RETURNED WITH THANKS.
A week or two had thus gone by since the dreadful evening at the Opéra
Comique, and all this time I had neither seen nor heard more of the fair
Josephine. My acquaintance with Franz Müller and the life of the
Quartier Latin had, on the contrary, progressed rapidly. Just as the
affair of the Opera had dealt a final blow to my romance _à la grisette_
on the one hand, so had the excursion to Courbevoie, the visit to the
École de Natation, and the adventure of the Café Procope, fostered my
intimacy with the artist on the other. We were both young, somewhat
short of money, and brimful of fun. Each, too, had a certain substratum
of earnestness underlying the mere surface-gayety of his character.
Müller was enthusiastic for art; I for poetry; and both for liberty. I
fear, when I look back upon them, that we talked a deal of nonsense
about Brutus, and the Rights of Man, and the noble savage, and all that
sort of thing, in those hot-headed days of our youth. It was a form of
political measles that the young men of that time were quite as liable
to as the young men of our own; and, living as we then were in the heart
of the most revolutionary city in Europe, I do not well see how we could
have escaped the infection. Müller (who took it worse than I did, and
was very rabid indeed when I first knew him) belonged just then not only
to the honorable brotherhood of Les Chicards, but also to a small
debating club that met twice a week in a private room at the back of an
obscure Estaminet in the Rue de la Harpe. The members of this club were
mostly art-students, and some, like himself, Chicards--generous,
turbulent, high-spirited boys, with more enthusiasm than brains, and a
flow of words wholly out of proportion to the bulk of their ideas. As I
came to know him more intimately, I used sometimes to go there with
Müller, after our cheap dinner in the Quartier and our evening stroll
along the Boulevards or the Champs Elysées; and I am bound to admit that
I never, before or since, heard quite so much nonsense of the
declamatory sort as on those memorable occasions. I did not think it
nonsense then, however. I admired it with all my heart; applauded the
nursery eloquence of these sucking Mirabeaus and Camille Desmoulins as
frantically as their own vanity could desire; and was even secretly
chagrined that my own French was not yet fluent enough to enable me to
take part in their discussions.
In the meanwhile, my debts were paid; and, having dropped out of society
when I fell out of love with Madame de Marignan, I no longer overspent
my allowance. I bought no more bouquets, paid for no more opera-stalls,
and hired no more prancing steeds at seven francs the hour. I bade adieu
to picture-galleries, flower-shows, morning concerts, dress boots, white
kid gloves, elaborate shirt-fronts, and all the vanities of the
fashionable world. In a word, I renounced the Faubourg St. Germain for
the Quartier Latin, and applied myself to such work and such pleasures
as pertained to the locality. If, after a long day at Dr. Chéron's, or
the Hôtel Dieu, or the École de Médecine, I did waste a few hours now
and then, I, at least, wasted them cheaply. Cheaply, but oh, so
pleasantly! Ah me! those nights at the debating club, those evenings at
the Chicards, those student's balls at the Chaumière, those third-class
trips to Versailles and Fontainebleau, those one-franc pit seats at the
Gaîeté and the Palais Royal, those little suppers at Pompon's and
Flicoteau's--how delightful they were! How joyous! How free from care!
And even when we made up a party and treated the ladies (for to treat
the ladies is _de rigueur_ in the code of Quartier Latin etiquette), how
little it still cost, and what a world of merriment we had for
the money!
It was well for me, too, and a source of much inward satisfaction, that
my love-affair with Mademoiselle Josephine had faded and died a natural
death. We never made up that quarrel of the Opéra Comique, and I had not
desired that we should make it up. On the contrary, I was exceedingly
glad of the opportunity of withdrawing my attentions; so I wrote her a
polite little note, in which I expressed my regret that our tastes were
so dissimilar and our paths in life so far apart; wished her every
happiness; assured her that I should ever remember her with friendly
regard; and signed my name with a tremendous flourish at the bottom of
the second page. With the note, however, I sent her a raised pie and a
red and green shawl, of which I begged her acceptance in token of amity;
and as neither of those gifts was returned, I concluded that she ate the
one and wore the other, and that there was peace between us.
