Chapter 19

MY FIRST NIGHT IN PARIS (continued)

He was holding out his hand timidly, as if to bid me good-bye.

"Oh, but," said I, "we must not part so soon. Can you not come and have some dinner with me? What are you doing?"

He looked at a big clock over a café on the opposite side of the way, and sighed. It pointed to a quarter to nine. He was due at La Closerie de Lilas at ten; he was a member of the band; there was a students' fancy-dress ball that night, and he evidently hated the business, though he said no word of complaint. Poor Franzius! Simple soul, poet and peasant, child of a woodcutter in Hartz, condemned to live by the gift that God had given him, just as one might imagine some child condemned to live by the sale of some lovely toy, the present of an Emperor—what a fate his was, forever surrounded by the flare of gas, the clatter of beer-mugs, and the fœtid life of music-hall and café-chantant!

"Come," I said. And, taking him by the arm, I led him into the nearest café.

You could dine here sumptuously for 1 franc 50, wine included. We found a vacant table; and as we waited for our soup the heart in me was touched at the way the world and the years had treated this friend who was part of the romance of my life; for the pitiless gaslight showed up all—the coat so old and frayed, yet still, somehow, respectable; the face showing lines that ought never to have been there. I hugged myself at the thought of my money, and what I could do for him. But in this I reckoned without Franzius.

He was hungry, and he enjoyed his dinner frankly, and like a child. He had the whole bottle of wine to himself. He had not had such a dinner for a long time, and he said so. Then I gave him the best cigar the café could supply, a black affair that smelt like burning rags, and we wandered out of the café, he, at least in outward appearance, the happiest man in Paris.

"And the Closerie de Lilas?" said I, when we were on the pavement.

"Ah, oui!" sighed Franzius, coming back from the paradise of digestion. "It is true that I should be getting there, and we must say good-bye."

"You said it was a fancy-dress ball?"

"Yes."

"I'd have gone with you only for that."

"But you will do as you are!" cried he, his face lighting up with pleasure at the thought of bringing me along with him. "Ma foi! it is not altogether fancy-dress, for Messieurs les Étudiants have not always the money to spend on dress. People go as they like."

"Very well," I replied. "Allons!" And we started.

When we reached our destination people were arriving fast, and there was a good deal of noise. A Japanese lantern was going in, and a cabinet was being put out by two grave-faced gendarmes. The cabinet was shouting, laughing, and protesting; at least, the head was that was stuck out of the top of it, and belonged presumably to the two legs that appeared below. It was very funny and fantastic, the gravity of the officers of the law contrasting so quaintly with the business they were about. Inside the big saloon all was light and colour and laughter, the band was tuning up, and Franzius rushed to the orchestra, promising to see me before I went.

I leaned against the wall and looked around me.

What a scene! Monkeys, goats, cabbages, pierrots, pierrettes, men in everyday clothes, girls in dominoes—and very little else—and then, boom, boom! the band broke into a waltz, and set the whole fantastic scene whirling. A girl, dressed as a bonbon, danced up to me, nearly kicked me in the face, and danced off again, seizing a carrot by the waist and whirling around with him. Too lame to join in the revelry, I watched, leaning against the wall and feeling horribly alone amidst all this gaiety.

I was standing like this when a fresh eruption of guests burst into the room—two men and three girls, all friends evidently, and linked together arm-in-arm.

It was well I had the wall behind me to lean against, for one of the girls, a lovely blonde, dressed as a shepherdess, was the Countess Feliciani!

The woman I had lost my heart to as a child, the woman I had seen touched by premature old age in the little sitting-room of the Hôtel de Mayence, the same woman rejuvenated, and turned by some magic wand into a girl of eighteen, laughing and joyous.

I gazed at this prodigy; and the prodigy, who had unlinked herself from her companions, was now whirling before me in the waltz, in the arms of a grenadier with a cock's feather stuck in his hat, and totally unconscious of the commotion she had raised in my breast.

"You aren't dancing?"

"No," I said. "I'm lame."

She looked at me to see if I were serious or not; then she made a grimace, and linked her arm in mine. It was the bonbon girl. The dance was over, and the carrot had vanished to the bar, without, it seems, offering her refreshment. She had beady, black eyes, a low forehead, and rather thick lips.

"That's bad," said she, "to be lame. Let us take a stroll." And she led me towards the bar.

How many times I led that damsel, or rather was led by her towards the bar during the evening, I can't tell. After every dance she came to me and commiserated me on my lameness. She was not in great request, it seems, as a partner, dancing with anybody she could seize upon, and coming to me, as to a drinking fountain, to allay her thirst. I did not care. I scarcely heeded. All my mind was absorbed by the girl, the marvellous girl with the golden hair, who was the Countess Feliciani reborn.

"Do you know her name?" I asked the bonbon on one of our strolls in search of refreshment.

