As Pierrotin issued from the Cafe de l’Echiquier, after treating the
valet, he saw in the gate-way of the Lion d’Argent the lady and the
young man in whom his perspicacity at once detected customers, for the
lady with outstretched neck and anxious face was evidently looking for
him. She was dressed in a black-silk gown that was dyed, a brown bonnet,
an old French cashmere shawl, raw-silk stockings, and low shoes; and in
her hand she carried a straw bag and a blue umbrella. This woman, who
had once been beautiful, seemed to be about forty years of age; but her
blue eyes, deprived of the fire which happiness puts there, told plainly
that she had long renounced the world. Her dress, as well as her whole
air and demeanor, indicated a mother wholly devoted to her household
and her son. If the strings of her bonnet were faded, the shape betrayed
that it was several years old. The shawl was fastened by a broken
needle converted into a pin by a bead of sealing-wax. She was waiting
impatiently for Pierrotin, wishing to recommend to his special care her
son, who was doubtless travelling for the first time, and with whom she
had come to the coach-office as much from doubt of his ability as from
maternal affection.
This mother was in every way completed by the son, so that the son would
not be understood without the mother. If the mother condemned herself to
mended gloves, the son wore an olive-green coat with sleeves too short
for him, proving that he had grown, and might grow still more, like
other adults of eighteen or nineteen years of age. The blue trousers,
mended by his mother, presented to the eye a brighter patch of color
when the coat-tails maliciously parted behind him.
“Don’t rub your gloves that way, you’ll spoil them,” she was saying as
Pierrotin appeared. “Is this the conductor? Ah! Pierrotin, is it you?”
she exclaimed, leaving her son and taking the coachman apart a few
steps.
“I hope you’re well, Madame Clapart,” he replied, with an air that
expressed both respect and familiarity.
“Yes, Pierrotin, very well. Please take good care of my Oscar; he is
travelling alone for the first time.”
“Oh! so he is going alone to Monsieur Moreau!” cried Pierrotin, for the
purpose of finding out whether he were really going there.
“Yes,” said the mother.
“Then Madame Moreau is willing?” returned Pierrotin, with a sly look.
“Ah!” said the mother, “it will not be all roses for him, poor child!
But his future absolutely requires that I should send him.”
This answer struck Pierrotin, who hesitated to confide his fears for
the steward to Madame Clapart, while she, on her part, was afraid of
injuring her boy if she asked Pierrotin for a care which might have
transformed him into a mentor. During this short deliberation, which was
ostensibly covered by a few phrases as to the weather, the journey, and
the stopping-places along the road, we will ourselves explain what were
the ties that united Madame Clapart with Pierrotin, and authorized the
two confidential remarks which they have just exchanged.
Often--that is to say, three or four times a month--Pierrotin, on his
way to Paris, would find the steward on the road near La Cave. As soon
as the vehicle came up, Moreau would sign to a gardener, who, with
Pierrotin’s help, would put upon the coach either one or two baskets
containing the fruits and vegetables of the season, chickens, eggs,
butter, and game. The steward always paid the carriage and Pierrotin’s
fee, adding the money necessary to pay the toll at the barriere, if
the baskets contained anything dutiable. These baskets, hampers, or
packages, were never directed to any one. On the first occasion, which
served for all others, the steward had given Madame Clapart’s address by
word of mouth to the discreet Pierrotin, requesting him never to deliver
to others the precious packages. Pierrotin, impressed with the idea
of an intrigue between the steward and some pretty girl, had gone as
directed to number 7 rue de la Cerisaie, in the Arsenal quarter, and had
there found the Madame Clapart just portrayed, instead of the young and
beautiful creature he expected to find.
The drivers of public conveyances and carriers are called by their
business to enter many homes, and to be cognizant of many secrets; but
social accident, that sub-providence, having willed that they be without
education and devoid of the talent of observation, it follows that they
are not dangerous. Nevertheless, at the end of a few months, Pierrotin
was puzzled to explain the exact relations of Monsieur Moreau and Madame
Clapart from what he saw of the household in the rue de la Cerisaie.
Though lodgings were not dear at that time in the Arsenal quarter,
Madame Clapart lived on a third floor at the end of a court-yard, in a
house which was formerly that of a great family, in the days when the
higher nobility of the kingdom lived on the ancient site of the Palais
des Tournelles and the hotel Saint-Paul. Toward the end of the sixteenth
century, the great seigneurs divided among themselves these vast spaces,
once occupied by the gardens of the kings of France, as indicated by the
present names of the streets,--Cerisaie, Beautreillis, des Lions, etc.
