I CAME across him the next afternoon sitting on a stone bench in the
Luxembourg Gardens. His hat was slouched forward over his eyes. His hand
supported his chin so that his long straggling beard protruded in a
curious Egyptian horizontality. His ill-laced boots innocent as usual of
blacking, for he would not allow Blanquette to touch them, were stuck
out ostentatiously, and to the peril of the near passers-by. He had
never during our acquaintance manifested any sense of the dandified; on
our travels he had worn the casual, unnoticeable dress of the peasant,
save when he had masqueraded in the pearl-buttoned velveteens; in London
a swaggering air of braggadocio had set off his Bohemian garb: but never
had the demoralised disreputability of Paragot struck me until I saw him
in the Luxembourg Gardens.
Everything else wore a startlingly fresh appearance, after the heavy
rains. The gravel walk had the prim neatness of a Peter de Hoogh garden
path. The white balustrades and flights of steps around the great
circle, the statuary and the fountains in the middle lake, flashed pure.
The enormous white caps of nurses, their gay silk streamers fluttering
behind them, the white-clad children, the light summer dresses of women;
the patches of white newspaper held by other loungers on the seats; a
dazzling bit of cirro-cumulus scudding across the clear Paris sky; the
pale dome of the Panthéon rising to the East; the background of the
Luxembourg itself in which one was only conscious of the high lights on
the long bold cornices; all set the key of the picture and gave it
symphonic value. The eye rejected everything but the whites and the
pearl greys, subordinating all other tones to its impression of
fantastic purity.
And there like an ink blot splashed on the picture, sat Paragot. The
very foulest odd-volume of Montesquieu's "Esprit des Lois" which could
be picked up on the quays lay unopened on his knee. Not until Narcisse,
who was sleeping at his feet, jumped up and barked a welcome around me
did Paragot notice my approach. He held out his hand, and the
finger-nails seemed longer and dirtier than ever. He drew me down to the
seat beside him.
"You were asleep when I ran in this morning, Master," said I
apologetically, for it was the first time I had seen him that day.
"Since then I have been thinking, my little Asticot. It is a vain
occupation for a May afternoon, and it makes your head ache. I should be
much better employed carting manure for Madame Dubosc. We earned two
francs. Do you remember?"
"I remember that my back ached terribly afterwards," said I laughing.
"Ah, but the ease and comfort in your soul! Perhaps there's nothing much
the matter with yours yet, is there?"
"I think it's all right," I answered.
"Something must be wrong with mine," he remarked meditatively, "because
at a crisis in my life I haven't had an inspiration. It is sluggish. I
want a soul pill."
This time it was I who had an inspiration--one of terrifying audacity.
"Master, perhaps absinthe isn't good for it," said I all in a breath.
"Infant Solomon," replied Paragot ironically, "where have you gathered
such a store of wisdom? Have you a scrap of paper in your pocket?"
"Yes, Master," said I, producing a sketch-book and preparing to tear out
a leaf. He stopped my hand.
"Leave it in. All the better. As I am sure you don't remember the
passage from Cicero's _De Natura Deorum_ which I quoted to you some time
ago, since you are unacquainted with the Latin tongue, I will dictate it
to you, and you can learn it by heart and say it like a Pater or an Ave
morning and evening."
I wrote down at his dictation the passage concerning the impossibility
of judging between the false and true. And that is how I was able to set
it down in its proper place in a previous chapter.
"Do you know why I have made you do this?"
"Yes, Master," said I, for I knew that he referred to the sale of Joanna
for ten thousand pounds.
"Circumstance flattens a man out sometimes," said he, "like a ribbon--as
if he had been carefully ironed by a hot steam roller. I suppose a
flattened man can't have an inspiration. I am my own tomb-stone and you
can chalk across me '_Hic jacet qui olim Paragotus fuit_.'"
His tone was so dejected that I felt a sinking at my heart, a
scratchiness in my nose and a wateriness in my eyes. I suffered the
pangs of suppressed sympathy. What could a boy of nineteen say or do in
order to restore rotundity to a flattened hero?
