He had altered but little. His legs were perhaps more bowed, the checks
of his trousers a trifle larger, and the part in his iron-gray hair less
regular than in the old days, but the general effect was the same--the
same flashy waistcoat, the same long gold watch-chain baited with
charms, the same shiny, bell-crown silk hat, and the same shade of green
kid gloves--same pair, I think. Nor had his manner changed--that
cringing, deferential, attentive manner which is so flattering at first
to the unsuspecting and inexperienced, and so positive and top-lofty
when his final accounts are submitted--particularly if they are
disputed. The voice, too, had lost none of its soft, purring quality--a
church-whisper-voice with the drone of the organ in it.
And yet withal Joseph is not a bad fellow. Once he knows the size of
your pocket-book he willingly adapts his expenditures to its contents.
Ofttimes, it is true, there is nothing left but the pocket-book, but
then some couriers would take that. When he is in doubt as to the
amount, he tries experiments. I have learned since that the lay-out for
the bride and groom that night in Milan was only one of his
experiments--the proprietor being co-conspirator. The coach belonged to
the hotel; the game supper was moved up from the restaurant, and the
flowers had been left over from a dinner the night before. Had they all
done duty, Joseph's commissions would have been that much larger. As it
was, he collected his percentage only on the coach and the two men on
the box and the flunkeys at the head of the stairs. These had been
_used_. The other preparations were only looked at.
Then again, Joseph not only speaks seven languages, but he speaks them
well--for Joseph--so much so that a stranger is never sure of his
nationality.
"Are you French, Joseph?" I once asked him.
"No."
"Dutch?"
"No."
"What, then?"
"I am a Jew gentleman from Germany."
He lied, of course. He's a Levantine from Constantinople, with Greek,
Armenian, Hindu, and perhaps some Turkish blood in his veins. This
combination insures him good temper, capacity, and imagination--not a
bad mixture for a courier. Besides, he is reasonably honest--not
punctiliously so--not as to francs, perhaps, but certainly as to
fifty-pound notes--that is, he was while he served me. Of course, I
never had a fifty-pound note--not all at once--but if I had had I don't
think he would have absorbed it--not if I had signed it on the back for
identification and had kept it in a money-belt around my waist and close
to my skin.
Those things, however, never trouble me. I don't want to make a
savings-bank of Joseph. It is his vivid imagination that appeals to me,
or perhaps the picturesqueness with which he puts things. In this he is
a veritable master. His material, too, is not only uncommonly rich, but
practically inexhaustible. He knows everybody; has travelled with
everybody; has always kept one ear and one eye open even when asleep,
and has thus picked up an immense amount of information regarding people
and events--mostly his own patrons--the telling of which has served to
enliven many a quiet hour while he sat beside me as I painted. Why, once
I remember in Stamboul, when some Arabs had----
But I forget that I am following Joseph upstairs, and that his mission
is to see that I am comfortably lodged at the Baur au Lac in Zurich.
When we reached the second floor Joseph met the porter emerging into the
corridor with my large luggage. He had mounted the back stairs.
"Let me see Number 13, porter," cried Joseph. "Ah, yes--it is just as I
supposed. Is it in that hole you would put my Lord--where there is noise
all the time? You see that window, my Lord?" (By this time I had reached
the two disputants and had entered the room.) "You remember, your
Highness, that enormous omnibus in which you have arrived just? It is
there that it sleeps." And Joseph craned his head out of the window and
pointed in the direction of the court-yard. "When it goes out in the
morning at seven o'clock for the train it is like thunder. The Count
Monflot had this room. You should have seen him when he was awoke at
seven. He was like a crazy man. He pulled all the strings out of the
bells, and when the waiter come he had the hat-box of Monsieur the Count
at his head."
Dismissing the apartment with a contemptuous wave of his hand, Joseph,
with the porter's assistance, who had a pass-key, began a search of the
other vacant rooms: half the hotel was vacant, I afterward learned; all
this telegram and book business was merely an attempt to bolster up the
declining days of a bad season.
"Number 21? No--it is a little better, but it's too near the behind
stairs. It would be absurd to put his Lordship there. Number 24?"--here
he looked into another room. "No, you can hear the grande baggage in the
night going up and down. No, it will not do."
The manager, having disposed of the other members of the Emperor's
household, now approached with a servile smile fitted to all parts of
his face. Joseph attacked him at once.
