very vexed expression of countenance to what was passing between his
wife and his friend, “don’t go on with all these details; what interest
can they have for Rouvière? Well, Tom, tell me, now, where were you
eight days ago at this very hour?”
“Eight days’ ago, George,” said Rouvière, and he stopped eating to
reflect—“eight days ago I was in Dublin.”
“In Dublin!” exclaimed Dupuis admiringly. “What a fellow!”
“From Dublin,” continued M. Rouvière, “I went to London, and from London
to Jersey, and from Jersey—here!”
“And was it when you got to Jersey that the happy thought occurred to
you to come and stir up your old friend?” asked Dupuis; and his bright,
soft eyes rested affectionately on Rouvière’s face.
“Yesterday morning, my dear boy,” replied Rouvière. “There was a map of
Normandy hanging up in the hall of the hotel where I was staying, and I
was looking at it almost mechanically, when suddenly I came across the
name of Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte. ‘Saint Sauveur-le-Vicomte!’ I repeated
two or three times to myself. ‘Isn’t that the name of the little town
where George Dupuis used to live—my friend George? I’ve a mind to go and
dine with him, if he be still alive.’”
M. Rouvière seemed to be looking for something on the table as he
finished these words. Mme. Dupuis, watching every feature, anxiously
inquired what he wanted.
“Some lemon, madame, for this sole,” replied he. “Marianne—I think I
heard you call her Marianne,” he added, turning towards his
hostess—“Marianne, haven’t you a lemon?”
“Here is one,” exclaimed Mme. Dupuis, rising hastily and running to the
sideboard. “Now tell me, M. Rouvière,” she said with her pleasant smile,
as she laid the lemon by his plate, “have you really been going up and
down the highways and by-ways of the world during thirty long years,
just like the Wandering Jew?”
“I have indeed, madame,” replied her guest, squeezing the lemon-juice
out over his sole.
“You must have eaten some strange things in your travels,” continued the
lady.
“I rather think so,” replied Rouvière, with his mouth full of fish;
“things _you_ never heard of! Marianne, my good girl, I smell coffee
roasting in your kitchen. Now, nearly every one, especially here in the
provinces, roasts it too much—all the aroma is driven off; run quick,
that’s a good lass, and tell the cook—Jeannette, isn’t it?—that the
coffee must only be toasted—just scorched. Do you understand, eh?”
“Yes, yes, I understand well enough,” muttered Marianne as she went out;
“that fellow seems to like nothing!”
“My dear lady,” went on Rouvière, turning to Mme. Dupuis, “the very
accident I feared for your coffee has happened to your chicken—it is
cooked too much, or rather it has been cooked too fast. It is a great
pity, for it was an excellent fowl!”
“Oh! dear, oh! dear,” exclaimed Mme. Dupuis, who was beginning to feel a
kind of despair thus far unknown to her. All her dinners hitherto had
been subjects of compliment; _this_ was quite a new experience. “Oh!
dear, oh! dear, how many misfortunes at one time. Pray excuse me, M.
Rouvière; you came so unexpectedly, you know. We had no time to do
things well. But do, pray, stay a few days with us, and you shall see. I
promise you that everything shall be better.”
“Impossible, madame,” replied the guest, as he accepted a fine snipe
done to a turn; “you are very kind, but at nine o’clock this evening I
must be on the road again. Yes, madame, you may well say that I have
eaten strange things,” he continued, raising his voice. “I’ve eaten
kouskoussou under the Arab’s tent; curry—that incendiary curry—on the
shores of the Ganges; I’ve dined off the frightful tripang in Java; and
in China on swallows’ nests stewed in castor-oil!”
“Good gracious!” ejaculated Mme. Dupuis.
“What a wonderful fellow!” exclaimed M. Dupuis enthusiastically.
M. Dupuis was unwontedly silent; he was evidently exceedingly annoyed,
and it was pitiful to see the deprecating glances his little wife
directed towards him from time to time. He, however, kept his eyes fixed
steadily on his plate.
“In Panama,” went on Rouvière, “I’ve eaten roasted monkey. But what need
to enumerate? There’s nothing edible in creation that I have not
swallowed. So that I believe I may say,” here he bowed thanks for a
second snipe, “there does not exist a man under the firmament of heaven
easier to satisfy than myself. The Rocky Mountain Indians—those Indians
are most extraordinarily sagacious—the Rocky Mountain Indians, I say,
gave me a surname while I was among them—‘Choc-ugh-tou-saw,’ which
signifies good-humored stomach, because I was always satisfied with my
dinner!”
