IV
As he passed under the arcades of the Odéon, Julius’s novel, which was on sale in the book shops, caught his eye; it was a yellow paper book, the mere sight of which on any other occasion would have made him yawn. He felt in his pocket and flung a five-franc piece on the counter.
“A fine fire for this evening,” thought he, as he carried off the book and the change.
In the lending-library a “Who’s Who” gave a short account of Julius’s invertebrate career, mentioned the titles of his works and praised them in terms so conventional as effectually to quench any desire to read them.
“Ugh!” said Lafcadio.... He was just going to shut up the book when three or four words in the preceding paragraph caught his eye and made him start.
A few lines above Julius de Baraglioul (Vmte.) Lafcadio saw under the heading Juste-Agénor: “Minister at Bucharest in 1873.” What was there in these simple words to make his heart beat so fast?
Lafcadio, whose mother had given him five uncles, had never known his father; he was content to regard him as dead and had always refrained from asking questions. As for his uncles (all of them of different nationalities and three of them in the diplomatic service), he had pretty soon perceived that they had no other relationship with him than that which the fair Wanda chose to give them. Now Lafcadio was just nineteen. He had been born in Bucharest in 1874, exactly at the end of the second year which the Comte de Baraglioul had spent there in his official capacity.
Now that he had been put on the alert by Julius’s mysterious visit, how was it possible to look upon this as merely a fortuitous coincidence? He made a great effort to read Juste-Agénor’s biography, but the lines danced before his eyes; he just managed to make out that Julius’s father, the Comte de Baraglioul, was a man of considerable importance.
The explosion of insolent joy in his heart was so riotous that he thought the outside world must hear it. But no! this covering of flesh was unquestionably solid and impervious. He furtively examined his neighbours—old habitués of the reading-room, all engrossed in their dreary occupations.... He began to calculate: “If he was born in 1821, the Count must be seventy-two by now. Ma chi sa se vive ancora?...” He put the dictionary back and went out.
The azure sky was clearing itself of a few light clouds which a fresh breeze had sent scudding. “Importa di domesticare questo nuovo proposito,” said Lafcadio to himself, who prized above all things the free possession of his soul; and hopeless of reducing so turbulent a thought to order, he resolved to banish it for a moment from his mind. He took Julius’s novel out of his pocket and made a great effort to distract himself with it; but the book had no allurement in it of indirectness or mystery, and nothing could have helped him less to escape from a too urgent self.
“And yet it is to the author of that that I am going to-morrow to play at being secretary!” he couldn’t refrain from repeating.
He bought a newspaper at a kiosk and went into the Luxembourg. The benches were sopping; he opened the book, sat down on it and unfolded the paper to look at the various items of the day. Suddenly, and as though he had been expecting to find it there, his eye fell upon the following announcement:
“It is hoped that Count Juste-Agénor de Baraglioul, whose health has lately given grave cause for anxiety, is now recovering. His condition, however, still remains too precarious to admit of his receiving any but a few intimate friends.”
Lafcadio sprang from the bench. In a moment he had made up his mind. Forgetting his book, he hurried off to a stationer’s shop in the Rue de Médicis, where he remembered having seen in the window a notice that visiting-cards were printed “while you wait at three francs the hundred.” He smiled as he went, amused by the boldness of his idea and possessed by the spirit of adventure.
“How long will it take to print a hundred cards?” he asked the shopkeeper.
“You can have them before nightfall.”
“I’ll pay you double if you let me have them by two o’clock this afternoon.”
The shopkeeper made a pretence of consulting his order-book.
“Very well ... to oblige you. You can call for them at two o’clock. What name?”
Then, without a tremor or a blush, but with a heart that beat a little unsteadily, he signed:
Lafcadio de Baraglioul.
“The rascal doesn’t believe me,” said he to himself as he left, for he was piqued that the shopkeeper’s bow had not been lower. Then, as he looked at his reflection in a shop window, “I must admit I don’t look very like a Baraglioul,” he thought. “We must see whether we can’t improve the resemblance before this afternoon.”
It was not yet twelve o’clock. Lafcadio, who was in a state of madcap exhilaration, had not begun to feel hungry.
“First, let’s take a little walk, or I shall fly into the air,” thought he. “And I must keep in the middle of the road. If I go too near the passers-by, they will notice that I’m a head and shoulders taller than any of them. Another superiority to conceal. One has never done putting the finishing touches to one’s education.”
