THE WHITE VIOLETS
About this time Rodolphe was very much in love with his cousin Angela,
who couldn't bear him; and the thermometer was twelve degrees below
freezing point.
Mademoiselle Angela was the daughter of Monsieur Monetti, the chimney
doctor, of whom we have already had occasion to speak. She was eighteen
years old, and had just come from Burgundy, where she lived five years
with a relative who was to leave her all her property. This relative was
an old lady who had never been young apparently--certainly never
handsome, but had always been very ill-natured, although--or perhaps
because--very superstitious. Angela, who at her departure was a charming
child, and promised to be a charming girl, came back at the end of the
five years a pretty enough young lady, but cold, dry, and uninteresting.
Her secluded provincial life, and the narrow and bigoted education she
had received, had filled her mind with vulgar prejudices, shrunk her
imagination, and converted her heart into a sort of organ, limited to
fulfilling its function of physical balance wheel. You might say that
she had holy water in her veins instead of blood. She received her
cousin with an icy reserve; and he lost his time whenever he attempted
to touch the chord of her recollections--recollections of the time when
they had sketched out that flirtation in the Paul-and-Virginia style
which is traditional between cousins of different sexes. Still Rodolphe
was very much in love with his cousin Angela, who couldn't bear him; and
learning one day that the young lady was going shortly to the wedding
ball of one of her friends, he made bold to promise Angela a bouquet of
violets for the ball. And after asking permission of her father, Angela
accepted her cousin's gallant offer--always on condition that the
violets should be white.
Overjoyed at his cousin's amiability, Rodolphe danced and sang his way
back to Mount St. Bernard, as he called his lodging--why will be seen
presently. As he passed by a florist's in crossing the Palais Royal, he
saw some white violets in the showcase, and was curious enough to ask
their price. A presentable bouquet could not be had for less than ten
francs; there were some that cost more.
"The deuce!" exclaimed Rodolphe, "ten francs! and only eight days to
find this fortune! It will be a hard pull, but never mind, my cousin
shall have her flowers."
This happened in the time of Rodolphe's literary genesis, as the
transcendentalists would say. His only income at that period was an
allowance of fifteen francs a month, made him by a friend, who, after
living a long while in Paris as a poet, had, by the help of influential
acquaintances, gained the mastership of a provincial school. Rodolphe,
who was the child of prodigality, always spent his allowance in four
days; and, not choosing to abandon his holy but not very profitable
profession of elegiac poet, lived for the rest of the month on the rare
droppings from the basket of Providence. This long Lent had no terrors
for him; he passed through it gaily, thanks to his stoical temperament
and to the imaginary treasures which he expended every day while
waiting for the first of the month, that Easter which terminated his
fast. He lived at this time at the very top of one of the loftiest
houses in Paris. His room was shaped like a belvidere, and was a
delicious habitation in summer, but from October to April a perfect
little Kamschatka. The four cardinal winds which penetrated by the four
windows,--there was one on each of the four sides--made fearful music in
it throughout the cold seasons. Then in irony as it were, there was a
huge fireplace, the immense chimney of which seemed a gate of honor
reserved for Boreas and his retinue. On the first attack of cold,
Rodolphe had recourse to an original system of warming; he cut up
successively what little furniture he had, and at the end of a week his
stock was considerably abridged; in fact, he had only a bed and two
chairs left; it should be remarked that these items were insured against
fire by their nature, being of iron. This manner of heating himself he
called _moving up the chimney_.
It was January, and the thermometer, which indicated twelve degrees
below freezing point on the Spectacle Quay, would have stood two or
three lower if moved to the belvidere, which Rodolphe called
indifferently Mount St. Bernard, Spitzenberg, and Siberia.
The night when he promised his cousin the white violets, he was seized
with a great rage on returning home; the four cardinal winds, in playing
puss-in-the-corner round his chamber, had broken a pane of glass--the
third time in a fortnight. After exploding in a volley of frantic
imprecations upon Eolus and all his family, and plugging up the breach
with a friend's portrait, Rodolphe lay down, dressed as he was, between
his two mattresses, and dreamed of white violets all night.
