Twice already, in accordance with my promise to Dalrymple, I had called upon Madame de Courcelles, and finding her out each time, had left my card, and gone away disappointed. From Dalrymple himself, although I had written to him several times, I heard seldom, and always briefly. His first notes were dated from Berlin, and those succeeding them from Vienna. He seemed restless, bitter, dissatisfied with himself, and with the world. Naturally unfit for a lounging, idle life, his active nature, now that it had to bear up against the irritation of hope deferred, chafed and fretted for work.
"My sword-arm," he wrote in one of his letters, "is weary of its holiday. There are times when I long for the smell of gunpowder, and the thunder of battle. I am sick to death of churches and picture-galleries, operas, dilettantism, white-kid-glovism, and all the hollow shows and seemings of society. Sometimes I regret having left the army--at others I rejoice; for, after all, in these piping times of peace, to be a soldier is to be a mere painted puppet--a thing of pipe-clay and gold bullion--an expensive scarecrow--an elegant Guy Fawkes--a sign, not of what is, but of what has been, and yet may be again. For my part, I care not to take the livery without the service. Pshaw! will things never mend! Are the good old times, and the good old international hatreds, gone by for ever? Shall we never again have a thorough, seasonable, wholesome, continental war? This place (Vienna) would be worth fighting for, if one had the chance. I sometimes amuse myself by planning a siege, when I ride round the fortifications, as is my custom of an afternoon."
In another, after telling me that he had been reading some books of travel in Egypt and Central America, he said:--
"Next to a military life I think that of a traveller--a genuine traveller, who turns his back upon railroads and guides--must be the most exciting and the most enviable under heaven. Since reading these books, I dream of the jungle and the desert, and fancy that a buffalo-hunt must be almost as fine sport as a charge of cavalry. Oh, what a weary exile this is! I feel as if the very air were stagnant around me, and I, like the accursed vessel that carried the ancient mariner,--
As idle as a painted ship,
Upon a painted ocean.'"
Sometimes, though rarely, he mentioned Madame de Courcelles, and then very guardedly: always as "Madame de Courcelles," and never as his wife.
"That morning," he wrote, "comes back to me with all the vagueness of a dream--you will know what morning I mean, and why it fills so shadowy a page in the book of my memory. And it might as well have been a dream, for aught of present peace or future hope that it has brought me. I often think that I was selfish when I exacted that pledge from her. I do not see of what good it can be to either her or me, or in what sense I can be said to have gained even the power to protect and serve her. Would that I were rich; or that she and I were poor together, and dwelling far away in some American wild, under the shade of primeval trees, the world forgetting; by the world forgot! I should enjoy the life of a Canadian settler--so free, so rational, so manly. How happy we might be--she with her children, her garden, her books; I with my dogs, my gun, my lands! What a curse it is, this spider's web of civilization, that hems and cramps us in on every side, and from which not all the armor of common-sense is sufficient to preserve us!"
Sometimes he broke into a strain of forced gayety, more sad, to my thinking, than the bitterest lamentations could have been.
"I wish to Heaven," he said, in one of his later letters--"I wish to Heaven I had no heart, and no brain! I wish I was, like some worthy people I know, a mere human zoophyte, consisting of nothing but a mouth and a stomach. Only conceive how it must simplify life when once one has succeeded in making a clean sweep of all those finer emotions which harass more complicated organisms! Enviable zoophytes, that live only to digest!--who would not be of the brotherhood?"
In another he wrote:--
"I seem to have lived years in the last five or six weeks, and to have grown suddenly old and cynical. Some French writer (I think it is Alphonse Karr) says, 'Nothing in life is really great and good, except what is not true. Man's greatest treasures are his illusions.' Alas! my illusions have been dropping from me in showers of late, like withered leaves in Autumn. The tree will be bare as a gallows ere long, if these rough winds keep on blowing. If only things would amuse me as of old! If there was still excitement in play, and forgetfulness in wine, and novelty in travel! But there is none--and all things alike are 'flat, stale, and unprofitable,' The truth is, Damon, I want but one thing--and wanting that, lack all."
Here is one more extract, and it shall be the last:--
"You ask me how I pass my days--in truth, wearily enough. I rise with the dawn, but that is not very early in September; and I ride for a couple of hours before breakfast. After breakfast I play billiards in some public room, consume endless pipes, read the papers, and so on. Later in the day I scowl through a picture-gallery, or a string of studios; or take a pull up the river; or start off upon a long, solitary objectless walk through miles and miles of forest. Then comes dinner--the inevitable, insufferable, interminable German table-d'hôte dinner--and then there is the evening to be got through somehow! Now and then I drop in at a theatre, but generally take refuge in some plebeian Lust Garten or Beer Hall, where amid clouds of tobacco-smoke, one may listen to the best part-singing and zitter-playing in Europe. And so my days drag by--who but myself knows how slowly? Truly, Damon, there comes to every one of us, sooner or later, a time when we say of life as Christopher Sly said of the comedy--''Tis an excellent piece of work. Would 'twere done!'"
It was after receiving the last of these letters that I hazarded a third visit to Madame de Courcelles. This time, I ventured to present myself at her door about midday, and was at once ushered upstairs into a drawing-room looking out on the Rue Castellane.
Seeing her open work-table, with the empty chair and footstool beside it, I thought at the first glance that I was alone in the room, when a muttered "Sacr-r-r-re! Down, Bijou!" made me aware of a gentleman extended at full length upon a sofa near the fireplace, and of a vicious-looking Spitz crouched beneath it.
