Original
Separated from her sister for a long time, she now beheld her in all the pomp of her singular triumph, in the midst of the cries of joy, and the applause of her companions in pleasure. Yet the eyes of the young sempstress grew dim with tears; for, though the Bacchanal Queen seemed to share in the stunning gayety of all around her—though her face was radiant with smiles, and she appeared fully to enjoy the splendors of her temporary elevation—yet she had the sincere pity of the poor workwoman, almost in rags, who was seeking, with the first dawn of morning, the means of earning her daily bread.
Mother Bunch had forgotten the crowd, to look only at her sister, whom she tenderly loved—only the more tenderly, that she thought her situation to be pitied. With her eyes fixed on the joyous and beautiful girl, her pale and gentle countenance expressed the most touching and painful interest.
All at once, as the brilliant glance of the Bacchanal Queen travelled along the crowd, it lighted on the sad features of Mother Bunch.
“My sister!” exclaimed Cephyse—such was the name of the Bacchanal Queen—“My sister!”—and with one bound, light as a ballet-dancer, she sprang from her movable throne (which fortunately just happened to be stopping), and, rushing up to the hunchback, embraced her affectionately.
All this had passed so rapidly, that the companions of the Bacchanal Queen, still stupefied by the boldness of her perilous leap, knew not how to account for it; whilst the masks who surrounded Mother Bunch drew back in surprise, and the latter, absorbed in the delight of embracing her sister, whose caresses she returned, did not even think of the singular contrast between them, which was sure to soon excite the astonishment and hilarity of the crowd.
Cephyse was the first to think of this, and wishing to save her sister at least one humiliation, she turned towards the carriage, and said: “Rose Pompon, throw me down my cloak; and, Ninny Moulin, open the door directly!”
Having received the cloak, the Bacchanal Queen hastily wrapped it round her sister, before the latter could speak or move. Then, taking her by the hand, she said to her: “Come! come!”
“I!” cried Mother Bunch, in alarm. “Do not think of it!”
“I must speak with you. I will get a private room, where we shall be alone. So make haste, dear little sister! Do not resist before all these people—but come!”
The fear of becoming a public sight decided Mother Bunch, who, confused moreover with the adventure, trembling and frightened, followed her sister almost mechanically, and was dragged by her into the carriage, of which Ninny Moulin had just opened the door. And so, with the cloak of the Bacchanal Queen covering Mother Bunch’s poor garments and deformed figure, the crowd had nothing to laugh at, and only wondered what this meeting could mean, while the coaches pursued their way to the eating house in the Place du Chatelet.
CHAPTER II. THE CONTRAST.
Some minutes after the meeting of Mother Bunch with the Bacchanal Queen, the two sisters were alone together in a small room in the tavern.
“Let me kiss you again,” said Cephyse to the young sempstress; “at least now we are alone, you will not be afraid?”
In the effort of the Bacchanal Queen to clasp Mother Bunch in her arms, the cloak fell from the form of the latter. At sight of those miserable garments, which she had hardly had time to observe on the Place du Chatelet, in the midst of the crowd, Cephyse clasped her hands, and could not repress an exclamation of painful surprise. Then, approaching her sister, that she might contemplate her more closely, she took her thin, icy palms between her own plump hands, and examined for some minutes, with increasing grief, the suffering, pale, unhappy creature, ground down by watching and privations, and half-clothed in a poor, patched cotton gown.
“Oh, sister! to see you thus!” Unable to articulate another word, the Bacchanal Queen threw herself on the other’s neck, and burst into tears. Then, in the midst of her sobs, she added: “Pardon! pardon!”
“What is the matter, my dear Cephyse?” said the young sewing-girl, deeply moved, and gently disengaging herself from the embrace of her sister. “Why do you ask my pardon?”
“Why?” resumed Cephyse, raising her countenance, bathed in tears, and purple with shame; “is it not shameful of me to be dressed in all this frippery, and throwing away so much money in follies, while you are thus miserably clad, and in need of everything—perhaps dying of want, for I have never seen your poor face look so pale and worn.”
“Be at ease, dear sister! I am not ill. I was up rather late last night, and that makes me a little pale—but pray do not cry—it grieves me.”
The Bacchanal Queen had but just arrived, radiant in the midst of the intoxicated crowd, and yet it was Mother Bunch who was now employed in consoling her!
An incident occurred, which made the contrast still more striking. Joyous cries were heard suddenly in the next apartment, and these words were repeated with enthusiasm: “Long live the Bacchanal Queen!”
Mother Bunch trembled, and her eyes filled with tears, as she saw her sister with her face buried in her hands, as if overwhelmed with shame. “Cephyse,” she said, “I entreat you not to grieve so. You will make me regret the delight of this meeting, which is indeed happiness to me! It is so long since I saw you! But tell me—what ails you?”
