Godefroid walked from the cloister of Notre-Dame to the avenue de
l’Observatoire in such a state of exaltation that he never noticed the
length of the way.
When he reached the rue Notre-Dame des Champs at the point where it
joins the rue de l’Ouest he was amazed to find (neither of these streets
being paved at the time of which we write) great mud-holes in that fine
open quarter. Persons walked on planks laid down beside the houses and
along the marshy gardens, or on narrow paths flanked on each side by
stagnant water which sometimes turned them into rivulets.
By dint of searching he found the house he wanted, but he did not
reach it without difficulty. It was evidently an abandoned factory. The
building was narrow and the side of it was a long wall with many windows
and no architectural decoration whatever. None of these windows, which
were square, were on the lower floor, where there was no opening but a
very miserable entrance-door.
Godefroid supposed that the proprietor had turned the building into a
number of small tenements to make it profitable, for a written placard
above the door stated that there were “Several rooms to let.” Godefroid
rang, but no one came. While he was waiting, a person who went by
pointed out to him that the house had another entrance on the boulevard
where he might get admittance.
Godefroid followed this advice and saw at the farther end of a little
garden which extended along the boulevard a second door to the house.
The garden, rather ill-kept, sloped downward, for there was enough
difference in level between the boulevard and the rue Notre-Dame des
Champs to make it a sort of ditch. Godefroid therefore walked along one
of the paths, at the end of which he saw an old woman whose dilapidated
garments were in keeping with the house.
“Was it you who rang at the other door?” she asked.
“Yes, madame. Do you show the lodgings?”
On the woman’s replying that she did, Godefroid inquired if the other
lodgers were quiet persons; his occupations, he said, were such that he
needed silence and peace; he was a bachelor and would be glad to arrange
with the portress to do his housekeeping.
On this suggestion the portress assumed a gracious manner.
“Monsieur has fallen on his feet in coming here, then,” she said;
“except on the Chaumiere days the boulevard is as lonely as the Pontine
marshes.”
“Ah! you know the Pontine marshes?” said Godefroid.
“No, monsieur, I don’t; but I’ve got an old gentleman upstairs whose
daughter seems to get her living by being ill, and he says that; I only
repeat it. The poor old man will be glad to know that monsieur likes
quiet, for a noisy neighbor, he thinks, would kill his daughter. On the
second floor we have two writers; they don’t come in till midnight, and
are off before eight in the morning. They say they are authors, but I
don’t know where or when they write.”
While speaking, the portress was showing Godefroid up one of those
horrible stairways of brick and wood so ill put together that it is
hard to tell whether the wood is trying to get rid of the bricks or the
bricks are trying to get away from the wood; the gaps between them
were partly filled up by what was dust in summer and mud in winter.
The walls, of cracked and broken plaster, presented to the eye more
inscriptions than the Academy of Belles-lettres has yet composed. The
portress stopped on the first landing.
“Here, monsieur, are two rooms adjoining each other and very clean,
which open opposite to those of Monsieur Bernard; that’s the old
gentleman I told you of,--quite a proper person. He is decorated; but
it seems he has had misfortunes, for he never wears his ribbon. They
formerly had a servant from the provinces, but they sent him away about
three years ago; and now the young son of the lady does everything,
housework and all.”
Godefroid made a gesture.
“Oh!” cried the Portress, “don’t you be afraid; they won’t say anything
to you; they never speak to any one. They came here after the Revolution
of July, in 1830. I think they’re provincial folk ruined by the change
of government; they are proud, I tell you! and dumb as fishes. For three
years, monsieur, I declare they have not let me do the smallest thing
for them for fear they should have to pay for it. A hundred sous on
New Year’s day, that’s all I get out of them. Talk to me of authors,
indeed!”
This gossip made Godefroid hope he should get some assistance out of the
woman, who presently said, while praising the healthfulness of the two
rooms she offered him, that she was not a portress, but the confidential
agent of the proprietor, for whom she managed many of the affairs of the
house.
“You may have confidence in me, monsieur, that you may! Madame Vauthier,
it is well known, would rather have nothing than a single penny that
ought to go to others.”
Madame Vauthier soon came to terms with Godefroid who would not take the
rooms unless he could have them by the single month and furnished. These
miserable rooms of students and unlucky authors were rented furnished
or unfurnished as the case might be. The vast garret which extended over
the whole building was filled with such furniture. But Monsieur Bernard,
she said, had furnished his own rooms.
