Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET
By Honore De Balzac
Translated by Clara Bell
DEDICATION
To Mademoiselle Marie de Montheau
AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET
Half-way down the Rue Saint-Denis, almost at the corner of the Rue du
Petit-Lion, there stood formerly one of those delightful houses which
enable historians to reconstruct old Paris by analogy. The threatening
walls of this tumbledown abode seemed to have been decorated with
hieroglyphics. For what other name could the passer-by give to the Xs
and Vs which the horizontal or diagonal timbers traced on the front,
outlined by little parallel cracks in the plaster? It was evident that
every beam quivered in its mortices at the passing of the lightest
vehicle. This venerable structure was crowned by a triangular roof of
which no example will, ere long, be seen in Paris. This covering, warped
by the extremes of the Paris climate, projected three feet over the
roadway, as much to protect the threshold from the rainfall as to
shelter the wall of a loft and its sill-less dormer-window. This upper
story was built of planks, overlapping each other like slates, in order,
no doubt, not to overweight the frail house.
One rainy morning in the month of March, a young man, carefully wrapped
in his cloak, stood under the awning of a shop opposite this old house,
which he was studying with the enthusiasm of an antiquary. In point of
fact, this relic of the civic life of the sixteenth century offered
more than one problem to the consideration of an observer. Each story
presented some singularity; on the first floor four tall, narrow
windows, close together, were filled as to the lower panes with boards,
so as to produce the doubtful light by which a clever salesman can
ascribe to his goods the color his customers inquire for. The young man
seemed very scornful of this part of the house; his eyes had not yet
rested on it. The windows of the second floor, where the Venetian blinds
were drawn up, revealing little dingy muslin curtains behind the large
Bohemian glass panes, did not interest him either. His attention was
attracted to the third floor, to the modest sash-frames of wood, so
clumsily wrought that they might have found a place in the Museum of
Arts and Crafts to illustrate the early efforts of French carpentry.
These windows were glazed with small squares of glass so green that, but
for his good eyes, the young man could not have seen the blue-checked
cotton curtains which screened the mysteries of the room from profane
eyes. Now and then the watcher, weary of his fruitless contemplation,
or of the silence in which the house was buried, like the whole
neighborhood, dropped his eyes towards the lower regions. An involuntary
smile parted his lips each time he looked at the shop, where, in fact,
there were some laughable details.
A formidable wooden beam, resting on four pillars, which appeared to
have bent under the weight of the decrepit house, had been encrusted
with as many coats of different paint as there are of rouge on an old
duchess’ cheek. In the middle of this broad and fantastically carved
joist there was an old painting representing a cat playing rackets. This
picture was what moved the young man to mirth. But it must be said
that the wittiest of modern painters could not invent so comical a
caricature. The animal held in one of its forepaws a racket as big as
itself, and stood on its hind legs to aim at hitting an enormous ball,
returned by a man in a fine embroidered coat. Drawing, color, and
accessories, all were treated in such a way as to suggest that the
artist had meant to make game of the shop-owner and of the passing
observer. Time, while impairing this artless painting, had made it yet
more grotesque by introducing some uncertain features which must have
puzzled the conscientious idler. For instance, the cat’s tail had been
eaten into in such a way that it might now have been taken for the
figure of a spectator--so long, and thick, and furry were the tails of
our forefathers’ cats. To the right of the picture, on an azure field
which ill-disguised the decay of the wood, might be read the name
“Guillaume,” and to the left, “Successor to Master Chevrel.” Sun and
rain had worn away most of the gilding parsimoniously applied to the
letters of this superscription, in which the Us and Vs had changed
places in obedience to the laws of old-world orthography.
To quench the pride of those who believe that the world is growing
cleverer day by day, and that modern humbug surpasses everything, it may
be observed that these signs, of which the origin seems so whimsical to
many Paris merchants, are the dead pictures of once living pictures
by which our roguish ancestors contrived to tempt customers into their
houses. Thus the Spinning Sow, the Green Monkey, and others, were
animals in cages whose skills astonished the passer-by, and whose
accomplishments prove the patience of the fifteenth-century artisan.
Such curiosities did more to enrich their fortunate owners than the
signs of “Providence,” “Good-faith,” “Grace of God,” and “Decapitation
of John the Baptist,” which may still be seen in the Rue Saint-Denis.
However, our stranger was certainly not standing there to admire the
cat, which a minute’s attention sufficed to stamp on his memory. The
young man himself had his peculiarities. His cloak, folded after the
manner of an antique drapery, showed a smart pair of shoes, all the more
remarkable in the midst of the Paris mud, because he wore white silk
stockings, on which the splashes betrayed his impatience. He had just
come, no doubt, from a wedding or a ball; for at this early hour he had
in his hand a pair of white gloves, and his black hair, now out of curl,
and flowing over his shoulders, showed that it had been dressed _a la
Caracalla_, a fashion introduced as much by David’s school of painting
as by the mania for Greek and Roman styles which characterized the early
years of this century.