“Place Malesherbes ... this afternoon!” he said to himself, as he copied out Count Juste-Agénor’s address from the directory. “But what’s to prevent me from going this morning to prospect Rue de Verneuil?” (This was the address on Julius’s card.)
Lafcadio knew and loved this part of Paris; leaving the more frequented thoroughfares, he took a roundabout way by Rue Vaneau; in that quiet street the young freshness of his joy would have space to breathe more freely. As he turned into the Rue de Babylone he saw people running; near the Impasse Oudinot a crowd was collecting in front of a two-storied house from which was pouring an evil-looking smoke. He forced himself not to hurry his pace, though he was naturally a quick walker....
Lafcadio, my friend, here you require the pen of a newspaper reporter—mine abandons you! My readers must not expect me to relate the incoherent comments of the onlookers, the broken exclamations, the....
Wriggling through the crowd like an eel, Lafcadio made his way to the front. There a poor woman was sobbing on her knees.
“My children! My little children!” she wept. She was being supported by a young girl, whose simple elegance of dress showed she was no relation; she was very pale and so lovely that Lafcadio was instantly drawn to her. She answered his questions.
“No, I don’t know her. I have just made out that her two little children are in that room on the second floor which the flames are just going to reach—they have caught the staircase already; the fire brigade has been sent for, but by the time they come the children will have been smothered by the smoke. Oh! wouldn’t it be possible to get up to the balcony by climbing that wall—look!—and helping oneself up by that waterpipe? Some of these people say that thieves did it a little while ago—thieves did it to steal money, but no one dares do it to save two children. I’ve offered my purse, but it’s no good. Oh! if only I were a man!”
Lafcadio listened no longer. Dropping his stick and hat at the young lady’s feet, he darted forward. With a bound he caught hold of the top of the wall unaided; a pull of his arms raised him on to it; in a moment he was standing upright and walking along the narrow edge, regardless of the broken pieces of glass with which it bristled.
But the amazement of the crowd redoubled when, seizing hold of the vertical pipe, he swarmed up it, hardly resting his feet here and there for a second on the clamps which fixed it to the wall. There he is—at the balcony now—now he has vaulted the railings; the admiring crowd no longer trembles—it can only admire, for, indeed, he moves with consummate ease. One push of his shoulder shivers the window-pane; he has disappeared into the room. Agonising moment of unspeakable suspense! Here he comes again, holding a crying infant in his arms. Out of a sheet torn in two and knotted together end to end, he hastily contrives a rope—ties the child to it—lowers it gently to the arms of the distracted mother. The second child is saved in the same way.
When Lafcadio came down in his turn, the crowd cheered him as a hero.
“They take me for a clown,” thought he, as he roughly and ungraciously repulsed their greetings, exasperated at feeling himself blush. But when the young lady, whom he again approached, shyly held out to him his hat and stick and with them the purse she had promised, he took it with a smile, emptied it of the sixty francs that it contained, and gave the money to the poor mother, who was smothering her children with kisses.
“May I keep the purse in remembrance of you, Mademoiselle?”
He kissed the little embroidered purse. The two looked at each other for a moment. The young girl was agitated and paler than ever; she seemed desirous of speaking, but Lafcadio abruptly turned on his heel and opened a way through the crowd with his stick. His air was so forbidding that they very soon stopped cheering and following him.
He regained the Luxembourg, made a hasty meal at the restaurant Gambrinus near the Odéon and returned swiftly to his room. There under a board in the floor he kept his store of money; three twenty-franc pieces and one ten-franc piece were extracted from their hiding-place. He reckoned:
| Visiting-cards | six francs |
| A pair of gloves | five francs |
| A tie | five francs (how shall I get anything decent at that price?) |
| A pair of shoes | thirty-five francs (I shan’t use them long.) |
| Left over | nineteen francs for emergencies. |
(Lafcadio had a horror of owing anything to anyone and always paid ready money.)
He went to a wardrobe and pulled out a suit made of soft dark tweed, perfectly cut and still fresh.
“Unfortunately,” he said to himself, “I’ve grown since....” His thoughts went back to that dazzling time, not so long ago, when he used to dance gaily off with the Marquis de Gesvres (the last of his uncles) to the tailor’s, the hatter’s, the shirtmaker’s.
Ill-fitting clothes were as shocking to Lafcadio as lying to a Calvinist.
“The most urgent first. My uncle de Gesvres used always to say you could judge a man by his foot-wear.”
And out of respect for the shoes he was going to try on, he began by changing his socks.