“You despise me perhaps—you are right,” said the Bacchanal Queen, drying her tears.
“Despise you? for what?”
“Because I lead the life I do, instead of having the courage to support misery along with you.”
The grief of Cephyse was so heart-breaking, that Mother Bunch, always good and indulgent, wishing to console her, and raise her a little in her own estimation, said to her tenderly: “In supporting it bravely for a whole year, my good Cephyse, you have had more merit and courage than I should have in bearing with it my whole life.”
“Oh, sister! do not say that.”
“In simple truth,” returned Mother Bunch, “to what temptations is a creature like me exposed? Do I not naturally seek solitude, even as you seek a noisy life of pleasure? What wants have I? A very little suffices.”
“But you have not always that little?”
“No—but, weak and sickly as I seem, I can endure some privations better than you could. Thus hunger produces in me a sort of numbness, which leaves me very feeble—but for you, robust and full of life, hunger is fury, is madness. Alas! you must remember how many times I have seen you suffering from those painful attacks, when work failed us in our wretched garret, and we could not even earn our four francs a week—so that we had nothing—absolutely nothing to eat—for our pride prevented us from applying to the neighbors.”
“You have preserved the right to that honest pride.”
“And you as well! Did you not struggle as much as a human creature could? But strength fails at last—I know you well, Cephyse—it was hunger that conquered you; and the painful necessity of constant labor, which was yet insufficient to supply our common wants.”
“But you could endure those privations—you endure them still.”
“Can you compare me with yourself? Look,” said Mother Bunch, taking her sister by the hand, and leading her to a mirror placed above a couch, “look!—Dost think that God made you so beautiful, endowed you with such quick and ardent blood, with so joyous, animated, grasping a nature and with such taste and fondness for pleasure, that your youth might be spent in a freezing garret, hid from the sun, nailed constantly to your chair, clad almost in rags, and working without rest and without hope? No! for He has given us other wants than those of eating and drinking. Even in our humble condition, does not beauty require some little ornament? Does not youth require some movement, pleasure, gayety? Do not all ages call for relaxation and rest? Had you gained sufficient wages to satisfy hunger, to have a day or so’s amusement in the week, after working every other day for twelve or fifteen hours, and to procure the neat and modest dress which so charming a face might naturally claim—you would never have asked for more, I am sure of it—you have told me as much a hundred times. You have yielded, therefore, to an irresistible necessity, because your wants are greater than mine.”
“It is true,” replied the Bacchanal Queen, with a pensive air; “if I could but have gained eighteenpence a day, my life would have been quite different; for, in the beginning, sister, I felt cruelly humiliated to live at a man’s expense.”
“Yes, yes—it was inevitable, my dear Cephyse; I must pity, but cannot blame you. You did not choose your destiny; but, like me, you have submitted to it.”
“Poor sister!” said Cephyse, embracing the speaker tenderly; “you can encourage and console me in the midst of your own misfortunes, when I ought to be pitying you.”
“Be satisfied!” said Mother Bunch; “God is just and good. If He has denied me many advantages, He has given me my joys, as you have yours.”
“Joys?”
“Yes, and great ones—without which life would be too burdensome, and I should not have the courage to go through with it.”
“I understand you,” said Cephyse, with emotion; “you still know how to devote yourself for others, and that lightens your own sorrows.”
“I do what I can, but, alas! it is very little; yet when I succeed,” added Mother Bunch, with a faint smile, “I am as proud and happy as a poor little ant, who, after a great deal of trouble, has brought a big straw to the common nest. But do not let us talk any more of me.”
“Yes, but I must, even at the risk of making you angry,” resumed the Bacchanal Queen, timidly; “I have something to propose to you which you once before refused. Jacques Rennepont has still, I think, some money left—we are spending it in follies—now and then giving a little to poor people we may happen to meet—I beg of you, let me come to your assistance—I see in your poor face, you cannot conceal it from me, that you are wearing yourself out with toil.”
“Thanks, my dear Cephyse, I know your good heart; but I am not in want of anything. The little I gain is sufficient for me.”
“You refuse me,” said the Bacchanal Queen, sadly, “because you know that my claim to this money is not honorable—be it so—I respect your scruples. But you will not refuse a service from Jacques; he has been a workman, like ourselves, and comrades should help each other. Accept it I beseech you, or I shall think you despise me.”
“And I shall think you despise me, if you insist any more upon it, my dear Cephyse,” said Mother Bunch, in a tone at once so mild and firm that the Bacchanal Queen saw that all persuasion would be in vain. She hung her head sorrowfully, and a tear again trickled down her cheek.
“My refusal grieves you,” said the other, taking her hand; “I am truly sorry—but reflect—and you will understand me.”
“You are right,” said the Bacchanal Queen, bitterly, after a moment’s silence; “you cannot accept assistance from my lover—it was an insult to propose it to you. There are positions in life so humiliating, that they soil even the good one wishes to do.”
