Müller, when he so confidently proposed to visit Bras de Fer in his future retirement at Toulon, believed that he had only to lodge his information with the proper authorities, and see the whole affair settled out of hand. He had not taken the bureaucratic system into consideration; and he had forgotten how little positive evidence he had to offer. It was no easier then than now to inspire the official mind with either insight or decision; and the police of Paris, inasmuch as they in no wise differed from the police of to-day, yesterday, or to-morrow, were slow to understand, slow to believe, and slower still to act.
An escaped convict? Monsieur le Chef du Bureau, upon whom we took the liberty of waiting the next morning, could scarcely take in the bare possibility of such a fact. An escaped convict? Bah! no convict could possibly escape under the present admirable system. Comment! He effected his escape some years ago? How many years ago? In what yard, in what ward, under what number was he entered in the official books? For what offence was he convicted? Had Monsieur seen him at Toulon?--and was Monsieur prepared to swear that Lenoir and Bras de Fer were one and the same person? How! Monsieur proposed to identify a certain individual, and yet was incapable of replying to these questions! Would Monsieur be pleased to state upon what grounds he undertook to denounce the said individual, and what proof he was prepared to produce in confirmation of the same?
To all which official catechizing, Müller, who (wanting Guichet's testimony) had nothing but his intense personal conviction to put forward, could only reply that he was ready to pledge himself to the accuracy of his information; and that if Monsieur the Chef du Bureau would be at the pains to call in any Toulon official of a few years' standing, he would undoubtedly find that the person now described as calling himself Lenoir, and the person commonly known in the Bagnes as Bras de Fer, were indeed "one and the same."
Whereupon Monsieur le Chef--a pompous personage, with a bald head and a white moustache--shrugged his shoulders, smiled incredulously, had the honor to point out to Monsieur that the Government could by no means be at the expense of conveying an inspector from Toulon to Paris on so shadowy and unsupported a statement, and politely bowed us out.
Thus rebuffed, Müller began to despair of present success; whilst I, in default of any brighter idea, proposed that he should take legal advice on the subject. So we went to a certain avocat, in a little street adjoining the École de Droit, and there purchased as much wisdom as might be bought for the sum of five francs sterling.
The avocat, happily, was fertile in suggestions. This, he said, was not a case for a witness. Here was no question of appearing before a court. With the foregone offences of either Lenoir or Bras de Fer, we had nothing to do; and to convict them of such offences formed no part of our plan. We only sought to show that Lenoir and Bras de Fer were in truth "one and the same person," and we could only do so upon the authority of some third party who had seen both. Now Monsieur Müller had seen Lenoir, but not Bras de Fer; and Guichet had seen Bras de Fer, but not Lenoir. Here, then, was the real difficulty; and here, he hoped, its obvious solution. Let Guichet be taken to some place where, being himself unseen, he may obtain a glimpse of Lenoir. This done, he can, in a private interview of two minutes, state his conviction to Monsieur the Chef de Bureau--voilà tout! If, however, the said Guichet can be persuaded by no considerations either of interest or justice, then another very simple course remains open. Every newly-arrived convict in every penal establishment throughout France is photographed on his entrance into the Bagne, and these photographs are duly preserved for purposes of identification like the present. Supposing therefore Bras de Fer had not escaped from Toulon before the introduction of this system, his portrait would exist in the official books to this day, and might doubtless be obtained, if proper application were made through an official channel.
Armed with this information, and knowing that any attempt to induce Guichet to move further in the matter would be useless, we then went back to the Bureau, and with much difficulty succeeded in persuading M. le Chef to send to Toulon for the photograph. This done, we could only wait and be patient.
Briefly, then, we did wait and were patient--though the last condition was not easy; for even I, who was by no means disposed to sympathize with Müller in his solicitude for the fair Marie, could not but feel a strange contagion of excitement in this chasse au forçat. And so a week or ten days went by, till one memorable afternoon, when Müller came rushing round to my rooms in hot haste, about an hour before the time when we usually met to go to dinner, and greeted me with--
"Good news, mon vieux! good news! The photograph has come--and I have been to the Bureau to see it--and I have identified my man--and he will be arrested to-night, as surely as that he carries T.F. on his shoulder!"
"You are certain he is the same?" I said.
"As certain as I am of my own face when I see it in the looking-glass."
And then he went on to say that a party of soldiers were to be in readiness a couple of hours hence, in a shop commanding Madame Marôt's door; that he, Müller, was to be there to watch with them till Lenoir either came out from or went into the house; and that as soon as he pointed him out to the sergeant in command, he was to be arrested, put into a cab waiting for the purpose, and conveyed to La Roquette.
Behold us, then, at the time prescribed, lounging in the doorway of a small shop adjoining the private entrance to Madame Marôt's house; our hands in our pockets; our cigars in our mouths; our whole attitude expressive of idleness and unconcern. The wintry evening has closed in rapidly. The street is bright with lamps, and busy with passers-by. The shop behind us is quite dark--so dark that not the keenest observer passing by could detect the dusky group of soldiers sitting on the counter within, or the gleaming of the musket-barrels which rest between their knees. The sergeant in command, a restless, black-eyed, intelligent little Gascon, about five feet four in height, with a revolver stuck in his belt, paces impatiently to and fro, and whistles softly between his teeth. The men, four in number, whisper together from time to time, or swing their feet in silence.