Madame Clapart’s apartment, which was panelled throughout with ancient
carvings, consisted of three connecting rooms, a dining-room, salon, and
bedroom. Above it was the kitchen, and a bedroom for Oscar. Opposite
to the entrance, on what is called in Paris “le carre,”--that is, the
square landing,--was the door of a back room, opening, on every floor,
into a sort of tower built of rough stone, in which was also the well
for the staircase. This was the room in which Moreau slept whenever he
went to Paris.
Pierrotin had seen in the first room, where he deposited the hampers,
six wooden chairs with straw seats, a table, and a sideboard; at the
windows, discolored curtains. Later, when he entered the salon, he
noticed some old Empire furniture, now shabby; but only as much as all
proprietors exact to secure their rent. Pierrotin judged of the bedroom
by the salon and dining-room. The wood-work, painted coarsely of a
reddish white, which thickened and blurred the mouldings and figurines,
far from being ornamental, was distressing to the eye. The floors, never
waxed, were of that gray tone we see in boarding-schools. When Pierrotin
came upon Monsieur and Madame Clapart at their meals he saw that their
china, glass, and all other little articles betrayed the utmost poverty;
and yet, though the chipped and mended dishes and tureens were those
of the poorest families and provoked pity, the forks and spoons were of
silver.
Monsieur Clapart, clothed in a shabby surtout, his feet in broken
slippers, always wore green spectacles, and exhibited, whenever he
removed his shabby cap of a bygone period, a pointed skull, from the top
of which trailed a few dirty filaments which even a poet could scarcely
call hair. This man, of wan complexion, seemed timorous, but withal
tyrannical.
In this dreary apartment, which faced the north and had no other outlook
than to a vine on the opposite wall and a well in the corner of the
yard, Madame Clapart bore herself with the airs of a queen, and moved
like a woman unaccustomed to go anywhere on foot. Often, while thanking
Pierrotin, she gave him glances which would have touched to pity an
intelligent observer; from time to time she would slip a twelve-sous
piece into his hand, and then her voice was charming. Pierrotin had
never seen Oscar, for the reason that the boy was always in school at
the time his business took him to the house.
Here is the sad story which Pierrotin could never have discovered, even
by asking for information, as he sometimes did, from the portress of
the house; for that individual knew nothing beyond the fact that the
Claparts paid a rent of two hundred and fifty francs a year, had no
servant but a charwoman who came daily for a few hours in the morning,
that Madame Clapart did some of her smaller washing herself, and paid
the postage on her letters daily, being apparently unable to let the sum
accumulate.
There does not exist, or rather, there seldom exists, a criminal who is
wholly criminal. Neither do we ever meet with a dishonest nature which
is completely dishonest. It is possible for a man to cheat his master
to his own advantage, or rake in for himself alone all the hay in
the manger, but, even while laying up capital by actions more or
less illicit, there are few men who never do good ones. If only from
self-love, curiosity, or by way of variety, or by chance, every man has
his moment of beneficence; he may call it his error, he may never do it
again, but he sacrifices to Goodness, as the most surly man sacrifices
to the Graces once or twice in his life. If Moreau’s faults can ever
be excused, it might be on the score of his persistent kindness in
succoring a woman of whose favors he had once been proud, and in whose
house he was hidden when in peril of his life.
This woman, celebrated under the Directory for her liaison with one
of the five kings of that reign, married, through that all-powerful
protection, a purveyor who was making his millions out of the
government, and whom Napoleon ruined in 1802. This man, named Husson,
became insane through his sudden fall from opulence to poverty; he flung
himself into the Seine, leaving the beautiful Madame Husson pregnant.
Moreau, very intimately allied with Madame Husson, was at that time
condemned to death; he was unable therefore to marry the widow, being
forced to leave France. Madame Husson, then twenty-two years old,
married in her deep distress a government clerk named Clapart, aged
twenty-seven, who was said to be a rising man. At that period of our
history, government clerks were apt to become persons of importance;
for Napoleon was ever on the lookout for capacity. But Clapart, though
endowed by nature with a certain coarse beauty, proved to have no
intelligence. Thinking Madame Husson very rich, he feigned a great
passion for her, and was simply saddled with the impossibility of
satisfying either then or in the future the wants she had acquired in a
life of opulence. He filled, very poorly, a place in the Treasury that
gave him a salary of eighteen hundred francs; which was all the
new household had to live on. When Moreau returned to France as the
secretary of the Comte de Serizy he heard of Madame Husson’s pitiable
condition, and he was able, before his own marriage, to get her an
appointment as head-waiting-woman to Madame Mere, the Emperor’s mother.