The gentleman lifted his head from the sofa-cusion; stared at me; bowed carelessly; got upon his feet; and seizing the poker, lunged savagely at the fire, as if he had a spite against it, and would have put it out, if he could. This done, he yawned aloud, flung himself into the nearest easy-chair, and rang the bell.
"More coals, Henri," he said, imperiously; "and--stop! a bottle of Seltzer-water."
The servant hesitated.
"I don't think, Monsieur le Vicomte," he said, "that Madame has any Seltzer-water in the house; but ..."
"Confound you!--you never have anything in the house at the moment one wants it," interrupted the gentleman, irritably.
"I can send for some, if Monsieur le Vicomte desires it."
"Send for it, then; and remember, when I next ask for it, let there be some at hand."
"Yes, Monsieur le Vicomte."
"And--Henri!"
"Yes, Monsieur le Vicomte."
"Bid them be quick. I hate to be kept waiting!"
The servant murmured his usual "Yes, Monsieur le Vicomte," and disappeared; but with a look of such subdued dislike and impatience in his face, as would scarcely have flattered Monsieur le Vicomte had he chanced to surprise it.
In the meantime the dog had never ceased growling; whilst I, in default of something better to do, turned over the leaves of an album, and took advantage of a neighboring mirror to scrutinize the outward appearance of this authoritative occupant of Madame de Courcelles' drawing-room.
He was a small, pallid, slender man of about thirty-five or seven years of age, with delicate, effeminate features, and hair thickly sprinkled with gray. His fingers, white and taper as a woman's, were covered with rings. His dress was careless, but that of a gentleman. Glancing at him even thus furtively, I could not help observing the worn lines about his temples, the mingled languor and irritability of his every gesture; the restless suspicion of his eye; the hard curves about his handsome mouth.
"Mille tonnerres!" said he, between his teeth "come out, Bijou--come out, I say!"
The dog came out unwillingly, and changed the growl to a little whine of apprehension. His master immediately dealt him a smart kick that sent him crouching to the farther corner of the room, where he hid himself under a chair.
"I'll teach you to make that noise," muttered he, as he drew his chair closer to the fire, and bent over it, shiveringly. "A yelping brute, that would be all the better for hanging."
Having sat thus for a few moments, he seemed to grow restless again, and, pushing back his chair, rose, looked out of the window, took a turn or two across the room, and paused at length to take a book from one of the side-tables. As he did this, our eyes met in the looking-glass; whereupon he turned hastily back to the window, and stood there whistling till it occurred to him to ring the bell again.
"Monsieur rang?" said the footman, once more making his appearance at the door.
"Mort de ma vie! yes. The Seltzer-water."
"I have sent for it, Monsieur le Vicomte."
"And it is not yet come?"
"Not yet, Monsieur le Vicomte."
He muttered something to himself, and dropped back into the chair before the fire.
"Does Madame de Courcelles know that I am here?" he asked, as the servant, after lingering a moment, was about to leave the room.
"I delivered Monsieur le Vicomte's message, and brought back Madame's reply," said the man, "half an hour ago."
"True--I had forgotten it. You may go."
The footman closed the door noiselessly, and had no sooner done so than he was recalled by another impatient peal.
"Here, Henri--have you told Madame de Courcelles that this gentleman is also waiting to see her?"
"Yes, Monsieur le Vicomte."
"Eh bien?"
"And Madame said she should be down in a few moments."
"Sacredie! go back, then, and inquire if...."
"Madame is here."
As the footman moved back respectfully, Madame de Courcelles came into the room. She was looking perhaps somewhat paler, but, to my thinking, more charming than ever. Her dark hair was gathered closely round her head in massive braids, displaying to their utmost advantage all the delicate curves of her throat and chin; while her rich morning dress, made of some dark material, and fastened at the throat by a round brooch of dead gold, fell in loose and ample folds, like the drapery of a Roman matron. Coming at once to meet me, she extended a cordial hand, and said:--
"I had begun to despair of ever seeing you again. Why have you always come when I was out?"
"Madame," I said, bending low over the slender fingers, that seemed to linger kindly in my own, "I have been undeservedly unfortunate."
"Remember for the future," she said, "that I am always at home till midday, and after five."
Then, turning to her other visitor, she said:--
"Mon cousin, allow me to present my friend. Monsieur Arbuthnot--Monsieur le Vicomte Adrien de Caylus."
I had suspected as much already. Who but he would have dared to assume these airs of insolence? Who but her suitor and my friend's rival? I had disliked him at first sight, and now I detested him. Whether it was that my aversion showed itself in my face, or that Madame de Courcelles's cordial welcome of myself annoyed him, I know not; but his bow was even cooler than my own.
"I have been waiting to see you, Helène," said he, looking at his watch, "for nearly three-quarters of an hour."
"I sent you word, mon cousin, that I was finishing a letter for the foreign post," said Madame de Courcelles, coldly, "and that I could not come sooner."
Monsieur de Caylus bit his lip and cast an impatient glance in my direction.
"Can you spare me a few moments alone, Helène?" he said.
"Alone, mon cousin?"
"Yes, upon a matter of business."
Madame de Courcelles sighed.
"If Monsieur Arbuthnot will be so indulgent as to excuse me for five minutes," she replied. "This way, mon cousin."
