed to the examiners. Larive was waiting for me in the courtyard,
and seized me by the arm.

“Uncle Mouillard will be pleased.”

“I suppose so.”

“Better pleased than you.”

“That’s very likely.”

“He might easily be that. Upon my word I can’t understand you. These two
years you have been working like a gang of niggers for your degree, and
now you have got it you don’t seem to care a bit. You have won a smile
from Flamaran and do not consider yourself a spoiled child of Fortune!
What more did you want? Did you expect that Mademoiselle Charnot would
come in person--”

“Look here, Larive--”

“To look on at your examination, and applaud your answers with her
neatly gloved hands? Surely you know, my dear fellow, that that is no
longer possible, and that she is going to be married.”

“Going to be married?”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t know it.”

“I have suspected as much since yesterday; I met her at the Salon, and
saw a young man with her.”

“Fair?”

“Yes.”

“Tall?”

“Rather.”

“Good-looking?”

“H’m--well”

“Dufilleul, old chap, friend Dufilleul. Don’t you know Dufilleul?”

“No.”

“Oh, yes you do--a bit of a stockjobber, great at ecarte, studied law in
our year, and is always to be seen at the Opera with little Tigra of the
Bouffes.”

“Poor girl!”

“You pity her?”

“It’s too awful.”

“What is?”

“To see an unhappy child married to a rake who--”

“She will not be the first.”

“A gambler!”

“Yes, there is that, to be sure.”

“A fool, as it seems, who, in exchange for her beauty, grace, and youth,
can offer only an assortment of damaged goods! Yes, I do pity girls
duped thus, deceived and sacrificed by the very purity that makes them
believe in that of others.”

“You’ve some queer notions! It’s the way of the world. If the innocent
victims were only to marry males of equal innocence, under the
guardianship of virtuous parents, the days of this world would be
numbered, my boy. I assure you that Dufilleul is a good match, handsome
for one thing--”

“That’s worth a deal!”

“Rich.”

“The deuce he is!”

“And then a name which can be divided.”

“Divided?”

“With all the ease in the world. A very rare quality. At his marriage
he describes himself as Monsieur du Filleul. A year later he is Baron
du Filleul. At the death of his father, an old cad, he becomes Comte
du Filleul. If the young wife is pretty and knows how to cajole her
husband, she may even become a marquise.”

“Ugh!”

“You are out of spirits, my poor fellow; I will stand you an absinthe,
the only beverage that will suit the bitterness of your heart.”

“No, I shall go home.”

“Good-by, then. You don’t take your degree cheerfully.”

“Good-by.”

He spun round on his heels and went down the Boulevard St. Michel.

So all is over forever between her and me, and, saddest of all, she is
even more to be pitied than I. Poor girl! I loved her deeply, but I did
it awkwardly, as I do everything, and missed my chance of speaking. The
mute declaration which I risked, or rather which a friend risked for me,
found her already engaged to this beast who has brought more skill to
the task, who has made no blots at the National Library, who has dared
all when he had everything to fear--

I have allowed myself to be taken by her maiden witchery. All the fault,
all the folly is mine. She has given me no encouragement, no sign of
liking me. If she smiled at St. Germain it was because she was surprised
and flattered. If she came near to tears at the Salon it was because she
pitied me. I have not the shadow of a reproach to make her.

That is all I shall ever get from her--a tear, a smile. That’s all;
never mind, I shall contrive to live on it. She has been my first love,
and I shall keep her a place in my heart from which no other shall drive
her. I shall now set to work to shut this poor heart which did so wrong
to open.... I thought to be happy to-night, and I am full of sorrow.
Henceforward I think I shall understand Sylvestre better. Our sorrows
will bring us nearer. I will go to see him at once, and will tell him
so.

But first I must write to my uncle to tell him that his nephew is a
Doctor of Law. All the rest, my plans, my whole future can be put off
till to-morrow, or the day after, unless I get disgusted at the very
thought of a future and decide to conjugate my life in the present
indicative only. That is what I feel inclined to do.

                       May 4th.

Lampron has gone to the country to pass a fortnight in an out-of-the-way
place with an old relative, where he goes into hiding when he wishes to
finish an engraving.

But Madame Lampron was at home. After a little hesitation I told her
all, and I am glad I did so. She found in her simple, womanly heart
just the counsel that I needed. One feels that she is used to giving
consolation. She possesses the secret of that feminine deftness which
is the great set-off to feminine weakness. Weak? Yes, women perhaps are
weak, yet less weak than we, the strong sex, for they can raise us to
our feet. She called me, “My dear Monsieur Fabien,” and there was
balm in the very way she said the words. I used to think she wanted
refinement; she does not, she only lacks reading, and lack of reading
may go with the most delicate and lofty feelings. No one ever taught her
certain turns of expression which she used. “If your mother was alive,”
 said she, “this is what she would say.” And then she spoke to me of God,
who alone can determinate man’s trials, either by the end He ordains,
or the resignation He inspires. I felt myself carried with her into
the regions where our sorrows shrink into insignificance as the horizon
broadens around them. And I remember she uttered this fine thought, “See
how my son has suffered! It makes one believe, Monsieur Fabien, that the
elect of the earth are the hardest tried, just as the stones that crown
the building are more deeply cut than their fellows.”

I returned from Madame Lampron’s, softened, calmer, wiser.




CHAPTER IX. A VISIT FROM MY UNCLE

                         May 5th.

A letter from M. Mouillard breathing fire and fury. Were I not so low
spirited I could laugh at it.

He would have liked me, after taking my degree at two in the afternoon,
to take the train for Bourges the same evening, where my uncle, his
practice, and provincial bliss awaited me. M. Mouillard’s friends had
had due notice, and would have come to meet me at the station. In short,
I am an ungrateful wretch. At least I might have fixed the hour of my
imminent arrival, for I can not want to stop in Paris with nothing there
to detain me. But no, not a sign, not a word of returning; simply the
announcement that I have passed. This goes beyond the bounds of mere
folly and carelessness. M. Mouillard, his most elementary notions of
life shaken to their foundations, concludes in these words:

   “Fabien, I have long suspected it; some creature has you in bondage.
   I am coming to break the bonds!

                  “BRUTUS MOUILLARD.”

I know him well; he will be here tomorrow.

                  May 6th.
No uncle as yet.

                  May 7th.
No more uncle than yesterday.

                  May 8th.
Total eclipse continues. No news of M. Mouillard. This is very strange.

                  May 9th.
This evening at seven o’clock, just as I was going out to dine, I saw,
a few yards away, a tall, broad-brimmed hat surmounting a head of lank
white hair, a long neck throttled in a white neckcloth, a frock-coat
flapping about a pair of attenuated legs. I lifted up my voice:

“Uncle!”

He opened his arms to me and I fell into them. His first remark was:

“I trust at least that you have not yet dined.”

“No, uncle.”

“To Foyot’s, then!”

When you expect to meet a man in his wrath and get an invitation to
dinner, you feel almost as if you had been taken in. You are heated,
your arguments are at your fingers’ ends, your stock of petulance is
ready for immediate use; and all have to be stored in bond.

When I had recovered from my surprise, I said:

“I expected you sooner, from your letter.”

“Your suppositions were correct. I have been two days here, at the
Grand Hotel. I went there on account of the dining-room, for my friend
Hublette (you remember Hublette at Bourges) told me: ‘Mouillard, you
must see that room before you retire from business.’”

“I should have gone to see you there, uncle, if I had known it.”

“You would not have found me. Business before pleasure, Fabien. I had to
see three barristers and five solicitors. You know that business of that
kind can not wait. I saw them. Business over, I can indulge my feelings.
Here I am. Does Foyot suit you?”

“Certainly, uncle.”