But in spite of that powerful protection Clapart was never promoted; his
incapacity was too apparent.
Ruined in 1815 by the fall of the Empire, the brilliant Aspasia of the
Directory had no other resources than Clapart’s salary of twelve hundred
francs from a clerkship obtained for him through the Comte de Serizy.
Moreau, the only protector of a woman whom he had known in possession of
millions, obtained a half-scholarship for her son, Oscar Husson, at
the school of Henri IV.; and he sent her regularly, by Pierrotin, such
supplies from the estate at Presles as he could decently offer to a
household in distress.
Oscar was the whole life and all the future of his mother. The poor
woman could now be reproached with no other fault than her exaggerated
tenderness for her boy,--the bete-noire of his step-father. Oscar was,
unfortunately, endowed by nature with a foolishness his mother did not
perceive, in spite of the step-father’s sarcasms. This foolishness--or,
to speak more specifically, this overweening conceit--so troubled
Monsieur Moreau that he begged Madame Clapart to send the boy down to
him for a month that he might study his character, and find out what
career he was fit for. Moreau was really thinking of some day proposing
Oscar to the count as his successor.
But to give to the devil and to God what respectively belongs to them,
perhaps it would be well to show the causes of Oscar Husson’s silly
self-conceit, premising that he was born in the household of Madame
Mere. During his early childhood his eyes were dazzled by imperial
splendors. His pliant imagination retained the impression of those
gorgeous scenes, and nursed the images of a golden time of pleasure
in hopes of recovering them. The natural boastfulness of school-boys
(possessed of a desire to outshine their mates) resting on these
memories of his childhood was developed in him beyond all measure. It
may also have been that his mother at home dwelt too fondly on the days
when she herself was a queen in Directorial Paris. At any rate, Oscar,
who was now leaving school, had been made to bear many humiliations
which the paying pupils put upon those who hold scholarships, unless the
scholars are able to impose respect by superior physical ability.
This mixture of former splendor now departed, of beauty gone, of blind
maternal love, of sufferings heroically borne, made the mother one of
those pathetic figures which catch the eye of many an observer in Paris.
Incapable, naturally, of understanding the real attachment of Moreau to
this woman, or that of the woman for the man she had saved in 1797,
now her only friend, Pierrotin did not think it best to communicate
the suspicion that had entered his head as to some danger which was
threatening Moreau. The valet’s speech, “We have enough to do in this
world to look after ourselves,” returned to his mind, and with it came
that sentiment of obedience to what he called the “chefs de file,”--the
front-rank men in war, and men of rank in peace. Besides, just now
Pierrotin’s head was as full of his own stings as there are five-franc
pieces in a thousand francs. So that the “Very good, madame,”
“Certainly, madame,” with which he replied to the poor mother, to whom a
trip of twenty miles appeared a journey, showed plainly that he desired
to get away from her useless and prolix instructions.
“You will be sure to place the packages so that they cannot get wet if
the weather should happen to change.”
“I’ve a hood,” replied Pierrotin. “Besides, see, madame, with what care
they are being placed.”
“Oscar, don’t stay more than two weeks, no matter how much they may ask
you,” continued Madame Clapart, returning to her son. “You can’t please
Madame Moreau, whatever you do; besides, you must be home by the end of
September. We are to go to Belleville, you know, to your uncle Cardot.”
“Yes, mamma.”
“Above all,” she said, in a low voice, “be sure never to speak about
servants; keep thinking all the time that Madame Moreau was once a
waiting-maid.”
“Yes, mamma.”
Oscar, like all youths whose vanity is excessively ticklish, seemed
annoyed at being lectured on the threshold of the Lion d’Argent.
“Well, now good-bye, mamma. We shall start soon; there’s the horse all
harnessed.”
The mother, forgetting that she was in the open street, embraced her
Oscar, and said, smiling, as she took a little roll from her basket:--
“Tiens! you were forgetting your roll and the chocolate! My child, once
more, I repeat, don’t take anything at the inns; they’d make you pay for
the slightest thing ten times what it is worth.”
Oscar would fain have seen his mother farther off as she stuffed the
bread and chocolate into his pocket. The scene had two witnesses,--two
young men a few years older than Oscar, better dressed than he,
without a mother hanging on to them, whose actions, dress, and ways all
betokened that complete independence which is the one desire of a lad
still tied to his mother’s apron-strings.