“Cephyse, I did not mean to hurt you—you know it well.”
“Oh! believe me,” replied the Bacchanal Queen, “gay and giddy as I am, I have sometimes moments of reflection, even in the midst of my maddest joy. Happily, such moments are rare.”
“And what do you think of, then?”
“Why, that the life I lead is hardly the thing; then resolve to ask Jacques for a small sum of money, just enough to subsist on for a year, and form the plan of joining you, and gradually getting to work again.”
“The idea is a good one; why not act upon it?”
“Because, when about to execute this project, I examined myself sincerely, and my courage failed. I feel that I could never resume the habit of labor, and renounce this mode of life, sometimes rich, as to day, sometimes precarious,—but at least free and full of leisure, joyous and without care, and at worst a thousand times preferable to living upon four francs a week. Not that interest has guided me. Many times have I refused to exchange a lover, who had little or nothing, for a rich man, that I did not like. Nor have I ever asked anything for myself. Jacques has spent perhaps ten thousand francs the last three or four months, yet we only occupy two half-furnished rooms, because we always live out of doors, like the birds: fortunately, when I first loved him, he had nothing at all, and I had just sold some jewels that had been given me, for a hundred francs, and put this sum in the lottery. As mad people and fools are always lucky, I gained a prize of four thousand francs. Jacques was as gay, and light-headed, and full of fun as myself, so we said: ‘We love each other very much, and, as long as this money lasts, we will keep up the racket; when we have no more, one of two things will happen—either we shall be tired of one another, and so part—or else we shall love each other still, and then, to remain together, we shall try and get work again; and, if we cannot do so, and yet will not part—a bushel of charcoal will do our business!’”
“Good heaven!” cried Mother Bunch, turning pale.
“Be satisfied! we have not come to that. We had still something left, when a kind of agent, who had paid court to me, but who was so ugly that I could not bear him for all his riches, knowing that I was living with Jacques asked me to—But why should I trouble you with all these details? In one word, he lent Jacques money, on some sort of a doubtful claim he had, as was thought, to inherit some property. It is with this money that we are amusing ourselves—as long as its lasts.”
“But, my dear Cephyse, instead of spending this money so foolishly, why not put it out to interest, and marry Jacques, since you love him?”
“Oh! in the first place,” replied the Bacchanal Queen, laughing, as her gay and thoughtless character resumed its ascendancy, “to put money out to interest gives one no pleasure. All the amusement one has is to look at a little bit of paper, which one gets in exchange for the nice little pieces of gold, with which one can purchase a thousand pleasures. As for marrying, I certainly like Jacques better than I ever liked any one; but it seems to me, that, if we were married, all our happiness would end—for while he is only my lover, he cannot reproach me with what has passed—but, as my husband, he would be stare to upbraid me, sooner or later, and if my conduct deserves blame, I prefer giving it to myself, because I shall do it more tenderly.”
“Mad girl that you are! But this money will not last forever. What is to be done next?”
“Afterwards!—Oh! that’s all in the moon. To-morrow seems to me as if it would not come for a hundred years. If we were always saying: ‘We must die one day or the other’—would life be worth having?”
The conversation between Cephyse and her sister was here again interrupted by a terrible uproar, above which sounded the sharp, shrill noise of Ninny Moulin’s rattle. To this tumult succeeded a chorus of barbarous cries, in the midst of which were distinguishable these words, which shook the very windows: “The Queen! the Bacchanal Queen!”
Mother Bunch started at this sudden noise.
“It is only my court, who are getting impatient,” said Cephyse—and this time she could laugh.
“Heavens!” cried the sewing-girl, in alarm; “if they were to come here in search of you?”
“No, no—never fear.”
“But listen! do you not hear those steps? they are coming along the passage—they are approaching. Pray, sister, let me go out alone, without being seen by all these people.”
That moment the door was opened, and Cephyse, ran towards it. She saw in the passage a deputation headed by Ninny Moulin, who was armed with his formidable rattle, and followed by Rose-Pompon and Sleepinbuff.
“The Bacchanal Queen! or I poison myself with a glass of water;” cried Ninny Moulin.
“The Bacchanal Queen! or I publish my banns of marriage with Ninny Moulin!” cried little Rose-Pompon, with a determined air.
“The Bacchanal Queen! or the court will rise in arms, and carry her off by force!” said another voice.
“Yes, yes—let us carry her off!” repeated a formidable chorus.
“Jacques, enter alone!” said the Bacchanal Queen, notwithstanding these pressing summonses; then, addressing her court in a majestic tone, she added: “In ten minutes, I shall be at your service—and then for a—of a time!”
“Long live the Bacchanal Queen,” cried Dumoulin, shaking his rattle as he retired, followed by the deputation, whilst Sleepinbuff entered the room alone.
