he demonstrated the proper application of the cure
Aristide breathed a sigh of relief, and after a well-earned déjeuner went forth with the car into the Place des Arbres and prepared to ply his trade. First he unfurled the Hiéropath banner, which floated proudly in the breeze. Then on a folding table he displayed his collection of ointment-boxes (together with pills and a toothache-killer which he sold on his own account) and a wax model of a human foot on which were grafted putty corns in every stage of callosity. As soon as half-a-dozen idlers collected he commenced his harangue. When their numbers increased he performed prodigies of chiropody on the putty corns, and demonstrated the proper application of the cure. He talked incessantly all the while. He has told me, in the grand manner, that this phase of his career was distasteful to him. But I scarcely believe it. If ever a man loved to talk, it was Aristide Pujol; and what profession, save that of an advocate, offers more occasion for wheedling loquacity than that of a public vendor of quack medicaments? As a matter of fact, he revelled in it. When he offered a free box of the cure to the first lady who confessed the need thereof, and a blushing wench came forward, the rascal revelled in the opportunity for badinage which set the good-humoured crowd in a roar. He loved to exert his half-mesmeric power. He had not the soul of a mountebank, for Aristide’s soul had its high and generous dwelling-place; but he had the puckish swiftness and mischief of which the successful mountebank is made. And he was a success because he treated it as an art, thinking nothing during its practice of the material gain, laughing whole-heartedly, like his great predecessor Tabarin of imperishable memory, and satisfying to the full his instinct for the dramatic. On the other hand, ever since he started life in the brass-buttoned shell-jacket of a chasseur in a Marseilles café, and dreamed dreams of the fairytale lives of the clients who came in accompanied by beautifully dressed ladies, he had social ambitions—and the social status of the mountebank is, to say the least of it, ambiguous. Ah me! What would man be without the unattainable?
Aristide pocketed his takings, struck his flag, dismantled his table, and visited the shops of Salon in the interests of the Maison Hiéropath. The day’s work over, he returned to inquire for his supposititious offspring. The landlady, all smiles, presented him with a transmogrified Jean, cleansed and powdered, arrayed in the smug panoply of bourgeois babyhood. Shoes with a pompon adorned his feet, and a rakish cap decorated with white satin ribbons crowned his head. He also wore an embroidered frock and a pelisse trimmed with rabbit-fur. Jean grinned and dribbled self-consciously, and showed his two little teeth to the proudest father in the world. The landlady invited the happy parent into her little dark parlour beyond the office, and there exhibited a parcel containing garments and implements whose use was a mystery to Aristide. She also demanded the greater part of another louis. Aristide began to learn that fatherhood is expensive. But what did it matter?
After all, here was a babe equipped to face the exigencies of a censorious world; in looks and apparel a credit to any father. As the afternoon was fine, and as it seemed a pity to waste satin and rabbit-fur on the murky interior of the hotel, Aristide borrowed a perambulator from the landlady, and, joyous as a schoolboy, wheeled the splendid infant through the sunny avenues of Salon.
That evening a bed was made up for the child in Aristide’s room, which, until its master retired for the night, was haunted by the landlady, the chambermaids and all the kitchen wenches in the hotel. Aristide had to turn them out and lock his door.
“This is excellent,” said he, apostrophizing the thoroughly fed, washed, and now sleeping child. “This is superb. As in every hotel there are women, and as every woman thinks she can be a much better mother than I, so in every hotel we visit we shall find a staff of trained and enthusiastic nurses. Jean, you will live like a little coq en pâté.”
The night passed amid various excursions on the part of Aristide and alarms on the part of Jean. Sometimes the child lay so still that Aristide arose to see whether he was alive. Sometimes he gave such proofs of vitality that Aristide, in terror lest he should awaken the whole hotel, walked him about the room chanting lullabies. This was in accordance with Jean’s views on luxury. He “goo’d” with joy. When Aristide put him back to bed he howled. Aristide snatched him up and he “goo’d” again. At last Aristide fed him desperately, dandled him eventually to sleep, and returned to an excited pillow. It is a fearsome thing for a man to be left alone in the dead of night with a young baby.
“I’ll get used to it,” said Aristide.
The next morning he purchased a basket, which he lashed ingeniously on the left-hand seat of the car, and a cushion, which he fitted into the basket. The berth prepared, he deposited the sumptuously-apparelled Jean therein and drove away, amid the perplexed benisons of the landlady and her satellites.