Thus the minutes go by heavily; for it is weary work waiting in this way, uncertain how long the watch may last, and not daring to relax the vigilance of eye and ear for a single moment. It may be for an hour, or for many hours, or it may be for only a few minutes-who can tell? Of Lenoir's daily haunts and habits we know nothing. All we do know is that he is wont to be out all day, sometimes returning only to dress and go out again; sometimes not coming home till very late at night; sometimes absenting himself for a day and a night, or two days and two nights together. With this uncertain prospect before us, therefore, we wait and watch, and watch and wait, counting the hours as they strike, and scanning every face that gleams past in the lamplight.
So the first hour goes by, and the second. Ten o'clock strikes. The traffic in the street begins perceptibly to diminish. Shops close here and there (Madame Marôt's shutters have been put up by the boy in the oilskin apron more than an hour ago), and the chiffonnier, sure herald of the quieter hours of the night, flits by with rake and lanthorn, observant of the gutters.
The soldiers on' the counter yawn audibly from time to time; and the sergeant, who is naturally of an impatient disposition, exclaims, for the twentieth time, with an inexhaustible variety, however, in the choice of expletives:--
"Mais; nom de deux cent mille petards! will this man of ours never come?"
To which inquiry, though not directly addressed to myself, I reply, as I have already replied once or twice before, that he may come immediately, or that he may not come for hours; and that all we can do is to wait and be patient. In the midst of which explanation, Müller suddenly lays his hand on my arm, makes a sign to the sergeant, and peers eagerly down the street.
There is a man coming up quickly on the opposite side of the way. For myself, I could recognise no one at such a distance, especially by night; but Müller's keener eye, made keener still by jealousy, identifies him at a glance.
It is Lenoir.
He wears a frock coat closely buttoned, and comes on with a light, rapid step, suspecting nothing. The sergeant gives the word--the soldiers spring to their feet--I draw back into the gloom of the shop-and only Müller remains, smoking his cigarette and lounging against the door-post.
Then Lenoir crosses over, and Müller, affecting to observe him for the first time, looks up, and without lifting his hat, says loudly:--
"Comment! have I the honor of saluting Monsieur Lenoir?"
Whereupon Lenoir, thrown off his guard by the suddenness of the address, hesitates--seems about to reply--checks himself--quickens his pace, and passes without a word.
The next instant he is surrounded. The butt ends of four muskets rattle on the pavement--the sergeant's hand is on his shoulder--the sergeant's voice rings in his ear.
"Number two hundred and seven, you are my prisoner!"
Lenoir's first impulse was to struggle in silence; then, finding escape hopeless, he folded his arms and submitted.
"So, it is Monsieur Müller who has done me this service," he said coldly; but with a flash in his eye like the sudden glint in the eye of a cobra di capello. "I will take care not to be unmindful of the obligation."
Then, turning impatiently upon the sergeant:--
"Have you no carriage at hand?" he said, sharply; "or do you want to collect a crowd in the street?"
The cab, however, which had been waiting a few doors lower down, drove up while he was speaking. The sergeant hurried him in; the half-dozen loiterers who had already gathered about us pressed eagerly forward; two of the soldiers and the sergeant got inside; Müller and I scrambled up beside the driver; word was given "to the Préfecture of Police;" and we drove rapidly away down the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis, through the arch of Louis Quatorze, out upon the bright noisy Boulevard, and on through thoroughfares as brilliant and crowded as at midday, towards the quays and the river.
Arrived at the Quai des Ortëvres, we alighted at the Préfecture, and were conducted through a series of ante-rooms and corridors into the presence of the same bald-headed Chef de Bureau whom we had seen on each previous occasion. He looked up as we came in, pressed the spring of a small bell that stood upon his desk, and growled something in the ear of a clerk who answered the summons.
"Sergeant," he said, pompously, "bring the prisoner under the gas-burner."
Lenoir, without waiting to be brought, took a couple of steps forward, and placed himself in the light.
Monsieur le Chef then took out his double eye-glass, and proceeded to compare Lenoir's face, feature by feature, with a photograph which he took out of his pocket-book for the purpose.
"Are you prepared, Monsieur," he said, addressing Müller for the first time--"are you, I say, prepared to identify the prisoner upon oath?"
"Within certain limitations--yes," replied Müller.
"Certain limitations!" exclaimed the Chef, testily. "What do you mean by 'certain limitations?' Here is the man whom you accuse, and here is the photograph. Are you, I repeat, prepared to make your deposition before Monsieur le Préfet that they are one and the same person?"