In spite of the noise made by a few market gardeners, who, being late,
rattled past towards the great market-place at a gallop, the busy street
lay in a stillness of which the magic charm is known only to those who
have wandered through deserted Paris at the hours when its roar, hushed
for a moment, rises and spreads in the distance like the great voice
of the sea. This strange young man must have seemed as curious to the
shopkeeping folk of the “Cat and Racket” as the “Cat and Racket” was
to him. A dazzlingly white cravat made his anxious face look even paler
than it really was. The fire that flashed in his black eyes, gloomy
and sparkling by turns, was in harmony with the singular outline of
his features, with his wide, flexible mouth, hardened into a smile. His
forehead, knit with violent annoyance, had a stamp of doom. Is not the
forehead the most prophetic feature of a man? When the stranger’s
brow expressed passion the furrows formed in it were terrible in their
strength and energy; but when he recovered his calmness, so easily
upset, it beamed with a luminous grace which gave great attractiveness
to a countenance in which joy, grief, love, anger, or scorn blazed out
so contagiously that the coldest man could not fail to be impressed.
He was so thoroughly vexed by the time when the dormer-window of the
loft was suddenly flung open, that he did not observe the apparition of
three laughing faces, pink and white and chubby, but as vulgar as the
face of Commerce as it is seen in sculpture on certain monuments. These
three faces, framed by the window, recalled the puffy cherubs floating
among the clouds that surround God the Father. The apprentices snuffed
up the exhalations of the street with an eagerness that showed how hot
and poisonous the atmosphere of their garret must be. After pointing to
the singular sentinel, the most jovial, as he seemed, of the apprentices
retired and came back holding an instrument whose hard metal pipe is now
superseded by a leather tube; and they all grinned with mischief as they
looked down on the loiterer, and sprinkled him with a fine white
shower of which the scent proved that three chins had just been shaved.
Standing on tiptoe, in the farthest corner of their loft, to enjoy
their victim’s rage, the lads ceased laughing on seeing the haughty
indifference with which the young man shook his cloak, and the
intense contempt expressed by his face as he glanced up at the empty
window-frame.
At this moment a slender white hand threw up the lower half of one of
the clumsy windows on the third floor by the aid of the sash runners,
of which the pulley so often suddenly gives way and releases the heavy
panes it ought to hold up. The watcher was then rewarded for his long
waiting. The face of a young girl appeared, as fresh as one of the
white cups that bloom on the bosom of the waters, crowned by a frill
of tumbled muslin, which gave her head a look of exquisite innocence.
Though wrapped in brown stuff, her neck and shoulders gleamed here
and there through little openings left by her movements in sleep. No
expression of embarrassment detracted from the candor of her face, or
the calm look of eyes immortalized long since in the sublime works of
Raphael; here were the same grace, the same repose as in those Virgins,
and now proverbial. There was a delightful contrast between the cheeks
of that face on which sleep had, as it were, given high relief to a
superabundance of life, and the antiquity of the heavy window with its
clumsy shape and black sill. Like those day-blowing flowers, which
in the early morning have not yet unfurled their cups, twisted by the
chills of night, the girl, as yet hardly awake, let her blue eyes wander
beyond the neighboring roofs to look at the sky; then, from habit,
she cast them down on the gloomy depths of the street, where they
immediately met those of her adorer. Vanity, no doubt, distressed her at
being seen in undress; she started back, the worn pulley gave way, and
the sash fell with the rapid run, which in our day has earned for this
artless invention of our forefathers an odious name, _Fenetre a la
Guillotine_. The vision had disappeared. To the young man the most
radiant star of morning seemed to be hidden by a cloud.
During these little incidents the heavy inside shutters that protected
the slight windows of the shop of the “Cat and Racket” had been removed
as if by magic. The old door with its knocker was opened back against
the wall of the entry by a man-servant, apparently coeval with the sign,
who, with a shaking hand, hung upon it a square of cloth, on which were
embroidered in yellow silk the words: “Guillaume, successor to Chevrel.”
Many a passer-by would have found it difficult to guess the class of
trade carried on by Monsieur Guillaume. Between the strong iron bars
which protected his shop windows on the outside, certain packages,
wrapped in brown linen, were hardly visible, though as numerous as
herrings swimming in a shoal. Notwithstanding the primitive aspect of
the Gothic front, Monsieur Guillaume, of all the merchant clothiers in
Paris, was the one whose stores were always the best provided, whose
connections were the most extensive, and whose commercial honesty never
lay under the slightest suspicion. If some of his brethren in business
made a contract with the Government, and had not the required quantity
of cloth, he was always ready to deliver it, however large the number of
pieces tendered for. The wily dealer knew a thousand ways of extracting
the largest profits without being obliged, like them, to court
patrons, cringing to them, or making them costly presents. When his
fellow-tradesmen could only pay in good bills of long date, he would
mention his notary as an accommodating man, and managed to get a second
profit out of the bargain, thanks to this arrangement, which had made it
a proverb among the traders of the Rue Saint-Denis: “Heaven preserve you
from Monsieur Guillaume’s notary!” to signify a heavy discount.
