CHAPTER III

My mother is obliged to sell her land and her house--The residue--The Piranèses--An architect at twelve hundred francs salary--I discount my first bill--Gondon--How I was nearly killed at his house--The fifty francs--Cartier--The game of billiards--How six hundred small glasses of absinthe equalled twelve journeys to Paris

The time had now come when my poor mother was obliged to take a definite step. She had borrowed so much and so often upon our thirty or forty acres let to M. Gilbert of Soucy, and upon the house which M. Harlay had at last left for us, that the value of both acres and house was nearly absorbed by mortgages. So it was decided to sell everything. The land was sold by auction, and fetched thirty-three thousand francs. The house was sold, by private contract, for twelve thousand francs to the M. Picot who had given me my first lessons in fencing. We realised forty-five thousand francs. When our debts were settled and all expenses paid, my mother had two hundred and fifty-three francs left. Lest some optimistic readers should think that this was our annual income, I hasten to say that it was capital. Need anyone ask if my poor mother was distressed at such a result? We had never really been so close to destitution. My mother fell into the depths of discouragement. Since my father's death we had been unceasingly drawing nearer and nearer to the end of all our resources. It had been a long struggle--from 1806 to 1823! It had lasted for seventeen years; but we were beaten at last. Nevertheless, I never felt gayer or more confident. I do not know why I deserve it, whether for deeds done in this world, or in other worlds where I may have had previous existences, but God seems to have me under His special care, and however grave my situation He comes openly to my succour. So, my God! I proudly and yet very humbly confess Thy name before believers and before infidels, and not even from the merit of faith do I say this, but simply because it is the truth. For, hadst Thou appeared to me when I invoked Thee, O my God! and hadst Thou asked me, "Child, say boldly what it is you want," I should never have dared to ask for half the favours Thou hast granted me out of Thy infinite bounty.

Well, my mother told me that, when all our debts were paid, we only had two hundred and fifty-three francs left.

"Very well," I said to my mother; "you must give me the fifty-three francs: I will set out for Paris, and, this time, I promise to return only with good news."

"Are you aware, my dear boy," said my mother, "that you are asking me for a fifth of our capital?"

"You remember that you owe me sixty francs?"

"Yes, but recollect that when I said,'For what purpose shall I return you the sixty francs?' you replied, 'That is my business.'"

"Very well, so indeed it is my business.... Will you give me the Piranèses which are upstairs in the big portfolio?"

"What do you call the Piranèses?"

"Those large black engravings that my father brought back from Italy."

"What will you do with them?"

"I will find a home for them."

My mother shrugged her shoulders dubiously.

"Do as you like about them," she said.

There was an architect, named Oudet, amongst the staff at the workhouse, who very much wanted our Piranèses. I had always refused him them, telling him that one day I would bring him them myself. The day had come. But it was an unlucky day: Oudet had no money. This was quite conceivable. Oudet, as architect to the Castle, received only a hundred francs per month. True, I was not very exorbitant in the matter of my Piranèses, which were well worth five or six hundred francs; I only asked fifty francs. Oudet offered to pay me these fifty francs in three months' time.

In three months!... How could I wait for three months?

