In the Days of My Youth: A Novel
Page 24
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE ECOLE DE NATATION.
It seemed to me that I had but just closed my eyes, when I was waked bya hand upon my shoulder, and a voice calling me by my name. I started upto find the early sunshine pouring in at the window, and Franz Muellerstanding by my bedside.
"_Tiens_!" said he. "How lovely are the slumbers of innocence! I washesitating, _mon cher_, whether to wake or sketch you."
I muttered something between a growl and a yawn, to the effect that Ishould have been better satisfied if he had left me alone.
"You prefer everything that is basely self-indulgent, young man,"replied Mueller, making a divan of my bed, and coolly lighting his pipeunder my very nose. "Contrary to all the laws of _bon-camaraderie_, youstole away last night, leaving your unprotected friend in the hands ofthe enemy. And for what?--for the sake of a few hours' ignominiousoblivion! Look at me--I have not been to bed all night, and I am aslively as a lobster in a lobster-pot."
"How did you get home?" I asked, rubbing my eyes; "and when?"
"I have not got home at all yet," replied my visitor. "I have come tobreakfast with you first."
Just at this moment, the _pendule_ in the adjoining room struck six.
"To breakfast!" I repeated. "At this hour?--you who never breakfastbefore midday!"
"True, _mon cher_; but then you see there are reasons. In the firstplace, we danced a little too long, and missed the last train, so I wasobliged to bring the dear creatures back to Paris in a fiacre. In thesecond place, the driver was drunk, and the horse was groggy, and thefiacre was in the last stage of dilapidation. The powers below only knowhow many hours we were on the road; for we all fell asleep, driverincluded, and never woke till we found ourselves at the Barriere del'Etoile at the dawn of day."
"Then what have you done with Madame Marotte and Mademoiselle Marie?"
"Deposited them at their own door in the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis, aswas the bounden duty of a _preux chevalier_. But then, _mon cher_, I hadno money; and having no money, I couldn't pay for the fiacre; so I droveon here--and here I am--and number One Thousand and Eleven is now at thedoor, waiting to be paid."
"The deuce he is!"
"So you see, sad as it was to disturb the slumbers of innocence, Icouldn't possibly let you go on sleeping at the rate of two francsan hour."
"And what is the rate at which you have waked me?"
"Sixteen francs the fare, and something for the driver--say twenty inall."
"Then, my dear fellow, just open my desk and take one of the twoNapoleons you will see lying inside, and dismiss number One Thousand andEleven without loss of time; and then...."
"A thousand thanks! And then what?"
"Will you accept a word of sound advice?"
"Depends on whether it's pleasant to follow, _caro mio_"
"Go home; get three or four hours' rest; and meet me in the Palais Royalabout twelve for breakfast."
"In order that you may turn round and go to sleep again in comfort? No,young man, I will do nothing of the kind. You shall get up, instead, andwe'll go down to Molino's."
"To Molino's?"
"Yes--don't you know Molino's--the large swimming-school by the PontNeuf. It's a glorious morning for a plunge in the Seine."
A plunge in the Seine! Now, given a warm bed, a chilly autumn morning,and a decided inclination to quote the words of the sluggard, and"slumber again," could any proposition be more inopportune, savage, andalarming? I shuddered; I protested; I resisted; but in vain.
"I shall be up again in less time than it will take you to tell yourbeads, _mon gaillard_" said Mueller the ferocious, as, having captured myNapoleon, he prepared to go down and liquidate with number One Thousandand Eleven. "And it's of no use to bolt me out, because I shall hammeraway till you let me in, and that will wake your fellow-lodgers. So letme find you up, and ready for the fray."
And then, execrating Mueller, and Molino, and Molino's bath, and Molino'scustomers, and all Molino's ancestors from the period of the delugedownwards, I reluctantly complied.
The air was brisk, the sky cloudless, the sun coldly bright; and thecity wore that strange, breathless, magical look so peculiar to Paris atearly morning. The shops were closed; the pavements deserted; the busythoroughfares silent as the avenues of Pere la Chaise. Yet how differentfrom the early stillness of London! London, before the world is up andstirring, looks dead, and sullen, and melancholy; but Paris lies allbeautiful, and bright, and mysterious, with a look as of dawning smilesupon her face; and we know that she will wake presently, like theSleeping Beauty, to sudden joyousness and activity.
Our road lay for a little way along the Boulevards, then down the RueVivienne, and through the Palais Royal to the quays; but long ere wecame within sight of the river this magical calm had begun to break up.The shop-boys in the Palais Royal were already taking down theshutters--the great book-stall at the end of the Galerie Vitree showedsigns of wakefulness; and in the Place du Louvre there was already adetachment of brisk little foot-soldiers at drill. By the time we hadreached the open line of the quays, the first omnibuses were on theroad; the water-carriers were driving their carts and blowing theirshrill little bugles; the washer-women, hard at work in their gay,oriental-looking floating kiosques, were hammering away, mallet in hand,and chattering like millions of magpies; and the early matin-bell wasringing to prayers as we passed the doors of St. Germain L'Auxerrois.
And now we were skirting the Quai de l'Ecole, looking down upon the bathknown in those days as Molino's--a hugh, floating quadrangularstructure, surrounded by trellised arcades and rows of dressing-rooms,with a divan, a cafe restaurant, and a permanent corps of cooks andhair-dressers on the establishment. For your true Parisian has ever beenwedded to his Seine, as the Venetian to his Adriatic; and the Ecole deNatation was then, as now, a lounge, a reading-room, an adjunct of theclubs, and one of the great institutions of the capital.