"I am neither more nor less prepared, Monsieur," said Müller, "than you are; or than Monsieur le Préfet, when he has the opportunity of judging. As I have already had the honor of informing you, I saw the prisoner for the first time about two months since. Having reason to believe that he was living in Paris under an assumed name, and wearing a decoration to which he had no right, I prosecuted certain inquiries about him. The result of those inquiries led me to conclude that he was an escaped convict from the Bagnes of Toulon. Never having seen him at Toulon, I was unable to prove this fact without assistance. You, Monsieur, have furnished that assistance, and the proof is now in your hand. It only remains for Monsieur le Préfet and yourself to decide upon its value."
"Give me the photograph, Monsieur Marmot," said a pale little man in blue spectacles, who had come in unobserved from a door behind us, while Müller was speaking.
The bald-headed Chef jumped up with great alacrity, bowed like a second Sir Pertinax, and handed over the photograph.
"The peculiar difficulty of this case, Monsieur le Préfet" ... he began.
The Préfet waved his hand.
"Thanks, Monsieur Marmot," he said, "I know all the particulars of this case. You need not trouble to explain them. So this is the photograph forwarded from Toulon. Well--well! Sergeant, strip the prisoner's shoulders."
A sudden quiver shot over Lenoir's face at this order, and his cheek blenched under the tan; but he neither spoke nor resisted. The next moment his coat and waistcoat were lying on the ground; his shirt, torn in the rough handling, was hanging round his loins, and he stood before us naked to the waist, lean, brown, muscular--a torso of an athlete done in bronze.
We pressed round eagerly. Monsieur le Chef put up his double eye-glass; Monsier le Préfet took off his blue spectacles.
"So--so," he said, pointing with the end of his glasses towards a whitish, indefinite kind of scar on Lenoir's left shoulder, "here is a mark like a burn. Is this the brand?"
The sergeant nodded.
"V'là, M'sieur le Préfet!" he said, and struck the spot smartly with his open palm. Instantly the smitten place turned livid, while from the midst of it, like the handwriting on the wall, the fatal letters T. F. sprang out in characters of fire.
Lenoir flashed a savage glance upon us, and checked the imprecation that rose to his lips. Monsieur le Préfet, with a little nod of satisfaction, put on his glasses again, went over to the table, took out a printed form from a certain drawer, dipped a pen in the ink, and said:--
"Sergeant, you will take this order, and convey Number Two Hundred and Seven to the Bicêtre, there to remain till Thursday next, when he will be drafted back to Toulon by the convict train, which leaves two hours after midnight. Monsieur Müller, the Government is indebted to you for the assistance you have rendered the executive in this matter. You are probably aware that the prisoner is a notorious criminal, guilty of one proved murder, and several cases of forgery, card-sharping, and the like. The Government is also indebted to Monsieur Marmot" (here he inclined his head to the bald-headed Chef), "who has acted with his usual zeal and intelligence."
Monsieur Marmot, murmuring profuse thanks, bowed and bowed again, and followed Monsieur le Préfet obsequiously to the door. On the threshold, the great little man paused, turned, and said very quietly: "You understand, sergeant, this prisoner does not escape again;" and so vanished; leaving Monsieur Marmot still bowing in the doorway.
Then the sergeant hurried on Lenoir's coat and waistcoat, clapped a pair of handcuffs on his wrists, thrust his hat on his head, and prepared to be gone; Monsieur, the bald-headed, looking on, meanwhile, with the utmost complacency, as if taking to himself all the merit of discovery and capture.
"Pardon, Messieurs," said the serjeant, when all was ready. "Pardon--but here is a fellow for whom I am responsible now, and who must be strictly looked after. I shall have to put a gendarme on the box from here to the Bicêtre, instead of you two gentlemen."
"All right, mon ami" said Müller. "I suppose we should not have been admitted if we had gone with you?"
"Nay, I could pass you in, Messieurs, if you cared to see the affair to the end, and followed in another fiacre."
So we said we would see it to the end, and following the prisoner and his guard through all the rooms and corridors by which we had come, picked up a second cab on the Quai des Orfèvres, just outside the Préfecture of Police.
It was now close upon midnight. The sky was flecked with driving clouds. The moon had just risen above the towers of Notre Dame. The quays were silent and deserted. The river hurried along, swirling and turbulent. The sergeant's cab led the way, and the driver, instead of turning back towards the Pont Neuf, followed the line of the quays along the southern bank of the Ile de la Cité; passing the Morgue--a mass of sinister shadow; passing the Hôtel Dieu; traversing the Parvis Notre Dame; and making for the long bridge, then called the Pont Louis Philippe, which connects the two river islands with the northern half of Paris.
"It is a wild-looking night," said Müller, as we drove under the mountainous shadow of Notre Dame and came out again in sight of the river.
"And it is a wild business to be out upon," I added. "I wonder if this is the end of it?"
The words were scarcely past my lips when the door of the cab ahead flew suddenly open, and a swift something, more like a shadow than a man, darted across the moonlight, sprang upon the parapet of the bridge, and disappeared!
In an instant we were all out--all rushing to and fro--all shouting--all wild with surprise and confusion.