But the scales of fortune as they go up for one, go down for another.
This man's luck is balanced by that man's ruin--Orestes falls sick, and
Pylades returns from Kissingen cured of his lumbago--old Croesus dies,
and little Miss Kilmansegg comes into the world with a golden spoon in
her mouth, So it fell out with Franz Müller and myself. As I happily
steered clear of Charybdis, he drifted into Scylla--in other words, just
as I recovered from my second attack of the tender passion, he caught
the epidemic and fancied himself in love with the fair Marie.
I say "fancied," because his way of falling in love was so unlike my
way, that I could scarcely believe it to be the same complaint. It
affected neither his appetite, nor his spirits, nor his wardrobe. He
made as many puns and smoked as many pipes as usual. He did not even buy
a new hat. If, in fact, he had not told me himself, I should never have
guessed that anything whatever was the matter with him.
It came out one day when he was pressing me to go with him to a certain
tea-party at Madame Marotte's, in the Rue St. Denis.
"You see," said he, "it is _la petite_ Marie's fête; and the party's in
her honor; and they'd be so proud if we both went to it; and--and, upon
my soul, I'm awfully fond of that little girl"....
"Of Marie Marotte?"
He nodded.
"You are not serious," I said.
"I am as serious," he replied, "as a dancing dervish."
And then, for I suppose I looked incredulous, he went on to justify
himself.
"She's very good," he said, "and very pretty. Quite a Madonna face, to
my thinking."
"You may see a dozen such Madonna faces among the nurses in the
Luxembourg Gardens, every afternoon of your life," said I.
"Oh, if you come to that, every woman is like every other woman, up to a
certain point."
"_Les femmes se suivent et se ressemblent toujours_," said I, parodying
a well-known apothegm.
"Precisely, but then they wear their rue, or cause you to wear yours,
'with a difference.' This girl, however, escapes the monotony of her sex
by one or two peculiarities:--she has not a bit of art about her, nor a
shred of coquetry. She is as simple and as straightforward as an
Arcadian. She doesn't even know when she is being made love to, or
understand what you mean, when you pay her a compliment."
"Then she's a phenomenon--and what man in his senses would fall in love
with a phenomenon?"
"Every man, _mon cher enfant_, who falls in love at all! The woman we
worship is always a phenomenon, whether of beauty, or grace, or
virtue--till we find her out; and then, probably, she becomes a
phenomenon of deceit, or slovenliness, or bad temper! And now, to return
to the point we started from--will you go with me to Madame Marotte's
tea-party to-morrow evening at eight? Don't say 'No,' there's a
good fellow."
"I'll certainly not say No, if you particularly want me to say Yes," I
replied, "but--"
"Prythee, no buts! Let it be Yes, and the thing is settled. So--here we
are. Won't you come in and smoke a pipe with me? I've a bottle of
capital Rhenish in the cupboard."
We had met near the Odéon, and, as our roads lay in the same direction,
had gone on walking and talking till we came to Müller's own door in the
Rue Clovis. I accepted the invitation, and followed him in. The
_portière_, a sour-looking, bent old woman with a very dirty duster tied
about her head, hobbled out from her little dark den at the foot of the
stairs, and handed him the key of his apartment.
"_Tiens_!" said she, "wait a moment--there's a parcel for you, M'sieur
Müller."
And so, hobbling back again, she brought out a small flat brown
paper-packet sealed at both ends.
"Ah, I see--from the Emperor!" said Müller. "Did he bring it himself,
Madame Duphôt, or did he send it by the Archbishop of Paris?"
A faint grin flitted over the little old woman's withered face.
"Get along with you, M'sieur Müller," she said. "You're always playing
the _farceur_! The parcel was brought by a man who looked like a
stonemason."
"And nobody has called?"
"Nobody, except M'sieur Richard."
"Monsieur Richard's visits are always gratifying and delightful--may
the _diable_ fly away with him!" said Müller. "What did dear Monsieur
Richard want to-day, Madame Duphôt?"
"He wanted to see you, and the third-floor gentleman also--about the
rent."
