Oscar had reached that last quarter of adolescence when little things cause immense joys and immense miseries, — a period when youth prefers misfortune to a ridiculous suit of clothes, and caring nothing for the real interests of life, torments itself about frivolities, about neckcloths, and the passionate desire to appear a man. Then the young fellow swells himself out; his swagger is all the more portentous because it is exercised on nothings. Yet if he envies a fool who is elegantly dressed, he is also capable of enthusiasm over talent, and of genuine admiration for genius. Such defects as these, when they have no root in the heart, prove only the exuberance of sap, — the richness of the youthful imagination. That a lad of nineteen, an only child, kept severely at home by poverty, adored by a mother who put upon herself all privations for his sake, should be moved to envy by a young man of twenty-two in a frogged surtout-coat silk-lined, a waist-coat of fancy cashmere, and a cravat slipped through a ring of the worse taste, is nothing more than a peccadillo committed in all ranks of social life by inferiors who envy those that seem beyond them. Men of genius themselves succumb to this primitive passion. Did not Rousseau admire Ventura and Bacle?
But Oscar passed from peccadillo to evil feelings. He felt humiliated; he was angry with the youth he envied, and there rose in his heart a secret desire to show openly that he himself was as good as the object of his envy.
The two young fellows continued to walk up and own from the gate to the stables, and from the stables to the gate. Each time they turned they looked at Oscar curled up in his corner of the coucou. Oscar, persuaded that their jokes and laughter concerned himself, affected the utmost indifference. He began to hum the chorus of a song lately brought into vogue by the liberals, which ended with the words, “‘Tis Voltaire’s fault, ‘tis Rousseau’s fault.”
“Tiens! perhaps he is one of the chorus at the Opera,” said Amaury.
This exasperated Oscar, who bounded up, pulled out the wooden “back,” and called to Pierrotin: —
“When do we start?”
“Presently,” said that functionary, who was standing, whip in hand, and gazing toward the rue d’Enghien.
At this moment the scene was enlivened by the arrival of a young man accompanied by a true “gamin,” who was followed by a porter dragging a hand-cart. The young man came up to Pierrotin and spoke to him confidentially, on which the latter nodded his head, and called to his own porter. The man ran out and helped to unload the little hand-cart, which contained, besides two trunks, buckets, brushes, boxes of singular shape, and an infinity of packages and utensils which the youngest of the new-comers, who had climbed into the imperial, stowed away with such celerity that Oscar, who happened to be smiling at his mother, now standing on the other side of the street, saw none of the paraphernalia which might have revealed to him the profession of his new travelling companion.
The gamin, who must have been sixteen years of age, wore a gray blouse buckled round his waist by a polished leather belt. His cap, jauntily perched on the side of his head, seemed the sign of a merry nature, and so did the picturesque disorder of the curly brown hair which fell upon his shoulders. A black-silk cravat drew a line round his very white neck, and added to the vivacity of his bright gray eyes. The animation of his brown and rosy face, the moulding of his rather large lips, the ears detached from his head, his slightly turned-up nose, — in fact, all the details of his face proclaimed the lively spirit of a Figaro, and the careless gayety of youth, while the vivacity of his gesture and his mocking eye revealed an intellect already developed by the practice of a profession adopted very early in life. As he had already some claims to personal value, this child, made man by Art or by vocation, seemed indifferent to the question of costume; for he looked at his boots, which had not been polished, with a quizzical air, and searched for the spots on his brown Holland trousers less to remove them than to see their effect.
“I’m in style,” he said, giving himself a shake and addressing his companion.
The glance of the latter, showed authority over his adept, in whom a practised eye would at once have recognized the joyous pupil of a painter, called in the argot of the studios a “rapin.”
“Behave yourself, Mistigris,” said his master, giving him the nickname which the studio had no doubt bestowed upon him.
