CHAPTER III

The travellers

As Pierrotin issued from the Cafe de l'Echiquier, after treating the

valet, he saw in the gate-way of the Lion d'Argent the lady and the

young man in whom his perspicacity at once detected customers, for the

lady with outstretched neck and anxious face was evidently looking for

him. She was dressed in a black-silk gown that was dyed, a brown

bonnet, an old French cashmere shawl, raw-silk stockings, and low

shoes; and in her hand she carried a straw bag and a blue umbrella.

This woman, who had once been beautiful, seemed to be about forty

years of age; but her blue eyes, deprived of the fire which happiness

puts there, told plainly that she had long renounced the world. Her

dress, as well as her whole air and demeanor, indicated a mother

wholly devoted to her household and her son. If the strings of her

bonnet were faded, the shape betrayed that it was several years old.

The shawl was fastened by a broken needle converted into a pin by a

bead of sealing-wax. She was waiting impatiently for Pierrotin,

wishing to recommend to his special care her son, who was doubtless

travelling for the first time, and with whom she had come to the

coach-office as much from doubt of his ability as from maternal

affection.

This mother was in every way completed by the son, so that the son

would not be understood without the mother. If the mother condemned

herself to mended gloves, the son wore an olive-green coat with

sleeves too short for him, proving that he had grown, and might grow

still more, like other adults of eighteen or nineteen years of age.

The blue trousers, mended by his mother, presented to the eye a

brighter patch of color when the coat-tails maliciously parted behind

him.

"Don't rub your gloves that way, you'll spoil them," she was saying as

Pierrotin appeared. "Is this the conductor? Ah! Pierrotin, is it you?"

she exclaimed, leaving her son and taking the coachman apart a few

steps.

"I hope you're well, Madame Clapart," he replied, with an air that

expressed both respect and familiarity.

"Yes, Pierrotin, very well. Please take good care of my Oscar; he is

travelling alone for the first time."

"Oh! so he is going alone to Monsieur Moreau!" cried Pierrotin, for

the purpose of finding out whether he were really going there.

"Yes," said the mother.

"Then Madame Moreau is willing?" returned Pierrotin, with a sly look.

"Ah!" said the mother, "it will not be all roses for him, poor child!

But his future absolutely requires that I should send him."

This answer struck Pierrotin, who hesitated to confide his fears for

the steward to Madame Clapart, while she, on her part, was afraid of

injuring her boy if she asked Pierrotin for a care which might have

transformed him into a mentor. During this short deliberation, which

was ostensibly covered by a few phrases as to the weather, the

journey, and the stopping-places along the road, we will ourselves

explain what were the ties that united Madame Clapart with Pierrotin,

and authorized the two confidential remarks which they have just

exchanged.

Often--that is to say, three or four times a month--Pierrotin, on his

way to Paris, would find the steward on the road near La Cave. As soon

as the vehicle came up, Moreau would sign to a gardener, who, with

Pierrotin's help, would put upon the coach either one or two baskets

containing the fruits and vegetables of the season, chickens, eggs,

butter, and game. The steward always paid the carriage and Pierrotin's

fee, adding the money necessary to pay the toll at the barriere, if

the baskets contained anything dutiable. These baskets, hampers, or

packages, were never directed to any one. On the first occasion, which

served for all others, the steward had given Madame Clapart's address

by word of mouth to the discreet Pierrotin, requesting him never to

deliver to others the precious packages. Pierrotin, impressed with the

idea of an intrigue between the steward and some pretty girl, had gone

as directed to number 7 rue de la Cerisaie, in the Arsenal quarter,

and had there found the Madame Clapart just portrayed, instead of the

young and beautiful creature he expected to find.

