THE FLOWER-SHOW
April 3d.
For a month I have written nothing in this brown notebook. But to-day
there is plenty to put down, and worth the trouble too.
Let me begin with the first shock. This morning, my head crammed with
passages from Latin authors, I leaned my brow against the pane of my
window which looks on the garden. The garden is not mine, of course,
since I live on the fourth floor; but I have a view of the big weeping-
willow in the centre, the sanded path that runs around it, and the four
walls lined with borders, one of which separates it from the huge
premises of the Carmelites. It is an almost deserted garden. The first-
floor tenant hardly ever walks there. His son, a schoolboy of seventeen,
was there this morning. He stood two feet from the street wall,
motionless, with head thrown back, whistling a monotonous air, which
seemed to me like a signal. Before him, however, was nothing but the
moss on the old wall gleaming like golden lights. People do not whistle
to amuse stones nor yet moss. Farther off, on the other side of the
street, the windows of the opposite houses stretched away in long
straight lines, most of them standing open.
I thought: "The bird is somewhere there. Some small Abigail with her
white cap will look out in a moment."
The suspicion was stupid and ill-natured. How rash are our lightest
judgments! Suddenly the school-boy took one step forward, swept his hand
quickly along the moss as if he were trying to catch a fly, and ran off
to his mother triumphant, delighted, beside himself, with an innocent
gray lizard on the tips of his fingers.
"I've got him! I've got him! He was basking in the sun and I charmed
him!"
"Basking in the sun!" This was a revelation to me. I flung up the
window. Yes, it was true. Warmth and light lay everywhere: on the roofs
still glistening with last night's showers; across the sky, whose gay
blue proclaimed that winter was done. I looked downward and saw what I
had not seen before: the willow bursting into bud; the hepatica in flower
at the foot of the camellias, which had ceased to bloom; the pear-trees
in the Carmelites' garden flushing red as the sap rose within them; and
upon the dead trunk of a fig-tree was a blackbird, escaped from the
Luxembourg, who, on tiptoe, with throat outstretched, drunk with delight,
answered some far-off call that the wind brought to him, singing, as if
in woodland depths, the rapturous song of the year's new birth. Then,
oh! then, I could contain myself no longer. I ran down the stairs four
at a time, cursing Paris and the Junian Latins who had been cheating me
of the spring. What! live there cut off from the world which was
created for me, tread an artificial earth of stone or asphalt, live with
a horizon of chimneys, see only the sky chopped into irregular strips by
roofs smirched with smoke, and allow this exquisite spring to fleet by
without drinking in her bountiful delight, without renewing in her
youthfulness our youth, always a little staled and overcast by winter!
No, that can not be; I mean to see the spring.
And I have seen it, in truth, though cut and tied into bouquets, for my
aimless steps led me to the Place St. Sulpice, where the flower-sellers
were. There were flowers in plenty, but very few people; it was already
late. None the less did I enjoy the sight of all the plants arranged by
height and kind, from the double hyacinths, dear to hall-porters, to the
first carnations, scarcely in bud, whose pink or white tips just peeped
from their green sheaths; then the bouquets, bundles of the same kinds
and same shades of flowers wrapped up in paper: lilies-of-the-valley,
lilacs, forget-me-nots, mignonette, which being grown under glass has
guarded its honey from the bees to scent the air here. Everyone had a
look of welcome for those exiles. The girls smiled at them without
knowing the reason why. The cabdrivers in line along the sidewalk seemed
to enjoy their neighborhood. I heard one of them, with a face like a
halfripened strawberry, red, with a white nose, say to a comrade, "Hallo,
Francis! that smells good, doesn't it!"
I was walking along slowly, looking into every stall, and when I came to
the end I turned right about face.
Great Heavens! Not ten feet off! M. Flamaran, M. Charnot, and
Mademoiselle Jeanne!
They had stopped before one of the stalls that I had just left.
M. Flamaran was carrying under his arm a pot of cineraria, which made his
stomach a perfect bower. M. Charnot was stooping, examining a superb
pink carnation. Jeanne was hovering undecided between twenty bunches of
flowers, bending her pretty head in its spring hat over each in turn.
"Which, father?"
"Whichever you like; but make up your mind soon; Flamaran is waiting."
A moment more, and the elective affinities carried the day.
"This bunch of mignonette," she said.
I would have wagered on it. She was sure to choose the mignonette--
a fair, well-bred, graceful plant like herself. Others choose their
camellias and their hyacinths; Jeanne must have something more refined.
She put down her money, caught up the bunch, looked at it for a moment,
and held it close to her breast as a mother might hold her child, while
all its golden locks drooped over her arm. Then off she ran after her
father, who had only changed one carnation for another. They went on
toward St. Sulpice--M. Flamaran on the right, M. Charnot in the middle,
Jeanne on the left. She brushed past without seeing me. I followed them
at a distance. All three were laughing. At what? I can guess; she
because she was eighteen, they for joy to be with her. At the end of the
marketplace they turned to the left, followed the railings of the church,
and bent their steps toward the Rue St. Sulpice, doubtless to take home
M. Flamaran, whose cineraria blazed amid the crowd. I was about to turn
in the same direction when an omnibus of the Batignolles-Clichy line
stopped my way. In an instant I was overwhelmed by the flood of
passengers which it poured on the pavements.
