Amedee was the first to arrive at the rendezvous. He had hardly
pronounced Maurice Roger’s name when a voice like a cannon bellowed out,
“Now then! the yellow parlor!” and he was conducted into a room where
a dazzling table was laid by a young man, with a Yankee goatee and
whiskers, and the agility of a prestidigitateur. This frisky person
relieved Amedee at once of his hat and coat, and left him alone in the
room, radiant with lighted candles.
Evidently it was to be a banquet. Piled up in the centre of the table
was a large dish of crayfish, and at each plate--there were five--were
groups of large and small glasses.
Maurice came in almost immediately, accompanied by his other guests,
three young men dressed in the latest fashion, whom Amedee did not at
first recognize as his former comrades, who once wore wrinkled stockings
and seedy coats, and wore out with him the seats of their trousers on
the benches of the Lycee Henri IV.
After the greetings, “What! is it you?” “Do you remember me?” and a
shaking of hands, they all seated themselves around the table.
What! is that little dumpy fellow with the turned-up nose, straight
as an arrow and with such a satisfied air, Gorju, who wanted to be an
actor? He is one now, or nearly so, since he studies with Regnier at the
Conservatoire. A make-believe actor, he puts on airs, and in the three
minutes that he has been in the room he has looked at his retrousse nose
and his coarse face, made to be seen from a distance, ten times in the
mirror. His first care is to inform Amedee that he has renounced his
name Gorju, which was an impossible one for the theatre, and has taken
that of Jocquelet. Then, without losing a moment, he refers to his
“talents,” “charms,” and “physique.”
Who is this handsome fellow with such neat side-whiskers, whose finely
cut features suggest an intaglio head, and who has just placed a
lawyer’s heavy portfolio upon the sofa? It is Arthur Papillon, the
distinguished Latin scholar who wished to organize a debating society at
the Lycee, and to divide the rhetoric class into groups and sub-groups
like a parliament. “What have you been doing, Papillon?” Papillon had
studied law, and was secretary of the Patru Conference, of course.
Amedee immediately recognized the third guest.
“What! Gustave!” exclaimed he, joyously.
Yes! Gustave, the former “dunce,” the one they had called “Good-luck”
because his father had made an immense fortune in guano. Not one bit
changed was Gustave! The same deep-set eyes and greenish complexion. But
what style! English from the tips of his pointed shoes to the horseshoe
scarfpin in his necktie. One would say that he was a horse-jockey
dressed in his Sunday best. What was this comical Gustave doing now?
Nothing. His father has made two hundred thousand pounds’ income
dabbling in certain things, and Gustave is getting acquainted with that
is all--which means to wake up every morning toward noon, with a bitter
mouth caused from the last night’s supper, and to be surprised every
morning at dawn at the baccarat table, after spending five hours saying
“Bac!” in a stifled, hollow voice. Gustave understands life, and, taking
into consideration his countenance like a death’s-head, it may lead him
to make the acquaintance of something entirely different. But who thinks
of death at his age? Gustave wishes to know life, and when a fit of
coughing interrupts him in one of his idiotic bursts of laughter, his
comrades at the Gateux Club tell him that he has swallowed the wrong
way. Wretched Gustave, so be it!
Meanwhile the boy with the juggler’s motions appeared with the soup, and
made exactly the same gestures when he uncovered the tureen as Robert
Houdin would have made, and one was surprised not to see a bunch of
flowers or a live rabbit fly out. But no! it was simply soup, and the
guests attacked it vigorously and in silence. After the Rhine wine all
tongues were unloosened, and as soon as they had eaten the Normandy
sole-oh! what glorious appetites at twenty years of age!--the five young
men all talked at once. What a racket! Exclamations crossed one
another like rockets. Gustave, forcing his weak voice, boasted of the
performances of a “stepper” that he had tried that morning in the Allee
des Cavaliers. He would have been much better off had he stayed in his
bed and taken cod-liver oil. Maurice called out to the boy to uncork
the Chateau-Leoville. Amedee, having spoken of his drama to the comedian
Gorju, called Jocquelet, that person, speaking in his bugle-like voice
that came through his bugle-shaped nose, set himself up at once as a man
of experience, giving his advice, and quoting, with admiration, Talma’s
famous speech to a dramatic poet: “Above all, no fine verses!” Arthur
Papillon, who was destined for the courts, thought it an excellent time
to lord it over the tumult of the assembly himself, and bleated out
a speech of Jules Favre that he had heard the night before in the
legislative assembly.