"Years ago," he continued after a pause, "I found the world a Lie and I
started off to chase the wild goose of Truth. I captured nothing but a
taste for alcohol which brought me eventually beneath the steam roller.
Were it not the silliest legend invented by man, I should say to you
'Beware of the steam roller.' But if a man's sober he can see the thing
himself; if he isn't, he can't read the warning. I can only tell you to
be unalcoholic and you'll be happy. You see, my little son Asticot, to
what depths I have descended in that I can be the Apostle of the
Platitudinous."
He leaned forward, chin on knuckles, and his beard again stuck out
horizontally. Happy people passed us by. For many the work of the day
was already over and they had the lingering magic of the sunshine for
their own. A young blue-bloused workman and a girl hanging on his arm
brushed close by our seat.
"_Si, nous aurons des enfants, et de beaux enfants_," she cried.
"I hope they will," said Paragot, looking at them wistfully. Then after
a pause: "Has the Comtesse de Verneuil any children?"
"No, Master," said I in a tone of conviction. It struck me later that I
had spoken from blank ignorance. But at the moment the question seemed
preposterous. In many ways I had still the unreasoning instincts of a
child. Because I had never contemplated my dear lady Joanna in the light
of a mother, I unhesitatingly proclaimed her childless. As a matter of
fact I was right.
Paragot, satisfied with my reply, watched the endless stream of cheerful
folk. Once he quoted to himself:--
"'The golden foot of May is on the flowers'--and on the heads of all but
me."
Suddenly he sat back and seized me by the arm.
"Asticot, you are a man now, and you must see things with the eyes of a
man. I have loved you like my son--if you should turn away, thinking
evil things of me, like someone else, it would break my heart. Neither
she nor you ought to have seen that accursed paper. You and Blanquette
and the dog are all I have in the world to care for, and I want you all
to think well of me."
Then the tears did spring into my eyes, for my beloved master's appeal
went home to that which was truest and best in me. I stammered out
something, I know not what; but it came from my heart. It pleased him.
He jumped to his feet in his old impetuous way.
"Bravo, _petit Asticot de mon coeur_! The nightmare is over, and we
can enjoy the sunshine again. We will drag Blanquette from the Rue des
Saladiers which does not lay itself out for jollity, and we will dine at
a reckless restaurant. Blanquette shall eat the snails which she adores
and I shall eat pig's feet and you an underdone beefsteak to nourish
your little body. And we shall all eat with our dinner '_le pain bénit
de la gaîté_.'"
He strode off eager as usual to put his idea into immediate execution.
He talked all the way to the Rue des Saladiers. Poor Blanquette! He had
been neglecting her. A girl of her age needed some amusement; we would
go to the Théâtre, the Porte Saint-Martin, like good bourgeois, and see
a melodrama so that Blanquette could weep.
"They are playing 'Les Eventreurs de Paris.' I hear they rip each other
up on the stage and everybody is reeking with blood--good honest red
blood--carried in bladders under their costumes, my son. You turn up
what you can of your snub little superior artistic nose--but Blanquette
will be in Paradise."
Blanquette was in the slip of a kitchen and a flurried temper when we
entered.
"But, Master, you said you would not be home for dinner. There is
nothing in the house--only this which I was cooking for myself," and she
dived her fork into the pot and brought up on the prongs a diminutive
piece of beef. "And now you and Asticot demand dinner, as if dinners
came out of the pot of their own accord. Ah men! They are always like
that."
I put my arm round her waist. "We are all dining out together,
Blanquette; but if you don't want to come, you shall stay at home."
"And without dinner," said Paragot, taking the fork from her hand and
throwing the meat to Narcisse.
"_Ah, mais non!_" cried Blanquette, whose sense of economy was outraged.
But when Narcisse sprang on the beef and finding it too hot, lay
growling at it until it should cool, she broke out laughing.
"After all, it would have been very tough," she admitted.
"Then why in the sacred name of shoe leather were you going to eat it?"
asked Paragot.