"One man to the Pont d'Arcole!" thundered the sergeant, running along the perapet, revolver in hand. "One to the Quai Bourbon--one to the Pont de la Cité! Watch up stream and down! The moment he shows his head above water, fire!"
"But, in Heaven's name, how did he escape?" exclaimed Müller.
"Grand Dieu! who can tell--unless he is the very devil?" cried the sergeant, distractedly. "The handcuffs were on the floor, the door was open, and he was gone in a breath! Hold! What's that?"
The soldier on the Pont de la Cité gave a shout and fired. There was a splash--a plunge--a rush to the opposite parapet.
"There he goes!"
"Where?"
"He has dived again!"
"Look--look yonder--between the floating bath and the bank!"
The sergeant stood motionless, his revolver ready cocked--the water swirled and eddied, eddied and parted--a dark dot rose for a second to the surface!
Three shots fired at the same moment (one by the sergeant, two by the soldiers) rang sharply through the air, and were echoed with startling suddenness again and again from the buttressed walls of Notre Dame. Ere the last echo had died away, or the last faint smoke-wreath had faded, two boats were pulling to the spot, and all the quays were alive with a fast-gathering crowd. The sergeant beckoned to the gendarme who had come upon the box.
"Bid the boatmen drag the river just here between the two bridges," he said, "and bring the body up to the Préfecture." Then, turning to Müller and myself, "I am sorry to trouble you again, Messieurs," he said, "but I must ask you to come back once more to the Quai des Orfèvres, to depose to the facts which have just happened."
"But is the man shot, or has he escaped?" asked a breathless bystander.
"Both," said the sergeant, with a grim smile, replacing his revolver in his belt. "He has escaped Toulon; but he has gone to the bottom of the Seine with something like six ounces of lead in his skull."
In Paris, a lodging-house (or, as they prefer to style it, a hôtel meublé) is a little town in itself; a beehive swarming from basement to attic; a miniature model of the great world beyond, with all its loves and hatreds, jealousies, aspirations, and struggles. Like that world, it contains several grades of society, but with this difference, that those who therein occupy the loftiest position are held in the lowest estimation. Thus, the fifth-floor lodgers turn up their noses at the inhabitants of the attics; while the fifth-floor is in its turn scorned by the fourth, and the fourth is despised by the third, and the third by the second, down to the magnificent dwellers on the premier étage, who live in majestic disdain of everybody above or beneath them, from the grisettes in the garret, to the concierge who has care of the cellars.
The house in which I lived in the Cité Bergère was, in fact, a double house, and contained no fewer than thirty tenants, some of whom had wives, children, and servants. It consisted of six floors, and each floor contained from eight to ten rooms. These were let in single chambers, or in suites, as the case might be; and on the outer doors opening round the landings were painted the names, or affixed the visiting-cards, of the dwellers within. My own third-floor neighbors were four in number. To my left lived a certain Monsieur and Madame Lemercier, a retired couple from Alsace. Opposite their door, on the other side of the well staircase, dwelt one Monsieur Cliquot, an elderly employé in some public office; next to him, Signor Milanesi, an Italian refugee who played in the orchestra at the Variétés every night, was given to practising the violoncello by day, and wore as much hair about his face as a Skye-terrier. Lastly, in the apartment to my right, resided a lady, upon whose door was nailed a small visiting-card engraved with these words:--
MLLE. HORTENSE DUFRESNOY.
Teacher of Languages.
I had resided in the house for months before I ever beheld this Mademoiselle Hortense Dufresnoy. When I did at last encounter her upon the stairs one dusk autumnal evening, she wore a thick black veil, and, darting past me like a bird on the wing, disappeared down the staircase in fewer moments than I take to write it. I scarcely observed her at the time. I had no more curiosity to learn whether the face under that veil was pretty or plain than I cared to know whether the veil itself was Shetland or Chantilly. At that time Paris was yet new to me: Madame de Marignan's evil influence was about me; and, occupied as my time and thoughts were with unprofitable matters, I took no heed of my fellow-lodgers. Save, indeed, when the groans of that much-tortured violoncello woke me in the morning to an unwelcome consciousness of the vicinity of Signor Milanesi, I should scarcely have remembered that I was not the only inhabitant of the third story.
Now, however, that I spent all my evenings in my own quiet room, I became, by imperceptible degrees, interested in the unseen inhabitant of the adjoining apartment. Sometimes, when the house was so still that the very turning of the page sounded unnaturally loud, and the mere falling of a cinder startled me, I heard her in her chamber, singing softly to herself. Every night I saw the light from her window streaming out over the balcony and touching the evergreens with a midnight glow. Often and often, when it was so late that even I had given up study and gone to bed, I heard her reading aloud, or pacing to and fro to the measure of her own recitations. Listen as I would, I could only make out that these recitations were poetical fragments--I could only distinguish a certain chanted metre, the chiming of an occasional rhyme, the rising and falling of a voice more than commonly melodious.
This vague interest gave place by-and-by to active curiosity. I resolved to question Madame Bouïsse, the concierge; and as she, good soul! loved gossip not wisely, but too well, I soon knew all the little she had to tell.