“Jacques,” said Cephyse, “this is my good sister.”
“Enchanted to see you,” said Jacques, cordially; “the more so as you will give me some news of my friend Agricola. Since I began to play the rich man, we have not seen each other, but I like him as much as ever, and think him a good and worthy fellow. You live in the same house. How is he?”
“Alas, sir! he and his family have had many misfortunes. He is in prison.”
“In prison!” cried Cephyse.
Original
“Agricola in prison! what for?” said Sleepinbuff.
“For a trifling political offence. We had hoped to get him out on bail.”
“Certainly; for five hundred francs it could be done,” said Sleepinbuff.
“Unfortunately, we have not been able; the person upon whom we relied—”
The Bacchanal Queen interrupted the speaker by saying to her lover: “Do you hear, Jacques? Agricola in prison, for want of five hundred francs!”
“To be sure! I hear and understand all about it. No need of your winking. Poor fellow! he was the support of his mother.”
“Alas! yes, sir—and it is the more distressing, as his father has but just returned from Russia, and his mother—”
“Here,” said Sleepinbuff, interrupting, and giving Mother Bunch a purse; “take this—all the expenses here have been paid beforehand—this is what remains of my last bag. You will find here some twenty-five or thirty Napoleons, and I cannot make a better use of them than to serve a comrade in distress. Give them to Agricola’s father; he will take the necessary steps, and to-morrow Agricola will be at his forge, where I had much rather he should be than myself.”
“Jacques, give me a kiss!” said the Bacchanal Queen.
“Now, and afterwards, and again and again!” said Jacques, joyously embracing the queen.
Mother Bunch hesitated for a moment; but reflecting that, after all, this sum of money, which was about to be spent in follies, would restore life and happiness to the family of Agricola, and that hereafter these very five hundred francs, when returned to Jacques, might be of the greatest use to him, she resolved to accept this offer. She took the purse, and with tearful eyes, said to him: “I will not refuse your kindness M. Jacques; you are so good and generous, Agricola’s father will thus at least have one consolation, in the midst of heavy sorrows. Thanks! many thanks!”
“There is no need to thank me; money was made for others as well as ourselves.”
Here, without, the noise recommenced more furiously than ever, and Ninny Moulin’s rattle sent forth the most doleful sounds.
“Cephyse,” said Sleepinbuff, “they will break everything to pieces, if you do not return to them, and I have nothing left to pay for the damage. Excuse us,” added he, laughing, “but you see that royalty has its duties.”
Cephyse deeply moved, extended her arms to Mother Bunch, who threw herself into them, shedding sweet tears.
“And now,” said she, to her sister, “when shall I see you again?”
“Soon—though nothing grieves me more than to see you in want, out of which I am not allowed to help you.”
“You will come, then, to see me? It is a promise?”
“I promise you in her name,” said Jacques; “we will pay a visit to you and your neighbor Agricola.”
“Return to the company, Cephyse, and amuse yourself with a light heart, for M. Jacques has made a whole family happy.”
So saying, and after Sleepinbuff had ascertained that she could go down without being seen by his noisy and joyous companions, Mother Bunch quietly withdrew, eager to carry one piece of good news at least to Dagobert; but intending, first of all, to go to the Rue de Babylone, to the garden-house formerly occupied by Adrienne de Cardoville. We shall explain hereafter the cause of this determination.
As the girl quitted the eating-house, three men plainly and comfortably dressed, were watching before it, and talking in a low voice. Soon after, they were joined by a fourth person, who rapidly descended the stairs of the tavern.
“Well?” said the three first, with anxiety.
“He is there.”
“Are you sure of it?”
“Are there two Sleepers-in-buff on earth?” replied the other. “I have just seen him; he is togged out like one of the swell mob. They will be at table for three hours at least.”
“Then wait for me, you others. Keep as quiet as possible. I will go and fetch the captain, and the game is bagged.” So saying, one of the three men walked off quickly, and disappeared in a street leading from the square.
At this same instant the Bacchanal Queen entered the banqueting-room, accompanied by Jacques, and was received with the most frenzied acclamations from all sides.
“Now then,” cried Cephyse, with a sort of feverish excitement, as if she wished to stun herself; “now then, friends—noise and tumult, hurricane and tempest, thunder and earthquake—as much as you please!” Then, holding out her glass to Ninny Moulin, she added: “Pour out! pour out!”
“Long live the Queen!” cried they all, with one voice.
CHAPTER III. THE CAROUSE.
The Bacchanal Queen, having Sleepinbuff and Rose-Pompon opposite her, and Ninny Moulin on her right hand, presided at the repast, called a reveille-matin (wake-morning), generously offered by Jacques to his companions in pleasure.
