My porter, with the cunning sagacity of his profession, imagines he has discovered some scandalous romance, because he brings me every day a letter in the handwriting of my valet. You may imagine the complication of my torment. I am afraid of my porter, therefore I go myself to the post-office, that receptacle of all the secrets of Paris.
Usually the waiting-room is full of wretched men, each an epistolary Tantalus, who, with eyes fixed on the wooden grating, implore the clerk for a post-marked deception. 'Tis a sad spectacle, and I am sure that there is a post-office in purgatory, where tortured souls go to inquire if their deliverance has been signed in heaven.
The clerks in the post-office never seem to be aware of the impatient murmurs around them. What administrative calmness beams on the fresh faces of these distributors of consolation and of despair! In the agony of waiting, minutes lose their mathematical value, and the hands of the clock become motionless on the dial like impaled serpents. The operations of the office proceed with a slowness that seems like a miniature eternity. This anxious crowd stand in single file, forming a living chain of eager notes of interrogation, and, as fate always reserves the last link for me, I have to witness the filing-off of these troubled souls. This office brings men close together, and obliterates all social distinctions; in default of letters one always receives lessons of equality gratis.
Here you see handsome young men whose dishevelled locks and pale faces bear traces of sleepless nights—the Damocles of the Bourse, who feels the sword of bankruptcy hanging over his head—forsaken sweethearts, whose hopes wander with beating drums upon African shores—timid women veiled in black, weeping and mourning for the dead, so as to smile more effectively upon the living.
If each person were to call out the secret of his letter, the clerks themselves would veil their faces and forget the postal alphabet. A painful silence reigns over this scene of anxious waiting; at long intervals a hoarse voice calls out his Christian name, and woe to its owner if his ancestors have not bequeathed him a short or easily pronounced one.
The other day I was present at a strange scene caused by the association of seven syllables. An unhappy-looking wretch went up to the railing and gave out his name—Sidoine Tarboriech—these two words inflicted on us the following dialogue:—"Is it all one name?" asked the clerk, without deigning to glance at the unfortunate owner of these syllables. "Two names," said the man, timidly, as if he were fully aware of the disgrace inflicted upon him at the baptismal font. "Did you say Antoine?" said the clerk. "Sidoine, Monsieur." "Is it your Christian name?" "'Tis the name of my godfather, Saint Sidoine, 23 of August." "Ah! there is a Saint Sidoine, is there? Well, Sidoine ... Sidoine—what else?" "Tarboriech." "Are you a German?" "From Toulon, opposite the Arsenal."
During this dialogue the rest of the unfortunates broke their chain with convulsive impatience, and made the floor tremble under the nervous stamping of their feet. The clerk calmly turned over with his methodically bent finger, a large bundle of letters, and would occasionally pause when the postal hieroglyphics effaced an address under a total eclipse of crests, seals and numbers recklessly heaped on; for the clerk who posts and endorses the letters takes great pains to cover the address with a cloud of ink, this little peculiarity all postmen delight in. But to return to our dialogue: "Excuse me, sir," said the clerk, "did you say your name is spelt with Dar or Tar?" "Tar, sir, Tar! "—"With a D?"—"No, sir, with a T., Tarboriech!" "We have nothing for you, sir." "Oh, sir, impossible! there certainly must be a letter for me." "There is no letter, sir; nothing commencing with T." "Did you look for my Christian name, Sidoine?" "But, sir, we don't arrange the mail according to Christian names." "But you know, sir, I am a younger son, and at home I am called Sidoine."
This interesting dialogue was now drowned by the angry complaining of some young men, who in a state of exasperation stamped up and down the room jerking out an epigrammatic psalm of lamentations. I'll give you a few verses of it: "Heavens! some names ought to be suppressed! This is getting to be intolerable, when a man has the misfortune to be named Extasboriech, he ought not to have his letters sent to the Poste-Restante! If I were afflicted with such a name, I would have the Keeper of the Seals to change it."
The imperturbable clerk smiled blandly through his little barred window, and said, "Gentlemen, we must do our duty scrupulously, I only do for this gentleman what each of you would wish done for yourself under similar circumstances."
"Oh, of course!" cried out one young man, who was wildly buttoning and unbuttoning his coat as if he wanted to fight the subject through; "but we are not cursed with names so abominable as this man's!"