Mademoiselle Hortense, it appeared, was the enigma of the third story. She had resided in the house for more than two years. She earned her living by her labor; went out teaching all the day; sat up at night, studying and writing; had no friends; received no visitors; was as industrious as a bee, and as proud as a princess. Books and flowers were her only friends, and her only luxuries. Poor as she was, she was continually filling her shelves with the former, and supplying her balcony with the latter. She lived frugally, drank no wine, was singularly silent and reserved, and "like a real lady," said the fat concierge, "paid her rent to the minute."
This, and no more, had Madame Bouïsse to tell. I had sought her in her own little retreat at the foot of the public staircase. It was a very wet afternoon, and under pretext of drying my boots by the fire, I stayed to make conversation and elicit what information I could. Now Madame Bouïsse's sanctuary was a queer, dark, stuffy little cupboard devoted to many heterogeneous uses, and it "served her for parlor, kitchen, and all." In one corner stood that famous article of furniture which became "a bed by night, a chest of drawers by day." Adjoining the bed was the fireplace; near the fireplace stood a corner cupboard filled with crockery and surmounted by a grand ormolu clock, singularly at variance with the rest of the articles. A table, a warming-pan, and a couple of chairs completed the furniture of the room, which, with all its contents, could scarcely have measured more than eight feet square. On a shelf inside the door stood thirty flat candlesticks; and on a row of nails just beneath them, hung two and twenty bright brass chamber-door keys--whereby an apt arithmetician might have divined that exactly two-and-twenty lodgers were out in the rain, and only eight housed comfortably within doors.
"And how old should you suppose this lady to be?" I asked, leaning idly against the table whereon Madame Bouïsse was preparing an unsavory dish of veal and garlic.
The concierge shrugged her ponderous shoulders.
"Ah, bah, M'sieur, I am no judge of age," said she.
"Well--is she pretty?"
"I am no judge of beauty, either," grinned Madame Bouïsse.
"But, my dear soul," I expostulated, "you have eyes!"
"Yours are younger than mine, mon enfant," retorted the fat concierge; "and, as I see Mam'selle Hortense coming up to the door, I'd advise you to make use of them for yourself."
And there, sure enough, was a tall and slender girl, dressed all in black, pausing to close up her umbrella at the threshold of the outer doorway. A porter followed her, carrying a heavy parcel. Having deposited this in the passage, he touched his cap and stated his charge. The young lady took out her purse, turned over the coins, shook her head, and finally came up to Madame's little sanctuary.
"Will you be so obliging, Madame Bouïsse," she said, "as to lend me a piece of ten sous? I have no small change left in my purse."
How shall I describe her? If I say that she was not particularly beautiful, I do her less than justice; for she was beautiful, with a pale, grave, serious beauty, unlike the ordinary beauty of woman. But even this, her beauty of feature, and color, and form, was eclipsed and overborne by that "true beauty of the soul" which outshines all other, as the sun puts out the stars.
There was in her face--or, perhaps, rather in her expression--an indefinable something that came upon me almost like a memory. Had I seen that face in some forgotten dream of long ago? Brown-haired was she, and pale, with a brow "as chaste ice, as pure as snow," and eyes--
"In whose orb a shadow lies,
Like the dusk in evening skies!"
Eyes lit from within, large, clear, lustrous, with a meaning in them so profound and serious that it was almost sorrowful,--like the eyes of Giotto's saints and Cimabue's Madonnas.
But I cannot describe her--
"For oh, her looks had something excellent That wants a name!"
I can only look back upon her with "my mind's eye," trying to see her as I saw her then for the first time, and striving to recall my first impressions.
Madame Bouïsse, meanwhile, searched in all the corners of her ample pockets, turned out her table-drawer, dived into the recesses of her husband's empty garments, and peeped into every ornament upon the chimney-piece; but in vain. There was no such thing as a ten-sous piece to be found.
"Pray, M'sieur Basil," said she, "have you one?"
"One what?" I ejaculated, startled out of my reverie.
"Why, a ten-sous piece, to be sure. Don't you see that Mam'selle Hortense is waiting in her wet shoes, and that I have been hunting for the last five minutes, and can't find one anywhere?"
Blushing like a school-boy, and stammering some unintelligible excuse, I pulled out a handful of francs and half-francs, and produced the coin required.
"Dame!" said the concierge. "This comes of using one's eyes too well, my young Monsieur. Hem! I'm not so blind but that I can see as far as my neighbors."
Mademoiselle Hortense had fortunately gone back to settle with the porter, so this observation passed unheard. The man being dismissed, she came back, carrying the parcel. It was evidently heavy, and she put it down on the nearest chair.
"I fear, Madame Bouïsse," she said, "that I must ask you to help me with this. I am not strong enough to carry it upstairs."
More alert this time, I took a step in advance, and offered my services.
"Will Mademoiselle permit me to take it?" I said. "I am going upstairs."
She hesitated.
"Many thanks," she said, reluctantly, "but...."