Both young men and girls seemed to have forgotten the fatigues of a ball, begun at eleven o’clock in the evening, and finished at six in the morning; and all these couples, joyous as they were amorous and indefatigable, laughed, ate, and drank, with youthful and Pantagruelian ardor, so that, during the first part of the feast, there was less chatter than clatter of plates and glasses.
The Bacchanal Queen’s countenance was less gay, but much more animated than usual; her flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes announced a feverish excitement; she wished to drown reflection, cost what it might. Her conversation with her sister often recurred to her, and she tried to escape from such sad remembrances.
Jacques regarded Cephyse from time to time with passionate adoration; for, thanks to the singular conformity of character, mind, and taste between him and the Bacchanal Queen, their attachment had deeper and stronger roots than generally belong to ephemeral connections founded upon pleasure. Cephyse and Jacques were themselves not aware of all the power of a passion which till now had been surrounded only by joys and festivities, and not yet been tried by any untoward event.
Little Rose-Pompon, left a widow a few days before by a student, who, in order to end the carnival in style, had gone into the country to raise supplies from his family, under one of those fabulous pretences which tradition carefully preserves in colleges of law and medicine—Rose Pompon, we repeat, an example of rare fidelity, determined not to compromise herself, had taken for a chaperon the inoffensive Ninny Moulin.
This latter, having doffed his helmet, exhibited a bald head, encircled by a border of black, curling hair, pretty long at the back of the head. By a remarkable Bacchic phenomenon, in proportion as intoxication gained upon him, a sort of zone, as purple as his jovial face, crept by degrees over his brow, till it obscured even the shining whiteness of his crown. Rose-Pompon, who knew the meaning of this symptom, pointed it out to the company, and exclaimed with a loud burst of laughter: “Take care, Ninny Moulin! the tide of the wine is coming in.”
“When it rises above his head he will be drowned,” added the Bacchanal Queen.
“Oh, Queen! don’t disturb me; I am meditating, answered Dumoulin, who was getting tipsy. He held in his hand, in the fashion of an antique goblet, a punch-bowl filled with wine, for he despised the ordinary glasses, because of their small size.
“Meditating,” echoed Rose-Pompon, “Ninny Moulin is meditating. Be attentive!”
“He is meditating; he must be ill then!”
“What is he meditating? an illegal dance?”
“A forbidden Anacreontic attitude?”
“Yes, I am meditating,” returned Dumoulin, gravely; “I am meditating upon wine, generally and in particular—wine, of which the immortal Bossuet”—Dumoulin had the very bad habit of quoting Bossuet when he was drunk—“of which the immortal Bossuet says (and he was a judge of good liquor): ‘In wine is courage, strength joy, and spiritual fervor’—when one has any brains,” added Ninny Moulin, by way of parenthesis.
“Oh, my! how I adore your Bossuet!” said Rose-Pompon.
“As for my particular meditation, it concerns the question, whether the wine at the marriage of Cana was red or white. Sometimes I incline to one side, sometimes to the other—and sometimes to both at once.”
“That is going to the bottom of the question,” said Sleepinbuff.
“And, above all, to the bottom of the bottles,” added the Bacchanal Queen.
“As your majesty is pleased to observe; and already, by dint of reflection and research, I have made a great discovery—namely, that, if the wine at the marriage of Cana was red—”
“It couldn’t ‘a’ been white,” said Rose-Pompon, judiciously.
“And if I had arrived at the conviction that it was neither white nor red?” asked Dumoulin, with a magisterial air.
“That could only be when you had drunk till all was blue,” observed Sleepinbuff.
“The partner of the Queen says well. One may be too athirst for science; but never mind! From all my studies on this question, to which I have devoted my life—I shall await the end of my respectable career with the sense of having emptied tuns with a historical—theological—and archeological tone!”
It is impossible to describe the jovial grimace and tone with which Dumoulin pronounced and accentuated these last words, which provoked a general laugh.
“Archieolopically?” said Rose-Pompon. “What sawnee is that? Has he a tail? does he live in the water?”
“Never mind,” observed the Bacchanal Queen; “these are words of wise men and conjurers; they are like horsehair bustles—they serve for filling out—that’s all. I like better to drink; so fill the glasses, Ninny Moulin; some champagne, Rose-Pompon; here’s to the health of your Philemon and his speedy return!”
“And to the success of his plant upon his stupid and stingy family!” added Rose-Pompon.
The toast was received with unanimous applause.
“With the permission of her majesty and her court,” said Dumoulin, “I propose a toast to the success of a project which greatly interests me, and has some resemblance to Philemon’s jockeying. I fancy that the toast will bring me luck.”
“Let’s have it, by all means!”
“Well, then—success to my marriage!” said Dumoulin, rising.
These words provoked an explosion of shouts, applause, and laughter. Ninny Moulin shouted, applauded, laughed even louder than the rest, opening wide his enormous mouth, and adding to the stunning noise the harsh springing of his rattle, which he had taken up from under his chair.