Some bathers, earlier than ourselves, were already sauntering about thegalleries in every variety of undress, from the simple _calecon_ to thegaudiest version of Turkish robe and Algerian _kepi_. Some were smoking;some reading the morning papers; some chatting in little knots; but asyet, with the exception of two or three school-boys (called, in the_argot_ of the bath, _moutards_), there were no swimmers in the water.
With some of these loungers Mueller exchanged a nod or a few words as wepassed along the platform; but shook hands cordially with a bronzed,stalwart man, dressed like a Venetian gondolier in the frontispiece to apopular ballad, with white trousers, blue jacket, anchor buttons, redsash, gold ear-rings, and great silver buckles in his shoes. Muellerintroduced this romantic-looking person to me as "Monsieur Barbet."
"My friend, Monsieur Barbet," said he, "is the prince ofswimming-masters. He is more at home in the water than on land, andknows more about swimming than a fish. He will calculate you thespecific gravity of the heaviest German metaphysician at a glance, andis capable of floating even the works of Monsieur Thiers, if put tothe test."
"Monsieur can swim?" said the master, addressing me, with a nauticalscrape.
"I think so," I replied.
"Many gentlemen think so," said Monsieur Barbet, "till they findthemselves in the water."
"And many who wish to be thought accomplished swimmers never ventureinto it on that account," added Mueller. "You would scarcely suppose," hecontinued, turning to me, "that there are men here--regular _habitues_of the bath--who never go into the water, and yet give themselves allthe airs of practised bathers. That tall man, for instance, with theblack beard and striped _peignoir_, yonder--there's a fellow who comesonce or twice a week all through the season, goes through the ceremonyof undressing, smokes, gossips, criticises, is looked up to as anauthority, and has never yet been seen off the platform. Then there'sthat bald man in the white robe--his name's Giroflet--a retiredstockbroker. Well, that fellow robes himself like an ancient Roman, putshimself in classical attitudes, affects taciturnity, models himself uponBrutus, and all t
hat sort of thing; but is as careful not to get hisfeet wet as a cat. Others, again, come simply to feed. The restaurant isone of the choicest in Paris, with this advantage over Vefour or theTrois Freres, that it is the only place where you may eat and drink ofthe best in hot weather, with nothing on but the briefest of _calecons_"
Thus chattering, Mueller took me the tour of the bath, which now began tofill rapidly. We then took possession of two little dressing-rooms nobigger than sentry-boxes, and were presently in the water.
The scene now became very animated. Hundreds of eccentric figurescrowded the galleries--some absurdly fat, some ludicrously thin; someold, some young; some bow-legged, some knock-kneed; some short, sometall; some brown, some yellow; some got up for effect in gorgeouswrappers; and all more or less hideous.
"An amusing sight, isn't it?" said Mueller, as, having swum several timesround the bath, we sat down for a few moments on one of the flights ofsteps leading down to the water.
"It is a sight to disgust one for ever with human-kind," I replied.
"And to fill one with the profoundest respect for one's tailor. Afterall, it's broad-cloth makes the man."
"But these are not men--they are caricatures."
"Every man is a caricature of himself when you strip him," said Mueller,epigrammatically. "Look at that scarecrow just opposite. He passes foran Adonis, _de par le monde_."
I looked and recognised the Count de Rivarol, a tall young man, an_elegant_ of the first water, a curled darling of society, a professedlady-killer, whom I had met many a time in attendance on Madame deMarignan. He now looked like a monkey:--
.... "long, and lank and brown, As in the ribb'd sea sand!"
"Gracious heavens!" I exclaimed, "what would become of the world, ifclothes went out of fashion?"
"Humph!--one half of us, my dear fellow, would commit suicide."
At the upper end of the bath was a semicircular platform somewhatloftier than the rest, called the Amphitheatre. This, I learned, was theplace of honor. Here clustered the _elite_ of the swimmers; here theydiscussed the great principles of their art, and passed judgment on theperformances of those less skilful than themselves. To the right of theAmphitheatre rose a slender spiral staircase, like an openwork pillar ofiron, with a tiny circular platform on the top, half surrounded by alight iron rail. This conspicuous perch, like the pillar of St. SimeonStylites, was every now and then surmounted by the gaunt figure of someambitious plunger who, after attitudinizing awhile in the pose ofNapoleon on the column Vendome, would join his hands above his head andtake a tremendous "header" into the gulf below. When this feat wassuccessfully performed, the _elite_ in the Amphitheatre applaudedgraciously.
And now, what with swimming, and lounging, and looking on, some twohours had slipped by, and we were both hungry and tired, Mueller proposedthat we should breakfast at the Cafe Procope.
"But why not here?" I asked, as a delicious breeze from the buffet camewafting by "like a steam of rich distilled perfumes."
"Because a breakfast _chez_ Molino costs at least twenty-five francsper head--BECAUSE I have credit at Procope--BECAUSE I have not a _sou_in my pocket--and BECAUSE, milord Smithfield, I aspire to the honor ofentertaining your lordship on the present occasion!" replied Mueller,punctuating each clause of his sentence with a bow.
If Mueller had not a _sou_, I, at all events, had now only one Napoleon;so the Cafe Procope carried the day.