"How, simple?"
"Dame! I can work for you and Asticot."
"The devil!" cried Paragot.
"But yes," she went on earnestly. "I know that men are men, and sometimes they do not like to work. It happens very often. Tiens! mon maître, I am alone, all that is most alone. You are the only friends I have in the world, you and Asticot. You have been kinder to me than any one I have ever met. I put you in my prayers every night. It is a very little thing that I should work for you, if it fatigues you to scrape the fiddle in these holes of cabarets. It is true. True as the bon Dieu. I would tear myself into four pieces for you. Je suis brave fille, and I can work. But no!" she cried, looking deep into his eyes. "You can't refuse. It is not possible."
"Yes, I refuse," said Paragot.
He had turned on his side, face on palm, elbow on pillow, had regarded her sternly as she spoke. I saw that he was very angry.
"For what do you take me, little imbecile? Do you know that you insult me? I to be supported by a woman? Nom de Dieu de Dieu!"
His ire blazed up suddenly. He cursed, scolded, boasted all in a breath. Blanquette looked at him terrified. She could not understand. Great tears rolled down her cheeks.
"But I have made you angry," she wailed.
The scornful spurning of her devotion hurt her less than the sense of having caused his wrath. The primitive savage feminine is not complicated by over-subtlety of feeling. As soon as she could speak she broke into repentant protestation. She had not meant to anger him. She had spoken from her heart. She was so ignorant. She would tear herself into four pieces for him. She was brave fille. She was alone and he was her only friend. He must forgive her.
I, feeling monstrously tearful, jumped to my feet.
"Yes, Master, forgive her."
He burst out laughing. "Oh what three beautiful fools we are! Blanquette to think of supporting two hulking men, I to be angry, and Asticot to plead tragically as if I were a tyrant about to cut off her head. My little Blanquette, you have touched my heart, and who touches the heart of Paragot can eat Paragot's legs and liver if he is hungry and drink his blood if he is thirsty. I will remember it all my life, and if you will bring me my déjeuner I will stay in bed till this afternoon."
"Then I am not to leave you?" she asked, somewhat bewildered.
"Good heavens no!" he cried. "Because I am sick of fiddling do you suppose I am going to send you adrift? We shall settle down for the winter. Some capital. Which one would you like, Asticot?"
"Buda-Pesth," said I at random.
"Very well," said Paragot, "the day after tomorrow we start for Buda-Pesth. Now let me go to sleep."
We took exactly two months getting to Buda-Pesth. The only incident of our journey which I clearly remember is a week's sojourn at the farm of La Haye near Chartres where we had carted manure, and where we renewed our acquaintance with Monsieur and Madame Dubosc.
CHAPTER X
In Buda-Pesth three things happened.
First, Paragot slipped in the street and broke his ankle bone, so that he lay seven weeks in hospital, during which time Blanquette and I and Narcisse lived like sparrows on the housetops, dazed by the incomprehensibilities of the strange city.
Secondly, Paragot's aunt, his mother's sister, died intestate leaving a small sum of money which he inherited as her nearest surviving relative.
Thirdly, Paragot fell into the arms of Theodor Izelin the painter, an old friend of Paris student days.
The consequences of the first accident, though not immediate, were lasting. Paragot walked for ever afterwards with a slight limp, and his tramps along the high-roads of Europe had to be abandoned.
The consequence of the second was that Paragot went to London. Some legal formality, the establishment of identity or what not, necessitated his presence. I daresay he could have arranged matters through consuls and lawyers and such-like folk, but Paragot who was childishly simple in business matters obeyed the summons to London without question.
As a consequence of the third I became an inmate of the house of Theodor Izelin.
It was all very bewildering.
It was arranged that during Paragot's absence in England I should board with Izelin, Blanquette with Izelin's elderly model, a lady of unimpeachable respectability and a rough and ready acquaintance with the French language, and that Narcisse should alternate between the two establishments. Paragot's business concluded, he would return to Buda-Pesth, collect us and go whither the wind might drift him. I was provided with a respectable outfit and with detailed instructions as to correct behaviour in a lady's house. Theodor Izelin's wife was a charming woman.
Everything was arranged; but who could reckon on Paragot?
On the night before his departure—indeed it must have been two or three in the morning—Paragot burst into my little attic bedroom, candle in hand, and before I had time to rub my startled eyes, sat down on the bed and began to speak.
"My son," said he, "I have had an inspiration!"
Who but Paragot would have awakened a boy at two or three in the morning to announce an inspiration? And who but Paragot would alter the course of human lives on the flash of an impulse?
"It came," he cried, "while I was supping with Izelin. I told him. I worked it all out. He agreed. So it is settled."
"What, Master?" I asked, sitting up. His slouch felt hat and his swarthy bearded face, his glittering eyes and the candle on his knees gave him the air of an excited Guy Fawkes.
"Your career, my son. The money I am going to collect in London shall be devoted to your education. You shall learn to paint, infant Raphael and Izelin shall teach you. And you shall learn the manners of a gentleman, and Madame Izelin shall teach you. And you shall learn what it is to have a heart, and if you care a hang for Paragot two years' separation shall teach you."
"Two years!" I cried aghast. "But master I can't live two years here without you!"
"We find we can live without a devil of a lot of things when we have to, my son. When I smashed my furniture with the crusader's mace I thought I could not live anywhere without—something. But here I am as alive as a dragon-fly."