“Come on, then nephew, quick, march! Paris, makes one feel quite young
again!”

And really Uncle Mouillard did look quite young, almost as young as he
looked provincial. His tall figure, and the countrified cut of his coat,
made all who passed him turn to stare, accustomed as Parisians are to
curiosities. He tapped the wood pavement with his stick, admired
the effects of Wallace’s philanthropy, stopped before the enamelled
street-signs, and grew enthusiastic over the traffic in the Rue de
Vaugirard.

The dinner was capital--just the kind a generous uncle will give to a
blameless nephew. M. Mouillard, who has a long standing affection for
chambertin, ordered two bottles to begin with. He drank the whole of one
and half of the other, eating in proportion, and talked unceasingly
and positively at the top of his voice, as his wont was. He told me the
story of two of his best actions this year, a judicial separation--my
uncle is very strong in judicial separations--and the abduction of a
minor. At first I looked out for personal allusions. But no, he told
the story from pure love of his art, without omitting an interlocutory
judgment, or a judgment reserved, just as he would have told the story
of Helen and Paris, if he had been employed in that well-known case. Not
a word about myself. I waited, yet nothing came but the successive steps
in the action.

After the ice, M. Mouillard called for a cigar.

“Waiter, what cigars have you got?”

“Londres, conchas, regalias, cacadores, partagas, esceptionales. Which
would you like, sir?”

“Damn the name! a big one that will take some time to smoke.”

Emile displayed at the bottom of a box an object closely resembling a
distaff with a straw through the middle, doubtless some relic of the
last International Exhibition, abandoned by all, like the Great Eastern,
on account of its dimensions. My uncle seized it, stuck it in the amber
mouthpiece that is so familiar to me, lighted it, and under the pretext
that you must always first get the tobacco to burn evenly, went out
trailing behind him a cloud of smoke, like a gunboat at full speed.

We “did” the arcades round the Odeon, where my uncle spent an eternity
thumbing the books for sale. He took them all up one after another, from
the poetry of the decedents to the Veterinary Manual, gave a glance at
the author’s name, shrugged his shoulders, and always ended by turning
to me with:

“You know that writer?”

“Why, yes, uncle.”

“He must be quite a new author; I can’t recall that name.”

M. Mouillard forgot that it was forty-five years since he had last
visited the bookstalls under the Odeon.

He thought he was a student again, loafing along the arcades after
dinner, eager for novelty, careless of draughts. Little by little he
lost himself in dim reveries. His cigar never left his lips. The ash
grew longer and longer yet, a lovely white ash, slightly swollen at the
tip, dotted with little black specks, and connected with the cigar by a
thin red band which alternately glowed and faded as he drew his breath.

M. Mouillard was so lost in thought, and the ash was getting so long,
that a young student--of the age that knows no mercy-was struck by these
twin phenomena. I saw him nudge a friend, hastily roll a cigarette, and,
doffing his hat, accost my uncle.

“Might I trouble you for a light, sir!”

M. Mouillard emitted a sigh, turned slowly round, and bent two terrible
eyes upon the intruder, knocked off the ash with an angry gesture, and
held out the ignited end at arm’s length.

“With pleasure, sir!”

Then he replaced the last book he had taken up--a copy of Musset--and
called me.

“Come, Fabien.”

Arm in arm we strolled up the Rue de Medicis along the railings of the
Luxembourg.

I felt the crisis approaching. My uncle has a pet saying: “When a thing
is not clear to me, I go straight to the heart of it like a ferret.”

The ferret began to work.

“Now, Fabien, about these bonds I mentioned? Did I guess right?”

“Yes, uncle, I have been in bondage.”

“Quite right to make a clean breast of it, my boy; but we must break
your bonds.”

“They are broken.”

“How long ago?”

“Some days ago.”

“On your honor?”

“Yes.”

“That’s quite right. You’d have done better to keep out of bondage. But
there, you took your uncle’s advice; you saw the abyss, and drew back
from it. Quite right of you.”

“Uncle, I will not deceive you. Your letter arrived after the event. The
cause of the rupture was quite apart from that.”

“And the cause was?”

“The sudden shattering of my illusions.”

“Men still have illusions about these creatures?”

“She was a perfect creature, and worthy of all respect.”

“Come, come!”

“I must ask you to believe me. I thought her affections free.”

“And she was--”

“Betrothed.”

“Really now, that’s very funny!”

“I did not find it funny, uncle. I suffered bitterly, I assure you.”

“I dare say, I dare say. The illusions you spoke of anyhow, it’s all
over now?”

“Quite over.”

“Well, that being the case, Fabien, I am ready to help you. Confess
frankly to me. How much is required?”

“How much?”

“Yes, you want something, I dare say, to close the incident. You know
what I mean, eh? to purchase what I might call the veil of oblivion. How
much?”

“Why, nothing at all, uncle.”

“Don’t be afraid, Fabien; I’ve got the money with me.”

“You have quite mistaken the case, uncle; there is no question of
money. I must tell you again that the young lady is of the highest
respectability.”

My uncle stared.

“I assure you, uncle. I am speaking of Mademoiselle Jeanne Charnot.”

“I dare say.”

“The daughter of a member of the Institute.”

“What!”

My uncle gave a jump and stood still.

“Yes, of Mademoiselle Charnot, whom I was in love with and wished to
marry. Do you understand?”

He leaned against the railing and folded his arms.

“Marry! Well, I never! A woman you wanted to marry?”

“Why, yes; what’s the matter?”

“To marry! How could I have imagined such a thing? Here were matters of
the utmost importance going on, and I knew nothing about them.
Marry! You might be announcing your betrothal to me at this moment if
you’d-Still you are quite sure she is betrothed?”

“Larive told me so.”

“Who’s Larive?”

“A friend of mine.”

“Oh, so you have only heard it through a friend?”

“Yes, uncle. Do you really think there may still be hope, that I still
have a chance?”

“No, no; not the slightest. She is sure to be betrothed, very much
betrothed. I tell you I am glad she is. The Mouillards do not come to
Paris for their wives, Fabien--we do not want a Parisienne to carry on
the traditions of the family, and the practice. A Parisienne! I shudder
at the thought of it. Fabien, you will leave Paris with me to-morrow.
That’s understood.”

“Certainly not, uncle.”

“Your reasons?”

“Because I can not leave my friends without saying goodby, and because
I have need to reflect before definitely binding myself to the legal
profession.”

“To reflect! You want to reflect before taking over a family practice,
which has been destined for you since you were an infant, in view of
which you have been working for five years, and which I have nursed for
you, I, your uncle, as if you had been my son?”

“Yes, uncle.”

“Don’t be a fool! You can reflect at Bourges quite as well as here. Your
object in staying here is to see her again.”

“It is not.”

“To wander like a troubled spirit up and down her street. By the way,
which is her street?”

“Rue de l’Universite.”

My uncle took out his pocketbook and made a note, “Charnot, Rue de
l’Universite.” Then all his features expanded. He gave a snort, which
I understood, for I had often heard it in court at Bourges, where it
meant, “There is no escape now. Old Mouillard has cornered his man.”

My uncle replaced his pencil in its case, and his notebook in his
pocket, and merely added:

“Fabien, you’re not yourself to-night. We’ll talk of the matter another
time. Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.” He was counting on his
fingers. “These return tickets are very convenient; I need not leave
before to-morrow evening. And, what’s more, you’ll go with me, my boy.”

