"I found," he says, "a very beautiful woman, twenty years of age, who had her head dressed for the night, wearing naught but a very fine shift and a short petticoat of green stuff, and slippers on her feet, with a wrapper around her. She pleased me mightily. I asked her if I could not see her once again.
"'If you wish to see me again,' she replied, 'it shall be at the house of one of my aunts, who lives in the Rue Bourg-l'Abbé, near the Markets, next to the Rue aux Ours, the third door on the side of the Rue Saint-Martin; I will await you there from ten o'clock till midnight, and later yet; I will leave the door open. At the entrance, there is a little passage through which you will go quickly, for the door of my aunt's room opens on it, and you will find a stair which will bring you to the second floor.'
"I came at ten o'clock and found the door she had indicated, and a great light, not only on the second floor, but on the third and the first too; but the door was closed. I knocked to show that I had come; but I heard a man's voice ask who I was. I returned to the Rue aux Ours, and having returned for the second time, finding the door opened, I climbed to the second floor, where I found that the light was the straw of the bed which they were burning, and two naked bodies lying upon the table in the room. Thereupon I retired greatly amazed, and in going out I met some crows"—buriers of the dead—"who asked me what I sought; and I, to make them turn aside, took sword in hand and passed out, returning to my lodging, somewhat moved by this unlooked-for sight[205]."
*
I in my turn went on a voyage of discovery, with the address given, two hundred and forty years before, by Bassompierre. I crossed the Petit Pont, passed the Markets, and followed the Rue Saint-Denis as far as the Rue aux Ours, on the right; the first street on the left, ending in the Rue aux Ours, is the Rue Bourg-l'Abbé. Its inscription, smoky as though through time and a fire, gave me good hope. I found the "third little door on the side of the Rue Saint-Martin," so faithful are the historian's directions. There, unfortunately, the two centuries and a half, which at first I thought had lingered in the street, disappear. The frontage of the house is modern; no light issued from the first, nor from the second, nor from the third floor. From the attic-windows, beneath the roof, hung a garland of nasturtiums and sweet peas; on the ground-floor, a hairdresser's shop displayed a variety of towers of hair behind the window-panes.
In great discomfiture, I entered this museum of the Eponines: since the Roman Conquest, the Gallic women have always sold their yellow tresses to foreheads less richly decked; my Breton countrywomen still let themselves be shorn on certain fair-days, and barter the natural veil of their heads for an Indian kerchief. Addressing a barber, who was drawing a wig over an iron comb:
"Sir," said I, "do you happen to have purchased the hair of a young sempstress who used to live at the sign of the Two Angels, near the Petit Pont?"
He stood dumfoundered, unable to say either yes or no. I asked a thousand pardons, and made my way out through a labyrinth of toupees.
I wandered next from door to door: no sempstress, twenty years of age, making me "deep courtesies;" no frank, disinterested, passionate young woman, "her head dressed for the night, wearing naught but a very fine shift, a short petticoat of green stuff, and slippers on her feet, with a wrapper around her." A grumbling old crone, ready to join her teeth in the tomb, was near to beating me with her crutch: perhaps it was the aunt of the assignation!
What a fine story, that story of Bassompierre's! One of the reasons for which he was so resolutely loved has to be understood. At that time, the French were divided into two classes, one dominant, the other semi-servile. The sempstress clasped Bassompierre in her arms like a demi-god who had descended to the bosom of a slave: he gave her the illusion of glory, and Frenchwomen alone among women are capable of intoxicating themselves with that illusion. But who will reveal to us the unknown causes of the catastrophe? Was the body which lay upon the table by the side of another body that of the pretty wench of the Two Angels? Whose was the other body? Was it the husband, or the man whose voice Bassompierre had heard? Had the plague (for the plague was raging in Paris) or jealousy reached the Rue Bourg-l'Abbé before love? The imagination can easily find matter for its exercises in such a subject as this. Mingle with the poet's inventions the chorus of the populace, the approaching grave-diggers, the "crows," and Bassompierre's sword, and a magnificent melodrama springs from the adventure.