In making Madame Vauthier talk, Godefroid discovered she had intended
to keep boarders in the building, but for the last five years had not
obtained a single lodger of that description. She lived herself on the
ground-floor facing towards the boulevard; and looked after the whole
house, by the help of a huge mastiff, a stout servant-girl, and a lad
who blacked the boots, took care of the rooms, and did the errands.
These two servants were, like herself, in keeping with the poverty of
the house, that of the tenants, and the wild and tangled look of the
garden. Both were children abandoned by their parents to whom the widow
gave food for wages,--and what food! The lad, whom Godefroid caught a
glimpse of, wore a ragged blouse and list slippers instead of shoes, and
sabots when he went out. With his tousled head, looking like a sparrow
when it takes a bath, and his black hands, he went to measure wood at a
wood-yard on the boulevard as soon as he had finished the morning work
of the house; and after his day’s labor (which ends in wood-yards at
half-past four in the afternoon) he returned to his domestic avocations.
He went to the fountain of the Observatoire for the water used in the
house, which the widow supplied to the tenants, together with bundles of
kindling, sawed and tied up by him.
Nepomucene, such was the name of the widow Vauthier’s slave, brought
the daily journal to his mistress. In summer the poor forsaken lad was
a waiter in the wine-shops at the barrier; and then his mistress dressed
him properly.
As for the stout girl, she cooked under direction of the widow, and
helped her in another department of industry during the rest of the day;
for Madame Vauthier had a business,--she made list shoes, which were
bought and sold by pedlers.
Godefroid learned all these details in about an hour’s time; for the
widow took him everywhere, and showed him the whole building, explaining
its transformation into a dwelling. Until 1828 it had been a nursery for
silk-worms, less for the silk than to obtain what they call the eggs.
Eleven acres planted with mulberries on the plain of Montrouge, and
three acres on the rue de l’Ouest, afterwards built over, had supplied
this singular establishment.
Just as the widow was explaining to Godefroid how Monsieur Barbet,
having lent money to an Italian named Fresconi, the manager of the
business, could recover his money only by foreclosing a mortgage on the
building and seizing the three acres on the rue Notre-Dame des Champs,
a tall, spare old man with snow-white hair appeared at the end of the
street which leads into the square of the rue de l’Ouest.
“Ah! here he comes, just in time!” cried the Vauthier; “that’s your
neighbor Monsieur Bernard. Monsieur Bernard!” she called out as soon as
the old man was within hearing; “you won’t be alone any longer; here is
a gentleman who has hired the rooms opposite to yours.”
Monsieur Bernard turned his eyes on Godefroid with an apprehension it
was easy to fathom; the look seemed to say: “The misfortune I feared has
come to pass.”
“Monsieur,” he said aloud, “do you intend to live here?”
“Yes, monsieur,” said Godefroid, honestly. “It is not a resort for the
fortunate of this earth and it is the least expensive place I can find
in the quarter. Madame Vauthier does not pretend to lodge millionnaires.
Adieu, for the present, my good Madame Vauthier, and have everything
ready for me at six o’clock this evening; I shall return punctually.”
Godefroid turned toward the square of the rue de l’Ouest, walking
slowly, for the anxiety depicted on the face of the tall old man made
him think that he would follow him and come to an explanation. And, in
fact, after an instant’s hesitation Monsieur Bernard turned round and
retraced his steps so as to overtake Godefroid.
“The old villain! he’ll prevent him from returning,” thought Madame
Vauthier; “that’s the second time he has played me the same trick.
Patience! patience! five days hence he owes his rent, and if he doesn’t
pay sharp up I’ll turn him out. Monsieur Barbet is a kind of a tiger
one mustn’t offend, and--But I would like to know what he’s telling him.
Felicite! Felicite, you great gawk! where are you?” cried the widow
in her rasping, brutal voice,--she had been using her dulcet tones to
Godefroid.
The servant-girl, stout, squint-eyed, and red-haired, ran out.
“Keep your eye on things, do you hear me? I shall be back in five
minutes.”
And Madame Vauthier, formerly cook to the publisher Barbet, one of
the hardest lenders of money by the week, slipped along behind her
two tenants so as to be able to overtake Godefroid as soon as his
conversation with Monsieur Bernard came to an end.