When the storm had somewhat subsided, the Bacchanal Queen rose and said: “I drink to the health of the future Madame Ninny Moulin.”
“Oh, Queen! your courtesy touches me so sensibly that I must allow you to read in the depths of my heart the name of my future spouse,” exclaimed Dumoulin. “She is called Madame Honoree-Modeste-Messaline-Angele de la Sainte-Colombe, widow.”
“Bravo! bravo!”
“She is sixty years old, and has more thousands of francs-a-year than she has hair in her gray moustache or wrinkles on her face; she is so superbly fat that one of her gowns would serve as a tent for this honorable company. I hope to present my future spouse to you on Shrove Tuesday, in the costume of a shepherdess that has just devoured her flock. Some of them wish to convert her—but I have undertaken to divert her, which she will like better. You must help me to plunge her headlong into all sorts of skylarking jollity.”
“We will plunge her into anything you please.”
“She shall dance like sixty!” said Rose-Pompon, humming a popular tune.
“She will overawe the police.”
“We can say to them: ‘Respect this lady; your mother will perhaps be as old some day!’”
Suddenly, the Bacchanal Queen rose; her countenance wore a singular expression of bitter and sardonic delight. In one hand she held a glass full to the brim. “I hear the Cholera is approaching in his seven-league boots,” she cried. “I drink luck to the Cholera!” And she emptied the bumper.
Notwithstanding the general gayety, these words made a gloomy impression; a sort of electric shudder ran through the assemblage, and nearly every countenance became suddenly serious.
“Oh, Cephyse!” said Jacques, in a tone of reproach.
“Luck to the Cholera,” repeated the Queen, fearlessly. “Let him spare those who wish to live, and kill together those who dread to part!”
Jacques and Cephyse exchanged a rapid glance, unnoticed by their joyous companions, and for some time the Bacchanal Queen remained silent and thoughtful.
“If you put it that way, it is different,” cried Rose-Pompon, boldly. “To the Cholera! may none but good fellows be left on earth!”
In spite of this variation, the impression was still painfully impressive. Dumoulin, wishing to cut short this gloomy subject, exclaimed: “Devil take the dead, and long live the living! And, talking of chaps who both live and live well, I ask you to drink a health most dear to our joyous queen, the health of our Amphitryon. Unfortunately, I do not know his respectable name, having only had the advantage of making his acquaintance this night; he will excuse me, then, if I confine myself to proposing the health of Sleepinbuff—a name by no means offensive to my modesty, as Adam never slept in any other manner. I drink to Sleepinbuff.”
“Thanks, old son!” said Jacques, gayly; “were I to forget your name, I should call you ‘Have-a-sip?’ and I am sure that you would answer: ‘I will.’”
“I will directly!” said Dumoulin, making the military salute with one hand, and holding out the bowl with the other.
“As we have drunk together,” resumed Sleepinbuff, cordially, “we ought to know each other thoroughly. I am Jacques Rennepont?”
“Rennepont!” cried Dumoulin, who appeared struck by the name, in spite of his half-drunkenness; “you are Rennepont?”
“Rennepont in the fullest sense of the word. Does that astonish you?”
“There is a very ancient family of that name—the Counts of Rennepont.”
“The deuce there is!” said the other, laughing.
“The Counts of Rennepont are also Dukes of Cardoville,” added Dumoulin.
“Now, come, old fellow! do I look as if I belonged to such a family?—I, a workman out for a spree?”
“You a workman? why, we are getting into the Arabian Nights!” cried Dumoulin, more and more surprised. “You give us a Belshazzar’s banquet, with accompaniment of carriages and four, and yet are a workman? Only tell me your trade, and I will join you, leaving the Vine of the Divine to take care of itself.”
“Come, I say! don’t think that I am a printer of flimsies, and a smasher!” replied Jacques, laughing.
“Oh, comrade! no such suspicion—”
“It would be excusable, seeing the rigs I run. But I’ll make you easy on that point. I am spending an inheritance.”
“Eating and drinking an uncle, no doubt?” said Dumoulin, benevolently.
“Faith, I don’t know.”
“What! you don’t know whom you are eating and drinking?”
“Why, you see, in the first place, my father was a bone-grubber.”
“The devil he was!” said Dumoulin, somewhat out of countenance, though in general not over-scrupulous in the choice of his bottle-companions: but, after the first surprise, he resumed, with the most charming amenity: “There are some rag-pickers very high by scent—I mean descent!”
“To be sure! you may think to laugh at me,” said Jacques, “but you are right in this respect, for my father was a man of very great merit. He spoke Greek and Latin like a scholar, and often told me that he had not his equal in mathematics; besides, he had travelled a good deal.”