He went on talking. It was for my good. His broken ankle bone had compelled him to resign his peripatetic tutorship in the University of the Universe. In a narrower Academy he would be but a poor instructor. If he had taught me to speak the truth and despise lies and shams, and to love pictures and music and cathedrals and books and trees and all beautiful things, nom de Dieu! he had accomplished his mission. It was time for other influences. When an inspiration such as tonight's came to him he took it as a command from a Higher Power (I am convinced that he believed it), against which he was powerless.
"Providence ordains that you stay here with the Izelins. Afterwards you shall go to Janot's studio in Paris. In the meantime you can attend classes in the humanities at Buda-Pesth."
"I can't understand the beastly language!" I grumbled.
"You will learn it, my son."
"No one ever speaks it out of Hungary," I contended.
"My son," said he, "the value of a man is often measured by his useless and fantastic attainments."
Then the candle end sputtered out and we were in darkness. Paragot bade me good night, and left me to a mingled sense of burned candle grease and desolation.
He departed the next day. Blanquette and I with a dejected Narcisse at our heels, walked back from the railway station to the hotel, where losing all sense of manly dignity I broke down crying and Blanquette put her arm round my neck and comforted me motherwise.
Two months afterwards Paragot wrote to Blanquette to join him in Paris, and when the flutter of her wet handkerchief from the railway carriage window became no longer visible, then indeed I felt myself to be a stranger in a strange land.
Two years! I can remember even now their endless heartache. The Izelins were kind; Madame Izelin, a refined Hungarian lady, became my staunch friend as well as my instructress in manners; my life teemed with interests, and I worked like a little maniac; but all the time I longed for Paragot. Had it not been for his letters I should have scented my way back to him like a dog, across Europe. Ah those letters of Paragot—I have them still—what a treasury they are of grotesque fantasy and philosophic wisdom! They gave me but little news of his doings. He had settled down in Paris with Blanquette as his housekeeper. His floridly anathematised ankle kept him hobbling about the streets while his heart was chasing butterflies over the fields. He had founded a coenaculum for the cultivation of the Higher Conversation at the Café Delphine. He had taken up Persian and was saturating himself with Hafiz and Firdusi. His health was good. Indeed he was a man of iron constitution.
Blanquette now and then supplemented these meagre details of objective life. The master had taken a bel appartement. There were curtains to his bed. Food was dear in Paris. They had been to Fontainebleau. Narcisse had stolen the sausages of the concierge. The Master was always talking of me and of the great future for which I was destined. But when I became famous I was not to forget my little Blanquette. I see the sprawling mis-spelt words now: "Il ne fot jamés oublié ta petite Blanquette."
As if I could ever forget her!
I arrived in Paris one evening a day or two earlier than I was expected. It had been ordained by Paragot that I should break my journey at Berlin, in order to visit that capital, but affection tugged at my heart-strings and compelled me to travel straight through from Buda-Pesth. It was Paragot and Blanquette and Narcisse that I wanted to see and not Berlin.
Yet when I stepped out of the train on to the Paris platform, I was conscious for the first time of development. I was decently attired. I had a bag filled with the garments of respectability. I had money in my pocket, also a packet of cigarettes. A porter took my luggage and enquired in the third person whether Monsieur desired a cab. The temptation was too great for eighteen. I took the cab in a lordly way and drove to No. 11 Rue des Saladiers where Paragot had his "bel appartement." And with the anticipatory throb of joy at beholding my beloved Master was mingled a thrill of vain-glorious happiness. Asticot in a cab! It was absurd, and yet it seemed to fall within the divine fitness of things.
The cab stopped in a narrow street. I had an impression of tall houses looking fantastically dilapidated in the dim gas-light, of little shops on the ground floor, and of little murky gateways leading to the habitations above. Beside the gateway of No. 11 was a small workman's drinking shop, sometimes called in Paris a zinc on account of the polished zinc bar which is its principal feature. Untidy, slouching people filled the street.
Directed by the concierge to the cinquième à gauche, I mounted narrow, evil smelling, badly lighted stairs, and rang at the designated door. It opened; Blanquette appeared with a lamp in her hand.
"Monsieur désire?"
"Mais c'est moi, Blanquette."
In another minute she had ushered me in, set down the lamp and was hugging me in her strong young arms.
"But my little Asticot, I did not know you. You have changed. You are no longer the same. Tu es tout à fait monsieur! How proud the Master will be."
"Where is he?"
Alas, the Master did not expect me to-day and was at the Café Delphine. She would go straightway and tell him. I must be tired and hungry. She would get me something to eat. But who would have thought I should have come back a monsieur! How I had grown! I must see the appartement. This was the salon.
I looked around me for the first time. Nothing in it save the rickettiness of a faded rep suite arranged primly around the walls, and a few bookshelves stuffed with tattered volumes suggested Paragot. The round centre table, covered with American cloth, and the polished floor were spotless. Cheap print curtains adorned the windows and a cage containing a canary hung between them. Three or four oleographs—one a portrait of Garibaldi—in gilt frames formed the artistic decoration.
"It was I who chose the pictures," said Blanquette proudly.
She opened a door and disclosed the sleeping chamber of the Master, very bare, but very clean. Another door led into the kitchen—a slip of a place but glistening like the machine room of a man-of-war.
"I have a bedroom upstairs, and there is one also for you which the Master has taken. Come and I will show you."
We mounted to the attics and I was duly installed.
"I would have put some flowers if I had known you were coming," said Blanquette.
