A Chair on the Boulevard

by Leonard Merrick

Your attention is directed to my preceding communications on this subject. I desire to protest against the revelry from which you recovered either on the 15th or 16th inst. On the afternoon of the latter date, while engaged in a conference of the first magnitude, I was seized with an overwhelming desire to dance a quadrille at a public ball. I found it impossible to concentrate my attention on the case concerning which I was consulted; I could no longer express myself with lucidity. Outwardly sedate, reliable, I sat at my desk dizzied by such visions as pursued St. Anthony to his cell. No sooner was I free than I fled from Vernon, dined in Paris, bought a false beard, and plunged wildly into the vortex of a dancing-hall. Scoundrel! This is past pardon! My sensibilities revolt, and my prudence shudders. Who shall say but that one night I may be recognised? Who can foretell to what blackmail you may expose me? I, Maitre Lapalme, forbid your profligacies, which devolve upon me; I forbid—etc.

Such admissions my brother sent to me in a disguised hand, and unsigned; perhaps he feared that his blackmailer might prove to be myself! Typewriting was not yet general in France.

Our mother still lived at Vernon, where she contemplated her favourite son's success with the profoundest pride. Occasionally I spent a few days with her; sometimes even more, for she always pressed me to remain. I think she pressed me to remain, not from any pleasure in my society, but because she knew that while I was at home I could commit no actions that would corrupt Grégoire. One summer, when I visited her, I met mademoiselle Leuillet.

Mademoiselle Leuillet was the daughter of a widower, a neighbour. I remembered that when our servant first announced her, I thought, "What a nuisance; how bored I am going to be!" And then she came in, and in an instant I was spellbound.

I am tempted to describe Berthe Leuillet to you as she entered our salon that afternoon in a white frock, with a basket of roses in her little hands, but I know very well that no description of a girl ever painted her to anybody yet. Suffice it that she was beautiful as an angel, that her voice was like the music of the spheres—more than all, that one felt all the time, "How good she is, how good, how good!"

I suppose the impression that she made upon me was plainly to be seen, for when she had gone, my mother remarked, "You did not say much. Are you always so silent in girls' company?" "No," I answered; "I do not often meet such girls."

But afterwards I often met Berthe Leuillet.

Never since I was a boy had I stayed at Vernon for so long as now; never had I repented so bitterly as now the error of my ways. I loved, and it seemed to me sometimes that my attachment was reciprocated, yet my position forbade me to go to monsieur Leuillet and ask boldly for his daughter's hand. While I had remained obscure, painters of my acquaintance, whose talent was no more remarkable than my own, had raised themselves from bohemia into prosperity. I abused myself, I acknowledged that I was an idler, a good-for-nothing, I declared that the punishment that had overtaken me was no more than I deserved. And then—well, then I owned to Berthe that I loved her!

Deliberately, of course, I should not have done this before seeking her father's permission, but it happened in the hour of our "good-bye", and I was suffering too deeply to subdue the impulse. I owned that I loved her—and when I left for Paris we were secretly engaged.

Mon Dieu! Now I worked indeed! To win this girl for my own, to show myself worthy of her innocent faith, supplied me with the most powerful incentive in life. In the quarter they regarded me first with ridicule, then with wonder, and, finally, with respect. For my enthusiasm did not fade. "He has turned over a new leaf," they said, "he means to be famous!" It was understood. No more excursions for Silvestre, no more junketings and recklessness! In the morning as soon as the sky was light I was at my easel; in the evening I studied, I sketched, I wrote to Berthe, and re-read her letters. I was another man—my ideal of happiness was now a wife and home.