Part 4

So have we arrived at the twilight of the once radiant Savoyarde’s career. She is sixty, and the golden hair has gone grey, and familiarly and affectionately she is known amongst her boarders as “Auntie.” Still, however, does she sew on the missing buttons of the _jeunesse_ of the Latin Quarter, and allow the _pension_ bills to stand over, and overlook the matter of broken washing-basins, and pacify the angry _blanchisseuse_, and encourage her struggling boarders with the old words of long ago: “Work hard, and make a name for yourself, and come and tell me of your fame....” Years roll on—and “Tante Marie” becomes deaf and frail, and holds a hand to her ear when the _pensionnaires_ of the past return to the Rue des Poitevins—elderly, many of them wealthy and distinguished—and pay her homage, and thank her emotionally for her kindnesses, and leave behind them autographed photographs bearing, amongst many other signatures, the names of Alphonse Daudet, François Coppée, Waldeck-Rousseau (Gambetta’s disciple), Reclus, the great physician, Millerand (ex-Minister of War), Pichon, the actual French Foreign Secretary, and a former President of the Republic, Émile Loubet.... More years roll by and “Tante Marie” becomes bent, shaky and wizened—a nonagenarian. Against her will, she is removed from the sombre, musty old Balzacian _pension_ to a small, modern, electric-lighted apartment—where she dies. Dies, in spite of her beauty, brilliancy, irresistibility, a spinster. Dies with the admission: “It was Gambetta I loved. Impossible, of course. But he called me a Greek Statue!”

3. PENSION DE FAMILLE. FRENCH AND PIANO LESSONS. LES SAINTES FILLES, MESDEMOISELLES PÉRIVIER

Three years have elapsed since Henri Rochette, the dashing young French financier with the handsome black beard, fell with a crash.

“Le Krach de Rochette. Arrest of the Financier. Millions of Losses. Ruin of Small Investors,” yelled the _camelots_ on the boulevards. It was another _affaire_, a gigantic swindle reminiscent of Panama, in that the greater part of the victims were small, thrifty people, who now stood in thousands outside Rochette’s closed, darkened offices, weeping, raging, pathetically or passionately demanding the return of their savings.

“That Rochette, he came from nowhere—how did he manage it?” asked the prudent bourgeois, who had steeled himself against Rochette’s alluring, rattling circulars.

Yes, Rochette had come from nowhere—or rather, he had come from the country town of Melun, where he was a waiter in a greasy hotel; then he passed as clerk into a financial establishment; next he opened spacious offices of his own and successfully floated a dozen different companies. I believe the chief factor in Rochette’s success was the black beard he began to grow and to cultivate assiduously, elaborately, after his departure from Melun. With ambition, audacity and, above all, an ornamental black beard, no Frenchman should fail to make his fortune. Lemoine, the alchemist, Duez, the liquidator of the Religious Congregations, both of them had splendid black beards; and the first lived in great style, at the expense of even so astute a financier as Sir Julius Wernher, and the second kept up costly establishments on money belonging to the State. True, MM. Duez and Lemoine were shorn of their beards and sent to prison. But for a long while, at all events, a really fine black beard in France can excite admiration, inspire confidence, command capital and make millions.

Well, Rochette fell with a crash—and so a panic, so ruin in Paris. Cases of suicide. Other cases of death from the shock. Bailiffs in possession of small homes and dim shops, and the small people expelled. Up with the shutters in Rochette’s splendid offices; away to prison with the swindling financier, and off with his beard. Victims and victims—dazed, broken, distracted. Amongst the forlornest victims, the two Mesdemoiselles Périvier.

“Saintly creatures,” the stout, red-faced Curé of the church of St Sulpice used to say of the Mesdemoiselles Périvier. For years and years they had resided in his parish, attending a Low Mass and High Mass every morning, and Vespers every evening; for years and years they had subscribed to M. le Curé’s “good works,” and provided his favourite dishes of _vol-au-vent_ and _poulet-au-riz_ upon those monthly occasions when he dined with them in their dreary, six-roomed flat. It was the most sunless, the most joyless of homes; and the Mesdemoiselles Périvier were the frailest, the simplest, the most frugal of old spinsters, with scarcely a friend and not a relative in the world, and with no experience of the shocks and hardships of life until their small income was lost in the Rochette crash.

