‘What! is it you?’
The architect stammered from sheer vexation:
‘Yes, I am going to pay a visit. It’s confoundedly idiotic in the country, eh? But it can’t be helped. There are certain things one’s obliged to do. And you live near here, eh? I knew—that is to say, I didn’t. I had been told something about it, but I thought it was on the opposite side, farther down.’
Claude, very much moved at seeing him, helped him out of his difficulty.
‘All right, all right, old man, there is no need to apologise. I am the most guilty party. Ah! it’s a long while since we saw one another! If you knew what a thump my heart gave when I saw your nose appear from behind the leaves!’
Then he took his arm and accompanied him, giggling with pleasure, while the other, in his constant worry about his future, which always made him talk about himself, at once began speaking of his prospects. He had just become a first-class pupil at the School, after securing the regulation ‘honourable mentions,’ with infinite trouble. But his success left him as perplexed as ever. His parents no longer sent him a penny, they wailed about their poverty so much that he might have to support them in his turn. He had given up the idea of competing for the Prix de Rome, feeling certain of being beaten in the effort, and anxious to earn his living. And he was weary already; sick at scouring the town, at earning twenty-five sous an hour from ignorant architects, who treated him like a hodman. What course should he adopt? How was he to guess at the shortest route? He might leave the School; he would get a lift from his master, the influential Dequersonnière, who liked him for his docility and diligence; only what a deal of trouble and uncertainty there would still be before him! And he bitterly complained of the Government schools, where one slaved away for years, and which did not even provide a position for all those whom they cast upon the pavement.
Suddenly he stopped in the middle of the path. The elder hedges were leading to an open plain, and La Richaudière appeared amid its lofty trees.
‘Hold hard! of course,’ exclaimed Claude, ‘I hadn’t thought about it—you’re going to that shanty. Oh! the baboons; there’s a lot of ugly mugs, if you like!’
Dubuche, looking vexed at this outburst of artistic feeling, protested stiffly. ‘All the same, Papa Margaillan, idiot as he seems to you, is a first-rate man of business. You should see him in his building-yards, among the houses he runs up, as active as the very fiend, showing marvellous good management, and a wonderful scent as to the right streets to build and what materials to buy! Besides, one does not earn millions without becoming a gentleman. And then, too, it would be very silly of me not to be polite to a man who can be useful to me.’
While talking, he barred the narrow path, preventing his friend from advancing further—no doubt from a fear of being compromised by being seen in his company, and in order to make him understand that they ought to separate there.