“We may be obliged to move into a new house,” said Monsieur Bergeret, for he was a sensible man accustomed to subject his desires to reason.
“I’m afraid so, papa,” said Pauline. “But never mind, we will find you a tree reaching up to your window, I promise you.”
She followed her father’s investigations with perfect good nature, but without much personal interest, as a young girl undismayed by change, who vaguely feels that her fate is not yet determined, and lives the while in a species of anticipation.
“The new houses are better fitted up than the old ones,” continued Monsieur Bergeret, “but I do not like them, perhaps because I am more conscious, in the midst of a luxury that one can measure, of the vulgarity of a straitened life. Not that the mediocrity of my fortune distresses me, even on your account. It is the banal and commonplace that I detest.... But you will think me absurd.”
“Oh no, papa.”
“What I dislike in new houses is the precise sameness of their arrangement. The structure of the apartment is only too visible from the outside. For a long while dwellers in cities have been accustomed to live one above another, and as your aunt won’t hear of a small house in the suburbs I am quite willing to put up with a third or fourth-story flat, and that is precisely why I cannot but regret giving up the idea of an old house. The irregularity of old houses makes the piling of flat upon flat more endurable. When I walk down a new street I find myself thinking that this superposition of households in modern buildings is, in its uniformity, ridiculous. The small dining-rooms perched one above the other with the same little windows and the self-same copper gaselier lighted every evening at exactly the same time; the same tiny kitchens with larders looking on the yard, the same extremely dirty maidservants; the same drawing-rooms, with their pianos one over the other. To my mind, the precision of modern houses reveals the daily functions of the creatures enclosed in them as plainly as though the floors and ceilings were of glass. And all these people who dine one above another, play the piano one above another, and go to bed one above another, in a perfectly symmetrical fashion—when one thinks of it, they offer a spectacle both comical and humiliating.”
“The tenants themselves would hardly think so,” said Mademoiselle Zoe, who had quite decided to settle in a new house.
“It is true,” said Pauline thoughtfully, “it is true, it is comical.”
“Of course, here and there, I see rooms that I like,” continued Monsieur Bergeret. “But the rent is always too high. And that makes me doubt the truth of a principle laid down by the admirable Fourier, which assures us that our tastes are so diverse that if only we lived in harmony with one another hovels would be as much in demand as palaces. It is quite true that we do not live in harmony; or we should all possess prehensile tails, so that we could hang suspended from the trees. Fourier has expressly said so. Another man of equal merit, the gentle Prince Kropotkin, has assured us more recently that some day we shall live rent-free in the mansions on the great avenues, for their owners will abandon them when they can no longer procure servants to keep them up. In those days, says the benevolent prince, they will be delighted to hand them over to the worthy women of the working-classes who will not object to a kitchen in the basement. In the meanwhile, the question of a house is both arduous and difficult. Zoe, please come with me to see that suite of rooms on the Quai Conti of which I told you. It is rather dilapidated, having served for thirty years as a chemical warehouse. The landlord won’t do any repairs as he expects to let the place as a warehouse. The windows are oval dormer-windows, but from them you see an ivy-covered wall, a moss-grown well and a headless statue of Flora which still seems to smile. Such things are not easily found in Paris.”