Chapter 16
Leaning over her work, the brave girl hastily counted her stitches, concealing her grief in the fanciful designs of her embroidery, while de Géry, deeply moved to hear the testimony of those pure lips in contradiction of the calumnies of a few disappointed dandies or jealous rivals, felt relieved of a weight and once more proud of his love. The sensation was so sweet to him that he came very often to seek to renew it, not only on lesson evenings, but on other evenings as well, and almost forgot to go and see Felicia for the pleasure of hearing Aline speak of her.
One evening, when he left the Joyeuse apartment, he found waiting for him on the landing M. André, the neighbor, who took his arm feverishly.
"Monsieur de Géry," he said, in a trembling voice, his eyes flashing fire behind their spectacles, the only part of his face one could see at night, "I have an explanation to demand at your hands. Will you come up to my room a moment?"
Between that young man and himself there had been only the usual relations of two frequent visitors at the same house, who are attached by no bond, who seem indeed to be separated by a certain antipathy between their natures and their modes of life. What could there be for them to explain? Sorely puzzled, he followed André.
The sight of the little studio, cold and cheerless under its glass ceiling, the empty fireplace, the wind blowing as it blows outside, and making the candle flicker, the only light that shone upon that vigil of a penniless recluse, reflected upon scattered sheets all covered with writing,--in a word, that atmosphere of inhabited cells wherein the very soul of the inhabitants exhales,--enabled de Géry to comprehend at once the impassioned André Maranne, his long hair thrown back and flying in the wind, his somewhat eccentric appearance, very excusable when one pays for it with a life of suffering and privations; and his sympathy instantly went out to the courageous youth, whose militant pride he fully divined at a single glance. But the other was too excited to notice this transition. As soon as the door was closed, he said, with the accent of a stage hero addressing the perjured seducer:
"Monsieur de Géry, I am not a Cassandra yet." And, as he observed his interlocutor's unbounded amazement, he added: "Yes, yes, we understand each other. I see perfectly clearly what attracts you to M. Joyeuse's, nor has the warm welcome you receive there escaped me. You are rich, you are of noble birth, no one can hesitate between you and the poor poet who carries on an absurd trade in order to gain time to attain success, which will never come perhaps. But I won't allow my happiness to be stolen from me. We will fight, monsieur, we will fight," he repeated, excited by his rival's unruffled tranquillity. "I have loved Mademoiselle Joyeuse a long while. That love is the aim, the joy, and the strength of a very hard life, painful in many respects. I have nothing but that in the world, and I should prefer to die rather than to renounce it."
What a strange combination is the human heart! Paul was not in love with the charming Aline. His whole heart belonged to another. He thought of her simply as a friend, the most adorable of friends. And yet the idea that Maranne was thinking of her, that she undoubtedly responded to his lover-like attentions, caused him a thrill of jealous anger, and his tone was very sharp when he asked if Mademoiselle Joyeuse were aware of this feeling of André's and had in any way authorized him to proclaim his rights.
"Yes, monsieur, Mademoiselle Élise knows that I love her, and before your frequent visits--"
"Élise--is it Élise you're talking about?"
"Why, who should it be, pray? The other two are too young."
He entered thoroughly into the traditions of the family. In his eyes Grandmamma's twenty years, her triumphant charm, were concealed by a respectful _sobriquet_ and by her providential qualities.
A very brief explanation having allayed André Maranne's excitement, he offered his apologies to de Géry, invited him to take a seat in the carved wooden armchair in which his customers posed, and their conversation speedily assumed an intimate and confidential character, attributable to the earnest avowal with which it began. Paul confessed that he too was in love, and that his only purpose in coming so often to M. Joyeuse's was to talk about his beloved with Grandmamma, who had known her long before.
"It's the same with me," said André. "Grandmamma knows all my secrets; but we have not dared say anything to her father yet. My position is too uncertain. Ah! when _Révolte_ has been brought out!"