“He said _mamma_!” cried one of the new-comers, laughing.
The words reached Oscar’s ears and drove him to say, “Good-bye, mother!”
in a tone of terrible impatience.
Let us admit that Madame Clapart spoke too loudly, and seemed to wish to
show to those around them her tenderness for the boy.
“What is the matter with you, Oscar?” asked the poor hurt woman. “I
don’t know what to make of you,” she added in a severe tone, fancying
herself able to inspire him with respect,--a great mistake made by those
who spoil their children. “Listen, my Oscar,” she said, resuming at once
her tender voice, “you have a propensity to talk, and to tell all you
know, and all that you don’t know; and you do it to show off, with
the foolish vanity of a mere lad. Now, I repeat, endeavor to keep your
tongue in check. You are not sufficiently advanced in life, my treasure,
to be able to judge of the persons with whom you may be thrown; and
there is nothing more dangerous than to talk in public conveyances.
Besides, in a diligence well-bred persons always keep silence.”
The two young men, who seemed to have walked to the farther end of the
establishment, here returned, making their boot-heels tap upon the paved
passage of the porte-cochere. They might have heard the whole of this
maternal homily. So, in order to rid himself of his mother, Oscar had
recourse to an heroic measure, which proved how vanity stimulates the
intellect.
“Mamma,” he said, “you are standing in a draught, and you may take cold.
Besides, I am going to get into the coach.”
The lad must have touched some tender spot, for his mother caught him
to her bosom, kissed him as if he were starting upon a long journey, and
went with him to the vehicle with tears in her eyes.
“Don’t forget to give five francs to the servants when you come away,”
she said; “write me three times at least during the fifteen days; behave
properly, and remember all that I have told you. You have linen enough;
don’t send any to the wash. And above all, remember Monsieur Moreau’s
kindness; mind him as you would a father, and follow his advice.”
As he got into the coach, Oscar’s blue woollen stockings became visible,
through the action of his trousers which drew up suddenly, also the
new patch in the said trousers was seen, through the parting of his
coat-tails. The smiles of the two young men, on whom these signs of
an honorable indigence were not lost, were so many fresh wounds to the
lad’s vanity.
“The first place was engaged for Oscar,” said the mother to Pierrotin.
“Take the back seat,” she said to the boy, looking fondly at him with a
loving smile.
Oh! how Oscar regretted that trouble and sorrow had destroyed his
mother’s beauty, and that poverty and self-sacrifice prevented her from
being better dressed! One of the young men, the one who wore top-boots
and spurs, nudged the other to make him take notice of Oscar’s mother,
and the other twirled his moustache with a gesture which signified,--
“Rather pretty figure!”
“How shall I ever get rid of mamma?” thought Oscar.
“What’s the matter?” asked Madame Clapart.
Oscar pretended not to hear, the monster! Perhaps Madame Clapart was
lacking in tact under the circumstances; but all absorbing sentiments
have so much egotism!
“Georges, do you like children when travelling?” asked one young man of
the other.
“Yes, my good Amaury, if they are weaned, and are named Oscar, and have
chocolate.”
These speeches were uttered in half-tones to allow Oscar to hear them or
not hear them as he chose; his countenance was to be the weather-gauge
by which the other young traveller could judge how much fun he might be
able to get out of the lad during the journey. Oscar chose not to hear.
He looked to see if his mother, who weighed upon him like a nightmare,
was still there, for he felt that she loved him too well to leave him
so quickly. Not only did he involuntarily compare the dress of his
travelling companion with his own, but he felt that his mother’s toilet
counted for much in the smiles of the two young men.
“If they would only take themselves off!” he said to himself.
Instead of that, Amaury remarked to Georges, giving a tap with his cane
to the heavy wheel of the coucou:
“And so, my friend, you are really going to trust your future to this
fragile bark?”
“I must,” replied Georges, in a tone of fatalism.
Oscar gave a sigh as he remarked the jaunty manner in which his
companion’s hat was stuck on one ear for the purpose of showing a
magnificent head of blond hair beautifully brushed and curled; while he,
by order of his step-father, had his black hair cut like a clothes-brush
across the forehead, and clipped, like a soldier’s, close to the head.
