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.