Thereupon they talked about _Révolte_! the famous drama on which he had been at work day and night for six months, which had kept him warm all through the winter, a very hard winter, whose rigor was tempered, however, by the magic power of composition in the little garret, which it completely transformed. There, in that confined space, all the heroes of his play had appeared to the poet, like familiar sprites falling through the roof or riding on the moonbeams, and with them the high-warp tapestries, the gleaming chandeliers, the vast parks with gateways flooded with light, all the usual magnificence of stage-setting, as well as the glorious uproar of the first performance, the applause being represented by the rain beating on the windows and the signs flapping against the door, while the wind, whistling through the melancholy lumber-yard below with a vague murmur of voices brought from afar and carried far, resembled the murmur from the boxes opening into the lobby, allowing his triumph to circulate amid the chattering and confusion of the audience. It was not simply the renown and the money that that blessed play were to bring to him, but something far more precious. How carefully, therefore, did he turn the pages of the manuscript contained in five great books in blue covers, such books as the Levantine spread out upon the divan on which she took her siestas, and marked with her managerial pencil.
Paul having drawn near the table in his turn, in order to examine the masterpiece, his eyes were attracted by a portrait of a woman in a handsome frame, which seemed, being so near the artist's work, to have been stationed there to stand guard over it. Élise, of course? Oh! no, André had no right as yet to take his young friend's photograph away from its protecting environment. It was a woman of about forty, fair, with a sweet expression, and dressed in the height of fashion. When he saw the face, de Géry could not restrain an exclamation.
"Do you know her?" said André Maranne.
"Why, yes--Madame Jenkins, the Irish doctor's wife. I took supper with them last winter."
"She is my mother." And the young man added in a lower tone:
"Madame Maranne married Dr. Jenkins for her second husband. You are surprised, are you not, to find me in such destitution when my parents are living in luxury? But, as you know, chance sometimes brings very antipathetic natures together in the same family. My father-in-law and I could not agree. He wanted to make a doctor of me, whereas I had no taste for anything but writing. At last, in order to avoid the constant disputes, which were a source of pain to my mother, I preferred to leave the house and dig my furrow all alone, without assistance from any one. It was a hard task! money was lacking. All the property is in the hands of that--of M. Jenkins. It was a question of earning my living, and you know what a difficult matter that is for persons like ourselves, well brought up as it is termed. To think that, with all the knowledge included in what it is fashionable to call a thorough education, I could find nothing but this child's play which gave me any hope of being able to earn my bread! Some little savings from my allowance as a young man sufficed to buy my first outfit, and I opened a studio far away, at the very end of Paris, in order not to annoy my parents. Between ourselves, I fancy that I shall never make my fortune in photography. The first weeks especially were very hard. No one came, or if by any chance some poor devil did toil up the stairs, I missed him, I spread him out on my plate in a faint, blurred mixture like a ghost. One day, very early in my experience, there came a wedding party, the bride all in white, the husband with a waistcoat--oh! such a waistcoat! And all the guests in white gloves which they insisted upon having included in the photograph, because of the rarity of the sensation. Really, I thought I should go mad. Those black faces, the great white daubs for the dress, the gloves and the orange flowers, the unfortunate bride in the guise of a Zulu queen, under her wreath which melted into her hair! And all so overflowing with good-nature, with encouragement for the artist. I tried them at least twenty times, kept them until five o'clock at night. They left me only when it was dark, to go and dine! Fancy that wedding-day passed in a photograph gallery!"
While André thus jocosely narrated the melancholy incidents of his life, Paul recalled Felicia's outburst on the subject of Bohemians, and all that she said to Jenkins concerning their exalted courage, their thirst for privations and trials. He thought also of Aline's passionate fondness for her dear Paris, of which he knew nothing but the unhealthy eccentricities, whereas the great city concealed so much unknown heroism, so many noble illusions in its folds. The sensation he had previously felt in the circle of the Joyeuses' great lamp, he was even more keenly conscious of in that less warm, less peaceful spot, whither art brought its desperate or glorious uncertainty; and it was with a melting heart that he listened while André Maranne talked to him of Élise, of the examination she was so long in passing, of the difficult trade of photography, of all the unforeseen hardships of his life, which would surely come to an end "when _Révolte_ should have been brought out," a fascinating smile playing about the poet's lips as they gave utterance to that hope, so often expressed, which he made haste to ridicule himself, as if to deprive others of the right to ridicule it.
