O'Hoolohan had learned this from a knot of premature cynics in the café of la Jeune France, where he had been in the habit of calling in among other gay resorts of the district to pick up what information he could on a matter that affected him much, for under his stone-like, soldierly exterior there were hidden springs of tenderness.
The café which is called after young France is much affected by those promising pillars of the future, the students of law and medicine, especially the latter, who reside in the Latin Quarter of Paris. A light, varied of blue and red, blazes like a pharos over its portals to entice the customers. It lies to the right a few hundred yards up the Boulevard St. Michel, as it is entered from the side of the quays. Here may be seen congregated, after dinner-hour in the evening—under the warm chandeliers in the winter, out in the fresh air of the thoroughfare in the finer season—the future Berryers and Lamballes of the most civilized nation in the world. Only they do not look like it always, carelessly chatting behind their modest glasses of beer, often from amid the clouds of incense floating from cheap cigars, or the equally economic caporal tobacco. A gay and spacious café it is; well lit, well furnished with softly-padded cushions, and lined with rows of mirrors reflecting the intellectual group around busily engaged wasting the hours in everything but the study of comparative anatomy or the subtleties of the Code Napoleon. Dominoes and picquet are more in vogue than jurisprudence, and the only books which are read by the novices of the learned professions who frequent the place are woman's looks, and folly—the loss of time and money—invariably all they teach them.
The night before that on which O'Hoolohan paid his last visit to O'Hara's chambers, the soldier of fortune had sauntered into the café early, but it was almost deserted. It was the mi-carême, that oasis in mid-Lent for the Paris student, when he avenges himself for the enforced abstinence from his usual enjoyments by the indulgence in riot in the interval of saturnalia allowed by custom. The habitués of the Young France were not there. They were dancing merrily in one disguise or other at the ball-room higher up in the same boulevard, the Closerie des Lilas.
Why, it may be asked, did not O'Hoolohan go to the ball-room where he had first seen her whose fate he was inquiring into? and why, knowing that she was dead, did he seek to know more?
The one answer may serve for both questions. He looked upon himself already as a member of Captain Chauvin's household. He would not dishonour her he loved by showing himself in any of the notorious haunts of loose womankind now that he was her accepted suitor. But having come to the inevitable conclusion that Marguerite was the lost sister of Berthe's friend, Caroline, he was anxious to obtain some memorial of her, and, if possible, to rescue her remains from the fosse commune, and put over them a simple tomb. He was emotional, was this battered campaigner, who had buffeted about the world so much, and had an infinite pity for human weakness—and chiefly for the weaknesses of maidenhood beset by temptation. He hung about the café until groups returning from the Closerie in every variety of carnivalesque costume had filled it with a noisy company. Close to the table at which he sat, three students, disciples of Æsculapius, from their conversation, took up their position and ordered a frugal supper before retiring to roost in their attics hard by. They were talkative, and talked as if they were not very particular who listened. Our friend could not help overhearing them, and out of their conversation had sprung the proposed 'affair of honour.'
'Ah, ma Marguerite,' said one pale-faced, blear-eyed stripling, as he rolled a cigarette, 'little I thought as I whirled you in a waltz a twelvemonth ago that I'd be having a hand in your dissection to-day. She makes a splendid subject.'
'The proud minx, she never would take my arm,' said a sentimental gentleman with blue spectacles. 'D'you know, Eugène, I cut enough of her hair off when I got the chance, two hours after they brought her in, to plait me a watch-guard. Garçon, a bock! Don't you think it a famous idea?'
'Ma foi!' said Eugène, a black-bearded fellow with a Gascon accent, robust of frame, and several years older than his companion, 'the idea is tolerable, but mine is better. I bought a member of Marguerite and took it home. Tiens, see this paper-knife,' producing one from his pocket. 'I thought I'd like a souvenir of la modiste in memory of old times. This is made out of her tibia; I had the fibula removed. Please to observe the beautiful polish the internal malleolus takes!'
'Is that true?' exclaimed O'Hoolohan angrily, starting forward to the table.
'What business of yours is it?' retorted the Gascon.