The master was a slight and pale young man, with extremely thick black hair, worn in a disorder that was actually fantastic. But this abundant mass of hair seemed necessary to an enormous head, whose vast forehead proclaimed a precocious intellect. A strained and harassed face, too original to be ugly, was hollowed as if this noticeable young man suffered from some chronic malady, or from privations caused by poverty (the most terrible of all chronic maladies), or from griefs too recent to be forgotten. His clothing, analogous, with due allowance, to that of Mistigris, consisted of a shabby surtout coat, American-green in color, much worn, but clean and well-brushed; a black waistcoat buttoned to the throat, which almost concealed a scarlet neckerchief; and trousers, also black and even more worn than the coat, flapping his thin legs. In addition, a pair of very muddy boots indicated that he had come on foot and from some distance to the coach office. With a rapid look this artist seized the whole scene of the Lion d’Argent, the stables, the courtyard, the various lights and shades, and the details; then he looked at Mistigris, whose satirical glance had followed his own.
“Charming!” said Mistigris.
“Yes, very,” replied the other.
“We seem to have got here too early,” pursued Mistigris. “Couldn’t we get a mouthful somewhere? My stomach, like Nature, abhors a vacuum.”
“Have we time to get a cup of coffee?” said the artist, in a gentle voice, to Pierrotin.
“Yes, but don’t be long,” answered the latter.
“Good; that means we have a quarter of an hour,” remarked Mistigris, with the innate genius for observation of the Paris rapin.
The pair disappeared. Nine o’clock was striking in the hotel kitchen. Georges thought it just and reasonable to remonstrate with Pierrotin.
“Hey! my friend; when a man is blessed with such wheels as these (striking the clumsy tires with his cane) he ought at least to have the merit of punctuality. The deuce! one doesn’t get into that thing for pleasure; I have business that is devilishly pressing or I wouldn’t trust my bones to it. And that horse, which you call Rougeot, he doesn’t look likely to make up for lost time.”
“We are going to harness Bichette while those gentlemen take their coffee,” replied Pierrotin. “Go and ask, you,” he said to his porter, “if Pere Leger is coming with us — ”
“Where is your Pere Leger?” asked Georges.
“Over the way, at number 50. He couldn’t get a place in the Beaumont diligence,” said Pierrotin, still speaking to his porter and apparently making no answer to his customer; then he disappeared himself in search of Bichette.
Georges, after shaking hands with his friend, got into the coach, handling with an air of great importance a portfolio which he placed beneath the cushion of the seat. He took the opposite corner to that of Oscar, on the same seat.
“This Pere Leger troubles me,” he said.
“They can’t take away our places,” replied Oscar. “I have number one.”
“And I number two,” said Georges.
Just as Pierrotin reappeared, having harnessed Bichette, the porter returned with a stout man in tow, whose weight could not have been less than two hundred and fifty pounds at the very least. Pere Leger belonged to the species of farmer which has a square back, a protuberant stomach, a powdered pigtail, and wears a little coat of blue linen. His white gaiters, coming above the knee, were fastened round the ends of his velveteen breeches and secured by silver buckles. His hob-nailed shoes weighed two pounds each. In his hand, he held a small reddish stick, much polished, with a large knob, which was fastened round his wrist by a thong of leather.
“And you are called Pere Leger?” asked Georges, very seriously, as the farmer
attempted to put a foot on the step.
“At your service,” replied the farmer, looking in and showing a face like that of Louis XVIII., with fat, rubicund cheeks, from between which issued a nose that in any other face would have seemed enormous. His smiling eyes were sunken in rolls of fat. “Come, a helping hand, my lad!” he said to Pierrotin.
The farmer was hoisted in by the united efforts of Pierrotin and the porter, to cries of “Houp la! hi! ha! hoist!” uttered by Georges.
“Oh! I’m not going far; only to La Cave,” said the farmer, good-humoredly.
In France everybody takes a joke.
“Take the back seat,” said Pierrotin, “there’ll be six of you.”
“Where’s your other horse?” demanded Georges. “Is it as mythical as the third post-horse.”
“There she is,” said Pierrotin, pointing to the little mare, who was coming along alone.
“He calls that insect a horse!” exclaimed Georges.
“Oh! she’s good, that little mare,” said the farmer, who by this time was seated. “Your servant, gentlemen. Well, Pierrotin, how soon do you start?”