The old merchant was to be seen standing on the threshold of his shop,
as if by a miracle, the instant the servant withdrew. Monsieur Guillaume
looked at the Rue Saint-Denis, at the neighboring shops, and at the
weather, like a man disembarking at Havre, and seeing France once more
after a long voyage. Having convinced himself that nothing had changed
while he was asleep, he presently perceived the stranger on guard, and
he, on his part, gazed at the patriarchal draper as Humboldt may have
scrutinized the first electric eel he saw in America. Monsieur Guillaume
wore loose black velvet breeches, pepper-and-salt stockings, and square
toed shoes with silver buckles. His coat, with square-cut fronts,
square-cut tails, and square-cut collar clothed his slightly bent figure
in greenish cloth, finished with white metal buttons, tawny from wear.
His gray hair was so accurately combed and flattened over his yellow
pate that it made it look like a furrowed field. His little green eyes,
that might have been pierced with a gimlet, flashed beneath arches
faintly tinged with red in the place of eyebrows. Anxieties had wrinkled
his forehead with as many horizontal lines as there were creases in his
coat. This colorless face expressed patience, commercial shrewdness,
and the sort of wily cupidity which is needful in business. At that
time these old families were less rare than they are now, in which the
characteristic habits and costume of their calling, surviving in
the midst of more recent civilization, were preserved as cherished
traditions, like the antediluvian remains found by Cuvier in the
quarries.
The head of the Guillaume family was a notable upholder of ancient
practices; he might be heard to regret the Provost of Merchants, and
never did he mention a decision of the Tribunal of Commerce without
calling it the _Sentence of the Consuls_. Up and dressed the first of
the household, in obedience, no doubt, to these old customs, he stood
sternly awaiting the appearance of his three assistants, ready to scold
them in case they were late. These young disciples of Mercury knew
nothing more terrible than the wordless assiduity with which the master
scrutinized their faces and their movements on Monday in search of
evidence or traces of their pranks. But at this moment the old clothier
paid no heed to his apprentices; he was absorbed in trying to divine the
motive of the anxious looks which the young man in silk stockings and a
cloak cast alternately at his signboard and into the depths of his shop.
The daylight was now brighter, and enabled the stranger to discern the
cashier’s corner enclosed by a railing and screened by old green silk
curtains, where were kept the immense ledgers, the silent oracles of the
house. The too inquisitive gazer seemed to covet this little nook,
and to be taking the plan of a dining-room at one side, lighted by
a skylight, whence the family at meals could easily see the smallest
incident that might occur at the shop-door. So much affection for his
dwelling seemed suspicious to a trader who had lived long enough to
remember the law of maximum prices; Monsieur Guillaume naturally thought
that this sinister personage had an eye to the till of the Cat and
Racket. After quietly observing the mute duel which was going on between
his master and the stranger, the eldest of the apprentices, having seen
that the young man was stealthily watching the windows of the third
floor, ventured to place himself on the stone flag where Monsieur
Guillaume was standing. He took two steps out into the street, raised
his head, and fancied that he caught sight of Mademoiselle Augustine
Guillaume in hasty retreat. The draper, annoyed by his assistant’s
perspicacity, shot a side glance at him; but the draper and his amorous
apprentice were suddenly relieved from the fears which the young man’s
presence had excited in their minds. He hailed a hackney cab on its
way to a neighboring stand, and jumped into it with an air of affected
indifference. This departure was a balm to the hearts of the other two
lads, who had been somewhat uneasy as to meeting the victim of their
practical joke.
“Well, gentlemen, what ails you that you are standing there with your
arms folded?” said Monsieur Guillaume to his three neophytes. “In former
days, bless you, when I was in Master Chevrel’s service, I should have
overhauled more than two pieces of cloth by this time.”
“Then it was daylight earlier,” said the second assistant, whose duty
this was.
The old shopkeeper could not help smiling. Though two of these
young fellows, who were confided to his care by their fathers, rich
manufacturers at Louviers and at Sedan, had only to ask and to have a
hundred thousand francs the day when they were old enough to settle in
life, Guillaume regarded it as his duty to keep them under the rod of an
old-world despotism, unknown nowadays in the showy modern shops, where
the apprentices expect to be rich men at thirty. He made them work like
Negroes. These three assistants were equal to a business which would
harry ten such clerks as those whose sybaritical tastes now swell the
columns of the budget. Not a sound disturbed the peace of this solemn
house, where the hinges were always oiled, and where the meanest article
of furniture showed the respectable cleanliness which reveals strict
order and economy. The most waggish of the three youths often amused
himself by writing the date of its first appearance on the Gruyere
cheese which was left to their tender mercies at breakfast, and which it
was their pleasure to leave untouched. This bit of mischief, and a few
others of the same stamp, would sometimes bring a smile on the face of
the younger of Guillaume’s daughters, the pretty maiden who has just now
appeared to the bewitched man in the street.
