CHAPTER VII.

FRIEZECOAT AT HOME.

The morning after Captain Chauvin had admitted the young Irishman into his confidences was wet and gloomy. At half-past ten a.m. O'Hara was seated in front of his dressing-table engaged in an unpleasant operation entailed by the usages of modern society, that of shaving himself. He wore moustaches and mouche, but fashion in the French capital necessitated the removal of the whiskers, and, razor in hand, skimming over a surface of lathered skin, he peered into the toilet-glass, when a loud tap resounded on the panel of the door. Before he had time to make answer the lock was turned, the door thrown open, and the applicant for admittance had entered with heavy step. O'Hara turned round and stared at him.

It was the very man whom he had been wishing to see, the stranger, whose name was not Beelzebub, clad in the same long frieze coat, the skirts of which were met by spatterdashes, which totally shut out his trousers from view. His boots were covered with mud, his face perspiring from exercise; he took off his hat and sat down abruptly by the table, on which a pile of loose journals, letters, and other literary matter was strewn.

'Welcome,' said the interrupted shaver with cheerfulness (although he had gashed his jaw), advancing towards his visitor.

'Stay where you are, Mr. Manus O'Hara, and finish your shaving. Passing by this way--thought I'd call in to see you.'

O'Hara regarded him with a broad stare of wonderment. How had this stranger found out his name and lodging? His looks must have conveyed the questions.

'How do I know your name and where to find you? you would ask,' said the stranger. 'Spiritual clairvoyance. Shave yourself.'

O'Hara smiled, said nothing, but determined to deal with the humorist in his own coin, and resumed his position before the glass.

Friezecoat commenced fumbling amid the letters and papers on the table. O'Hara saw the movement reflected in the mirror, turned round, and said calmly:

'There are private documents there.'

'You have no right to leave them exposed,' retorted the stranger imperturbably.

'Most of my visitors are gentlemen; at least, in their habits,' said O'Hara with quiet irony.

'Not all,' said the stranger as quietly.

'So I see.'

'For instance, I'm not a gentleman--don't want to be one,' said the stranger. 'I'm content to be a man. Finish your shaving.'

O'Hara looked at him, undecided whether to lose temper or laugh; finally, again turned to the glass and resumed the operation on his beard with a studious show of deliberateness. He could see, however, with pleasure, in the reflection of the table, that the stranger had not chosen to meddle a second time with the loose manuscripts before him. After removing the last wanton hair, disburdening his jaws of the accumulated lather, wiping his cheek with the towel, softly dusting the irritated flesh with powder, carefully drying the razor and returning it to its case, he turned round in his seat, faced his whimsical visitor, and said deliberately:

'I have finished.'

'Come away,' said the stranger, and he descended the stairs. 'You must accompany me to the wild beast's den. I have something to say to you.'

O'Hara followed him; they entered a _voiture_, and the stranger gave the word, to the Rue des Fossés St. Victor. The street which was called Loustarol in the revolutionary times corresponds with the Rue des Fossés St. Victor of to-day. It lies in the thick network of schools behind the church of St. Etienne du Mont, between the thoroughfares named in honour of the great French mathematician, Déscartes, and the great Swedish naturalist, Linnæus. Its site was formerly occupied by the cloisters of Philippe Auguste, and here stood the convent of _Les Dames Anglaises_ and the Scotch College. Even still there is a scholarly sedateness in the neighbourhood. The house to which they were driven was entered by a long-walled avenue with prison-like wickets at intervals, ending in an open iron gate, which permitted a view of a blooming flower-garden. To the left, just before reaching this gate, was a door painted _Pension Bourgeoise_, the sort of establishment in Paris which corresponds with our boarding-house. Friezecoat raised the latch and led in his companion.

A narrow courtyard, weakly vines trained along the wall on one side and a range of rooms destined for lodgers on the other, conducted to the Pension, which was a tall, narrow house, surmounted by a belvedere. A few noisy fowls in a preternatural state of activity promenaded the yard; a lazy dog, preternaturally lazy, too lazy even to bark, lay curled in a corner. But the grand feature of the pension was a one-storied wooden house, such as are frequently to be met with in Switzerland, containing two bedrooms underneath and two in the upper floor, which was approached by a staircase from the outside, prolonged into a balcony, which ran in front of the structure under the shelter of the over-hanging eaves. Friezecoat lived in this châlet. As they drew near, the cock, at the van of his plumed seraglio, crowed like a proud French cock; the dog moved his head and gave an indolent growl.

'Let us go aloft,' said Friezecoat, stepping on the staircase.

'I pay for these two rooms on the top, I tenant but one,' continued he; 'I have the staircase to myself, so that I can be isolated when I like.'

'You are comfortably situated,' said O'Hara, glancing round the room into which they had entered, which was a square cleanly-papered bed-chamber plainly furnished. A timepiece ticked on the mantel-shelf under a neat mirror, a secretaire stood between it and the window, which was furnished with _persiennes_, adding to the general appearance of rusticity. A book-case, over which was disposed a trophy of pistols, foils, and boxing-gloves, and having on either side prints of Protais' celebrated sketches of the Chasseurs de Vincennes at work, _Avant l'Attaque_ and _Après le Combat_, was fixed against the wall directly opposite the door. A fauteuil, four rush-bottomed chairs, and a commode completed the inventory of the furniture. A screened alcove concealed the bed, and a nook in the same side of the room was cut off by a partition and apportioned to the services of ablution.

