It was an inveterate habit of the Captain to spend much of his time at a
café. It was there that he satisfied at the same time the three vices
which reigned supreme in his heart--tobacco, absinthe, and cards. It was
thus that he passed his life, and he could have drawn a plan of all the
places where he had ever been stationed by their tobacco shops, cafés,
and military clubs. He never felt himself so thoroughly at ease as when
sitting on a worn velvet bench before a square of green cloth near a
heap of beer-mugs and saucers. His cigar never seemed good unless he
struck his match under the marble of the table, and he never failed,
after hanging his hat and his sabre on a hat-hook and settling himself
comfortably, by unloosing one or two buttons of his coat, to breathe a
profound sigh of relief, and exclaim,
"That is better!"
His first care was, therefore, to find an establishment which he could
frequent, and after having gone around the village without finding
anything that suited him, he stopped at last to regard with the eye of a
connoisseur the Café Prosper, situated at the corner of the Place du
Marché and the Rue de la Pavoisse.
It was not his ideal. Some of the details of the exterior were too
provincial: the waiter, in his black apron, for example, the little
stands in their green frames, the footstools, and the wooden tables
covered with waxed cloth. But the interior pleased the Captain. He was
delighted upon his entrance by the sound of the bell which was touched
by the fair and fleshy dame du comptoir, in her light dress, with a
poppy-colored ribbon in her sleek hair. He saluted her gallantly, and
believed that she sustained with sufficient majesty her triumphal place
between two piles of punch-bowls properly crowned by billiard-balls. He
ascertained that the place was cheerful, neat, and strewn evenly with
yellow sand. He walked around it, looking at himself in the glasses as
he passed; approved the panels where guardsmen and amazons were drinking
champagne in a landscape filled with red holly-hocks; called for his
absinthe, smoked, found the divan soft and the absinthe good, and was
indulgent enough not to complain of the flies who bathed themselves in
his glass with true rustic familiarity.
Eight days later he had become one of the pillars of the Café Prosper.
They soon learned his punctual habits and anticipated his wishes, while
he, in turn, lunched with the patrons of the place--a valuable recruit
for those who haunted the café, folks oppressed by the tedium of a
country life, for whom the arrival of that new-comer, past master in all
games, and an admirable raconteur of his wars and his loves, was a true
stroke of good-fortune. The Captain himself was delighted to tell his
stories to folks who were still ignorant of his repertoire. There were
fully six months before him in which to tell of his games, his feats,
his battles, the retreat of Constantine, the capture of Bou-Maza, and
the officers' receptions with the concomitant intoxication of rum-punch.
[Illustration]
Human weakness! He was by no means sorry, on his part, to be something
of an oracle; he from whom the sub-lieutenants, new-comers at Saint-Cyr,
fled dismayed, fearing his long stories.
[Illustration]
His usual auditors were the keeper of the café, a stupid and silent
beer-cask, always in his sleeved vest, and remarkable only for his
carved pipe; the bailiff, a scoffer, dressed invariably in black,
scorned for his inelegant habit of carrying off what remained of his
sugar; the town-clerk, the gentleman of acrostics, a person of much
amiability and a feeble constitution, who sent to the illustrated
journals solutions of enigmas and rebuses; and, lastly, the veterinary
surgeon of the place, the only one who, from his position of atheist and
democrat, was allowed to contradict the Captain. This practitioner, a
man with tufted whiskers and eye-glasses, presided over the radical
committee of electors, and when the curé took up a little collection
among his devotees for the purpose of adorning his church with some
frightful red and gilded statues, denounced, in a letter to the
_Siècle_, the cupidity of the Jesuits.
The Captain having gone out one evening for some cigars after an
animated political discussion, the aforesaid veterinary grumbled to
himself certain phrases of heavy irritation concerning "coming to the
point," and "a mere fencing-master," and "cutting a figure." But as the
object of these vague menaces suddenly returned, whistling a march and
beating time with his cane, the incident was without result.
In short, the group lived harmoniously together, and willingly permitted
themselves to be presided over by the new-comer, whose white beard and
martial bearing were quite impressive. And the small city, proud of so
many things, was also proud of its retired Captain.