THE ÉCOLE DE NATATION.
It seemed to me that I had but just closed my eyes, when I was waked by
a hand upon my shoulder, and a voice calling me by my name. I started up
to find the early sunshine pouring in at the window, and Franz Müller
standing by my bedside.
"_Tiens_!" said he. "How lovely are the slumbers of innocence! I was
hesitating, _mon cher_, whether to wake or sketch you."
I muttered something between a growl and a yawn, to the effect that I
should have been better satisfied if he had left me alone.
"You prefer everything that is basely self-indulgent, young man,"
replied Müller, making a divan of my bed, and coolly lighting his pipe
under my very nose. "Contrary to all the laws of _bon-camaraderie_, you
stole away last night, leaving your unprotected friend in the hands of
the enemy. And for what?--for the sake of a few hours' ignominious
oblivion! Look at me--I have not been to bed all night, and I am as
lively as a lobster in a lobster-pot."
"How did you get home?" I asked, rubbing my eyes; "and when?"
"I have not got home at all yet," replied my visitor. "I have come to
breakfast with you first."
Just at this moment, the _pendule_ in the adjoining room struck six.
"To breakfast!" I repeated. "At this hour?--you who never breakfast
before midday!"
"True, _mon cher_; but then you see there are reasons. In the first
place, we danced a little too long, and missed the last train, so I was
obliged to bring the dear creatures back to Paris in a fiacre. In the
second place, the driver was drunk, and the horse was groggy, and the
fiacre was in the last stage of dilapidation. The powers below only know
how many hours we were on the road; for we all fell asleep, driver
included, and never woke till we found ourselves at the Barrière de
l'Étoile at the dawn of day."
"Then what have you done with Madame Marotte and Mademoiselle Marie?"
"Deposited them at their own door in the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis, as
was the bounden duty of a _preux chevalier_. But then, _mon cher_, I had
no money; and having no money, I couldn't pay for the fiacre; so I drove
on here--and here I am--and number One Thousand and Eleven is now at the
door, waiting to be paid."
"The deuce he is!"
"So you see, sad as it was to disturb the slumbers of innocence, I
couldn't possibly let you go on sleeping at the rate of two francs
an hour."
"And what is the rate at which you have waked me?"
"Sixteen francs the fare, and something for the driver--say twenty in
all."
"Then, my dear fellow, just open my desk and take one of the two
Napoleons you will see lying inside, and dismiss number One Thousand and
Eleven without loss of time; and then...."
"A thousand thanks! And then what?"
"Will you accept a word of sound advice?"
"Depends on whether it's pleasant to follow, _caro mio_"
"Go home; get three or four hours' rest; and meet me in the Palais Royal
about twelve for breakfast."
"In order that you may turn round and go to sleep again in comfort? No,
young man, I will do nothing of the kind. You shall get up, instead, and
we'll go down to Molino's."
"To Molino's?"
"Yes--don't you know Molino's--the large swimming-school by the Pont
Neuf. It's a glorious morning for a plunge in the Seine."
A plunge in the Seine! Now, given a warm bed, a chilly autumn morning,
and a decided inclination to quote the words of the sluggard, and
"slumber again," could any proposition be more inopportune, savage, and
alarming? I shuddered; I protested; I resisted; but in vain.
"I shall be up again in less time than it will take you to tell your
beads, _mon gaillard_" said Müller the ferocious, as, having captured my
Napoleon, he prepared to go down and liquidate with number One Thousand
and Eleven. "And it's of no use to bolt me out, because I shall hammer
away till you let me in, and that will wake your fellow-lodgers. So let
me find you up, and ready for the fray."
And then, execrating Müller, and Molino, and Molino's bath, and Molino's
customers, and all Molino's ancestors from the period of the deluge
downwards, I reluctantly complied.
The air was brisk, the sky cloudless, the sun coldly bright; and the
city wore that strange, breathless, magical look so peculiar to Paris at
early morning. The shops were closed; the pavements deserted; the busy
thoroughfares silent as the avenues of Père la Chaise. Yet how different
from the early stillness of London! London, before the world is up and
stirring, looks dead, and sullen, and melancholy; but Paris lies all
beautiful, and bright, and mysterious, with a look as of dawning smiles
upon her face; and we know that she will wake presently, like the
Sleeping Beauty, to sudden joyousness and activity.
Our road lay for a little way along the Boulevards, then down the Rue
Vivienne, and through the Palais Royal to the quays; but long ere we
came within sight of the river this magical calm had begun to break up.
The shop-boys in the Palais Royal were already taking down the
shutters--the great book-stall at the end of the Galerie Vitrée showed
signs of wakefulness; and in the Place du Louvre there was already a
detachment of brisk little foot-soldiers at drill. By the time we had
reached the open line of the quays, the first omnibuses were on the
road; the water-carriers were driving their carts and blowing their
shrill little bugles; the washer-women, hard at work in their gay,
oriental-looking floating kiosques, were hammering away, mallet in hand,
and chattering like millions of magpies; and the early matin-bell was
ringing to prayers as we passed the doors of St. Germain L'Auxerrois.
And now we were skirting the Quai de l'École, looking down upon the bath
known in those days as Molino's--a hugh, floating quadrangular
structure, surrounded by trellised arcades and rows of dressing-rooms,
with a divan, a café restaurant, and a permanent corps of cooks and
hair-dressers on the establishment. For your true Parisian has ever been
wedded to his Seine, as the Venetian to his Adriatic; and the École de
Natation was then, as now, a lounge, a reading-room, an adjunct of the
clubs, and one of the great institutions of the capital.