Their eyes stained with tears, the two lonely sisters sought out M. le Curé. He consoled them as best he could; urged them to bear their loss with resignation; exhorted them to seek relief in prayer. And day after day, in shadowy St Sulpice, the Mesdemoiselles Périvier prayed long, earnestly, humbly. Never did a complaint escape them. But they looked frailer and lonelier than ever in their rusty black dresses, as they crossed themselves with holy water on their way out of St Sulpice to their sunless, stricken home.

A few thousand francs invested in French _rentes_, but returning a sum insufficient to satisfy even the Mesdemoiselles Périvier’s frugal needs, was all that remained. Imperative, therefore, to do something. And one morning the elder Mademoiselle Périvier (aged sixty-three) and her sister, Mademoiselle Berthe Périvier (three years her junior) affixed a black-edged visiting-card to their door. Under their joint names appeared the intimation: “Pension de Famille. French and Piano Lessons. Moderate Terms.”

Then, in the Paris edition of _The New York Herald_, the Mesdemoiselles Périvier offered a home to English and American girls desirous of studying painting in the Latin Quarter; the six-roomed flat, in the shadow of St Sulpice, being also in the neighbourhood of Julian’s and Vitti’s art schools. A few flower-pots for the flat. The half-dumb, yellow-keyed old piano repaired. Far into the night the Mesdemoiselles Périvier studied French and English grammars; at intervals during the day the elder Mademoiselle Périvier was to be heard practising feebly on the piano... against the arrival of pupils and _pensionnaires_.

“Saintly creatures!” repeatedly exclaimed M. le Curé in the houses he visited. Earnestly he recommended the _pension_. Warmly, too, was it spoken of by kindly, well-meaning people.

But it was such a sunless, cheerless place, and the Mesdemoiselles Périvier looked such dim, old-fashioned spinsters in their rusty black dresses, that the recommendations proved fruitless. After a glance at the piano and flower-pots, intending _pensionnaires_ took their leave, and found attractive, sociable quarters _chez_ Madame Lagrange (“widow of a diplomat”), or at the “Villa des Roses,” or the “Pension Select,” where there were “musical evenings,” five-o’clock teas, electric light, comfortable corners and gossip and laughter.

A year went by; another twelvemonth—and then it became known round and about St Sulpice that the Mesdemoiselles Périvier had been disposing little by little of their Government stock. Yet they were never heard to complain. When dust had dimmed the visiting-card on the door, the card was replaced, and the advertisements still appeared in the Paris _New York Herald_.

It was noticed, however, that the eyes of the Mesdemoiselles Périvier were often swollen and red, that their cheeks showed traces of tears, and that the two lonely spinsters were more assiduous than ever in their visits to St Sulpice. At all times, in all weathers, they made their way to the church, and bowed their heads in prayer in the half-light, amidst the shadows.

It was on her return home from St Sulpice, one bitter afternoon, that Mademoiselle Berthe Périvier, the younger by three years of the two spinsters, contracted pneumonia, and died.

“Une sainte fille, une sainte fille,” reiterated M. le Curé, himself sobbing by the bedside.

And to-day the black-edged visiting-card—“Pension de Famille. French and Piano Lessons. Moderate Terms”—appears no longer on the door. With her last remaining French _rentes_ passed the elder Mademoiselle Périvier. Gone, without a complaint, are the frail, frugal old spinsters. And M. Henri Rochette, on the eve of his release from prison, is growing a new beard.

4. THE AFFAIR OF THE COLLARS

It is a popular superstition that amongst the smaller French bourgeoisie one day is like another day, and all days are empty, colourless and banal. None of the joys of life—none of its shocks and surprises—up there in the Durands’ gloomy and oppressive fifth-floor _appartement_. From morning till night, infinite monotony, relieved only by Madame Durand’s periodical altercations with the concierge, the tradespeople, and deaf and dim-eyed old Amélie, the cook. The family newspaper is the _Petit Journal_, because of its two _feuilletons_. In a corner a little, damaged piano, upon which angular and elderly Mademoiselle Durand laboriously picks out the _Polka des Joyeux_ and the _Valse Bleue_. In another corner Madame Durand knits away at a pink woollen shawl. And from a third corner M. Hippolyte Durand, in huge carpet slippers, tells his wife what has happened to him during the day.

