Sometimes, on the occasion of the graduation of one of their number, an impromptu feed would make the whole house redolent of garlic stews and mountain cheeses smelling strong and rotting nicely in their blue paper wrappers. After his farewell dinner the new owner of a sheepskin would take down from the rack the pipe that bore his initials and sally forth to be notary or deputy in some far-away hole beyond the Loire, there to talk to his friends in the provinces about Paris—Paris which he thought he knew, but in which really he had never set his foot!
In this narrow local circle Numa readily assumed the eagle’s place. To begin with, he shouted louder than the others, and then his music was looked upon as a sign of superiority; at any rate there was some originality in his very lively taste for music. Two or three times a week he treated himself to a stall at the opera and when he came back he overflowed with recitatives and arias, which he sang quite agreeably in a pretty good throaty voice that rebelled against all cultivation. When he strode into the Café Malmus in a theatrical manner, singing some bit of Italian music as he passed the tables, peals of admiration welcomed him: “Hello, old artist!” the boys would shout from every gang. It was just like a club of ordinary citizens in this respect: owing to his reputation as a musical artist all the women gave him a warm look, but the men would use the term enviously and with a suggestion of irony. This artistic fame did him good service later when he came to power and entered public life. Even now the name of Roumestan figures high on the list of all artistic commissions, plans for popular operas, reforms in exhibitions of paintings proposed in the Chamber of Deputies. All that was the result of evenings spent in haunting the music-halls. He learned there self-confidence, the actor’s pose, and a certain way of taking up a position three-quarters front when talking to the lady at the cashier’s desk; then his wonder-struck comrades would exclaim: “Oh! de ce Numa, pas moins!” (Oh, that Numa! what a fellow he is!)
In his studies he had the same easy victory; he was lazy and hated study and solitude, but he managed to pass his examination with no little success through sheer audacity and Southern slyness, the slyness which made him discover the weak spot in his professor’s vanity and work it for all it was worth. Then his pleasant, frank expression and his amiability were also in his favor, and it seemed as if a lucky star lighted the pathway before him.
As soon as he obtained his lawyer’s diploma his parents sent for him to return home, because the slender pocket money which he cost them meant privations they could no longer bear. But the prospect of burying himself alive in the old dead town of Aps crumbling to dust with its ancient ruins, an existence composed of a humdrum round of visits and nothing more exciting than a few lawsuits over a parcel of party-walls, held out no inducements to that undefined ambition that the southern youth vaguely felt underlying his love for the stir and intellectual life of Paris.
With great difficulty he obtained an extension of two years more, in which to complete his studies, and just as these two years had expired and the irrevocable summons home had come, at the house of the Duchesse de San Donnino he met Sagnier during a musical function to which he had been asked on account of his pretty voice—Sagnier, the great Sagnier, the Legitimist lawyer, brother of the duchess and a musical monomaniac. Numa’s youthful enthusiasm appearing in the monotonous round of society and his craze for Mozart’s music carried Sagnier off his feet. He offered him the position of fourth secretary in his office. The salary was merely nominal, but it was being admitted into the employment of the greatest law office in Paris, having close relations with the Faubourg Saint Germain and also with the Chamber of Deputies. Unluckily old Roumestan insisted on cutting off his allowance, hoping to force him to return when hunger stared him in the face. Was he not twenty-six, a notary, and fit to earn his own bread? Then it was that landlord Malmus came to the front.
A regular type was this Malmus; a large, pale-faced, asthmatic man, who from being a mere waiter had become the proprietor of one of the largest restaurants in Paris, partly by having credit, partly by usury. It had been his custom in early days to advance money to the students when they were in need of it, and then when their ships came in, allow himself to be repaid threefold. He could hardly read and could not write at all; his accounts were kept by means of notches cut in a piece of wood, as he had seen the baker boys do in his native town of Lyon; but he was so accurate that he never made a mistake in his accounts, and, more than all, he never placed his money badly. Later, when he had become rich and the proprietor of the house in which he had been a servant for fifteen years, he established his business, and placed it entirely upon a credit basis, an unlimited credit that left the money-drawer empty at the close of the day but filled his queerly kept books with endless lines of orders for food and drink jotted down with those celebrated five-nibbed pens which are held in such sovereign honor in the world of Paris trade.
And the honest fellow’s system was simplicity itself. A student kept all his pocket money, all his allowance from home. All had full credit for meals and drinks and favorites were even allowed a room in his house. He did not ask for a penny during term time, letting the interest mount up on very high sums. But he did not do this carelessly or without circumspection. Malmus passed two months every year, his vacation, in the provinces, making secret inquiry into the health and wealth of the families of his debtors. His asthma was terrible as he mounted the peaks of the Cévennes and descended the low ranges of Languedoc. He was to be seen, gouty and mysterious, prowling about among forgotten villages, with suspicious eyes lowering under the heavy lids that are peculiar to waiters in all-night restaurants. He would remain a few days in each place, interview the notary and the sheriff, inspect secretly the farm or factory of his debtor’s father, and then nothing was heard of him more.
What he learned at Aps gave him full confidence in Numa. The latter’s father, formerly a weaver, had ruined himself with inventions and speculations and lived now in modest circumstances as an insurance agent, but his aunt, Mme. Portal, the childless widow of a rich town councillor, would doubtless leave all her property to her nephew; so, naturally, Malmus wished Numa to remain in Paris.
“Go into Sagnier’s office; I will help you.”
As a secretary of a man in Sagnier’s position he could not live in the Quartier Latin, so Malmus furnished a set of bachelor chambers for him on the Quai Voltaire, on the courts, paying the rent and giving him his allowance on credit. Thus did the future leader face his destiny, everything on the surface seemingly easy and comfortable, but in reality in the direst need; lacking pin and pocket money. The friendship of Sagnier helped him to fine acquaintances. The Faubourg welcomed him. But this social success, the invitations in Paris and to country houses in summer, where he had to arrive in perfect fashionable outfit, only added to his expense. After repeated prayers his Aunt Portal helped him a little, but with great caution and stinginess, always accompanying her gifts with long flighty stupidities and Bible denunciations against “that ruinous Paris.” The situation was untenable.