M. Mouillard talked only on indifferent subjects during our brief walk
from the Rue Soufflot to catch the omnibus at the Odeon. There he shook
me by the hand and sprang nimbly into the first bus. A lady in black,
with veil tightly drawn over a little turned up nose, seeing my uncle
burst in like a bomb, and make for the seat beside her, hurriedly drew
in the folds of her dress, which were spread over the seat. My uncle
noticed her action, and, fearing he had been rude, bent over toward her
with an affable expression. “Do not disturb yourself, Madame. I am
not going all the way to Batignolles; no farther, indeed, than the
Boulevards. I shall inconvenience you for a few moments only, a very few
moments, Madame.” I had time to remark that the lady, after giving her
neighbor a glance of Juno-like disdain, turned her back upon him, and
proceeded to study the straps hanging from the roof.

The brake was taken off, the conductor whistled, the three horses, their
hoofs hammering the pavement, strained for an instant amid showers of
sparks, and the long vehicle vanished down the Rue de Vaugirard, bearing
with it Brutus and his fortunes.




CHAPTER X. A FAMILY BREACH

May 10th.

It is an awful fate to be the nephew of M. Mouillard! I always knew he
was obstinate, capable alike of guile and daring, but I little imagined
what his intentions were when he left me!

My refusal to start, and my prayer for a respite before embarking in his
practice, drove him wild. He lost his head, and swore to drag me off,
‘per fas et nefas’. He has mentally begun a new action--Mouillard v.
Mouillard, and is already tackling the brief; which is as much as to say
that he is fierce, unbridled, heartless, and without remorse.

Some might have bent. I preferred to break.

We are strangers for life. I have just seen him to the landing of my
staircase.

He came here about a quarter of an hour ago, proud, and, I may say,
swaggering, as he does over his learned friends when he has found a flaw
in one of their pleadings.

“Well, nephew?”

“Well, uncle?”

“I’ve got some news for you.”

“Indeed?”

M. Mouillard banged his hat down furiously upon my table.

“Yes, you know my maxim: when anything does not seem quite clear to
me--”

“You ferret it out.”

“Quite so; I have always found it answer. Your business did not seem
clear to me. Was Mademoiselle Charnot betrothed, or was she not? To what
extent had she encouraged your attentions? You never would have told me
the story correctly, and I never should have known. That being so, I put
my maxim into practice, and went to see her father.”

“You did that?”

“Certainly I did.”

“You have been to see Monsieur Charnot?”

“In the Rue de l’Universite. Wasn’t it the simplest thing to do?
Besides, I was not sorry to make the acquaintance of a member of the
Institute. And I must admit that he behaved very nicely to me--not a bit
stuck up.”

“And you told him?”

“My name to begin with: Brutus Mouillard. He reflected a bit, just a
moment, and recalled your appearance: a shy youth, a bachelor of arts,
wearing an eyeglass.”

“Was that all his description?”

“Yes, he remembered seeing you at the National Library, and once at his
house. I said to him, ‘That is my nephew, Monsieur Charnot.’ He replied,
‘I congratulate you, sir; he seems a youth of parts.’--‘That he is, but
his heart is very inflammable.’--‘At his age, sir, who is not liable to
take fire?’ That was how we began. Your friend Monsieur Charnot has a
pretty wit. I did not want to be behindhand with him, so I answered,
‘Well, sir, it caught fire in your house.’ He started with fright
and looked all round the room. I was vastly amused. Then we came to
explanations. I put the case before him, that you were in love with his
daughter, without my consent, but with perfectly honorable intentions;
that I had guessed it from your letters, from your unpardonable neglect
of your duties to your family, and that I hurried hither from Bourges
to take in the situation. With that I concluded, and waited for him to
develop. There are occasions when you must let people develop. I could
not jump down his throat with, ‘Sir, would you kindly tell me whether
your daughter is betrothed or not?’ You follow me? He thought, no doubt,
I had come to ask for his daughter’s hand, and passing one hand over his
forehead, he replied, ‘Sir, I feel greatly flattered by your proposal,
and I should certainly give it my serious attention, were it not that my
daughter’s hand is already sought by the son of an old schoolfellow
of mine, which circumstance, as you will readily understand, does not
permit of my entertaining an offer which otherwise should have received
the most mature consideration.’ I had learned what I came for without
risking anything. Well, I didn’t conceal from him that, so far as I was
concerned, I would rather you took your wife from the country than that
you brought home the most charming Parisienne; and that the Mouillards
from father to son had always taken their wives from Bourges. He entered
perfectly into my sentiments, and we parted the best of friends. Now, my
boy, the facts are ascertained: Mademoiselle Charnot is another’s;
you must get your mourning over and start with me to-night. To-morrow
morning we shall be in Bourges, and you’ll soon be laughing over your
Parisian delusions, I warrant you!”

I had heard my uncle out without interrupting him, though wrath,
astonishment, and my habitual respect for M. Mouillard were struggling
for the mastery within me. I needed all my strength of mind to answer,
with apparent calm.

“Yesterday, uncle, I had not made up my mind; today I have.”

“You are coming?”

“I am not. Your action in this matter, uncle--I do not know if you are
aware of it--has been perfectly unheard-of. I can not acknowledge your
right to act thus. It puts between you and me two hundred miles of rail,
and that forever. Do you understand me? You have taken the liberty of
disclosing a secret which was not yours to tell; you have revealed
a passion which, as it was hopeless, should not have been further
mentioned, and certainly not exposed to such humiliation. You went to
see Monsieur Charnot without reflecting whether you were not bringing
trouble into his household; without reflecting, further, whether
such conduct as yours, which may perhaps be usual among your business
acquaintances, was likely to succeed with me. Perhaps you thought it
would. You have merely completed an experiment, begun long ago, which
proves that we do not understand life in the same way, and that it
will be better for both of us if I continue to live in Paris, and you
continue to live at Bourges.”

“Ha! that’s how you take it, young man, is it? You refuse to come? you
try to bully me?”

“Yes.”

“Consider carefully before you let me leave here alone. You know the
amount of your fortune--fourteen hundred francs a year, which means
poverty in Paris.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, then, attend to what I am about to say. For years past I have
been saving my practice for you--that is, an honorable and lucrative
position all ready for you to step into. But I am tired at length of
your fads and your fancies. If you do not take up your quarters at
Bourges within a fortnight from now, the Mouillard practice will change
its name within three weeks!” My uncle sniffed with emotion as he looked
at me, expecting to see me totter beneath his threats. I made no
answer for a moment; but a thought which had been harassing me from the
beginning of our interview compelled me to say:

“I have only one thing to ask you, Monsieur Mouillard.”

“Further respite, I suppose? Time to reflect and fool me again? No, a
hundred times no! I’ve had enough of you; a fortnight, not a day more!”

“No, sir; I do not ask for respite.”

“So much the better, for I should refuse it. What do you want?”

“Monsieur Mouillard, I trust that Jeanne was not present at the
interview, that she heard none of it, that she was not forced to
blush--”

My uncle sprang to his feet, seized his gloves, which lay spread out
on the table, bundled them up, flung them passionately into his hat,
clapped the whole on his head, and made for the door with angry strides.

I followed him; he never looked back, never made answer to my “Good-by,
uncle.” But, at the sixth step, just before turning the corner, he
raised his stick, gave the banisters a blow fit to break them, and went
on his way downstairs exclaiming:

“Damnation!”

                         May 20th.

And so we have parted with an oath, my uncle and I! That is how I have
broken with the only relative I possess. It is now ten days since then.
I now have five left in which to mend the broken thread of the family
tradition, and become a lawyer. But nothing points to such conversion.
On the contrary, I feel relieved of a heavy weight, pleased to be free,
to have no profession. I feel the thrill of pleasure that a fugitive
from justice feels on clearing the frontier. Perhaps I was meant for a
different course of life than the one I was forced to follow. As a child
I was brought up to worship the Mouillard practice, with the fixed idea
that this profession alone could suit me; heir apparent to a lawyer’s
stool--born to it, brought up to it, without any idea, at any rate for a
long time, that I could possibly free myself from the traditions of the
law’s sacred jargon.