The face of the vain lad was round and chubby and bright with the hues
of health, while that of his fellow-traveller was long, and delicate,
and pale. The forehead of the latter was broad, and his chest filled
out a waistcoat of cashmere pattern. As Oscar admired the tight-fitting
iron-gray trousers and the overcoat with its frogs and olives clasping
the waist, it seemed to him that this romantic-looking stranger, gifted
with such advantages, insulted him by his superiority, just as an ugly
woman feels injured by the mere sight of a pretty one. The click of the
stranger’s boot-heels offended his taste and echoed in his heart. He
felt as hampered by his own clothes (made no doubt at home out of those
of his step-father) as that envied young man seemed at ease in his.
“That fellow must have heaps of francs in his trousers pocket,” thought
Oscar.
The young man turned round. What were Oscar’s feelings on beholding
a gold chain round his neck, at the end of which no doubt was a gold
watch! From that moment the young man assumed, in Oscar’s eyes, the
proportions of a personage.
Living in the rue de la Cerisaie since 1815, taken to and from school
by his step-father, Oscar had no other points of comparison since his
adolescence than the poverty-stricken household of his mother. Brought
up strictly, by Moreau’s advice, he seldom went to the theatre, and
then to nothing better than the Ambigu-Comique, where his eyes could see
little elegance, if indeed the eyes of a child riveted on a melodrama
were likely to examine the audience. His step-father still wore, after
the fashion of the Empire, his watch in the fob of his trousers, from
which there depended over his abdomen a heavy gold chain, ending in a
bunch of heterogeneous ornaments, seals, and a watch-key with a round
top and flat sides, on which was a landscape in mosaic. Oscar,
who considered that old-fashioned finery as the “ne plus ultra” of
adornment, was bewildered by the present revelation of superior and
negligent elegance. The young man exhibited, offensively, a pair of
spotless gloves, and seemed to wish to dazzle Oscar by twirling with
much grace a gold-headed switch cane.
Oscar had reached that last quarter of adolescence when little things
cause immense joys and immense miseries,--a period when youth prefers
misfortune to a ridiculous suit of clothes, and caring nothing for
the real interests of life, torments itself about frivolities, about
neckcloths, and the passionate desire to appear a man. Then the young
fellow swells himself out; his swagger is all the more portentous
because it is exercised on nothings. Yet if he envies a fool who is
elegantly dressed, he is also capable of enthusiasm over talent, and of
genuine admiration for genius. Such defects as these, when they have no
root in the heart, prove only the exuberance of sap,--the richness of
the youthful imagination. That a lad of nineteen, an only child, kept
severely at home by poverty, adored by a mother who put upon herself
all privations for his sake, should be moved to envy by a young man of
twenty-two in a frogged surtout-coat silk-lined, a waist-coat of fancy
cashmere, and a cravat slipped through a ring of the worse taste, is
nothing more than a peccadillo committed in all ranks of social life by
inferiors who envy those that seem beyond them. Men of genius themselves
succumb to this primitive passion. Did not Rousseau admire Ventura and
Bacle?
But Oscar passed from peccadillo to evil feelings. He felt humiliated;
he was angry with the youth he envied, and there rose in his heart a
secret desire to show openly that he himself was as good as the object
of his envy.
The two young fellows continued to walk up and own from the gate to the
stables, and from the stables to the gate. Each time they turned they
looked at Oscar curled up in his corner of the coucou. Oscar, persuaded
that their jokes and laughter concerned himself, affected the utmost
indifference. He began to hum the chorus of a song lately brought into
vogue by the liberals, which ended with the words, “‘Tis Voltaire’s
fault, ‘tis Rousseau’s fault.”
“Tiens! perhaps he is one of the chorus at the Opera,” said Amaury.
This exasperated Oscar, who bounded up, pulled out the wooden “back,”
and called to Pierrotin:--
“When do we start?”
“Presently,” said that functionary, who was standing, whip in hand, and
gazing toward the rue d’Enghien.
At this moment the scene was enlivened by the arrival of a young man
accompanied by a true “gamin,” who was followed by a porter dragging
a hand-cart. The young man came up to Pierrotin and spoke to him
confidentially, on which the latter nodded his head, and called to his
own porter. The man ran out and helped to unload the little hand-cart,
which contained, besides two trunks, buckets, brushes, boxes of singular
shape, and an infinity of packages and utensils which the youngest of
the new-comers, who had climbed into the imperial, stowed away with
such celerity that Oscar, who happened to be smiling at his mother, now
standing on the other side of the street, saw none of the paraphernalia
which might have revealed to him the profession of his new travelling
companion.