"Is his Lordship a valet, Monsieur, that you should put him in such
holes? Do you not know that he never wakes until ten, and has his coffee
at eleven, and the omnibus, you know, sleeps there?" And he pointed
outside. (Another Levantine lie: I am up at seven when the light is
right.)
Here the porter unlocked another room and stood by smiling. He knew the
game was up now, and had reserved this one for the last.
"Number--28! Ah, this is something like. Yes, my Lord, this will be
quite right. La Contessa Moriarti had this room--yes, I remember."
(Joseph never serves any woman below the rank of contessa.)
So I moved into Number 28, handed Joseph the keys, and the porter
deposited my luggage and withdrew, followed by the manager. Soon the
large and small trunks were disembowelled, my sponge hung on a nail in
the window, and the several toilet articles distributed in their proper
places, Joseph serving in the triple capacity of courier, valet, and
chambermaid--the lame Englishman being out driving, and Joseph,
therefore, having this hour to himself. This distribution, of course,
was made in deference to my exalted rank and the ten-franc gold piece
which he never fails to get despite my resolutions, and which he always
seems to have earned despite my knowledge as to how the trick is
performed.
Suddenly a crash sounded through the hall as if somebody had dropped a
tray of dishes. Then came another, and another. Either every waiter in
the house was dropping trays, or an attack was being made on the pantry
by a mob.
Joseph, with a bound, threw back the door and we rushed out.
Just opposite my room was a small salon with the door wide open. In its
centre stood a man with an iron poker in his hand. He was busy smashing
what was left of a large mirror, its pieces littering the floor. On the
sofa lay another man twice the size of the first one, who was roaring
with laughter. Down the corridor swooped a collection of guests,
porters, and chambermaids in full cry, the manager at their head.
"Two hundred and fifty francs, eh--for a looking-glass worth twenty
francs?" I heard the man with the poker shout. "I blister with my
gas-jet one little corner, and I must pay two hundred and fifty francs.
I have ruined the mirror, have I, eh? And it must be thrown out and a
new one put in to-morrow--eh?" Bang! bang! Here the poker came down on
some small fragment still clinging to the frame. "Yes, it _will_ come
out [bang!]--_all_ of it will come out."
The manager was now trying to make himself heard. Such words as "my
mirror," "outrage," "Gendarme," could be heard above the sound of the
breaking glass and the shrieks of the man on the sofa, who seemed to be
in a paroxysm of laughter.
I looked on for a moment. Some infuriated lodger, angry, perhaps, at the
overcharge in his bill, was venting his wrath on the furniture. It was
not my mirror, and it was not my bill; the manager was present with
staff enough to throw both men downstairs if he pleased and without my
assistance, and so I turned and reentered my room. Two things fixed
themselves in my mind: the alert figure, trim as a fencer's, of the man
with the poker, and the laugh of the fat man sprawling on the lounge.
Joseph followed me into my room and shut the door softly behind him.
"Ah, I knew it was he. No other man is so crazy like that. He would
break the head of the propriétaire just the same. That is an old
swindle. That mirror has been cracked four--five--six times. The gas-jet
is fixed so that you _must_ crack it. All the mirrors like the one he
burnt--it was only a little spot--go upstairs in the cheap rooms and new
ones are brought in for such games. 'Most always they pay, but
monsieur--it is not like him to pay. He has heard of the trick,
perhaps--is it not delicious?" and Joseph's face widened into a grin.
"You know him, then?" I broke in.
"Know him?--oh, for many years. He is the great Doctor Barsac. He
smashes everything he doesn't like. He smashed that old fat monsieur
who made so much laugh. His name is Mariguy. He looks like a curé, does
he not? But he is not a curé; he is an advocate. Barsac is from Basle,
but Mariguy lives in Paris. Those two are never separated; they love
each other like a man and a wife. There is a great medical convention
here in Zurich, and Barsac has brought Mariguy with him to show him off.
He put a new silver stomach in Mariguy last winter and is very proud of
it. It is the great operation of the year, they say."
"What happened to the fat man, Joseph--was it an accident?"
"No--a duel. Barsac ran him through the belly with his sword."
"Permit me, my Lord--" And Joseph stepped to the window. "Yes, there
comes the lame Englishman home from the drive. Excuse me--I will go and
help him from his carriage." And Joseph bowed himself out backward.
* * * * * * *