I have quite got over that now. The courts, where I have been a frequent
spectator, seem to me full of talented men who fine down and belittle
their talents in the practice of law. Nothing uses up the nobler
virtues more quickly than a practice at the bar. Generosity, enthusiasm,
sensibility, true and ready sympathy--all are taken, leaving the man,
in many instances nothing but a skilful actor, who apes all the emotions
while feeling none. And the comedy is none the less repugnant to me
because it is played through with a solemn face, and the actors are
richly recompensed.

Lampron is not like this. He has given play to all the noble qualities
of his nature. I envy him. I admire his disinterestedness, his broad
views of life, his faith in good in spite of evil, his belief in poetry
in spite of prose, his unspoiled capacity for receiving new impressions
and illusions--a capacity which, amid the crowds that grow old in mind
before they are old in body, keeps him still young and boyish. I think
I might have been devoted to his profession, or to literature, or to
anything but law.

We shall see. For the present I have taken a plunge into the unknown. My
time is all my own, my freedom is absolute, and I am enjoying it.

I have hidden nothing from Lampron. As my friend he is pleased, I can
see, at a resolve which keeps me in Paris; but his prudence cries out
upon it.

“It is easy enough to refuse a profession,” he said; “harder to find
another in its place. What do you intend to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“My dear fellow, you seem to be trusting to luck. At sixteen that might
be permissible, at twenty-four it’s a mistake.”

“So much the worse, for I shall make the mistake. If I have to live on
little--well, you’ve tried that before now; I shall only be following
you.”

“That’s true; I have known want, and even now it attacks me sometimes;
it’s like influenza, which does not leave its victims all at once; but
it is hard, I can tell you, to do without the necessaries of life; as
for its luxuries--”

“Oh, of course, no one can do without its luxuries.”

“You are incorrigible,” he answered, with a laugh. Then he said no more.
Lampron’s silence is the only argument which struggles in my heart in
favor of the Mouillard practice. Who can guess from what quarter the
wind will blow?




CHAPTER XI. IN THE BEATEN PATH

                         June 5th.

The die is cast; I will not be a lawyer.

The tradition of the Mouillards is broken for good, Sylvestre is
defeated for good, and I am free for good--and quite uncertain of my
future.

I have written my uncle a calm, polite, and clearly worded letter to
confirm my decision. He has not answered it, nor did I expect an answer.

I expected, however, that he would be avenged by some faint regret on my
part, by one of those light mists that so often arise and hang about our
firmest resolutions. But no such mist has arisen.

Still, Law has had her revenge. Abandoned at Bourges, she has recaptured
me at Paris, for a time. I realized that it was impossible for me
to live on an income of fourteen hundred francs. The friends whom I
discreetly questioned, in behalf of an unnamed acquaintance, as to
the means of earning money, gave me various answers. Here is a fairly
complete list of their expedients:

“If your friend is at all clever, he should write a novel.”

“If he is not, there is the catalogue of the National Library: ten hours
of indexing a day.”

“If he has ambition, let him become a wine-merchant.”

“No; ‘Old Clo,’ and get his hats gratis.”

“If he is very plain, and has no voice, he can sing in the chorus at the
opera.”

“Shorthand writer in the Senate is a peaceful occupation.”

“Teacher of Volapuk is the profession of the future.”

“Try ‘Hallo, are you there?’ in the telephones.”

“Wants to earn money? Advise him first not to lose any!”

The most sensible one, who guessed the name of the acquaintance I was
interested in, said:

“You have been a managing clerk; go back to it.”

And as the situation chanced to be vacant, I went back to my old master.
I took my old seat and den as managing clerk between the outer office
and Counsellor Boule’s glass cage. I correct the drafts of the inferior
clerks; I see the clients and instruct them how to proceed. They often
take me for the counsellor himself. I go to the courts nearly every day,
and hang about chief clerks’ and judges’ chambers; and go to the theatre
once a week with the “paper” supplied to the office.

Do I call this a profession? No, merely a stop-gap which allows me to
live and wait for something to turn up. I sometimes have forebodings
that I shall go on like this forever, waiting for something which
will never turn up; that this temporary occupation may become only too
permanent.

There is an old clerk in the office who has never had any other
occupation, whose appearance is a kind of warning to me. He has a red
face--the effect of the office stove, I think--straight, white hair,
the expression when spoken to of a startled sheep-gentle, astonished,
slightly flurried. His attenuated back is rounded off with a stoop
between the neck and shoulders. He can hardly keep his hands from
shaking. His signature is a work of art. He can stick at his desk for
six hours without stirring. While we lunch at a restaurant, he consumes
at the office some nondescript provisions which he brings in the morning
in a paper bag. On Sundays he fishes, for a change; his rod takes the
place of his pen, and his can of worms serves instead of inkstand.

He and I have already one point of resemblance. The old clerk was once
crossed in love with a flowergirl, one Mademoiselle Elodie. He has told
me this one tragedy of his life. In days gone by I used to think this
thirty-year-old love-story dull and commonplace; to-day I understand
M. Jupille; I relish him even. He and I have become sympathetic. I no
longer make him move from his seat by the fire when I want to ask him a
question: I go to him. On Sundays, on the quays by the Seine, I pick him
out from the crowd intent upon the capture of tittlebats, because he is
seated upon his handkerchief. I go up to him and we have a talk.

“Fish biting, Monsieur Jupille?”

“Hardly at all.”

“Sport is not what it used to be?”

“Ah! Monsieur Mouillard, if you could have seen it thirty years ago!”

This date is always cropping up with him. Have we not all our own date,
a few months, a few days, perhaps a single hour of full-hearted joy, for
which half our life has been a preparation, and of which the other half
must be a remembrance?

                       June 5th.

“Monsieur Mouillard, here is an application for leave to sign judgment
in a fresh matter.”

“Very well, give it me.”

“To the President of the Civil Court:

“Monsieur Plumet, of 27 Rue Hauteville, in the city of Paris, by
Counsellor Boule, his advocate, craves leave--”

It was a proceeding against a refractory debtor, the commonest thing in
the world.

“Monsieur Massinot!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who brought these papers?”

“A very pretty little woman brought them this morning while you were
out, sir.”

“Monsieur Massinot, whether she was pretty or not, it is no business of
yours to criticise the looks of the clients.”

“I did not mean to offend you, Monsieur Mouillard.”

“You have not offended me, but you have no business to talk of a ‘pretty
client.’ That epithet is not allowed in a pleading, that’s all. The lady
is coming back, I suppose?”

“Yes, sir.”

Little Madame Plumet soon called again, tricked out from head to foot in
the latest fashion. She was a little flurried on entering a room full of
jocular clerks. Escorted by Massinot, both of them with their eyes fixed
on the ground, she reached my office. I closed the door after her. She
recognized me.

“Monsieur Mouillard! What a pleasant surprise!”

She held out her hand to me so frankly and gracefully that I gave her
mine, and felt sure, from the firm, expressive way in which she clasped
it, that Madame Plumet was really pleased to see me. Her ruddy cheeks
and bright eyes recalled my first impression of her, the little
dressmaker running from the workshop to the office, full of her love for
M. Plumet and her grievances against the wicked cabinetmaker.

“What, you are back again with Counsellor Boule? I am surprised!”

“So am I, Madame Plumet, very much surprised. But such is life! How is
Master Pierre progressing?”

“Not quite so well, poor darling, since I weaned him. I had to wean him,
Monsieur Mouillard, because I have gone back to my old trade.”

“Dressmaking?”