Some bathers, earlier than ourselves, were already sauntering about the
galleries in every variety of undress, from the simple _caleçon_ to the
gaudiest version of Turkish robe and Algerian _kepi_. Some were smoking;
some reading the morning papers; some chatting in little knots; but as
yet, with the exception of two or three school-boys (called, in the
_argot_ of the bath, _moutards_), there were no swimmers in the water.
With some of these loungers Müller exchanged a nod or a few words as we
passed along the platform; but shook hands cordially with a bronzed,
stalwart man, dressed like a Venetian gondolier in the frontispiece to a
popular ballad, with white trousers, blue jacket, anchor buttons, red
sash, gold ear-rings, and great silver buckles in his shoes. Müller
introduced this romantic-looking person to me as "Monsieur Barbet."
"My friend, Monsieur Barbet," said he, "is the prince of
swimming-masters. He is more at home in the water than on land, and
knows more about swimming than a fish. He will calculate you the
specific gravity of the heaviest German metaphysician at a glance, and
is capable of floating even the works of Monsieur Thiers, if put to
the test."
"Monsieur can swim?" said the master, addressing me, with a nautical
scrape.
"I think so," I replied.
"Many gentlemen think so," said Monsieur Barbet, "till they find
themselves in the water."
"And many who wish to be thought accomplished swimmers never venture
into it on that account," added Müller. "You would scarcely suppose," he
continued, turning to me, "that there are men here--regular _habitués_
of the bath--who never go into the water, and yet give themselves all
the airs of practised bathers. That tall man, for instance, with the
black beard and striped _peignoir_, yonder--there's a fellow who comes
once or twice a week all through the season, goes through the ceremony
of undressing, smokes, gossips, criticises, is looked up to as an
authority, and has never yet been seen off the platform. Then there's
that bald man in the white robe--his name's Giroflet--a retired
stockbroker. Well, that fellow robes himself like an ancient Roman, puts
himself in classical attitudes, affects taciturnity, models himself upon
Brutus, and all that sort of thing; but is as careful not to get his
feet wet as a cat. Others, again, come simply to feed. The restaurant is
one of the choicest in Paris, with this advantage over Véfour or the
Trois Frères, that it is the only place where you may eat and drink of
the best in hot weather, with nothing on but the briefest of _caleçons_"
Thus chattering, Müller took me the tour of the bath, which now began to
fill rapidly. We then took possession of two little dressing-rooms no
bigger than sentry-boxes, and were presently in the water.
The scene now became very animated. Hundreds of eccentric figures
crowded the galleries--some absurdly fat, some ludicrously thin; some
old, some young; some bow-legged, some knock-kneed; some short, some
tall; some brown, some yellow; some got up for effect in gorgeous
wrappers; and all more or less hideous.
"An amusing sight, isn't it?" said Müller, as, having swum several times
round the bath, we sat down for a few moments on one of the flights of
steps leading down to the water.
"It is a sight to disgust one for ever with human-kind," I replied.
"And to fill one with the profoundest respect for one's tailor. After
all, it's broad-cloth makes the man."
"But these are not men--they are caricatures."
"Every man is a caricature of himself when you strip him," said Müller,
epigrammatically. "Look at that scarecrow just opposite. He passes for
an Adonis, _de par le monde_."
I looked and recognised the Count de Rivarol, a tall young man, an
_élégant_ of the first water, a curled darling of society, a professed
lady-killer, whom I had met many a time in attendance on Madame de
Marignan. He now looked like a monkey:--
.... "long, and lank and brown,
As in the ribb'd sea sand!"
"Gracious heavens!" I exclaimed, "what would become of the world, if
clothes went out of fashion?"
"Humph!--one half of us, my dear fellow, would commit suicide."
At the upper end of the bath was a semicircular platform somewhat
loftier than the rest, called the Amphitheatre. This, I learned, was the
place of honor. Here clustered the _élite_ of the swimmers; here they
discussed the great principles of their art, and passed judgment on the
performances of those less skilful than themselves. To the right of the
Amphitheatre rose a slender spiral staircase, like an openwork pillar of
iron, with a tiny circular platform on the top, half surrounded by a
light iron rail. This conspicuous perch, like the pillar of St. Simeon
Stylites, was every now and then surmounted by the gaunt figure of some
ambitious plunger who, after attitudinizing awhile in the pose of
Napoleon on the column Vendôme, would join his hands above his head and
take a tremendous "header" into the gulf below. When this feat was
successfully performed, the _élite_ in the Amphitheatre applauded
graciously.
And now, what with swimming, and lounging, and looking on, some two
hours had slipped by, and we were both hungry and tired, Müller proposed
that we should breakfast at the Café Procope.
"But why not here?" I asked, as a delicious breeze from the buffet came
wafting by "like a steam of rich distilled perfumes."
"Because a breakfast _chez_ Molino costs at least twenty-five francs
per head--BECAUSE I have credit at Procope--BECAUSE I have not a _sou_
in my pocket--and BECAUSE, milord Smithfield, I aspire to the honor of
entertaining your lordship on the present occasion!" replied Müller,
punctuating each clause of his sentence with a bow.
If Müller had not a _sou_, I, at all events, had now only one Napoleon;
so the Café Procope carried the day.