Though each of these apprentices, even the eldest, paid a round sum for
his board, not one of them would have been bold enough to remain at the
master’s table when dessert was served. When Madame Guillaume talked of
dressing the salad, the hapless youths trembled as they thought of the
thrift with which her prudent hand dispensed the oil. They could never
think of spending a night away from the house without having given, long
before, a plausible reason for such an irregularity. Every Sunday, each
in his turn, two of them accompanied the Guillaume family to Mass at
Saint-Leu, and to vespers. Mesdemoiselles Virginie and Augustine, simply
attired in cotton print, each took the arm of an apprentice and walked
in front, under the piercing eye of their mother, who closed the little
family procession with her husband, accustomed by her to carry two large
prayer-books, bound in black morocco. The second apprentice received
no salary. As for the eldest, whose twelve years of perseverance and
discretion had initiated him into the secrets of the house, he was paid
eight hundred francs a year as the reward of his labors. On certain
family festivals he received as a gratuity some little gift, to which
Madame Guillaume’s dry and wrinkled hand alone gave value--netted
purses, which she took care to stuff with cotton wool, to show off the
fancy stitches, braces of the strongest make, or heavy silk stockings.
Sometimes, but rarely, this prime minister was admitted to share the
pleasures of the family when they went into the country, or when, after
waiting for months, they made up their mind to exert the right acquired
by taking a box at the theatre to command a piece which Paris had
already forgotten.
As to the other assistants, the barrier of respect which formerly
divided a master draper from his apprentices was that they would
have been more likely to steal a piece of cloth than to infringe this
time-honored etiquette. Such reserve may now appear ridiculous; but
these old houses were a school of honesty and sound morals. The masters
adopted their apprentices. The young man’s linen was cared for, mended,
and often replaced by the mistress of the house. If an apprentice fell
ill, he was the object of truly maternal attention. In a case of
danger the master lavished his money in calling in the most celebrated
physicians, for he was not answerable to their parents merely for the
good conduct and training of the lads. If one of them, whose character
was unimpeachable, suffered misfortune, these old tradesmen knew how to
value the intelligence he had displayed, and they did not hesitate
to entrust the happiness of their daughters to men whom they had long
trusted with their fortunes. Guillaume was one of these men of the
old school, and if he had their ridiculous side, he had all their good
qualities; and Joseph Lebas, the chief assistant, an orphan without any
fortune, was in his mind destined to be the husband of Virginie, his
elder daughter. But Joseph did not share the symmetrical ideas of his
master, who would not for an empire have given his second daughter in
marriage before the elder. The unhappy assistant felt that his heart was
wholly given to Mademoiselle Augustine, the younger. In order to justify
this passion, which had grown up in secret, it is necessary to inquire
a little further into the springs of the absolute government which ruled
the old cloth-merchant’s household.
Guillaume had two daughters. The elder, Mademoiselle Virginie, was
the very image of her mother. Madame Guillaume, daughter of the Sieur
Chevrel, sat so upright in the stool behind her desk, that more than
once she had heard some wag bet that she was a stuffed figure. Her
long, thin face betrayed exaggerated piety. Devoid of attractions or of
amiable manners, Madame Guillaume commonly decorated her head--that of
a woman near on sixty--with a cap of a particular and unvarying shape,
with long lappets, like that of a widow. In all the neighborhood she was
known as the “portress nun.” Her speech was curt, and her movements had
the stiff precision of a semaphore. Her eye, with a gleam in it like a
cat’s, seemed to spite the world because she was so ugly. Mademoiselle
Virginie, brought up, like her younger sister, under the domestic rule
of her mother, had reached the age of eight-and-twenty. Youth mitigated
the graceless effect which her likeness to her mother sometimes gave
to her features, but maternal austerity had endowed her with two great
qualities which made up for everything. She was patient and gentle.
Mademoiselle Augustine, who was but just eighteen, was not like either
her father or her mother. She was one of those daughters whose total
absence of any physical affinity with their parents makes one believe in
the adage: “God gives children.” Augustine was little, or, to describe
her more truly, delicately made. Full of gracious candor, a man of the
world could have found no fault in the charming girl beyond a certain
meanness of gesture or vulgarity of attitude, and sometimes a want of
ease. Her silent and placid face was full of the transient melancholy
which comes over all young girls who are too weak to dare to resist
their mother’s will.
The two sisters, always plainly dressed, could not gratify the innate
vanity of womanhood but by a luxury of cleanliness which became them
wonderfully, and made them harmonize with the polished counters and
the shining shelves, on which the old man-servant never left a speck of
dust, and with the old-world simplicity of all they saw about them. As
their style of living compelled them to find the elements of happiness
in persistent work, Augustine and Virginie had hitherto always satisfied
their mother, who secretly prided herself on the perfect characters of
her two daughters. It is easy to imagine the results of the training
they had received. Brought up to a commercial life, accustomed to
hear nothing but dreary arguments and calculations about trade, having
studied nothing but grammar, book-keeping, a little Bible-history, and
the history of France in Le Ragois, and never reading any book but what
their mother would sanction, their ideas had not acquired much scope.