The omnibus that took him to his office was full; his lunch consisted of _navarin aux pommes_ and stewed pears; after leaving his bureau he played two games of dominoes with Dupont in the Café du Commerce, and the omnibus that brought him home was even fuller than that in which he travelled to business.

“There should be more omnibuses in Paris,” remarks Madame Durand.

“And how odious are the conductors!” exclaims elderly and embittered Mademoiselle Durand from the piano.

Then lights out at eleven o’clock, and the dull, dreamless sleep of the unimaginative, the worthy.

However, this popularly conceived idea of the life and mind of the smaller French bourgeoisie is something of a libel. Their existence is not eternally uneventful, nor their temperament hopelessly colourless. Now and again the dim, oppressive fifth-floor _appartements_ are shaken by “Affairs” quite as exciting and incoherent in their own way as those that have convulsed the Palace of Justice and Chamber of Deputies. There was once a Dreyfus Affair. There were also the Syveton and Steinheil Affairs. All three caused the Parisians (who dearly love imbroglios and incoherencies) to exclaim: “C’est le comble!”—in colloquial English: “It’s the limit!”

But, in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris, there rages to-day an Affair that must be awarded the first place amongst all other Affairs for sheer confusion, dizziness and irresponsibility.

Thus:

Three weeks ago M. Henri Bouzon, a stout, middle-aged bourgeois, bought a dozen new collars from a “general” clothing establishment known as “The Joy of the Gentleman.” In due course the collars went to the laundry, but twelve other collars were returned in their place, and these M. Bouzon rejected. A second lot of collars—again somebody else’s. Then a third wrong delivery, and a fourth. By the time a fifth contingent had arrived M. Bouzon was collarless and desperate.

“Once again, these are not my collars,” he cried. “But as they fit me, I will keep them.”

Next day, appearance of Madame Martin, the _blanchisseuse_, in a state of emotion. The fifth contingent of collars belonged to a M. Aristide Dubois, who was clamouring for them. He had acquired them only recently at “The Paradise of the Bachelor,” and was furious at their loss.

“Bother Aristide Dubois,” shouted M. Bouzon. “Where are my own dozen collars from ‘The Joy of the Gentleman’? Return them and I will give up the Dubois collars—which I am wearing.”

Despair of the _blanchisseuse_. She searched and searched for the Bouzon collars, but in vain; and tearfully, then frantically did she implore Henri Bouzon to be “amiable” and “gentil” and surrender up the collars of Aristide Dubois.

“He is a terrible man—such a temper,” pleaded the _blanchisseuse_. “I had to tell him you were wearing his collars, and he threatened to call on you and tear them off your neck.”

“Let him come,” cried M. Bouzon. Then, following Madame Martin out on to the staircase he shouted over the banisters: “And tell Dubois from me that he is a brigand and a bandit.”

Inevitably, the concierges and tradespeople of Montparnasse got to hear of the dispute. It was discussed in doorways and at street corners, and in her steamy _blanchisserie_ Madame Martin held little levees of the Montparnasse servants, who took the story home to their masters and mistresses, who in their turn became garrulous and excited over the Dubois and Bouzon collars. Then, one memorable afternoon, Aristide Dubois—another stout and middle-aged bourgeois—called upon Henri Bouzon. And the following dialogue took place:—

“Sir, you are wearing the collars I bought recently at ‘The Paradise of the Bachelor.’”

“Sir, I have no wish to speak to you, and I beg you to withdraw.”

“Monsieur, vous aurez de mes nouvelles.”

That was all, but it caused a commotion in Montparnasse. Aristide Dubois’ last words, “Sir, you will hear from me,” signified nothing less than a duel. Yes; Bouzon and Dubois on the field of honour, sword or pistol in hand, with doctors in attendance! “Both of them are terrible men,” related Madame Martin, whose _blanchisserie_ now became a popular place of rendez-vous. “Impossible to reason with them. They will fight to the death.” Equally sought after were the respective concierges of the Dubois and Bouzon families, and the tradespeople who served them.

The discussion spreading, all Montparnasse soon found itself indirectly and chaotically mixed up in the Affair of the Collars. It was Collars in a hundred bourgeois homes, in cafés, in the shady Luxembourg Gardens, even amongst the enormous, apoplectic _cochers_ on the cab-ranks.

