Le Cocu Part 45

I left my good friends early. Three days later I received a letter from Eugenie's banker; he informed me that she was temporarily at Aubonne, near Montmorency. So I knew where my daughter was, and that did me good; it always seems that we are less distant from people when we know where they are. I remembered that an old kinswoman of Eugenie's mother lived at Aubonne; she was probably living with her. I did not know whether she would remain there, but I determined to write to her at once.

I sat down at my desk. I did not know how to begin, for it was the first time that I had ever written to Eugenie. We had never been separated. I did not propose to indulge in any reproaches in regard to her conduct.

What good would it do? One should never complain, except when one is willing to forgive. I would go straight to the point, without beating about the bush.

"Madame, you have taken my daughter away; I wish, I insist, that she should remain with me. Keep your son; you can give him that name; but ought I too to call him my son? Take that child, and give me back my daughter. It will be no deprivation to you; besides, I will allow her to go to see her mother whenever you wish. I trust, madame, that I shall not be obliged to write to you a second time."

I signed this letter and sent it at once to the post; I was impatient to have a reply.

I could no longer attend to business, so I abandoned my profession. I had enough to live on, now that I no longer proposed to keep house or to receive company. But what should I do to employ the time, which is so long when one suffers? I would return to my brushes; yes, I would cultivate once more that consoling art; I would give myself up to it entirely, and it would make my time pa.s.s happily. That idea pleased me; it seemed to me like returning to my bachelor life. But for my children, I would have left France and have travelled for some time; but my daughter was still too young for me to subject her to changes of climate which might injure her health.

Two days had not pa.s.sed when I received a letter from Aubonne; it was Eugenie's reply. I trembled as I opened it.

"Monsieur, you are mistaken when you think that it would not be a great deprivation to me not to have my daughter with me; I love her just as dearly as you can possibly love her. As for your son, he is yours in fact, monsieur. You know my frankness, so you can believe what I tell you. Things will remain as they are; my daughter shall not leave me. Appeal to the law if you wish; nothing will change my determination.

"EUGeNIE."

I could hardly endure to read that letter. I was angry, furious. She had dishonored me, she had made me unhappy, and she refused to give me back my daughter! Ah! that woman had no pity, no delicacy of feeling! She loved her daughter, she said; yes, as she had loved me; she defied me, she told me to appeal to the law! Ah! if I could do it! if I had proofs of her crime to produce! But no; even if I could, she knew very well that I would not; that I did not propose that the courts should ring with my complaints, that my name should never be mentioned in society without being the subject of a jest. Yes, she knew me, and that is why she had no fear. She declared that her son was mine and she expected me to believe her word! No! I would never see that child again, I wanted never to hear his name. But my daughter--ah! I neither could nor wished to forget her.

For several days I was in a state of most intense excitement; I did not know what to do, nor what course to adopt. Sometimes I determined to go away, to leave France forever; but the thought of Henriette detained me; sometimes I determined to go back into society, to have mistresses, to pa.s.s my time with them, and to do my best to forget the past.

A profound prostration succeeded to that feverish excitement of my senses. I avoided society, I did not even go to Ernest's, although he had come several times to beg me to do so. Everything bored and tired me; I cared for nothing except to be alone, to think of my daughter. I hated and cursed her mother. Yes, I would go away, I would leave the country. What detained me there? I had no idea.

Several weeks pa.s.sed, and I do not now know how I lived. I went out early in order to avoid even Ernest's visits, for I became more misanthropical, more morose every day. I walked in solitary places, I returned early, and always ordered my concierge to say that I was not at home. My concierge was my servant also now; he took care of my apartment, which was wretchedly kept.

The house in which I was living suited me in many respects; it was gloomy and dark, like most of the old houses in the Marais, and contained but few tenants, I thought, for I never met anybody on the stairs. I had one neighbor, however, with whom I would gladly have dispensed; it was a man who lived in the attic rooms above my apartment, the house having only three floors in all.

That neighbor of mine was in the habit of beginning to sing as soon as he got home, which was ordinarily between ten and eleven o'clock at night; and I was forced to listen to his jovial refrains and drinking songs until he was in bed and asleep. It annoyed me; not because it prevented me from sleeping, for sleep never visited my eyes so early; but it disturbed me in my thoughts, in my reflections. I was inclined sometimes to complain to the concierge. But because I was unhappy, must I prevent others from being light-hearted?

For some days that music had become more unendurable than ever, because my neighbor had taken to returning much earlier, and his songs often began at eight o'clock. Although I never talked with my concierge, I decided to ask him who the man was who was always singing.