"Food is to be eaten, not thrown away, Master," she replied
sententiously.
We took the omnibus and crossed the river and went up the Grands
Boulevards, an unusual excursion for Paragot who kept obstinately to the
Boulevard Saint-Michel and the poorer streets of the _quartier_,
through fear, I believe, of meeting friends of former days. A restaurant
outside the Porte Saint-Martin provided a succulent meal. The place was
crowded. Two young soldiers sat at our table, and listened awe-stricken
to Paragot's conversation and were prodigiously polite to Blanquette,
who, they discovered, was from Normandy, like themselves. And when they
asked, after the frank manner of their kind, which of us had the honour
to be the lover of Mademoiselle, and she cried with scarlet face, "But
neither, Monsieur!" we all shouted together and laughed and became the
best friends in the world. Happy country of fraternity! The little
soldiers--they were dragoons and wore helmets too big for them and long
horsehair plumes--accompanied us with clanking sabres to the gallery of
the theatre, and at Paragot's invitation sat one on each side of
Blanquette, who, what with the unaccustomed bloodshed of the spectacle
and the gallantry of her neighbours, passed an evening of delirious
happiness. In those days I had an æsthetic soul above the 'Eventreurs de
Paris,' and I made fun of it to Paragot, whose thoughts were far away.
When I perceived this, I kept my withering sarcasm to myself, and
realised that a flattened man cannot be blown like a bladder into
permanent rotundity even by the faith and affection of a little
art-student. But I marvelled all the more at his gaiety during the
intervals, when we all went outside into the thronged boulevard and
drank bocks on the terrace of the café, and I learned how great a factor
in the continued existence of humanity is the Will-to-Laugh, which I
think the German philosopher has omitted from his system.
I mention this incident to show how Paragot defied the effects of the
steam roller and became outwardly himself again. He did not visit the
Café Delphine that night, but went soberly home with Blanquette, and I
believe read himself to sleep with his tattered odd volume of
Montesquieu. The following evening however found him in his usual seat
under the lee of Madame Boin's counter, arguing on art, literature and
philosophy and consuming a vast quantity of ill-assorted alcohols. And
then his life resumed its normal course.
It was about this time that Madame Boin seeing in Paragot an attractive
adjunct to her establishment and, with a Frenchwoman's business
instinct, desiring to make it permanent, paralysed him by an offer of
marriage.
"Madame," said he, as soon as he had recovered, "if I accepted the great
honour which you propose, you would doubtless require me to abandon
certain personal habits which are dear to me, and also to trim my hair
and beard and cut my finger-nails of whose fantastic length I am
inordinately proud."
"I think I should ask you to cut your nails," said Madame Boin
reflectively.
"Then, Madame," said Paragot, "it would be impossible. Shorn of these
adornments I should lose the power of conversation and I should be a
helpless and useless Samson on your hands."
"I don't see what long nails have to do with talking," argued Madame
Boin.
"They give one the necessary thirst," replied Paragot.
"My son," said he when relating to me this adventure, "do not cultivate
a habit of affability towards widows of the lower middle classes. There
was once a murderer's widow of Prague--"
"I know," said I.
"How?"
"There was an old stocking."
"I forgot," said he, and his laughing face darkened and I saw that he
fell to thinking of Joanna.
