[Illustration: A VOLUNTARY DEATH]
I knew the poet Louis Miraz very well, in the old times in the Latin
Quarter, where we used to take our meals together at a crémerie on the
Rue de Seine, kept by an old Polish woman whom we nicknamed the Princess
Chocolawska, on account of the enormous bowl of créme and chocolate
which she exposed daily in the show-window of her shop. It was possible
to dine there for ten sous, with "two breads," an "ordinaire for thirty
centimes," and a "small coffee."
Some who were very nice spent a sou more for a napkin.
Besides some young men who were destined to become geniuses, the
ordinary guests of the crémerie were some poor compatriots of the
proprietress, who had all to some extent commanded armies. There was,
above all, an imposing and melancholy old fellow with a white beard,
whose old befrogged cloak, shabby boots, and old hat, which looked as if
snails had crawled over it, presented a poem of misery, and whom the
other Poles treated with a marked respect, for he had been a dictator
for three days.
It was, moreover, at the Princess Chocolawska's that I knew a singular
fool, who gained his bread by giving German lessons, and declared
himself a convert to Buddhism. On the mantle of the miserable room,
where he lived with a milliner of Saint-Germain, was enthroned an ugly
little Buddha in jade, fixing his hypnotized eyes on his navel, and
holding his great toes in his hands. The German professor accorded to
the idol the most profound veneration, but on the epoch of quarter-day
he was sometimes forced to carry him to the Mont-de-piété, upon which
he fell into a state of sombre chagrin, and did not recover his serenity
until he was able to make amends for his impious act. He never failed,
moreover, to renew his avowals in prosperous times, and finally to take
his god out of pawn.
As to Louis Miraz, he had the deep eyes, the pale complexion, and the
long and dishevelled hair of all those young men who come to town in
third-class carriages to conquer glory, who spend more for midnight oil
than for beefsteaks, and who, rich already with some manuscripts, have
thrown out to great Paris from the height of some hill in its environs
the classic defiance of Rastignac. At that time my hair was archaic
enough in length to grease the collar of my coat. Thus we were made to
understand each other, and Louis Miraz soon took me to his attic-room in
the Rue des Quatre-Vents, where he dragged two thousand alexandrines
over me.
[Illustration]
Seriously, they were fresh and charming verses, with the inspiration of
spring-tide, having the perfume of the first lilacs, and _Forest Birds_
(the title of that collection of poems which Louis Miraz published a
little while after he read them to me) will retain a place among the
volumes in the first rank of belles-lettres, by the side of those poets
of a single book--of the Daudet of the Amoureuses, for example.
For Miraz wrote no more verse. A young eaglet seeking the upper air, he
made his eyrie on the summit of Montmartre, and for quite a while we
lost sight of him. Then I found his name again in Sunday journals and
reviews, when he began to write those short and exquisite sketches which
have made his reputation. Thus five years passed, when I met him one day
in the editor's office of a journal for which I worked.
* * * * *
Each of us was as much pleased as the other at thus meeting again; and
after the first "What, is that you? Is that you?" we stood facing each
other, shaking hands, and exposing, in a laugh of cordial delight, our
teeth, which in old times we used to exercise on the same crust of
poverty. He had not changed. He had not even sacrificed his long hair,
which he threw back with the graceful movement of a horse who tosses his
mane. Only he had the clear complexion and calm eye of a contented man,
and his slim figure was clad in most fashionable costume.
"We won't drift apart again, will we?" said he, affectionately, taking
me by the arm; and he led me out in the boulevard, where the April sun
gilded the young leaves of the plane-trees.
Ah, happy day! How we exhausted the "Don't you remembers?" "Do you
remember the fried eggs which tasted of straw, and the dreadful
rice-milk of the Princess Chocolawska? and the melancholy air of the old
dictator? and the German who used to pawn his god every three months?"
At last those days of hardship were finished. He had from afar applauded
my success, as I had watched his. But one thing I did not know, and that
was that he had married a woman whom he adored, and that he had a
charming little girl.
"Come and see them; you shall dine with me."
I let myself be persuaded, and he carried me down to the Enclos des
Ternes, where he lived in a cottage among the trees. There everything
made you welcome. No sooner had we opened the door of the garden than a
young dog frisked about our feet.