“I have two travellers in there after a cup of coffee,” replied Pierrotin.
The hollow-cheeked young man and his page reappeared.
“Come, let’s start!” was the general cry.
“We are going to start,” replied Pierrotin. “Now, then, make ready,” he said to the porter, who began thereupon to take away the stones which stopped the wheels.
Pierrotin took Rougeot by the bridle and gave that guttural cry, “Ket, ket!” to tell the two animals to collect their energy; on which, though evidently stiff, they pulled the coach to the door of the Lion d’Argent. After which manoeuvre, which was purely preparatory, Pierrotin gazed up the rue d’Enghien and then disappeared, leaving the coach in charge of the porter.
“Ah ca! is he subject to such attacks, — that master of yours?” said Mistigris, addressing the porter.
“He has gone to fetch his feed from the stable,” replied the porter, well versed in all the usual tricks to keep passengers quiet.
“Well, after all,” said Mistigris, “‘art is long, but life is short’ — to Bichette.”
At this particular epoch, a fancy for mutilating or transposing proverbs reigned in the studios. It was thought a triumph to find changes of letters, and sometimes of words, which still kept the semblance of the proverb while giving it a fantastic or ridiculous meaning.[*]
[*] It is plainly impossible to translate many of these proverbs
and put any fun or meaning into them. — Tr.
“Patience, Mistigris!” said his master; “‘come wheel, come whoa.’”
Pierrotin here returned, bringing with him the Comte de Serizy, who had come through the rue de l’Echiquier, and with whom he had doubtless had a short conversation.
“Pere Leger,” said Pierrotin, looking into the coach, “will you give your place to Monsieur le comte? That will balance the carriage better.”
“We sha’n’t be off for an hour if you go on this way,” cried Georges. “We shall have to take down this infernal bar, which cost such trouble to put up. Why should everybody be made to move for the man who comes last? We all have a right to the places we took. What place has monsieur engaged? Come, find that out! Haven’t you a way-book, a register, or something? What place has Monsieur Lecomte engaged? — count of what, I’d like to know.”
“Monsieur le comte,” said Pierrotin, visibly troubled, “I am afraid you will be uncomfortable.”
“Why didn’t you keep better count of us?” said Mistigris. “‘Short counts make good ends.’”
“Mistigris, behave yourself,” said his master.
Monsieur de Serizy was evidently taken by all the persons in the coach for a bourgeois of the name of Lecomte.
“Don’t disturb any one,” he said to Pierrotin. “I will sit with you in front.”
“Come, Mistigris,” said the master to his rapin, “remember the respect you owe to age; you don’t know how shockingly old you may be yourself some day. ‘Travel deforms youth.’ Give your place to monsieur.”
Mistigris opened the leathern curtain and jumped out with the agility of a frog leaping into the water.
“You mustn’t be a rabbit, august old man,” he said to the count.
“Mistigris, ‘ars est celare bonum,’” said his master.
“I thank you very much, monsieur,” said the count to Mistigris’s master, next to whom he now sat.
The minister of State cast a sagacious glance round the interior of the coach, which greatly affronted both Oscar and Georges.
“When persons want to be master of a coach, they should engage all the places,” remarked Georges.
Certain now of his incognito, the Comte de Serizy made no reply to this observation, but assumed the air of a good-natured bourgeois.
“Suppose you were late, wouldn’t you be glad that the coach waited for you?” said the farmer to the two young men.
Pierrotin still looked up and down the street, whip in hand, apparently reluctant to mount to the hard seat where Mistigris was fidgeting.
“If you expect some one else, I am not the last,” said the count.
“I agree to that reasoning,” said Mistigris.
Georges and Oscar began to laugh impertinently.
“The old fellow doesn’t know much,” whispered Georges to Oscar, who was delighted at this apparent union between himself and the object of his envy.
“Parbleu!” cried Pierrotin, “I shouldn’t be sorry for two more passengers.”
“I haven’t paid; I’ll get out,” said Georges, alarmed.
“What are you waiting for, Pierrotin?” asked Pere Leger.