"But Madame Bouïsse is busy," I urged, "and the pot au feu will spoil if she leaves it on the fire."
The fat concierge nodded, and patted me on the shoulder.
"Let him carry the parcel, Mam'selle Hortense," she chuckled. "Let him carry it. M'sieur is your neighbor, and neighbors should be neighborly. Besides," she added, in an audible aside, "he is a bon garçon--an Englishman--and a book-student like yourself."
The young lady bent her head, civilly, but proudly. Compelled, as it seemed, to accept my help, she evidently wished to show me that I must nevertheless put forward no claim to further intercourse--not even on the plea of neighborhood. I understood her, and taking up the parcel, followed her in silence to her door on the third story. Here she paused and thanked me.
"Pray let me carry it in for you," I said.
Again she hesitated; but only for an instant. Too well-bred not to see that a refusal would now be a discourtesy, she unlocked the door, and held it open.
The first room was an ante-chamber; the second a salon somewhat larger than my own, with a door to the right, leading into what I supposed would be her bedroom. At a glance, I took in all the details of her home. There was her writing-table laden with books and papers, her desk, and her pile of manuscripts. At one end of the room stood a piano doing duty as a side-board, and looking as if it were seldom opened. Some water-color drawings were pinned against the walls, and a well-filled bookcase stood in a recess beside the fireplace. Nothing escaped me --not even the shaded reading-lamp, nor the plain ebony time-piece, nor the bronze Apollo on the bracket above the piano, nor the sword over the mantelpiece, which seemed a strange ornament in the study of a gentle lady. Besides all this, there were books everywhere, heaped upon the tables, ranged on shelves, piled in corners, and scattered hither and thither in most admired disorder. It was, however, the only disorder there.
I longed to linger, but dared not. Having laid the parcel down upon the nearest chair, there was nothing left for me to do but to take my leave. Mademoiselle Dufresnoy still kept her hand upon the door.
"Accept my best thanks, sir," she said in English, with a pretty foreign accent, that seemed to give new music to the dear familiar tongue.
"You have nothing to thank me for, Mademoiselle," I replied.
She smiled, proudly still, but very sweetly, and closed the door upon me.
I went back to my room; it had become suddenly dark and desolate. I tried to read; but all subjects seemed alike tedious and unprofitable. I could fix my attention to nothing; and so, becoming restless, I went out again, and wandered about the dusky streets till evening fairly set in, and the shops were lighted, and the tide of passers-by began to flow faster in the direction of boulevard and theatre.
The soft light of her shaded lamp streamed from her window when I came back, nor faded thence till two hours after midnight. I watched it all the long evening, stealing out from time to time upon my balcony, which adjoined her own, and welcoming the cool night air upon my brow. For I was fevered and disquieted, I knew not why, and my heart was stirred within me, strangely and sweetly.
Such was my first meeting with Hortense Dufresnoy. No incident of it has since faded from my memory. Brief as it was, it had already turned all the current of my life. I had fallen in love at first sight. Yes--in love; for love it was--real, passionate, earnest; a love destined to be the master-passion of all my future years.
"Love-In-Idleness" has passed into a proverb, and lovers, somehow, are not generally supposed to be industrious. I, however, worked none the less zealously for being in love. I applied only the more closely to my studies, both medical and literary, and made better progress in both than I had made before. I was not ambitious; but I had many incentives to work. I was anxious to satisfy my father. I earnestly desired to efface every unfavorable impression from the mind of Dr. Chéron, and to gain, if possible, his esteem. I was proud of the friendship of Madame de Courcelles, and wished to prove the value that I placed upon her good opinion. Above all, I had a true and passionate love of learning--not that love which leadeth on to fame; but rather that self-abandoning devotion which exchangeth willingly the world of action for the world of books, and, for an uninterrupted communion with the "souls of all that men held wise," bartereth away the society of the living.
Little gregarious by nature, Paris had already ceased to delight me in the same way that it had delighted me at first. A "retired leisure," and the society of the woman whom I loved, grew to be the day-dream of my solitary life. And still, ever more and more plainly, it became evident to me that for the career of the student I was designed by nature. Bayle, Magliabecchi of Florence, Isaac Reed, Sir Thomas Brown, Montaigne--those were the men whose lot in life I envied--those the literary anchorites in whose steps I would fain have followed.
But this was not to be; so I worked on, rose early, studied late, gained experience, took out my second inscription with credit, and had the satisfaction of knowing that I was fast acquiring the good opinion of Dr. Chéron. Thus Christmas passed by, and January with its bitter winds; and February set in, bright but frosty. And still, without encouragement or nope, I went on loving Hortense Dufresnoy.
