What flatters him most in all of this is the costume. What a bore that he is not able to put on his crenelated cap and his long-pointed shoes in order that he might show the Minister what a splendid engagement he has, and this time on good government stamped paper which was signed without Roumestan’s aid! Cabantous looks at the stamped paper, smudged on both its faces, and sighs.
“You are mighty lucky; why, look at me—it’s more than a year that I am ’oping for my medal. Numa told me to send my papers on here and I did send my papers here—after that I never heard anything more about the medal, nor about the papers, nor about anything else. I wrote to the Ministry of Marine; they don’t know me at the Marine. I wrote to the Minister himself; the Minister did not answer. And what beats me is this, that now, when I haven’t my papers with me and a discussion arises among the mercantile captains as to pilotage, the port councilmen won’t listen to my arguments. So, finding that was the way of it, I put my ship in dry dock and says I to myself: Come, let’s go and see Numa.”
He was almost in tears about it, was this wretched pilot. Valmajour consoles and reassures him and promises to speak for him with the Minister; he does this in an assured tone, his finger on his moustache, like a man to whom people can refuse nothing. But after all the haughty attitude is not peculiar to him; all these people who are waiting for an audience—old priests of pious manners in their visiting cloaks; methodical and authoritative professors; dudish painters with their hair cut Russian fashion; thick-set sculptors with broad ends to their fingers—they all have this same triumphant air—special friends of the Minister and sure of their business. All of them, as they came in, have said to the clerk: “He expects me.”
Each one is filled with a conviction that if only Roumestan knew that he was there!—This it is that gives a very particular physiognomy to the antechamber of the Ministry of Public Instruction, without a trace of those feverish pallors, of those trembling anxieties, which one perceives in the waiting-rooms at other Ministries.
“Who is he engaged with?” asks Valmajour in a loud voice, going up to the little table.
“The Director of the Opera.”
“Cadaillac—all right, I know—it is about my business!”
After the failure made by the tabor-player in his theatre Cadaillac had refused to let him appear again. Valmajour wished to bring suit, but the Minister, who was afraid of the lawyers and the little newspapers, had begged the musician to withdraw his plea, guaranteeing him a round sum as damages. There is no doubt whatever with Valmajour that they are at this moment discussing these damages and not without a certain animation, too, for every few moments the clarion voice of Numa penetrates the double door of his sitting room, which at last is rudely torn open.
“She is not my protegée, she is yours!”
Big fat Cadaillac leaves the room, hurling this taunt, crosses the antechamber with an angry gait and passes the clerk who is coming up between two lines of solicitors.