We went down again and she prepared food for me, her plain face beaming as she talked. She was entirely happy. No one so perfect as the Master had ever been the head of a household. Of course he was untidy. But such was the nature of men. If he did not make stains on the floor with muddy boots and lumps of meat thrown to Narcisse, and litter the rooms with clothes and tobacco and books, what occupation would there be for a housekeeper? As it was she worked from morning to night. And the result; was it not neat and clean and beautiful? Ah! she was happy not to be playing the zither in brasseries. All her dreams were realised. She had a ménage. And she had the Master to serve. Now would she fetch him from the Café Delphine.
Half an hour afterwards he strode into the room, followed by Blanquette and Narcisse. He spoke in French and embraced me French fashion. Then he cried out in English and wrung me by the hand. He was almost as excited as Narcisse who leaped and barked frantically.
"It is good to have him back, eh Blanquette?"
"Oui, Maître. He does not know how sad it has been without him."
Blanquette smiled, wept and removed the remains of my supper. Then she set on the table glasses and a bottle of tisane they had bought on the way home. We drank the sour sweet champagne as if it were liquid gold and clinked glasses, and with Narcisse all talked and barked together. It was a glad home-coming.
Paragot had changed very little. The hair on his temple was beginning to turn grey and his sallow cheeks were thinner. But he was the same hairy unkempt creature of prodigious finger nails and disreputable garments, still full of strange oaths and picturesque fancy, and still smoking his pipe with the porcelain bowl.
Presently Blanquette retired to bed and Paragot and I talked far into the night. Before we separated, with a comprehensive wave of the hand he indicated the primly set furniture and polished floor.
"Did you ever behold such exquisite discomfort?"
CHAPTER XI
How far away it all seems; Paris; the Rue des Saladiers: the atelier Janot where the illustrious painter called us his children and handed us the sacred torch of his art for us to transmit, could we but keep it aflame, to succeeding generations; the Café Delphine, with Madame Boin, fat, pink, urbane, her hair a miracle of perrukery, enthroned behind the counter; my dear Master, Paragot, himself! How far away! It is not good to live to a hundred and fifty. The backward vista down the years is too frighteningly long.
I found Paragot established as the Dictator of the Café Delphine. No one seemed to question his position. He ruled there autocratically, having instituted sundry ordinances disobedience to which had exile as its penalty. The most generous of creatures, he had nevertheless ordained that as Dictator he should go scot-free. To have declined to pay for his absinthe or choucroute would have closed the Café Delphine in a student's face. He had a prescriptive right to the table under the lee of Madame Boin's counter, and the peg behind him was sacred to his green hat. To the students he was a mystery. No one knew where he lived, how he subsisted, what he had been. Various rumours filled the Quartier. According to one he was a Russian Nihilist escaped from Siberia. Another, and one nearer the mark, credited him with being a kind of Rip van Winkle revisiting old student scenes after a twenty years' slumber. He seemed to pass his life between the Luxembourg Gardens, the Pont Neuf and the Café Delphine. "Paris," he used to say, "it is the Boul' Mich'!" Although he would turn to the absolute stranger who had been brought as a privilege to his table and say, using the familiar second person singular, "Buy me an evening paper," or addressing the company at large, "Somebody is going to offer me an absinthe," and promptly order it, he was never known to borrow money.
This eccentricity vexed the soul of the Quartier, where the chief use of money is to be borrowed. To me the idea of Paragot asking needy youngsters for the loan of five francs was exquisitely ludicrous; I am only setting down the impression of the Quartier regarding him. Not only did he never borrow but sometimes gave whole francs in charity. One evening an unseemly quarrel having arisen between two law-students from Auvergne (the Bœotia of France) and the waiter as to an alleged overcharge of two sous, Paragot arose in wrath, and dashing a louis on the table with a "Hercule paie-toi," stalked majestically out of the Café. A deputation waited on him next day with the object of refunding the twenty francs. He refused (naturally) to take a penny. It would be a lesson to them, said he, and they meekly accepted the rebuke.
"But what did you study here, before you went to sleep?" an impudent believer in the Rip van Winkle theory once asked him.
"The lost arts of discretion and good manners, mon petit," retorted Paragot, with a flash of his blue eyes which scorched the offender.
The students paid his score willingly, for in his talk they had full value for their money. I found the Café Delphine a Lotus Club, with a difference. Instead of being the scullion I was a member, and took my seat with the rest, and, though none suspected it, paid for Paragot's drinks with Paragot's money. Our real relations were never divulged. It would affect both our positions, said he. To explain our friendship, it was only necessary to say that we had met at Buda-Pesth where I had been sent to study with the famous Izelin, who was a friend of Paragot's.
"My son," said he, "the fact of your being an Englishman who has studied in Buda-Pesth and speaks French like a Frenchman will entitle you to respect in the Quartier. Your previous acquaintance with me, on which you need not insist too much, will bring you distinction."
And so it turned out. I felt that around me also hung a little air of mystery, which was by no means unprofitable or unpleasant. To avoid complications, however, and also in order that I should have the freedom befitting my man's estate and my true education in the Quartier, Paragot threw me out of the nest in the Rue des Saladiers, and assigning to me a fixed allowance bade me seek my own shelter and make my way in the world.
I made it as best I could, and the months went on.
Why I should have been dreaming outside the Hôtel Bristol that afternoon, I cannot remember. If to Paragot Paris was the Boulevard Saint-Michel, to me it spread itself a vaster fairyland through which I loved to wander, and before whose magnificences I loved to dream. Why not dream therefore in the Place Vendôme? Surely my aspirations in those days soared as high as the Column, and surely the student's garb (beloved and ordained by Paragot)—the mushroom-shaped cap, the tight ankled, tight throated velveteens—rendered any eccentricity a commonplace. Early Spring too was in the air, which encourages the young visionary. Spruce young men and tripping modistes with bandboxes under their arms and the sun glinting over their trim bare heads hurried along through the traffic across the Place and landed on the pavement by my side. I must own to have been not unaffected by the tripping milliners. Why should they not weave themselves too into a painter lad's spring visions?
