Just now M. Bergeret was on his way to the restaurant, for every evening he spent an hour at the Café de la Comédie. Everybody blamed him for doing so, but here he could enjoy a cheery warmth which had nothing to do with wedded bliss. Here, too, he could read the papers and look on the faces of people who bore him no ill-will. Sometimes, too, he met M. Goubin here—M. Goubin, who had become his favourite pupil since M. Roux’s treachery. M. Bergeret had his favourites, for the simple reason that his artistic soul took pleasure in the very act of making a choice. He had a partiality for M. Goubin, though he could scarcely be said to love him, and, as a matter of fact, M. Goubin was not lovable. Thin and lank, poverty-stricken in physique, in hair, in voice, and in brain, his weak eyes hidden by eye-glasses, his lips close-locked, he was petty in every way, and endowed, not only with the foot, but with the mind of a young girl. Yet, with these characteristics, he was accurate and painstaking, and to his puny frame had been fitted vast and powerful protruding ears, the only riches with which nature had blessed this feeble organism. M. Goubin was naturally qualified to be a capital listener.
M. Bergeret was in the habit of talking to M. Goubin, while they sat with two large beer-glasses in front of them, amidst the noise of the dominoes clicking on the marble tables all around them. At eleven o’clock the master rose and the pupil followed his example. Then they walked across the empty Place du Théâtre and by back ways until they reached the gloomy Tintelleries.
In such fashion they proceeded one night in May when the air, which had been cleared by a heavy storm of rain, was fresh and limpid and full of the smell of earth and leaves. In the purple depths of the moonless, cloudless sky hung points of light that sparkled with the white gleam of diamonds. Amid them, here and there, twinkled bright facets of red or blue. Lifting his eyes to the sky, M. Bergeret watched the stars. He knew the constellations fairly well, and, with his hat on the back of his head and his face turned upwards, he pointed out Gemini with the end of his stick to the vague, wandering glance of M. Goubin’s ignorance. Then he murmured:
“Would that the clear star of Helen’s twin brothers
Might ’neath thy barque the wild waters assuage,
Would that to Pœstum o’er seas of Ionia ...”[9]
[9] “Oh! soit que l’astre pur des deux frères d’Hélène
Calme sous ton vaisseau la vague ionienne,