"Whose? Oh, that doll with the yellow hair? Know her name? Why, the whole quarter knows her name. Marie—what's this it is? She's a model at Cardillac's. A brandy for me, with some ice in it. Hurry up! There's the band beginning again."

The ball had now become infected by the element of riot. Scarcely had the music struck up than it ceased. Shrill screams, shouts, and sounds of scuffling came from the saloon, and, leaving the bonbon, who seemed quite unconcerned, to finish her brandy, I ran out and nearly into the arms of two gendarmes, who were making for the centre of the floor, where the carrot and the grenadier with the cock's feather were engaged in mortal combat. A ring of shouting spectators surrounded the combatants, and amidst them stood the shepherdess, weeping.

She had been dancing with the grenadier, it seems, when they had cannoned against the carrot and his partner. Hence the blows. Scarcely had the gendarmes seized upon the combatants than someone struck a chandelier. The crash and the shower of glass were like a signal. Shouts, shrieks, the crowing of cocks, the blowing of horns seized from the orchestra, the smash of glass, the crash of benches overthrown, filled the air.

The lights went out; someone hit me a blow on the head that made me see a thousand stars; and then I was in the street, with someone on my arm, someone I had seized and rescued; and the great white moon of May was lighting us, and the street, and the entry to the Closerie de Lilas, that beer-garden that the police had now seized upon and bottled. We had only just escaped in time. More and more gendarmes were hurrying up; and speechless, like deer who scent the hunters on the tracks, we ran, our shadows running before us, as if leading the way.

"We are safe here," I said, glad to pull up, for my lameness did not lend grace to my running. "We are safe here. Those gendarmes are so busy with the others, they have no time to run after us."

She had been crying when I pulled her out of the turmoil. She was laughing now.

"Oh, mon Dieu!" said she. "That Changarnier! Never will I dance with him again."

"Who is Changarnier?" I asked, looking at the lock of golden hair that had fallen loose on her shoulder, and which the moonlight was silvering, just as sorrow had silvered the hair of the once beautiful Countess Feliciani.

"He is a beast!" replied she. "Is my dress torn?" She held out her dress by a finger and thumb on either side, and rotated before me solemnly in the moonlight, so that I might examine it back and front.

"No," I said; "it is not torn, but you have lost your crook."

"Yes," replied the shepherdess; "but I have found my sheep. Oh, I saw you looking at me. You followed me with your eyes the whole evening. You made Changarnier furious; he said you were an aristocrat. Who are you, M. l'Aristocrat?"

"And you?"

"I am a shepherdess. And you?"

"I am an aristocrat."

She laughed, put her arm in mine, and we walked, the great moon casting our shadows before us.

"If we go this way," said she, "we can get something to eat. This is the Rue Petit Thouars. Are you hungry?"

"Are you?"

"Famished. Have you any money?"

"Lots."

"Good. Ah, yes; I saw you watching me. And, do you know, my friend, I have seen you before, or someone like you—and you look so friendly. Indeed, I would have spoken to you but for Changarnier. He is so jealous! You are lame?"

"Yes, I am lame."

"Then," said she, "I can never have met you before, for I have never known a lame man. But here we are."

She led the way into a small café. The place was crowded enough, but we managed to get a seat. The people at the supper were mostly the remnants of the fancy-dress ball that had escaped from the police.

I ordered everything that the place could supply, and I watched her as she ate.

She was very beautiful; quite the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, with the exception of the Countess Feliciani.

"You are not drinking. Why, you are not eating! What is the matter with you, M. l'Aristocrat?"

"I am in love," replied I.

She laughed.

A Red Indian, who was supping at the next table with a grizzly bear who had taken his head off to eat more conveniently, spoke to her occasionally over his shoulder, giving details of their escape; and I was glad enough when the bill was presented, and we wandered out again into the street.

The supper had put her in the highest spirits. She laughed at our fantastic shadows as we walked arm-in-arm down the silent Rue Petit Thouars. She chatted, not noticing my silence: told me of Cardillac's studio, and the "rapins," and the rules, and the life, and what her dress cost. "Thirty-five francs the material alone, for I made it myself. Do you admire it?"

"Yes."

"Oh, how dull you are! Yes! You ought to have said: 'Mademoiselle, your toilet is charming.' Now, repeat it after me."

"Mademoiselle, your toilet is charming."

"Good heavens! If a hearse could speak, it would speak like that. You are not gay. Never mind; you are all the nicer. Ah!" And she fell into a sentimental and despondent fit, drawing closer to me, so that our shadows made one.

Then, at a door in a side street, down which we had turned, she stopped, and drew a key from her pocket.

"I must see you again," I said. "It is absolutely necessary. When can I see you, and where?"

The door was open now. She drew me close to her, as if to whisper something, but she whispered nothing. Our lips had met in the darkness.