Suddenly a lady—of so radiant a loveliness as to send modistes packing from my head—emerged from the Hôtel Bristol and crossed the broad pavement to a waiting victoria. She had eyes like the blue of glaciers and the tenderest mouth in the world. She glanced at me. A floppy picturesque Paris student, lounging springlike in the Place Vendôme, is worth a fair lady's glance of curiosity. I raised my cap. She glanced at me again, haughtily; then again, puzzled; then stopped.
"If I don't know you, you are a very ill-bred young man to have saluted me," she said in French. "But I think I have seen you before."
"If I had not met you before I should not have bowed. You are the Comtesse de Verneuil," said I in English, very boyishly and eagerly. The spring and the sight of Joanna had sent the blood into my pasty cheeks.
"I once played the tambourine at Aix," I added.
She grew suddenly pale, put her hand to her heart and clutched at a bunch of Parma violets she was wearing. They fell to the ground.
"No, no, it is nothing," she said, as I stepped forward. "Only a slight shock. I remember you perfectly. You said your name was Asticot. I asked you to come and see me. Why haven't you?"
"You said I might come if I were in want. But thanks to my dear Master I am not." I picked up the violets.
"Your master?" She looked relieved, and thanked me with a smile for the flowers. "He is well? He is with you in Paris? Is he still playing the violin?"
"He is well," said I. "He is in Paris, but he only plays the violin at home when, as he says, he wants to have a conversation with his soul."
The frost melted from her eyes and they smiled at me.
"You have caught his trick of talking."
"You once called me an amazing parrot, Madame," said I. "It is quite true."
"In the meantime," said she, "we can't stand in the Place Vendôme for ever. Come for a drive and we can talk in the carriage."
"In the——" I gasped stupefied, pointing to the victoria.
"Why not?" she laughed. "Do you think it's dangerous?"
"No," said I, "but——"
But she was already in the carriage; and as I stepped in beside her I noted the tips of her little feet so adored by Paragot.
"I'm glad you're English," she remarked, arranging the rug. "A young Frenchman would have replied with the obvious gallantry. I think the young Englishman rather despises that kind of obviousness."
The coachman turned on his seat and asked whither he should drive Madame la Comtesse.
"Anywhere. I don't know"—then desperately, "Drive to the fortifications. Where the fortifications are I haven't the remotest idea. I believe they are a kind of pleasure resort for people who want to get murdered. You hear of them in the papers. We'll cross the river," she said to the coachman.
We started, drove down the Rue Castiglione, along the Rue de Rivoli, struck off by the Louvre and over the Pont Neuf. Standing in conversation with Joanna, I had the gutter urchin's confidence of the pavement, the impudence of the street. Seated beside Madame la Comtesse de Verneuil in an elegant victoria I was as dumb as a fish, until her graciousness set me more at my ease. As we passed through the Quartier I trembled lest any of my fellow students should see me. "Asticot avec une femme du monde chic! Il court les bonnes fortunes ce sacré petit diable. Ou l'as-tu pêchée?" I shivered at their imagined ribaldries. And all the time I was athrill with pride and joy—suffused therewith into imbecility. Verily I must be a monsieur to drive with Countesses! And verily it must be fairyland for Asticot to be driving in Joanna's carriage.
"That is Henri Quatre," said she pointing to the statue as we crossed the bridge.
"It was the first thing my Master brought me to see in Paris—years ago," I said, with the very young's curious mis-realisation of time. "He is very fond of Henri Quatre."
"Why?" she asked.
I told her vaguely the story of the crusader's mace. She listened with a somewhat startled interest.
"I believe your Master is mad," she remarked. "Indeed," she added after a pause, "I believe everyone is mad. I'm mad. You're mad."
"Oh, I am not," I cried warmly.
"You must be to set up a human god and worship him as you do your Master. You are the maddest of all of us, Mr. Asticot."
A touch of light scorn in her tone nettled me. Even Joanna should not speak of him irreverently.
"If he had bought you from your mother for half-a-crown," said I, "and made you into a student at Janot's, you would worship him too, Madame."
"I have been wondering whether you kept your promise to me," she said—I wish women were not so disconcertingly irrelevant—"but now I am quite sure."
"Of course I didn't tell my master," I declared stoutly.
"Good. And this little drive must be a secret too."
"If you wish," I said. "But I don't like to have secrets from him."
"Give me his address," she said after a pause, and I noticed she spoke with some effort. "Does he still go by that absurd name? What was it?"
"His name is Berzélius Paragot, and he lives at No. 11 Rue des Saladiers."
"Do you know his real name?"
"Yes, Madame," said I. "It is Gaston de Nérac. I only learned it lately through Monsieur Izelin."
"Do you know Izelin, too?" she asked.
I explained my stay in Buda-Pesth. I also mentioned Monsieur Izelin's reticence in speaking of Paragot's early days.
I think he was cautioned by my Master.
"And who do you think I am?" The sudden question startled me.
"You," said I, "are Joanna."
"Indeed? How long have you known that, pray?"
"When I came to you with the tambourine at Aix-les-Bains."
"I don't understand," she said, the frozen blue coming into her eyes. "Did he tell you then—a child like you?"
"He has never mentioned your name to me, Madame," I said eagerly, for I saw her resentment.
"Then how did you know?"