Whereupon Pierrotin shouted a certain “Hi!” in which Bichette and Rougeot recognized a definitive resolution, and they both sprang toward the rise of the faubourg at a pace which was soon to slacken.
The count had a red face, of a burning red all over, on which were certain inflamed portions which his snow-white hair brought out into full relief. To any but heedless youths, this complexion would have revealed a constant inflammation of the blood, produced by incessant labor. These blotches and pimples so injured the naturally noble air of the count that careful examination was needed to find in his green-gray eyes the shrewdness of the magistrate, the wisdom of a statesman, and the knowledge of a legislator. His face was flat, and the nose seemed to have been depressed into it. The hat hid the grace and beauty of his forehead. In short, there was enough to amuse those thoughtless youths in the odd contrasts of the silvery hair, the burning face, and the thick, tufted eye-brows which were still jet-black.
The count wore a long blue overcoat, buttoned in military fashion to the throat, a white cravat around his neck, cotton wool in his ears, and a shirt-collar high enough to make a large square patch of white on each cheek. His black trousers covered his boots, the toes of which were barely seen. He wore no decoration in his button-hole, and doeskin gloves concealed his hands. Nothing about him betrayed to the eyes of youth a peer of France, and one of the most useful statesmen in the kingdom.
Pere Leger had never seen the count, who, on his side, knew the former only by name. When the count, as he got into the carriage, cast the glance about him which affronted Georges and Oscar, he was, in reality, looking for the head-clerk of his notary (in case he had been forced, like himself, to take Pierrotin’s vehicle), intending to caution him instantly about his own incognito. But feeling reassured by the appearance of Oscar, and that of Pere Leger, and, above all, by the quasi-military air, the waxed moustaches, and the general look of an adventurer that distinguished Georges, he concluded that his note had reached his notary, Alexandre Crottat, in time to prevent the departure of the clerk.
“Pere Leger,” said Pierrotin, when they reached the steep hill of the faubourg Saint-Denis by the rue de la Fidelite, “suppose we get out, hey?”
“I’ll get out, too,” said the count, hearing
Leger’s name.
“Goodness! if this is how we are going, we shall do fourteen miles in fifteen days!” cried Georges.
“It isn’t my fault,” said Pierrotin, “if a passenger wishes to get out.”
“Ten louis for you if you keep the secret of my being here as I told you before,” said the count in a low voice, taking Pierrotin by the arm.
“Oh, my thousand francs!” thought Pierrotin as he winked an eye at Monsieur de Serizy, which meant, “Rely on me.”
Oscar and Georges stayed in the coach.
“Look here, Pierrotin, since Pierrotin you are,” cried Georges, when the passengers were once more stowed away in the vehicle, “if you don’t mean to go faster than this, say so! I’ll pay my fare and take a post-horse at Saint-Denis, for I have important business on hand which can’t be delayed.”
“Oh! he’ll go well enough,” said Pere Leger. “Besides, the distance isn’t great.”
“I am never more than half an hour late,” asserted Pierrotin.
“Well, you are not wheeling the Pope in this old barrow of yours,” said Georges, “so, get on.”
“Perhaps he’s afraid of shaking monsieur,” said Mistigris looking round at the count. “But you shouldn’t have preferences, Pierrotin, it isn’t right.”
“Coucous and the Charter make all Frenchmen equals,” said Georges.
“Oh! be easy,” said Pere Leger; “we are sure to get to La Chapelle by mid-day,” — La Chapelle being the village next beyond the Barriere of Saint-Denis.
CHAPTER IV. THE GRANDSON OF THE FAMOUS CZERNI-GEORGES
Those who travel in public conveyances know that the persons thus united by chance do not immediately have anything to say to one another; unless under special circumstances, conversation rarely begins until they have gone some distance. This period of silence is employed as much in mutual examination as in settling into their places. Minds need to get their equilibrium as much as bodies. When each person thinks he has discovered the age, profession, and character of his companions, the most talkative member of the company begins, and the conversation gets under way with all the more vivacity because those present feel a need of enlivening the journey and forgetting its tedium.
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 77