* * * * *
Although much of my leisure was absorbed by the companionship of my
beloved Master and Blanquette, I yet had an individual life of my own. I
made dozens of acquaintances and one or two friends. I had not a care in
the world. Bisard, the great man attached to the life school in Janot's
atelier, proclaimed me one of the best of my year, and sent my heart
leaping sky-high. I worked early and late. I also played the fool as
(worse luck) only boyhood can. With my fellows, arm in arm through the
streets, I shouted imbecile songs. I went to all kinds of reprehensible
places--to the _bals du quartier_, for instance, where we danced with
simple-minded damsels who thought _choucroute garnie_ a generous supper
and a bottle of _vin cacheté_ as setting the seal of all that was most
distinguished upon the host. With the first five francs that I made by
selling a drawing I treated Fanchette, the little model I kissed on the
stairs, to a trip to Saint-Cloud. Five francs went prodigiously far in
those days. They had to, as some of us were desperately poor and could
afford but one meal a day. Fortunate youth that I was, whenever money
ran short, instead of borrowing or starving, I had only to climb to
Blanquette and open my mouth like a young bird and she filled it with
nice fat things. Poor sandalled Cazalet of the yellow hair, on the other
hand, lived sometimes for a week on dry bread and water. It was partly
his own fault; for had he chosen to make saleable drawings he too might
have had five francs wherewith to take Fanchette to Saint-Cloud. Pretty
little Pierrettes in frills and pointed caps are more attractive to the
cheap purchaser than ugly souls writhing in torment; and really they are
quite as artistic. We quarrelled fiercely over this one day, and he
challenged me to a duel. I replied that I had no money to buy pistols.
Neither had he, he retorted, but I could borrow a sabre. He himself had
one. His father had been an officer. Whereupon the studio bawled in
gleeful unison "_Voici le sabre, le sabre de mon père_," and dragged us
in tumult to the Café opposite where we swore eternal friendship over
_grogs américains_.
From this I do not mean you to infer that I was a devil of a fellow, the
mention of whose name spread a hush over godly families. God wot! I did
little harm. I only ate what Murger calls "the Blessed bread of gaiety,"
the food of youth. Remember, too, it was the first time in my life that
I had companions of my own age. Indeed, so nearly had I modelled myself
on Paragot the ever young, that my comrades laughed at my old fashioned
ideas, and I found myself hopelessly behind the times. Youth hops an
inch sideways and thinks it has leaped a mile ahead. All is vanity, even
youth.
'Tis a pleasant vanity though, on which the wise smile with regretful
indulgence; and therein lay the wisdom of Paragot.
"Ah! confounded little cock-sparrow--I haven't seen you for a week," he
said one morning, shaking me by the shoulders till my teeth chattered.
"What about the other little sparrow you neglected me for on Sunday? Is
she at least good-looking? A model? And she is a good girl and supports
her widowed mother and ten brothers and sisters, I suppose? And she
calls herself Fanchette? Narcisse, the lady of Monsieur Asticot's
affections has the singular name of Fanchette."
Whereupon Narcisse uncurled himself from slumber and planted himself on
his hindquarters in front of me and grinned at me with lolling tongue.
"But she is quite a different kind of girl from all the other models!" I
cried eagerly.
"What does she pose for?"
"Well--of course--you know how it is--" I stammered, reddening.
Paragot laughed and quoted something in Latin about an ingenuous boy.
"Would she be a fit companion for Blanquette and Narcisse and myself?"
Having deep convictions as to the essential virtues of Fanchette, I
swore that she could not disgrace so respectable a company.
"We will all picnic together in the woods of Fontainebleau on Sunday,"
said he.
We picnic-ed. Fanchette had no shynesses. She found Paragot peculiarly
diverting, and though I enjoyed the day prodigiously, I realised
afterwards that I had spent most of it in the company of Blanquette.
"My son," said he, "there never was a model so like all the other models
that have posed for the well-of-course-you-know-how-it-is, since the
world began."
A week later, when I found my particular friend Ewing, whom as a
tongue-tied Englishman I had relieved of many embarrassments, and for
whom I had secured an easel, branding it myself in twenty places with
his name, and for whom I had engineered a good position next to mine in
the Life School--when I saw Ewing hugging Fanchette on the stairs, on
the very landing sacred to my embraces, I knew that Paragot was right,
and that Fanchette was just a fickle, naughty little model like the
others. But if Paragot had not taken her measure before my eyes at
Fontainebleau and made a figured drawing so to speak of her heart and
soul, shewing their exiguous dimensions, I might have cast myself
beneath the wheels of an omnibus like the pig Népomucène, or blacked the
eyes of Ewing who was smaller than myself. As it was, I put my hands in
my trousers' pockets and surveyed the abashed couple in Paragot's best
manner.