Monsieur Bernard walked slowly, like a man who is undecided, or like a
debtor seeking for excuses to placate a creditor who has just left him
with threats. Godefroid, though some distance in front, saw him
while pretending to look about and examine the locality. It was not,
therefore, till they reached the middle of the great alley of the garden
of the Luxembourg that Monsieur Bernard came up to the young man.
“Pardon me, monsieur,” said Monsieur Bernard, bowing to Godefroid, who
returned his bow. “A thousand pardons for stopping you without having
the honor of your acquaintance; but is it really your intention to take
lodgings in that horrible house you have just left?”
“But, monsieur--”
“Yes, yes,” said the old man, interrupting Godefroid, with a gesture of
authority. “I know that you may well ask me by what right I meddle in
your affairs and presume to question you. Hear me, monsieur; you are
young and I am old; I am older than my years, and they are sixty-seven;
people take me for eighty. Age and misfortunes justify many things; but
I will not make a plea of my whitened head; I wish to speak of yourself.
Do you know that this quarter in which you propose to live is deserted
by eight o’clock at night, and the roads are full of dangers, the least
of which is robbery? Have you noticed those wide spaces not yet built
upon, these fields, these gardens? You may tell me that I live here;
but, monsieur, I never go out after six o’clock. You may also remind me
of the two young men on the second floor, above the apartment you are
going to take. But, monsieur, those two poor men of letters are pursued
by creditors. They are in hiding; they are away in the daytime and
only return at night; they have no reason to fear robbers or assassins;
besides, they always go together and are armed. I myself obtained
permission from the prefecture of police that they should carry arms.”
“Monsieur,” said Godefroid, “I am not afraid of robbers, for the same
reasons that make those gentlemen invulnerable; and I despise life
so heartily that if I were murdered by mistake I should bless the
murderer!”
“You do not look to me very unhappy,” said the old man, examining
Godefroid.
“I have, at the most, enough to get me bread to live on; and I have come
to this place, monsieur, because of its silent neighborhood. May I ask
you what interest you have in driving me away?”
The old man hesitated; he saw Madame Vauthier close behind them.
Godefroid, who examined him attentively, was astonished at the degree of
thinness to which grief, perhaps hunger, perhaps toil, had reduced him.
There were signs of all those causes upon that face, where the parched
skin clung to the bones as if it had been burned by the sun of Africa.
The dome of the forehead, high and threatening, overshadowed a pair
of steel-blue eyes,--two cold, hard, sagacious, penetrating eyes, like
those of savages, surrounded by a black and wrinkled circle. The large
nose, long and very thin, and the prominent chin, gave the old man a
strong resemblance to the well-known mask popularly ascribed to Don
Quixote; but a wicked Don Quixote, without illusions,--a terrible Don
Quixote.
And yet the old man, in spite of this general aspect of severity,
betrayed the weakness and timidity which indigence imparts to all
unfortunates. These two emotions seemed to have made crevices in
that solidly constructed face which the pickaxe of poverty was daily
enlarging. The mouth was eloquent and grave; in that feature Don Quixote
was complicated with Montesquieu’s president.
His clothing was entirely of black cloth, but cloth that was white at
the seams. The coat, of an old-fashioned cut, and the trousers, showed
various clumsy darns. The buttons had evidently just been renewed. The
coat, buttoned to the chin, showed no linen; and the cravat, of a rusty
black, hid the greater part of a false collar. These clothes, worn for
many years, smelt of poverty. And yet the lofty air of this mysterious
old man, his gait, the thought that dwelt on his brow and was manifest
in his eyes, excluded the idea of pauperism. An observer would have
hesitated how to class him.
Monsieur Bernard seemed so absorbed that he might have been taken for
a teacher employed in that quarter of the city, or for some learned man
plunged in exacting and tyrannical meditation. Godefroid, in any case,
would have felt a curiosity which his present mission of benevolence
sharpened into powerful interest.
“Monsieur,” continued the old man, “if I were sure that you are really
seeking silence and seclusion, I should say take those rooms near mine.”
He raised his voice so that Madame Vauthier, who was now passing them,
could hear him. “Take those rooms. I am a father, monsieur. I have only
a daughter and a grandson to enable me to bear the miseries of life.
Now, my daughter needs silence and absolute tranquillity. All those
persons who, so far, have looked at the rooms you are now considering,
have listened to the reasons and the entreaties of a despairing father.