"Dear Richard! What an admirable memory he has for dates! Did he leave
any message, Madame Duphôt?"
The old woman looked at me, and hesitated.
"He says, M'sieur Müller--he says ..."
"Nay, this gentleman is a friend--you may speak out. What does our
beloved and respected _propriétaire_ say, Madame Duphôt?"
"He says, if you don't both of you pay up the arrears by midday on
Sunday next, he'll seize your goods, and turn you into the street."
"Ah, I always said he was the nicest man I knew!" observed Müller,
gravely. "Anything else, Madame Duphôt?"
"Only this, Monsieur Müller--that if you didn't go quietly, he'd take
your windows out of the frames and your doors off the hinges."
"_Comment_! He bade you give me that message, the miserable old son of a
spider! _Quatre-vingt mille plats de diables aux truffes_! Take my
windows out of the frames, indeed! Let him try, Madame Duphôt--that's
all--let him try!"
And with this, Müller, in a towering rage, led the way upstairs,
muttering volleys of the most extraordinary and eccentric oaths of his
own invention, and leaving the little old _portière_ grinning
maliciously in the hall.
"But can't you pay him?" said I.
"Whether I can, or can't, it seems I must," he replied, kicking open the
door of his studio as viciously as if it were the corporeal frame of
Monsieur Richard. "The only question is--how? At the present moment, I
haven't five francs in the till."
"Nor have I more than twenty. How much is it?"
"A hundred and sixty--worse luck!"
"Haven't the Tapottes paid for any of their ancestors yet?"
"Confound it!--yes; they've paid for a Marshal of France and a Farmer
General, which are all I've yet finished and sent home. But there was
the washerwoman, and the _traiteur_, and the artist's colorman, and,
_enfin_, the devil to pay--and the money's gone, somehow!"
"I've only just cleared myself from a lot of debts," I said, ruefully,
"and I daren't ask either my father or Dr. Chéron for an advance just at
present. What is to be done?"
"Oh, I don't know. I must raise the money somehow. I must sell
something--there's my copy of Titian's 'Pietro Aretino.' It's worth
eighty francs, if only for a sign. And there's a Madonna and Child after
Andrea del Sarto, worth a fortune to any enterprising sage-femme with
artistic proclivities. I'll try what Nebuchadnezzar will do for me."
"And who, in the name of all that's Israelitish, is Nebuchadnezzar?"
"Nebuchadnezzar, my dear Arbuthnot, is a worthy Shylock of my
acquaintance--a gentleman well known to Bohemia--one who buys and sells
whatever is purchasable and saleable on the face of the globe, from a
ship of war to a comic paragraph in the _Charivari_. He deals in
bric-à-brac, sermons, government sinecures, pugs, false hair, light
literature, patent medicines, and the fine arts. He lives in the Place
des Victoires. Would you like to be introduced to him?"
"Immensely."
"Well, then, be here by eight to-morrow morning, and I'll take you with
me. After nine he goes out, or is only visible to buyers. Here's my
bottle of Rhenish--genuine Assmanshauser. Are you hungry?"
I admitted that I was not unconscious of a sensation akin to appetite.
He gazed steadfastly into the cupboard, and shook his head.
"A box of sardines," he said, gloomily, "nearly empty. Half a loaf,
evidently disinterred from Pompeii. An inch of Lyons sausage, saved
from the ark; the remains of a bottle of fish sauce, and a pot of
currant jelly. What will you have?"
I decided for the relics of Pompeii and the deluge, and we sat down to
discuss those curious delicacies. Having no corkscrew, we knocked off
the neck of the bottle, and being short of glasses, drank our wine out
of teacups.
"But you have never opened your parcel all this time," I said presently.
"It may be full of _billets de banque_--who can tell?"
"That's true," said Müller; and broke the seals.
"By all the Gods of Olympus!" he shouted, holding up a small oblong
volume bound in dark green cloth. "My sketch-book!"
He opened it, and a slip of paper fell out. On this slip of paper were
written, in a very neat, small hand, the words, "_Returned with
thanks_;" but the page that contained the sketch made in the Café
Procope was missing.
* * * * *