X.
MEMOIRS OF A CLERK.--THE SERVANTS.
Really the wheel of fortune in Paris revolves in a way to make one's head swim!
To have seen the _Caisse Territoriale_ as I have seen it, fireless rooms, never swept, covered with the dust of the desert, notices of protest piled high on the desks, a notice of sale on execution at the door every week, and my ragout diffusing the odor of a poor man's kitchen over it all; and to witness now the rehabilitation of our Society in its newly-furnished salons, where it is my duty to light ministerial fires, in the midst of a busy throng, with whistles, electric bells, piles of gold pieces so high that they topple over--it borders on the miraculous. To convince myself that it is all true, I have to look at myself in the glass, to gaze at my iron-gray coat trimmed with silver, my white cravat, my usher's chain such as I used to wear at the Faculty on council days. And to think that, to effect this transformation, to bring back to our brows the gayety that is the mother of concord, to restore to our paper its value ten times over and to our dear Governor the esteem and confidence of which he was so unjustly deprived, it only needed one man, that supernatural Croesus whom the hundred voices of fame designate by the name of the Nabob.
Oh! the first time that he came into the offices, with his fine presence, his face, a little wrinkled perhaps but so distinguished, the manners of an habitué of courts, on familiar terms with all the princes of the Orient, in a word with the indescribable touch of self-confidence and grandeur that great fortune gives, I felt my heart swell in my waistcoat with its double row of buttons. They may say all they choose about their equality and fraternity, there are some men who are so much above others, that you feel like falling on your face before them and inventing new formulæ of adoration to compel them to pay some attention to you. Let me hasten to add that I had no need of anything of the sort to attract the attention of the Nabob. When I rose as he passed--deeply moved but dignified: you can always trust Passajon--he looked at me with a smile and said in an undertone to the young man who accompanied him: "What a fine head, like--" then a word that I did not hear, a word ending in _ard_, like leopard. But no, it could not be that, for I am not conscious of having a head like a leopard. Perhaps he said like Jean-Bart, although I do not see the connection. However, he said: "What a fine head, like--" and his condescension made me proud. By the way, all the gentlemen are very kind, very polite to me. It seems that there has been a discussion in regard to me, whether they should keep me or send me away like our cashier, that crabbed creature who was always talking about sending everybody to the galleys, and whom they requested to go and make his economical shirt-fronts somewhere else. Well done! That will teach him to use vulgar language to people.
When it came to me, the Governor was kind enough to forget my rather hasty words in consideration of my certificates of service at the _Territoriale_ and elsewhere; and after the council meeting he said to me with his musical accent: "Passajon, you are to stay on with us." You can imagine whether I was happy, whether I lost myself in expressions of gratitude. Just consider! I should have gone away with my few sous, with no hope of ever earning any more, obliged to go and cultivate my little vineyard at Montbars, a very narrow field for a man who has lived among all the financial aristocracy of Paris and the bold strokes of financiering that make fortunes. Instead of that, here I am established all anew in a superb position, my wardrobe replenished, and my savings, which I actually held in my hand for a whole day, intrusted to the fostering care of the Governor, who has undertaken to make them yield a handsome return. I rather think that he is the man who knows how to do it. And not the slightest occasion for anxiety. All apprehensions vanish before the word that is all the fashion at this moment in all administrative councils, at all meetings of the shareholders, on the Bourse, on the boulevards, everywhere: "The Nabob is in the thing." That is to say, we are running over with cash, the worst _combinazioni_ are in excellent shape.
That man is so rich!