I recounted the history of the old stocking. I also mentioned Paragot's appeal to me as a scholar and a gentleman.
A wan smile played about her lips.
"Was that soon after he bought you for half-a-crown?"
"Yes, Madame," said I.
"And an old stocking?"
"Yes, Madame. And since then we have never spoken of the papers."
"But how did you know I was the—the Joanna of the papers?"
"I guessed," said I. I could not tell her of the petits pieds si adorés.
"You are an odd boy," she said. "Tell me all about yourself."
Unversed in woman's wiles I flushed with pleasure at her flattering interest. I did not perceive that it was an invitation to tell her all about Paragot. I related, however, artlessly the story of my life from the morning when I delivered my tattered copy of "Paradise Lost" to Paragot instead of the greasy washing book: and if my narrative glowed rosier with poetic illusion than the pages on which it has been set down, pray forgive nineteen for seeing things in a different light and perspective from a hundred and fifty. In my description of the Lotus Club, for instance, I felt instinctively that Madame de Verneuil would wince at the sound of tripe; I conveyed to her my own childish impression of the magnificence of Paragot's bedchamber, and the story of our wanderings became an Idyll of No Man's Land.
"And what is he doing now?" We had grown so confidential that we exchanged smiles.
"He is cultivating philosophy," said I.
Perhaps it was a sign of my development that I could detect a little spot of clay in my idol.
We had gone south, past the Observatoire to Montrouge, and had turned back before I realised that we were in the Boulevard Saint-Michel again near the prearranged end of my drive.
"Do you know why I am so glad to have met you to-day?" she asked. "I think—indeed I know I can trust you. I am in great trouble and I have an idea that your Master can help me."
She looked at me so earnestly, so wistfully, her face seemed to grow of a sudden so young and helpless, that all my boy's fantastic chivalry was roused.
"My Master would lay down his life for you, Madame," I cried. "And so would I."
"Even if I never, never, in this world forgave him?"
"You would forgive him in the next, Madame," I answered, scarce knowing what I said, "and he would be contented."
The carriage stopped at the appointed place. I felt as if I were about to descend from the side of an Olympian goddess to sordid humanity, to step from the Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon on to the common earth. It was I who looked wistful.
"May I come to see you, Madame?"
The quick fear came into her eyes.
"Not as yet, Mr. Asticot," she said holding out her hand. "My husband is queer tempered at times. I will write to you."
The carriage drove off. For the second time she had left me with her husband on her lips. I had forgotten him completely. I stamped my foot on the pavement.
"He is a scaly vulture," said I, echoing Paragot. Gods! How I hated the poor man.
One evening, about a week after this, some seven or eight of us were gathered around Paragot's table at the Café Delphine. Two were rapins—we have no word for the embryo painter—my companions in Janot's atelier. Of the rest I only remember one—poor Cazalet. He wore a self-tailored grotesque attire, a brown stuff tunic girt at the waist by a leathern belt, shapeless trousers of the same material, and sandals. He had long yellow hair and untrimmed chicken fluff grew casually about his face. A sombre genius, he used to paint dark writhing horrors of souls in pain, and in his hours of relaxation to drink litres of anisette. At first he disliked and scoffed at me because I was an Englishman, which grieved me sorely, for I regarded him as the greatest genius, save Paragot, of my acquaintance. I found him ten years afterwards a sous-chef de gare on the Belgian frontier.
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.
It was the Comtesse de Verneuil standing in the doorway and looking in her frightened way into the café: Joanna in dark fitting toque and loose jacket beneath which one saw a gleaming high evening dress. I noted swiftly that she had violets in her toque. Her beauty, her rare daintiness compelled a stupefied silence. I sped towards the door and went with her into the street. A closed carriage stood by the kerb.
She took me by the front of my loose jacket and twisted it nervously.
"Get him out, Mr. Asticot. Tell him I must see him."
"But how did you come here?" I asked.
"I went first to the Rue des Saladiers. The servant told me I should find him at the Café Delphine."
I left her outside, and re-entering, met him in the middle of the Café, grasping his green hat in one hand and the pipe with the porcelain bowl in the other. All eyes were turned anxiously towards us.
"She has come for you, Master," I whispered. "She needs you. Come."
"What does she want with me? It was all over and done with thirteen years ago." His voice shook.
"She is waiting," said I.
I drew him to the door and he obeyed me with strange docility. He drew a deep breath as soon as we emerged on to the wind-swept pavement.
"Gaston."
"Yes," said he.
They remained looking at each other for several seconds, agitated, neither able to speak.
"You were very cruel to me long ago," she said at last.
My Master remained silent; the wooden stem of the pipe snapped between his fingers and the porcelain bowl fell with a crash to the pavement.
"Very cruel, Gaston. But you can make a little reparation now, if you like."
"I repair my cruelty to you?" He laughed as men laugh in great pain. "Very well. It will be a fitting end to a topsy-turvy farce. What can I do for Madame la Comtesse?"
"My husband is ill. Come to him. My carriage is here. Oh, put on your hat and don't stand there French fashion, bareheaded. We are English."
"We are what you will," said my Master putting on his hat. "At present however I am mystified by your lighting on me in the dustbin of Paris. You must have done much sifting."
"I will tell you as we drive," she said.
I walked with them across the pavement and opened the carriage door.
"Goodnight, Mr. Asticot," said Madame la Comtesse holding out her hand.
Paragot looked from me to her, shrugged his shoulders and followed her into the carriage. My master had many English attributes, but in the shrug, the pantomime of Kismet, he was exclusively French.
