Bohemian Days: Three American Tales

by George Alfred Townsend

He gave the same order to the proprietor as he passed down-stairs, and hurried at a crazy pace across the Pont des Arts to the rooms of Terrapin. That philosopher was playing whist with his friends, and gave as his opinion that Ralph was "spooney."

Ralph drank much, talked much, chafed more. Somebody advised him to travel, but he felt that Europe had nothing to show him like that which he had lost. He told Madame George the story at the cremery.

"Ah, monsieur," she said, "that is the way with all love in Paris."

He played "ramps" with the French, but the game impressed him as stupid, and he tried to quarrel with Boetia, who was too polite to be vexed. He drank pure cognac, to the astonishment of the Gauls, but it had no visible effect upon him, and Père George held up his hands as he went away, saying: "Behold these Americans! they do everything with a fever; brandy affects them no more than water."

The room in the fifth story was very cold now. He tried to read in bed, but the novel had no meaning in it. He walked up and down the balcony in the November night, where he had often explained the motions of the stars to her. They seemed to miss her now, and peeped inquisitively. He looked into the bureau and wardrobe, half ashamed of the hope that she had left some souvenir. There was not even a letter. She had torn a leaf, on which she had written her name, out of his diary. The sketches he had made of her were gone; if she had only taken her remembrance out of his heart, it would have been well. Then he reasoned, with himself, sensibly and consistently. It was a bad passion at first. How would it have shamed his father and mother had they heard of it! Its continuance was even more pernicious, making him profligate and idle; introducing him to light pleasures and companies; enfeebling him, morally and physically; diverting him from the beautiful arts; weakening his parental love; divorcing him from grand themes and thoughts. He could never marry this woman. Their heart-strings must have been wrung by some final parting; and now that she had been proved untrue, was it not most unmanly that he should permit her to stand even in the threshold of his mind? It was a good riddance, he said, pacing the floor in the firelight; but just then he glanced into the great mirror, and stood fixed to mark the pallor of his face. Say what he might, laugh as he did, with a hollow sound, that absent girl had stirred the very fountains of his feelings. Not learned, not beautiful, not anything to anybody but him—there was yet the difference between her love and her deceit, which made him content or wretched.

He felt this so keenly that he lifted his voice and cursed—himself, her, society, mankind. Then he cried like a child, and called himself a calf, and laughed bitterly, and cried again.

There was no sleep for him that night. He drank brandy again in the morning, and walked to the banker's. His remittance awaited him, and he came out of the Rue de la Paix with thirty gold napoleons in his pocket.

He met all the Americans at breakfast at Trappe's in the Palais Royal, and strolling to the morgue with a part of them, kept on to Vincennes, and spent a wretched day in the forest. At the Place de la Bastille, returning, he got into a cabriolet alone and searched ineffectually along the Rue Rivoli for a companion who would ride with him. "Go through the Rue de Beaux Arts!" he said, as they crossed Pont Neuf. This is a quiet street in the Latin Quarter filled with cheap pensions, in one of which dwelt Fanchette. His heart was wedged in his throat as he saw at the window little Suzette sewing. She wore one of the dresses he had given her. Her face was old and piteous; she was red-eyed and worked wearily, looking into the street like one on a rainy day.

When she saw him, he thought, by her start and flush, that she was going to fall from the chair; but then she looked with a dim, absent manner into his face, like one who essays to remember something that was very dear but is now quite strange. He was pleased to think that she was miserable, and would have given much to have found her begging bread, as she did that night of him.

He had ridden by on purpose to show that he had money, and she sent him by Terrapin's word a petition for a few francs to buy her a chamber. Fanchette's friend had come home from the country, and it would not do for her to occupy their single bedroom; but Ralph made reply by deputy, to the effect that the donor of the jewelry would, he supposed, give her a room. It was a weary week ensuing; he drank spirits all the time, and made love to an English governess in the Tuileries garden, and when Sunday came, with a rainy, windy, dismal evening, he went with Terrapin and Co. to the Closerie des Lilas.