“Yes, on my own account this time. I have taken the flat opposite to
ours, on the same floor. Plumet makes frames, while I make gowns. I have
already three workgirls, and enough customers to give me a start. I do
not charge them very dear to begin with.

“One of my customers was a very nice young lady--you know who! I have
not talked to her of you, but I have often wanted to. By the way,
Monsieur Mouillard, did I do my errand well?”

“What errand?”

“The important one, about the portrait at the Salon.”

“Oh, yes; very well indeed. I must thank you.”

“She came?”

“Yes, with her father.”

“She must have been pleased! The drawing was so pretty. Plumet, who is
not much of a talker, is never tired of praising it. I tell you, he and
I did not spare ourselves. He made a bit of a fuss before he would take
the order; he was in a hurry--such a hurry; but when he saw that I was
bent on it he gave in. And it is not the first time he has given in.
Plumet is a good soul, Monsieur Mouillard. When you know him better
you will see what a good soul he is. Well, while he was cutting out the
frame, I went to the porter’s wife. What a business it was! I am glad my
errand was successful!”

“It was too good of you, Madame Plumet; but it was useless, alas! she is
to marry another.”

“Marry another? Impossible!”

I thought Madame Plumet was about to faint. Had she heard that her son
Pierre had the croup, she could not have been more upset. Her
bosom heaved, she clasped her hands, and gazed at me with sorrowful
compassion.

“Poor Monsieur Mouillard!”

And two tears, two real tears, coursed down Madame Plumet’s cheeks. I
should have liked to catch them. They were the only tears that had been
shed for me by a living soul since my mother died.

I had to tell her all, every word, down to my rival’s name. When she
heard that it was Baron Dufilleul, her indignation knew no bounds. She
exclaimed that the Baron was an awful man; that she knew all sorts of
things about him! Know him? she should think so! That such a union was
impossible, that it could never take place, that Plumet, she knew, would
agree with her:

“Madame Plumet,” I said, “we have strayed some distance from the
business which brought you here. Let us return to your affairs; mine are
hopeless, and you can not remedy them.”

She got up trembling, her eyes red and her feelings a little hurt.

“My action? Oh, no! I can’t attend to it to-day. I’ve no heart to talk
about my business. What you’ve told me has made me too unhappy. Another
day, Monsieur Mouillard, another day.”

She left me with a look of mystery, and a pressure of the hand which
seemed to say: “Rely on me!”

Poor woman!




CHAPTER XII. I GO TO ITALY

June 10th.

In the train. We have passed the fortifications. The stuccoed houses of
the suburbs, the factories, taverns, and gloomy hovels in the debatable
land round Paris are so many points of sunshine in the far distance.
The train is going at full speed. The fields of green or gold are being
unrolled like ribbons before my eyes. Now and again a metallic sound and
a glimpse of columns and advertisements show that we are rushing through
a station in a whirlwind of dust. A flash of light across our path is
a tributary of the river. I am off, well on my way, and no one can stop
me--not Lampron, nor Counsellor Boule, nor yet Plumet. The dream of
years is about to be realized. I am going to see Italy--merely a corner
of it; but what a pleasure even that is, and what unlooked-for luck!

A few days ago, Counsellor Boule called me into his office.

“Monsieur Mouillard, you speak Italian fluently, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” “Would you like a trip at a client’s expense?”

“With pleasure, wherever you like.”

“To Italy?”

“With very great pleasure.”

“I thought so, and gave your name to the court without asking your
consent. It’s a commission to examine documents at Milan, to prove some
copies of deeds and other papers, put in by a supposititious Italian
heir to establish his rights to a rather large property. You remember
the case of Zampini against Veldon and others?”

“Quite well.”

“It is Zampini’s copies of the deeds on which he bases his claim which
you will have to compare with the originals, with the help of a clerk
from the Record Office and a sworn translator. You can go by Switzerland
or by the Corniche route, as you please. You will be allowed six hundred
francs and a fortnight’s holiday. Does that suit you?”

“I should think so!”

“Then pack up and be off. You must be at Milan by the morning of the
eighteenth.”

I ran to tell the news to Lampron, who was filled with surprise and not
a little emotion at the mention of Italy. And here I am flying along
in the Lyons express, without a regret for Paris. All my heart leaps
forward toward Switzerland, where I shall be to-morrow. I have chosen
this green route to take me to the land of blue skies. Up to the last
moment I feared that some obstacle would arise, that the ill-luck which
dogs my footsteps would keep me back, and I am quite surprised that it
has let me off. True, I nearly lost the train, and the horse of cab
No. 7382 must have been a retired racer to make up for the loss of time
caused by M. Plumet.

Counsellor Boule sent me on a business errand an hour before I started.
On my way back, just as I was crossing the Place de l’Opera in the
aforesaid cab, a voice hailed me:

“Monsieur Mouillard!”

I looked first to the right and then to the left, till, on a refuge, I
caught sight of M. Plumet struggling to attract my attention. I
stopped the cab, and a smile of satisfaction spread over M. Plumet’s
countenance. He stepped off the refuge. I opened the cab-door. But a
brougham passed, and the horse pushed me back into the cab with his
nose. I opened the door a second time; another brougham came by; then a
third; finally two serried lines of traffic cut me off from M. Plumet,
who kept shouting something to me which the noise of the wheels and the
crowd prevented me from hearing. I signalled my despair to M. Plumet. He
rose on tiptoe. I could not hear any better.

Five minutes lost! Impossible to wait any longer! Besides, who could
tell that it was not a trap to prevent my departure, though in friendly
guise? I shuddered at the thought and shouted:

“Gare de Lyon, cabby, as fast as you can drive!”

My orders were obeyed. We got to the station to find the train made up
and ready to start, and I was the last to take a ticket.

I suppose M. Plumet managed to escape from his refuge.

                         GENEVA.

On my arrival I found, keeping order on the way outside the station, the
drollest policeman that ever stepped out of a comic opera. At home
we should have had to protect him against the boys; here he protects
others.

Well, it shows that I am really abroad.

I have only two hours to spare in this town. What shall I see? The
country; that is always beautiful, whereas many so-called “sights” are
not. I will make for the shores of the lake, for the spot where the
Rhone leaves it, to flow toward France. The Rhone, which is so muddy at
Avignon, is clean here; deep and clear as a creek of the sea. It rushes
along in a narrow blue torrent compressed between a quay and a line of
houses.

The river draws me after it. We leave the town together, and I am soon
in the midst of those market-gardens where the infant Topffer lost
himself, and, overtaken by nightfall, fell to making his famous analysis
of fear. The big pumping wheels still overtop the willows, and cast
their shadows over the lettuce-fields. In the distance rise slopes of
woodland, on Sundays the haunt of holiday-makers. The Rhone leaps and
eddies, singing over its gravel beds. Two trout-fishers are taxing all
their strength to pull a boat up stream beneath the shelter of the bank.

Perhaps I was wrong in not waiting to hear what M. Plumet had to tell
me. He is not the kind of man to gesticulate wildly without good reason.

                       ON THE LAKE.

The steamer is gaining the open water and Geneva already lies far
behind. Not a ripple on the blue water that shades into deep blue behind
us. Ahead the scene melts into a milky haze. A little boat, with idle
sails embroidered with sunlight, vanishes into it. On the right rise
the mountains of Savoy, dotted with forests, veiled in clouds which cast
their shadows on the broken slopes. The contrast is happy, and I can
not help admiring Leman’s lovely smile at the foot of these rugged
mountains.

At the bend in the banks near St. Maurice-en-Valais, the wind catches
us, quite a squall. The lake becomes a sea. At the first roll an
Englishwoman becomes seasick. She casts an expiring glance upon Chillon,
the ancient towers of which are being lashed by the foam. Her husband
does not think it worth his while to cease reading his guide-book or
focusing his field-glass for so trifling a matter.

