It was about half past eleven. Our table gleamed a motley wilderness of glasses and saucers. Only two other tables were occupied: at the one two men and a woman played manille, on the other a pair of players rattled dominoes, Madame Boin, sunk into her rolls of fat, drowsed on her throne behind the counter. Hercule stood by, his dirty napkin tucked under his arm, listening to Paragot's discourse. Through the glass side of the café one could see the moving, flaring lights of the Boulevard Saint-Michel. Paragot sipped absinthe and smoked his eternal pipe with the porcelain bowl, and talked.
"The Quartier Latin! Do you call this bourgeois-stricken aceldama the Quartier Latin? Do you miserable little white mice in clean shirts call this the Vie de Bohème? Is there a devil of a fellow among you, save Cazalet whose chilblains make him indecent, who doesn't wear socks? Haven't you all dress suits? Aren't you all suffocating with virtue? Would any Marcel of you lie naked in bed for two days so that Rodolfe could pawn your clothes for the wherewithal to nurse Mimi in sickness? Is there a Mimi in the whole etiolated Quartier?"
"But yes, mon vieux," said my friend Bringard who prided himself on his intimacy with life. "There are even a great many."
Paragot swept his skinny fingers in a circular gesture.
"Where are they? Here? You see not. It is a stunted generation, my gentle little lambs. Why sacré nom de Saint-Antoine!" he cried, with one of his apposite oaths, "the very pigs in the good days could teach you lessons in the romantic. Vices you have—but the noble passions? No! Did you ever hear of the Café du Cochon Fidèle? Of course not. What do you know? It was situated in the Rue des Cordiers. Mimi la Blonde was the demoiselle du comptoir. Ah bigre! There are no such demoiselles du comptoir now. Exquisite. Ah!" He blew a kiss from the tips of his long nails.
"You are very impolite, Monsieur Paragot," cried Madame Boin from her throne.
"Listen, Madame," said he, "to the story of the pig and you shall judge. The whole quartier was mad for Mimi, including a pig. Yes, a great fat clean pig with sentimental eyes. He belonged to the charcutier opposite. I am telling you the authentic history of the Quartier. Every day the devoted animal would stand at the door and gaze at Mimi with adoration—ah! but such an adoration, my children, an adoration, respectful, passionate, without hope. Only now and then his poor sensitive snout quivered his despair. Sometimes happier rivals, with two legs, mais pour ça pas moins cochons que lui, admitted him into the café. He would sit before the counter, his little tail well arranged behind him, his ears cocked up politely, his eyes full of tears—he wept like a cow this poor Népomucène—they called him Népomucène—and when Mimi looked at him he would utter little cries of the heart like a strangulated troubadour. Ah, it was hopeless this passion; but for one long year he never wavered. The Quartier respected him. Of him it was said: "Love is given to us as a measure to gauge our power of suffering." Suddenly Mimi disappeared. She married a certain Godiveau, a charcoal merchant in the vicinity. Népomucène stood all day by the door with haggard eyes. Then knowing she would return no more, he walked with a determined air to the roadway of the Boul' Mich' and cast himself beneath the wheels of an omnibus. He committed suicide."
Paragot stopped abruptly and finished his absinthe. There was vociferous applause. I have never met anyone with his gift of magical narration. Hercule was summoned amid a confused hubbub and received orders for eight or nine different kinds of drink. We were fantastic in our potations in those days.
"Ah!" said Paragot, excited as usual by his success, "ou sont les neiges d'antan? Where is the good Père Cordier of the Café Cordier? He would play billiards with his nose, and a little pug nose at that, my children. When it grew greasy he would chalk it deliberately. Once he made a break of two hundred and forty-five. A champion! The Café Cordier itself? Swept long ago into the limbo of dear immemorable dissolute things. Then there was the Café du Bas-Rhin on the Boul' Mich' where Marie la Démocrate drank fifty-five bocks in an evening against Hélène la Sévère who drank fifty-three. Where are such women now, O generation of slow worms? Where is——"
He stopped. His jaw dropped. "My God!" he exclaimed in English, rising from his chair. We followed his gaze. Astounded, I too sprang up.