So saying, she lifted a dark green curtain, beneath which they passed to a farther room out of sight and hearing.
They remained a long time away. So long, that I grew weary of waiting, and, having turned over all the illustrated books upon the table, and examined every painting on the walls, turned to the window, as the idler's last resource, and watched the passers-by.
What endless entertainment in the life-tide of a Paris street, even though but a branch from one of the greater arteries! What color--what character--what animation--what variety! Every third or fourth man is a blue-bloused artisan; every tenth, a soldier in a showy uniform. Then comes the grisette in her white cap; and the lemonade-vender with his fantastic pagoda, slung like a peep-show across his shoulders; and the peasant woman from Normandy, with her high-crowned head-dress; and the abbé, all in black, with his shovel-hat pulled low over his eyes; and the mountebank selling pencils and lucifer-matches to the music of a hurdy-gurdy; and the gendarme, who is the terror of street urchins; and the gamin, who is the torment of the gendarme; and the water-carrier, with his cart and his cracked bugle; and the elegant ladies and gentlemen, who look in at shop windows and hire seats at two sous each in the Champs Elysées; and, of course, the English tourist reading "Galignani's Guide" as he goes along. Then, perhaps, a regiment marches past with colors flying and trumpets braying; or a fantastic-looking funeral goes by, with a hearse like a four-post bed hung with black velvet and silver; or the peripatetic showman with his company of white rats establishes himself on the pavement opposite, till admonished to move on by the sergent de ville. What an ever-shifting panorama! What a kaleidoscope of color and character! What a study for the humorist, the painter, the poet!
Thinking thus, and watching the overflowing current as it hurried on below, I became aware of a smart cab drawn by a showy chestnut, which dashed round the corner of the street and came down the Rue Castellane at a pace that caused every head to turn as it went by. Almost before I had time to do more than observe that it was driven by a moustachioed and lavender-kidded gentleman, it drew up before the house, and a trim tiger jumped down, and thundered at the door. At that moment, the gentleman, taking advantage of the pause to light a cigar, looked up, and I recognised the black moustache and sinister countenance of Monsieur de Simoncourt.
"A gentleman for Monsieur le Vicomte," said the servant, drawing back the green curtain and opening a vista into the room beyond.
"Ask him to come upstairs," said the voice of De Caylus from within.
"I have done so, Monsieur; but he prefers to wait in the cabriolet."
"Pshaw!--confound it!--say that I'm coming."
The servant withdrew.
I then heard the words "perfectly safe investment--present convenience--unexpected demand," rapidly uttered by Monsieur de Caylus; and then they both came back; he looked flushed and angry--she calm as ever.
"Then I shall call on you again to-morrow, Helène," said he, plucking nervously at his glove. "You will have had time to reflect. You will see matters differently."
Madame Courcelles shook her head.
"Reflection will not change my opinion," she said gently.
"Well, shall I send Lejeune to you? He acts as solicitor to the company, and ..."
"Mon cousin" interposed the lady, "I have already given you my decision--why pursue the question further? I do not wish to see Monsieur Lejeune, and I have no speculative tastes whatever."
Monsieur de Caylus, with a suppressed exclamation that sounded like a curse, rent his glove right in two, and then, as if annoyed at the self-betrayal, crushed up the fragments in his hand, and laughed uneasily.
"All women are alike," he said, with an impatient shrug. "They know nothing of the world, and place no faith in those who are competent to advise them. I had given you credit, my charming cousin, for broader views."
Madame de Courcelles smiled without replying, and caressed the little dog, which had come out from under the sofa to fondle round her.
"Poor Bijou!" said she. "Pretty Bijou! Do you take good care of him, mon cousin?"
"Upon my soul, not I," returned De Caylus, carelessly. "Lecroix feeds him, I believe, and superintends his general education."
"Who is Lecroix?"
"My valet, courier, body-guard, letter-carrier, and general factotum. A useful vagabond, without whom I should scarcely know my right hand from my left!"
"Poor Bijou! I fear, then, your chance of being remembered is small indeed!" said Madame de Courcelles, compassionately.
But Monsieur le Vicomte only whistled to the dog; bowed haughtily to me; kissed, with an air of easy familiarity, before which she evidently recoiled, first the hand and then the cheek of his beautiful cousin, and so left the room. The next moment I saw him spring into the cabriolet, take his place beside Monsieur de Simoncourt, and drive away, with Bijou following at a pace that might almost have tried a greyhound.
"My cousin, De Caylus, has lately returned from Algiers on leave of absence," said Madame de Courcelles, after a few moments of awkward silence, during which I had not known what to say. "You have heard of him, perhaps?"
"Yes, Madame, I have heard of Monsieur de Caylus."
"From Captain Dalrymple?
"From Captain Dalrymple, Madame; and in society."
"He is a brave officer," she said, hesitatingly, "and has greatly distinguished himself in this last campaign."
"So I have heard, Madame."
She looked at me, as if she would fain read how much or how little Dalrymple had told me.
"You are Captain Dalrymple's friend, Mr. Arbuthnot," she said, presently, "and I know you have his confidence. You are probably aware that my present position with regard to Monsieur de Caylus is not only very painful, but also very difficult."
"Madame, I know it."
"But it is a position of which I have the command, and which no one understands so well as myself. To attempt to help me, would be to add to my embarrassments. For this reason it is well that Captain Dalrymple is not here. His presence just now in Paris could do no good--on the contrary, would be certain to do harm. Do you follow my meaning, Monsieur Arbuthnot?"