“What a wonderful fellow!” reiterated Dupuis. “Come, Tom, try this
Burgundy; your throat must be dry. What a wonderful fellow, to be sure!”
“Do let me prevail on you to take another snipe,” said Mme. Dupuis,
holding up to the guest’s acceptance a third fine, fat bird; “I’m so
glad to find that you like them!”
“No, madame, no, a thousand thanks. Yes, I don’t deny that I am fond of
snipes, but, I’m sorry—I can’t deceive you—these are not just what they
ought to be. In the first place, they have not been killed long enough;
and, secondly, you have forgotten to pepper them—a process absolutely
necessary with game. But, excuse me, for the last half-hour I’ve been
looking at that covered dish, wondering what there is in it. I really
don’t believe that I have ever felt more curiosity in the whole course
of my life; excuse me, I must look into it.”
He raised the cover as he spoke, peering in with eyes and nose.
“In the name of all the saints, what is it?” he exclaimed, as he
contemplated the contents and sniffed up the steam.
“My dear friend,” answered Dupuis, a little nervously, “it is something
I had concocted on purpose for you—it is macaroni.”
“Macaroni! _That_ macaroni!” shouted Rouvière, as if never more
surprised in his life.
“Yes, M. Rouvière,” explained Mme. Dupuis, no longer smiling, poor
little woman! “This dish was inspired by George’s friendship. He
remembered that you were very fond of Italy, so I sent in haste to the
grocer’s; he fortunately had still a small quantity of macaroni on hand,
and then, with the help of my cookery-book—for Jeannette couldn’t manage
it—I made you a _plat à l’italienne_.”
“_A l’italienne!_” repeated George’s old friend with a sneering laugh.
“My dear, good lady, that’s not macaroni _à l’italienne_! Oh! no, no.
However, who knows?—it may be good to eat all the same. Let us try!” So
saying, M. Rouvière helped himself to a spoonful, while his hosts looked
on anxiously.
“Well, how do you like it?” asked George, when the taster, after many
grimaces, had got down a mouthful.
“Like it!” replied Rouvière, “why, not at all; you might as well try to
masticate organ-pipes! It really is something remarkable; it’s fossil
macaroni, petrified macaroni! The grocer who sold it to you deserves the
jail; _I_ shouldn’t wonder if he belonged to some secret society!”
“Marianne, quick! change M. Rouvière’s plate,” said Dupuis sharply—for
the old servant was gazing at her master’s friend with a very
unmistakable expression of disgust on her honest face. “My dear Tom,” he
continued, “what a bad dinner you have made!”
“You are jesting,” replied Rouvière carelessly; “at all events, your
wine is capital.”
“I don’t know what to say,” sighed poor Mme. Dupuis. “I feel ready to
die with vexation. But, dear M. Rouvière,” with a pretty supplicatory
gesture, “do, I beg and pray of you, do taste my rice-pudding.”
“Very willingly, my dear lady,” answered the terrible guest—“very
willingly; only let me first finish eating these green peas, which have
been very well preserved, and would be really perfect had the cook
spared her butter a little!”
At this moment the church bells began to ring the _Angelus_, and Mme.
Dupuis rose precipitately from the table.
“You will pardon my leaving you to finish dinner with George,” said she
to Rouvière; “I shall be back long before you go.”
“Surely you are not going out such an evening as this!” exclaimed
Rouvière. “Why, there’s a foot deep of snow in the streets!”
“My wife goes to church every evening, winter and summer, at the
_Angelus_, no matter what the weather,” remarked George. “She has done
so for nearly fifty years, and nothing will break her of the habit now.”
“Ah! very well,” returned Rouvière. “I hope you like your pastor, Mme.
Dupuis?”
“Oh! yes, indeed I do,” replied the good little woman enthusiastically;
“he is a most worthy man. Do stay twenty-four hours longer with us, M.
Rouvière, and I will ask him to dine with us; you will be glad to know
him, I am quite sure.”
“So am I,” returned her husband’s old chum, with the little sneering
laugh which seemed to be natural to him; “but I must wait for another
opportunity.”
“Now, George,” said Mme. Dupuis, as she tied her wadded hood and slipped
on the cloak and india-rubber shoes which had been placed ready for her
on a chair, “do beg your friend to taste the rice-pudding; and, M.
Rouvière, do try my preserves. I make them myself, and I really believe
that they are excellent. Good-by for the present!”
“Good-by, madame.”
“Hem! hem!” ejaculated Rouvière as the door closed behind the lady, “so!
so! Now let us look at this rice. Your wife’s given to piety, eh,
George?”