“I am for Dubois,” declared some.

“Henri Bouzon has my sympathy,” announced others. “It is the most distracting of affairs,” agreed everybody. Thus, fame of Henri Bouzon and Aristide Dubois! After fifty years of obscurity, there they were—suddenly—the Men of the Hour. Such was their importance, their renown, that when they appeared in the Montparnasse streets people nudged one another and whispered:

“Here comes Henri Bouzon.”

And: “There goes Aristide Dubois.”

... Such has been the state of Montparnasse during the last three weeks, and to-day that usually tranquil neighbourhood is literally convulsed by the Affair of the Collars. No duel has taken place: but MM. Dubois and Bouzon exchange lurid letters, in which they call one another “traitors,” and “Apaches,” and “sinister assassins.” Thus, shades of the Dreyfus Affair and of the Affairs Syveton and Steinheil! Here, in the Café du Dôme, sits M. Bouzon, surrounded by Bouzonites. There, in the Café de la Rotonde, M. Dubois and his own supporters are established,—and in both places, night after night, hot controversies rage, the marble tables are thumped, and MM. Dubois and Bouzon are severally applauded and toasted by their admirers. Become celebrities, they have blossomed out into silk hats and frock coats, and the waiters bow before them, and the café proprietors actually address them as “cher maître.” At times they dramatically exclaim: “Ah, my poor head! This affair is destroying me: but I will fight to the last,” and there are murmurs of sympathy, which MM. Bouzon and Dubois (always in their respective cafés) acknowledge with the condescension of a Briand or a Delcassé or a Clemenceau. For, most indisputably, they are great public characters. The post brings them letters of congratulation or abuse; the policemen salute them: and “The Paradise of the Bachelor” has named a collar after Aristide Dubois, whilst “The Joy of the Gentleman” has issued the intimation: “For ease, chic, durability, wear the Collar Bouzon.” Then, to live up to their renown as the Men of the Hour, MM. Dubois and Bouzon go about with bulky portfolios under their arms, and a grim, determined expression. “They are doing too much. They will certainly collapse. It is even worse than the Dreyfus Affair,” says Montparnasse. And, exclaims Madame Martin, in her steamy and crowded _blanchisserie_: “Terrible men! I have tried to make peace between them by offering them all kinds of collars. I have even declared myself ready to buy them collars out of my own pocket. But they only go red in the face, and shout, and won’t hear a word.”

And now—in the words of the journalists—a “sensational development.” It is announced, breathlessly, hysterically by Madame Martin, that at last she has traced the dozen missing collars, bought by M. Bouzon at “The Joy of the Gentleman,” to the bourgeois fifth-floor _appartement_ of a M. Alexandre Dupont. He has been wearing them all these weeks. And he refuses to surrender them. And he, too, is a “terrible man.” And he has called M. Dubois a “convict,” and M. Bouzon “le dernier des misérables.” And, if they come within his reach, he will hurl both of them into the Seine.

“Le comble” [the limit], gasps Montparnasse. All over the neighbourhood goes the statement that M. Alexandre Dupont bought _his_ dozen collars at that other Montparnasse clothing establishment, “The One Hundred Thousand Supreme Shirts.”

“The man Alexandre Dupont is as great a scoundrel as the man Aristide Dubois,” cries M. Bouzon to his admiring supporters in the Café du Dôme.

“It is impossible to determine which of the two is the more infamous and diabolical, the creature Bouzon or the lunatic Dupont,” shouts M. Dubois, amidst the cheers of his followers in the Café de la Rotonde.

“Bouzon and Dubois—I consign them to the Seine and the Morgue,” storms Alexandre Dupont, addressing his newly gathered partisans in the Café du Repos.

Out comes that other “general” clothing establishment, “The One Hundred Thousand Supreme Shirts,” with the announcement: “The Only Collar in Paris is the Collar Dupont.”

“All three of them are terrible,” affirms Madame Martin to her audience in the stifling _blanchisserie_.

“The collars of Bouzon, then the collars of Dubois, and next the collars of Dupont—but where have they all gone to? Where are we? What is going to happen!” cries, emotionally and distractedly, Montparnasse.