Rich to such a degree that one cannot believe it. Why, he has just loaned fifteen millions off-hand to the Bey of Tunis. Fifteen millions, I say! That was rather a neat trick on Hemerlingue, who tried to make trouble between him and that monarch and to cut the grass from under his feet in those lovely Oriental countries, where it grows tall and thick and golden-colored. It was an old Turk of my acquaintance, Colonel Brahim, one of our council at the _Territoriale_, who arranged the loan. Naturally the bey, who was very short of pocket money, it seems, was greatly touched by the Nabob's zeal to accommodate him, and he sent him by Brahim a letter of acknowledgment in which he told him that on his next trip to Vichy he would pass two days with him at the magnificent Château de Saint-Romans, which the former bey, this one's brother, once honored with a visit. Just think what an honor! To receive a reigning prince! The Hemerlingues are in a frenzy. They had manoeuvred so skilfully, the son in Tunis, the father in Paris, to bring the Nabob into disfavor. To be sure, fifteen millions is a large sum of money. But do not say: "Passajon is gulling us." The person who told me the story had in his hands the paper sent by the bey in a green silk envelope stamped with the royal seal. His only reason for not reading it was that it was written in Arabic; otherwise he would have taken cognizance of it as he does of all the Nabob's correspondence. That person is his valet de chambre, M. Noël, to whom I had the honor to be presented last Friday at a small party of persons in service, which he gave to some of his friends. I insert a description of that festivity in my memoirs, as one of the most interesting things I have seen during my four years' residence in Paris.
I supposed at first, when M. Francis, Monpavon's valet de chambre, mentioned the affair to me, that it was to be one of the little clandestine junkets such as they sometimes have in the attic rooms on our boulevard, with the leavings sent up by Mademoiselle Séraphine and the other cooks in the house, where they drink stolen wine and stuff themselves, sitting on trunks, trembling with fear, by the light of two candles which they put out at the slightest noise in the corridors. Such underhand performances are repugnant to my character. But when I received an invitation on pink paper, written in a very fine hand, as if for a ball given by the people of the house:
_M. Noël pri M.--de se randre à sa soire du 25 couran._
_On soupra._[3]
[3] M. Noël requests the pleasure of M. ----'s company on the evening of the 25th instant. Supper.
I saw, notwithstanding the defective orthography, that it was a serious, authoritative function; so I arrayed myself in my newest frock coat and my finest linen, and betook myself to Place Vendôme, to the address indicated by the invitation.
M. Noël had selected for his party the evening of a first performance at the Opéra, which society attended _en masse_, so that the whole household had the bit in their teeth until midnight, and the entire house at their disposal. Nevertheless, our host had preferred to receive us in his room in the upper part of the house, and I strongly approved his judgment, being therein of the opinion of the good man who said:
Fi du plaisir Que la crainte peut corrompre![4]
[4]
A fig for the pleasure Which fear can destroy!
But talk to me about the attics on Place Vendôme! A thick carpet on the floor, the bed out of sight in an alcove, Algerian curtains with red stripes, a green marble clock, the whole lighted by patent self-regulating lamps. Our dean, M. Chalmette, at Dijon had no better quarters than that. I arrived about nine o'clock with Monpavon's old Francis, and I must confess that my appearance created a sensation, preceded as I was by the fame of my academic past, by my reputation for refined manners and great learning. My fine bearing did the rest, for I must say that I know how to carry myself. M. Noël, very dark skinned, with mutton-chop whiskers, and dressed in a black coat, came forward to meet us.
"Welcome, Monsieur Passajon," he said; and taking my cap with silver ornaments, which, as I entered the room, I held in my right hand according to custom, he handed it to an enormous negro in red and gold livery.
"Here, Lakdar, take this--and this," he said, by way of jest, giving him a kick in a certain portion of the back.
