[CHAPTER VII]
I find lodgings—Hiraux's son—Journals and journalists in 1823—By being saved the expense of a dinner I am enabled to go to the play at the Porte-Saint-Martin—My entry into the pit—Sensation caused by my hair—I am turned out—How I am obliged to pay for three places in order to have one—A polite gentleman who reads Elzevirs
The reader will have observed that my balance increased each journey I made to Paris. It was but four months since the firm of Paillet and Company had entered the city with thirty-five francs apiece; only a week ago I had reached the barrier with fifty francs in my pocket; now, finally, I alighted at the door of the Hôtel des Vieux Augustins with one hundred and eighty-five francs.
I began to search for lodgings the same day. When I had climbed and descended a good many staircases, I stopped at a little room on a fourth floor. This room, which contained the luxury of an alcove, belonged to that immense mass of houses called the Italian quarter, and formed part of No. 1. It was papered with a yellow paper at twelve sous the piece, and looked out on the yard. It was let to me for the sum of a hundred and twenty francs per annum. It suited me in every respect, so I did not haggle. I told the porter I would take it, and I advised him that my furniture would come in on the following night. The porter asked me for the denier à Dieu. I was a complete stranger to Parisian habits and I did not know what the denier à Dieu meant. I thought it must be a commission on letting the room: I majestically took a napoleon out of my pocket, and I dropped it into the hand of the porter, who bowed down to the ground.
In his eyes I evidently passed for a prince travelling incognito. To give twenty francs as denier à Dieu for a room at a hundred and twenty!... Such a thing had never been heard of. Twenty francs! it was a sixth of the rent!... So his wife instantly asked for the honour of looking after me. I granted her this favour for five francs per month—always with the same regal air.
From there, I ran to General Verdier's to get up my appetite, and I told him the good news. I had left Paris at such short notice, on the previous Monday, that I had not had time to ascend his four flights of stairs. I mounted them, this time, fruitlessly: the general had taken advantage of its being Sunday and had gone out. I followed his example: I strolled about the boulevards,—the only place where I ran no risk of being lost,—and I reached the Café de la Porte-Saint-Honoré at the end of my strolling. Suddenly, through the windows, I saw someone I knew: it was Hiraux, the son of good old Hiraux, who had so unsuccessfully endeavoured to make a musician of me. I entered the café. Hiraux had recently bought it: he was the proprietor of it.... I was in his house!... Although he was slightly older than myself, we had been very good chums in our childhood. He kept me to dinner. While waiting for dinner, he put all the journals of the establishment before me. Some of those papers have since disappeared. The chief of them at that time were: the Journal des Débats, always under the direction of the brothers Bertin, and a supporter of the Government. It reflected the views of Louis XVIII. and of M. de Villèle—namely, a moderate and conciliatory Royalism, a policy of optimism and vacillation; the system, in fact, by which, in the midst of the plots of the Carbonari and the intrigues of the Extreme Party, Louis XVIII. managed to die almost in tranquillity: if not on the throne, at any rate close by it.
The old Constitutionnel—of Saint-Albin, Jay, Tissot and Évariste Dumoulin—was suppressed one day for an article which the Censorship placed on the Index, an article which somehow had managed to get inserted without any trace of the claws and teeth of the censors. Then, with a rapidity of decision which indicated the extreme devotion the Constitutionnel of every epoch has always exhibited in its own cause, it bought for a mere song the Journal du Commerce, which had four hundred subscribers; and, under the title of the Journal du Commerce appeared next morning: it need hardly be said that the good old rogue was recognised under this transparent disguise, and just about the time when I arrived in Paris, it had resumed, or was about to resume, its old title, so dear to the citizens of Paris. The Constitutionnel was very timid: it represented the Liberal opinion, and never really breathed out thunder and lightning except against the Jesuits, towards whom it had vowed the same cruel and magnificent hatred that nowadays it fulminates against demagogues.
The Drapeau blanc was edited by Martainville, a man of infinite resource, but one who could hate and was hated in return. Charged with the defence of the bridge of Pecq, as commandant of the National Guard of Saint-Germain, he was reproached with having, in 1814, delivered up this bridge to the Prussians; and he replied to the reproach, not merely by an avowal, but with bravado: not being able to deny it, he boasted about it. But as all treachery torments the heart of the man who has committed it, irrespective of what he said, so it preyed on his vital forces. M. Arnault had infuriated him by deriving his name from Martin on his father's, and Vil (vile) on his mother's side. He was courageous enough, and, ever ready to tackle an adversary, he did battle with Telleville Arnault over his Germanicus. The bullet of the poet's son merely grazed the thigh of the critic, leaving nothing worse than a slight bruise behind it. "Bah!" said Arnault's father, "he has not even felt it: a blow from a stick would have produced the same effect."
The Foudre was the admitted journal of the Marsan Party, the outspoken expression of the ultra-Royalists, who, through all the reactions that followed, leant for support on the Comte d'Artois, and who waited impatiently for that decomposition of the elements, which, at the rate things were going, could not fail to be accomplished under Louis XVIII.