“Yes, she is a religious woman,” replied George slowly; then added, with
some slight eagerness in his manner, “but she never imposes her opinions
upon any one. She never teases me, I can assure you, although I do
happen to be somewhat lukewarm about church matters. But tell me,
Tom”—here M. Dupuis hesitated and appeared embarrassed—“don’t you find
her very provincial, very rustic?”
“Oh! no, not at all,” answered Rouvière in a tone which seemed to imply
the contrary of his words.
“Yes, you do—I know you do!” cried George passionately. “But what _can_
you expect? It’s not her fault! She has lived in this hole all her life.
And your unexpected visit has excited her—upset her. She really talked
as if she did not know what she was saying—such nonsense, such silly
gossip!”
“Oh! no, not at all,” repeated Rouvière, as he steadily devoured the
rice-pudding.
“_Parbleu!_ yes; don’t deny it!” cried Dupuis peevishly. “It made you
nervous—I saw it did. It irritated me, I know: it really seemed as if
she was trying to show you her defects. It vexed me more, too, because
she really has many good qualities—admirable qualities, poor little
woman!”
“My dear George,” returned Rouvière, pushing away his plate and coolly
wiping his mouth with his napkin, “I don’t doubt it in the least; her
rice-pudding is certainly delicious.”
Dupuis at this moment caught sight of the pretty Angora with one soft
white paw laid in silent petition on his friend’s knee. His irritation,
with difficulty kept under so far, instantly boiled over on the head of
the innocent cat. “Get down!” he roared, “get down, you brute! I’ll
drown that beast one of these days! Take that animal away,” he
continued, turning angrily towards Marianne, who had just brought in the
coffee; “if she comes into this room again, I’ll throw her out of the
window!”
“Come to me, pussy,” said Marianne in an extra-gentle tone of voice,
taking the cat in her arms and kissing it; “these Parisian gentlemen
don’t like you, it seems. A regular Turk he is, too, turning the house
topsy-turvy,” she muttered as she went out of the room, scowling over
her shoulder at the visitor.
Rouvière had risen from the table during this episode, and, tongs in
hand, was busy with the bright wood fire. He smiled maliciously when the
cat was carried away, and, as if in very lightness of heart, broke forth
in song:
“‘_O bell’ alma innamorata! O bell’ alma innamorata!_’ Tell me, George,”
he interrupted himself to say, “have you a good theatre here in
Saint-Sauveur?”
“A theatre? That’s an idea! Well, yes, we have a theatre once a year, on
the fair-day at mid-Lent!”
“That’s too bad!” laughed Rouvière. “How on earth do you contrive to get
through your evenings?”
“Well, in winter,” answered George, “we chat by the side of the fire, or
my wife and I play at piquet; sometimes two or three neighbors come in,
and then we have a game of whist!”
“Phew!” whistled the man of the world. “With the _curé_, I’ll swear,”
said he presently with his customary mocking smile, as he planted
himself comfortably with his back to the blaze and his coattails
gathered up under his arms.
“Yes,” went on George simply, apparently unconscious of his friend’s
sneer; “sometimes with the _curé_. And then in summer I water my garden,
and Reine and I take a walk on the highroad up to the top of the hill,
or in the wood by the river’s side; and then—well, everybody goes to bed
early here.”
“Very moral, indeed!” sneered Rouvière again, picking his teeth.
By this time Marianne had cleared away the dinner things, and, after
placing a provision of glasses and a bottle of brandy, another of rum,
and a case of liqueurs on the table, had finally departed to dine in her
turn with Jeannette, and to confide her observations on the obnoxious
Parisian to her companion’s sympathizing ear.
III.
“So at last we are alone!” exclaimed Dupuis with a sigh of satisfaction,
as the maid closed the door behind her. “Now, Tom, sit down and let us
drink. Come and tell me what you think of this brandy. Here’s to your
health, old friend!” filling himself a glass of old Cognac and tossing
it off excitedly. “Do you know how many years it is since we last met,
Tom? Five-and-thirty, Tom—five-and-thirty years!”
“Yes, _parbleu_!” said Rouvière, helping himself to the brandy. “I
suppose it must be some thirty-five years since we parted in the
diligence yard, Rue Montmartre. I remember that we swore eternal
friendship and constant correspondence. The correspondence did not last
long—less than two years, it seems to me—but our friendship, George, it
smouldered under its ashes, but it kept alive, my boy!”
The two friends clasped each other’s hands for a moment silently.
“Your brandy is first-rate,” remarked Rouvière presently, as he finished
his _petit-verre_.
“You like it? Bravo! Well, there are still some pleasant hours in
life—aren’t there now, Tom?”
“I believe you,” answered the guest meditatively.