The timid Amedee was defeated at the start in this melee of
conversation. Maurice also kept silent, with a slightly disdainful smile
under his golden moustache, and an attack of coughing soon disabled
Gustave. Alone, like two ships in line who let out, turn by turn, their
volleys, the lawyer and the actor continued their cannonading. Arthur
Papillon, who belonged to the Liberal opposition and wished that
the Imperial government should come around to “a pacific and regular
movement of parliamentary institutions,” was listened to for a time, and
explained, in a clear, full voice the last article in the ‘Courrier du
Dimanche’. But, bursting out in his terrible voice, which seemed like
all of Gideon’s trumpets blowing at once, the comedian took up the
offensive, and victoriously declared a hundred foolish things--saying,
for example, that the part of Alceste should be made a comic one;
making fun of Shakespeare and Hugo, exalting Scribe, and in spite of
his profile and hooked nose, which should have opened the doors of the
Theatre-Francais and given him an equal share for life in its benefits,
he affirmed that he intended to play lovers’ parts, and that he meant to
assume the responsibility of making “sympathetic” the role of Nero, in
Britannicus.
This would have become terribly tiresome, but for the entrance upon
the scene of some truffled partridges, which the juggler carved and
distributed in less time than it would take to shuffle a pack of cards.
He even served the very worst part of the bird to the simple Amedee, as
he would force him to choose the nine of spades. Then he poured out the
chambertin, and once more all heads became excited, and the conversation
fell, as was inevitable, upon the subject of women.
Jocquelet began it, by speaking the name of one of the prettiest
actresses in Paris. He knew them all and described them exactly,
detailing their beauties like a slave-dealer.
“So little Lucille Prunelle is a friend of the great Moncontour--”
“Pardon me,” interrupted Gustave, who was looking badly, “she has
already left him for Cerfbeer the banker.”
“I say she has not.”
“I say that she has.”
They would have quarrelled if Maurice, with his affable, bantering air,
had not attacked Arthur Papillon on the subject of his love-affairs; for
the young advocate drank many cups of Orleanist tea, going even into
the same drawing-rooms as Beule and Prevost-Paradol, and accompanying
political ladies to the receptions at the Academie Francaise.
“That is where you must make havoc, you rascal!”
But Papillon defends himself with conceited smiles and meaning looks.
According to him--and he puts his two thumbs into the armholes of his
vest--the ambitious must be chaste.
“Abstineo venere,” said he, lowering his eyes in a comical manner, for
he did not fear Latin quotations. However, he declared himself very hard
to please in that matter; he dreamed of an Egeria, a superior mind. What
he did not tell them was, that a dressmaker’s little errand-girl, with
whom he had tried to converse as he left the law-school, had surveyed
him from head to foot and threatened him with the police.
Upon some new joke of Maurice’s, the lawyer gave his amorous programme
in the following terms:
“Understand me, a woman must be as intelligent as Hypatia, and have
the sensibility of Heloise; the smile of a Joconde, and the limbs of
an Antiope; and, even then, if she had not the throat of a Venus de
Medicis, I should not love her.”
Without going quite so far, the actor showed himself none the less
exacting. According to his ideas, Deborah, the tragedienne at the
Odeon--a Greek statue!--had too large hands, and the fascinating Blanche
Pompon at the Varietes was a mere wax doll.
Gustave, after all, was the one who is most intractable; excited by
the Bordeaux wine--a glass of mineral water would be best for him--he
proclaimed that the most beautiful creature was agreeable to him only
for one day; that it was a matter of principle, and that he had never
made but one exception, in favor of the illustrious dancer at the Casino
Cadet, Nina l’Auvergnate, because she was so comical! “Oh! my friends,
she is so droll, she is enough to kill one!”
“To kill one!” Yes! my dear Monsieur Gustave, that is what will happen
to you one of these fine mornings, if you do not decide to lead a more
reasonable life--and on the condition that you pass your winters in the
South, also!
Poor Amedee was in torture; all his illusions--desires and sentiments
blended--were cruelly wounded. Then, he had just discovered a deplorable
faculty; a new cause for being unhappy. The sight of this foolishness
made him suffer. How these coarse young men lied! Gustave seemed to him
a genuine idiot, Arthur Papillon a pedant, and as to Jocquelet, he was
as unbearable as a large fly buzzing between the glass and the curtain
of a nervous man’s room. Fortunately, Maurice made a little diversion by
bursting into a laugh.
“Well, my friends, you are all simpletons,” he exclaimed. “I am not like
you, thank fortune! I do not sputter over my soup. Long life to women!
Yes, all of them, pretty and otherwise! For, upon my word, there are no
ugly ones. I do not notice that Miss Keepsake has feet like the English,
and I forget the barmaid’s ruddy complexion, if she is attractive
otherwise. Now do not talk in this stupid fashion, but do as I do;
nibble all the apples while you have teeth. Do you know the reason why,
at the moment that I am talking to the lady of the house, I notice the
nose of the pretty waitress who brings in a letter on a salver? Do you
know the reason why, just as I am leaving Cydalize’s house, who has put
a rose in my buttonhole, that I turn my head at the passing of Margoton,
who is returning from the market with a basket upon her arm? It is
because it is one other of my children. One other! that is a great
word! Yes, one thousand and three. Don Juan was right. I feel his blood
coursing in my veins. And now the boy shall uncork some champagne, shall
he not? to drink to the health of love!”
