Solemn moment approached for the two friends. They were to take their
examinations for graduation. Upon the days when M. Violette--they now
called him at the office “Father Violette,” he had grown so aged and
decrepit--was not too much “consoled” in the cafe in the Rue du Four,
and when he was less silent and gloomy than usual, he would say to his
son, after the soup:
“Do you know, Amedee, I shall not be easy in my mind until you have
received your degree. Say what they may, it leads to everything.”
To everything indeed! M. Violette had a college friend upon whom all
the good marks had been showered, who, having been successively
schoolmaster, journalist, theatrical critic, a boarder in Mazas prison,
insurance agent, director of an athletic ring--he quoted Homer in his
harangue--at present pushed back the curtains at the entrance to the
Ambigu, and waited for his soup at the barracks gate, holding out an old
tomato-can to be filled.
But M. Violette had no cause to fear! Amedee received his degree on the
same day with his friend Maurice, and both passed honorably. A little
old man with a head like a baboon--the scientific examiner--tried to
make Amedee flounder on the subject of nitrogen, but he passed all the
same. One can hope for everything nowadays.
But what could Amedee hope for first? M. Violette thought of it when
he was not at his station at the Rue du Four. What could he hope for?
Nothing very great.
Probably he could enter the ministry as an auxiliary. One hundred
francs a month, and the gratuities, would not be bad for a beginner! M.
Violette recalled his endless years in the office, and all the trouble
he had taken to guess a famous rebus that was celebrated for never
having been solved. Was Amedee to spend his youth deciphering enigmas?
M. Violette hoped for a more independent career for his son, if it were
possible. Commerce, for example! Yes! there was a future in commerce.
As a proof of it there was the grocer opposite him, a simpleton who
probably did not put the screws on enough and had just hanged himself
rather than go into bankruptcy. M. Violette would gladly see his son in
business. If he could begin with M. Gaufre? Why not? The young man might
become in the end his uncle’s partner and make his fortune. M. Violette
spoke of it to Amedee.
“Shall we go to see your uncle Sunday morning?”
The idea of selling chasubles and Stations of the Cross did not greatly
please Amedee, who had concealed in his drawer a little book full of
sonnets, and had in his mind the plan of a romantic drama wherein one
would say “Good heavens!” and “My lord!” But first of all, he must
please his father. He was glad to observe that for some time M. Violette
had interested himself more in him, and had resisted his baneful habit
somewhat. The young man offered no resistance. The next day at noon he
presented himself at the Rue Servandoni, accompanied by his father.
The “dealer in pious goods” received them with great good-humor. He had
just come from high mass and was about to sit down at the table. He even
invited them to follow his example and taste of his stewed kidneys, one
of Berenice’s triumphs, who served the dinner with her hands loaded with
rings. The Violettes had dined, and the father made known his desire.
“Yes,” said Uncle Isidore, “Amedee might enter the house. Only you know,
Violette, it will be another education to be learned over again. He must
begin at the very beginning and follow the regular course. Oh! the boy
will not be badly treated! He may take his meals with us, is not that
so, Berenice? At first he would be obliged to run about a little, as
I did when I came from the province to work in the shop and tie up
parcels.”
M. Violette looked at his son and saw that he was blushing with shame.
The poor man understood his mistake. What good to have dazzled M. Patin
before the whole University by reciting, without hesitation, three
verses of Aristophanes, only to become a drudge and a packer? Well!
so Amedee would yawn over green boxes and guess at enigmas in the
Illustration. It had to be so.
They took leave of Uncle Isidore.
“We will reflect over it, Monsieur Gaufre, and will come to see you
again.”
But Berenice had hardly shut the door upon them when M. Violette said to
his son:
“Nothing is to be expected of that old egotist. Tomorrow we will go
to see the chief of my department, I have spoken of you to him, at all
events.”
He was a good sort of fellow, this M. Courtet, who was head clerk,
though too conceited and starched up, certainly. His red rosette, as
large as a fifty-cent piece, made one’s eyes blink, and he certainly was
very imprudent to stand so long backed up to the fireplace with limbs
spread apart, for it seemed that he must surely burn the seat of his
trousers. But no matter, he has stomach enough. He has noticed M.
Violette’s pitiful decline--“a poor devil who never will live to be
promoted.” Having it in his power to distribute positions, M. Courtet
had reserved a position for Amedee. In eight days the young man would be
nominated an auxiliary employe at fifteen hundred francs a year. It is
promised and done.
Ugh! the sickening heat from the stove! the disgusting odor of musty
papers! However, Amedee had nothing to complain of; they might have
given him figures to balance for five hours at a time. He owed it to
M. Courtet’s kindness, that he was put at once into the correspondence
room. He studied the formulas, and soon became skilful in official
politeness. He now knew the delicate shades which exist between “yours
respectfully” and “most respectfully yours;” and he measured the abyss
which separates an “agreeable” and “homage.”