It was indifferent to them whether they lived in one house or another
of a quarter so deserted that plenty of lodgings can be had for a low
price. But I see in you a fixed determination, and I beg you, monsieur,
not to deceive me. Do you really desire a quiet life? If not, I shall be
forced to move and go beyond the barrier, and the removal may cost me my
daughter’s life.”
If the man could have wept, the tears would have covered his cheeks
while he spoke; as it was, they were, to use an expression now become
vulgar, “in his voice.” He covered his forehead with his hand, which was
nothing but bones and muscle.
“What is your daughter’s illness?” asked Godefroid, in a persuasive and
sympathetic voice.
“A terrible disease to which physicians give various names, but it has,
in truth, no name. My fortune is lost,” he added, with one of those
despairing gestures made only by the wretched. “The little money that I
had,--for in 1830 I was cast from a high position,--in fact, all that I
possessed, was soon used by on my daughter’s illness; her mother, too,
was ruined by it, and finally her husband. To-day the pension I receive
from the government barely suffices for the actual necessities of my
poor, dear, saintly child. The faculty of tears has left me; I have
suffered tortures. Monsieur, I must be granite not to have died. But
no, God had kept alive the father that the child might have a nurse, a
providence. Her poor mother died of the strain. Ah! you have come, young
man, at a moment when the old tree that never yet has bent feels the
axe--the axe of poverty, sharpened by sorrow--at his roots. Yes, here am
I, who never complain, talking to you of this illness so as to prevent
you from coming to the house; or, if you still persist, to implore you
not to trouble our peace. Monsieur, at this moment my daughter barks
like a dog, day and night.”
“Is she insane?” asked Godefroid.
“Her mind is sound; she is a saint,” replied the old man. “You will
presently think I am mad when I tell you all. Monsieur, my only child,
my daughter was born of a mother in excellent health. I never in my life
loved but one woman, the one I married. I married the daughter of one of
the bravest colonels of the Imperial guard, Tarlowski, a Pole, formerly
on the staff of the Emperor. The functions that I exercised in my high
position demanded the utmost purity of life and morals; but I have never
had room in my heart for many feelings, and I faithfully loved my wife,
who deserved such love. I am a father in like manner as I was a husband,
and that is telling you all in one word. My daughter never left her
mother; no child has ever lived more chastely, more truly a Christian
life than my dear daughter. She was born more than pretty, she was
born most beautiful; and her husband, a young man of whose morals I was
absolutely sure,--he was the son of a friend of mine, the judge of one
of the Royal courts,--did not in any way contribute to my daughter’s
illness.”
Godefroid and Monsieur Bernard made an involuntary pause, and looked at
each other.
“Marriage, as you know, sometimes changes a young woman greatly,”
resumed the old man. “The first pregnancy passed well and produced a
son, my grandson, who now lives with us, the last scion of two families.
The second pregnancy was accompanied by such extraordinary symptoms
that the physicians, much astonished, attributed them to the caprice
of phenomena which sometimes manifest themselves in this state, and are
recorded by physicians in the annals of science. My daughter gave birth
to a dead child; in fact, it was twisted and smothered by internal
movements. The disease had begun, the pregnancy counted for nothing.
Perhaps you are a student of medicine?”
Godefroid made a sign which answered as well for affirmation as for
negation.
“After this terrible confinement,” resumed Monsieur Bernard,--“so
terrible and laborious that it made a violent impression on my
son-in-law and began the mortal melancholy of which he died,--my
daughter, two or three months later, complained of a general weakness
affecting, particularly, her feet, which she declared felt like
cottonwood. This debility changed to paralysis,--and what a paralysis!
My daughter’s feet and legs can be bent or twisted in any way and she
does not feel it. The limbs are there, apparently without blood or
muscles or bones. This affection, which is not connected with anything
known to science, spread to the arms and hands, and we then supposed
it to be a disease of the spinal cord. Doctors and remedies only made
matters worse until at last my poor daughter could not be moved without
dislocating either the shoulders, the arms, or the knees. I kept an
admirable surgeon almost constantly in the house, who, with the doctor,
or doctors (for many came out of interest in the case), replaced the
dislocated limbs,--sometimes, would you believe it monsieur? three and
four times a day! Ah!--This disease has so many forms that I forgot to
tell you that during the first period of weakness, before the paralysis
began, the strangest signs of catalepsy appeared--you know what
catalepsy is. She remained for days with her eyes wide open, motionless,
in whatever position she was when the attack seized her. The worst
symptoms of that strange affection were shown, even those of lockjaw.
