THAT TERRIBLE MÜLLER.
La petite Marie broke off at the sound of our oars, and blushed a
becoming rose-color.
"Will these ladies do us the honor of letting us row them back to
Courbevoie?" said Müller, running our boat close in against the sedges,
and pulling off his hat as respectfully as if they were duchesses.
Mademoiselle Marie repeated the invitation to her aunt, who accepted it
at once.
"_Très volontiers, très volontiers, messieurs_" she said, smiling and
nodding. "We have rambled out so far--so far! And I am not as young as I
was forty years ago. _Ah, mon Dieu_! how my old bones ache! Give me thy
hand, Marie, and thank the gentlemen for their politeness."
So Mam'selle Marie helped her aunt to rise, and we steadied the boat
close under the bank, at a point where the interlacing roots of a couple
of sallows made a kind of natural step by means of which they could
easily get down.
"Oh, dear! dear! it will not turn over, will it, my dear young man?
_Ciel_! I am slipping ... Ah, _Dieu, merci_!--Marie, _mon cher enfant_,
pray be careful not to jump in, or you will upset us all!"
And _ma tante_, somewhat tremulous from the ordeal of embarking, settled
down in her place, while Müller lifted Mam'selle Marie into the boat, as
if she had been a child. I then took the oars, leaving him to steer; and
so we pursued our way towards Courbevoie.
"Mam'selle has of course seen the fair?" said Müller, from behind the
old lady's back.
"No, monsieur,"
"No! Is it possible?"
"There was so much crowd, monsieur, and such a noise ... we were quite
too much afraid to venture in."
"Would you be afraid, mam'selle, to venture with me?"
"I--I do not know, monsieur."
"Ah, mam'selle, you might be very sure that I would take good care of
you!"
"_Mais ... monsieur_"...
"These gentlemen, I see, have been angling," said the old lady,
addressing me very graciously. "Have you caught many fish?"
"None at all, madame!" I replied, loudly.
"_Tiens_! so many as that?"
"_Pardon_, madame," I shouted at the top of my voice. "We have caught
nothing--nothing at all."
_Ma tante_ smiled blandly.
"Ah, yes," she said; "and you will have them cooked presently for
dinner, _n'est-ce pas_? There is no fish so fresh, and so well-flavored,
as the fish of our own catching."
"Will madame and mam'selle do us the honor to taste our fish and share
our modest dinner?" said Müller, leaning forward in his seat in the
stern, and delivering his invitation close into the old lady's ear.
To which _ma tante_, with a readiness of hearing for which no one would
have given her credit, replied:--
"But--but monsieur is very polite--if we should not be inconveniencing
these gentlemen"....
"We shall be charmed, madame--we shall be honored!"
"_Eh bien!_ with pleasure, then--Marie, my child, thank the gentlemen
for their amiable invitation."
I was thunderstruck. I looked at Müller to see if he had suddenly gone
out of his senses. Mam'selle Marie, however, was infinitely amused.
"_Fi donc!_ monsieur," she said. "You have no fish. I heard the other
gentleman say so."
"The other gentleman, mam'selle," replied Müller, "is an Englishman, and
troubled with the spleen. You must not mind anything he says."
Troubled with the spleen! I believe myself to be as even-tempered and as
ready to fall in with a joke as most men; but I should have liked at
that moment to punch Franz Müller's head. Gracious heavens! into what a
position he had now brought us! What was to be done? How were we to get
out of it? It was now just seven; and we had already been upon the water
for more than an hour. What should we have to pay for the boat? And when
we had paid for the boat, how much money should we have left to pay for
the dinner? Not for our own dinners--ah, no! For _ma tante's_ dinner
(and _ma tante_ had a hungry eye) and for _la petite_ Marie's dinner;
and _la petite_ Marie, plump, rosy, and well-liking, looked as if she
might have a capital appetite upon occasion! Should we have as much as
two and a half francs? I doubted it. And then, in the absence of a
miracle, what could we do with two and a half francs, if we had them? A
miserable sum!--convertible, perhaps, into as much bouilli, bread and
cheese, and thin country wine as might have satisfied our own hunger in
a prosaic and commonplace way; but for four persons, two of
them women!...
