“Don’t swear, but hold out.”
“Yes, yes. I swear to you. Never in my life shall I be seen in a wineshop.”
And yet here he was, drinking and laughing, and as healthy as possible. Father was certainly too severe. Forgetting that he had cured me, I inwardly blamed him for frightening people, finding in him a certain hardness of heart. Why should he wish to deprive this good fellow of his pleasure?
My rubicund friend answered to the name of Casenave, but he was generally called by a symbolical nickname—nothing other than “Pour-the-drink,” which might serve a double purpose. “Pour-the-drink” at once won my heart by the surprising adventures through which he had passed: stories of which he most unaffectedly poured forth. He might have figured in the narratives of the “Three Old Mariners,” in which case his weight would assuredly have assured Jeremy’s descent into the jaws of the tiger. Having in his youth learned through the newspapers of the idleness and good cheer which inhered in the monkish estate, he resolved to adopt it, and presented himself at the door of a Capuchin monastery, where he soon learned to moderate his hopes. To be routed out in the night by a barbarous brother to take part in singing the service, to be fed on vegetables half cooked by a brother suffering from incurable catarrh, made him grow thin and waste away. His ingenuity alone saved him from a still greater disaster. When the monks, placed in a circle, were invited to inflict the discipline upon one another, piously reciting the penitential psalms the while, he managed to get his rope so entangled in that of his nearest fellow-sufferer that while they were deliberately disentangling them “the ‘miserere’ ran along.”
But the prior declined to keep him, and generously restored him to civil life. He there formed the most brilliant relations, which he proved to the admiring listeners by telling of the beautiful women who came every evening to visit him in his modest abode. They used to come down through the ceiling, in which, however, no aperture was afterward visible. One moment he was alone, the next, there they were in silk gowns and hoop skirts, for they still adhered to the fashions of the Second Empire. Far from remaining inactive, they would put into his hands a bowl of reasonable dimensions, into which, bending their arms, they would empty—fz-z-z-z!—several bottles of champagne. This fz-z-z-z, which expressed the flowing of the wine into the bowl, took upon his lips a caressing, musical sound. One could almost hear the pop of the cork and the bubbling out of the froth.
He imparted to us still more astounding biographical details. One night, mistaking the gas light in the street for his candle, he had sprung out of the window to blow it out, and had been picked up in his nightshirt somewhat bruised but safe and sound. And had he not a double who walked out with him? Only the evening before he had had a long and most interesting conversation with his double, who never left him till they had returned to the outskirts of the town, when he bade him good-bye till next time.
Every one listened without interrupting him, except by signs of approval or requests to go on. Why should I not believe all those marvellous things, when no one around me showed the slightest sign of incredulity?
I did not know the nature of Casenave’s business, for he could converse upon all subjects with great competence, and might be supposed to have practised the most diverse industries. Whereas I very soon discovered that two other members of the company—Gallus and Merinos—were distinguished artists. Gallus, the musician, directed his remarks especially to grandfather, as if only they two, in the midst of the general imbecility, could understand one another and fraternise in matters musical. The pair affected to hold themselves apart, though in their asides they appeared to utter only a few brief cabalistic words: understanding thus established, they would roll the whites of their eyes when one or the other alluded to the allegro of the symphony in C minor, the andante of the fourteenth sonata, or the scherzo in B flat of the seventh trio, over which they would clasp one another’s hands as if in mutual congratulation, calling it the Archduke Rodolpho’s divine trio. No one interrupted them in the state of exultation to which a mere numeral was enough to lift them; at such times indeed every one gazed upon them with respect. From time to time some one would inquire of Gallus, somewhat diffidently, as if fearful of being pitied for not having used the proper terms:
“How about your lyrical drama on the Death of Olympus?”
“It’s getting on,” the composer would reply imperturbably.