THE PASSAGE DU SAUMON.
While awaiting a more complete settling than was possible before the
arrival of their furniture, which was coming by slow freight, the
Valmajours had taken rooms temporarily at the famous Passage du Saumon,
where from time immemorial teachers from Aps and its district have
stopped, and of which Aunt Portal still retained such astonishing
recollections. There, up under the roof, they had two small rooms,
one of which was without light or air, a kind of wood-closet which
was occupied by the men; the other was not much larger but seemed to
them fine in comparison, with its worm-pierced black walnut furniture,
its moth-eaten ragged carpet on the worn wooden floor and the dormer
windows that let in only a bit of a sky as lowering and yellow as the
long donkey-backed skylight over the Passage.
In these poor quarters they kept up the memory of home with a strong
smell of garlic and fried onions, which foreign food they cooked for
themselves on a little stove. Old Valmajour, who loved good eating and
was also fond of company, would have liked to dine at the hotel table,
where the white linen and plated salt-cellars and service seemed very
handsome to him, and also to have joined in the noisy conversations
and mingled with shouts of laughter of the commercial gentlemen who at
meal times filled the house to the very top floor with their noise and
jollity. But Audiberte opposed this flatly.
Amazed not to find at once on their arrival the promises of Numa
fulfilled and the two hundred francs an evening which had filled her
little head with piles of money ever since the visit of the Parisians;
horrified at the high price of everything, from the first day she had
been seized with the craze that the Parisians call “fear of wanting.”
For herself she could get along with anchovies and olives as in
Lent--_té, pardi!_ but her men were perfect wolves, worse than in their
own country because it is colder in Paris, and she was obliged to be
constantly opening her _saquette_, a large calico pocket made by her
own hands, in which she carried the three thousand francs that they had
received for their farm and chattels.
Each coin that she spent was a struggle, a pang, as if she were handing
over the stones of her farmhouse or the last vines of her vineyard.
Her peasant greed and her suspiciousness, that fear of being cheated
by a tenant which caused her to sell her farm instead of letting it,
were redoubled in this gloomy, unknown Paris, this city which from her
garret she heard roaring with a sound that did not cease day or night
at this noisy corner of the city market, causing the glasses near the
hotel water-bottle on the table to rattle at every hour.
No traveller lost in a wood of sinister repute ever clung more
convulsively to his baggage than did Audiberte to her _saquette_ as she
walked through the streets in her green skirt and her Arles head-dress,
which the passers-by turned to stare at. When she entered a shop with
her countrywoman’s gait, the way she had of calling things by a lot of
outlandish names, saying _api_ for celery, _mérinjanes_ for aubergines,
made her, a woman from the south of France, as much a stranger in her
country’s capital as if she had been a Russian from Nijni Novgorod or a
Swede from Stockholm.
Sweet and humble of manner at first, if she detected a smile on the
face of a clerk or received a rough answer on account of her mania
for bargaining, she would suddenly fly into a gust of rage; her
pretty virginal brown face twitching with frantic gesticulations she
would pour forth a torrent of noisy, vainglorious words. Then she
would tell about the expected legacy from Cousin Puyfourcat, the two
hundred francs a night to be earned by her brother, the friendship
that Roumestan had for them--sometimes calling him Numa, sometimes
the _Menister_--all this with an emphasis more grotesque than her
familiarity. Everything was jumbled together in a flood of gibberish
composed of the _langue d’oil_ tinged with French.
Then her habitual caution would return to her; she would fear that
she had talked imprudently, and, seized by a superstitious terror at
her own gossip, she would stop, suddenly mute, and close her lips as
tightly as the strings of her _saquette_.
At the end of a week she had become a legendary character in the
quarter of the Rue Montmartre, a street of shops where, at their
ever-open doors, the vendors of meats, green-groceries and colonial
wares discussed the affairs and secrets of all the inhabitants of the
neighborhood. The constant teasing of these people, the saucy questions
with which they plied her as she made her frugal purchases each
morning--as to why her brother’s appearance was delayed and when the
legacy was coming from the Arab--all these insults to her self-respect,
more than the fear of poverty staring them in the face, exasperated
Audiberte against Numa, against those promises which at first she had
suspected, true child of the South that she was, knowing well that the
promises of her country-people down South vanish easier than those of
other folks--all because of the lightness of the air.
“Oh, if we had only made him sign a paper!”
This idea became a fixture in her mind and she felt daily in her
brother’s pockets for the stamped document when Valmajour set out for
the Ministry, in order to be sure it was there.