This phase of her illness suggested to me the idea of employing
magnetism, and I was about to do so when the paralysis began. My
daughter, monsieur, has a miraculous clear-sightedness; her soul has
been the theatre of all the wonders of somnambulism, just as her body
has been that of all diseases.”
Godefroid began to ask himself if the old man were really sane.
“So that I,” continued Monsieur Bernard paying no attention to the
expression in Godefroid’s eyes, “even I, a child of the eighteenth
century, fed on Voltaire, Diderot, Helvetius,--I, a son of the
Revolution, who scoff at all that antiquity and the middle-ages tell
us of demoniacal possession,--well, monsieur, I affirm that nothing but
such possession can explain the condition of my child. As a somnambulist
she has never been able to tell us the cause of her sufferings; she has
never perceived it, and all the remedies she has proposed when in
that state, though carefully carried out, have done her no good. For
instance, she wished to be wrapped in the carcass of a freshly killed
pig; then she ordered us to run the sharp points of ret-hot magnets into
her legs; and to put hot sealing-wax on her spine--”
Godefroid looked at him in amazement.
“And then! what endless other troubles, monsieur! her teeth fell out;
she became deaf, then dumb; and then, after six months of absolute
dumbness, utter deafness, speech and hearing have returned to her! She
recovered, just as capriciously as she had lost, the use of her hands.
But her feet have continued in the same hapless condition for the last
seven years. She has shown marked and well-characterized symptoms of
hydrophobia. Not only does the sight of water, the sound of water, the
presence of a glass or a cup fling her at times into a state of fury,
but she barks like a dog, that melancholy bark, or rather howl, a dog
utters when he hears an organ. Several times we have thought her dying,
and the priests had administered the last sacraments; but she has always
returned to life to suffer with her full reason and the most absolute
clearness of mind; for her faculties of heart and soul are still
untouched. Though she has lived, monsieur, she has caused the deaths
of her mother and her husband, who have not been able to endure the
suffering of such scenes. Alas! monsieur, those distressing scenes are
becoming worse. All the natural functions are perverted; the Faculty
alone can explain the strange aberration of the organs. She was in this
state when I brought her from the provinces to Paris in 1829, because
the two or three distinguished doctors to whom I wrote, Desplein,
Bianchon, and Haudry, thought from my letters that I was telling them
fables. Magnetism was then energetically denied by all the schools of
medicine, and without saying that they doubted either my word or that of
the provincial doctors, they said we could not have observed thoroughly,
or else we had been misled by the exaggeration which patients are apt to
indulge in. But they were forced to change their minds when they saw my
daughter; and it is to the phenomena they then observed that the great
researches made in these latter days are owing; for I must tell you that
they class my daughter’s singular state as a form of neurosis. At the
last consultation of these gentlemen they decided to stop all medicines,
to let nature alone and study it. Since then I have had but one doctor,
and he is the doctor who attends the poor of this quarter. We do nothing
for her now but alleviate pain, for we know not the cause of it.”
Here the old man stopped as if overcome with his harrowing confidence.
“For the last five years,” he continued, “my daughter alternates between
revivals and relapses, but no new phenomena have appeared. She suffers
more or less from the varied nervous attacks I have briefly described
to you, but the paralysis of the legs and the derangement of the natural
functions are constant. The poverty into which we fell, and which alas!
is only increasing, obliged me to leave the rooms that I took, in 1829,
in the faubourg du Roule. My daughter cannot endure the fatigue of
moving; I came near losing her when I brought her to Paris, and again
when I removed her to this house. Here my worst financial misfortunes
have come upon me. After thirty years in the public service I was made
to wait four years before my pension was granted. I have only received
it during the last six months and even then the new government has
sternly cut it down to the minimum.”
Godefroid made a gesture of surprise which seemed to ask for a more
complete confidence. The old man so understood it, for he answered
immediately, casting a reproachful glance to heaven:--
“I am one of the thousand victims of political reaction. I conceal
my name because it is the mark for many a revenge. If the lessons of
experience were not always wasted from one generation to another I
should warn you, young man, never to adopt the sternness of any policy.