                    ON THE DILIGENCE

I am crossing the Simplon at daybreak, with rosepink glaciers on every
side. We are trotting down the Italian slope. How I have longed for the
sight of Italy! Hardly had the diligence put on the brake, and begun
bowling down the mountain-side, before I discovered a change on the
face of all things. The sky turned to a brighter blue. At the very first
glance I seemed to see the dust of long summers on the leaves of the
firs, six thousand feet above the sea, in the virgin atmosphere of the
mountain-tops: and I was very near taking the creaking of my loosely
fixed seat for the southern melody of the first grasshopper.

                       BAVENO

No one could be mistaken; this shaven, obsequious, suavely jovial
innkeeper is a Neapolitan. He takes his stand in his mosaic-paved
hall, and is at the service of all who wish for information about Lago
Maggiore, the list of its sights; in a word, the programme of the piece.

                  ISOLA BELLA, ISOLA MADRE.

Yes, they are scraped clean, carefully tended, pretty, all a-blowing and
a-growing; but unreal. The palm trees are unhomely, the tropical plants
seem to stand behind footlights. Restore them to their homes, or give me
back Lake Leman, so simply grand.

                    MENAGGIO.

After the sky-blue of Maggiore and the vivid green of Lugano, comes the
violet-blue of Como, with its luminous landscape, its banks covered with
olives, Roman ruins, and modern villas. Never have I felt the air so
clear. Here for the first time I said to myself: “This is the spot where
I would choose to dwell.” I have even selected my house; it peeps out
from a mass of pomegranates, evergreens, and citrons, on a peninsula
around which the water swells with gentle murmur, and whence the view is
perfect across lake, mountain, and sky.

A nightingale is singing, and I can not help reflecting that his fellows
here are put to death in thousands. Yes, the reapers, famed in poems
and lithographs, are desperate bird-catchers. At the season of migration
they capture thousands of these weary travellers with snares or limed
twigs; on Maggiore alone sixty thousand meet their end. We have but
those they choose to leave us to charm our summer nights.

Perhaps they will kill my nightingale in the Carmelite garden. The idea
fills me with indignation.

Then my thoughts run back to my rooms in the Rue de Rennes, and I see
Madame Menin, with a dejected air, dusting my slumbering furniture;
Lampron at work, his mother knitting; the old clerk growing sleepy with
the heat and lifting his pen as he fancies he has got a bite; Madame
Plumet amid her covey of workgirls, and M. Plumet blowing away with
impatient breath the gold dust which the gum has failed to fix on the
mouldings of a newly finished frame.

M. Plumet is pensive. He is burdened with a secret. I am convinced I did
wrong in not waiting longer on the Place de L’Opera.

                    MILAN.

At last I am in Milan, an ancient city, but full of ideas and energy, my
destination, and the cradle of the excellent Porfirio Zampini, suspected
forger. The examination of documents does not begin till the day after
to-morrow, so I am making the best of the time in seeing the sights.

There are four sights to see at Milan if you are a musician, and three
if you are not: the Duomo, ‘vulgo’, cathedral; “The Marriage of the
Virgin,” by Raphael; “The Last Supper,” by Leonardo; and, if it suits
your tastes, a performance at La Scala.

I began with the Duomo, and on leaving it I received the news that still
worries me.

But first of all I must make a confession. When I ascended through the
tropical heat to the marble roof of the cathedral, I expected so much
that I was disappointed. Surprise goes for so much in what we admire.
Neither this mountain of marble, nor the lacework and pinnacles which
adorn the enormous mass, nor the amazing number of statues, nor the
sight of men smaller than flies on the Piazza del Duomo, nor the vast
stretch of flat country which spreads for miles on every side of the
city--none of these sights kindled the spark of enthusiasm within me
which has often glowed for much less. No, what pleased me was something
quite different, a detail not noticed in the guide-books, I suppose.

I had come down from the roof and was wandering in the vast nave from
pillar to pillar, when I found myself beneath the lantern. I raised
my eyes, but the flood of golden light compelled me to close them.
The sunlight passing through the yellow glass of the windows overhead
encircled the mighty vault of the lantern with a fiery crown, and played
around the walls of its cage in rays which, growing fainter as they
fell, flooded the floor with their expiring flames, a mysterious
dayspring, a diffused glory, through which litany and sacred chant
winged their way up toward the Infinite.

I left the cathedral tired out, dazed with weariness and sunlight, and
fell asleep in a chair as soon as I got back to my room, on the fifth
floor of the Albergo dell’ Agnello.

I had been asleep for about an hour, perhaps, when I thought I heard a
voice near me repeating “Illustre Signore!”

I did not wake. The voice continued with a murmur of sibilants:

“Illustrissimo Signore!”

This drew me from my sleep, for the human ear is very susceptible to
superlatives.

“What is it?”

“A letter for your lordship. As it is marked ‘Immediate,’ I thought I
might take the liberty of disturbing your lordship’s slumbers.”

“You did quite right, Tomaso.”

“You owe me eight sous, signore, which I paid for the postage.”

“There’s half a franc, keep the change.”

He retired calling me Monsieur le Comte; and all for two sous--O
fatherland of Brutus! The letter was from Lampron, who had forgotten to
put a stamp on it.

   “MY DEAR FRIEND:

   “Madame Plumet, to whom I believe you have given no instructions so
   to do, is at present busying herself considerably about your
   affairs. I felt I ought to warn you, because she is all heart and
   no brains, and I have often seen before the trouble into which an
   overzealous friend may get one, especially if the friend be a woman.

   “I fear some serious indiscretion has been committed, for the
   following reasons.

   “Yesterday evening Monsieur Plumet came to see me, and stood pulling
   furiously at his beard, which I know from experience is his way of
   showing that the world is not going around the right way for him.
   By means of questions, I succeeded, after some difficulty, in
   dragging from him about half what he had to tell me. The only thing
   which he made quite clear was his distress on finding that Madame
   Plumet was a woman whom it was hard to silence or to convince by
   argument.

   “It appears that she has gone back to her old trade of dress-making,
   and that one of her first customers--God knows how she got there!--
   was Mademoiselle Jeanne Charnot.

   “Well, last Monday Mademoiselle Jeanne was selecting a hat. She was
   blithe as dawn, while the dressmaker was gloomy as night.

   “‘Is your little boy ill, Madame Plumet?’

   “‘No, Mademoiselle.’

   “‘You look so sad.’

   “Then, according to her husband’s words, Madame Plumet took her
   courage in her two hands, and looking her pretty customer in the
   face, said:

   “‘Mademoiselle, why are you marrying?’

   “‘What a funny question! Why, because I am old enough; because I
   have had an offer; because all young girls marry, or else they go
   into convents, or become old maids. Well, Madame Plumet, I never
   have felt a religious vocation, and I never expected to become an
   old maid. Why do you ask such a question?’

   “‘Because, Mademoiselle, married life may be very happy, but it may
   be quite the reverse!’

   “After giving expression to this excellent aphorism, Madame Plumet,
   unable to contain herself any longer, burst into tears.

   “Mademoiselle Jeanne, who had been laughing before, was now amazed
   and presently grew rather anxious.

   “Still, her pride kept her from asking any further questions, and
   Madame Plumet was too much frightened to add a word to her answer.
   But they will meet again the day after to-morrow, on account of the
   hat, as before.

   “Here the story grew confused, and I understood no more of it.