The gamin, who must have been sixteen years of age, wore a gray blouse
buckled round his waist by a polished leather belt. His cap, jauntily
perched on the side of his head, seemed the sign of a merry nature, and
so did the picturesque disorder of the curly brown hair which fell upon
his shoulders. A black-silk cravat drew a line round his very white
neck, and added to the vivacity of his bright gray eyes. The animation
of his brown and rosy face, the moulding of his rather large lips, the
ears detached from his head, his slightly turned-up nose,--in fact, all
the details of his face proclaimed the lively spirit of a Figaro, and
the careless gayety of youth, while the vivacity of his gesture and his
mocking eye revealed an intellect already developed by the practice of a
profession adopted very early in life. As he had already some claims
to personal value, this child, made man by Art or by vocation, seemed
indifferent to the question of costume; for he looked at his boots,
which had not been polished, with a quizzical air, and searched for
the spots on his brown Holland trousers less to remove them than to see
their effect.
“I’m in style,” he said, giving himself a shake and addressing his
companion.
The glance of the latter, showed authority over his adept, in whom
a practised eye would at once have recognized the joyous pupil of a
painter, called in the argot of the studios a “rapin.”
“Behave yourself, Mistigris,” said his master, giving him the nickname
which the studio had no doubt bestowed upon him.
The master was a slight and pale young man, with extremely thick black
hair, worn in a disorder that was actually fantastic. But this abundant
mass of hair seemed necessary to an enormous head, whose vast forehead
proclaimed a precocious intellect. A strained and harassed face, too
original to be ugly, was hollowed as if this noticeable young man
suffered from some chronic malady, or from privations caused by poverty
(the most terrible of all chronic maladies), or from griefs too recent
to be forgotten. His clothing, analogous, with due allowance, to that of
Mistigris, consisted of a shabby surtout coat, American-green in color,
much worn, but clean and well-brushed; a black waistcoat buttoned to the
throat, which almost concealed a scarlet neckerchief; and trousers,
also black and even more worn than the coat, flapping his thin legs. In
addition, a pair of very muddy boots indicated that he had come on
foot and from some distance to the coach office. With a rapid look this
artist seized the whole scene of the Lion d’Argent, the stables, the
courtyard, the various lights and shades, and the details; then he
looked at Mistigris, whose satirical glance had followed his own.
“Charming!” said Mistigris.
“Yes, very,” replied the other.
“We seem to have got here too early,” pursued Mistigris. “Couldn’t we
get a mouthful somewhere? My stomach, like Nature, abhors a vacuum.”
“Have we time to get a cup of coffee?” said the artist, in a gentle
voice, to Pierrotin.
“Yes, but don’t be long,” answered the latter.
“Good; that means we have a quarter of an hour,” remarked Mistigris,
with the innate genius for observation of the Paris rapin.
The pair disappeared. Nine o’clock was striking in the hotel kitchen.
Georges thought it just and reasonable to remonstrate with Pierrotin.
“Hey! my friend; when a man is blessed with such wheels as these
(striking the clumsy tires with his cane) he ought at least to have the
merit of punctuality. The deuce! one doesn’t get into that thing for
pleasure; I have business that is devilishly pressing or I wouldn’t
trust my bones to it. And that horse, which you call Rougeot, he doesn’t
look likely to make up for lost time.”
“We are going to harness Bichette while those gentlemen take their
coffee,” replied Pierrotin. “Go and ask, you,” he said to his porter,
“if Pere Leger is coming with us--”
“Where is your Pere Leger?” asked Georges.
“Over the way, at number 50. He couldn’t get a place in the Beaumont
diligence,” said Pierrotin, still speaking to his porter and apparently
making no answer to his customer; then he disappeared himself in search
of Bichette.
Georges, after shaking hands with his friend, got into the coach,
handling with an air of great importance a portfolio which he placed
beneath the cushion of the seat. He took the opposite corner to that of
Oscar, on the same seat.
“This Pere Leger troubles me,” he said.
“They can’t take away our places,” replied Oscar. “I have number one.”
“And I number two,” said Georges.
Just as Pierrotin reappeared, having harnessed Bichette, the porter
returned with a stout man in tow, whose weight could not have been less
than two hundred and fifty pounds at the very least. Pere Leger belonged
to the species of farmer which has a square back, a protuberant stomach,
a powdered pigtail, and wears a little coat of blue linen. His white
gaiters, coming above the knee, were fastened round the ends of his
velveteen breeches and secured by silver buckles. His hob-nailed shoes
weighed two pounds each. In his hand, he held a small reddish stick,
much polished, with a large knob, which was fastened round his wrist by
a thong of leather.
