"You see?... you see?"
"I will make myself scarce, M. Deviolaine."
And off I went, while M. Deviolaine buried his nose in the report, growling as usual.
I returned to our common office, and I sat down at my desk. My desk was next to Lassagne's, so we were only separated from one another by the width of our tables and by the little black set of pigeon-holes in which the current work was usually put. Ernest had gone out, I know not why. I asked Lassagne to tell me what to do. Lassagne got up, leant over my desk and told me. I always took a great interest in studying people around me, and especially the man whose position in the office was that of my immediate superior; for, although Ernest was now a full-fledged clerk and I only destined to be a simple copying-clerk, he was more my comrade than my superior.
Lassagne, as I think I have already said, was at that time a man of twenty-eight or thirty, with an attractive face, enshrined in beautiful black hair, animated by black eyes full of intelligence and cleverness, and lighted up (if the phrase may be permitted) by teeth so white and so regular that the vainest of women might have envied them. The only defect in his face was his aquiline nose, which was a little more inclined to one side than the other; but this very irregularity gave an original touch to his face that it would not have had without it. Add to these things a sympathetic voice which seemed gently to vibrate in one's ear, and at the sound of which it was impossible not to turn round and smile. In short, a delightful person whose like I have rarely met; well informed; a brilliant song-writer; the intimate friend of Désaugiers, Théaulon, Armand Gouffé, Brazier, Rougemont and all the opera-writers of the time; so that he refreshed himself after his official work, which he loathed, by entering into the literary world, which he adored, and his daily labour alternated with desultory work, consisting partly of articles for the Drapeau blanc and the Foudre and partly of contributions to some of the most delightful plays of the operatic theatres. It will be admitted that here was the very superior I needed, and I could not have asked Providence for anything that would have seemed to me better for me.
Well, during the five years that we spent in the same office there was never a cloud, or a quarrel, or a feeling of cross purposes between Lassagne and me. He made me like the hour at which I began my daily work, because I knew he would come in immediately after me; he made me love the time I spent at my desk, because he was always ready there to help me with an explanation, to teach me something fresh about life, which had as yet, for me, scarcely opened, about the world of which I was totally ignorant, and finally about foreign or national literature, of which in 1823 I knew practically nothing, either of the one or of the other.
Lassagne arranged my daily work; it was entirely mechanical, and consisted in copying out, in the finest handwriting possible, the largest possible number of letters: these, according to their importance, had to be signed by M. Oudard, M. de Broval, or even by the Duc d'Orléans. In the midst of this correspondence, which concerned the whole range of administration and which often, when addressed to princes or foreign kings, passed from matters of administration to politics, there occurred reports connected with the contentious affairs of M. le Duc d'Orléans; for the Duc d'Orléans himself prepared his litigious business for his counsel, doing himself the work that solicitors do for barristers—that is to say, preparing the briefs. These were nearly always entirely in the handwriting of the Duc d'Orléans, or at all events corrected and annotated in his large thick writing, in which every letter was fastened to its neighbouring letter by a solid stroke, after the fashion of the arguments of a logical dialectician, bound together, entwined, succeeding each other.
I was attacking my first letter, and, by the advice of Lassagne, who had laid great stress on this point, I was despatching it in my very best handwriting, when I heard the door of communication between Oudard's office and ours open. I pretended, with the hypocrisy of an old hand, to be so deeply absorbed in my work that no noise could distract my attention, when I heard the creak of steps advancing towards my desk and then they stopped by me.
"Dumas!" called out Lassagne to me.
I raised my head and I saw, standing close to me on my left, a person who was totally unknown to me.