They knew perfectly how to keep house; they were familiar with the
prices of things; they understood the difficulty of amassing money; they
were economical, and had a great respect for the qualities that make a
man of business. Although their father was rich, they were as skilled
in darning as in embroidery; their mother often talked of having them
taught to cook, so that they might know how to order a dinner and scold
a cook with due knowledge. They knew nothing of the pleasures of the
world; and, seeing how their parents spent their exemplary lives, they
very rarely suffered their eyes to wander beyond the walls of their
hereditary home, which to their mother was the whole universe. The
meetings to which family anniversaries gave rise filled in the future of
earthly joy to them.
When the great drawing-room on the second floor was to be prepared to
receive company--Madame Roguin, a Demoiselle Chevrel, fifteen months
younger than her cousin, and bedecked with diamonds; young Rabourdin,
employed in the Finance Office; Monsieur Cesar Birotteau, the rich
perfumer, and his wife, known as Madame Cesar; Monsieur Camusot, the
richest silk mercer in the Rue des Bourdonnais, with his father-in-law,
Monsieur Cardot, two or three old bankers, and some immaculate
ladies--the arrangements, made necessary by the way in which everything
was packed away--the plate, the Dresden china, the candlesticks, and the
glass--made a variety in the monotonous lives of the three women, who
came and went and exerted themselves as nuns would to receive their
bishop. Then, in the evening, when all three were tired out with having
wiped, rubbed, unpacked, and arranged all the gauds of the festival, as
the girls helped their mother to undress, Madame Guillaume would say to
them, “Children, we have done nothing today.”
When, on very great occasions, “the portress nun” allowed dancing,
restricting the games of boston, whist, and backgammon within the limits
of her bedroom, such a concession was accounted as the most unhoped
felicity, and made them happier than going to the great balls, to two
or three of which Guillaume would take the girls at the time of the
Carnival.
And once a year the worthy draper gave an entertainment, when he spared
no expense. However rich and fashionable the persons invited might be,
they were careful not to be absent; for the most important houses on
the exchange had recourse to the immense credit, the fortune, or the
time-honored experience of Monsieur Guillaume. Still, the excellent
merchant’s daughters did not benefit as much as might be supposed by the
lessons the world has to offer to young spirits. At these parties, which
were indeed set down in the ledger to the credit of the house, they wore
dresses the shabbiness of which made them blush. Their style of dancing
was not in any way remarkable, and their mother’s surveillance did not
allow of their holding any conversation with their partners beyond Yes
and No. Also, the law of the old sign of the Cat and Racket commanded
that they should be home by eleven o’clock, the hour when balls and
fetes begin to be lively. Thus their pleasures, which seemed to conform
very fairly to their father’s position, were often made insipid by
circumstances which were part of the family habits and principles.
As to their usual life, one remark will sufficiently paint it. Madame
Guillaume required her daughters to be dressed very early in the
morning, to come down every day at the same hour, and she ordered their
employments with monastic regularity. Augustine, however, had been
gifted by chance with a spirit lofty enough to feel the emptiness of
such a life. Her blue eyes would sometimes be raised as if to pierce
the depths of that gloomy staircase and those damp store-rooms. After
sounding the profound cloistral silence, she seemed to be listening to
remote, inarticulate revelations of the life of passion, which accounts
feelings as of higher value than things. And at such moments her cheek
would flush, her idle hands would lay the muslin sewing on the polished
oak counter, and presently her mother would say in a voice, of which
even the softest tones were sour, “Augustine, my treasure, what are
you thinking about?” It is possible that two romances discovered
by Augustine in the cupboard of a cook Madame Guillaume had
lately discharged--_Hippolyte Comte de Douglas_ and _Le Comte de
Comminges_--may have contributed to develop the ideas of the young girl,
who had devoured them in secret, during the long nights of the past
winter.
And so Augustine’s expression of vague longing, her gentle voice, her
jasmine skin, and her blue eyes had lighted in poor Lebas’ soul a
flame as ardent as it was reverent. From an easily understood caprice,
Augustine felt no affection for the orphan; perhaps she did not know
that he loved her. On the other hand, the senior apprentice, with his
long legs, his chestnut hair, his big hands and powerful frame, had
found a secret admirer in Mademoiselle Virginie, who, in spite of her
dower of fifty thousand crowns, had as yet no suitor. Nothing could
be more natural than these two passions at cross-purposes, born in the
silence of the dingy shop, as violets bloom in the depths of a wood. The
mute and constant looks which made the young people’s eyes meet by sheer
need of change in the midst of persistent work and cloistered peace, was
sure, sooner or later, to give rise to feelings of love. The habit of
seeing always the same face leads insensibly to our reading there the
qualities of the soul, and at last effaces all its defects.
“At the pace at which that man goes, our girls will soon have to go on
their knees to a suitor!” said Monsieur Guillaume to himself, as he
read the first decree by which Napoleon drew in advance on the conscript
classes.
From that day the old merchant, grieved at seeing his eldest daughter
fade, remembered how he had married Mademoiselle Chevrel under much the
same circumstances as those of Joseph Lebas and Virginie. A good bit
of business, to marry off his daughter, and discharge a sacred debt
by repaying to an orphan the benefit he had formerly received from
his predecessor under similar conditions! Joseph Lebas, who was now
three-and-thirty, was aware of the obstacle which a difference of
fifteen years placed between Augustine and himself. Being also too
clear-sighted not to understand Monsieur Guillaume’s purpose, he knew
his inexorable principles well enough to feel sure that the second would
never marry before the elder. So the hapless assistant, whose heart was
as warm as his legs were long and his chest deep, suffered in silence.