“And you are called Pere Leger?” asked Georges, very seriously, as the
farmer attempted to put a foot on the step.
“At your service,” replied the farmer, looking in and showing a face
like that of Louis XVIII., with fat, rubicund cheeks, from between which
issued a nose that in any other face would have seemed enormous. His
smiling eyes were sunken in rolls of fat. “Come, a helping hand, my
lad!” he said to Pierrotin.
The farmer was hoisted in by the united efforts of Pierrotin and the
porter, to cries of “Houp la! hi! ha! hoist!” uttered by Georges.
“Oh! I’m not going far; only to La Cave,” said the farmer,
good-humoredly.
In France everybody takes a joke.
“Take the back seat,” said Pierrotin, “there’ll be six of you.”
“Where’s your other horse?” demanded Georges. “Is it as mythical as the
third post-horse.”
“There she is,” said Pierrotin, pointing to the little mare, who was
coming along alone.
“He calls that insect a horse!” exclaimed Georges.
“Oh! she’s good, that little mare,” said the farmer, who by this time
was seated. “Your servant, gentlemen. Well, Pierrotin, how soon do you
start?”
“I have two travellers in there after a cup of coffee,” replied
Pierrotin.
The hollow-cheeked young man and his page reappeared.
“Come, let’s start!” was the general cry.
“We are going to start,” replied Pierrotin. “Now, then, make ready,” he
said to the porter, who began thereupon to take away the stones which
stopped the wheels.
Pierrotin took Rougeot by the bridle and gave that guttural cry, “Ket,
ket!” to tell the two animals to collect their energy; on which, though
evidently stiff, they pulled the coach to the door of the Lion d’Argent.
After which manoeuvre, which was purely preparatory, Pierrotin gazed up
the rue d’Enghien and then disappeared, leaving the coach in charge of
the porter.
“Ah ca! is he subject to such attacks,--that master of yours?” said
Mistigris, addressing the porter.
“He has gone to fetch his feed from the stable,” replied the porter,
well versed in all the usual tricks to keep passengers quiet.
“Well, after all,” said Mistigris, “‘art is long, but life is short’--to
Bichette.”
At this particular epoch, a fancy for mutilating or transposing proverbs
reigned in the studios. It was thought a triumph to find changes of
letters, and sometimes of words, which still kept the semblance of the
proverb while giving it a fantastic or ridiculous meaning.[*]
[*] It is plainly impossible to translate many of these proverbs
and put any fun or meaning into them.--Tr.
“Patience, Mistigris!” said his master; “‘come wheel, come whoa.’”
Pierrotin here returned, bringing with him the Comte de Serizy, who had
come through the rue de l’Echiquier, and with whom he had doubtless had
a short conversation.
“Pere Leger,” said Pierrotin, looking into the coach, “will you give
your place to Monsieur le comte? That will balance the carriage better.”
“We sha’n’t be off for an hour if you go on this way,” cried Georges.
“We shall have to take down this infernal bar, which cost such trouble
to put up. Why should everybody be made to move for the man who comes
last? We all have a right to the places we took. What place has monsieur
engaged? Come, find that out! Haven’t you a way-book, a register, or
something? What place has Monsieur Lecomte engaged?--count of what, I’d
like to know.”
“Monsieur le comte,” said Pierrotin, visibly troubled, “I am afraid you
will be uncomfortable.”
“Why didn’t you keep better count of us?” said Mistigris. “‘Short counts
make good ends.’”
“Mistigris, behave yourself,” said his master.
Monsieur de Serizy was evidently taken by all the persons in the coach
for a bourgeois of the name of Lecomte.
“Don’t disturb any one,” he said to Pierrotin. “I will sit with you in
front.”
“Come, Mistigris,” said the master to his rapin, “remember the respect
you owe to age; you don’t know how shockingly old you may be yourself
some day. ‘Travel deforms youth.’ Give your place to monsieur.”
Mistigris opened the leathern curtain and jumped out with the agility of
a frog leaping into the water.
“You mustn’t be a rabbit, august old man,” he said to the count.
“Mistigris, ‘ars est celare bonum,’” said his master.
“I thank you very much, monsieur,” said the count to Mistigris’s master,
next to whom he now sat.
The minister of State cast a sagacious glance round the interior of the
coach, which greatly affronted both Oscar and Georges.
“When persons want to be master of a coach, they should engage all the
places,” remarked Georges.