"I understand what you say, Madame; but...."
"But you do not quite understand why I say it? Eh bien, Monsieur, when you write to Captain Dalrymple.... for you write sometimes, do you not?"
"Often, Madame."
"Then, when you write, say nothing that may add to his anxieties. If you have reason at any time to suppose that I am importuned to do this or that; that I am annoyed; that I have my own battle to fight--still, for his sake as well as for mine, be silent. It is my own battle, and I know how to fight it."
"Alas! Madame...."
She smiled sadly.
"Nay," she said, "I have more courage than you would suppose; more courage and more will. I am fully capable of bearing my own burdens; and Captain Dalrymple has already enough of his own. Now tell me something of yourself. You are here, I think, to study medicine. Are you greatly devoted to your work? Have you many friends?"
"I study, Madame--not always very regularly; and I have one friend."
"An Englishman?"
"No, Madame--a German."
"A fellow-student, I presume."
"No, Madame--an artist."
"And you are very happy here?"
"I have occupations and amusements; therefore, if to be neither idle nor dull is to be happy. I suppose I am happy."
"Nay," she said quickly, "be sure of it. Do not doubt it. Who asks more from Fate courts his own destruction."
"But it would be difficult, Madame, to go through life without desiring something better, something higher--without ambition, for instance--without love."
"Ambition and love!" she repeated, smiling sadly. "There speaks the man. Ambition first--the aim and end of life; love next--the pleasant adjunct to success! Ah, beware of both."
"But without either, life would be a desert."
"Life is a desert," she replied, bitterly. "Ambition is its mirage, ever beckoning, ever receding--love its Dead Sea fruit, fair without and dust within. You look surprised. You did not expect such gloomy theories from me--yet I am no cynic. I have lived; I have suffered; I am a woman--voilà tout. When you are a few years older, and have trodden some of the flinty ways of life, you will see the world as I see it."
"It may be so, Madame; but if life is indeed a desert, it is, at all events, some satisfaction to know that the dwellers in tents become enamored of their lot, and, content with what the desert has to give, desire no other. It is only the neophyte who rides after the mirage and thirsts for the Dead Sea apple."
She smiled again.
"Ah!" she said, "the gifts of the desert are two-fold, and what one gets depends on what one seeks. For some the wilderness has gifts of resignation, meditation, peace; for others it has the horse, the tent, the pipe, the gun, the chase of the panther and antelope. But to go back to yourself. Life, you say, would be barren without ambition and love. What is your ambition?"
"Nay, Madame, that is more than I can tell you--more than I know myself."
"Your profession...."
"If ever I dream dreams, Madame," I interrupted quickly, "my profession has no share in them. It is a profession I do not love, and which I hope some day to abandon."
"Your dreams, then?"
I shook my head.
"Vague--unsubstantial--illusory--forgotten as soon as dreamt! How can I analyze them? How can I describe them? In childhood one says--'I should like to be a soldier, and conquer the world;' or 'I should like to be a sailor, and discover new Continents;' or 'I should like to be a poet, and wear a laurel wreath, like Petrarch and Dante;' but as one gets older and wiser (conscious, perhaps, of certain latent energies, and weary of certain present difficulties and restraints), one can only wait, as best one may, and watch for the rising of that tide whose flood leads on to fortune."
With this I rose to take my leave. Madame de Courcelles smiled and put out her hand.
"Come often," she said; "and come at the hours when I am at home. I shall always be glad to see you. Above all, remember my caution--not a word to Captain Dalrymple, either now or at any other time."
"Madame, you may rely upon me. One thing I ask, however, as the reward of my discretion."
"And that one thing?"
"Permission, Madame, to serve you in any capacity, however humble--in any strait where a brother might interfere, or a faithful retainer lay down his life in your service."
With a sweet earnestness that made my heart beat and my cheeks glow, she thanked and promised me.
"I shall look upon you henceforth," she said, "as my knight sans peur et sans reproche."
Heaven knows that not all the lessons of all the moralists that ever wrote or preached since the world began, could just then have done me half such good service as did those simple words. They came at the moment when I most needed them--when I had almost lost my taste for society, and was sliding day by day into habits of more confirmed idleness and Bohemianism. They roused me. They made a man of me. They recalled me to higher aims, "purer manners, nobler laws." They clothed me, so to speak, in the toga virilis of a generous devotion. They made me long to prove myself "sans peur," to merit the "sans reproche." They marked an era in my life never to be forgotten or effaced.
Let it not be thought for one moment that I loved her--or fancied I loved her. No, not so far as one heart-beat would carry me; but I was proud to possess her confidence and her friendship. Was she not Dalrymple's wife, and had not he asked me to watch over and protect her? Nay, had she not called me her knight and accepted my fealty?
Nothing perhaps, is so invaluable to a young man on entering life as the friendship of a pure-minded and highly-cultivated woman who, removed too far above him to be regarded with passion, is yet beautiful enough to engage his admiration; whose good opinion becomes the measure of his own self-respect; and whose confidence is a sacred trust only to be parted from with loss of life or honor.