But Roumestan was engaged in signing another kind of paper and had many
things to think of more important than the taborist. He was settling
down in his new office with the generous ardor and enthusiasm, with
the fever of a man who comes to his own. Everything was a novelty to
him--the enormous rooms of the Ministry as well as the large ideas
necessitated by his position. To arrive at the top, to “reconquer
Gaul,” as he had said, that was not so difficult; but to sustain
himself satisfactorily, to justify his elevation by intelligent reforms
and attempts at progress! Full of zeal, he studied, questioned,
consulted, literally surrounded himself with shining lights. With
Béchut, that great professor, he studied the evils of the college
system and the means to extirpate the spirit of free-thinking in the
schools. He employed the experience of his chief in the fine arts, M.
de la Calmette, who had behind him twenty-nine years of office, and of
Cadaillac, the manager of the grand opera, who was still erect after
three failures, in order to remodel the Conservatory, the Salon and the
Academy of Music in accordance with brand-new plans.
The trouble was that he never listened to these counsellors, but
talked himself for hours at a time and then, suddenly glancing at his
watch, would rise and hastily dismiss them: “Bad luck to it--I had
forgotten the council meeting! What a life, not a moment to oneself! I
understand--just send me your memorial right off!”
Memorials were piling up on Méjean’s desk, who, notwithstanding his
good intentions and intelligence, had none too much time for current
work and so permitted these grand reforms to slumber in their dust.
Like all Ministers when they arrive at a portfolio, Roumestan had
brought with him all his clerks from the Rue Scribe--Baron de Lappara
and Viscount de Rochemaure, who gave a flavor of aristocracy to the new
Ministry, but who were otherwise perfectly incompetent and ignorant of
their duties.
The first time that Valmajour came there he was received by Lappara,
who occupied himself by preference with the fine arts and whose
duties consisted principally in sending invitations in large official
envelopes at all hours by staff officers, dragoons or cuirassiers
to the young ladies of the minor theatres, asking them to supper.
Sometimes the envelope was empty, being merely a pretext to display in
front of the lady’s door that reassuring orderly from the Ministry the
day before some debt came due.
Lappara received him with a kindly, easy air, a bit top-loftical,
like that of a feudal lord receiving one of his vassals. His legs
outstretched, so as not to crease his gray-blue trousers, he talked
mincingly without stopping a moment the polishing of his nails.
“Not easy just now--the Minister is busy--perhaps in a few days. We’ll
let you know, my good fellow!”
And when in his simplicity the musician ventured to say that his matter
was somewhat urgent, that they only had enough for a short time left,
the baron, carefully placing his file upon the edge of the desk with
his most serious air, suggested to him to have a crank attached to his
tabor.
“A crank attached to my tabor?--for what purpose?”
“Why, my dear fellow, so as to use it as a box for _plaisirs_ (cakes)
while you are out of work.”
The next time Valmajour came to see Roumestan he was received by
Rochemaure. The viscount raised his head of hair frizzed with hot
irons from the dusty ledger over which he was bending and in his
conscientious manner asked to have the mechanism of the fife explained
to him, took notes, tried to understand and said finally that he was
not there for art matters, but more especially for religious questions.
After that the unhappy peasant never could find any one--they had all
betaken themselves to that inaccessible retreat where His Excellency
had hidden himself. Still he did not lose calmness or heart and always
responded to the evasive answers and shrugging shoulders of the
attendants with the surprised but steady look and shrewd half-smile
peculiar to the Provençal.
“All right, I will come again.”
And he did come again. But for his high gaiters and the tabor hanging
on his arm, he might have been taken for an employee of the house, he
came so regularly. But each time he came it was harder than the last.
Now the mere sight of the great arched door made his heart beat.
Beyond the arch was the old Hôtel Augereau with its large courtyard
where they were already stacking wood for the winter and the double
staircase so hard to ascend under the mocking gaze of the servants.
Everything combined to harass him--the silver chains of the porters,
the gold-laced caps, the endless gorgeous things that made him feel the
distance that separated him from his patron. But he dreaded more than
all this the dreadful scenes that he went through at home, the terrible
frowning brows of Audiberte; that is why he still desperately insisted
on coming. At last the hall porter took pity upon him and gave him the
advice to waylay the Minister at the Saint-Lazare station when he was
going down to Versailles.
He took his advice and did sentry work in the big lively waiting room
on the first story at the hour of the Parliament train when it took
on a very special look of its own. Deputies, senators, journalists,
members of the Left, of the Right and all the parties jostled each
other there, forming as variegated a throng as the blue, red and green
placards that covered the walls. They watched each other, talked,
screamed, whispered, some sitting apart rehearsing their next speech,
others, the orators of the lobbies, making the windows rattle with
loud voices that the Chamber was never destined to hear. Northern
accents and Southern accents, divers opinions and sentiments, swarming
ambitions and intrigues, the noisy tramp of the restless crowd--this
waiting-room with its delays and uncertainties was an appropriate
theatre for politics, this tumult of a journey at a fixed hour which
would soon, at bid of the whistle, be speeding over the rails down a
perspective of tracks, disks and locomotives, over a country full of
accidents and surprises.
