He was always waiting for me at the schoolroom door, and was always the last one to speak to me at closing. Perhaps I reminded him of some young usher whom he had known when life was more pleasant.
If, however, the Maison Sorel chafed Auguste, it was not for lack of affection on his father's part Sorel often came with him to the door of the school-room; and every night, rain or shine, he was there at nine to accompany him home. It was in this way that I first came to know Sorel; and whether it was from some kindness that Auguste may have thought I showed, or because I could talk a little French, Sorel took a great liking to me. At first, he and Auguste would walk with me a few blocks after school; then he would look in upon me for a few minutes at the law-office where I was studying, where I had a large anteroom to myself; finally, nothing would do but that I should visit him at his house. I had always been fond of strolling about the wharves, and I should have liked very well to stop occasionally at Sorel's, if I could have been allowed to sit in the kitchen and hear the general conversation. But this was not sufficient state for “M. le maître d'école.” I must be drawn off upstairs to the bedroom parlor, to hear of Auguste's virtues. Such devotion I have seldom seen. Sorel would have praised Auguste, with tears in his eyes, for hours together, if I would have stayed to listen.
He had many things to show in that parlor. He had gyroscopes: and he would wind them up and set half-a-dozen of those anti-natural tops spinning straight out in the air for my diversion. There were great sacks of uninflated balloons, and delicate sheet-rubber, from which Sorel made up balloons. There were other curious things in rubber,—a tobacco-pouch, for example, in perfect outward imitation of an iron kilogramme-weight, with a ring to lift it by, warranted to create “immense surprise” among those who should lift it for iron; tobacco-pouches, too, in fac-simile of lobsters and crabs and reptiles, colored to nature, which Sorel assured me would cause roars of laughter among my friends: there was no pleasanter way, he said, of entertaining an evening company than suddenly to display one of these creatures, and make the ladies scream and run about. He presented me, at different times, with a gyroscope, a kilogramme-weight and a lobster with a blue silk lining.
As time ran on, and, in the early winter, I began practice, Sorel brought me a little business. He had to sue two Graeco-Roman wrestlers for board and attach their box-office receipts. Some Frenchman had heard of a little legacy left him in the Calvados, and wanted me to look up the matter.
Fidèle, too, came to me every quarter-day, to make oath before me to his pension certificate, and stopped and made a short call. He had little to say about France. His great romance had been the war, although it seemed to have fused itself into a hazy, high-colored dream of danger, excitement, suffering, and generous devotion. Tears always rose in his eyes when he spoke of “la république?”
In those first days of practice, anything by the name of law business wore a halo, and I used to encourage Sorel's calls, partly for this reason and partly for practice in talking French with a common man. I hoped to go to France some day, and I wanted to be able then to talk not only with the grammatical, but with the dear people who say, “I guess likely,” and “How be you?” in French.
Moreover, Sorel was rather amusing. He was something of a humorist. Once he came to tell me, excitedly, that Auguste was learning music: “Il touche au violon,—mais—'e play so bien!” And Sorel's eyes opened in wonder at the boy's quickness.
“Who teaches him?” I asked. “Some Frenchman who plays in the theatre?”
“Mais, no,” Sorel replied, with a broad drollery in his eye; “un professeur d'occasion!” It was a ruined music-teacher, engaged now in selling balloons from Madeira Place, who was the “professeur d'occasion.”
One day Sorel appeared with a great story to tell. Auguste, it seemed, had wearied of home, and was determined to go to sea. Nothing could deter him. Whereupon M. Sorel had hit upon a stratagem. He had hunted up, somewhere along the wharves, two French sailors with conversational powers, and had retained them to stay at his house for two or three days, as chance comers. It was inevitable that Auguste should ply them with eager questions,—and they knew their part.