A Chair on the Boulevard Part 8

Their attachment was the talk of the town, and everybody waited to hear that Pitou had killed himself. His name was widely known at last. But weeks and months went by; Florozonde's protracted season came to an end; and still he looked radiantly well. Pitou was the most unpopular man in Paris.

In the rue Dauphine, one day, he met de Fronsac.

"So you are still alive!" snarled the poet.

"Never better," declared Pitou. "It turns out," he added confidentially, "there was nothing in that story--it was all fudge."

"Evidently! I must congratulate you," said de Fronsac, looking bomb-sh.e.l.ls.

THE OPPORTUNITY OF PEt.i.tPAS

In Bordeaux, on the 21st of December, monsieur Pet.i.tpas, a clerk with bohemian yearnings, packed his portmanteau for a week's holiday. In Paris, on the same date, monsieur Tricotrin, poet and pauper, was commissioned by the Editor of _Le Demi-Mot_ to convert a rough translation into literary French. These two disparate incidents were destined by Fate--always mysterious in her workings--to be united in a narrative for the present volume.

Three evenings later the poet's concierge climbed the stairs and rapped peremptorily at the door.

"Well?" cried Tricotrin, raising bloodshot eyes from the ma.n.u.script; "who disturbs me now? Come in!"

"I have come in," panted madame Dubois, who had not waited for his invitation, "and I am here to tell you, monsieur, that you cannot be allowed to groan in this agonised fashion. Your lamentations can be heard even in the bas.e.m.e.nt."

"Is it in my agreement, madame, that I shall not groan if I am so disposed?" inquired the poet haughtily.

"There are things tacitly understood. It is enough that you are in arrears with your rent, without your doing your best to drive away the other tenants. For two days they have all complained that it would be less disturbing to reside in a hospital."

"Well, they have my permission to remove there," said Tricotrin. "Now that the matter is settled, let me get on with my work!" And with the groan of a soul in Hades, he perused another line.

"There you go again!" expostulated the woman angrily, "It is not to be endured, monsieur. What is the matter with you, for goodness' sake?"

"With me, madame, there is nothing the matter; the fault lies with an infernal Spanish novel. A misguided editor has commissioned me to rewrite it from a translation made by a foreigner. How can I avoid groans when I read his rot? Miranda exclaims, 'May heaven confound you, bandit!' And the fiance of the ingenue addresses her as 'Angel of this house!'"

"Well, at least groan quietly," begged the concierge; "do not bellow your sufferings to the cellar."

"To oblige you I will be as Spartan as I can," agreed Tricotrin. "Now I have lost my place in the masterpiece. Ah, here we are! 'I feel she brings bad tidings--she wears a disastrous mien.' It is sprightly dialogue! If the hundred and fifty francs were not essential to keep a roof over my head, I would send the Editor a challenge for offering me the job."

Perspiration bespangled the young man's brow as he continued his task.

When another hour had worn by he thirsted to do the foreign translator a bodily injury, and so intense was his exasperation that, by way of interlude, he placed the ma.n.u.script on the floor and jumped on it. But the climax was reached in Chapter XXVII; under the provocation of the love scene in Chapter XXVII frenzy mastered him, and with a yell of torture he hurled the whole novel through the window, and burst into hysterical tears.

The novel, which was of considerable bulk, descended on the landlord, who was just approaching the house to collect his dues.

"What does it mean," gasped monsieur Gouge, when he had recovered his equilibrium, and his hat; "what does it mean that I cannot approach my own property without being a.s.saulted with a ton of paper? Who has dared to throw such a thing from a window?"

"Monsieur," stammered the concierge, "I do not doubt that it was the top-floor poet; he has been behaving like a lunatic for days."

"Aha, the top-floor poet?" snorted monsieur Gouge. "I shall soon dispose of _him_!" And Tricotrin's tears were scarcely dried when _bang_ came another knock at his door.

"So, monsieur," exclaimed the landlord, with fine satire, "your poems are of small account, it appears, since you use them as missiles? The value you put upon your scribbling does not encourage me to wait for my rent!"

"Mine?" faltered Tricotrin, casting an indignant glance at the muddy ma.n.u.script restored to him; "you accuse _me_ of having perpetrated that atrocity? Oh, this is too much! I have a reputation to preserve, monsieur, and I swear by all the Immortals that it was no work of mine."

"Did you not throw it?"

"Throw it? Yes, a.s.suredly I threw it. But I did not write it."