The drivers of public conveyances and carriers are called by their

business to enter many homes, and to be cognizant of many secrets; but

social accident, that sub-providence, having willed that they be

without education and devoid of the talent of observation, it follows

that they are not dangerous. Nevertheless, at the end of a few months,

Pierrotin was puzzled to explain the exact relations of Monsieur

Moreau and Madame Clapart from what he saw of the household in the rue

de la Cerisaie. Though lodgings were not dear at that time in the

Arsenal quarter, Madame Clapart lived on a third floor at the end of a

court-yard, in a house which was formerly that of a great family, in

the days when the higher nobility of the kingdom lived on the ancient

site of the Palais des Tournelles and the hotel Saint-Paul. Toward the

end of the sixteenth century, the great seigneurs divided among

themselves these vast spaces, once occupied by the gardens of the

kings of France, as indicated by the present names of the streets,--

Cerisaie, Beautreillis, des Lions, etc. Madame Clapart's apartment,

which was panelled throughout with ancient carvings, consisted of

three connecting rooms, a dining-room, salon, and bedroom. Above it

was the kitchen, and a bedroom for Oscar. Opposite to the entrance, on

what is called in Paris "le carre,"--that is, the square landing,--was

the door of a back room, opening, on every floor, into a sort of tower

built of rough stone, in which was also the well for the staircase.

This was the room in which Moreau slept whenever he went to Paris.

Pierrotin had seen in the first room, where he deposited the hampers,

six wooden chairs with straw seats, a table, and a sideboard; at the

windows, discolored curtains. Later, when he entered the salon, he

noticed some old Empire furniture, now shabby; but only as much as all

proprietors exact to secure their rent. Pierrotin judged of the

bedroom by the salon and dining-room. The wood-work, painted coarsely

of a reddish white, which thickened and blurred the mouldings and

figurines, far from being ornamental, was distressing to the eye. The

floors, never waxed, were of that gray tone we see in boarding-

schools. When Pierrotin came upon Monsieur and Madame Clapart at their

meals he saw that their china, glass, and all other little articles

betrayed the utmost poverty; and yet, though the chipped and mended

dishes and tureens were those of the poorest families and provoked

pity, the forks and spoons were of silver.

Monsieur Clapart, clothed in a shabby surtout, his feet in broken

slippers, always wore green spectacles, and exhibited, whenever he

removed his shabby cap of a bygone period, a pointed skull, from the

top of which trailed a few dirty filaments which even a poet could

scarcely call hair. This man, of wan complexion, seemed timorous, but

withal tyrannical.

In this dreary apartment, which faced the north and had no other

outlook than to a vine on the opposite wall and a well in the corner

of the yard, Madame Clapart bore herself with the airs of a queen, and

moved like a woman unaccustomed to go anywhere on foot. Often, while

thanking Pierrotin, she gave him glances which would have touched to

pity an intelligent observer; from time to time she would slip a

twelve-sous piece into his hand, and then her voice was charming.

Pierrotin had never seen Oscar, for the reason that the boy was always

in school at the time his business took him to the house.

Here is the sad story which Pierrotin could never have discovered,

even by asking for information, as he sometimes did, from the portress

of the house; for that individual knew nothing beyond the fact that

the Claparts paid a rent of two hundred and fifty francs a year, had

no servant but a charwoman who came daily for a few hours in the

morning, that Madame Clapart did some of her smaller washing herself,

and paid the postage on her letters daily, being apparently unable to

let the sum accumulate.

There does not exist, or rather, there seldom exists, a criminal who

is wholly criminal. Neither do we ever meet with a dishonest nature

which is completely dishonest. It is possible for a man to cheat his

master to his own advantage, or rake in for himself alone all the hay

in the manger, but, even while laying up capital by actions more or

less illicit, there are few men who never do good ones. If only from

self-love, curiosity, or by way of variety, or by chance, every man

has his moment of beneficence; he may call it his error, he may never

do it again, but he sacrifices to Goodness, as the most surly man

sacrifices to the Graces once or twice in his life. If Moreau's faults

can ever be excused, it might be on the score of his persistent

kindness in succoring a woman of whose favors he had once been proud,

and in whose house he was hidden when in peril of his life.

This woman, celebrated under the Directory for her liaison with one of

the five kings of that reign, married, through that all-powerful

protection, a purveyor who was making his millions out of the

government, and whom Napoleon ruined in 1802. This man, named Husson,

became insane through his sudden fall from opulence to poverty; he

flung himself into the Seine, leaving the beautiful Madame Husson

pregnant. Moreau, very intimately allied with Madame Husson, was at

that time condemned to death; he was unable therefore to marry the

widow, being forced to leave France. Madame Husson, then twenty-two

years old, married in her deep distress a government clerk named

Clapart, aged twenty-seven, who was said to be a rising man. At that

period of our history, government clerks were apt to become persons of

importance; for Napoleon was ever on the lookout for capacity. But

Clapart, though endowed by nature with a certain coarse beauty, proved

to have no intelligence. Thinking Madame Husson very rich, he feigned

a great passion for her, and was simply saddled with the impossibility

of satisfying either then or in the future the wants she had acquired

in a life of opulence. He filled, very poorly, a place in the Treasury

that gave him a salary of eighteen hundred francs; which was all the

new household had to live on. When Moreau returned to France as the

secretary of the Comte de Serizy he heard of Madame Husson's pitiable

condition, and he was able, before his own marriage, to get her an

appointment as head-waiting-woman to Madame Mere, the Emperor's

mother. But in spite of that powerful protection Clapart was never

promoted; his incapacity was too apparent.