Such an influence upon myself at this time was the friendship of Madame de Courcelles. I went out from her presence that morning morally stronger than before, and at each repetition of my visit I found her influence strengthen and increase. Sometimes I met Monsieur de Caylus, on which occasions my stay was ever of the briefest; but I most frequently found her alone, and then our talk was of books, of art, of culture, of all those high and stirring things that alike move the sympathies of the educated woman and rouse the enthusiasm of the young man. She became interested in me; at first for Dalrymple's sake, and by-and-by, however little I deserved it, for my own--and she showed that interest in many ways inexpressibly valuable to me then and thenceforth. She took pains to educate my taste; opened to me hitherto unknown avenues of study; led me to explore "fresh fields and pastures new," to which, but for her help, I might not have found my way for many a year to come. My reading, till now, had been almost wholly English or classical; she sent me to the old French literature--to the Chansons de Geste; to the metrical romances of the Trouvères; to the Chronicles of Froissart, Monstrelet, and Philip de Comines, and to the poets and dramatists that immediately succeeded them.
These books opened a new world to me; and, having daily access to two fine public libraries, I plunged at once into a course of new and delightful reading, ranging over all that fertile tract of song and history that begins far away in the morning land of mediæval romance, and leads on, century after century, to the new era that began with the Revolution.
With what avidity I devoured those picturesque old chronicles--those autobiographies--those poems, and satires, and plays that I now read for the first time! What evenings I spent with St. Simon, and De Thou, and Charlotte de Bavière! How I relished Voltaire! How I laughed over Molière! How I revelled in Montaigne! Most of all, however, I loved the quaint lore of the earlier literature:--
"Old legends of the monkish page,
Traditions of the saint and sage,
Tales that have the rime of age,
And Chronicles of Eld."
Nor was this all. I had hitherto loved art as a child or a savage might love it, ignorantly, half-blindly, without any knowledge of its principles, its purposes, or its history. But Madame de Courcelles put into my hands certain books that opened my eyes to a thousand wonders unseen before. The works of Vasari, Nibby, Winkelman and Lessing, the aesthetic writings of Goethe and the Schlegels, awakened in me, one after the other, fresher and deeper revelations of beauty.
I wandered through the galleries of the Louvre like one newly gifted with sight. I haunted the Venus of Milo and the Diane Chasseresse like another Pygmalion. The more I admired, the more I found to admire. The more I comprehended, the more I found there remained for me to comprehend. I recognised in art the Sphinx whose enigma is never solved. I learned, for the first time, that poetry may be committed to imperishable marble, and steeped in unfading colors. By degrees, as I followed in the footsteps of great thinkers, my insight became keener and my perceptions more refined. The symbolism of art evolved itself, as it were, from below the surface; and instead of beholding in paintings and statues mere studies of outward beauty, I came to know them as exponents of thought--as efforts after ideal truth--as aspirations which, because of their divineness, can never be wholly expressed; but whose suggestiveness is more eloquent than all the eloquence of words.
Thus a great change came upon my life--imperceptibly at first, and by gradual degrees; but deeply and surely. To apply myself to the study of medicine became daily more difficult and more distasteful to me. The boisterous pleasures of the Quartier Latin lost their charm for me. Day by day I gave myself up more and more passionately to the cultivation of my taste for poetry and art. I filled my little sitting-room with casts after the antique. I bought some good engravings for my walls, and hung up a copy of the Madonna di San Sisto above the table at which I wrote and read. All day long, wherever I might be--at the hospital, in the lecture-room, in the laboratory--I kept looking longingly forward to the quiet evening by-and-by when, with shaded lamp and curtained window, I should again take up the studies of the night before.
Thus new aims opened out before me, and my thoughts flowed into channels ever wider and deeper. Already the first effervescence of youth seemed to have died off the surface of my life, as the "beaded bubbles" die off the surface of champagne. I had tried society, and wearied of it. I had tried Bohemia, and found it almost as empty as the Chaussée d'Autin. And now that life which from boyhood I had ever looked upon as the happiest on earth, the life of the student, was mine. Could I have devoted it wholly and undividedly to those pursuits which were fast becoming to me as the life of my life, I would not have exchanged my lot for all the wealth of the Rothschilds. Somewhat indolent, perhaps, by nature, indifferent to achieve, ambitious only to acquire, I asked nothing better than a life given up to the worship of all that is beautiful in art, to the acquisition of knowledge, and to the development of taste. Would the time ever come when I might realize my dream? Ah! who could tell? In the meanwhile ... well, in the meanwhile, here was Paris--here were books, museums, galleries, schools, golden opportunities which, once past, might never come again. So I reasoned; so time went on; so I lived, plodding on by day in the École de Médecine, but, when evening came, resuming my studies at the leaf turned down the night before, and, like the visionary in "The Pilgrims of the Rhine," taking up my dream-life at the point where I had been last awakened.
To the man who lives alone and walks about with his eyes open, the mere bricks and mortar of a great city are instinct with character. Buildings become to him like living creatures. The streets tell him tales. For him, the house-fronts are written over with hieroglyphics which, to the passing crowd, are either unseen or without meaning. Fallen grandeur, pretentious gentility, decent poverty, the infamy that wears a brazen front, and the crime that burrows in darkness--he knows them all at a glance. The patched window, the dingy blind, the shattered doorstep, the pot of mignonette on the garret ledge, are to him as significant as the lines and wrinkles on a human face. He grows to like some houses and to dislike others, almost without knowing why--just as one grows to like or dislike certain faces in the parks and clubs. I remember now, as well as if it were yesterday, how, during the first weeks of my life in Paris, I fell in love at first sight with a wee maisonnette at the corner of a certain street overlooking the Luxembourg gardens--a tiny little house, with soft-looking blue silk window-curtains, and cream-colored jalousies, and boxes of red and white geraniums at all the windows. I never knew who lived in that sunny little nest; I never saw a face at any of those windows; yet I used to go out of my way in the summer evenings to look at it, as one might go to look at a beautiful woman behind a stall in the market-place, or at a Madonna in a shop-window.
