Weary of himself, Godefroid attempted one day to give a meaning to his
life, after meeting a former comrade who had been the tortoise in the
fable, while he in earlier days had been the hare. In one of those
conversations which arise when schoolmates meet again in after years,--a
conversation held as they were walking together in the sunshine on the
boulevard des Italiens,--he was startled to learn the success of a
man endowed apparently with less gifts, less means, less fortune than
himself; but who had bent his will each morning to the purpose resolved
upon the night before. The sick soul then determined to imitate that
simple action.
“Social existence is like the soil,” his comrade had said to him; “it
makes us a return in proportion to our efforts.”
Godefroid was in debt. As a first test, a first task, he resolved to
live in some retired place, and pay his debts from his income. To a man
accustomed to spend six thousand francs when he had but five, it was
no small undertaking to bring himself to live on two thousand. Every
morning he studied advertisements, hoping to find the offer of some
asylum where his expenses could be fixed, where he might have the
solitude a man wants when he makes a return upon himself, examines
himself, and endeavors to give himself a vocation. The manners and
customs of bourgeois boarding-houses shocked his delicacy, sanitariums
seemed to him unhealthy, and he was about to fall back into the fatal
irresolution of persons without will, when the following advertisement
met his eye:--
“To Let. A small lodging for seventy francs a month; suitable for
an ecclesiastic. A quiet tenant desired. Board supplied; the rooms
can be furnished at a moderate cost if mutually acceptable.
“Inquire of M. Millet, grocer, rue Chanoinesse, near Notre-Dame,
where all further information can be obtained.”
Attracted by a certain kindliness concealed beneath these words, and
the middle-class air which exhaled from them, Godefroid had, on the
afternoon when we found him on the quay, called at four o’clock on the
grocer, who told him that Madame de la Chanterie was then dining,
and did not receive any one when at her meals. The lady, he said, was
visible in the evening after seven o’clock, or in the morning between
ten and twelve. While speaking, Monsieur Millet examined Godefroid,
and made him submit to what magistrates call the “first degree of
interrogation.”
“Was monsieur unmarried? Madame wished a person of regular habits; the
gate was closed at eleven at the latest. Monsieur certainly seemed of an
age to suit Madame de la Chanterie.”
“How old do you think me?” asked Godefroid.
“About forty!” replied the grocer.
This ingenuous answer threw the young man into a state of misanthropic
gloom. He went off and dined at a restaurant on the quai de la
Tournelle, and afterwards went to the parapet to contemplate Notre-Dame
at the moment when the fires of the setting sun were rippling and
breaking about the manifold buttresses of the apsis.
The young man was floating between the promptings of despair and
the moving voice of religious harmonies sounding in the bell of the
cathedral when, amid the shadows, the silence, the half-veiled light
of the moon, he heard the words of the priest. Though, like most of the
sons of our century, he was far from religious, his sensibilities were
touched by those words, and he returned to the rue Chanoinesse, although
he had almost made up his mind not to do so.
The priest and Godefroid were both surprised when they entered together
the rue Massilon, which is opposite to the small north portal of the
cathedral, and turned together into the rue Chanoinesse, at the point
where, towards the rue de la Colombe, it becomes the rue des Marmousets.
When Godefroid stopped before the arched portal of Madame de la
Chanterie’s house, the priest turned towards him and examined him by the
light of the hanging street-lamp, probably one of the last to disappear
from the heart of old Paris.
“Have you come to see Madame de la Chanterie, monsieur?” said the
priest.
“Yes,” replied Godefroid. “The words I heard you say to that workman
show me that, if you live here, this house must be salutary for the
soul.”
“Then you were a witness of my defeat,” said the priest, raising the
knocker of the door, “for I did not succeed.”
“I thought, on the contrary, it was the workman who did not succeed; he
demanded money energetically.”
“Alas!” replied the priest, “one of the great evils of revolutions in
France is that each offers a fresh premium to the ambitions of the lower
classes. To get out of his condition, to make his fortune (which is
regarded to-day as the only social standard), the working-man throws
himself into some of those monstrous associations which, if they do not
succeed, ought to bring the speculators to account before human justice.
This is what trusts often lead to.”
The porter opened a heavy door. The priest said to Godefroid: “Monsieur
has perhaps come about the little suite of rooms?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
The priest and Godefroid then crossed a wide courtyard, at the farther
end of which loomed darkly a tall house flanked by a square tower which
rose above the roof, and appeared to be in a dilapidated condition.