This was the state of the affairs in the tiny republic which, in the
heart of the Rue Saint-Denis, was not unlike a dependency of La Trappe.
But to give a full account of events as well as of feelings, it is
needful to go back to some months before the scene with which this story
opens. At dusk one evening, a young man passing the darkened shop of the
Cat and Racket, had paused for a moment to gaze at a picture which might
have arrested every painter in the world. The shop was not yet lighted,
and was as a dark cave beyond which the dining-room was visible. A
hanging lamp shed the yellow light which lends such charm to pictures
of the Dutch school. The white linen, the silver, the cut glass, were
brilliant accessories, and made more picturesque by strong contrasts of
light and shade. The figures of the head of the family and his wife, the
faces of the apprentices, and the pure form of Augustine, near whom a
fat chubby-cheeked maid was standing, composed so strange a group; the
heads were so singular, and every face had so candid an expression; it
was so easy to read the peace, the silence, the modest way of life in
this family, that to an artist accustomed to render nature, there was
something hopeless in any attempt to depict this scene, come upon by
chance. The stranger was a young painter, who, seven years before, had
gained the first prize for painting. He had now just come back from
Rome. His soul, full-fed with poetry; his eyes, satiated with Raphael
and Michael Angelo, thirsted for real nature after long dwelling in the
pompous land where art has everywhere left something grandiose. Right or
wrong, this was his personal feeling. His heart, which had long been
a prey to the fire of Italian passion, craved one of those modest
and meditative maidens whom in Rome he had unfortunately seen only
in painting. From the enthusiasm produced in his excited fancy by the
living picture before him, he naturally passed to a profound admiration
for the principal figure; Augustine seemed to be pensive, and did not
eat; by the arrangement of the lamp the light fell full on her face, and
her bust seemed to move in a circle of fire, which threw up the shape of
her head and illuminated it with almost supernatural effect. The artist
involuntarily compared her to an exiled angel dreaming of heaven. An
almost unknown emotion, a limpid, seething love flooded his heart. After
remaining a minute, overwhelmed by the weight of his ideas, he tore
himself from his bliss, went home, ate nothing, and could not sleep.
The next day he went to his studio, and did not come out of it till he
had placed on canvas the magic of the scene of which the memory had, in
a sense, made him a devotee; his happiness was incomplete till he should
possess a faithful portrait of his idol. He went many times past the
house of the Cat and Racket; he even ventured in once or twice, under
a disguise, to get a closer view of the bewitching creature that Madame
Guillaume covered with her wing. For eight whole months, devoted to his
love and to his brush, he was lost to the sight of his most intimate
friends forgetting the world, the theatre, poetry, music, and all his
dearest habits. One morning Girodet broke through all the barriers with
which artists are familiar, and which they know how to evade, went into
his room, and woke him by asking, “What are you going to send to the
Salon?” The artist grasped his friend’s hand, dragged him off to the
studio, uncovered a small easel picture and a portrait. After a long
and eager study of the two masterpieces, Girodet threw himself on his
comrade’s neck and hugged him, without speaking a word. His feelings
could only be expressed as he felt them--soul to soul.
“You are in love?” said Girodet.
They both knew that the finest portraits by Titian, Raphael, and
Leonardo da Vinci, were the outcome of the enthusiastic sentiments
by which, indeed, under various conditions, every masterpiece is
engendered. The artist only bent his head in reply.
“How happy are you to be able to be in love, here, after coming back
from Italy! But I do not advise you to send such works as these to the
Salon,” the great painter went on. “You see, these two works will not
be appreciated. Such true coloring, such prodigious work, cannot yet be
understood; the public is not accustomed to such depths. The pictures
we paint, my dear fellow, are mere screens. We should do better to
turn rhymes, and translate the antique poets! There is more glory to be
looked for there than from our luckless canvases!”
Notwithstanding this charitable advice, the two pictures were exhibited.
The _Interior_ made a revolution in painting. It gave birth to the
pictures of genre which pour into all our exhibitions in such prodigious
quantity that they might be supposed to be produced by machinery. As
to the portrait, few artists have forgotten that lifelike work; and the
public, which as a body is sometimes discerning, awarded it the crown
which Girodet himself had hung over it. The two pictures were surrounded
by a vast throng. They fought for places, as women say. Speculators and
moneyed men would have covered the canvas with double napoleons, but the
artist obstinately refused to sell or to make replicas. An enormous sum
was offered him for the right of engraving them, and the print-sellers
were not more favored than the amateurs.
Though these incidents occupied the world, they were not of a nature to
penetrate the recesses of the monastic solitude in the Rue Saint-Denis.