"Morbleu! what do I care who wrote it?" roared monsieur Gouge, purple with spleen. "Does its authorship improve the condition of my hat? My grievance is its arrival on my head, not its literary quality. Let me tell you that you expose yourself to actions at law, pitching weights like this from a respectable house into a public street."

"I should plead insanity," said Tricotrin; "twenty-seven chapters of that novel, translated into a Spaniard's French, would suffice to people an asylum. Nevertheless, if it arrived on your hat, I owe you an apology."

"You also owe me two hundred francs!" shouted the other, "and I have shown you more patience than you deserve. Well, my folly is finished!

You settle up, or you get out, right off!"

"Have you reflected that it is Christmas Eve--do we live in a melodrama, that I should wander homeless on Christmas Eve? Seriously, you cannot expect a man of taste to lend himself to so hackneyed a situation? Besides, I share this apartment with the composer monsieur Nicolas Pitou. Consider how poignant he would find the room's a.s.sociations if he returned to dwell here alone!"

"Monsieur Pitou will not be admitted when he returns--there is not a pin to choose between the pair of you. You hand me the two hundred francs, or you go this minute--and I shall detain your wardrobe till you pay. Where is it?"

"It is divided between my person and a shelf at the p.a.w.nbroker's,"

explained the poet; "but I have a soiled collar in the left-hand corner drawer. However, I can offer you more valuable security for this trifling debt than you would dare to ask; the bureau is full of pearls --metrical, but beyond price. I beg your tenderest care of them, especially my tragedy in seven acts. Do not play jinks with the contents of that bureau, or Posterity will gibbet you and the name of 'Gouge' will one day be execrated throughout France. Garbage, farewell!"

"Here, take your shaving paper with you!" cried monsieur Gouge, flinging the Spanish novel down the stairs. And the next moment the man of letters stood dejected on the pavement, with the fatal ma.n.u.script under his arm.

"Ah, Miranda, Miranda, thou little knowest what mischief thou hast done!" he murmured, unconsciously plagiarising. "She brought bad tidings indeed, with her disastrous mien," he added. "What is to become of me now?"

The moon, to which he had naturally addressed this query, made no answer; and, fingering the sou in his trouser-pocket, he trudged in the direction of the rue Ravignan. "The situation would look well in print," he reflected, "but the load under my arm should, dramatically, be a bundle of my own poems. Doubtless the matter will be put right by my biographer. I wonder if I can get half a bed from Goujaud?"

Encouraged by the thought of the painter's hospitality, he proceeded to the studio; but he was informed in sour tones that monsieur Goujaud would not sleep there that night.

"So much the better," he remarked, "for I can have all his bed, instead of half of it! Believe me, I shall put you to no trouble, madame."

"I believe it fully," answered the woman, "for you will not come inside--not monsieur Goujaud, nor you, nor any other of his vagabond friends. So, there!"

"Ah, is that how the wind blows--the fellow has not paid his rent?"

said Tricotrin. "How disgraceful of him, to be sure! Fortunately Sanquereau lives in the next house."

He pulled the bell there forthwith, and the peal had scarcely sounded when Sanquereau rushed to the door, crying, "Welcome, my Beautiful!"

"Mon Dieu, what worthless acquaintances I possess!" moaned the unhappy poet. "Since you are expecting your Beautiful I need not go into details."

"What on earth did you want?" muttered Sanquereau, crestfallen.

"I came to tell you the latest Stop Press news--Goujaud's landlord has turned him out and I have no bed to lie on. Au revoir!"

After another apostrophe to the heavens, "That inane moon, which makes no response, is beginning to get on my nerves," he soliloquised. "Let me see now! There is certainly master Criqueboeuf, but it is a long journey to the quartier Latin, and when I get there his social engagements may annoy me as keenly as Sanquereau's. It appears to me I am likely to try the open-air cure to-night. In the meanwhile I may as well find Miranda a seat and think things over."

Accordingly he bent his steps to the place Dancourt, and having deposited the incubus beside him, stretched his limbs on a bench beneath a tree. His att.i.tude, and his luxuriant locks, to say nothing of his melancholy aspect, rendered him a noticeable figure in the little square, and monsieur Pet.i.tpas, from Bordeaux, under the awning of the cafe opposite, stood regarding him with enthusiasm.

"Upon my word of honour," mused Pet.i.tpas, rubbing his hands, "I believe I see a Genius in the dumps! At last I behold the Paris of my dreams.

If I have read my Murger to any purpose, I am on the verge of an epoch.

What a delightful adventure!"