Certain now of his incognito, the Comte de Serizy made no reply to this
observation, but assumed the air of a good-natured bourgeois.
“Suppose you were late, wouldn’t you be glad that the coach waited for
you?” said the farmer to the two young men.
Pierrotin still looked up and down the street, whip in hand, apparently
reluctant to mount to the hard seat where Mistigris was fidgeting.
“If you expect some one else, I am not the last,” said the count.
“I agree to that reasoning,” said Mistigris.
Georges and Oscar began to laugh impertinently.
“The old fellow doesn’t know much,” whispered Georges to Oscar, who was
delighted at this apparent union between himself and the object of his
envy.
“Parbleu!” cried Pierrotin, “I shouldn’t be sorry for two more
passengers.”
“I haven’t paid; I’ll get out,” said Georges, alarmed.
“What are you waiting for, Pierrotin?” asked Pere Leger.
Whereupon Pierrotin shouted a certain “Hi!” in which Bichette and
Rougeot recognized a definitive resolution, and they both sprang toward
the rise of the faubourg at a pace which was soon to slacken.
The count had a red face, of a burning red all over, on which were
certain inflamed portions which his snow-white hair brought out into
full relief. To any but heedless youths, this complexion would have
revealed a constant inflammation of the blood, produced by incessant
labor. These blotches and pimples so injured the naturally noble air of
the count that careful examination was needed to find in his green-gray
eyes the shrewdness of the magistrate, the wisdom of a statesman, and
the knowledge of a legislator. His face was flat, and the nose seemed
to have been depressed into it. The hat hid the grace and beauty of his
forehead. In short, there was enough to amuse those thoughtless youths
in the odd contrasts of the silvery hair, the burning face, and the
thick, tufted eye-brows which were still jet-black.
The count wore a long blue overcoat, buttoned in military fashion to the
throat, a white cravat around his neck, cotton wool in his ears, and a
shirt-collar high enough to make a large square patch of white on each
cheek. His black trousers covered his boots, the toes of which were
barely seen. He wore no decoration in his button-hole, and doeskin
gloves concealed his hands. Nothing about him betrayed to the eyes of
youth a peer of France, and one of the most useful statesmen in the
kingdom.
Pere Leger had never seen the count, who, on his side, knew the former
only by name. When the count, as he got into the carriage, cast the
glance about him which affronted Georges and Oscar, he was, in reality,
looking for the head-clerk of his notary (in case he had been forced,
like himself, to take Pierrotin’s vehicle), intending to caution
him instantly about his own incognito. But feeling reassured by the
appearance of Oscar, and that of Pere Leger, and, above all, by the
quasi-military air, the waxed moustaches, and the general look of an
adventurer that distinguished Georges, he concluded that his note had
reached his notary, Alexandre Crottat, in time to prevent the departure
of the clerk.
“Pere Leger,” said Pierrotin, when they reached the steep hill of the
faubourg Saint-Denis by the rue de la Fidelite, “suppose we get out,
hey?”
“I’ll get out, too,” said the count, hearing Leger’s name.
“Goodness! if this is how we are going, we shall do fourteen miles in
fifteen days!” cried Georges.
“It isn’t my fault,” said Pierrotin, “if a passenger wishes to get out.”
“Ten louis for you if you keep the secret of my being here as I told you
before,” said the count in a low voice, taking Pierrotin by the arm.
“Oh, my thousand francs!” thought Pierrotin as he winked an eye at
Monsieur de Serizy, which meant, “Rely on me.”
Oscar and Georges stayed in the coach.
“Look here, Pierrotin, since Pierrotin you are,” cried Georges, when the
passengers were once more stowed away in the vehicle, “if you don’t mean
to go faster than this, say so! I’ll pay my fare and take a post-horse
at Saint-Denis, for I have important business on hand which can’t be
delayed.”
“Oh! he’ll go well enough,” said Pere Leger. “Besides, the distance
isn’t great.”
“I am never more than half an hour late,” asserted Pierrotin.
“Well, you are not wheeling the Pope in this old barrow of yours,” said
Georges, “so, get on.”
“Perhaps he’s afraid of shaking monsieur,” said Mistigris looking round
at the count. “But you shouldn’t have preferences, Pierrotin, it isn’t
right.”
“Coucous and the Charter make all Frenchmen equals,” said Georges.
“Oh! be easy,” said Pere Leger; “we are sure to get to La Chapelle by
mid-day,”--La Chapelle being the village next beyond the Barriere of
Saint-Denis.