However, when paying a visit to Madame Guillaume, the notary’s wife
spoke of the exhibition before Augustine, of whom she was very fond,
and explained its purpose. Madame Roguin’s gossip naturally inspired
Augustine with a wish to see the pictures, and with courage enough to
ask her cousin secretly to take her to the Louvre. Her cousin succeeded
in the negotiations she opened with Madame Guillaume for permission to
release the young girl for two hours from her dull labors. Augustine was
thus able to make her way through the crowd to see the crowned work. A
fit of trembling shook her like an aspen leaf as she recognized herself.
She was terrified, and looked about her to find Madame Roguin, from
whom she had been separated by a tide of people. At that moment her
frightened eyes fell on the impassioned face of the young painter. She
at once recalled the figure of a loiterer whom, being curious, she had
frequently observed, believing him to be a new neighbor.
“You see how love has inspired me,” said the artist in the timid
creature’s ear, and she stood in dismay at the words.
She found supernatural courage to enable her to push through the crowd
and join her cousin, who was still struggling with the mass of people
that hindered her from getting to the picture.
“You will be stifled!” cried Augustine. “Let us go.”
But there are moments, at the Salon, when two women are not always free
to direct their steps through the galleries. By the irregular course to
which they were compelled by the press, Mademoiselle Guillaume and her
cousin were pushed to within a few steps of the second picture. Chance
thus brought them, both together, to where they could easily see the
canvas made famous by fashion, for once in agreement with talent. Madame
Roguin’s exclamation of surprise was lost in the hubbub and buzz of the
crowd; Augustine involuntarily shed tears at the sight of this wonderful
study. Then, by an almost unaccountable impulse, she laid her finger on
her lips, as she perceived quite near her the ecstatic face of the young
painter. The stranger replied by a nod, and pointed to Madame Roguin, as
a spoil-sport, to show Augustine that he had understood. This pantomime
struck the young girl like hot coals on her flesh; she felt quite
guilty as she perceived that there was a compact between herself and the
artist. The suffocating heat, the dazzling sight of beautiful dresses,
the bewilderment produced in Augustine’s brain by the truth of coloring,
the multitude of living or painted figures, the profusion of gilt
frames, gave her a sense of intoxication which doubled her alarms. She
would perhaps have fainted if an unknown rapture had not surged up
in her heart to vivify her whole being, in spite of this chaos of
sensations. She nevertheless believed herself to be under the power
of the Devil, of whose awful snares she had been warned of by the
thundering words of preachers. This moment was to her like a moment of
madness. She found herself accompanied to her cousin’s carriage by the
young man, radiant with joy and love. Augustine, a prey to an agitation
new to her experience, an intoxication which seemed to abandon her to
nature, listened to the eloquent voice of her heart, and looked again
and again at the young painter, betraying the emotion that came over
her. Never had the bright rose of her cheeks shown in stronger contrast
with the whiteness of her skin. The artist saw her beauty in all its
bloom, her maiden modesty in all its glory. She herself felt a sort of
rapture mingled with terror at thinking that her presence had brought
happiness to him whose name was on every lip, and whose talent lent
immortality to transient scenes. She was loved! It was impossible to
doubt it. When she no longer saw the artist, these simple words still
echoed in her ear, “You see how love has inspired me!” And the throbs of
her heart, as they grew deeper, seemed a pain, her heated blood revealed
so many unknown forces in her being. She affected a severe headache to
avoid replying to her cousin’s questions concerning the pictures; but
on their return Madame Roguin could not forbear from speaking to Madame
Guillaume of the fame that had fallen on the house of the Cat and
Racket, and Augustine quaked in every limb as she heard her mother say
that she should go to the Salon to see her house there. The young girl
again declared herself suffering, and obtained leave to go to bed.
“That is what comes of sight-seeing,” exclaimed Monsieur Guillaume--“a
headache. And is it so very amusing to see in a picture what you can
see any day in your own street? Don’t talk to me of your artists! Like
writers, they are a starveling crew. Why the devil need they choose my
house to flout it in their pictures?”
“It may help to sell a few ells more of cloth,” said Joseph Lebas.
This remark did not protect art and thought from being condemned once
again before the judgment-seat of trade. As may be supposed, these
speeches did not infuse much hope into Augustine, who, during the night,
gave herself up to the first meditations of love. The events of the day
were like a dream, which it was a joy to recall to her mind. She was
initiated into the fears, the hopes, the remorse, all the ebb and flow
of feeling which could not fail to toss a heart so simple and timid as
hers. What a void she perceived in this gloomy house! What a treasure
she found in her soul! To be the wife of a genius, to share his glory!
What ravages must such a vision make in the heart of a girl brought up
among such a family! What hopes must it raise in a young creature who,
in the midst of sordid elements, had pined for a life of elegance! A
sunbeam had fallen into the prison. Augustine was suddenly in love. So
many of her feelings were soothed that she succumbed without reflection.
At eighteen does not love hold a prism between the world and the eyes
of a young girl? She was incapable of suspecting the hard facts which
result from the union of a loving woman with a man of imagination, and
she believed herself called to make him happy, not seeing any disparity
between herself and him. To her the future would be as the present.