   “Clearly there is more behind this. Monsieur Plumet never would
   have gone out of his way merely to inform me that his wife had given
   him a taste of her tongue, nor would he have looked so upset about
   it. But you know the fellow’s way; whenever it’s important for him
   to make himself clear he loses what little power of speech he has,
   becomes worse than dumb-unintelligible. He sputtered inconsequent
   ejaculations at me in this fashion:

   “‘To think of it, to-morrow, perhaps! And you know what a
   business! Oh, damnation! Anyhow, that must not be! Ah! Monsieur
   Lampron, how women do talk!’

   “And with this Monsieur Plumet left me.

   “I must confess, old fellow, that I am not burning with desire to
   get mixed up in this mess, or to go and ask Madame Plumet for the
   explanation which her husband was unable to give me. I shall bide
   my time. If anything turns up to-morrow, they are sure to tell me,
   and I will write you word.

   “My mother sends you her love, and begs you to wrap up warmly in the
   evening; she says the twilight is the winter of hot climates.

   “The dear woman has been a little out of sorts for the last two
   days. Today she is keeping her bed. I trust it is nothing but a
   cold.

   “Your affectionate friend,

                    “SYLVESTRE LAMPRON.”




CHAPTER XIII. STARTLING NEWS FROM SYLVESTRE

                    MILAN, June 18th.

The examination of documents began this morning. I never thought we
should have such a heap to examine, nor papers of such a length. The
first sitting passed almost entirely in classifying, in examining
signatures, in skirmishes of all kinds around this main body.

My colleagues and I are working in a room in the municipal Palazzo del
Marino, a vast deserted building used, I believe, as a storehouse. Our
leathern armchairs and the table on which the documents are arranged
occupy the middle of the room. Along the walls are several cupboards,
nests of registers and rats; a few pictures with their faces to the
wall; some carved wood scutcheons, half a dozen flagstaffs and a
triumphal arch in cardboard, now taken to pieces and rotting--gloomy
apparatus of bygone festivals.

The persons taking part in the examination besides the three Frenchmen,
are, in the first place, a little Italian judge, with a mean face,
wrinkled like a winter apple, whose eyelids always seem heavy with
sleep; secondly, a clerk, shining with fat, his dress, hair, and
countenance expressive of restrained jollity, as he dreams voluptuous
dreams of the cool drinks he means to absorb through a straw when the
hour of deliverance shall sound from the frightful cuckoo clock, a relic
of the French occupation, which ticks at the end of the room; thirdly,
a creature whose position is difficult to determine--I think he must
be employed in some registry; he is here as a mere manual laborer. This
third person gives me the idea of being very much interested in the
fortunes of Signore Porfirio Zampini, for on each occasion, when his
duties required him to bring us documents, he whispered in my ear:

“If you only knew, my lord, what a man Zampini is! what a noble heart,
what a paladin!”

Take notice that this “paladin” is a macaroni-seller, strongly suspected
of trying to hoodwink the French courts.

Amid the awful heat which penetrated the windows, the doors, even the
sun-baked walls, we had to listen to, read, and compare documents.
Gnats of a ferocious kind, hatched by thousands in the hangings of this
hothouse, flew around our perspiring heads. Their buzzing got the upper
hand at intervals when the clerk’s voice grew weary and, diminishing in
volume, threatened to fade away into snores.

The little judge rapped on the table with his paperknife and urged the
reader afresh upon his wild career. My colleague from the Record
Office showed no sign of weariness. Motionless, attentive, classing the
smallest papers in his orderly mind, he did not even feel the’ gnats
swooping upon the veins in his hands, stinging them, sucking them, and
flying off red and distended with his blood.

I sat, both literally and metaphorically, on hot coals. Just as I came
into the room, the man from the Record Office handed me a letter which
had arrived at the hotel while I was out at lunch. It was a letter from
Lampron, in a large, bulky envelope. Clearly something important must
have happened.

My fate, perhaps, was settled, and was in the letter, while I knew it
not. I tried to get it out of my inside pocket several times, for to me
it was a far more interesting document than any that concerned Zampini’s
action. I pined to open it furtively, and read at least the first few
lines. A moment would have sufficed for me to get at the point of this
long communication. But at every attempt the judge’s eyes turned slowly
upon me between their half-closed lids, and made me desist. No--a
thousand times no! This smooth-tongued, wily Italian shall have no
excuse for proving that the French, who have already such a reputation
for frivolity, are a nation without a conscience, incapable of
fulfilling the mission with which they are charged.

And yet.... there came a moment when he turned his back and began to
sort a fresh bundle with the man of records. Here was an unlooked-for
opportunity. I cut open the envelope, unfolded the letter, and found
eight pages! Still I began:

   “MY DEAR FRIEND:

   “In spite of my anxiety about my mother, and the care her illness
   demands (to-day it is found to be undoubted congestion of the
   lungs), I feel bound to tell you the story of what has happened in
   the Rue Hautefeuille, as it is very important--”

“Excuse me, Monsieur Mou-il-ard,” said the little judge, half
turning toward me, “does the paper you have there happen to be number
twenty-seven, which we are looking for?”

“Oh, dear, no; it’s a private letter.”

“A private letter? I ask pardon for interrupting you.”

He gave a faint smile, closed his eyes to show his pity for such
frivolity, and turned away again satisfied, while the other members of
the Zampini Commission looked at me with interest.

The letter was important. So much the worse, I must finish it:

   “I will try to reconstruct the scene for you, from the details which
   I have gathered.

   “The time is a quarter to ten in the morning. There is a knock at
   Monsieur Plumet’s door. The door opposite is opened half-way and
   Madame Plumet looks out. She withdraws in a hurry, ‘with her heart
   in her mouth,’ as she says; the plot she has formed is about to
   succeed or fail, the critical moment is at hand; the visitor is her
   enemy, your rival Dufilleul.

   “He is full of self-confidence and comes in plump and flourishing,
   with light gloves, and a terrier at his heels.

   “‘My portrait framed, Plumet?’

   “‘Yes, my lord-yes, to be sure.’

   “‘Let’s see it.’

   “I have seen the famous portrait: a miniature of the newly created
   baron, in fresh butter, I think, done cheap by some poor girl who
   gains her living by coloring photographs. It is intended for
   Mademoiselle Tigra of the Bouffes. A delicate attention from
   Dufilleul, isn’t it? While Jeanne in her innocence is dreaming of
   the words of love he has ventured to utter to her, and cherishes but
   one thought, one image in her heart, he is exerting his ingenuity to
   perpetuate the recollection of that image’s adventures elsewhere.

   “He is pleased with the elaborate and costly frame which Plumet has
   made for him.

   “‘Very nice. How much?’

   “‘One hundred and twenty francs.’

   “‘Six louis? very dear.’

   “‘That’s my price for this kind of work, my lord; I am very
   busy just now, my lord.’

   “‘Well, let it be this once. I don’t often have a picture framed;
   to tell the truth, I don’t care for pictures.’

   “Dufilleul admires and looks at himself in the vile portrait
   which he holds outstretched in his right hand, while his left hand
   feels in his purse. Monsieur Plumet looks very stiff, very unhappy,
   and very nervous. He evidently wants to get his customer off the
   premises.

   “The rustling of skirts is heard on the staircase. Plumet turns
   pale, and glancing at the half-opened door, through which the
   terrier is pushing its nose, steps forward to close it. It is too
   late.

   “Some one has noiselessly opened it, and on the threshold stands
   Mademoiselle Jeanne in walking-dress, looking, with bright eyes and
   her most charming smile, at Plumet, who steps back in a fright, and
   Dufilleul, who has not yet seen her.

   “‘Well, sir, and so I’ve caught you!’

   “Dufilleul starts, and involuntarily clutches the portrait to his
   waistcoat.

   “‘Mademoiselle--No, really, you have come--?’

   “‘To see Madame Plumet. What wrong is there in that?’