To sum it all up, Amedee was bored, but he was not unhappy; for he had
time to dream.
He went the longest way to the office in the morning, while seeking to
make “amour” rhyme with “jour” without producing an insipid thing; or
else he thought of the third act of his drama after the style of 1830,
and the grand love scene which should take place at the foot of the
Montfaucon gallows. In the evening he went to the Gerards, and they
seated themselves around--the lamp which stood on the dining-room table,
the father reading his journal, the women sewing. He chatted with Maria,
who answered him the greater part of the time without raising her eyes,
because she suspected, the coquette! that he admired her beautiful,
drooping lids.
Amedee composed his first sonnets in her honor, and he adored her, of
course, but he was also in love with the Lantz young ladies, whom he saw
sometimes at Madame Roger’s, and who each wore Sunday evenings roses in
her hair, which made them resemble those pantheons in sponge-cake that
pastry-cooks put in their windows on fete days.
If Amedee had been presented to twelve thousand maidens successively,
they would have inspired twelve thousand wishes. There was the servant
of the family on the first floor, whose side-glance troubled him as he
met her on the staircase; and his heart sank every time he turned the
handle of the door of a shop in the Rue Bonaparte, where an insidious
clerk always forced him to choose ox-colored kid gloves, which he
detested. It must not be forgotten that Amedee was very young, and was
in love with love.
He was so extremely timid that he never had had the audacity to tell the
girl at the glove counter that he preferred bronze-green gloves, nor the
boldness to show Maria Gerard his poems composed in her honor, in which
he now always put the plural “amours,” so as to make it rhyme with
“toujours,” which was an improvement. He never had dared to reply to the
glance of the little maid on the second floor; and he was very wrong to
be embarrassed, for one morning, as he passed the butcher’s shop, he saw
the butcher’s foreman put his arm about the girl’s waist and whisper a
love speech over a fine sirloin roast.
Sometimes, in going or coming from the office, Amedee would go to see
his friend Maurice, who had obtained from Madame Roger permission to
install himself in the Latin Quarter so as to be near the law school.
In a very low-studded first-floor room in the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince,
Amedee perceived through a cloud of tobacco-smoke the elegant Maurice
in a scarlet jacket lying upon a large divan. Everything was rich and
voluptuous, heavy carpets, handsomely bound volumes of poems, an open
piano, and an odor of perfumery mingled with that of cigarettes. Upon
the velvet-covered mantel Mademoiselle Irma, the favorite of the master
of the apartment, had left the last fashionable novel, marking, with
one of her hairpins, where she had left off reading. Amedee spent a
delightful hour there. Maurice always greeted him with his joyful, kind
manner, in which one hardly minded the slight shade of patronage.
He walked up and down his room, expanding his finely moulded chest,
lighting and throwing away his cigarettes, seating himself for two
minutes at the piano and playing one of Chopin’s sad strains, opening
a book and reading a page, showing his albums to his friend, making
him repeat some of his poems, applauding him and touching lightly upon
different subjects, and charming Amedee more and more by his grace and
manners.
However, Amedee could not enjoy his friend much, as he rarely found him
alone. Every few moments--the key was in the door--Maurice’s comrades,
young pleasure-seekers like himself, but more vulgar, not having his
gentlemanly bearing and manners, would come to talk with him of some
projected scheme or to remind him of some appointment for the evening.
Often, some one of them, with his hat upon his head, would dash off a
polka, after placing his lighted cigar upon the edge of the piano. These
fast fellows frightened Amedee a little, as he had the misfortune to be
fastidious.
After these visitors had left, Maurice would ask his friend to dinner,
but the door would open again, and Mademoiselle Irma, in her furs and
small veil--a comical little face--would enter quickly and throw her
arms about Amedee’s neck, kissing him, while rumpling his hair with her
gloved hands.
“Bravo! we will all three dine together.”
No! Amedee is afraid of Mademoiselle Irma, who has already thrown her
mantle upon the sofa and crowned the bronze Venus de Milo with her otter
toque. The young man excuses himself, he is expected at home.
“Timid fellow, go!” said Maurice to him, as he conducted him to the
door, laughing.
What longings! What dreams! They made up all of poor Amedee’s life.
Sometimes they were sad, for he suffered in seeing his father indulge
himself more and more in his vice. No woman loved him, and he never
had one louis in his pocket for pleasure or liberty. But he did not
complain. His life was noble and happy! He smiled with pleasure as
he thought of his good friends; his heart beat in great throbs as
he thought of love; he wept with rapture over beautiful verses.
The spectacle of life, through hope and the ideal, seemed to him
transfigured. Happy Amedee! He was not yet twenty years old!