When I reached home, the porter handed me two cards from Larive. On the first I read:
CH. LARIVE,
Managing Clerk.
P. P. C.
The second, on glazed cardboard, announced, likewise in initials, another piece of news:
CH. LARIVE,
Formerly Managing Clerk.
P. F. P. M.
So the Parisian who swore he could not exist two days in the country is leaving Paris. That was fated. He is about to be married; I’m sure I don’t object. The only consequence to me is that we never shall meet again, and I shall not weep over that.
BOURGES, August 4th.
If you have ever been in Bourges, you may have seen the little Rue Sous-les-Ceps, the Cours du Bat d’Argent and de la Fleur-de-lys, the Rues de la Merede-Dieu, des Verts-Galants, Mausecret, du Moulin-le-Roi, the Quai Messire-Jacques, and other streets whose ancient names, preserved by a praiseworthy sentiment or instinctive conservatism, betoken an ancient city still inhabited by old-fashioned people, by which I mean people attached to the soil, strongly marked with the stamp of the provincial in manners as in language; people who understand all that a name is to a street—its honor, its spouse if you will, from which it must not be divorced.
My Uncle Mouillard, most devoted and faithful citizen of Bourges, naturally lives in one of these old streets, the Rue du Four, within the shadow of the cathedral, beneath the swing of its chimes.
Within fifteen minutes after my arrival at Bourges I was pulling the deer’s foot which hangs, depilated with long use, beside his door. It was five o’clock, and I knew for certain that he would not be at home. When the courts rise, one of the clerks carries back his papers to the office, while he moves slowly off, his coat-tails flapping in the breeze, either to visit a few friends and clients, respectable dames who were his partners in the dance in the year 1840, or more often to take a “constitutional” along the banks of the Berry Canal, where, in the poplar shade, files of little gray donkeys are towing string after string of big barges.
So I was sure not to meet him.