“Well, then,” resumed Dumoulin, whom surprise had partly sobered, “you may belong to the family of the Counts of Rennepont, after all.”
“In which case,” said Rose-Pompon, laughing, “your father was not a gutter-snipe by trade, but only for the honor of the thing.”
Original
“No, no—worse luck! it was to earn his living,” replied Jacques; “but, in his youth, he had been well off. By what appeared, or rather by what did not appear, he had applied to some rich relation, and the rich relation had said to him: ‘Much obliged! try the work’us.’ Then he wished to make use of his Greek, and Latin, and mathematics. Impossible to do anything—Paris, it seems, being choke-full of learned men—so my father had to look for his bread at the end of a hooked stick, and there, too, he must have found it, for I ate of it during two years, when I came to live with him after the death of an aunt, with whom I had been staying in the country.”
“Your respectable father must have been a sort of philosopher,” said Dumoulin; “but, unless he found an inheritance in a dustbin, I don’t see how you came into your property.”
“Wait for the end of the song. At twelve years of age I was an apprentice at the factory of M. Tripeaud; two years afterwards, my father died of an accident, leaving me the furniture of our garret—a mattress, a chair, and a table—and, moreover, in an old Eau de Cologne box, some papers (written, it seems, in English), and a bronze medal, worth about ten sous, chain and all. He had never spoken to me of these papers, so, not knowing if they were good for anything, I left them at the bottom of an old trunk, instead of burning them—which was well for me, since it is upon these papers that I have had money advanced.”
“What a godsend!” said Dumoulin. “But somebody must have known that you had them?”
“Yes; one of those people that are always looking out for old debts came to Cephyse, who told me all about it; and, after he had read the papers, he said that the affair was doubtful, but that he would lend me ten thousand francs on it, if I liked. Ten thousand francs was a large sum, so I snapped him up!”
“But you must have supposed that these old papers were of great value.”
“Faith, no! since my father, who ought to have known their value, had never realized on them—and then, you see, ten thousand francs in good, bright coin, falling as it were from the clouds, are not to be sneezed at—so I took them—only the man made me do a bit of stiff as guarantee, or something of that kind.”
“Did you sign it?”
“Of course—what did I care about it? The man told me it was only a matter of form. He spoke the truth, for the bill fell due a fortnight ago, and I have heard nothing of it. I have still about a thousand francs in his hands, for I have taken him for my banker. And that’s the way, old pal, that I’m able to flourish and be jolly all day long, as pleased as Punch to have left my old grinder of a master, M. Tripeaud.”
As he pronounced this name, the joyous countenance of Jacques became suddenly overcast. Cephyse, no longer under the influence of the painful impression she had felt for a moment, looked uneasily at Jacques, for she knew the irritation which the name of M. Tripeaud produced within him.
“M. Tripeaud,” resumed Sleepinbuff, “is one that would make the good bad, and the bad worse. They say that a good rider makes a good horse; they ought to say that a good master makes a good workman. Zounds! when I think of that fellow!” cried Sleepinbuff, striking his hand violently on the table.
“Come, Jacques—think of something else!” said the Bacchanal Queen. “Make him laugh, Rose-Pompon.”
“I am not in a humor to laugh,” replied Jacques, abruptly, for he was getting excited from the effects of the wine; “it is more than I can bear to think of that man. It exasperates me! it drives me mad! You should have heard him saying: ‘Beggarly workmen! rascally workmen! they grumble that they have no food in their bellies; well, then, we’ll give them bayonets to stop their hunger.‘(11) And there’s the children in his factory—you should see them, poor little creatures!—working as long as the men—wasting away, and dying by the dozen—what odds? as soon as they were dead plenty of others came to take their places—not like horses, which can only be replaced with money.”
“Well, it is clear, that you do not like your old master,” said Dumoulin, more and more surprised at his Amphitryon’s gloomy and thoughtful air, and, regretting that the conversation had taken this serious turn, he whispered a few words in the ear of the Bacchanal Queen, who answered by a sign of intelligence.