   “‘None whatever--of course not.’

   “‘Not the least in the world, eh? Ha, ha! What a trifle flurries
   you. Come now, collect yourself. There is nothing to be frightened
   at. As I was coming upstairs, your dog put his muzzle out; I
   guessed he was not alone, so I left my maid with Madame Plumet, and
   came in at the right-hand door instead of the left. Do you think it
   improper?’

   “‘Oh, no, Mademoiselle.’

   “‘However, I am inquisitive, and I should like to see what you are
   hiding there.’

   “‘It’s a portrait.’

   “‘Hand it to me.’

   “‘With pleasure; unfortunately it’s only a portrait of myself.’

   “‘Why unfortunately? On the contrary, it flatters you--the nose is
   not so long as the original; what do you say, Monsieur Plumet?’

   “‘Do you think it good?’

   “‘Very.’

   “‘How do you like the frame?’

   “‘It’s very pretty.’

   “‘Then I make you a present of it, Mademoiselle.’

   “‘Why! wasn’t it intended for me?’

   “‘I mean--well! to tell the truth, it wasn’t; it’s a wedding
   present, a souvenir--there’s nothing extraordinary in that, is
   there?’

   “‘Nothing whatever. You can tell me whom it’s for, I suppose?’

   “‘Don’t you think that you are pushing your curiosity too far?’

   “‘Well, really!’

   “‘Yes, I mean it.’

   “‘Since you make such a secret of it, I shall ask Monsieur Plumet to
   tell me. Monsieur Plumet, for whom is this portrait?’

   “Plumet, pale as death, fumbled at his workman’s cap, like a naughty
   child.

   “‘Why, you see, Mademoiselle--I am only a poor framemaker.’

   “‘Very well! I shall go to Madame Plumet, who is sure to know, and
   will not mind telling me.’

   “Madame Plumet, who must have been listening at the door, came in at
   that moment, trembling like a leaf, and prepared to dare all.

   “I beg you won’t, Mademoiselle,’ broke in Dufilleul; ‘there is no
   secret. I only wanted to tease you. The portrait is for a friend
   of mine who lives at Fontainebleau.’

   “‘His name?’

   “‘Gonin--he’s a solicitor.’

   “‘It was time you told me. How wretched you both looked. Another
   time tell me straight out, and frankly, anything you have no reason
   to conceal. Promise you won’t act like this again.’

   “‘I promise.’

   “‘Then, let us make peace.’

   “She held out her hand to him. Before he could grasp it, Madame
   Plumet broke in:

   “‘Excuse me, Mademoiselle, I can not have you deceived like this in
   my house. Mademoiselle, it is not true!’

   “‘What is not true, Madame?’

   “‘That this portrait is for Monsieur Gonin, or anybody else at
   Fontainebleau.’

   “Mademoiselle Charnot drew back in surprise.

   “‘For whom, then?’

   “‘An actress.’

   “‘Take care what you are saying, Madame.’

   “‘For Mademoiselle Tigra of the Bouffes.’

   “‘Lies!’ cried Dufilleul. ‘Prove it, Madame; prove your story,
   please!’

   “‘Look at the back,’ answered Madame Plumet, quietly.

   “Mademoiselle Jeanne, who had not put down the miniature, turned it
   over, read what was on the back, grew deathly pale, and handed it to
   her lover.

   “‘What does it say?’ said Dufilleul, stooping over it.

   “It said: ‘From Monsieur le Baron D-----to Mademoiselle T-----,
   Boulevard Haussmann. To be delivered on Thursday.’

   “‘You can see at once, Mademoiselle, that this is not my writing.
   It’s an abominable conspiracy. Monsieur Plumet, I call upon you to
   give your wife the lie. She has written what is false; confess it!’

   “The frame-maker hid his face in his hands and made no reply.

   “‘What, Plumet, have you nothing to say for me?’

   “Mademoiselle Charnot was leaving the room.

   “‘Where are you going, Mademoiselle? Stay, you will soon see that
   they lie!’

   “She was already half-way across the landing when Dufilleul caught
   her and seized her by the hand.

   “‘Stay, Jeanne, stay!’

   “‘Let me go, sir!’

   “‘No, hear me first; this is some horrible mistake. I swear’

   “At this moment a high-pitched voice was heard on the staircase.

   “‘Well, George, how much longer are you going to keep me?’

   “Dufilleul suddenly lost countenance and dropped Mademoiselle
   Charnot’s hand.

   “The young girl bent over the banisters, and saw, at the bottom of
   the staircase, exactly underneath her, a woman looking up, with head
   thrown back and mouth still half-opened. Their eyes met. Jeanne at
   once turned away her gaze.

   “Then, turning to Madame Plumet, who leaned motionless against the
   wall:

   “‘Come, Madame,’ she said, ‘we must go and choose a hat.’ And she
   closed the dressmaker’s door behind her.

   “This, my friend, is the true account of what happened in the Rue
   Hautefeuille. I learned the details from Madame Plumet in person,
   who could not contain herself for joy as she described the success
   of her conspiracy, and how her little hand had guided old Dame
   Fortune’s. For, as you will doubtless have guessed, the meeting
   between Jeanne and her lover, so dreaded by the framemaker, had been
   arranged by Madame Plumet unknown to all, and the damning
   inscription was also in her handwriting.

   “I need not add that Mademoiselle Charnot, upset by the scene, had a
   momentary attack of faintness. However, she soon regained her usual
   firm and dignified demeanor, which seems to show that she is a woman
   of energy.

   “But the interest of the story does not cease here. I think the
   betrothal is definitely at an end. A betrothal is always a
   difficult thing to renew, and after the publicity which attended the
   rupture of this one, I do not see how they can make it up again.
   One thing I feel sure of is, that Mademoiselle Jeanne Charnot will
   never change her name to Madame Dufilleul.

   “Do not, however, exaggerate your own chances. They will be less
   than you think for some time yet. I do not believe that a young
   girl who has thus been wounded and deceived can forget all at once.
   There is even the possibility of her never forgetting--of living
   with her sorrow, preferring certain peace of mind, and the simple
   joys of filial devotion, to all those dreams of married life by
   which so many simple-hearted girls have been cruelly taken in.

   “In any case do not think of returning yet, for I know you are
   capable of any imprudence. Stay where you are, examine your
   documents, and wait.

   “My mother and I are passing through a bitter trial. She is ill, I
   may say seriously ill. I would sooner bear the illness than my
   present anxiety.

             “Your friend,

                    “SYLVESTRE LAMPRON.

   “P. S.--Just as I was about to fasten up this letter, I got a note
   from Madame Plumet to tell me that Monsieur and Mademoiselle Charnot
   have left Paris. She does not know where they have gone.”

I became completely absorbed over this letter. Some passages I read a
second time; and the state of agitation into which it threw me did not
at once pass away. I remained for an indefinite time without a notion
of what was going on around me, entirely wrapped up in the past or the
future.

The Italian attendant brought me back to the present with a jerk of his
elbow. He was replacing the last register in the huge drawers of the
table. He and I were alone. My colleagues had left, and our first
sitting had come to an end without my assistance, though before my
eyes. They could not have gone far, so, somewhat ashamed of my want of
attention, I put on my hat, and went to find them and apologize. The
little attendant caught me by the sleeve, and gave a knowing smile at
the letter which I was slipping into my pocketbook.

“E d’una donna?” he asked.

“What’s that to you?”

“I am sure of it; a letter from a man would never take so long to read;
and, ‘per Bacco’, you were a time about it! ‘Oh, le donne, illustre
signore, le downe!’”

“That’s enough, thank you.”

I made for the door, but he threw himself nimbly in my way, grimacing,
raising his eyebrows, one finger on hi

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