'The view is not splendid,' said the stranger, seating himself in the fauteuil and motioning O'Hara to a rush-bottomed chair: 'that wall with the high trellis confines it; outside is the playground of some sort of an institution. I like to hear the buzz of the boys amusing themselves; it brings back my youth; then the green trees, as I see them waving through the lattice, call up the country. Altogether,' with a tone of enthusiasm in his voice, 'I like the shanty; it's a bit of Switzerland in this Paris.'

'You go in for muscularity,' hinted O'Hara, glancing at the trophy of arms.

'I have found it necessary in my career,' replied the stranger quietly. 'Smoke?'

'Yes.'

The stranger brought out a superbly-mounted Turkish pipe from a drawer, and handed it to his visitor. 'Will you try hasheesh?'

O'Hara declined.

'I like it now and again. It lifts me into an ideal world--makes me forget the real. Drink?'

O'Hara accepted.

The stranger produced a dust-covered bottle with a yellow seal from the same drawer as before, and placed it before his companion. 'Comes from Pfungst Brothers,' was the only recommendation he ventured; but that was enough. The bottle was fitted with a false neck, to which a siphon, closing hermetically, was attached, so that the champagne could be sipped glass by glass, if desired, without loss of first freshness and that titillating effervescence which makes its charm.

O'Hara drank.

'Drink again. 'Twill sweep the cobwebs from your throat.'

'Do you ever feel lonely?' demanded Friezecoat, after a pause.

'Yes, sometimes very much. Like most Irishmen, I am changeful in my moods; to-day I find myself in the height of good spirits, to-morrow in the lowest depths of depression.'

'That is because you are not in your native land--have no home here--no interior. It is not well to be alone.'

The pair continued smoking. They smoked as connoisseurs, enjoying each particular puff, following it with dreamy eyes as it ascended, until it lost itself in gradually widening rings of lessening haze, and they embraced the stems of their pipes for a new pull with gloating lips.

'Do you like the furniture of this room?' abruptly inquired the stranger.

'Yes,' replied O'Hara; 'rich, not gaudy, as Shakespeare says.'

'See any want?'

'Not particularly.'

'Ah! there is one piece of furniture particularly wanting,' said the stranger, with the manner of a man who endeavours to master bashfulness by an exaggerated show of good-humoured, rude self-possession.

'What's that?'

'A wife!'

O'Hara turned his eyes from the pipe to Friezecoat, and Friezecoat--the gruff, blunt-mannered, muscularly-educated Friezecoat--was positively embarrassed, blushed like a callow boy.

'Were you ever in love?' said Friezecoat, probably with a sly view of diverting the enemy's attention by a movement in flank.

The answer was an involuntary sigh.

'Is that it? Do you believe in love at first sight?'

'I believe in anything where love exists; it makes fools of the wisest of us.'

'That's right; and now that the cat's out of the bag I may as well tell you that I have fallen in love at first sight, and that's what I have to say to you.'

O'Hara removed his pipe, and gave a long, low, significant whistle, which reached even unto the dog in the yard, and stimulated him into an inquisitive yelp, which might have been heard had it not been stifled in its birth.

'Who has glamoured you--a Frenchwoman?'

'Yes; Chauvin's grand-daughter.'

'The little Song-bird?'

'The same; and I intend to go to-morrow--no, perhaps this very night, to make a formal proposal for her hand to the old soldier.'

'In that instance, I believe, I am justified in telling you what I know of her history, as Captain Chauvin told it to me himself,' said O'Hara, laying down his pipe. Simply and briefly he proceeded to narrate to his companion the story which had been confided to him. 'So now you are the best judge,' he finished, 'whether you are justified in offering your hand to the daughter of a--a--to a woman who will bring a bend sinister to your escutcheon.'

'Who will bring cheerfulness to my fireside, you meant to say, sir,' said Friezecoat, with a certain tone of displeasure in his voice. 'Bend sinister! There's your virtuous, charitable world, that would exact penalty of an innocent child for the sin of a progenitor who was mouldered in his tomb before she was born. Bend sinister be blowed! Thank God, I'm burdened with no escutcheon to put it on. There's the coat of arms of the O'Hoolohan Roe,' stretching out his open palm, 'and there are its supporters,' pointing to the trophy and opening a drawer, filled with thick rouleaux of yellow Napoleons--'steel on one side and gold on the other.'

After finishing the bottle in conjunction, they parted in good fellowship. We were near forgetting that O'Hara mentioned something about paying one hundred francs for which he was indebted, but the democrat thrust back the purse which was produced, and said, 'Whenever it suits you;' and as it didn't happen just then to suit the aristocrat, he returned the purse unopened to his pocket. There was not a syllable more of argument, if we except a friendly quotation which Friezecoat sent as a parting shot from his balcony to his retiring friend: 'Hallo! Mr. O'Hara--

'When Adam dolve, and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?'

followed by a loud laugh.

'The O'Hoolohan Roe!' said O'Hara to himself, as he lingered at the gate of the Pension; 'that's what he called himself. Who the deuce can the O'Hoolohan Roe be? I have heard of the M'Carthy More, of the O'Conor Don, and of the O'Donoghue of the Glens; but never of him before.'

In the interests of our readers, we, too, must endeavour to find out who the O'Hoolohan Roe really was.