Whoever knows the history of Paris, knows that the soil before and
around the cathedral has been so raised that there is not a vestige now
of the twelve steps which formerly led up to it. To-day the base of the
columns of the porch is on a level with the pavement; consequently what
was once the ground-floor of the house of which we speak is now its
cellar. A portico, reached by a few steps, leads to the entrance of the
tower, in which a spiral stairway winds up round a central shaft carved
with a grape-vine. This style, which recalls the stairways of Louis XII.
at the chateau of Blois, dates from the fourteenth century. Struck by
these and other evidences of antiquity, Godefroid could not help saying,
with a smile, to the priest: “This tower is not of yesterday.”
“It sustained, they say, an assault of the Normans, and probably formed
part of the first palace of the kings of Paris; but, according to actual
tradition, it was certainly the dwelling of the famous Canon Fulbert,
the uncle of Heloise.”
As he ended these words, the priest opened the door of the apartment
which appeared now to be the ground-floor of the house, but was in
reality towards both the front and back courtyard (for there was a small
interior court) on the first floor.
In the antechamber a maid-servant, wearing a cambric cap with fluted
frills for its sole decoration, was knitting by the light of a little
lamp. She stuck her needles into her hair, held her work in her hand,
and rose to open the door of a salon which looked out on the inner
court. The dress of the woman was somewhat like that of the Sisters of
Mercy.
“Madame, I bring you a tenant,” said the priest, ushering Godefroid into
the salon, where the latter saw three persons sitting in armchairs near
Madame de la Chanterie.
These three persons rose; the mistress of the house rose; then, when the
priest had drawn up another armchair for Godefroid, and when the future
tenant had seated himself in obedience to a gesture of Madame de
la Chanterie, accompanied by the old-fashioned words, “Be seated,
monsieur,” the man of the boulevards fancied himself at some enormous
distance from Paris,--in lower Brittany or the wilds of Canada.
Silence has perhaps its own degrees. Godefroid, already penetrated with
the silence of the rues Massillon and Chanoinesse, where two carriages
do not pass in a month, and grasped by the silence of the courtyard and
the tower, may have felt that he had reached the very heart of silence
in this still salon, guarded by so many old streets, old courts, old
walls.
This part of the Ile, which is called “the Cloister,” has preserved the
character of all cloisters; it is damp, cold, and monastically silent
even at the noisiest hours of the day. It will be remarked, also, that
this portion of the Cite, crowded between the flank of Notre-Dame
and the river, faces the north, and is always in the shadow of the
cathedral. The east winds swirl through it unopposed, and the fogs
of the Seine are caught and retained by the black walls of the
old metropolitan church. No one will therefore be surprised at the
sensations Godefroid felt when he found himself in this old dwelling, in
presence of four silent human beings, who seemed as solemn as the things
which surrounded them.
He did not look about him, being seized with curiosity as to Madame
de la Chanterie, whose name was already a puzzle to him. This lady was
evidently a person of another epoch, not to say of another world. Her
face was placid, its tones both soft and cold; the nose aquiline; the
forehead full of sweetness; the eyes brown; the chin double; and all
were framed in silvery white hair. Her gown could only be called by its
ancient name of “fourreau,” so tightly was she sheathed within it, after
the fashion of the eighteenth century. The material--a brown silk, with
very fine and multiplied green lines--seemed also of that period. The
bodice, which was one with the skirt, was partly hidden beneath a mantle
of _poult-de-soie_ edged with black lace, and fastened on the bosom by a
brooch enclosing a miniature. Her feet, in black velvet boots, rested
on a cushion. Madame de la Chanterie, like her maid, was knitting a
stocking, and she, too, had a needle stuck through her white curls
beneath the lace of her cap.
“Have you seen Monsieur Millet?” she said to Godefroid, in the head
voice peculiar to the dowagers of the faubourg Saint-Germain, observing
that her visitor seemed confused, and as if to put the words into his
mouth.
“Yes, madame.”
“I fear that the apartment will scarcely suit you,” she said, noticing
the elegance and newness of his clothes.
Godefroid was wearing polished leather boots, yellow gloves, handsome
studs, and a very pretty gold chain passed through the buttonhole of his
waistcoat of black silk with blue flowers. Madame de la Chanterie took
a little silver whistle from her pocket and blew it. The serving-woman
came.
“Manon, my child, show this gentleman the apartment. Would you, my dear
vicar, be so kind as to accompany him?” she said, addressing the priest.
“If by chance,” she added, rising and again looking at Godefroid, “the
apartment suits you, we will talk of the conditions.”
Godefroid bowed and went out. He heard the rattle of keys which Manon
took from a drawer, and he saw her light the candle in a large brass
candlestick. Manon went first, without uttering a word. When Godefroid
found himself again on the staircase, winding up two flights, he
doubted the reality of life, he dreamed awake, he saw with his eyes the
fantastic world of romances he had read in his idle hours. Any Parisian
leaving, as he did, the modern quarter, with its luxury of houses and
furniture, the glitter of its restaurants and theatres, the tumult and
movement of the heart of Paris, would have shared his feeling.
