“Hey, down there, old Francis, you are very glad all the same to have
him to pay your card-debts, the street porter of La Cannebriere. You may
well be embarrassed by _parvenus_ like us who lend millions to kings,
and whom _grand seigneurs_ like Mora do not blush to admit to their
tables.”
“Oh, in the country,” chuckled M. Francis, with a sneer that showed his
old tooth.
The other rose, quite red in the face. He was about to give way to his
anger when M. Louis made a gesture with his hand to signify that he had
something to say, and M. Noel sat down immediately, putting his hand to
his ear like all the rest of us in order to lose nothing that fell from
those august lips.
“It is true,” remarked the personage, speaking with the slightest
possible movement of his mouth and continuing to take his wine in little
sips, “it is true that we received the Nabob at Grandbois the other
week. There even happened something very funny on the occasion. We have
a quantity of mushrooms in the second park, and his excellency amuses
himself sometimes by gathering them. Now at dinner was served a large
dish of fungi. There were present, what’s his name--I forget, what is
it?--Marigny, the Minister of the Interior, Monpavon, and your master,
my dear Noel. The mushrooms went the round of the table, they looked
nice, the gentlemen helped themselves freely, except M. le Duc, who
cannot digest them and out of politeness feels it his duty to remark to
his guests: ‘Oh, you know, it is not that I am suspicious of them. They
are perfectly safe. It was I myself who gathered them.’
“‘_Sapristi!_’ said Monpavon, laughing, ‘then, my dear Auguste, allow me
to be excused from tasting them.’ Marigny, less familiar, glanced at his
plate out of the corner of his eye.
“‘But, yes, Monpavon, I assure you. They look extremely good, these
mushrooms. I am truly sorry that I have no appetite left.’
“The duke remained very serious.
“‘Come, M. Jansoulet, I sincerely hope that you are not going to offer
me this affront, you also. Mushrooms selected by myself.’
“‘Oh, Excellency, the very idea of such a thing! Why, I would eat them
with my eyes closed.’
“So you see what sort of luck he had, the poor Nabob, the first time
that he dined with us. Duperron, who was serving opposite him, told us
all about it in the pantry. It seems there could have been nothing more
comic than to see the Jansoulet stuffing himself with mushrooms, and
rolling terrified eyes, while the others sat watching him curiously
without touching their plates. He sweated under the effort, poor wretch.
And the best of it was that he took a second portion, he actually found
the courage to take a second portion. He kept drinking off glasses of
wine, however, like a mason, between each mouthful. Ah, well, do you
wish to hear my opinion? What he did there was very clever, and I am no
longer surprised that this fat cow-herd should have become the
favourite of sovereigns. He knows where to flatter them in those little
pretensions which no man avows. In brief, the duke has been crazy over
him since that day.”
This little story caused much laughter and scattered the clouds which
had been raised by a few imprudent words. So then, since the wine had
untied people’s tongues, and they knew each other better, elbows were
leaned on the table and the conversation fell on masters, on the places
in which each of them had served, on the amusing things he had seen in
them. Ah! of how many such adventures did I not hear, how much of the
interior life of those establishments did I not see pass before me.
Naturally I also made my own little effect with the story of my larder
at the Territorial, the times when I used to keep my stew in the empty
safe, which circumstance, however, did not prevent our old cashier, a
great stickler for forms, from changing the key-word of the lock every
two days, as though all the treasures of the Bank of France had been
inside. M. Louis appeared to find my anecdote entertaining. But the
most astonishing was what the little Bois l’Hery, with his Parisian
street-boy’s accent, related to us concerning the household of his
employers.
Marquis and Marquise de Bois l’Hery, second floor, Boulevard Haussmann.
Furniture rich as at the Tuileries, blue satin on all the walls,
Chinese ornaments, pictures, curiosities, a veritable museum, indeed,
overflowing even on to the stairway. The service very smart: six
men-servants, chestnut livery in winter, nankeen livery in summer.
These people are seen everywhere at the small Mondays, at the races, at
first-nights, at embassy balls, and their name always in the newspapers
with a remark upon the handsome toilettes of Madame, and Monsieur’s
remarkable chic. Well! all that is nothing at all but pretence, plated
goods, show, and when the marquis wants five francs nobody would
lend them to him upon his possessions. The furniture is hired by
the fortnight from Fitily, the upholsterer of the demi-monde. The
curiosities, the pictures, belong to old Schwalbach, who sends his
clients round there and makes them pay doubly dear, since people don’t
bargain when they think they are dealing with a marquis, an amateur.
As for the toilettes of the marquise, the milliner and the dressmaker
provide her with them each season gratis, get her to wear the new
fashions, a little ridiculous sometimes but which society subsequently
adopts because Madame is still a very handsome woman and reputed for
her elegance; she is what is called a _launcher_. Finally, the servants!
