There was a loud blare; a hunting-horn without began to bray the Dead March in Saul.
“Mon Dieu!” said a waiter.
“Silence!” growled the head waiter.
The door was flung open, and Horace entered in black, wearing black kid gloves, and followed by Gaston Latour, also in mourning and black kid gloves, blowing all the emotion of which he was master into the resounding brass of the great wind instrument that encircled his chest. And as the guests trooped in after them, all in black and wearing black kid gloves, students and their young womenfolk all taking their seats at the table with a titter, Gaston Latour solemnly tramped round the room behind the waiters in slow step, blaring the march of the dead, taking his lips from the brass mouthpiece only to imitate the roll of the kettle-drums and to give the big drum’s solemn announcement of doom with a loud “boom!”
When Horace had seen them all seated, he sat down.
But, in spite of the vigorous lead given by Gaston Latour, the jests did not come tripping to the call; laughter lost something of its hilarity; tongues that were wont to wag with airy wit were barren of banter; voices had a tendency to huskiness; quip and crank gave way to tales of the days that were gone—so they feasted for awhile with something of the fever gone out of their riot, and until the coffee came they sat unwontedly staid and hushed, and in reminiscence and story lived again their insolences and their rebuffs, their darings and their hesitations, their enthusiasms and their hardships, their glorious comradeships, their hero-worship, and their fantastic revelries....
It was near midnight when a skull was passed round filled with little folded papers, and they cast lots for Horace’s corduroy trousers. Gaston won the breeches, and had to deliver the funeral oration.
He stood up, pulled on his black kid gloves, and blew his nose strenuously, taking a long-sustained and melancholy note that sent a titter round the solemn row of waiters:
“Friends of my youth, companions of my unmitigated follies! the ancient figure that sits at the head of this table was once young—the years cannot rob him of that. And it is because he has not been ashamed to share his youngness with the lion and the ass that I rise to-night to bid you drink to the Passing of Youth in the mirth-provoking wines of France. This is the last mad moment of his splendid years; to-night his heroic follies are done; this room, where have been revelry and dance and song and wit and laughter and boon companionship, will know him no more. He is called home—across the sea-sick channel. He goes to shiver forlorn amidst the gloomy fogs of respectability. He will marry a staid wife and beget staid children and dine with lord mayors and wear white waistcoats over a self-conscious stomach. With the corduroy breeches of his studentship he has no more to do. Whither he goes there are no gay cafés—no riotous junketings. He will dance down the streets no more—shout no more—to the stars no more. Whither he goes the people are glum, grey-minded, commonplace—he must not sing, except out of tune, or monotonously, for fear of sin in the music—he must not dance, except with pre-arranged precision and with demure one, two, three to tunes that are piously bereft of all ecstasy. Revelry he will pass by with averted glance and eyes downcast. And yet, as he sits at his plethoric ease before the fire, after a full dinner, prosperous, rotund, bourgeois, he will nod, and nodding sleep—and in the freedom of dreams his ranging memory, rid for awhile of its crude discipline, will flit here, back to the old room, back to the bare walls—he will live again the blithe days of his fantastic youth; he will hear the echo of old laughter as his old jests set the ghosts of his old companions in a roar about the table; at break of day, as the mists rise from the river, he will skip down the Boule Miche, the highway of youth; he will caper through the dawn to blow out the stars above Montparnasse; he will recall with a glow and a bracing of the nerves that he was acquainted with hardship and scarce knew it, for the streets were paved with gladness, and kind eyes made stars in his firmament on the blackest of nights, and he lodged amongst the skies—and in Paris.... Fill your glasses, comrades, and drink.”
They all rose to their feet.