Hatred of the Empire which had left him to rot in a back-shop
and a school class-room, love of the Republic that was to bring
every blessing in its train had, since the proclamation of September
4, raised Jean Servien's warlike enthusiasm to fever heat. But
he soon wearied of the long drills in the Luxembourg gardens
and the hours of futile sentry-go behind the fortifications.
The sight of tipsy shopkeepers in a frenzy of foolish ardour,
half drink, half patriotism, sickened him, and this playing at
soldiers, tramping through the mud on an empty stomach, struck
him as after all an odious, ugly business.
Luckily Garneret was his comrade in the ranks, and Servien felt
the salutary effect of that well-stored, well-ordered mind, the
servant of duty and stern reality. Only this saved him from a
passion, as futile in the past as it was hopeless in the future,
which was assuming the dangerous character of a mental disease.
He had not seen Gabrielle again for a long time. The theatres
were shut; all he knew, from the newspapers, was that she was
nursing the wounded in the theatre ambulance. He had no wish
now to meet her.
When he was not on duty, he used to lie in bed and read (it was a
hard winter and wood was scarce), or else scour the boulevards and
mix with the throng of idlers in search of news. One evening, early
in January, as he was passing the corner of the _Rue Drouot_, his
attention was attracted by the clamour of voices, and he saw
Monsieur Bargemont being roughly handled by an ill-looking gang
of National Guards.
"I am a better Republican than any of you," the big man was
vociferating; "I have always protested against the infamies of
the Empire. But when you shout: Vive Blanqui!... excuse me...
I have a right to shout: Vive Jules Favre! excuse me, I have a
perfect right----" But his voice was drowned in a chorus of yells.
Men in _képis_ shook their fists at him, shouting: "Traitor! no
surrender! down with Badinguet!" His broad face, distraught with
terror, still bore traces of its erstwhile look of smug effrontery.
A girl in the crowd shrieked: "Throw him in the river!" and a
hundred voices took up the cry. But just at that moment the crowd
swayed back violently and Monsieur Bargemont darted into the
forecourt of the _Mairie_. A squad of police officers received
him in their ranks and closed in round him. He was saved!
Little by little the crowd melted away, and Jean heard a dozen
different versions of the incident as it travelled with
ever-increasing exaggeration from mouth to mouth. The last comers
learned the startling news that they had just arrested a German
general officer, who had sneaked into Paris as a spy to betray
the city to the enemy with the connivance of the Bonapartists.
The streets being once more passable, Jean saw Monsieur Bargemont
come out of the _Mairie_. He was very red and a sleeve of his
overcoat was torn away.
Jean made up his mind to follow him.
Along the boulevards he kept him in view at a distance, and not
much caring whether he lost track of him or no; but when the
Functionary turned up a cross street, the young man closed in
on his quarry. He had no particular suspicion even now; a mere
instinct urged him to dog the man's heels. Monsieur Bargemont
wheeled to the right, into a fairly broad street, empty and badly
lighted by petroleum flares that supplied the place of the gas
lamps. It was the one street Jean knew better than another. He
had been there so often and often! The shape of the doors, the
colour of the shop-fronts, the lettering on the sign-boards,
everything about it was familiar; not a thing in it, down to
the night-bell at the chemist's and druggist's, but called up
memories, associations, to touch him. The footsteps of the two men
echoed in the silence. Monsieur Bargemont looked round, advanced
a few paces more and rang at a door. Jean Servien had now come up
with him and stood beside him under the archway. It was the same
door he had kissed one night of desperation, Gabrielle's door. It
opened; Jean took a step forward and Monsieur Bargemont, going
in first, left it open, thinking the National Guard there was
a tenant going home to his lodging. Jean slipped in and climbed
two flights of the dark staircase. Monsieur Bargemont ascended
to the third floor and rang at a door on the landing, which was
opened. Jean could hear Gabrielle's voice saying:
"How late you are coming home, dear; I have sent Rosalie to bed;
I was waiting up for you, you see."
The man replied, still puffing and panting with his exertions:
"Just fancy, they wanted to pitch me into the river, those
scoundrels! But never you mind, I've brought you something mighty
rare and precious--a pot of butter."
"Like Little Red Ridinghood," laughed Gabrielle's voice. "Come
in and you shall tell me all about it.... Hark! do you hear?"
"What, the guns? Oh! that never stops."
"No, the noise of a fall on the stairs."
"You're dreaming!"
"Give me the candle, I'm going to look."
Monsieur Bargemont went down two or three steps and saw Jean
stretched motionless on the landing.
"A drunkard," he said; "there's so many of them! They were drunkards,
those chaps who wanted to drown me."
He was holding his light to Jean's ashy face, while Gabrielle,
leaning over the rail, looked on:
"It's not a drunken man," she said; "he is too white. Perhaps
it is a poor young fellow dying of hunger. When you're brought
down to rations of bread and horseflesh----"
Then she looked more carefully under frowning brows, and muttered:
"It's very queer, it's really very queer!"
"Do you know him?" asked Bargemont.
"I am trying to remember----"
But there was no need to try; already she had recalled it all--how
her hand had been kissed at the gate of the little house at Bellevue.
Running to her rooms, she returned with water and a bottle of
ether, knelt beside the fainting man, and slipping her arm, which
was encircled by the white band of a nursing sister, under his
shoulders, raised Jean's head. He opened his eyes, saw her, heaved
the deepest sigh of love ever expelled from a human breast and
felt his lids fall softly to again. He remembered nothing; only
she was bending over him; and her breath had caressed his cheek.
Now she was bathing his temples, and he felt a delicious sense
of returning life. Monsieur Bargemont with the candle leant over
Jean Servien, who, opening his eyes for the second time, saw the
man's coarse red cheek within an inch of the actress's delicate
ear. He gave a great cry and a convulsive spasm shook his body.
"Perhaps it is an epileptic fit," said Monsieur Bargemont, coughing;
he was catching cold standing on the staircase.
She protested:
"We cannot leave a sick man without doing something for him. Go
and wake Rosalie."
He remounted the stairs, grumbling. Meantime Jean had got to his
feet and was standing with averted head.
She said to him in a low tone:
"So you love me still?"
He looked at her with an indescribable sadness:
"No, I don't love you any longer"--and he staggered down the stairs.
Monsieur Bargemont reappeared:
"It's very curious," he said, "but I can't make Rosalie hear."
The actress shrugged her shoulders.
"Look here, go away, will you? I have a horrid headache. Go away,
Bargemont."