Five minutes later he saw Numa enter, leaning on the arm of one of his
secretaries who carried his portfolio. His coat was flung open, his
face beaming just as he had looked that day on the platform in the
amphitheatre and at a distance he recognized the facile voice, the warm
words, his protestations of friendship: “Count on me,--put yourself in
my hands,--it is as good as granted....”
The Minister just then was in the honey-moon of prosperity. Except for
political enmities--not always as bitter as they are supposed to be,
simply the result of rivalry between public speakers or quarrels of
lawyers on opposite sides of a case--Numa had no enemies, not having
been in power long enough to discourage those who sought his services.
His credit was still good. Only a few had begun to be impatient and dog
his footsteps. To these he threw a loud, hasty “How are you, friend?”
that anticipated their reproaches and in a way denied their arguments,
while his familiar manner flattered the baffled office-seekers and yet
kept their demands at a distance. It was a great idea, was this “How
are you?” It sprang from instinctive duplicity.
At sight of Valmajour, who came swinging towards him, his smile showing
his white teeth, Numa felt inclined to throw him his fatal, careless
“How are you, friend?”--but how could he treat this peasant lad in
a little felt hat as a friend as he stood there in his gray jacket,
from the sleeves of which his brown hands protruded like those in a
cheap village photograph? He preferred to pass him by without a word,
with his “Ministerial air,” leaving the poor boy amazed, crushed
and knocked about by the crowd that was following the great man.
Still Valmajour returned to his station the next day and several days
thereafter, but he did not dare approach the Minister; he sat on the
edge of a bench with that touching air of sorrowful resignation that
one so often sees in a railway station on the faces of soldiers and
emigrants, who are going to a strange country, prepared to meet all the
chances of their evil destiny.
Roumestan could not evade that silent figure on his path with its
dumb appeal. He might pretend not to see it, turn aside his glance,
talk louder as he passed; the smile on his victim’s face was there
and remained there until the train had gone. Of a certainty he would
have preferred a noisy demand and a row, when he could have called a
policeman and given the disturber of his complacency in charge and so
got rid of him. He, the Minister, went so far as to take a different
station on the left bank of the Seine to avoid this trouble of his
conscience. Thus in many instances is the greatest man’s life made
wretched by some little thing of no account, like a pebble in the
seven-league boots.
But Valmajour would not despair.
“He must be ill,” he said to himself and stuck obstinately to his post.
At home his sister watched for his coming in a fever of impatience.
“Well, _bé!_ have you seen the Menister? Has he signed that paper?”
His eternal “No, not yet!” exasperated her, but more his calmness
as he threw into a corner his tabor whose strap left a dent on his
shoulder--it was the calmness of indolence and shiftlessness, as common
as vivacity among Southern nations. Then the queer little creature
would fall into one of her furious fits. What had he in his veins in
place of blood?--was there to be no end to this?--“Look out, or I
will attend to it myself!” Very calm, he made no answer, but let the
storm blow over, took his instruments from their cases, his fife and
mouth-piece with its ivory tip, and rubbed them well with a bit of
cloth for fear of dampness and promised to try at the Ministry again
to-morrow, and, if he could not see Numa, ask to see Mme. Roumestan.
“O, _vaï!_ Mme. Roumestan! You know she does not like your music--but
the young lady, though--she will be sure to help you; yes indeed!” And
she tossed her head.
“Madame or Mademoiselle, they don’t either of them care anything about
you,” said the old man, who was cowering over a turf fire that his
daughter had economically covered with ashes, a fire about which they
were eternally quarrelling.
In the bottom of his heart the old man was not displeased at his son’s
want of success, from professional jealousy. All these complications
and the uprooting of their lives had been most welcome to the Bohemian
tastes of the old wandering minstrel; he was delighted at first with
the journey and the idea of seeing Paris, that “Paradise of females and
purgatory of hosses,” as the carters of his country put it, imagining
that in Paris one would see women like houris arrayed in transparent
garments and horses distorted, leaping about in the midst of flames.
Instead he had found cold, privations and rain. From fear of Audiberte
and respect for Roumestan he had contented himself with grumbling and
shivering in a corner, only an occasional word or wink hinting at his
dissatisfaction. But Numa’s treachery and his daughter’s fits of wrath
gave him also an excuse for opening hostilities. He revenged himself
for all the blows to his vanity that his son’s musical proficiency had
inflicted on him for ten years and shrugged his shoulders as he heard
him trying his fife.
“Music, music, oh, yes--much good your music is going to do you!”