“Who should know it better than you, fortunate fellow as you are! But I
say, Tom, how does it happen that you have not changed in the least? Not
in the least, by Jove! You’ve remained young and handsome.... ‘I was
young and handsome!’—do you remember how magnificently Talma used to say
that? Your beard and moustaches might belong to an African lion! You
make me think of Henri Quatre! But drink, Tom; you don’t drink!”
“My dear old George,” said Rouvière in a quiet, confidential tone of
voice, and resting his two arms on the table, while he fixed his eyes on
his friend’s flushed face—“my dear old George, what _was_ your reason
for burying yourself alive in Cotentin? Tell me.”
“Why do you ask me that, Tom?” cried Dupuis, who suddenly became
serious. “You find me rusty, then?”
“No, no; but _what_ was your reason? Tell me in confidence, you know.”
“Yes, I am rusty; I feel it!” said poor Dupuis mournfully. “I tell you
what, Tom, the provinces of France deserve all that is said against
them. They are like those springs of mineral waters which turn to stone
every living creature you throw into them! What reason had I, do you
ask? Gracious heavens! What is life, Tom, but a series of chances; some
fatality gets you into a groove, and you are pushed on and on until you
reach your grave. Try this rum, Tom.”
“Do you indulge in such prolonged libations every evening?” asked
Rouvière.
“No, never. These are in honor of you.”
“So I suspected. This is the rum, isn’t it? Come, go on, George; I want
to hear the rest of your _Odyssey_.”
“Well, Tom,” resumed his friend, taking a sip at his glass of rum and
breathing at the same time a sigh which was almost a groan, “you
remember that my prospects were pretty bright in Paris. I fully intended
to buy that solicitor’s office where I was working—it had been offered
to me on good conditions; but some family affairs called me home here,
and here I stayed. I don’t know how it happened, but it is certain that
I found a charm in this provincial life—in its futile comfort, its
indolent habits, its tame monotony.”
Here poor Dupuis stopped, that he might give vent to an angry gust of
self-reproach by punching the fire with the tongs; after a sip of rum he
continued: “All these got possession of me, wound themselves around me
like a net, and I remained their captive.”
His head bowed itself forward, and he sat gazing regretfully on the ugly
clock in the middle of the chimney-piece.
“All right, George!” laughed Rouvière; “you don’t say it, but I suspect
that Madame Dupuis had a good deal to do with this final catastrophe!”
“It is true, Tom,” replied the other, his countenance lighting up for a
moment; “and you may believe it or not, as you like, but I swear that
she was a charming girl! Moreover, my dear old mother was living then,
and it was a great pleasure to her to have me settle here where we were
all born. The long and the short of it was that I married, bought my
father-in-law’s office, and all was over—the die was cast! Take some of
the Kirschwasser, Tom,” he added hurriedly, as if his remembrances were
too painful to be dwelt on.
“Presently,” said Rouvière, a smile flickering over his worldly-wise
face; “but tell me, first, you’ve not stayed walled up in Saint-Sauveur,
I hope, all these thirty-five years? You take a run to Paris every once
in a while, don’t you?”
“Don’t mention it,” groaned Dupuis. “I’ve not seen Paris since I said
good-by to you in the Rue Montmartre!”
“Phew!” whistled Rouvière, helping himself to the Kirschwasser. The
friends remained silent for a time, gazing at the fire.
“But you used to like to travel,” exclaimed Rouvière, at last.
“And so I do still, my dear Tom; my taste has not changed in that
respect, I can assure you. But what could I do? When I married, my idea
was to work steadily for fifteen years, and then sell my business and
live on what I had saved. I intended then to take a trip to Paris with
my wife, after that to the Pyrenees—I always wished so much to see the
Pyrenees! But it was not to be; as the old women say, Man proposes and
God disposes. We had been married just five years when our daughter was
born....”
“What’s that you say—you have a daughter?” interrupted his friend.
“A daughter and a granddaughter, Tom,” replied George, with an
inflection in his voice that sounded very like pride, and a soft look in
his eyes; “so you understand that I had to stick to my business for ten
years more, that I might get her a dowry; and then, when at last I did
sell out—well, I was old ... and I couldn’t think of anything pleasanter
than just to stay quietly in my arm-chair! Didn’t I tell you that my
life has been nothing but a chapter of accidents from beginning to end?
Come, shall we have some punch, Tom? I’ll make it.”
“If you will. So you have a daughter! And she is married! Well married,
I hope?”
“Well, yes; her husband is a sub-prefect.”
George’s voice again took a tone of gratified pride, which elicited a
smile from his observant friend.