CHAPTER XII
"Mais dis donc, Asticot," said Blanquette holding a half egg-shell in each hand while the yolk and white fell into the bowl, "who was the lady that came last night and wanted to see the Master?"
"You had better ask him," said I.
"I have done so, but he will not tell me."
"What did he say?"
"He told me to ask the serpent. I don't know what he meant," said Blanquette.
I explained the allusion to the curiosity of Eve.
"But," objected the literal Blanquette, "there is no serpent in the Rue des Saladiers—unless it is you."
"You have beaten those eggs enough," I remarked.
"You can teach me many things, but how to make omelettes—ah no!"
"All right," said I, "when your inordinate curiosity has spoiled the thing, don't blame me."
"She is very pretty," said Blanquette.
"Pretty? She is entirely adorable."
Blanquette sighed. "She must have a great many lovers."
"Blanquette!" cried I scandalised, "she is married."
"Naturally. If she weren't she could not have lovers. I wish I were only half as beautiful."
The lump of butter cast into the frying-pan sizzled, and Blanquette sighed again. I must explain that I had come, as I often did, to share Paragot's midday meal, but as he was still abed, Blanquette had enticed me into her tiny kitchen. The omelette being for my sole consumption I may be pardoned for my interest in its concoction.
"So that you could be married and have lovers?" I asked in a superior way.
"Too many lovers make life unhappy," she replied sagely. "If I were pretty I should only want one—one to love me for myself."
"And for what are you loved now?"
"For my omelettes," she said with a deft turn of the frying-pan.
"Blanquette," said I, "je t'adore."
She laughed with an "es-tu bête!" and ministered to my wants as I sat down to my meal at a corner of the kitchen table. She loved this. Great as was her pride in the speckless and orderly salon, she never felt at her ease there. In the kitchen she was herself, at home, and could do the honours as hostess.
"Do you think the beautiful lady is in love with the Master?"
"You have been reading the feuilletons of the Petit Journal and your head is full of sentimental nonsense," I cried.
"It is not nonsense for a woman to love the Master."
"Oho!" I exclaimed teasingly, "perhaps you are in love with him too."
She turned her back on me and began to clean a spotless casserole.
"Mange ton omelette," she said.
My meal over, I went to Paragot's room. I found him in bed, not as usual pipe in mouth and a tattered volume in his hand, but lying on his back, his arms crossed beneath his head, staring into the white curtains of which Blanquette was so proud.
"My son," said he, after he had enquired after my welfare and my lunch and advised me as to cooling medicaments wherewith to mitigate a certain pimplous condition of cheek, "My son, I want you to make me a promise. Swear that if a hitch occurs in your scheme of the cosmos, you will not break up your furniture with a crusader's mace. Such a proceeding has infinite consequences of effraction. It disrupts your existence and ends with the irreparable smash of your porcelain pipe." Whereupon he asked me for a cigarette and began to smoke reflectively.
"One ought to order one's scheme so that no hitch can occur," said I.
"As far as I can gather from the theologians that is beyond the power even of the Almighty," said Paragot.
Blanquette appeared with the morning absinthe.
"The hitch, my son, in my case was beyond mortal control," he said looking up at the bed-curtains. "You may think that I caused it in the first place. You heard me last night accused of cruelty. You, discreet little image that you are, know more about things than I thought. And yet you must wonder, now that you are nearly a man, what can be, what can have been between this disreputable hairy scallywag who is eating the bread of idleness and," with a sip of his absinthe, "drinking the waters of destruction, and that fair creature of dainty life. Don't judge anyone, my little Asticot 'Hi sumus, qui omnibus veris falsa quædam esse dicamus, tanta similitudine, ut in iis nulla insit certe judicandi et assentiendi nota.' That is Cicero, an author to whom I regret I have not been able to introduce you, and it means that the false is so mingled with the true and looks so like it, that there is no sure mark whereby we may distinguish one from the other. It is a damned fool of a world."
In this chastened mood I left him.
I learned later in the day that the appearance of the Comtesse in the Café Delphine and the exodus of Paragot had caused no small sensation. Cazalet had peeped through the glass door.
"Cré nom de nom, she is driving him off in her own carriage!"
He returned to the table and drank a glass of anisette to steady his nerves. Who was the lady? Evidently Paragot was leading a double life. Madame Boin nodded her head mysteriously as though possessed of secrets she would not divulge. They spent the evening in profitless conjecture. The fact remained that Paragot, the hairy disreputable scallywag, had relations with a high born and beautiful woman. It was stupefying. C'était abracadabrant! That was the final word. When the Quartier Latin calls a thing abracadabrant there is no more to be said.
The Café Delphine was far from being the school of discretion and good manners that Paragot frequented in his youth, but such was his personal influence that when he reappeared in his usual place no one dared allude to the disconcerting incident. Paragot had recovered from the chastened mood and was gay, Rabelaisian, and with great gestures talked of all subjects under heaven. One of the International Exhibitions was in prospect and many architects' offices were busy with projects for the new buildings. A discussion on these having arisen—two of our company were architectural students—Paragot declared that the Exhibition would be incomplete without a Palais de Dipsomanie. Indeed it should be the central feature.
"Tiens!" he cried, "I have an inspiration! Some one give me a soft black pencil. Hercule, clear the table."