Maurice was cynical, but this exposition of his philosophy served a good
purpose all the same. Everybody applauded him. The prestidigitateur, who
moved about the table like a schoolboy in a monkey-house, drew the cork
from a bottle of Roederer--it was astonishing that fireworks did not
dart out of it--and good-humor was restored. It reigned noisily until
the end of the repast, when the effect was spoiled by that fool of a
Gustave. He insisted upon drinking three glasses of kummel--why had they
not poured in maple sirup?--and, imagining that Jocquelet looked at him
askance, he suddenly manifested the intention of cutting his head open
with the carafe. The comedian, who was very pale, recalled all the
scenes of provocation that he had seen in the theatre; he stiffened
in his chair, swelled out his chest, and stammered, “At your orders!”
trying to “play the situation.” But it was useless.
Gustave, restrained by Maurice and Amedee, and as drunk as a Pole,
responded to his friend’s objurgations by a torrent of tears, and fell
under the table, breaking some of the dishes.
“Now, then, we must take the baby home,” said Maurice, signing to the
boy. In the twinkling of an eye the human rag called Gustave was lifted
into a chair, clothed in his topcoat and hat, dressed and spruced
up, pushed down the spiral staircase, and landed in a cab. Then the
prestidigitateur returned and performed his last trick by making the
plate disappear upon which Maurice had thrown some money to pay the
bill.
It was not far from eleven o’clock when the comrades shook hands, in a
thick fog, in which the gaslights looked like the orange pedlers’ paper
lanterns. Ugh! how damp it was!
“Good-by.”
“I will see you again soon.”
“Good-night to the ladies.”
Arthur Papillon was in evening dress and white cravat, his customary
attire every evening, and still had time to show himself in a political
salon on the left side, where he met Moichod, the author of that famous
Histoire de Napoleon, in which he proves that Napoleon was only
a mediocre general, and that all his battles were gained by his
lieutenants. Jocquelet wished to go to the Odeon and hear, for the tenth
time, the fifth act of a piece of the common-sense school, in which
the hero, after haranguing against money for four acts in badly rhymed
verse, ends by marrying the young heiress, to the great satisfaction of
the bourgeois. As to Maurice, before he went to rejoin Mademoiselle Irma
at the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, he walked part of the way with Amedee.
“These comrades of ours are a little stupid, aren’t they?” said he to
his friend.
“I must say that they almost disgust me,” replied the young man. “Their
brutal way of speaking of women and love wounded me, and you too,
Maurice. So much the worse! I will be honest; you, who are so refined
and proud, tell me that you did not mean what you said--that you made a
pretence of vice just to please the others. It is not possible that you
are content simply to gratify your appetite and make yourself a slave
to your passions. You ought to have a higher ideal. Your conscience must
reproach you.”
Maurice brusquely interrupted this tirade, laughing in advance at what
he was about to say.
“My conscience? Oh, tender and artless Violette; Oh, modest wood-flower!
Conscience, my poor friend, is like a Suede glove, you can wear it
soiled. Adieu! We will talk of this another day, when Mademoiselle Irma
is not waiting for me.”
Amedee walked on alone, shivering in the mist, weary and sad, to the Rue
Notre-Dame-des-Champs.
No! it could not be true. There must be another love than that known to
these brutes. There were other women besides the light creatures they
had spoken of. His thoughts reverted to the companion of his childhood,
to the pretty little Maria, and again he sees her sewing near the family
lamp, and talking with him without raising her eyes, while he admires
her beautiful, drooping lashes. He is amazed to think that this
delicious child’s presence has never given him the slightest uneasiness;
that he has never thought of any other happiness than that of being near
her. Why should not a love like that he has dreamed of some day spring
up in her own heart? Have they not grown up together? Is he not the
only young man that she knows intimately? What happiness to become her
fiancee! Yes, it was thus that one should love! Hereafter he would flee
from all temptations; he would pass all his evenings with the Gerards;
he would keep as near as possible to his dear Maria, content to hear
her speak, to see her smile; and he would wait with a heart full of
tenderness for the moment when she would consent to become his wife.
Oh! the exquisite union of two chaste beings! the adorable kiss of two
innocent mouths! Did such happiness really exist?
This beautiful dream warmed the young man’s heart, and he reached his
home joyous and happy. He gave a vigorous pull to the bell, climbed
quickly up the long flights of stairs and opened the door to their
apartment. But what was this? His father must have come home very late,
for a stream of light shines under the door of his sleeping-room.
“Poor man!” thought Amedee, recalling the scene of the morning. “He may
be ill. Let us see.”
He had hardly opened the door, when he drew back uttering a shriek
of horror and distress. By the light of a candle that burned upon the
mantel, Amedee had caught sight of his father extended upon the floor,
his shirt disordered and covered with blood, holding in his clenched
right hand the razor with which he had cut his throat.
Yes! the union of two loving hearts had at last taken place. Their love
was happiness on earth; but if one of the two dies the other can never
be consoled while life lasts.
M. Violette never was consoled.