“A sub-prefect! Bravo, bravissimo! But you’re putting too much lemon
into that punch.”
“Do you think so? And now, Tom, that I’ve made a clean breast of it—told
you all—you must explain something to me that I never could comprehend:
how _have_ you contrived to make your modest fortune suffice for nearly
half a century’s constant travel?”
“It is easy enough to explain,” said Rouvière, sitting up straight in
his chair and becoming very animated and somewhat loud as he proceeded.
“I began life with ten thousand francs a year in land; my first
operation was to change my patrimony into bank-notes, by which means I
doubled my income; then I invested it in the sinking funds, which
trebled it. And then, freed from every narrow calculation, from every
family tie, from every social trammel, I took my flight into space!
Here’s to your health, my old friend George! Hip! hip! hurrah!”
“What a wonderful fellow!” cried George in a paroxysm of admiration,
excited, very probably, much more by the brandy and the rum and the
punch than by Rouvière’s comprehension of life and happiness. “What
energy! what grandeur!”
“I consecrated my youth,” continued Tom in a declamatory style, “to
distant adventures, reserving Europe for the autumn of life. My
foot—this foot, this very foot, George, which now touches yours on this
carpet—has left its print among those of the tiger and the elephant on
the sands of India! Nay, it has even followed those terrible prowlers
into their forests of bamboo, lofty and solemn as our cathedrals!”
“Ah! that was something like living!” ejaculated Dupuis, who listened
with almost breathless interest.
“Two years later I arrived in Canton. What an arrival, ye gods! Never
shall I forget the scene. It was a lovely summer night. The accession of
the emperor of the Celestials to his ancestral throne was being
celebrated. Our canoe could scarcely force its way among the junks and
flower-boats, all of them decorated with innumerable paper lanterns.
Fireworks of a thousand different hues were reflected, mingled with the
stars, in the flowing river, and we could watch their rainbow tints
playing on the porcelain temples that rise on its banks!”
“What a fairy-like sight! Happy, happy Tom!” murmured Dupuis.
“From China,” pursued Rouvière, after quaffing off his glass of punch,
“I sailed for the Americas. I travelled about there for several years,
going to and fro, from north to south, from the savannas to the pampas,
from the great austere Canadian woods to the smiling Brazilian forests;
sometimes on foot, sometimes on horseback, oftenest in a _pirogue_. My
longest stay was in Peru. I could not tear myself away from that
coquettish city of Lima!”
“Ha! ha! _traître_, gay deceiver! O Tom, Tom!” laughed Dupuis, shaking
his head in ecstasy.
“I turned gamester, too. It is impossible for you, George, to conceive
the immense attraction a gaming-table possesses in that land of gold and
silver and jewels. One might almost fancy that one of those fabulous
trees we read of in Oriental tales had been shaken over the green cloth!
There is little or no regular coined money to be seen on it, but dull
yellow ingots, bright golden spangles, fiery diamonds, and milk-white,
lustrous pearls are heaped up there pell-mell! All the treasures of
earth and ocean seem to be brought together on that table, tumbled and
jostled in dazzling confusion! You can stay whole nights by that
board—nights that fly like minutes—your eyes fascinated, your brain on
fire! Twenty times in twenty-four hours you are raised to the throne of
Rothschild—as often precipitated down, down to Job’s dunghill. You
become bald, you may become mad, but you feel what life is—you live!”
“It is true, it is true!” cried Dupuis in a state of intense excitement;
“you are right, Tom, there is no doubt of that. And to think that I have
never played at anything but that blackguard whist at a sou the counter!
But go on, Tom, go on; you really electrify me!”
“Everything has its end,” continued Rouvière, highly flattered by the
effect he was producing; “there came a day of sadness and
discouragement, and I took passage on board an American whaler bound for
the south pole. Yes, my hand has touched the frozen limits of our globe;
I have contemplated, with feelings akin to awe, those creatures with
human-like faces, the morse, on their pedestals of ice, recumbent and
dreamy as the sphinx of Thebes. And in the midst of those silent spaces,
so strangely different from all I had hitherto seen, I experienced
sensations that seemed to belong to another world. A kind of
_posthumous_ illusion of being in another planet took possession of me.
Certainly I am much deceived if the days and nights I saw in those
regions of ice do not resemble those in our pale satellite. What more
shall I tell you, my dear friend? Three years after this I found myself
in Rio Janeiro, whence I returned to Europe, after having literally
described the whole circumference of our globe with the end of my
walkingstick! And thus passed away my youth!”
M. Rouvière here threw himself back in his arm-chair, and stroked his
beard with a sigh.