The candle carried by the woman feebly lighted the winding stair, where
spiders swung their draperies gray with dust. Manon wore a petticoat
with heavy plaits of a coarse woollen stuff; the bodice was square
before and square behind, and all her clothes seemed to hang together.
When she reached the second floor, which, it will be remembered, was
actually the third, Manon stopped, turned a key in an ancient lock, and
opened a door painted in a coarse imitation of mahogany.
“This is it,” she said, entering first.
Was it a miser, was it an artist dying in penury, was it a cynic to whom
the world was naught, or some religious soul detached from life, who had
occupied this apartment? That triple question might well be asked by one
who breathed the odor of that poverty, who saw the greasy spots upon the
papers yellow with smoke, the blackened ceilings, the dusty windows with
their casement panes, the discolored floor-bricks, the wainscots layered
with a sort of sticky glaze. A damp chill came from the chimneys with
their mantels of painted stone, surmounted by mirrors in panels of the
style of the seventeenth century. The apartment was square, like the
house, and looked out upon the inner court, which could not now be seen
because of the darkness.
“Who has lived here?” asked Godefroid of the priest.
“A former councillor of the parliament, a great-uncle of madame,
Monsieur de Boisfrelon. After the Revolution he fell into dotage; but
he did not die until 1832, at the age of ninety-six. Madame could not at
first make up her mind to let his rooms to a stranger, but she finds she
cannot afford to lose the rent.”
“Madame will have the apartment cleaned and furnished in a manner to
satisfy monsieur,” said Manon.
“That will depend on the arrangement you make with her,” said the
priest. “You have here a fine parlor, a large sleeping-room and closet,
and those little rooms in the angle will make an excellent study. It
is the same arrangement as in my apartment below, also in the one
overhead.”
“Yes,” said Manon, “Monsieur Alain’s apartment is just like this, only
his has a view of the tower.”
“I think I had better see the rooms by daylight,” said Godefroid,
timidly.
“Perhaps so,” said Manon.
The priest and Godefroid went downstairs, leaving the woman to lock the
doors. When they re-entered the salon, Godefroid, who was getting inured
to the surroundings, looked about him while discoursing with Madame de
la Chanterie, and examined the persons and things there present.
The salon had curtains at its windows of old red damask, with
lambrequins, tied back at the sides with silken cords. The red-tiled
floor showed at the edges of an old tapestry carpet too small to cover
the whole room. The woodwork was painted gray. The plastered ceiling,
divided in two parts by a heavy beam which started from the fireplace,
seemed a concession tardily made to luxury. Armchairs, with their
woodwork painted white, were covered with tapestry. A paltry clock,
between two copper-gilt candlesticks, decorated the mantel-shelf. Beside
Madame de la Chanterie was an ancient table with spindle legs, on which
lay her balls of worsted in a wicker basket. A hydrostatic lamp lighted
the scene. The four men, who were seated there, silent, immovable, like
bronze statues, had evidently stopped their conversation with Madame de
la Chanterie when they heard the stranger returning. They all had cold,
discreet faces, in keeping with the room, the house, the quarter of the
town.
Madame de la Chanterie admitted the justice of Godefroid’s observations;
but told him that she did not wish to make any change until she knew the
intentions of her lodger, or rather her boarder. If he would conform to
the customs of the house he could become her boarder; but these customs
were widely different from those of Paris. Life in the rue Chanoinesse
was like provincial life: the lodger must always be in by ten o’clock at
night; they disliked noise; and could have no women or children to break
up their customary habits. An ecclesiastic might conform to these ways.
Madame de la Chanterie desired, above all, some one of simple life,
who would not be exacting; she could afford to put only the strictest
necessaries into the apartment. Monsieur Alain (here she designated
one of the four men present) was satisfied, and she would do for a new
tenant just as she did for the others.
“I do not think,” said the priest, “that monsieur is inclined to enter
our convent.”
“Eh! why not?” said Monsieur Alain; “we are all well off here; we have
nothing to complain of.”
“Madame,” said Godefroid, rising, “I shall have the honor of calling
again to-morrow.”
Though he was a young man, the four old men and Madame de la Chanterie
rose, and the vicar accompanied him to the portico. A whistle sounded.
At that signal the porter came with a lantern, guided Godefroid to the
street, and closed behind him the enormous yellow door,--ponderous as
that of a prison, and decorated with arabesque ironwork of a remote
period that was difficult to determine.
Though Godefroid got into a cabriolet, and was soon rolling into the
living, lighted, glowing regions of Paris, what he had seen still
appeared to him a dream, and his impressions, as he made his way along
the boulevard des Italiens, had already the remoteness of a memory. He
asked himself, “Shall I to-morrow find those people there?”