At the time about which I write, there was probably no city in Europe of which the street-scenery was so interesting as that of Paris. I have already described the Quartier Latin, joyous, fantastic, out-at-elbows; a world in itself and by itself; unlike anything else in Paris or elsewhere. But there were other districts in the great city--now swept away and forgotten--as characteristic in their way as the Quartier Latin. There was the He de Saint Louis, for instance--a Campo Santo of decayed nobility--lonely, silent, fallen upon evil days, and haunted here and there by ghosts of departed Marquises and Abbés of the vieille école. There was the debateable land to the rear of the Invalides and the Champ de Mars. There was the Faubourg St. Germain, fast falling into the sere and yellow leaf, and going the way of the Ile de Saint Louis. There was the neighborhood of the Boulevart d'Aulnay, and the Rue de la Roquette, ghastly with the trades of death; a whole Quartier of monumental sculptors, makers of iron crosses, weavers of funereal chaplets, and wholesale coffin-factors. And beside and apart from all this, there were (as in all great cities) districts of evil report and obscure topography--lost islets of crime, round which flowed and circled the daily tide of Paris life; flowed and circled, yet never penetrated. A dark arch here and there--the mouth of a foul alley--a riverside vista of gloom and squalor, marked the entrance to these Alsatias. Such an Alsatia was the Rue Pierre Lescot, the Rue Sans Nom, and many more than I can now remember--streets into which no sane man would venture after nightfall without the escort of the police.
Into the border land of such a neighborhood--a certain congeries of obscure and labyrinthine streets to the rear of the old Halles--I accompanied Franz Müller one wintry afternoon, about an hour before sunset, and perhaps some ten days after our evening in the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis. We were bound on an expedition of discovery, and the object of our journey was to find the habitat of Guichet the model.
"I am determined to get to the bottom of this Lenoir business," said Müller, doggedly; "and if the police won't help me, I must help myself."
"You have no case for the police," I replied.
"So says the chef de bureau; but I am of the opposite opinion. However, I shall make my case out clearly enough before long. This Guichet can help me, if he will. He knows Lenoir, and he knows something against him; that is clear. You saw how cautious he was the other day. The difficulty will be to make him speak."
"I doubt if you will succeed."
"I don't, mon cher. But we shall see. Then, again, I have another line of evidence open to me. You remember that orange-colored rosette in the fellow's button-hole?"
"Certainly I do."
"Well, now, I happen, by the merest chance, to know what that rosette means. It is the ribbon of the third order of the Golden Palm of Mozambique--a Portuguese decoration. They give it to diplomatic officials, eminent civilians, distinguished foreigners, and the like. I know a fellow who has it, and who belongs to the Portuguese Legation here. Eh bien! I went to him the other day, and asked him about our said friend--how he came by it, who he is, where he comes from, and so forth. My Portuguese repeats the name--elevates his eyebrows--in short, has never heard of such a person. Then he pulls down a big book from a shelf in the secretary's room--turns to a page headed 'Golden Palm of Mozambique'--runs his finger along the list of names--shakes his head, and informs me that no Lenoir is, or ever has been, received into the order. What do you say to that, now?"
"It is just what I should have expected; but still it is not a ease for the police. It concerns the Portuguese minister; and the Portuguese minister is by no means likely to take any trouble about the matter. But why waste all this time and care? If I were you, I would let the thing drop. It is not worth the cost."
Müller looked grave.
"I would drop it this moment," he said, "if--if it were not for the girl."
"Who is still less worth the cost,"
"I know it," he replied, impatiently. "She has a pretty, sentimental Madonna face; a sweet voice; a gentle manner--et voilà tout. I'm not the least bit in love with her now. I might have been. I might have committed some great folly for her sake; but that danger is past, Dieu merci! I couldn't love a girl I couldn't trust, and that girl is a flirt. A flirt of the worst sort, too--demure, serious, conventional. No, no; my fancy for the fair Marie has evaporated; but, for all that, I don't relish the thought of what her fate might be if linked for life to an unscrupulous scoundrel like Lenoir. I must do what I can, my dear fellow--I must do what I can."
We had by this time rounded the Halles, and were threading our way through one gloomy by-street after another. The air was chill, the sky low and rainy; and already the yellow glow of an oil-lamp might be seen gleaming through the inner darkness of some of the smaller shops. Meanwhile, the dusk seemed to gather at our heels, and to thicken at every step.
"You are sure you know your way?" I asked presently, seeing Müller look up at the name at the corner of the street.
"Why, yes; I think I do," he answered, doubtfully.
"Why not inquire of that man just ahead?" I suggested.
He was a square-built, burly, shabby-looking fellow, and was striding along so fast that we had to quicken our pace in order to come up with him. All at once Müller fell back, laid his hand on my arm, and said:--
"Stop! It is Guichet himself. Let him go on, and we'll follow."