"Hallo, you here! How goes it? What are you staring at? My stovepipe?
Observe it well, my dear fellow--the latest invention of Leon; the patent
ventilating, anti-sudorific, and evaporating hat!"
It was Larive who had just climbed down from the knifeboard.
Every one knows Larive, head clerk in Machin's office. He is to be seen
everywhere--a tall, fair man, with little closetrimmed beard, and
moustache carefully twisted. He is always perfectly dressed, always in a
tall hat and new gloves, full of all the new stories, which he tells as
his own. If you believe him, he is at home in all the ministries,
whatever party is in power; he has cards for every ball, and tickets for
every first night. With all that he never misses a funeral, is a good
lawyer, and as solemn when in court as a dozen old mandarins.
"Come, Fabien, will you answer? What are you staring at?"
He turned his head.
"Oh, I see--pretty Mademoiselle Charnot."
"You know her?"
"Of course I do, and her father, too. A pretty little thing!"
I blushed with pleasure.
"Yes, a very pretty little thing; but wants style--dances poorly."
"An admirable defect."
"A little big, too, for her eyes."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Her eyes are a little too small, you understand me?"
"What matters that if they are bright and loving?"
"No matter at all to me; but it seems to have some effect on you. Might
you be related?"
"No."
"Or connected by marriage?"
"No."
"So much the better--eh, my boy? And how's uncle? Still going strong?"
"Yes; and longing to snatch me from this Babylon."
"You mean to succeed him?"
"As long hence as possible."
"I had heard you were not enthusiastic. A small practice, isn't it?"
"Not exactly. A matter of a thousand a year!"
"Clear profit?"
"Yes."
"That's good enough. But in the country, my poor fellow, in the
country!"
"It would be the death of you, wouldn't it?"
"In forty-eight hours."
"However did you manage to be born there, Larive? I'm surprised at you."
"So am I. I often think about it. Good-by. I must be off."
I caught him by the hand which he held out to me.
"Larive, tell me where you have met Mademoiselle Charnot?"
"Oh, come!--I see it's serious. My dear fellow, I am so sorry I did not
tell you she was perfection. If I had only known!"
"That's not what I asked you. Where have you seen her?"
"In society, of course. Where do you expect me to see young girls except
in society? My dear Fabien!"
He went off laughing. When he was about ten yards off he turned, and
making a speaking-trumpet of his hands, he shouted through them:
"She's perfection!"
Larive is decidedly an ass. His jokes strike you as funny at first; but
there's nothing in him, he's a mere hawker of stale puns; there's nothing
but selfishness under his jesting exterior. I have no belief in him.
Yet he is an old school friend; the only one of my twenty-eight
classmates whose acquaintance I have kept up. Four are dead, twenty-
three others are scattered about in obscure country places; lost for want
of news, as they say at the private inquiry offices. Larive makes up the
twenty-eight. I used to admire him, when we were low in the school,
because of his long trousers, his lofty contempt of discipline, and his
precocious intimacy with tobacco. I preferred him to the good, well-
behaved boys. Whenever we had leave out I used to buy gum-arabic at the
druggist's in La Chatre, and break it up with a small hammer at the far
end of my room, away from prying eyes. I used there to distribute it
into three bags ticketed respectively: "large pieces," "middle-sized
pieces," "small pieces." When I returned to school with the three bags
in my pocket, I would draw out one or the other to offer them to my
friends, according to the importance of the occasion, or the degrees of
friendship. Larive always had the big bits, and plenty of them. Yet he
was none the more grateful to me, and even did not mind chaffing me about
these petty attentions by which he was the gainer. He used to make fun
of everything, and I used to look up to him. He still makes fun of
everything; but for me the age of gumarabic is past and my faith in
Larive is gone.
If he believes that he will disparage this charming girl in my eyes by
telling me that she is a bad dancer, he is wrong. Of great importance it
is to have a wife who dances well! She does not dance in her own house,
nor with her husband from the wardrobe to the cradle, but at others'
houses, and with other men. Besides, a young girl who dances much has a
lot of nonsense talked to her. She may acquire a taste for Larive's
buffooneries, for a neat leg, or a sharp tongue. In that case what
welcome can she give to simple, timid affection? She will only laugh at
it. But you would not laugh, Jeanne, were I to tell you that I loved
you. No, I am quite convinced that you would not laugh. And if you
loved me, Jeanne, we should not go into society. That would just suit
me. I should protect you, yet not hide you. We should have felicity at
home instead of running after it to balls and crushes, where it is never
to be found. You could not help being aware of the fascination you
exert; but you would not squander it on a mob of dancers, and bring home
only the last remnants of your good spirits, with the last remnants of
your train. Jeanne, I am delighted to hear that you dance badly.
Whither away, Fabien, my friend, whither away? You are letting your
imagination run away with you again. A hint from it, and off you go.
Come, do use your reason a little. You have seen this young lady again,
that is true. You admired her; that was for the second time. But she,
whom you so calmly speak of as "Jeanne," as if she were something to you,
never even noticed you. You know nothing about her but what you suspect
from her maiden grace and a dozen words from her lips. You do not know
whether she is free, nor how she would welcome the notions you entertain
if you gave them utterance, yet here you are saying, "We should go here,"
"We should do this and that." Keep to the singular, my poor fellow. The
plural is far away, very far away, if not entirely beyond your reach.