"Of course," said I, laying the first week's rent upon the table.
And so the thing was done, and, brimful of satisfaction, I went off to the hotel for my luggage, and moved in immediately.
CHAPTER XII.
BROADCLOTH AND CIVILIZATION.
Allowing for my inexperience in the use of the language, I prospered better than I had expected, and found, to my satisfaction, that I was by no means behind my French fellow-students in medical knowledge. I passed through my preliminary examination with credit, and although Dr. Chéron was careful not to praise me too soon, I had reason to believe that he was satisfied with my progress. My life, indeed, was now wholly given up to my work. My country-breeding had made me timid, and the necessity for speaking a foreign tongue served only to increase my natural reserve; so that although I lived and studied day after day in the society of some two or three hundred young men, I yet lived as solitary a life as Robinson Crusoe in his island. No one sought to know me. No one took a liking for me. Gay, noisy, chattering fellows that they were, they passed me by for a "dull and muddy-pated rogue;" voted me uncompanionable when I was only shy; and, doubtless, quoted me to each other as a rare specimen of the silent Englishman. I lived, too, quite out of the students' colony. To me the Quartier Latin (except as I went to and fro between the Hotel Dieu and the Ecole de Medicine) was a land unknown; and the student's life--that wonderful Vie de Bohéme which furnishes forth half the fiction of the Paris press--a condition of being, about which I had never even heard. What wonder, then, that I never arrived at Dr. Chéron's door five minutes behind time, never missed a lecture, never forgot an appointment? What wonder that, after dropping moodily into one or two of the theatres, I settled down quite quietly in my lodgings; gave up my days to study; sauntered about the lighted alleys of the Champs Elysées in the sweet spring evenings, and, going home betimes, spent an hour or two with my books, and kept almost as early hours as in my father's house at Saxonholme?
After I had been living thus for rather longer than three weeks, I made up my mind one Sunday morning to call at Dalrymple's rooms, and inquire if he had yet arrived in Paris. It was about eleven o'clock when I reached the Chaussée d'Antin, and there learned that he was not only arrived, but at home. Being by this time in possession of the luxury of a card, I sent one up, and was immediately admitted. I found breakfast still upon the table; Dalrymple sitting with an open desk and cash-box before him; and, standing somewhat back, with his elbow resting on the chimney-piece, a gentleman smoking a cigar. They both looked up as I was announced, and Dalrymple, welcoming me with a hearty grasp, introduced this gentleman as Monsieur de Simoncourt.
M. de Simoncourt bowed, knocked the ash from his cigar, and looked as if he wished me at the Antipodes. Dalrymple was really glad to see me.
"I have been expecting you, Arbuthnot," said he, "for the last week. If you had not soon beaten up my quarters, I should have tried, somehow, to find out yours. What have you been about all this time? Where are you located? What mischief have you been perpetrating since our expedition to the guingette on the river? Come, you have a thousand things to tell me!"
M. de Simoncourt looked at his watch--a magnificent affair, decorated with a costly chain, and a profusion of pendant trifles--and threw the last-half of his cigar into the fireplace.