"Down, Gavroche! He will soil your clothes."
But at the sound of the bell Madame Miraz appeared at the steps with her
little daughter in her arms. An imposing and beautiful blond, her
well-moulded figure wrapped in a blue gown.
"Put on a plate more. I've an old comrade with me."
And the happy father, keeping his hat on his head and carrying his
little girl, showed me all over his establishment--the dining-room,
brightened by light bits of faience, the study, abounding in books, with
its window opening out on the green turf, so that a puff of wind had
strewn with rose-leaves the printer's proofs which were scattered on the
table.
"This is only a beginning, you know. It wasn't so long ago that we were
working for three sous a line."
And while I luxuriated under a blossoming Judas-tree which I saw in the
garden, Miraz, at ease in his home, had slipped into his working-vest,
put on his slippers, and, lying on his sofa, caught little Helen in his
arms to toss her in the air--"Houp la! Houp la!"
I do not remember ever to have had a more perfect impression of
contentment. We dined pleasantly--two good courses, that was all; a
dinner without pretence, where we served ourselves with the pepper-mill.
The charming Madame Miraz presided with her bright smile, having her
child by her side in a high-chair. She spoke but little, but her sweet
and intelligent attention followed our light and paradoxical chat, the
good-humored fooling of men of letters; and at the dessert she took a
rose from the bouquet which ornamented the table, and placed it in her
hair near her ear with a supreme grace. She was indeed that lovely and
silent friend whom a dreamer requires.
We took our coffee in the study--they intended to furnish the salon very
soon with the price of a story to be published by Levy--then, as the
evening was cool, a fire of sticks and twigs was built, and while we
smoked, Miraz and I, recalling old memories, the mistress of the house,
holding on her knees little Helen, now ready for bed, made her repeat
"Our Father" and "Hail Mary," which the little one lisped, rubbing her
little feet together before the warm flame.
* * * * *
We saw each other again, often at first, then less frequently, the
difficult and complicated life of literary labor taking us each his own
way. So the years passed. We met, shook hands. "Everything going well?"
"Splendidly." And that was all. Then, later, I found the name of Louis
Miraz but rarely in the journals and periodicals. "Happy man; he is
resting," I said to myself, remembering that he was spoken of as having
made a small fortune. Finally, last autumn, I learned that he was
seriously ill.
I hurried to see him. He still lived at the Enclos des Ternes; but on
this sombre day of the last of November the little house seemed cold,
and looked naked among the leafless trees. It seemed to me shrunken and
diminished, like everything that we have not seen for a long time.
The dog was probably dead, for his bark no longer answered the sound of
the bell when I passed the little gate and entered the garden, all
strewn with dead leaves where the night's frost had withered the last
chrysanthemums.
It was not Madame Miraz--she was absent--it was Helen who received me,
Helen, who had grown to be a great girl of fourteen, with an awkward
manner. She opened for me the door of her father's study, and brusquely
lifting her great black eyelashes, turned on me a timid and distressed
glance.
I found Miraz huddled in an easy-chair in the corner of the fireplace,
wrapped in a sort of bed-gown, with gray locks streaking his long hair;
and by the cold, clammy hand which he reached towards me, by the pallid
face which he turned upon me, I knew that he was lost. Horrible! I found
in my unhappy comrade that worn and ruined look which used to strike us
formerly among the poor Poles of the crémerie.
[Illustration]
"Ah, well, old man, things are not going well?"
"Deucedly bad, my boy," he answered, with a heart-breaking smile. "I am
going out stupidly with consumption, as they do in the fifth act, you
know, when the venerable doctor, with a head like Béranger, feels the
first walking gentleman's pulse, and lifts his eyes towards heaven,
saying, 'The death-struggle approaches!' Only the difference is that
with me it continues; it will not conclude, the death-struggle. Smoke
away; that doesn't disturb me," he added, seeing me put my cigar one
side, his cough sounding like a death-rattle.
I tried to find encouraging words. I talked with him, holding him by the
hand and patting him affectionately on the shoulder; but my voice had in
my own ears the empty hollowness of deceit, and Miraz, looking at me,
seemed to pity my efforts.