He caught the napkin from beneath Hercule's arm and as soon as the glasses were removed, he dried the marble top, and holding the pencil draughtsman's fashion, a couple of inches from the point, began to draw with feverish haste. His long fingers worked magically. We bent over him, holding our breath, as gradually emerged the most marvellous, weird, riotous dream of drunken architecture the world could ever behold. There were columns admirably indicated, upside down. The domes looked like tops of half inflated balloons. Enormous buttresses supporting nothing leaned incapable against the building. Bottles and wine cups formed part of the mad construction. Satyrs' heads leered instead of windows. The whole palace looked reeling drunk. It was a tremendous feat of imagination and skill. The hour that he spent in elaborating it passed like five minutes. When he had finished he threw down his pencil.
"Voilà!"
Then he called for his drink and emptied the glass at a gulp. We all clamoured our admiration.
"But Paragot," cried one of the architectural students in considerable excitement, "you are a trained architect, and a great architect! It is the work of a genius. Garnier himself could not have done it."
Paragot whipped up the napkin from the seat and, before we could protest, rubbed the drawing into a black smudge.
"I am a poet, painter, architect, musician and philosopher, mon petit Bibi," said he, "and my name is Berzélius Nibbidard Paragot."
It was growing late and we all rose in a body—except Paragot, who made a point of remaining after everyone had gone. He caught me by the sleeve.
"Stay a bit to-night, my little Asticot," said he.
Usually he would not allow me to remain late at the Café. It was bad for my health; and indeed I was not supposed to waste my time thus more than two evenings a week. Paragot did not include my seeing him make a Helot of himself as part of my education. This was the theory at the back of his mind. In practice it had occurred at intervals since the days (or nights) of the Lotus Club.
Paragot ordered another drink. It was astonishing, said he, how provocative of thirst was any diversion from the ordinary course of life.
"If the pig of the Café Cordier had been human," he remarked, "he would have sat down and consumed intoxicating liquors instead of throwing himself under the wheels of an omnibus. My son," he said with solemn eyes, "reverence that pig. It is few of us who have his courage and single-heartedness."
He went on talking for some time in a semi-coherent strain, clouding over with dim allusions the vital idea which, I verily believe, had I been a kind woman of the world instead of a raw youth of nineteen, he would have crystallised with flaming speech. I could only listen to him dumbly, vaguely divinatory through my love for him and I suppose through a certain temperamental sensitiveness, but alas! uncomprehending by reason of my inexperience in the deeps of life.
Presently he announced that he was ready to start. He walked somewhat unsteadily to the door, his hand on my shoulder.
"My little son Asticot," said he on the threshold, "I am so far on my road to immortality that I ought to have vine-leaves in my hair; instead of which I have wormwood in my heart. Will you kindly take me to the Pont Neuf."
"But dear Master," said I, "what on earth are you going to do there?"
"I have something important to say to Henri Quatre."
"You can say it better," I urged, "in the Rue des Saladiers."
"To the Pont Neuf," said he brusquely, pushing me away.
I had to humour him. We started up the Boulevard Saint-Michel. It was drizzling with rain.
"Master, we had better go home."
He did not reply, but strode on. I have a catlike dislike of rain. I bear it philosophically, but that is all. To carry on a conversation during a persistent downpour is beyond my powers. I might as well try to sing under water. Paragot, who ordinarily was indifferent to the seasons' difference, and would discourse gaily in a deluge, walked on in silence. We went along amid the umbrella-covered crowd, past the steaming terraces of cafés, whose lights set the kiosques in a steady glare and sent shafts of yellow from the tops of stationary cabs, and caught the wet passing traffic in livid flashes, and illuminated faces to an unreal significance; down the gloom-enveloped, silent quais frowned upon by the dim and monstrous masses of architecture, guarding the Seine like phantasmagorical bastions, none visible in outline, but only felt looming in the rain-filled night, until we reached the statue of Paragot's tutelary King. And the rain fell miserably.
We were wet through. I put my hand on his dripping sleeve.
"Master, let me see you home."
He shook me off roughly.
"You can go."
"But dear Master," I implored. He put both hands behind his head and threw out his arms in a great gesture.
"Boy! Can't you see," cried he, "that I am in agony of soul?"
I bent my head and went away. God knows what he said to Henri Quatre. I suppose each of us has a pet Gethsemane of his own.
One night, a few weeks later, Blanquette appeared in my little student's attic. Fired by the example of some of my comrades at Janot's who showed glistening five-franc pieces as the rewards of industry, I was working up a drawing which I fondly hoped I could sell to a comic paper. Youth is the period of insensate ambitions.
I put down my charcoal as Blanquette entered, bare-headed—wise girl, she scorned hats and bonnets—and as neatly dressed as her figure daily growing dumpier would allow. She was laughing.
"Guess what your concierge said."
"That it was improper for you to come to see me at this hour of the night."
"Improper? Bah!" cried Blanquette, for whom such conventions existed not. "But she told me that it was un joli petit amant that I had upstairs. What an idea!" She laughed again.
"You find that funny?" I asked, my dignity somewhat ruffled. "I suppose I am as pretty a little lover as anyone else."
"But you and me, Asticot, it is so droll."
"If you put it that way," I admitted, "it is. But the concierge doesn't think it possible that you are not my maîtresse. Why otherwise should you be running in and out of my room, as if it belonged to you?"
"You will be bringing a maîtresse of your own here soon, and then you won't want Blanquette any longer."
I dismissed the idea as one too remote for contemplation. At the same time I reflected that I kissed a pretty model at Janot's when we met alone on the stairs. I wondered whether the diabolical perspicacity of women had seen traces of the kiss on my lips.
"I disturb you?" she asked drawing up my other wooden chair to the deal table and sitting down.
"Why, no. I can work while you talk."
She put her elbow on a couple of pickled gherkins that remained casually on the table after a perambulatory meal.