So we dropped into the rear and followed him. He turned presently to the right, and preceded us down a long and horribly ill-favored street, full of mean cabarets and lodging-houses of the poorest class, where, painted in red letters on broken lamps above the doors, or printed on cards wafered against the window-panes, one saw at almost every other house, the words, "Ici on loge la nuit." At the end of this thoroughfare our unconscious guide plunged into a still darker and fouler impasse, hung across from side to side with rows of dingy linen, and ornamented in the centre with a mound of decaying cabbage-leaves, potato-parings, oyster-shells, and the like. Here he made for a large tumble-down house that closed the alley at the farther end, and, still followed by ourselves, went in at an open doorway, and up a public staircase dimly lighted by a flickering oil-lamp at every landing. At his own door he paused, and just as he had turned the key, Müller accosted him.
"Is that you, Guichet?" he said. "Why, you are the very man I want! If I had come ten minutes sooner, I should have missed you."
"Is it M'sieur Müller?" said Guichet, bending his heavy brows and staring at us in the gloom of the landing.
"Ay, and with me the friend you saw the other day. So, this is your den? May we come in?"
He had been standing till now with his hand on the key and the closed door at his back, evidently not intending to admit us; but thus asked, he pushed the door open, and said, somewhat ungraciously:--
"It is just that, M'sieur Müller--a den; not fit for gentlemen like you. But you can go in, if you please."
We did not wait for a second invitation, but went in immediately. It was a long, low, dark room, with a pale gleam of fading daylight struggling in through a tiny window at the farther end. We could see nothing at first but this gleam; and it was not till Guichet had raked out the wood ashes on the hearth, and blown them into a red glow with his breath, that we could distinguish the form or position of anything in the room. Then, by the flicker of the fire, we saw a low truckle-bed close under the window; a kind of bruised and battered seaman's chest in the middle of the room; a heap of firewood in one corner; a pile of old packing-cases; old sail-cloth, old iron, and all kinds of rubbish in another; a few pots and pans over the fire-place; and a dilapidated stool or two standing about the room. Avoiding these latter, we set ourselves down upon the edge of the chest; while Guichet, having by this time lit a piece of candle-end in a tin sconce against the wall, stood before us with folded arms, and stared at us in silence.
"I want to know, Guichet, if you can give me some sittings," said Müller, by way of opening the conversation.
"Depends on when, M'sieur Müller," growled the model.
"Well--next week, for the whole week."
Guichet shook his head. He was engaged to Monsieur Flandrin là bas, for the next month, from twelve to three daily, and had only his mornings and evenings to dispose of; in proof of which he pulled out a greasy note-book and showed where the agreement was formally entered. Müller made a grimace of disappointment.
"That man's head takes a deal of cutting off, mon ami," he said. "Aren't you tired of playing executioner so long?"
"Not I, M'sieur! It's all the same to me--executioner or victim, saint or devil."
Müller, laughing, offered him a cigar.
"You've posed for some queer characters in your time, Guichet," said he.
"Parbleu, M'sieur!"
"But you've not been a model all your life?"
"Perhaps not, M'sieur."
"You've been a sailor once upon a time, haven't you?"
The model looked up quickly.
"How did you know that?" he said, frowning.
"By a number of little things--by this, for instance," replied Müller, kicking his heels against the sea-chest; "by certain words you make use of now and then; by the way you walk; by the way you tie your cravat. Que diable! you look at me as if you took me for a sorcerer!"
The model shook his head.
"I don't understand it," he said, slowly.
"Nay, I could tell you more than that if I liked," said Müller, with an air of mystery.
"About myself?"
"Ay, about yourself, and others."
Guichet, having just lighted his cigar, forgot to put it to his lips.
"What others?" he asked, with a look half of dull bewilderment and half of apprehension.
Müller shrugged his shoulders.
"Pshaw!" said he; "I know more than you think I know, Guichet. There's our friend, you know--he of whom I made the head t'other day ... you remember?"
The model, still looking at him, made no answer.
"Why didn't you say at once where you had met him, and all the rest of it, mon vieux? You might have been sure I should find out for myself, sooner or later."
The model turned abruptly towards the fire-place, and, leaning his head against the mantel-shelf, stood with his back towards us, looking down into the fire.
"You ask me why I did not tell you at once?" he said, very slowly.
"Ay--why not?"
"Why not? Because--because when a man has begun to lead an honest life, and has gone on leading an honest life, as I have, for years, he is glad to put the past behind him--to forget it, and all belonging to it. How was I to guess you knew anything about--about that place là bas?"
"And why should I not know about it?" replied Müller, flashing a rapid glance at me.
Guichet was silent.
"What if I tell you that I am particularly interested in--that place là bas?"
"Well, that may be. People used to come sometimes, I remember--artists and writers, and so on."
"Naturally."
"But I don't remember to have ever seen you, M'sieur Müller."
"You did not observe me, mon cher--or it may have been before, or after your time."
"Yes, that's true," replied Guichet, ponderingly. "How long ago was it, M'sieur Müller?"
Müller glanced at me again. His game, hitherto so easy, was beginning to grow difficult.
"Eh, mon Dieu!" he said, indifferently, "how can I tell? I have knocked about too much, now here, now there, in the course of my life, to remember in what particular year this or that event may have happened. I am not good at dates, and never was."
"But you remember seeing me there?"
"Have I not said so?"
Guichet took a couple of turns about the room. He looked flushed and embarrassed.
"There is one thing I should like to know," he said, abruptly. "Where was I? What was I doing when you saw me?"
Müller was at fault now, for the first time.
