The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter. Henri Murger
eternities?”
Just then his eyes fell on his desk. The pen seemed to fidget, as if to say, “Work!”
“Work, ah yes! A plague take prose! . . . I will not stay here, the place stinks of ink.”
He installed himself in a café where he was quite sure of meeting none of his friends. “They would see that I am in love,” he told himself, “and shape my ideal in advance for me.” So after a succinct repast Rodolphe hastened to the railway station, took the train, and in half an hour was out in the woods of Ville d’Avray. There set at freedom in a world grown young with spring, he spent the whole day in walking about, and only came back to Paris at nightfall.
First of all Rodolphe put the temple in order for the reception of the idol; then he dressed himself for the occasion, regretting as he did so that a white costume was out of the question.
From seven o’clock till eight he suffered from a sharp, feverish attack of suspense. The slow torture recalled old days to his mind, and the ancient loves which lent them charm. And, faithful to his habit, he fell a-dreaming of a heroic passion, a ten-volume love, a perfect lyrical poem, with moonlit nights and sunsets and meetings under the willow tree and sighs and jealousy and all the rest of it. It was always the same with him whenever chance threw a woman in his way; nor did the fair one ever quit him without an aureole about her head and a necklet of tears.
“They would much prefer a hat or a pair of shoes,” remonstrated his friends, but Rodolphe was obdurate, nor hitherto had his tolerably numerous blunders cured him. He was always on the lookout for a woman who should consent to pose as his idol; an angel in velvet to whom he might indite sonnets on willow leaves at his leisure.
At last the “hallowed hour” struck, and as Rodolphe heard the last stroke sound with a sonorous clang of bell metal, it seemed to him that he saw the alabaster Cupid and Psyche above his timepiece arise and fall into each other’s arms. And at that very moment somebody gave a couple of timid taps on his door.
Rodolphe went to open it, and there stood Louise.
“I have kept my word, you see,” she said.
Rodolphe drew the curtains and lighted a new wax candle; and the girl meanwhile took off her hat and shawl and laid them on the bed. The dazzling whiteness of the sheets drew a smile and something like a blush.
Louise was charming rather than pretty, with a piquant mixture of simplicity and mischief in her face, somehow suggesting one of Greuze’s themes treated by Gavarni. All her winning girlish charm was still further heightened by a toilette which, simple though it was, showed that she understood the science of coquetry, a science innate in every woman, from her first long clothes to her wedding-dress. Louise appeared, besides, to have made a special study of the theory of attitudes; for as Rodolphe looked at her more closely with an artist’s eye, she tried for his benefit a great variety of graceful poses, the charm of her movements being for the most part of the studied order. The slenderness of her daintily shod feet, however, left nothing to be desired—not even by a Romantic with a fancy for the miniature proportions of the Andalusians or Chinese; as for her hands, it was plain from their delicate texture that they did no work, and indeed for the past six months they had had nothing to fear from needle pricks. To tell the whole truth, Louise was one of the birds of passage whom fancy, or oftener still necessity, leads to make their nest for a day, or rather for a night, in some garret in the Latin Quarter, where they will sometimes stay for several days, held willing captives by a riband or a whim.
After an hour’s chat with Louise, Rodolphe pointed by way of example to the Cupid and Psyche.
“Is that Paul and Virginia?” asked she.
“Yes,” said Rodolphe, unwilling to vex her by a contradiction at the outset.
“It is very like,” returned Louise.
“Alas!” sighed Rodolphe as he looked at her, “the poor child has not very much literature. I feel sure that she only knows the orthography of the heart, which knows no ‘s’ in the plural. I must buy her a grammar.”
While he thus meditated, Louise complained that her shoes hurt her, and he obligingly was helping her to unlace them, when all on a sudden the light went out.
“There!” exclaimed Rodolphe, “who can have blown out the candle?”
A joyous burst of laughter answered him.
Some days later Rodolphe met a friend who accosted him in the street.
“Why, what are you doing? You have dropped out of sight.”
“Making poetry out of my own experience,” returned Rodolphe, and the unfortunate young man told the truth.
He had asked more of Louise than the poor child could give him. Your little hurdy-gurdy cannot give out the notes of the lyre, and Louise used to talk, as one may say, the patois of love, while Rodolphe insisted that she should use poetical language. So they understood each other somewhat imperfectly.
A week later, at the very dancing saloon where she met Rodolphe, Louise came across a fair-haired young fellow, who danced a good many dances with her and ended by taking her home.
He was a second-year student; he spoke the prose language of pleasure very well; he had fine eyes, and pockets that jingled musically.
Louise asked him for paper and ink, and wrote Rodolphe a letter thus conceived:—
“Dont count on mee any more. One larst kiss and goodbye.—LOUISE.”
As Rodolphe read this epistle that night, when he came in, the light suddenly went out.
“There!” he said to himself meditatively, “that is the very candle which I lighted when Louise came that evening; it is fitting that it should burn out now that all is over between us. If I had only known, I would have chosen a longer one,” he added, with a ring in his voice, half vexation, half regret, and he laid Louise’s note in a drawer, which he was wont at times to call the catacombs of his dead love affairs.
One day when Rodolphe was with Marcel he picked up a scrap of paper off the floor to light his pipe, and recognised Louise’s handwriting and spelling.
“I possess an autograph of the same writer,” he remarked to his friend, “only in mine there are two fewer mistakes in spelling. Does that not show that she loved me better?”
“It proves that you are a fool,” returned Marcel; “white arms and shoulders have no need of grammar.”
IV
ALI RODOLPHE
OR, THE INVOLUNTARY TURK
OSTRACISED by a churlish landlord, Rodolphe led for a time a nomad life, doing his best to perfect himself in the arts of sleeping supperless, and supping without a bed to follow, with Chance for his chef, and the ground open to the stars for his lodging. No cloud wandered more than he.
Still amid these painful cross events two things did not desert him—to wit, his good humour and the manuscript of The Avenger, a tragedy which had made the rounds of all the likely openings for dramatic talent in Paris.
But one day, as it befell, Rodolphe, having been conducted to the “jug” for a choregraphic performance a trifle too weird for public taste, found himself face to face with an uncle, a genuine uncle whom he had not seen for an age, in the shape of one Monetti, a stove manufacturer, an authority on chimneys, and a sergeant in the National Guard to boot.
Touched by his nephew’s misfortunes, Uncle Monetti promised to mend matters; how, we shall presently see, if the ascent of six pairs of stairs does not dismay the reader.
So let us grasp the handrail and climb. . . . Ouf! one hundred and twenty-five steps! Here we are. One step more takes us into the room, another would bring us out at the other side. The place is perhaps small, but it is high up, and besides there s good air up there and a fine view.
The furniture consists of a good selection of chimney