When, next day, her father and mother returned from the Salon, their
dejected faces proclaimed some disappointment. In the first place, the
painter had removed the two pictures; and then Madame Guillaume had lost
her cashmere shawl. But the news that the pictures had disappeared from
the walls since her visit revealed to Augustine a delicacy of sentiment
which a woman can always appreciate, even by instinct.
On the morning when, on his way home from a ball, Theodore de
Sommervieux--for this was the name which fame had stamped on Augustine’s
heart--had been squirted on by the apprentices while awaiting the
appearance of his artless little friend, who certainly did not know that
he was there, the lovers had seen each other for the fourth time only
since their meeting at the Salon. The difficulties which the rule of
the house placed in the way of the painter’s ardent nature gave added
violence to his passion for Augustine.
How could he get near to a young girl seated in a counting-house between
two such women as Mademoiselle Virginie and Madame Guillaume? How could
he correspond with her when her mother never left her side? Ingenious,
as lovers are, to imagine woes, Theodore saw a rival in one of the
assistants, to whose interests he supposed the others to be devoted. If
he should evade these sons of Argus, he would yet be wrecked under the
stern eye of the old draper or of Madame Guillaume. The very vehemence
of his passion hindered the young painter from hitting on the ingenious
expedients which, in prisoners and in lovers, seem to be the last effort
of intelligence spurred by a wild craving for liberty, or by the fire of
love. Theodore wandered about the neighborhood with the restlessness of
a madman, as though movement might inspire him with some device.
After racking his imagination, it occurred to him to bribe the blowsy
waiting-maid with gold. Thus a few notes were exchanged at long
intervals during the fortnight following the ill-starred morning when
Monsieur Guillaume and Theodore had so scrutinized one another. At
the present moment the young couple had agreed to see each other at a
certain hour of the day, and on Sunday, at Saint-Leu, during Mass and
vespers. Augustine had sent her dear Theodore a list of the relations
and friends of the family, to whom the young painter tried to get
access, in the hope of interesting, if it were possible, in his love
affairs, one of these souls absorbed in money and trade, to whom a
genuine passion must appear a quite monstrous speculation, a thing
unheard-of. Nothing meanwhile, was altered at the sign of the Cat and
Racket. If Augustine was absent-minded, if, against all obedience to the
domestic code, she stole up to her room to make signals by means of
a jar of flowers, if she sighed, if she were lost in thought, no one
observed it, not even her mother. This will cause some surprise to those
who have entered into the spirit of the household, where an idea tainted
with poetry would be in startling contrast to persons and things, where
no one could venture on a gesture or a look which would not be seen and
analyzed. Nothing, however, could be more natural: the quiet barque that
navigated the stormy waters of the Paris Exchange, under the flag of
the Cat and Racket, was just now in the toils of one of these tempests
which, returning periodically, might be termed equinoctial. For the
last fortnight the five men forming the crew, with Madame Guillaume and
Mademoiselle Virginie, had been devoting themselves to the hard labor,
known as stock-taking.
Every bale was turned over, and the length verified to ascertain the
exact value of the remnant. The ticket attached to each parcel was
carefully examined to see at what time the piece had been bought. The
retail price was fixed. Monsieur Guillaume, always on his feet, his pen
behind his ear, was like a captain commanding the working of the ship.
His sharp tones, spoken through a trap-door, to inquire into the
depths of the hold in the cellar-store, gave utterance to the barbarous
formulas of trade-jargon, which find expression only in cipher. “How
much H. N. Z.?”--“All sold.”--“What is left of Q. X.?”--“Two ells.”--“At
what price?”--“Fifty-five three.”--“Set down A. at three, with all of
J. J., all of M. P., and what is left of V. D. O.”--A hundred other
injunctions equally intelligible were spouted over the counters like
verses of modern poetry, quoted by romantic spirits, to excite each
other’s enthusiasm for one of their poets. In the evening Guillaume,
shut up with his assistant and his wife, balanced his accounts, carried
on the balance, wrote to debtors in arrears, and made out bills. All
three were busy over this enormous labor, of which the result could be
stated on a sheet of foolscap, proving to the head of the house that
there was so much to the good in hard cash, so much in goods, so much
in bills and notes; that he did not owe a sou; that a hundred or two
hundred thousand francs were owing to him; that the capital had been
increased; that the farmlands, the houses, or the investments were
extended, or repaired, or doubled. Whence it became necessary to begin
again with increased ardor, to accumulate more crown-pieces, without its
ever entering the brain of these laborious ants to ask--“To what end?”
Favored by this annual turmoil, the happy Augustine escaped the
investigations of her Argus-eyed relations. At last, one Saturday
evening, the stock-taking was finished. The figures of the sum-total
showed a row of 0’s long enough to allow Guillaume for once to relax the
stern rule as to dessert which reigned throughout the year. The shrewd
old draper rubbed his hands, and allowed his assistants to remain at
table. The members of the crew had hardly swallowed their thimbleful
of some home-made liqueur, when the rumble of a carriage was heard. The
family party were going to see _Cendrillon_ at the Varietes, while
the two younger apprentices each received a crown of six francs, with
permission to go wherever they chose, provided they were in by midnight.