“Why, yes.”
The artist said: “Well! you'll go out and buy for me five francs' worth
of wax-candles while I go and see the cooper.”
And he pushed the notary in his evening coat into the street. At the end
of five minutes, they had returned, one of them with the wax-candles and
the other with the hoop of a cask. Then Romantin plunged his hand into
a cupboard, and drew forth twenty empty bottles, which he fixed in the
form of a crown around the hoop.
He then went downstairs to borrow a ladder from the janitress, after
having explained that he had made interest with the old woman by
painting the portrait of her cat, exhibited on the easel.
When he returned with the ladder, he said to M. Saval:
“Are you active?”
The other, without understanding, answered:
“Why, yes.”
“Well, you just climb up there, and fasten this chandelier for me to
the ring of the ceiling. Then, you put a wax-candle in each bottle, and
light it. I tell you I have a genius for lighting up. But off with your
coat, damn it! You are just like a Jeames.”
The door was opened brusquely. A woman appeared, her eyes flashing, and
remained standing on the threshold.
Romantin gazed at her with a look of terror.
She waited some seconds, crossing her arms over her breast, and then in
a shrill, vibrating, exasperated voice said:
“Ha! you dirty scoundrel, is this the way you leave me?”
Romantin made no reply. She went on:
“Ha! you scoundrel! You did a nice thing in parking me off to the
country. You'll soon see the way I'll settle your jollification. Yes,
I'm going to receive your friends.”
She grew warmer.
“I'm going to slap their faces with the bottles and the wax-candles----”
Romantin said in a soft tone:
“Mathilde----”
But she did not pay any attention to him; she went on:
“Wait a little, my fine fellow! wait a little!”
Romantin went over to her, and tried to take her by the hands.
“Mathilde----”
But she was now fairly under way; and on she went, emptying the vials of
her wrath with strong words and reproaches. They flowed out of her mouth
like, a stream sweeping a heap of filth along with it. The words pouring
forth seemed struggling for exit. She stuttered, stammered, yelled,
suddenly recovering her voice to cast forth an insult or a curse.
He seized her hands without her having noticed it. She did not seem
to see anything, so taken up was she in scolding and relieving her
feelings. And suddenly she began to weep. The tears flowed from her
eyes, but this did not stop her complaints. But her words were uttered
in a screaming falsetto voice with tears in it and interrupted by
sobs. She commenced afresh twice or three times, till she stopped as if
something were choking her, and at last she ceased with a regular flood
of tears.
Then he clasped her in his arms and kissed her hair, affected himself.
“Mathilde, my little Mathilde, listen. You must be reasonable. You know,
if I give a supper-party to my friends, it is to thank these gentlemen
for the medal I got at the Salon. I cannot receive women. You ought to
understand that. It is not the same with artists as with other people.”
She stammered, in the midst of her tears:
“Why didn't you tell me this?”
He replied:
“It was in order not to annoy you, not to give you pain. Listen, I'm
going to see you home. You will be very sensible, very nice; you will
remain quietly waiting for me in bed, and I'll come back as soon as it's
over.”
She murmured:
“Yes, but you will not begin over again?”
“No, I swear to you!”
He turned towards M. Saval, who had at last hooked on the chandelier:
“My dear friend, I am coming back in five minutes. If anyone arrives in
my absence, do the honors for me, will you not?”
And he carried off Mathilde, who kept drying her eyes with her
handkerchief as she went along.
Left to himself, M. Saval succeeded in putting everything around him in
order. Then he lighted the wax-candles, and waited.
He waited for a quarter of an hour, half an hour, an hour. Romantin did
not return. Then, suddenly there was a dreadful noise on the stairs,
a song shouted out in chorus by twenty mouths and a regular march like
that of a Prussian regiment. The whole house was shaken by the steady
tramp of feet. The door flew open, and a motley throng appeared--men and
women in file, two and two holding each other by the arm and stamping
their heels on the ground to mark time, advanced into the studio like a
snake uncoiling itself. They howled:
“Come, and let us all be merry,
Pretty maids and soldiers gay!”
M. Saval, thunderstruck, remained standing in evening dress under the
chandelier. The procession of revellers caught sight of him, and uttered
a shout:
“A Jeames! A Jeames!”
And they began whirling round him, surrounding him with a circle of
vociferations. Then they took each other by the hand and went dancing
about madly.
He attempted to explain:
“Messieurs--messieurs--mesdames----”
But they did not listen to him. They whirled about, they jumped, they
brawled.
At last, the dancing ceased. M. Saval said:
“Gentlemen----”
A tall young fellow, fair-haired and bearded to the nose, interrupted
him:
“What's your name, my friend?”
The notary, quite scared, said:
“I am M. Saval.”
A voice exclaimed:
“You mean Baptiste.”
A woman said:
“Let the poor waiter alone! You'll end by making him get angry. He's
paid to wait on us, and not to be laughed at by us.”
Then, M. Saval noticed that each guest had brought his own provisions.
One held a bottle of wine, and the other a pie. This one had a loaf of
bread, and one a ham.
The tall, fair young fellow placed in his hands an enormous sausage, and
gave orders:
“Here, go and arrange the sideboard in the corner over there. Put the
bottles at the left and the provisions at the right.”
Saval, getting quite distracted, exclaimed: “But, messieurs, I am a
notary!”
There was a moment's silence and then a wild outburst of laughter. One
suspicious gentleman asked:
“How came you to be here?”
He explained, telling about his project of going to the opera, his
departure from Vernon, his arrival in Paris, and the way in which he had
spent the evening.
They sat around him to listen to him; they greeted him with words of
applause, and called him Scheherazade.
Romantin did not return. Other guests arrived. M. Saval was presented
to them so that he might begin his story over again. He declined; they
forced him to relate it. They seated and tied him on one of three chairs
between two women who kept constantly filling his glass. He drank; he
laughed; he talked; he sang, too. He tried to waltz with his chair, and
fell on the ground.
From that moment, he forgot everything. It seemed to him, however, that
they undressed him, put him to bed, and that he was nauseated.
When he awoke, it was broad daylight, and he lay stretched with his feet
against a cupboard, in a strange bed.
An old woman with a broom in her hand was glaring angrily at him. At
last, she said:
“Clear out, you blackguard! Clear out! What right has anyone to get
drunk like this?”
He sat up in bed, feeling very ill at ease. He asked:
“Where am I?”
“Where are you, you dirty scamp? You are drunk. Take your rotten carcass
out of here as quick as you can--and lose no time about it!”
He wanted to get up. He found that he was in no condition to do so. His
clothes had disappeared. He blurted out:
“Madame, I----Then he remembered. What was he to do? He asked:
“Did Monsieur Romantin come back?”
The doorkeeper shouted:
“Will you take your dirty carcass out of this, so that he at any rate
may not catch you here?”