"Amuse yourselves well, my children," I laughed, in French, and turned
away heart-whole.
This is an instance of the wisdom of Paragot. He smiled on the vanity of
my youth, and personally conducted me to the barrenness whither it led.
In this particular case the result was more positive still. Ewing in
admiration of my magnanimity at the time, and a fortnight later of my
profound knowledge of women--for he in his turn witnessed the alien
osculations of Fanchette--cultivated my friendship to the extent of
urging me to spend some of the summer recess at his father's country
vicarage in Somerset.
"But you'll have to get some other togs," said he, eyeing my attire
dubiously. "If you come like that to church on Sunday, my governor would
forget and want to baptise you. He was once a missionary, you know."
When I mentioned the invitation, Paragot insisted on acceptance.
"The Latin Quarter confers an exuberance of tone which conflicts with
the reposeful ideal of manners required in the _beau monde_ which I
destined you to grace when I took you from the maternal soapsuds. You
will find an English Parsonage exerts a repressive influence. But for
Heaven's sake don't fall in love with Ewing's eldest sister, who, I am
sure, is addicted to piety and good works. She will try to make a good
work of you and thus all my labour will have been in vain."
In his heart, however, I believe he was immensely proud at having
trained me to meet gentlefolk on more or less equal terms. Ewing's
invitation was a tribute to himself. To fit me for church on Sunday and
other functions of civilisation he took Ewing (as counsellor) and myself
to a tailor's and plunged enthusiastically into the details of my
outfit. I can see him now, shaggy and shabby, fingering stuffs with the
anxious solicitude of a woman at a draper's counter.
"That's a nice country suiting. It expresses its purpose, suggests the
right gaiety of mood. What says _Arbiter elegantiarum_?"
"Don't you think it might make the cart-horses shy?" says Ewing, and
Paragot drops reluctantly the thunder-and-lightning check that has
seized his unaccustomed fancy.
My wardrobe included a dress suit.
At Paragot's bidding, I donned it when it arrived, and on my way to him
transfixed the Rue des Saladiers with awe and wonder. Upstairs, Paragot
twirled me slowly round as if I were a mannequin on a pivot, and called
Blanquette to admire, and uttered strange oaths in the dozen languages
of which he was master. Was I not beautiful?
Blanquette admitted that I was. All that was most beautiful; without a
doubt. I resembled the stylish people who went to expensive funerals.
In fact, she added with a sigh, I was too beautiful.
She saw her brother Asticot transfigured into the resplendent gentleman
beyond her sphere, and sighed womanlike at my apotheosis. She could no
longer walk by my side, bareheaded, in the streets. The dress suit was a
symbol of change detested by woman. She gave the matter however her
practical attention.
"He ought to have patent-leather shoes," she observed.
"That's true," said Paragot, pulling his beard reflectively. "Ewing
should have mentioned it; but I have noticed a singular lack of
universality in the sons of English clergymen."
"And now my son," said he on the eve of my departure, "I too have the
nostalgia of green fields and the smell of hay and manure and the fresh
earth after rain. I have at last an inspiration. As this confounded
ankle will not let me walk, I shall hire a donkey and let him take me
whither he will. Narcisse shall accompany me."
"And Blanquette, will she trudge beside the donkey?"
"I have arranged for Blanquette to go into villégiatura at the farm of
La Haye."
"With Monsieur and Madame Dubosc?"
"Your logical faculty does you credit, my son. They are most excellent
people, although they could not tell me how many towers the Cathedral of
Chartres possessed. You will remember an excursion we made on Sunday,
and I lectured learnedly on the archæology of the fabric. My learning
impressed them less than my skill in curing a pig according to a
Dalmatian recipe. They will board and lodge Blanquette for ten francs a
week and she will be as happy as Marie Antoinette while haymaking at
the Petit Trianon. She will occupy herself with geese and turkeys while
I shall be riding my donkey."
"Master," said I, "I only have one fear. You will adopt that donkey and
bring it to live in the Rue des Saladiers."
Paragot laughed, drained his glass of absinthe and ordered another.