And this was not the worst of it. I thought I knew Müller well enough by
this time to feel that he would entirely dismiss this minor
consideration of ways and means; that he would order the dinner as
recklessly as if we had twenty francs apiece in our pockets; and that he
would not only order it, but eat it and preside at it with all the
gayety and audacity in life.
Then would come the horrible retribution of the bill!
I felt myself turn red and hot at the mere thought of it.
Then a dastardly idea insinuated itself into my mind. I had my
return-ticket in my waistcoat-pocket:--what if I slipped away presently
to the station and went back to Paris by the next train, leaving my
clever friend to improvise his way out of his own scrape as best
he could?
In the meanwhile, as I was rowing with the stream, we soon got back to
Courbevoie.
"_Are_ you mad?" I said, as, having landed the ladies, Müller and I
delivered up the boat to its owner.
"Didn't I admit it, two or three hours ago?" he replied. "I wonder you
don't get tired, _mon cher_, of asking the same question so often."
"Four francs, fifty centimes, Messieurs," said the boatman, having made
fast his boat to the landing-place.
"Four francs, fifty centimes!" I echoed, in dismay.
Even Müller looked aghast.
"My good fellow," he said, "do you take us for coiners?"
"Hire of boat, two francs the hour. These gentlemen have been out
nearly one hour and a half--three francs. Hire of bait and
fishing-tackle, one franc fifty. Total, four francs and a half," replied
the boatman, putting out a great brown palm.
Müller, who was acting as cashier and paymaster, pulled out his purse,
deposited one solitary half-franc in the middle of that brown palm, and
suggested that the boatman and he should toss up for the remaining four
francs--or race for them--or play for them--or fight for them. The
boatman, however, indignantly rejected each successive proposal, and,
being paid at last, retired with a _decrescendo_ of oaths.
"_Tiens_!" said Müller, reflectively. "We have but one franc left. One
franc, two sous, and a centime. _Vive la France!_"
"And you have actually asked that wretched old woman and her niece to
dinner!"
"And I have actually solicited that excellent and admirable woman,
Madame Marotte, relict of the late lamented Jacques Marotte, umbrella
maker, of number one hundred and two, Rue du Faubourg St. Denis, and her
beautiful and accomplished niece, Mademoiselle Marie Charpentier, to
honor us with their company this evening. _Dis-donc,_ what shall we give
them for dinner?"
"Precisely what you invited them to, I should guess--the fish we caught
this afternoon."
"Agreed. And what else?"
"Say--a dish of invisible greens, and a phoenix _à la Marengo_."
"You are funny, _mon cher_."
"Then, for fear I should become too funny--good afternoon."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that I have no mind to dine first, and be kicked out of doors
afterwards. It is one of those aids to digestion that I can willingly
dispense with."
"But if I guarantee that the dinner shall be paid for--money down!"
"Tra la la!"
"You don't believe me? Well, come and see."
With this, he went up to Madame Marotte, who, with her niece, had sat
down on a bench under a walnut-tree close by, waiting our pleasure.
"Would not these ladies prefer to rest here, while we seek for a
suitable restaurant and order the dinner?" said Müller insinuatingly.
The old lady looked somewhat blank. She was not too tired to go
on--thought it a pity to bring us all the way back again--would do,
however, as "_ces messieurs_" pleased; and so was left sitting under the
walnut-tree, reluctant and disconsolate.
"_Tiens! mon enfant_" I heard her say as we turned away, "suppose they
don't come back again!"
We had promised to be gone not longer, than twenty minutes, or at most
half an hour. Müller led the way straight to the _Toison d' Or_.
I took him by the arm as we neared the gate.
"Steady, steady, _mon gaillard_" I said. "We don't order our dinner, you
know, till we've found the money to pay for it."
"True--but suppose I go in here to look for it?"
"Into the restaurant garden?"
"Precisely."