In three months!... How could I wait for three months?
I left Oudet in despair. I ought to say, in justice to Oudet, that he was probably in even lower straits than I was. In leaving Oudet, I ran up against another of my friends, whose name was Gondon. He was a shooting comrade. He had a property three leagues from Villers-Cotterets,—at Cœuvre, the country of the beautiful Gabrielle,—and we had very often spent whole weeks together there, shooting by day and poaching by night. It was at his place that I nearly lost my life one evening, in the most ridiculous fashion imaginable. It was the evening before the opening of the shooting season. Five or six of us shooters had come from Villers-Cotterets, and we were putting up at Gondon's, in order to be up early for a start at daybreak. Now, as we had neither rooms nor beds enough for everybody, the sitting-room had been transformed into a dormitory, in the four corners of which four beds were set up—that is to say, four mattresses were laid down. When the candles were extinguished, my three companions took it into their heads to start a bolster fight. As, for some reason or another, I did not feel inclined for the sport, I announced my intention of remaining neutral. The result of this compact was that after a quarter of an hour's fight between Austrians, Russians and Prussians, the Austrians, Russians and Prussians became allies and united to fall upon me, who represented France. So they hurled themselves on my bed, and began to belabour me with the afore-mentioned bolsters, as threshers beat out corn with their flails in a barn. I drew up my sheet over my head, and waited patiently till the storm should have passed over, which could not be long first, at the rate they were beating. And as I anticipated, the storm calmed down. One thrasher retired, then another. But the third, who was my cousin, Félix Deviolaine, upheld no doubt by the tie of kinship, continued striking in spite of the retreat of the others. Suddenly he stopped, and I heard him get silently into his bed. One might have thought some accident had overtaken him, which he was anxious to conceal from his comrades. In fact, the opposite end of the bolster to that which he had held in his hands, had burst by the violence of the blows, and all the feathers had escaped. This down made a mountain, just where the sheet which protected my head joined the bolster. I was totally unaware of the fact. As I did not feel any more blows, and having heard my last enemy retire to his bed, I gently put out my head and, as for the past ten minutes I had become more or less stifled, according as I tightened or loosened the sheet, I drew a full breath. I swallowed a big armful of feathers. Suffocation was instantaneous, almost complete. I uttered an inarticulate cry, and feeling myself literally being strangled, I began to roll about the room. My companions at first thought I had now taken it into my head to pirouette like a ballet dancer, just as they had fancied a fight; but they realised at last that the strangled sounds I gave forth expressed acute agony. Gondon was the first to realise that something very serious had happened to me, from some unknown cause, and that I was in extremis. Félix, who alone could have explained my gyrations and my wheezings, lay still, and pretended to be asleep. Gondon rushed into the kitchen, returned with a candle, and threw light on the scene. I must have been a very funny spectacle, and I confess, there was a general burst of laughter. But though I had been pretty gluttonous, I had not swallowed all the feathers and all the down: some stuck to my curly head, giving me a false air of resemblance to Polichinelle. This false air soon began to look like reality from the flush of redness that strangulation had sent into my face. They thought water was the best thing to give me. One of my companions, named Labarre, ran in his shirt to the pump and filled a pot with water, which he laughingly brought me. Such hilarity, when my torture had reached its height, drove me wild. I seized the pot by the handle, and chucked the contents down Labarre's back. The water was icy cold. Its temperature was little in harmony with the natural warmth of his blood, and it produced such gambols and such contortions on the part of the anointed, that, in spite of my various woes, the desire to laugh was now on my side. I made a different effort from any I had tried hitherto, and I expectorated some of the feathers and down which had blocked my throat. From that moment I was safe. Nevertheless, I continued to spit feathers for a week, and I coughed for a month.
I beg my reader's pardon for this digression; but, as I had neglected to put down this important episode in my life in its chronological order, it will not be deemed extraordinary if I seize the first opportunity that presents itself to repair this omission.
Well, I met Gondon coming out of Oudet's house. He had a hundred francs in his hand.
"Oh, my dear fellow," I said, "if you are so wealthy, you can surely lend Oudet fifty francs."
"What to do?"
"To buy my Piranèses from me."
"Your Piranèses?"
"Yes, I want to go to Paris. Oudet offered to buy my Piranèses for fifty francs, and now...."
"And now he does not wish to have them?"