At the end of five days, Rodolphe had found nothing to help him toward
realizing his dreams. He must have the bouquet the day after tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the thermometer fell still lower, and the luckless poet was
ready to despair as he thought the violets might have risen higher.
Finally his good angel had pity on him, and came to his relief as
follows.
One morning, Rodolphe went to take his chance of getting a breakfast
from his friend Marcel the painter, and found him conversing with a
woman in mourning. It was a widow who had just lost her husband, and who
wanted to know how much it would cost to paint on the tomb which she had
erected, a man's hand, with this inscription beneath:
"I WAIT FOR HER TO WHOM MY FAITH WAS PLIGHTED."
To get the work at a cheaper rate, she observed to the artist that when
she was called to rejoin her husband, he would have another hand to
paint--her hand with a bracelet on the wrist and the supplementary line
beneath:
"AT LENGTH, BEHOLD US THUS ONCE MORE UNITED."
"I shall put this clause in my will," she said, "and require that the
task be intrusted to you."
"In that case, madame," replied the artist, "I will do it at the price
you offer--but only in the hope of seeing your hand. Don't go and forget
me in your will."
"I should like to have this as soon as possible," said the disconsolate
one, "nevertheless, take your time to do it well and don't forget the
scar on the thumb. I want a living hand."
"Don't be afraid, madame, it shall be a speaking one," said Marcel, as
he bowed the widow out. But hardly had she crossed the threshold when
she returned, saying, "I have one more thing to ask you, sir: I should
like to have inscribed on my husband's tomb something in verse which
would tell of his good conduct and his last words. Is that good style?"
"Very good style--they call that an epitaph--the very best style."
"You don't know anyone who would do that for me cheap? There is my
neighbor Monsieur Guerin, the public writer, but he asks the clothes off
my back."
Here Rodolphe looked at Marcel, who understood him at once.
"Madame," said the artist, pointing to Rodolphe, "a happy fortune has
conducted hither the very person who can be of service to you in this
mournful juncture. This gentleman is a renowned poet; you couldn't find
a better one."
"I want something very melancholy," said the widow, "and the spelling
all right."
"Madame," replied Marcel, "my friend spells like a book. He had all the
prizes at school."
"Indeed!" said the widow, "my grand-nephew had just had a prize too; he
is only seven years old."
"A very forward child, madame."
"But are you sure that the gentleman can make very melancholy verses?"
"No one better, madame, for he has undergone much sorrow in his life.
The papers always find fault with his verses for being too melancholy."
"What!" cried the widow, "do they talk about him in the papers? He must
know quite as much, then, as Monsieur Guerin, the public writer."
"And a great deal more. Apply to him, madame, and you will not repent of
it."
After having explained to Rodolphe the sort of inscription in verse
which she wished to place on her husband's tomb, the widow agreed to
give Rodolphe ten francs if it suited her--only she must have it very
soon. The poet promised she should have it the very next day.
"Oh good genius of Artemisia!" cried Rodolphe as the widow disappeared.
"I promise you that you shall be suited--full allowance of melancholy
lyrics, better got up than a duchess, orthography and all. Good old
lady! May Heaven reward you with a life of a hundred and seven
years--equal to that of a good brandy!"
"I object," said Marcel.
"That's true," said Rodolphe, "I forgot that you have her hand to paint,
and that so long a life would make you lose money." And lifting his
hands he gravely ejaculated, "Heaven, do not grant my prayer! Ah!" he
continued, "I was in jolly good luck to come here."
"By the way," asked Marcel, "what did you want?"
"I recollect--and now especially that I have to pass the night in making
these verses, I cannot do without what I came to ask you for, namely,
first, some dinner; secondly, tobacco and a candle; thirdly, your
polar-bear costume."
"To go to the masked ball?"
"No, indeed, but as you see me here, I am as much frozen up as the grand
army in retreat from Russia. Certainly my green frock-coat and
Scotch-plaid trowsers are very pretty, but much too summery; they would
do to live under the equator; but for one who lodges near the pole, as I
do, a white bear skin is more suitable; indeed I may say necessary."