Makeshifts like the rest, changed each week at the pleasure of the
registry office which sends them there to do a period of probation by
way of preliminary to a serious engagement. If you have neither sureties
nor certificates, if you have just come out of prison or anything of
that kind, Glanand, the famous agent of the Rue de la Paix, sends you
off to the Boulevard Haussmann. You remain in service there for a
week or two, just the time necessary to buy a good reference from the
marquis, who, of course, it is understood, pays you nothing and barely
boards you; for in that house the kitchen-ranges are cold most of the
time, Monsieur and Madame dining out nearly every evening or going to
balls, where a supper is included in the entertainment. It is positive
fact that there are people in Paris who take the sideboard seriously and
make the first meal of their day after midnight. The Bois l’Herys, in
consequence, are well-informed with regard to the houses that provide
refreshments. They will tell you that you get a very good supper at the
Austrian Embassy, that the Spanish Embassy rather neglects the wines,
and that it is at the Foreign Office again that you find the best
_chaud-froid de volailles_. And that is the life of this curious
household. Nothing that they possess is really theirs; everything is
tacked on, loosely fastened with pins. A gust of wind and the whole
thing blows away. But at least they are certain of losing nothing. It is
this assurance which gives to the marquis that air of raillery worthy of
a Father Tranquille which he has when he looks at you with both hands in
his pockets, as much as to say: “Ah, well, and what then? What can they
do to me?”
And the little groom, in the attitude which I have just mentioned, with
his head like that of a prematurely old and vicious child, imitated his
master so well that I could fancy I saw himself as he looks at our board
meetings, standing in front of the governor and overwhelming him with
his cynical pleasantries. All the same, one must admit that Paris is
a tremendously great city, for a man to be able to live thus, through
fifteen, twenty years of tricks, artifice, dust thrown in people’s eyes,
without everybody finding him out, and for him still to be able to make
a triumphal entry into a drawing-room in the rear of his name announced
loudly and repeatedly, “Monsieur le Marquis de Bois l’Hery.”
No, look you, the things that are to be learned at a servants’ party,
what a curious spectacle is presented by the fashionable world of Paris,
seen thus from below, from the basements, you need to go to one
before you can realize. Here, for instance, is a little fragment of
conversation which, happening to find myself between M. Francis and M.
Louis, I overheard about the worthy sire de Monpavon.
“You are making a mistake, Francis. You are in funds just now. You
ought to take advantage of the occasion to restore that money to the
Treasury.”
“What will you have?” replied M. Francis with a despondent air. “Play is
devouring us.”
“Yes, I know it well. But take care. We shall not always be there. We
may die, fall from power. Then you will be asked for accounts by the
people down yonder. And it will be a terrible business.”
I had often heard whispered the story of a forced loan of two hundred
thousand francs which the marquis was reputed to have secured from the
State at the time when he was Receiver-General; but the testimony of his
_valet de chambre_ was worse than all. Ah! if masters had any suspicion
of how much servants know, of all the stories that are told in the
servants’ hall, if they could see their names dragged among the
sweepings of the house and the refuse of the kitchen, they would never
again dare to say even “shut the door” or “harness the horses.” Why, for
instance, take Dr. Jenkins, with the most valuable practice in Paris,
ten years of life in common with a magnificent woman, who is sought
after everywhere; it is in vain that he has done everything to
dissimulate his position, announced his marriage in the newspapers after
the English fashion, admitted to his house only foreign servants knowing
hardly three words of French. In those three words, seasoned with vulgar
oaths and blows of his fist on the table, his coachman Joey, who hates
him, told us his whole history during supper.
“She is going to kick the bucket, his Irish wife, the real one. Remains
to be seen now whether he will marry the other. Forty-five, she is, Mrs.
Maranne, and not a shilling. You should see how afraid she is of being
left in the lurch. Whether he marries her or whether he does not marry
her--kss, kss--we shall have a good laugh.”
And the more drink he was given, the more he told us about her, speaking
of his unfortunate mistress as though she were the lowest of the low.
For my own part, I confess that she interested me, this false Mme.
Jenkins, who goes about weeping in every corner, implores her lover
as though he were the executioner, and runs the chance of being thrown
overboard altogether, when all society believes her to be married,
respectable, and established in life. The others only laughed over the
story, the women especially. Dame! it is amusing when one is in service
to see that the ladies of the upper ten have their troubles also and
torments that keep them awake at night.
Our festal board at this stage presented the most lively aspect, a
circle of gay faces stretched towards this Irishman whose story was
adjudged to have won the prize. The fact excited envy; the rest sought
and hunted through their memories for whatever they might hold in the
way of old scandals, adventures of deceived husbands, of those intimate
privacies which are emptied on the kitchen-table along with the scraps
from the plates and the dregs from the bottles. The champagne was
beginning to claim its own among the guests. Joey wanted to dance a jig
on the table-cloth. The ladies, at the least word that was a little gay,
threw themselves back with the piercing laughter of people who are being
tickled, allowing their embroidered skirts to trail beneath the table,
loaded with the remains of the food and covered with spilt grease. M.
Louis had discreetly retired. Glasses were filled up before they had
been emptied; one of the housekeepers dipped a handkerchief in hers,
filled with water, and bathed her forehead with it, because her head was
swimming, she said. It was time that the festivity should end; and,
in fact, an electric bell ringing in the corridor warned us that the
footman, on duty at the theatre, had come to summon the coachmen.
Thereupon Monpavon proposed the health of the master of the house,
thanking him for his little party. M. Noel announced that he proposed
to give another at Saint-Romans, in honour of the visit of the Bey, to
which most of those present would probably be invited. And I was about
to rise in my turn, being sufficiently accustomed to social banquets
to know that on such an occasion the oldest man present is expected to
propose the health of the ladies, when the door opened abruptly, and
a tall footman, bespattered with mud, a dripping umbrella in his hand,
perspiring, out of breath, cried to us, without respect for the company:
“But come on then, you set of idiots! What are you sticking here for?
Don’t you know it is over?”