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."