Nobody knows. Nobody will ever know. But Bouzon, Dubois and Dupont, so obscure three weeks ago, are the Men of the Hour in Montparnasse to-day. And one of the three will, almost indubitably, represent Montparnasse in the Hôtel de Ville after the next Municipal Election,—then be promoted to the Chamber of Deputies—then will eloquently, passionately inform the Palais Bourbon that Incoherency is the Peril of the Present Age.

V

ON STRIKE

1. WHEN IT WAS DARK IN PARIS

Eight o’clock at night, and the electric lights burning brightly, and the band playing gaily, and the customers chatting happily in this large, comfortable café. Although it is the “dead” season, business is brisk. Here and there an elegant Parisienne, eating an ice. In corners, groups of card-players. And next to me, three stout, red-faced, prosperous-looking bourgeois, to whom the proprietor of the café pays particular attention. He hopes they are well. He hopes their ladies and their dear children are well. He hopes their affairs are going well. From their replies, I learn that the three bourgeois are important tradesmen of the quarter.

Suddenly their conversation turns to strikes—and naturally my three neighbours are indignant with the strikers. The strikers spoil affairs; the strikers should therefore be arrested, imprisoned, transported. Half-a-dozen of them might be executed, as an example. The Bourse du Travail and the offices of the General Confederation of Labour should be razed to the ground. No other country but France would tolerate such anarchy. One is on the verge of a revolution, and——

At this point the scores of electric lights jump excitedly—turn dim—go out. And it is darkness.

“The strikers!” exclaims the first bourgeois.

“The electricians!” cries the second.

“Ah, the scoundrels, the brigands, the assassins!” shouts the third.

Mercy me, the excitement! The three bourgeois light matches, everyone lights matches,—and in the light from the matches I see the proprietor standing on a chair in the middle of the café. Loudly he claps his hands; loudly he cries to the waiters: “Candles.” Then, for some mysterious reason, the customers also mount chairs. The lights have gone out, so one mounts chairs! If you don’t immediately mount a chair when the lights have gone out, heaven only knows what will not happen to you. And so I, too, stand on a chair, and light matches, and join in the cries of: “It’s a strike; it’s a strike.”

For my own part, I rejoice. I love the cries, the confusion, the amazing aspect of Paris—when it is dark. Here, in this café, the band is idle; the card-players have stopped their games; the proprietor is still clapping his hands and clamouring for candles. However, no candlesticks: so, vulgarly, as in low places, one uses bottles. A bottle for every table and the grease (another low spectacle) trickles down the bottles. The lady at the desk, whose highly important duty it is to keep the accounts, is given a dilapidated old lantern. Very old and very dilapidated, too, are the petroleum lamps brought up from the cellars where they have remained hidden so long as to acquire a sinister coating of verdigris. “It’s deadly poison,” says one of the bourgeois next to me. “I won’t have it. Fetch me a candle.” So the waiter bringeth the bourgeois a candle, and, no sooner has he placed the bottle on the table than it topples over and falls against the breast of the bourgeois.

“A cloth, a cloth!” he shouts. “I am covered with grease.” And he storms. And he goes purple in the face. And violently he rubs his waistcoat, making the stains worse. And as he rubs he cries furiously, of the strikers: “Ah, the scoundrels, the brigands, the assassins.”

In the street, only gas. And as I make my way to the _grands boulevards_, I perceive waiters speeding about in all directions, and hear them asking policemen for the nearest grocer’s shop. The waiters are in quest of candles. The waiters dare not return to their cafés without packets and packets of candles. But most of the grocers are closed: and so on speed the waiters, flushed, breathless, through the gloom.

No theatres to-night. Out went the lights just as the curtain was about to rise, and on to the stage stepped the manager, lamp or candlestick in hand—a sepulchral figure—to beg the audience to disperse in good order. No telephones to-night. Out went the lights in the Exchange, to the confusion, to the terror of the ladies. They are there in the darkness, waiting for candles. Then, gloom in most of the newspaper offices. Out went the lights, suddenly, unanimously. “Lamps, candles!” shouted the editor. Thus, office-boys also in desperate quest of candles. And they come into collision with the waiters. And there are tumultuous scenes in the grocers’ shops. And the grocers cry desperately: “One at a time; one at a time. I shall faint. I shall lose my reason. I shall die.”