My opportunities of seeing her were few and brief. A passing bow in the hall, or a distant "good-evening" as we passed upon the stairs, for some time made up the sum of our intercourse. Gradually, however, a kind of formal acquaintance sprang up between us; an acquaintance fostered by trifles and dependent on the idlest, or what seemed the idlest, casualties. I say "seemed," for often that which to her appeared the work of chance was the result of elaborate contrivance on my part. She little knew, when I met her on the staircase, how I had been listening for the last hour to catch the echo of her step. She little dreamed when I encountered her at the corner of the street, how I had been concealed, till that moment, in the café over the way, ready to dart out as soon as she appeared in sight. I would then affect either a polite unconcern, or an air of judicious surprise, or pretend not to lift my eyes at all till she was nearly past; and I think I must have been a very fair actor, for it all succeeded capitally, and I am not aware that she ever had the least suspicion of the truth. Let me, however, recall one incident over which I had no control, and which did more towards promoting our intercourse than all the rest.
It is a cold, bright morning in February. There is a brisk exhilaration in the air. The windows and gilded balconies sparkle in the sun, and it is pleasant to hear the frosty ring of one's boots upon the pavement. It is a fête to-day. Nothing is doing in the lecture-rooms, and I have the whole day before me. Meaning, therefore, to enjoy it over the fire and a book, I wisely begin it by a walk.
From the Cité Bergère, out along the right-hand side of the Boulevards, down past the front of the Madeleine, across the Place de la Concorde, and up the Champs Elysées as far as the Arc de Triomphe; this is the route I take in going. Arrived at the arch, I cross over, and come back by the same roads, but on the other side of the way. I have a motive in this. There is a certain second-hand book-shop on the opposite side of the Boulevard des Italiens, which draws me by a wholly irresistible attraction. Had I started on that side, I should have gone no further. I should have looked, lingered, purchased, and gone home to read. But I know my weakness. I have reserved the book-shop for my return journey, and now, rewarded and triumphant, compose myself for a quiet study of its treasures.
And what a book-shop it is! Not only are its windows filled--not only are its walls a very perspective of learning--but square pillars of volumes are built up on either side of the door, and an immense supplementary library is erected in the open air, down all the length of a dead-wall adjoining the house.
Here then I pause, turning over the leaves of one volume, reading the title of another, studying the personal appearance of a third, and weighing the merits of their authors against the contents of my purse. And when I say "personal appearance," I say it advisedly; for book-hunters, are skilled Lavaters in their way, and books, like men, attract or repel at first sight. Thus it happens that I love a portly book, in a sober coat of calf, but hate a thin, smart volume, in a gaudy binding. The one promises to be philosophic, learnedly witty, or solidly instructive; the other is tolerably certain to be pert and shallow, and reminds me of a coxcombical lacquey in bullion and red plush. On the same principle, I respect leaves soiled and dog's-eared, but mistrust gilt edges; love an old volume better than a new; prefer a spacious book-stall to all the unpurchased stores of Paternoster Row; and buy every book that I possess at second-hand. Nay, that it is second-hand is in itself a pass port to my favor. Somebody has read it before; therefore it is readable. Somebody has derived pleasure from it before; therefore I open it with a student's sympathy, and am disposed to be indulgent ere I have perused a single line. There are cases, however, in which I incline to luxury of binding. Just as I had rather have my historians in old calf and my chroniclers in black letter, so do I delight to see my modern poets, the Benjamins of my affections, clothed in coats of many colors. For them no moroccos are too rich, and no "toolings" too elaborate. I love to see them smiling on me from the shelves of my book-cases, as glowing and varied as the sunset through a painted oriel.
Standing here, then, to-day, dipping first into this work and then into that, I light upon a very curious and interesting edition of Froissart--an edition full of quaint engravings, and printed in the obsolete spelling of two hundred years ago. The book is both a treasure and a bargain, being marked up at five and twenty francs. Only those who haunt book-stalls and luxuriate in old editions can appreciate the satisfaction with which I survey
"That weight of wood, with leathern coat overlaid,
Those ample clasps of solid metal made,
The close pressed leaves unclosed for many an age,
The dull red edging of the well-filled page,
And the broad back, with stubborn ridges roll'd,
Where yet the title stands in tarnished gold!"
They only can sympathize in the eagerness with which I snatch up the precious volume, the haste with which I count out the five and twenty francs, the delight with which I see the dealer's hand close on the sum, and know that the book is legally and indisputably mine! Then how lovingly I embrace it under my arm, and taking advantage of my position as a purchaser, stroll leisurely round the inner warehouse, still courting that literary world which (in a library at least) always turns its back upon its worshipper!
"Pray, Monsieur," says a gentle voice at the door, "where is that old Froissart that I saw outside about a quarter of an hour ago?"
"Just sold, Madame," replies the bookseller, promptly.
"Oh, how unfortunate!--and I only went home for the money" exclaims the lady in a tone of real disappointment.
Selfishly exultant, I hug the book more closely, turn to steal a glance at my defeated rival, and recognise--Mademoiselle Dufresnoy.
She does not see me. I am standing in the inner gloom of the shop, and she is already turning away. I follow her at a little distance; keep her in sight all the way home; let her go into the house some few seconds in advance; and then, scaling three stairs at a time, overtake her at the door of her apartment.
Flushed and breathless, I stand beside her with Froissart in my hand.