Not that I regret having done my duty; my conscience is perfectly clear
on that score; but the powers of to-day have not that solidarity which
formerly bound all governments together as governments, no matter how
different they might be; if to-day they reward zealous agents it is
because they are afraid of them. The instrument they have used, no
matter how faithful it has been, is, sooner or later, cast aside. You
see in me one of the firmest supporters of the government of the elder
branch of the Bourbons, as I was later of the Imperial power; yet here I
am in penury! Since I am too proud to beg, they have never dreamed that
I suffer untold misery. Five days ago, monsieur, the doctor who takes
care of my daughter, or rather I should say, observes her, told me that
he was unable to cure a disease the forms of which varied perpetually.
He says that neurotic patients are the despair of science, for
the causes of their conditions are only to be found in some as yet
unexplored system. He advised me to have recourse to a physician who has
been called a quack; but he carefully pointed out that this man was a
stranger, a Polish Jew, a refugee, and that the Parisian doctors were
extremely jealous of certain wonderful cures he had made, and also of
the opinion expressed by many that he is very learned and extremely
able. Only, Dr. Berton says, he is very exacting and overbearing. He
selects his patients, and will not allow an instant of his time to be
wasted; and he is--a communist! His name is Halpersohn. My grandson has
been twice to find him, but he is always too busy to attend to him; he
has not been to see us; I fully understand why.”
“Why?” asked Godefroid.
“Because my grandson, who is sixteen years old, is even more shabbily
dressed than I am. Would you believe it, monsieur? I _dare_ not go to
that doctor; my clothes are so out of keeping with a man of my age and
dignity. If he saw the father as shabby as I am, and the boy even worse,
he might not give my daughter the needful attention; he would treat us
as doctors treat the poor. And think, my dear monsieur, that I love my
daughter for all the suffering she has caused me, just as I used to
love her for the joys I had in her. She has become angelic. Alas! she is
nothing now but a soul, a soul which beams upon her son and me; the body
no longer exists; she has conquered suffering. Think what a spectacle
for a father! The whole world, to my daughter, is within the walls of
her room. I keep it filled with flowers, for she loves them. She reads
a great deal; and when she has the use of her hands she works like a
fairy. She has no conception of the horrible poverty to which we are
reduced. This makes our household way of life so strange, so eccentric,
that we cannot admit visitors. Do you now understand me, monsieur? Can
you not see how impossible a neighbor is? I should have to ask for
so much forbearance from him that the obligation would be too heavy.
Besides, I have no time for friends; I educate my grandson, and I have
so much other work to do that I only sleep three, or at most four hours
at night.”
“Monsieur,” said Godefroid, who had listened patiently, observing the
old man with sorrowful attention, “I will be your neighbor, and I will
help you.”
A scornful gesture, even an impatient one, escaped the old man, for he
was one who believed in nothing good in human nature.
“I will help you,” pursued Godefroid, taking his hand, “but in my own
way. Listen to me. What do you mean to make of your grandson?”
“He is soon to enter the Law school. I am bringing him up to the bar.”
“Then he will cost you six hundred francs a year.”
The old man made no reply.
“I myself,” continued Godefroid after a pause, “have nothing, but I may
be able to do much. I will obtain the Polish doctor for you. And if your
daughter is curable she shall be cured. We will find some way of paying
Halpersohn.”
“Oh! if my daughter be cured I will make a sacrifice I can make but
once,” cried the old man. “I will sell the pear I have kept for a
thirsty day.”
“You shall keep the pear--”
“Oh, youth! youth!” exclaimed Monsieur Bernard, shaking his head.
“Adieu, monsieur; or rather, au revoir. This is the hour for the
Library, and as my books are all sold I am obliged to go there every day
to do my work. I shall bear in mind the kindness you express, but I must
wait and see whether you will grant us the consideration I must ask from
my neighbor. That is all I expect of you.”
“Yes, monsieur, let me be your neighbor; for, I assure you, Barbet is
not a man to allow the rooms to be long unrented, and you might have far
worse neighbors than I. I do not ask you to believe in me, only to let
me be useful to you.”
“What object have you?” said the old man, preparing to go down the steps
from the cloister of the Chartreux which leads from the great alley of
the Luxembourg to the rue d’Enfer.
“Did you never, in your public functions, oblige any one?”
The old man looked at Godefroid with frowning brows; his eyes were
full of memories, like a man who turns the leaves of his book of life,
seeking for the action to which he owed this gratitude; then he turned
away coldly, with a bow, full of doubt.
“Well, for a first investigation I did not frighten him too much,”
thought Godefroid.