“Your case will be inquired into, Count, and representation made to the Spanish minister at this court. May I ask where you are staying here?”
“I have not yet taken up my residence at Paris.” “Your passport is of course with the police?” I bowed an assent, while a sudden thought flashed across me. “They mean to send me out of the country!” The attaché had twice said “Good morning,” ere I remarked it, and with a hurried leave-taking I quitted the room, well aware of the folly into which a momentary fit of passion had betrayed me.
It was palpable enough,—my passport would at once offer a ground for my expulsion: I was an English subject, travelling on a Spanish passport. I must, of course, expect to be disowned by the Spanish minister, and not acknowledged by my own.
This was a sorry beginning, and I sauntered out into the streets in a very depressed state of mind. What was I to do? My funds were at a low ebb,—I had not above four hundred francs in the world. Into what career could I throw myself, and, while obtaining a livelihood, avoid discovery? I knew various things, in that smattering sort of way which, by the aid of puffing and notoriety, often succeeds with the world; but yet notoriety was the very thing I most dreaded! There was nothing for it but to change my name. Many would doubtless say that this was not any great sacrifice,—need not have cost me any very poignant sufferings; but they would be wrong. I had clung to my name through all the changes and vicissitudes of my fortune, as though it embodied my very identity. It was to make that humble name a great one that I had toiled and struggled through my whole life. In that obscure name lay the whole impulse of my darings. Take that from me, and you took away the energy that sustained me, and I sunk down into the mere adventurer, living on from day to day, and hour to hour, without purpose or ambition. I had borne my name in the very lowest passages of my fortune, hoping one day or other to contrast these dark periods with the brilliant hours of my destiny. And now I must abandon it! “Well, be it so,” thought I, “and, by way of compromise, I 'll keep half of it, and call myself Monsieur Corneille; and as to nationality, there need be little difficulty. Whenever a man talks indifferent Spanish, he says he is from the Basque. If he speaks bad German, he calls himself an Austrian. So I, if there be any irregularities in my regular verbs, will coolly assert that I am a brave Belge and a subject of King Leopold; and if humility be a virtue, this choice of a native land ought to do me credit.”
I raised my head from my musings at this moment, and found myself at the corner of the Rue Goguenarde, exactly opposite a house covered with placards and announcements, from the street to the third story, a great board with gilt letters, over the entrance, proclaiming it the “Bureau des Affiches” for all nations. Nor was the universality a mere pretence, as a single glance could show the range of advertisements, taking in everything, from an estate in Guadaloupe to a neat chamber in the Marais; from a foundry at Lyons to the sweeping of a passage in the Rue Rivoli. All the nostrums of medicine, all the cheap appliances of the toilet, remedies against corpulence, perventives to extreme emaciation, how to grow hair, how to get rid of it, governesses, ballet-dancers, even ladies “with suitable portions and great personal attractions,” were all at the command of him rich enough to indulge his indolence. “There must surely be something applicable to me in all those varied wants,” thought I; and I entered a great room where several knots of men and women, of different ranks and conditions, were gathered around large tablets of advertisements.
Some were in search of lost articles of dress or jewelry, a runaway child or a missing spaniel; some inquiring for cheap apartments, or economical modes of travel with others going the same road: but the greater number were in pursuit of some means of livelihood,—and what a host they were! Professors of every art, science, and language; journalists, poets, tenors, gardeners, governesses, missionaries, rope-dancers, frail little damsels who performed as goddesses in a pantomime, and powerful fellows who performed the “life-models” of academies, together with a number of well-dressed gentlemen of a certain age who announced themselves as “discreet friends to any party engaged in a delicate and difficult transaction.”
My heart sunk within me as I saw the mass of capability by which I was surrounded. “What could the world want with me,” thought I, “in such a glut of acquirements as I see here?” And I was about to turn away, when my attention was drawn to a very little elderly man who was most importunately entreating one of the clerks to do him some service or other. The old man's eagerness was actually painful to witness. “I will sell it for a mere nothing,” said he, “although it cost me five hundred francs!”
“You'll be fortunate if you get one hundred for it,” said the clerk.
“I would accept of even one hundred,—nay! I'd take eighty,” sighed the old man.
“So you ought,” said the other. “These things are all at a discount now; men like more active and energetic situations. Retirement is not the taste of our day.”