"Oh, how dirty men are! You are worse than the Master. Oh la! la! and he puts his boots and his dirty plates together on his bed! It is time that you did have a maîtresse to keep the place in order."
"I believe you really do want to come here in that capacity," I said laughingly.
She flushed at the jest and drew herself up. "You have no right to say that, Asticot. I would sooner be the Master's servant than the mistress or even the wife of any man living. He is everything to me, my little Asticot, everything, do you hear? although he loves me just as he loves you and Narcisse. Il ne faut pas te moquer de moi. You must not laugh at me. It hurts me."
It was only then, for the first time, that I realised in Blanquette a grown woman. Hitherto I had regarded her merely as a female waif picked up like the dog and myself under Paragot's vagabond arm and attached to him by ties of gratitude. Now, lo and behold! she was a woman talking of deep things with a treacherous throb in her voice.
I reached across the table and took one of her coarse hands.
"Mais tu l'aimes donc, ma pauvre Blanquette!" I exclaimed in sympathy and consternation.
She looked down and nodded. I did not know what to say. A tear fell on my hand. I knew still less. Then crying out she was very unhappy, she began to sob.
"He does not want me—even to pass the time. It has never entered his head. I am too ugly. I do not demand that he should love me. It would be asking for the moon."
"But he does love you, like a father," I said, in vain consolation. "I love him like a son and you should love him like a daughter."
She did not even condescend to notice this counsel of perfection. She was too ugly. She was built like a hayrick. The Master had never cast his eyes on her, as doubtless he would have done, being a man, had she any of the qualities of allurement. She suffered, poor Blanquette, from the spretæ injuria formæ with reason even more solid than the forsaken Dido. She was humble, she sobbed; she did not demand a bit of love bigger than that—and she clicked her finger nail. With that she would be proud and happy.
"If the master were as gay as he used to be, I should not mind," she said, lifting a grotesquely stained face. "But when he goes drinking, drinking so as to drown his love for another woman, c'est plus fort que moi. It is more than I can bear."
"Which other woman?"
"You know very well. That beautiful lady. She has come more than once to fetch him away. She is a wicked woman, for she does not love him; she even detests him; one can see that. I should like to kill her," cried Blanquette.
The idea of anyone wanting to kill Joanna was so novel that I stared at her speechless. It took some time for my wits to accommodate themselves to the point of view.
"If I were a man I would not drink myself to death for the sake of a woman who treated me so," she remarked, recovering her composure.
"Is it as bad as that?" I asked.
She shrugged her shoulders. Men must drink. It is their nature. But there should be limits. One ought to be reasonable, even a man. Did I not think so? In her matter of fact way she gave me details of Paragot's habits. The one morning absinthe had grown to two or three. There was brandy too in his bedroom.
"And it eats such a deal of money, my little Asticot," she remarked.
After which, to relieve her feelings, she washed up my dirty plates, and discoursed on the economics of catering.
I walked with her through the two or three streets that separated me from the Rue des Saladiers, and went upstairs with her to see whether Paragot had returned. It was past midnight. There was no Paragot. I went to the Café Delphine profoundly depressed by Blanquette's story. Here was Blanquette eating her heart out for Paragot, who was killing his soul for Joanna, who was miserably unhappy on account of her husband, who was suffering some penalty for his scaly-headed vulturedom. It was a kind of House-that-Jack-built tale of misery, of which I seemed to be the foundation.
Save for Paragot the café was empty. He was asleep in his usual corner, breathing stertorously, his head against the wall. Madame Boin on her throne was busy over accounts. Hercule dozed at a table by the door, his napkin in the crook of his arm. He nodded towards Paragot as I entered and made a helpless gesture. I looked at the huddled figure against the wall and wondered how the deuce I was to take him home. I had no money to pay for a cab. I tried in vain to rouse him.
"Monsieur had better let him stay here," said Hercule. "It won't be the first time." My heart grew even heavier than it was before. No wonder poor Blanquette was dismayed.
"He will catch his death of cold when the morning comes," said I, for the night was fresh and three years of warm lying had softened the Paragot of vagrant days.
"One must die sooner or later," moralised Hercule inhumanly.
I shook my master again. He grunted. I shook him more violently. To my relief he opened his eyes, smiled at me and waved a limp salutation.
"The Palace of Dipsomania," he murmured.
"No, Master," said I. "This is the Café Delphine and you live in the Rue des Saladiers."
"It is a nuisance to live anywhere. I was born to be a bird—to roost on trees." I had considerable difficulty in disentangling the words from his thick speech. He shut his eyes—then opened them again.
"How does a drunken owl stay on his twig?"
As I felt no interest in the domestic habits of dissolute owls, I set about getting him home. I took his green hat from the peg and put it on his head, and with Hercule's help drew away the table and set him on his feet.
"A man like that! It goes to my heart," said Madame Boin in a low voice.
I felt unreasonably angry that any one, save myself or perhaps Blanquette, should pity my beloved master. I did not answer, whereby I am afraid I was rude to the good Madame Boin. Paragot lurched forward and would have fallen had not Hercule caught and steadied him.
"Broken ankle," explained Paragot.
"You must try to walk, Master," I urged anxiously. How was I going to get him to the Rue des Saladiers? His arm round my neck weighed cruelly on my frail body.
"Put best foot forward," he murmured making a step and pausing. "That is very easy; but the devil of it is when time comes for worst foot."
"Try it, for goodness sake," said I.
He tried it with a silly laugh. Then the swing door of the café opened and Joanna with her sweet frightened face appeared on the threshold.