I saw Soulié had made up his mind to go on with it, and I dropped the subject. Then, as I could not afford to buy the Biographie universelle, I asked Soulié if I might copy out the two articles, and he let me do so. It was evident my writing on the same subject did not inspire him with much terror. We separated at midnight; and, as I went along the boulevard, I dreamt already of my future Christine. It was a dark, rainy night, and the boulevard was almost deserted. When I reached the gate of Saint-Denis, just as I was leaving the boulevard to re-enter the street, I heard cries thirty steps ahead of me; then, in the midst of the darkness, I could see what looked like a group of people struggling violently on the boulevard, and I ran in the direction of the cries. Two fellows were attacking a man and woman. The man attacked was trying to defend himself with a cane, the woman had been thrown down and the thief was trying to snatch a chain that hung round her neck. I leapt on the thief, and the next moment he was on the ground in his turn, and I was kneeling on him. When the second thief saw this, he left off attacking the man and ran away. It would seem that, unwittingly, I had been squeezing the throat of my thief unmercifully; for suddenly, to my great surprise, he yelled out—
"Help, help, help!"
This shout, together with those already uttered by the man and woman assaulted, brought several soldiers from the military station of Bonne-Nouvelle. I had not loosened my hold of the thief, and the soldiers dragged him out of my hands. Then only was I able to respond to the thanks of those whom I had rescued. The woman's voice struck me strangely. It was Adèle d'Alvin, whom I had not seen since I left Villers-Cotterets, and the man was her husband. There had been a special performance at the Porte-Saint-Martin at which la Noce et l'Enterrement had been played, and knowing I had had a hand in that masterpiece, they had wanted to see it. The performance had not finished until late, as is usual in the case of special representations, and Adèle was hungry. When they came out, they went to the theatre café for supper, and this had delayed them. Just as they reached Charlard's chemist's shop they were attacked by the two ruffians of whom I had rid them, and of whom one had been arrested by the defenders of the country. Unluckily, these defenders of the country were not as intelligent as they were brave. They could not distinguish between robbers and robbed, between thieves and honest folk, and they took us all to the guard-room, informing us we must stop there till the morning. At daybreak they sent for a police-officer, who separated the wheat from the tares.
We tried to explain ourselves, and asked that they should examine carefully our persons, our countenances, our appearances, and compare them with those of the man whom I had arrested, and that they should not keep us till next day before rendering us the justice that was our due. But to all this the defenders of the country replied imperturbably that by night all cats look grey; and, consequently, one might easily be deceived, whereas, on the morrow, there would be daylight on the matter.
The decision was neither logical nor eloquent; but we were the weaker party. They made us, assaulted and assaulter alike, go into that part of the guard-house that is called the violon, and there was no help for it but to await the good pleasure of M. le chef du poste.
We all leant up one against another, as people do in a carriage, and tried to sleep. As Adèle and her husband had taken one corner of the camp bed for themselves, there was one left for me. I gazed sadly at the woman for a long time; she was associated with the earliest recollections of my life, and now, apparently perfectly happy, she was falling asleep on the shoulder of another, to whom she spoke in accents of familiar intercourse. She had two children: motherhood had consoled her for her lost love. They both fell asleep; but neither the thief nor I slept at all. Soon my eyes tore themselves away from watching Adèle and her husband; my thoughts retraced their steps and I resumed my dream where it had been interrupted. I saw, in my mind's eye, the bas-relief of Mademoiselle de Fauveau as it hung fastened against the wall, and, in the guard-room of the boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, by the side of that woman and her husband, face to face with the thief who was to get three years' imprisonment at the next assizes, my imagination conjured up the first scenes of Christine. At eight next morning the police-officer entered, took down our depositions and addresses and then set us at liberty; whilst our friend the thief was immediately hustled off to the police station. I returned home to find my poor mother terribly upset. She, like myself, had never closed her eyes all night. I saw Adèle again once or twice during her stay in Paris; but, since that time, my imagination, if not my heart, has been the slave of a mistress who has supplanted all my past mistresses, and even done injury to those of later years. That mistress, or rather that master, was Art.
[CHAPTER VII]
Future landmarks—Compliments to the Duc de Bordeaux—Vates—Cauchois-Lemaire's Orléaniste brochure—The lake of Enghien—Colonel Bro's parrot—Doctor Ferrus—Morrisel—A tip-top funeral cortège—Hunting in full cry—An autopsy—Explanation of the death of the parrot