"Take the fur!" said Marcel, "it's a good idea; warm as a dish of
charcoal; you will be like a roll in an oven in it."
Rodolphe was already inside the animal's skin.
"Now," said he, "the thermometer is going to be really mad."
"Are you going out so?" said Marcel to his friend, after they had
finished an ambiguous repast served in a penny dish.
"I just am," replied Rodolphe. "Do you think I care for public opinion?
Besides, today is the beginning of carnival."
He went half over Paris with all the gravity of the beast whose skin he
occupied. Only on passing before a thermometer in an optician's window
he couldn't help taking a sight at it.
Having returned home not without causing great terror to his porter,
Rodolphe lit his candle, carefully surrounding it with an extempore
shade of paper to guard it against the malice of the winds, and set to
work at once. But he was not long in perceiving that if his body was
almost entirely protected from the cold, his hands were not; a terrible
numbness seized his fingers which let the pen fall.
"The bravest man cannot struggle against the elements," said the poet,
falling back helpless in his chair. "Caeser passed the Rubicon, but he
could not have passed the Beresina."
All at once he uttered a cry of joy from the depths of his bear-skin
breast, and jumped up so suddenly as to overturn some of his ink on its
snowy fur. He had an idea!
Rodolphe drew from beneath his bed a considerable mass of papers, among
which were a dozen huge manuscripts of his famous drama, "The Avenger."
This drama, on which he had spent two years, had been made, unmade, and
remade so often that all the copies together weighed fully fifteen
pounds. He put the last version on one side, and dragged the others
towards the fireplace.
"I was sure that with patience I should dispose of it somehow," he
exclaimed. "What a pretty fagot! If I could have foreseen what would
happen, I could have written a prologue, and then I should have more
fuel tonight. But one can't foresee everything." He lit some leaves of
the manuscript, in the flame of which he thawed his hands. In five
minutes the first act of "The Avenger" was over, and Rodolphe had
written three verses of his epitaph.
It would be impossible to describe the astonishment of the four winds
when they felt fire in the chimney.
"It's an illusion," quoth Boreas, as he amused himself by brushing back
the hair of Rodolphe's bear skin.
"Let's blow down the pipe," suggested another wind, "and make the
chimney smoke." But just as they were about to plague the poor poet, the
south wind perceived Monsieur Arago at a window of the Observatory
threatening them with his finger; so they all made off, for fear of
being put under arrest. Meanwhile the second act of "The Avenger" was
going off with immense success, and Rodolphe had written ten lines. But
he only achieved two during the third act.
"I always thought that third act too short," said Rodolphe, "luckily the
next one will take longer; there are twenty three scenes in it,
including the great one of the throne." As the last flourish of the
throne scene went up the chimney in fiery flakes, Rodolphe had only
three couplets more to write. "Now for the last act. This is all
monologue. It may last five minutes." The catastrophe flashed and
smouldered, and Rodolphe in a magnificent transport of poetry had
enshrined in lyric stanzas the last words of the illustrious deceased.
"There is enough left for a second representation," said he, pushing the
remainder of the manuscript under his bed.
At eight o'clock next evening, Mademoiselle Angela entered the ballroom;
in her hand was a splendid nosegay of white violets, and among them two
budding roses, white also. During the whole night men and women were
complimenting the young girl on her bouquet. Angela could not but feel a
little grateful to her cousin who had procured this little triumph for
her vanity; and perhaps she would have thought more of him but for the
gallant persecutions of one of the bride's relatives who had danced
several times with her. He was a fair-haired youth, with a magnificent
moustache curled up at the ends, to hook innocent hearts. The bouquet
had been pulled to pieces by everybody; only two white roses were left.
The young man asked Angela for them; she refused--only to forget them
after the ball on a bench, whence the young fair-haired youth hastened
to take them.
At that moment it was fourteen degrees below freezing point in
Rodolphe's belvidere. He was leaning against his window looking out at
the lights in the ballroom, where his cousin Angela, who didn't care for
him, was dancing.