I left Oudet in despair. I ought to say, in justice to Oudet, that he was probably in even lower straits than I was. In leaving Oudet, I ran up against another of my friends, whose name was Gondon. He was a shooting comrade. He had a property three leagues from Villers-Cotterets,--at Cœuvre, the country of the beautiful Gabrielle,--and we had very often spent whole weeks together there, shooting by day and poaching by night. It was at his place that I nearly lost my life one evening, in the most ridiculous fashion imaginable. It was the evening before the opening of the shooting season. Five or six of us shooters had come from Villers-Cotterets, and we were putting up at Gondon's, in order to be up early for a start at daybreak. Now, as we had neither rooms nor beds enough for everybody, the sitting-room had been transformed into a dormitory, in the four corners of which four beds were set up--that is to say, four mattresses were laid down. When the candles were extinguished, my three companions took it into their heads to start a bolster fight. As, for some reason or another, I did not feel inclined for the sport, I announced my intention of remaining neutral. The result of this compact was that after a quarter of an hour's fight between Austrians, Russians and Prussians, the Austrians, Russians and Prussians became allies and united to fall upon me, who represented France. So they hurled themselves on my bed, and began to belabour me with the afore-mentioned bolsters, as threshers beat out corn with their flails in a barn. I drew up my sheet over my head, and waited patiently till the storm should have passed over, which could not be long first, at the rate they were beating. And as I anticipated, the storm calmed down. One thrasher retired, then another. But the third, who was my cousin, Félix Deviolaine, upheld no doubt by the tie of kinship, continued striking in spite of the retreat of the others. Suddenly he stopped, and I heard him get silently into his bed. One might have thought some accident had overtaken him, which he was anxious to conceal from his comrades. In fact, the opposite end of the bolster to that which he had held in his hands, had burst by the violence of the blows, and all the feathers had escaped. This down made a mountain, just where the sheet which protected my head joined the bolster. I was totally unaware of the fact. As I did not feel any more blows, and having heard my last enemy retire to his bed, I gently put out my head and, as for the past ten minutes I had become more or less stifled, according as I tightened or loosened the sheet, I drew a full breath. I swallowed a big armful of feathers. Suffocation was instantaneous, almost complete. I uttered an inarticulate cry, and feeling myself literally being strangled, I began to roll about the room. My companions at first thought I had now taken it into my head to pirouette like a ballet dancer, just as they had fancied a fight; but they realised at last that the strangled sounds I gave forth expressed acute agony. Gondon was the first to realise that something very serious had happened to me, from some unknown cause, and that I was _in extremis_. Félix, who alone could have explained my gyrations and my wheezings, lay still, and pretended to be asleep. Gondon rushed into the kitchen, returned with a candle, and threw light on the scene. I must have been a very funny spectacle, and I confess, there was a general burst of laughter. But though I had been pretty gluttonous, I had not swallowed all the feathers and all the down: some stuck to my curly head, giving me a false air of resemblance to Polichinelle. This false air soon began to look like reality from the flush of redness that strangulation had sent into my face. They thought water was the best thing to give me. One of my companions, named Labarre, ran in his shirt to the pump and filled a pot with water, which he laughingly brought me. Such hilarity, when my torture had reached its height, drove me wild. I seized the pot by the handle, and chucked the contents down Labarre's back. The water was icy cold. Its temperature was little in harmony with the natural warmth of his blood, and it produced such gambols and such contortions on the part of the anointed, that, in spite of my various woes, the desire to laugh was now on my side. I made a different effort from any I had tried hitherto, and I expectorated some of the feathers and down which had blocked my throat. From that moment I was safe. Nevertheless, I continued to spit feathers for a week, and I coughed for a month.

I beg my reader's pardon for this digression; but, as I had neglected to put down this important episode in my life in its chronological order, it will not be deemed extraordinary if I seize the first opportunity that presents itself to repair this omission.

Well, I met Gondon coming out of Oudet's house. He had a hundred francs in his hand.

"Oh, my dear fellow," I said, "if you are so wealthy, you can surely lend Oudet fifty francs."

"What to do?"

"To buy my Piranèses from me."

"Your Piranèses?"

"Yes, I want to go to Paris. Oudet offered to buy my Piranèses for fifty francs, and now...."

"And now he does not wish to have them?"

"On the contrary, he is dying to possess them; but he hasn't a son, and cannot pay me for three months."

"And you want fifty francs?"

"Indeed I do."

"You would like to have them?"

"Rather."

"Wait: perhaps we can arrange matters."

"Oh, do try, my good fellow."

"There is a very simple way: I cannot give you the fifty francs, because I have promised my tailor a hundred francs to-day; but Oudet can make a cheque out to me for fifty francs at three months, I will endorse the cheque, and I will give it to the tailor as ready money."

We went to Oudet's. Oudet made out the cheque, and I carried off the money, thanking Gondon, and above all God, who out of His infinite loving kindness had provided me the means to advance a step farther on my way. I accompanied Gondon as far as his tailor's. At the tailor's door I ran up against old Cartier.

"Well, my boy," he said, "isn't there a bit left of your dog's money to pay for a small glass of wine for your old friend?"

"Certainly, if he wins it of me at billiards;" and I jingled my fifty francs.

I turned to Gondon.

"Come and see what happens," I said to him.

"You go on; I will rejoin you.... At Camberlin's, is it not?"

"At Camberlin's."

Camberlin was the traditional coffee-house; since the discovery of coffee and the invention of billiards, the Camberlins had sold coffee and kept a billiard-table, from father to son.

It was to Camberlin's my grandfather used to go every evening to take a hand at dominoes or piquet, until his little bitch Charmante came scratching at the door, with two lanterns held in her jaws. It was at Camberlin's my father and M. Deviolaine came to challenge each other's skill at play, as, on another green carpet, they challenged each other's skill at the chase. It was at Camberlin's, finally, that, thanks to my antecedents, I had been able, almost gratis, when I lost, to begin my education as an elder Philibert under three different masters, who had ended by seeing me a better player than they were. These three masters were--Cartier, against whom I was going to wipe out an old score; Camusat, Hiraux's nephew, who reclothed his uncle at la Râpée, when they turned him out of Villers-Cotterets in drawers and shirt; and a delightful youth, called Gaillard, who was a first-class player in all sorts of games, and who had, to my great satisfaction, replaced M. Miaud, my old rival, at the work-house. So I had become a much better player than Cartier; but, as he would never admit it, he invariably declined the six points I as invariably offered him before we began the match. Just as we were trying our cues on the billiard-table, Gondon entered.