"Pardon, Mademoiselle," I say, hurriedly, "for having involuntarily forestalled you just now. I had just bought the book you wished to purchase,"
She looks at me with evident surprise and some coldness; but says nothing.
"And I am rejoiced to have this opportunity of transferring it to you."
Mademoiselle Dufresnoy makes a slight but decided gesture of refusal.
"I would not deprive you of it, Monsieur," she says promptly, "upon any consideration."
"But, Mademoiselle, unless you allow me to relinquish it in your favor, I beg to assure you that I shall take the book back to the bookseller and exchange it for some other."
"I cannot conceive why you should do that, Monsieur."
"In order, Mademoiselle, that you may still have it in your power to become the purchaser."
"And yet you wished to possess the book, or you would not have bought it."
"I would not have bought it, Mademoiselle, if I had known that I should disappoint a--a lady by doing so,"
I was on the point of saying, "if I had known that I should disappoint you by so doing," but hesitated, and checked myself in time.
A half-mocking smile flitted across her lips.
"Monsieur is too self-sacrificing," she said. "Had I first bought the book, I should have kept it--being a woman. Reverse the case as you will, and show me any just reason why you should not do the same--being a man?"
"Nay, the merest by-law of courtesy..." I began, hesitatingly.
"Do not think me ungracious, Monsieur," she interrupted, "if I hold that these so-called laws of courtesy are in truth but concessions, for the most part, from the strength of your sex to the weakness of ours."
"Eh bien, Mademoiselle--what then?"
"Then, Monsieur, may there not be some women---myself, for instance--who do not care to be treated like children?"
"Pardon, Mademoiselle, but are you stating the case quite fairly? Is it not rather that we desire not to efface the last lingering tradition of the age of chivalry--not to reduce to prose the last faint echoes of that poetry which tempered the sword of the Crusader and inspired the song of the Trouvère?"
"Were it not better that the new age created a new code and a new poetry?" said Mademoiselle Dufresnoy.
"Perhaps; but I confess I love old forms and usages, and cling to creeds outworn. Above all, to that creed which in the age of powder and compliment, no less than in the age of chivalry, enjoined absolute devotion and courtesy towards women."
"Against mere courtesy reasonably exercised and in due season, I have nothing to say," replied Mademoiselle Dufresnoy; "but the half-barbarous homage of the Middle Ages is as little to my taste as the scarcely less barbarous refinement of the Addison and Georgian periods. Both are alike unsound, because both have a basis of insincerity. Just as there is a mock refinement more vulgar than simple vulgarity, so are there courtesies which humiliate and compliments that offend."
"Mademoiselle is pleased to talk in paradoxes," said I.
Mademoiselle unlocked her door, and turning towards me with the same half-mocking smile and the same air of raillery, said:--
"Monsieur, it is written in your English histories that when John le Bon was taken captive after the battle of Cressy, the Black Prince rode bareheaded before him through the streets of London, and served him at table as the humblest of his attendants. But for all that, was John any the less a prisoner, or the Black Prince any the less a conqueror?"
"You mean, perhaps, that you reject all courtesy based on mere ceremonial. Let me then put the case of this Froissart more plainly--as I would have done from the first, had I dared to speak the simple truth."
"And that is...?"
"That it will give me more pleasure to resign the book to you, Mademoiselle, than to possess it myself."
Mademoiselle Dufresnoy colors up, looks both haughty and amused, and ends by laughing.
"In truth, Monsieur," she says merrily, "if your politeness threatened at first to be too universal, it ends by becoming unnecessarily particular."
"Say rather, Mademoiselle, that you will not have the book on any terms!" I exclaim impatiently.
"Because you have not yet offered it to me upon any just or reasonable grounds."
"Well, then, bluntly and frankly, as student to student, I beg you to spare me the trouble of carrying this book back to the Boulevard. Yours, Mademoiselle, was the first intention. You saw the book before I saw it. You would have bought it on the spot, but had to go home for the money. In common equity, it is yours. In common civility, as student to student, I offer it to you. Say, is it yes or no?"
"Since you put it so simply and so generously, and since I believe you really wish me to accept your offer," replies Mademoiselle Dufresnoy, taking out her purse, "I suppose I must say--yes."
And with this, she puts out her hand for the hook, and offers me in return the sum of five and twenty francs.
Pained at having to accept the money, pained at being offered it, seeing no way of refusing it, and feel altogether more distress than is reasonable in a man brought up to the taking of fees; I affect not to see the coin, and, bowing, move away in the direction of my own door.
"Pardon, Monsieur," she says, "but you forget that I am in your debt."
"And--and do you really insist..."
She looks at me, half surprised and half offended.
"If you do not take the money, Monsieur, how can I take the book?"
Bowing, I receive the unwelcome francs in my unwilling palm.
Still she lingers.
"I--I have not thanked you as I ought for your generosity," she says, hesitatingly.
"Generosity!" I repeat, glancing with some bitterness at the five and twenty francs.
"True kindness, Monsieur, is neither bought nor sold," says the lady, with the loveliest smile in the world, and closes her door.