"Say what you like, my dear fellows, I simply cannot do without those wretched Boulevards, which commence at the Madeleine and end just before you come to the Rue da Faubourg-Montmartre. They are dusty, dirty, smoky—I admit all that. In the summer my boots are incrusted with the asphalte which melts under my feet. In the winter I flounder about in a mass of sticky mud, which is at the same time as slippery as ice. At all seasons of the year the gas lamps shed around their sickly light. The trees weep in vain for leaves, but I have been accustomed ever since my birth and theirs to the sight of their trunks alone, and I should be annoyed if they afforded any shade, for then they would not be my trees.
"From noon to 1 a.m. I cannot get away from the sight of those miserable little kiosques where so much silliness goes on, nor from the theatres in which, for the last twenty years, the same actresses have acted the same pieces, nor from those picturesque hired carriages, closed in summer and open in winter, whose horses care as much for their drivers as the drivers do for us. I am bound to jostle and be jostled by the same loungers, male and female, the same poor, the same rich, always the same, beggars, bohemians, men who have, men who have had, and men who never had a name, virtue and vice, honour and disgrace; rags and ermine brush past me in turn, and in turn I take off my hat to the tip-tilted nose, or the modest eyes so bashfully cast down, or the bald-headed ancient. I must shake hands warmly with jolly Mrs. This, or just touch the tips of Miss That's delicate fingers; I must inhale the noisome vapours which steam out of the half-open café, and the delicious essence of verbena which ever hangs around the footsteps of the Countess X. In a word, these elbowings to and fro, the bow given or received, the 'how d'ye do?' to one, and 'very well, thank you,' to another, the crowd, the smells, the lights, this life itself—all, all are indispensable to me, and away from them I should droop, and wither, and die.
"And yet, I repeat, I adore travels, in all probability because I have never done any travelling. The New Library in the Boulevard des Italiens never sees any one but me. Achilla Heymann and Ménard, those intelligent employés at Lévy's, send me, by the cart load, volume upon volume of the adventures of every traveller, known or unknown. An author need only go a hundred leagues from Paris to secure a place in my esteem. I read him attentively, I admire and I revere him. In short, within the walls of my own room I am one of the most remarkable travellers the world ever saw.
"You have now heard my confession, and have by this time learnt, first of all, that you will have to do without me, and, secondly, that you can do me a great service, by giving me a full, true, and particular description of every country through which you pass, by jotting down for me all sorts of information and all kinds of random notes. I shall enter thoroughly into the spirit of your letters, study them, learn them by heart; I shall travel in thought with you, and I will bless you for the pleasant half hours I know you will have in store for me.
"You need not say a word about yourselves, my dear fellows. The fact of your writing to me will be a proof positive that you are well, and that is all I care about, as far as you are concerned. No, I shall like you ever so much better if you will introduce me to the negroes and negresses, the he-savages and she-savages of your acquaintance. I have spoken. Do you swear to do as I ask you?"
And, like the three Horatii, they raised their hands on high and sware.
CHAPTER XVIII.
On the 26th October, 1872, M. de Pommerelle, on reaching his rooms at 3 a.m., found on his bedroom mantel-piece a letter, with the Cairo post-mark.
"Those dear boys!" he exclaimed, gleefully. "They have not forgotten me." And in spite of the late, or rather, early hour, and the fact that he was tired, he lighted a couple of candles so that he might more readily peruse his precious letter without losing a word of it. He very soon saw, from the variations in the handwriting, that the three travellers had worked together in his behalf. M. de Morin opened the ball.
"Ah! my dear de Pommerelle," commenced this epistle, "what a voyage! what an ecstatic voyage!"