In the Days of My Youth: A Novel

by Amelia B. Edwards

Dinner over, and the serious waiter dismissed with the dessert and the empty bottles, we sat by the open window for a long time, sipping our coffee, smoking our cigars, and watching the busy life of the Boulevard below. There the shops were all alight and the passers-by more numerous than by day. Carriages were dashing along, full of opera-goers and ball-room beauties. On the pavement just under our window were seated the usual crowd of Boulevard idlers, sipping their al fresco absinthe, and grog-au-vin. In the very next room, divided from us by only a slender partition, was a noisy party of young men and girls. We could hear their bursts of merriment, the chinking of their glasses as they pledged one another, the popping of the champagne corks, and almost the very jests that passed from lip to lip. Presently a band came and played at the corner of an adjoining street. All was mirth, all was life, all was amusement and dissipation both in-doors and out-of-doors, in the "care-charming" city of Paris on that pleasant September night; and we, of course, were gay and noisy, like our neighbors. Dalrymple and Müller could scarcely be called new acquaintances. They had met some few times at the Chicards, and also, some years before, in Rome. What stories they told of artists whom they had known! What fun they made of Academic dons and grave professors high in authority! What pictures they drew, of life in Rome--in Vienna--in Paris! Though we had no ladies of our party and were only three in number, I am not sure that the merry-makers in the next room laughed any louder or oftener than we!

At length the clock on the mantelpiece warned us that it was already half-past nine, and that we had been three hours at dinner. It was clearly time to vary the evening's amusement in some way or other, and the only question was what next to do? Should we go to a billiard-room? Or to the Salle Valentinois? Or to some of the cheap theatres on the Boulevard du Temple? Or to the Tableaux Vivants? Or the Café des Aveugles? Or take a drive round by the Champs Elysées in an open fly?

At length Müller remembered that some fellow-students were giving a party that evening, and offered to introduce us.

"It is up five pairs of stairs, in the Quartier Latin," said he; "but thoroughly jolly--all students and grisettes. They'll be delighted to see us."

This admirable proposition was no sooner made than acted upon; so we started immediately, and Dalrymple, who seemed to be well acquainted with the usages of student-life, proposed that we should take with us a store of sweetmeats for the ladies.

"There subsists," observed he, "a mysterious elective affinity between the grisette and the chocolate bon-bon. He who can skilfully exhibit the latter, is almost certain to win the heart of the former. Where the chocolate fails, however, the marron glacé is an infallible specific. I recommend that we lay in a liberal supply of both weapons."

"Carried by acclamation," said Müller. "We can buy them on our way, in the Rue Vivienne. A capital shop; but one that I never patronize--they give no credit."

Chatting thus, and laughing, we made our way across the Boulevard and through a net-work of by-streets into the Rue Vivienne, where we laid siege to a great bon-bon shop--a gigantic depot for dyspepsia at so much per kilogramme--and there filled our pockets with sweets of every imaginable flavor and color. This done, a cab conveyed us in something less than ten minutes across the Pont Neuf to the Quartier Latin.

Müller's friends were three in number, and all students--one of art, one of law, and one of medicine. They lodged at the top of a dingy house near the Odéon, and being very great friends and very near neighbors were giving this entertainment conjointly. Their names were Gustave, Jules, and Adrien. Adrien was the artist, and lived in the garret, just over the heads of Gustave and Jules, which made it very convenient for a party, and placed a suite of rooms at the disposal of their visitors.

Long before we had achieved the five pairs of stairs, we heard the sound of voices and the scraping of a violin, and on the fifth landing were received by a pretty young lady in a coquettish little cap, whom Müller familiarly addressed as Annette, and who piloted us into a very small bed-room which was already full of hats and coats, bonnets, shawls, and umbrellas. Having added our own paletots and beavers to the general stock, and having each received a little bit of pasteboard in exchange for the same, we were shown into the ball-room by Mademoiselle Annette, who appeared to fill the position of hostess, usher, and general superintendent.