"Look," said he, pointing to his table; "see my work-bench. For six
months I have not been able to write."
It was true. Nothing could be more sad than that heap of papers covered
with dust, and in an old Roman plate there was a bundle of pens, crusted
with ink, and like those trophies of rusty foils which hang on the walls
of old fencers.
I made a new attempt to revive him. Die! at his age. Nonsense! He wasn't
taking care of himself. He must pass the winter in the South, drink a
good draught of sunlight. He could. He was easy in his money matters.
But he stopped me, putting his hand on my arm.
"Listen," he said, gravely, "we have seen each other seldom, but you are
my oldest, perhaps my best, friend. You have proved me pen in hand.
Well, I am going to tell you something in confidence, for you to keep to
yourself, unless it may serve on some occasion to discourage the young
literary aspirants who bring their manuscripts to you--always a
praiseworthy action. Yes, I have been successful. Yes, I have been paid
a franc a line. Yes, I have made money, and there in that drawer are a
certain number of yellow, green, and red papers from which a bit is
clipped every six months, and which represent three or four thousand
francs of income. It is rare in our profession, and to gain that poor
hoard I have been obliged--I, a poet--to imitate the unsociable virtues
of a bourgeois, know how to deny a jewel to my wife, a dress to my
daughter. At last I have that money. And I often said to myself, if I
should die their bread is assured, and here is a little marriage portion
for Helen! And I was content--I was proud!--for I know them, the stories
of our widows and our orphans, the fourpenny help of the government, the
tobacco shops for six hundred francs in the province, and, if the
daughter is intelligent and pretty like mine, the dramatic author, an
old friend of the father, who advises her to enter the Conservatoire,
and who makes of her--mercy of God! that shall never be. But for all
that, my boy, it is necessary that I should not linger. Sickness is
expensive, and already it has been necessary to sell one or two bonds
from that drawer. To seek the sunlight, as you suggest, to bask like a
lizard at Cannes or at Menton, one more bond must go, and there would
not be enough to last to the end, if I should wait for seven or eight
years more, now that I can no longer write. Happily, there is nothing to
fear. But what I have suffered since I have been incapable of writing,
and have felt my hoard of gold shrink and diminish in my hand like the
Magic Skin of Balzac, is frightful. Now you understand me, do you not?
and you will no longer bid me take care of myself. No; if you still pray
to God, ask him to send me speedily to the undertaker's."
* * * * *
Fifteen days later some thirty of us followed the hearse which carried
Louis Miraz to the Cemetery Montmartre. It had snowed the day before,
and Doctor Arnould, the old frequenter of painters' studios, the friend
and physician of the dead man, walking behind me, called in his brusque
voice,
"Very commonplace, but always terrible the contrast: a burial in the
snow--black on white. The Funeral of the Poor, by the late Vigneron,
isn't to be ridiculed. Brr!"
At last we came to the edge of the grave. The place and the time were
sad. Under a cloudy sky the little yew-trees, swayed by the wind, threw
down their burdens of melted snow. The by-standers had formed a circle,
and were watching the grave-diggers, who were lowering the coffin by
cords. Near a cross-bearer, whose short surplice permitted the bottom of
his trousers to be seen, the priest waited with a finger in his book;
and, having grasped the rim of his hat under his left arm, the orator of
the Society of Men of Letters already held in his black-gloved hand the
funeral oration, hastily patched up by the aid of a comrade over a
couple of glasses at the corner of a café table.
Suddenly, as the priest began his Latin prayers, Doctor Arnould seized
me by the arm and whispered in my ear,
"You know that he killed himself?"
I looked at him with astonishment. But he pointed to the group in black,
composed of Madame Miraz and her daughter, who were sobbing under their
long veils and clasping each other in a tragic embrace, and he added,
"For them. Yes, for six months he threw all his medicines in the fire,
and designedly committed all sorts of imprudences. He confessed it to me
before his death. I had not understood it at all--I, who had expected to
prolong his life at least three years by creosote. At last the other
night, when it was freezing cold, he left his window open, as if by
forgetfulness, and was taken with bleeding at the lungs. Yes, that he
might leave bread for those two women. The curé does not dream that he
is blessing a suicide. But what of it, my good fellow? Miraz is in the
paradise of the brave. The details of such a death. Eh? It is tougher
than the passage of the Bridge of Arcole."
[Illustration]