"Monsieur," the concierge replied, "he's a poor German, a tailor. I don't understand how he has the courage to sing, for he hasn't a sou, and apparently he never finds any work. That doesn't surprise me, for he is a drunkard and he works very badly. I gave him a pair of trousers, to make a coat for my son; and it was very badly made, without fit or style, and the patches all in front! I took my custom away from him.

However, he won't trouble you long; as he doesn't pay his rent, the landlord has decided to give him notice."

I informed the concierge that I did not wish the man to be sent away; but it seemed that the landlord cared for nothing but his rent. That evening, about eight o'clock, I heard the tailor singing with all his lungs; he executed trills and flourishes. Who would ever have believed that the man had not a sou?

I remembered the fable of the cobbler and the banker; suppose I should go to my neighbor and give him money to keep silent? But perhaps that would make him sing all the louder; for one could find few cobblers like the one in the fable. However, I yielded to the idea of going to my neighbor. If he was an obliging person, perhaps he would consent to sing not quite so loud. But I had little hope of it, for the Germans are obstinate and they are fond of music. Never mind, I would go to see the tailor none the less.

I ascended the stairs which separated me from the attic. My neighbor's voice guided me to his door. The key was on the outside, but for all that I knocked before opening the door.

He continued to sing a pa.s.sage from _Der Freischutz_, and did not reply; thereupon I opened the door.

I entered a room in which there was a mattress with a wretched coverlid thrown over it, in one corner. A rickety chair, a few broken jars and a long board which served doubtless as a table, but which was then standing against the wall--that was all the furniture. Leaning on the sill of the window, which was open, was a man, still young, whose good-humored, bloated face was not unfamiliar to me. He was in his shirt sleeves, and was seated after the manner of tailors, with his knees outside the window, a position which made him likely to fall into the courtyard at the slightest forward movement.

On my arrival he stopped in the middle of a trill and exclaimed:

"h.e.l.lo! I thought it was the concierge to ask for money again. I should have said to him: 'prout, prout!' Sit you down, monsieur."

I sat down, for my neighbor seemed quite unceremonious; he had not risen. I do not know whether he thought that I had come to hear him sing; but he seemed inclined to resume his performance. I stopped him at once.

"Monsieur, I am your neighbor."

"Indeed! you are my neighbor, are you? Beside me or below?"

"Below."

"Oh, yes! it's a fact that on this floor there's n.o.body but the cooks of the house, all old women, unluckily. They don't sing, they don't make love, they don't know how to make anything but sauces,--reduced consommes, as the one from the first floor says. For my part, I would give all her consommes for a bottle of beaune. Ah! how delicious beaune is! If I had any, I would give you some; but it is three days now that I haven't drunk anything but water. Prout, prout! I must make the best of it."

While the tailor was talking, I examined him, because I was confident that I had seen him somewhere before, but I could not remember where.

"Have you come to order trousers or a coat?" continued my neighbor. "It is just, the right time, for I have nothing to do, and I will make 'em up for you at once, and in the latest style, although that miserable concierge presumed to complain of my skill. The idiot! he wanted me to make a new coat for his son out of an old pair of breeches that had already been turned three times."

"I have not come for a coat or a waistcoat, but to make a request of you."

"A request?"

"You sing a great deal, monsieur."

"Parbleu! I have nothing else to do."

"You sing very well, certainly."

"Yes, I have some voice; we Germans are all musicians; it is born in us."

"I know it; but do you think that for a person who works with his brain, who is obliged to think, to reflect, it is very pleasant to hear someone singing all the time?"

"What has all that got to do with me?"

"Look you, monsieur, I will come to the point; your singing inconveniences and annoys me; and if you would be obliging enough to sing less, or not so loud, I would beg you to take this as a slight token of my grat.i.tude."

I had taken my purse from my pocket and I was looking about for something to put it on, which was hard to find, unless I should put it on the floor, when the tailor, who had abruptly left the window and begun to dance about the room, strode toward me with a frown.

"I say, monsieur from below, who don't like music, do I look to you like a man who asks alms? Who gave you leave to come to my room and insult me? Has Pettermann ever been called a beggar?"

"Pettermann!" I said, looking at him more carefully; "is your name Pettermann?"

"Schnick Pettermann, journeyman tailor from the age of fifteen. I have never succeeded in getting to be a master tailor. It isn't my fault.

Well, when will you finish staring me out of countenance?"

"Yes, I know now; you used to live on Rue Meslay."

"I think so, but I have moved so often that I can hardly remember all the rooms that I have occupied!"

"Don't you remember that little room that you used to climb into so often through the window in the roof, after breaking the gla.s.s, because you had lost your key?"

"Ah! I remember now, there was a broad gutter; it was very convenient, I used to walk on it."

"And that young neighbor of yours in whose room you used to light your candle?"