"What will you take, Gondon?" Cartier asked. "Dumas is paying."

"I will take absinthe; I want to enjoy my dinner well to-day."

"Well, so will I," said Cartier. "And you?"

"I? You know I have made a vow never to take either liqueur or coffee."

To what saint and on what occasion I made this vow I cannot at all say; but I know I kept it religiously.

"Then we will say two small absinthes?" replied Cartier, continuing to joke. "That will be six sous, waiter, in exchange for your receipt." In the provinces, at any rate at Villers-Cotterets, a small glass of absinthe costs three sous.

"My dear Gondon," I said, "I cannot offer you a better prayer than my uncle's, the curé at Béthisy: 'My God, side neither with one nor with the other, and you will see a rascal receive a jolly good whacking!' Will you have your six points, father Cartier?"

"Go along with you!" Cartier exclaimed disdainfully, putting my ball on the yellow.

We played Russian fashion, a game with five balls, and thirty-six points. I made the yellow six times--three times into the right pocket and three times into the left.

"Six times six; thirty-six; first round. Your two small glasses are not worth more than their three sous, father Cartier." "Four sous, you mean to say."

"Not unless I let you win the second round."

"Come on, then!"

"Will you have the six points?"

"I will give them to you, if you like."

"Done! Mark my six points, Gondon; I have my designs on father Cartier. I mean him to contribute to my visit to Paris: the diligences start from his hotel."

At the second round, Cartier got up to twelve.

At thirty points, I had a run and made sixteen more; that made forty-six points, instead of thirty-six. Deducting the six points restored to Cartier, there still remained four I could offer him in return. He refused them with his usual dignity. But Cartier was beside himself when he had lost the first game, and the wilder he was the more obstinate he became: once set going, he would have played away his land, his hotel, his saucepans, to the very chickens that were turning on his spit.

Worthy old Cartier! He is alive yet; although he is eighty-six or eighty-seven, he is still remarkably hale, and lives with his two children. I never go to Villers-Cotterets without calling on him. Last time I saw him, about a year ago, I paid him a compliment on his health.

"My goodness, my dear Cartier," I said to him, "you are like our oak trees, which, if they do not grow very tall, go deep into the soil and gain in roots what they miss in the way of leaves. You will live to the Last Judgment."

"Oh, my boy," he said, "I have been very ill,--did you not know it?"

"No--when?"

"Three and a half years ago."

"What was the matter with you?"

"I had toothache."

"That was your own fault. What business have you with' teeth at your age?"

Well, on that day, poor old Cartier! (I am referring to the day of our game),--on that day, to use a gaming term, I took a fine tooth out of his head. We played for five hours on end, always doubling; I won _six hundred small glasses of absinthe_ from him. We should have played longer, and you may judge what an ocean of absinthe Cartier would have owed me, if Auguste had not come to look for him.

Auguste was one of Cartier's sons: his father stood in great awe of him; he put his finger to his lips to ask me to keep mum. I was as generous as was Alexander in the matter of the family of Porus.

I let Cartier go, without demanding my winnings from him. And Gondon and I reckoned up the account. Reduced to money, the six hundred small glasses of absinthe would have produced a total of eighteen hundred sous--that is to say, ninety francs. I could have paid the journey to Paris a dozen times over. My mother had good cause to say, "My boy, God is on your side."

My mother was very uneasy when I returned home; she knew what folly I was capable of, when I had got an idea into my head, and it was therefore with some anxiety that she asked me where I had been. Generally, when I had been to Camberlin's, I took a roundabout way in telling her of it. My poor mother, foreseeing what passions would one day surge in me, was afraid that gaming might be one of them. In several of her surmises she was correct; but at any rate she was completely mistaken in this one. So I told her what had just happened. How the Piranèses had brought us in fifty francs, and how M. Cartier was going to pay my fare to Paris. But these blessings from heaven brought sadness with them, for they meant our separation. I did my best to comfort her by telling her that the separation would be only for a little while, and that as soon as I had obtained a berth at fifteen hundred francs, she should leave Villers-Cotterets also and come and join me; but my mother knew that a berth at fifteen hundred francs was an Eldorado, difficult to discover.