There was much laughter at that sally, and we began to converse most amicably. An excellent fellow, that M. Noël, with his Southern accent, his determined bearing, the frankness and simplicity of his manners. He reminded me of the Nabob, minus his master's distinguished mien, however. Indeed, I noticed that evening that such resemblances are of common occurrence in valets de chambre, who, as they live on intimate terms with their masters, by whom they are always a little dazzled, end by adopting their peculiarities and their mannerisms. For instance, M. Francis has a certain habit of drawing himself up and displaying his linen shirtfront, a mania for raising his arms to pull down his cuffs, which is Monpavon to the life. But there is one who does not resemble his master in the least, that is Joe, Dr. Jenkins' coachman. I call him Joe, but at the party everybody called him Jenkins; for in that circle the stable folk among themselves call one another by their employers' names, plain Bois-l'Héry, Monpavon and Jenkins. Is it to debase the superiors, to exalt the servant class? Every country has its customs; nobody but a fool ought to be astonished by them. To return to Joe Jenkins--how can the doctor, who is such an amiable man, so perfect in every respect, keep in his service that _gin_ and _porter_-soaked brute, who sits silent for hours at a time, and then, the instant that the liquor goes to his head, begins to roar and wants to box everybody--witness the scandalous scene that had just taken place when we arrived.
The marquis's little tiger, Tom Bois-l'Héry, as they call him here, undertook to joke with that Irish beast, who--at some Parisian gamin's jest--retorted by a terrible Belfast knock-down blow in the middle of the face.
"Come on, Humpty-Dumpty! Come on, Humpty-Dumpty!" roared the coachman, choking with rage, while they carried his innocent victim into the adjoining room, where the ladies, young and old, were engaged in bandaging his nose. The excitement was soon allayed, thanks to our arrival, thanks also to the judicious words of M. Barreau, a man of mature years, sedate and majestic, of my own type. He is the Nabob's cook, formerly _chef_ at the Café Anglais, and M. Cardailhac, manager of the Nouveautés, secured him for his friend. To see him in his black coat and white cravat, with his handsome, full, clean-shaven face, you would take him for one of the great functionaries of the Empire. To be sure, a cook in a house where the table is set for thirty people every morning, in addition to Madame's table, and where everyone is fed on the best and the extra best, is no ordinary cook-shop artist. He receives a colonel's salary, with board and lodging, and then the perquisites! No one has any idea of what the perquisites amount to in a place like that. So every one addressed him with great respect, with the consideration due to a man of his importance: "Monsieur Barreau" here, "my dear Monsieur Barreau" there. You must not imagine that the servants in a house are all chums and social equals. Nowhere is the hierarchy more strictly observed than among them. For instance, I noticed at M. Noël's party that the coachmen did not fraternize with their grooms, nor the valets de chambre with the footmen and out-riders, any more than the steward and butler mingled with the scullions; and when M. Barreau cracked a little joke, no matter what it was, it was a pleasure to see how amused his underlings seemed to be. I have no fault to find with these things. Quite the contrary. As our dean used to say: "A society without a hierarchy is a house without a stairway." But the fact seemed to me worth noting in these memoirs.
The party, I need not say, lacked something of its brilliancy until the return of its fairest ornaments, the ladies who had gone to look after little Tom; ladies' maids with glossy, well-oiled hair, housekeepers in beribboned caps, negresses, governesses, among whom I at once acquired much prestige, thanks to my respectable appearance and the nickname "my uncle" which the youngest of those attractive females were pleased to bestow upon me. I tell you there was no lack of second-hand finery, silk and lace, even much faded velvet, eight-button gloves cleaned several times and perfumery picked up on Madame's toilet-table; but their faces were happy, their minds given over to gayety, and I had no difficulty in forming a very lively little party in one corner--always perfectly proper, of course--that goes without saying--and entirely befitting a person in my position. But that was the general tone of the occasion. Not until toward the close of the collation did I hear any of the unseemly remarks, any of the scandalous anecdotes that amuse the gentlemen of our council so highly; and it gives me pleasure to state that Bois-l'Héry the coachman, to cite no other instance, is very differently brought up from Bois-l'Héry the master.