"Where were you?" he repeated. "Why, there--where we said just now. Là bas."
"No, no--that's not what I mean. Was I .... was I in the uniform of the Garde Chiourme?"
The color rushed into Müller's face as, flashing a glance of exultation at me, he replied:--
"Assuredly, mon ami. In that, and no other."
The model drew a deep breath.
"And Bras de Fer?" he said. "Was he working in the quarries ?"
"Bras de Fer! Was that the name he went by in those days?"
"Ay--Bras de Fer--alias Coupe-gorge--alias Triphot--alias Lenoir--alias a hundred other names. Bras de Fer was the one he went by at Toulon--and a real devil he was in the Bagnes! He escaped three times, and was twice caught and brought back again. The third time he killed one sentry, injured another for life, and got clear off. That was five years ago, and I left soon after. I suppose, if you saw him in Paris the other day, he has kept clear of Toulon ever since."
"But was he in for life?" said Müller, eagerly.
"Travaux forcés à perpétuité," replied Guichet, touching his own shoulder significantly with the thumb of his right hand.
Müller sprang to his feet.
"Enough," he said. "That is all I wanted to know. Guichet, mon cher, I am your debtor for life. We will talk about the sittings when you have more time to dispose of. Adieu."
"But, M'sieur Müller, you won't get me into trouble!" exclaimed the model, eagerly. "You won't make any use of my words?"
"Why, supposing I went direct to the Préfecture, what trouble could I possibly get you into, mon ami?" replied Müller.
The model looked down in silence.
"You are a brave man. You do not fear the vengeance of Bras de Fer, or his friends?"
"No, M'sieur---it's not that."
"What is it, then?"
"M'sieur...."
"Pshaw, man! Speak up."
"It is not that you would get me personally into trouble, M'sieur Müller," said Guichet, slowly. "I am no coward, I hope--a coward would make a bad Garde Chiourme at Toulon, I fancy. And I'm not an escaped forçat. But--but, you see, I've worked my way into a connection here in Paris, and I've made myself a good name among the artists, and ... and I hold to that good name above everything in the world."
"Naturally--rightly. But what has that to do with Lenoir?"
"Ah, M'sieur Müller, if you knew more about me, you would not need telling how much it has to do with him! I was not always a Garde Chiourme at Toulon. I was promoted to it after a time, for good conduct, you know, and that sort of thing. But--but I began differently--I began by wearing the prison dress, and working in the quarries."
"My good fellow," said Müller, gently, "I half suspected this--I am not surprised; and I respect you for having redeemed that past in the way you have redeemed it."
"Thank you, M'sieur Müller; but you see, redeemed or unredeemed, I'd rather be lying at the bottom of the Seine than have it rise up against me now,"
"We are men of honor," said Müller, "and your secret is safe with us."
"Not if you go to the Préfecture and inform against Bras de Fer on my words," exclaimed the model, eagerly. "How can I appear against him--Guichet the model--Guichet the Garde Chiourme--Guichet the forçat? M'sieur Müller, I could never hold my head up again. It would be the ruin of me."
"You shall not appear against him, and it shall not be the ruin of you. Guichet," said Müller. "That I promise you. Only assure me that what you have said is strictly correct--that Bras de Fer and Lenoir are one and the same person--an escaped forçat, condemned for life to the galleys."
"That's as true, M'sieur Müller, as that God is in heaven," said the model, emphatically.
"Then I can prove it without your testimony--I can prove it by simply summoning any of the Toulon authorities to identify him."
"Or by stripping his shirt off his back, and showing the brand on his left shoulder," said Guichet. "There you'll find it, T.F. as large as life--and if it don't show at first, just you hit him a sharp blow with the flat of your hand, M'sieur Müller, and it will start out as red and fresh as if it had been done only six months ago. Parbleu! I remember the day he came in, and the look in his face when the hot iron hissed into his flesh! They roar like bulls, for the most part; but he never flinched or spoke. He just turned a shade paler under the tan, and that was all."
"Do you remember what his crime was?" asked Müller
Guichet shook his head.
"Not distinctly," he said. "I only know that he was in for a good deal, and had a lot of things proved against him on his trial. But you can find all that out for yourself, easily enough. He was tried in Paris, about fourteen years ago, and it's all in print, if you only know where to look for it."
"Then I'll find it, if I have to wade through half the Bibliothèque Nationale!" said Müller. "Adieu, Guichet--you have done me a great service, and you may be sure I will do nothing to betray you. Let us shake hands upon it."
The color rushed into the model's swarthy cheeks.
"Comment, M'sieur Müller!" he said, hesitatingly. "You offer to shake hands with me--after what I have told you?"
"Ten times more willing than before, mon ami," said Müller. "Did I not tell you just now that I respected you for having redeemed that past, and shall I not give my hand where I give my respect?"
The model grasped his outstretched hand with a vehemence that made Müller wince again.
"Thank you," he said, in a low, deep voice. "Thank you. Death of my life! M'sieur Müller, I'd go to the galleys again for you, after this--if you asked me."
"Agreed. Only when I do ask you, it shall be to pay a visit of ceremony to Monsieur Bras de Fer, when he is safely lodged again at Toulon with a chain round his leg, and a cannon-ball at the end of it."
And with this Müller turned away laughingly, and I followed him down the dimly-lighted stairs.
"By Jove!" he said, "what a grip the fellow gave me! I'd as soon shake hands with the Commendatore in Don Giovanni."