“Well then, in the house; pardi! sugar and coal—people lend each other such things as that. Don’t be impatient, mother, I will come right back.”
“No, Georget, I don’t want you to ask the neighbors; don’t, I beg you!”
But Georget was not listening to his mother; he had already relighted his tallow-dip and hurried from the room. When he reached the landing, the young man stopped, for he was uncertain to whom he should apply for the loan which he wished to obtain; but he did not hesitate long. He ran down the stairs three or four at a time, and did not stop until he reached the ground floor and knocked at the concierge’s lodge, saying to himself:
“Baudoin and his wife are not unkind; they dispute together, and fight sometimes, but they haven’t bad hearts; they won’t refuse me. Besides, it is only a loan, I will return it all.”
But Georget forgot that he had left the concierge and his wife engaged in an occupation which was likely to plunge them into a profound slumber ere long. In fact, after sucking and lapping brandy for some time, the husband and wife had felt such an intense longing to sleep, that they had hardly strength enough to reach their bed; and as the sleep caused by intoxication is never light, Monsieur and Madame Baudoin did not hear the knocking at their door; one might have fired a cannon under their noses, and they would simply have said: “God bless you!”
Weary of knocking to no purpose, Georget walked away from the lodge, murmuring:
“Those concierges are regular beer kegs; I shall never succeed in waking them, and I might as well give it up. Let me see, where can I apply? on the first floor? The whole floor is occupied by a family of English people, who hardly understand what you say to them and who don’t look very pleasant; I should not be well received there, they would not be able to understand what I said. On the second floor is a very pretty, very stylish lady, who receives fine gentlemen, but who refuses to open her door when she has company; her maid told me so the other day,—those are her orders. On the third,—ah! that is the gentleman that they call the Bear in the house, because he never talks with anybody, never receives any visitors, and hardly answers when you speak to him. Much use there would be in trying to borrow sugar and charcoal of that man! and still, if I thought that his black man would open the door;—but no, Pongo sleeps so sound that he never hears his master come home. So it would be the gentleman himself who would open the door, and he would shut it in my face without answering me. I don’t even dare to try!—On the fourth, on one side is an old woman, so timid that she will never open her door after dusk; on the other, a student; but he has gone into the country. And at the top, opposite us, no one; the room is to let. Mon Dieu! whom shall I apply to then, if among all these people I can see no hope of help for my poor mother, who has a high fever and no cooling draft to lessen her suffering? Ah! Chicotin was quite right to say that I am a fool to be in love, that I am too young. Mamzelle Violette makes me forget my mother, my duty, my work. To think that I have done nothing to-day! that I came home without a sou when I knew that my mother was sick! Oh, I am a miserable, heartless villain! I shall never forgive myself!”
As he said this, Georget went slowly upstairs, stopping frequently because he was weeping; and he had stopped again, and rested his head against the wall, to sob at his ease, when a door opened within two steps of him.
He was then on the landing of the third floor, and it was Monsieur Malberg who stood before him. When he saw the young messenger, who still had the look of a mere boy, beating his head against the wall, and giving free vent to his sobs, the gentleman who was called the Bear, and who in fact had a rather stern expression and a rather rough voice, walked toward Georget and asked:
“What are you doing here?”