“I don’t like M. Tripeaud!” exclaimed Jacques. “I hate him—and shall I tell you why? Because it is as much his fault as mine, that I have become a good-for-nothing loafer. I don’t say it to screen myself; but it is the truth. When I was ‘prenticed to him as a lad, I was all heart and ardor, and so bent upon work, that I used to take my shirt off to my task, which, by the way, was the reason that I was first called Sleepinbuff. Well! I might have toiled myself to death; not one word of encouragement did I receive. I came first to my work, and was the last to leave off; what matter? it was not even noticed. One day, I was injured by the machinery. I was taken to the hospital. When I came out, weak as I was, I went straight to my work; I was not to be frightened; the others, who knew their master well, would often say to me: ‘What a muff you must be, little one! What good will you get by working so hard?’—still I went on. But, one day, a worthy old man, called Father Arsene, who had worked in the house many years, and was a model of good conduct, was suddenly turned away, because he was getting too feeble. It was a death-blow to him; his wife was infirm, and, at his age, he could not get another place. When the foreman told him he was dismissed, he could not believe it, and he began to cry for grief. At that moment, M. Tripeaud passes; Father Arsene begs him with clasped hands to keep him at half-wages. ‘What!’ says M. Tripeaud, shrugging his shoulders; ‘do you think that I will turn my factory into a house of invalids? You are no longer able to work—so be off!’ ‘But I have worked forty years of my life; what is to become of me?’ cried poor Father Arsene. ‘That is not my business,’ answered M. Tripeaud; and, addressing his clerk, he added: ‘Pay what is due for the week, and let him cut his stick.’ Father Arsene did cut his stick; that evening, he and his old wife suffocated themselves with charcoal. Now, you see, I was then a lad; but that story of Father Arsene taught me, that, however hard you might work, it would only profit your master, who would not even thank you for it, and leave you to die on the flags in your old age. So all my fire was damped, and I said to myself: ‘What’s the use of doing more than I just need? If I gain heaps of gold for M. Tripeaud, shall I get an atom of it?’ Therefore, finding neither pride nor profit in my work, I took a disgust for it—just did barely enough to earn my wages—became an idler and a rake—and said to myself: ‘When I get too tired of labor, I can always follow the example of Father Arsene and his wife.”’
Whilst Jacques resigned himself to the current of these bitter thoughts, the other guests, incited by the expressive pantomime of Dumoulin and the Bacchanal Queen, had tacitly agreed together; and, on a signal from the Queen, who leaped upon the table, and threw down the bottles and glasses with her foot, all rose and shouted, with the accompaniment of Ninny Moulin’s rattle “The storm blown Tulip! the quadrille of the Storm-blown Tulip!”
At these joyous cries, which burst suddenly, like shell, Jacques started; then gazing with astonishment at his guests, he drew his hand across his brow, as if to chase away the painful ideas that oppressed him, and exclaimed: “You are right. Forward the first couple! Let us be merry!”
In a moment, the table, lifted by vigorous arms, was removed to the extremity of the banqueting-room; the spectators, mounted upon chairs, benches, and window-ledges, began to sing in chorus the well-known air of les Etudiants, so as to serve instead of orchestra, and accompany the quadrille formed by Sleepinbuff, the Queen, Ninny Moulin, and Rose Pompon.
Dumoulin, having entrusted his rattle to one of the guests, resumed his extravagant Roman helmet and plume; he had taken off his great-coat at the commencement of the feast, so that he now appeared in all the splendor of his costume. His cuirass of bright scales ended in a tunic of feathers, not unlike those worn by the savages, who form the oxen’s escort on Mardi Gras. Ninny Moulin had a huge paunch and thin legs, so that the latter moved about at pleasure in the gaping mouths of his large top boots.
Little Rose-Pompon, with her pinched-up cocked-hat stuck on one side, her hands in the pockets of her trousers, her bust a little inclined forward, and undulating from right to left, advanced to meet Ninny-Moulin; the latter danced, or rather leaped towards her, his left leg bent under him, his right leg stretched forward, with the toe raised, and the heel gliding on the floor; moreover, he struck his neck with his left hand, and by a simultaneous movement, stretched forth his right, as if he would have thrown dust in the eyes of his opposite partner.
This first figure met with great success, and the applause was vociferous, though it was only the innocent prelude to the step of the Storm-blown Tulip—when suddenly the door opened, and one of the waiters, after looking about for an instant, in search of Sleepinbuff, ran to him, and whispered some words in his ear.
“Me!” cried Jacques, laughing; “here’s a go!”
The waiter added a few more words, when Sleepinbuff’s face assumed an expression of uneasiness, as he answered. “Very well! I come directly,”—and he made a step towards the door.
“What’s the matter, Jacques?” asked the Bacchanal Queen, in some surprise.
“I’ll be back immediately. Some one take my place. Go on with the dance,” said Sleepinbuff, as he hastily left the room.
“Something, that was not put down in the bill,” said Dumoulin; “he will soon be back.”
“That’s it,” said Cephyse. “Now cavalier suel!” she added, as she took Jacques’s place, and the dance continued.
Ninny Moulin had just taken hold of Rose Pompon with his right hand, and of the Queen with his left, in order to advance between the two, in which figure he showed off his buffoonery to the utmost extent, when the door again opened, and the same waiter, who had called out Jacques, approached Cephyse with an air of consternation, and whispered in her ear, as he had before done to Sleepinbuff.
The Bacchanal Queen grew pale, uttered a piercing scream, and rushed out of the room without a word, leaving her guests in stupefaction.
(11) These atrocious words were actually spoken during the Lyons Riots.