Then I was in the hall; the door was closed, and, following her, I was led up a steep staircase, past a landing, up another staircase to a door. She opened the door, and the moonlight struck us in the face. The great moon was framed in the lattice window, and against its face the fronds of a plant growing on the sill in a flower pot were silhouetted. The bare, poorly furnished room was filled with light, pure as driven snow.

She shut the door, with a little laugh, and I took her in my arms.

"Eloise!" I said.

She pushed me away, and stared at me with the laugh withered on her lips. Never shall I forget her face.

"Have you forgotten Toto?"

"Toto! Who—where——" Recollections were rushing upon her, but she did not yet understand. She seemed straining to catch some distant voice.

"The Castle of Lichtenberg, the pine forests, little Carl. I tried to find you, but you were gone—years ago. I was only a child, and I could not find you. But I have found you now!"

She was clinging to me, sobbing wildly; and I made her sit down on the side of the little bed. Then I sat by her, holding her whilst the sobs seemed to tear her to pieces.

"I knew you," she said at last. "I knew you, but I did not recollect—little Toto! How could I tell?"

Ah, yes, how could she tell? Through the miserable veils that lay between her and that happy time, the past seemed vague to her as a dream of earliest childhood.

Then, bit by bit, with her head on my shoulder, the miserable tale unfolded itself. The Countess Feliciani had died when Eloise was fifteen. They were in the greatest poverty, living in the Rue St. Lazare. It was the old, old, wicked, weary story that makes us doubt at times the existence of a God.

A model at Cardillac's and this wretched room. That was the story.

We had entered that room a man and woman, the woman with a laugh on her lips. We sat on the side of the bed together—two children. Children just as we were that day sitting by the pond in the woods of Lichtenberg, with little Carl and his drum.

For Eloise had never grown up. The thing she was then in heart and spirit she was now.

Then, as the moon drew away slowly, and the room grew darker, we talked: and I can fancy how the evil ones who are for ever about us covered their faces and cowered as they listened and watched.

"And little Carl?" asked Eloise. "Where is he?"

The question, spoken in the semi-darkness, caused a shiver to run through me.

"Who knows?" I said. "Or what he is doing? Eloise, I am half afraid. I met a man to-night, a musician; he saw me at the Schloss that time which seems so long ago. He spoke about Carl, and then I came with him to the ball. Only for him, I would not have met you, and it all seems like fate. Let us talk of ourselves. You can't stay here in this house: you must leave it to-morrow. I will arrange everything. I am rich. Think of it!"

She laughed and clung closer to me. Despite her bitter experiences, she had no more real knowledge of the world than myself. Money was a thing to amuse oneself with—a thing very hard to obtain.

"You will leave this place and live in the country. You will never go to Cardillac's again. Think, Eloise; it is May! You never see the country here in Paris. The hawthorn is out, and the woods at Etiolles are more beautiful than the forest was at Lichtenberg. Why, you are crying!"

"I am crying because I am happy," said she, whispering the words against my shoulder.

Then I left her.

I cannot tell you my feelings. I cannot put them into words. It was as if I had seen Moloch face to face, seen the brazen monster in the Square of Carthage, seen the officiating priests and the little veiled children seized by the brazen arms and plunged in the burning stomach.

I had seen that day Eloise Feliciani, the living child, and Amy Feraud, the cinder remnants of a child consumed; and God in His mercy had given me power to seize Eloise from the monster, scorched, indeed, but living.

I found the Boulevard St. Michel almost deserted now, and took my way along it to the Seine.

"What are you to do with her?"

That is the question I would have asked myself had I been a man of the world. But I knew nothing of the world or the convenances. I was not in love with her. Had I met her for the first time that night it might have been different; but for me she was just the child of Lichtenberg, the little figure I had last seen standing at the door of the Hôtel de Mayence, holding in her arms the black cat with the amber eyes.

What was I to do with her? I had already made up my mind. I would put her to live in the Pavilion of Saluce. I had not a real friend in the world except old Joubert, or a thing to love. I would be no longer lonely. What good times we would have!

I leaned over the parapet of the Pont des Arts, looking at the river, all lilac in the dawn, thinking of the woods at Saluce, and watching myself in fancy wandering there with Eloise.

Then I returned to the Place Vendôme. It was very late, or, rather, very early; and before our house a carriage was drawn up, and from it M. le Vicomte Armand de Chatellan was being assisted.

He had only just returned from the Duc de Bassano's, and he was very tipsy. He was an object lesson to vulgar tipplers. Severe and stately, assisted by Beril on one side and the footman on the other, the grand old aristocrat marched towards the door he could not see.

I watched the pro-consular silhouette vanish. One could almost hear the murmur of the togaed crowd and the "Consul Romanus" of the lictors.