And then in a loud voice he asked if it wasn’t a sin to bring an old
man like him so far--into this _Sibelia_, this wilderness, to let him
perish of cold and hunger. He called on the memory of his sainted wife,
whom, by the way, he had killed with unhappiness--“made a goat of her,”
as Audiberte put it. He would whine for hours at a time, his head in
the fire, red-faced and sullen, until his daughter, wearied with his
lamentations, gave him a few pennies and sent him out to get a glass
of country wine for himself. In the wine-shop his sorrows fled away.
It was comfortable by the roaring stove; in the warmth the old wretch
soon recovered his low vein of an actor in Italian comedy, which his
grotesque figure, big nose and thin lips made more apparent, taken in
connection with his little wiry body, like Punch in the show.
He was soon the delight of the customers in the wine-shop with his
buffooneries and his boasting. He jeered his son’s tabor and told them
how much trouble it gave them at the hotel; for in order to be ready
for his coming out Valmajour, kept at tension by the delay of hopes,
persisted in practising up to midnight; but the other tenants objected
to the continual thunder of the tabor and the ear-piercing cry of the
fife--the very stairs shook with the sound, as if an engine were in
motion on the fifth floor.
“Go ahead,” Audiberte would say to her brother when the proprietor came
to them with complaints. It was pretty queer if one hadn’t the right to
make music in this Paris that makes so much noise one cannot sleep at
night! So he continued to practise. Then the proprietor demanded their
rooms. But when they left the Passage du Saumon, the hostelry so well
known in their native province, one that recalled their native land,
they felt as if their exile were heavier to bear and that they had
journeyed still a bit farther North.
The night before they left, after another long, unfruitful journey
taken by Valmajour, Audiberte hurried her men through dinner without
speaking a word, but with the light of firm resolution shining in
her eyes. When it was over she threw her long brown cloak over her
shoulders and went out, leaving the washing of the dishes to the men.
“Two months, almost two months since we came to Paris,” she muttered
through her clenched teeth. “I’ve had enough, I am going to speak to
this Menister myself--”
She arranged the ribbon of her head-dress, that, perched over her wavy
hair in high bows, stood up like a helmet, and rushed violently from
the room, her well-blacked boot-heels kicking at every step the heavy
material of her gown. Father and son stared at each other alarmed, but
did not dare to restrain her; they knew that any interference would but
exasperate her anger. They passed the afternoon alone together, hardly
speaking as the rain battered against the windows, the one polishing
his bag and fife, the other cooking the stew for supper over a good,
big fire that he took advantage of Audiberte’s absence to kindle, and
over which he was for once getting thoroughly warm.
Finally her quick steps, the short steps of a dwarf, were heard in the
corridor. She entered beaming.
“Too bad our windows do not look out upon the street,” she said,
removing her cloak, which was perfectly dry. “You might have seen the
beautiful carriage in which I came home.”
“A carriage! you are joking!”
“_And_ two servants, _and_ liveries--it is making a great stir in the
hotel!”
Then in a wondering silence she described and acted out her
adventure. In the first place and to start with--instead of going to
the Minister, who would not have received her, she found out the
address--one can get anything if one talks politely--of the sister of
Mme. Roumestan, the tall young lady who came to see them at Valmajour.
She did not live at the Ministry but with her parents in a quarter
full of little, badly-paved streets that smelt of drugs and reminded
Audiberte of her own province. It was ever so far away and she was
obliged to walk. She found the place at last in a little square
surrounded with arcades like the _placette_ at Aps.
The dear young lady--how well she had received her, without any
haughtiness, although everything looked very rich and handsome in the
house, much gilding, and many silken curtains hung round on this side
and that, in every direction:
“Ah, God be with you! So you have come to Paris? Where from? Since
when?”
Then, when she heard how Numa had disappointed them, she rang for her
governess, she too a lady in a bonnet, and all three set off for the
Ministry. It was something to see the bows and reverences made to them
by all those old beadles who ran ahead of them to open the doors.
“So you have seen him, then, the Minister?” timidly ventured Valmajour
as his sister stopped to breathe.
“Seen him! I certainly have; what did I tell you, you poor _bédigas_
(calf), that you must get the young lady on your side! She arranged the
whole thing in no time. There is to be a great musical function next
week at the Minister’s and you are to play before the directors of the
Conservatory of Music. And after that, _cra-cra!_ the contract drawn up
and signed!”
But the best of all was that the young lady had driven her home in the
carriage of the Minister.
“And she was very anxious to come upstairs with me,” added the peasant
girl, winking at her father and distorting her pretty face with a
meaning grimace. The father’s old face, with its complexion like a
dried fig, wrinkled up in a look of slyness which meant: “I understand;
not a word!” He no longer taunted the taborist. Valmajour himself, very
quiet, did not understand his sister’s perfidious meaning; he could
think only of his coming appearance, and, taking down his instruments,
he passed all his pieces in review, sending the notes as a farewell all
over the house and down the glass-covered passage in floods of trills
on rolling cadences.