Ruined in 1815 by the fall of the Empire, the brilliant Aspasia of the

Directory had no other resources than Clapart's salary of twelve

hundred francs from a clerkship obtained for him through the Comte de

Serizy. Moreau, the only protector of a woman whom he had known in

possession of millions, obtained a half-scholarship for her son, Oscar

Husson, at the school of Henri IV.; and he sent her regularly, by

Pierrotin, such supplies from the estate at Presles as he could

decently offer to a household in distress.

Oscar was the whole life and all the future of his mother. The poor

woman could now be reproached with no other fault than her exaggerated

tenderness for her boy,--the bete-noire of his step-father. Oscar was,

unfortunately, endowed by nature with a foolishness his mother did not

perceive, in spite of the step-father's sarcasms. This foolishness--

or, to speak more specifically, this overweening conceit--so troubled

Monsieur Moreau that he begged Madame Clapart to send the boy down to

him for a month that he might study his character, and find out what

career he was fit for. Moreau was really thinking of some day

proposing Oscar to the count as his successor.

But to give to the devil and to God what respectively belongs to them,

perhaps it would be well to show the causes of Oscar Husson's silly

self-conceit, premising that he was born in the household of Madame

Mere. During his early childhood his eyes were dazzled by imperial

splendors. His pliant imagination retained the impression of those

gorgeous scenes, and nursed the images of a golden time of pleasure in

hopes of recovering them. The natural boastfulness of school-boys

(possessed of a desire to outshine their mates) resting on these

memories of his childhood was developed in him beyond all measure. It

may also have been that his mother at home dwelt too fondly on the

days when she herself was a queen in Directorial Paris. At any rate,

Oscar, who was now leaving school, had been made to bear many

humiliations which the paying pupils put upon those who hold

scholarships, unless the scholars are able to impose respect by

superior physical ability.

This mixture of former splendor now departed, of beauty gone, of blind

maternal love, of sufferings heroically borne, made the mother one of

those pathetic figures which catch the eye of many an observer in

Paris.

Incapable, naturally, of understanding the real attachment of Moreau

to this woman, or that of the woman for the man she had saved in 1797,

now her only friend, Pierrotin did not think it best to communicate

the suspicion that had entered his head as to some danger which was

threatening Moreau. The valet's speech, "We have enough to do in this

world to look after ourselves," returned to his mind, and with it came

that sentiment of obedience to what he called the "chefs de file,"--

the front-rank men in war, and men of rank in peace. Besides, just now

Pierrotin's head was as full of his own stings as there are five-franc

pieces in a thousand francs. So that the "Very good, madame,"

"Certainly, madame," with which he replied to the poor mother, to whom

a trip of twenty miles appeared a journey, showed plainly that he

desired to get away from her useless and prolix instructions.

"You will be sure to place the packages so that they cannot get wet if

the weather should happen to change."

"I've a hood," replied Pierrotin. "Besides, see, madame, with what

care they are being placed."

"Oscar, don't stay more than two weeks, no matter how much they may

ask you," continued Madame Clapart, returning to her son. "You can't

please Madame Moreau, whatever you do; besides, you must be home by

the end of September. We are to go to Belleville, you know, to your

uncle Cardot."

"Yes, mamma."

"Above all," she said, in a low voice, "be sure never to speak about

servants; keep thinking all the time that Madame Moreau was once a

waiting-maid."

"Yes, mamma."

Oscar, like all youths whose vanity is excessively ticklish, seemed

annoyed at being lectured on the threshold of the Lion d'Argent.

"Well, now good-bye, mamma. We shall start soon; there's the horse all

harnessed."

The mother, forgetting that she was in the open street, embraced her

Oscar, and said, smiling, as she took a little roll from her basket:--

"Tiens! you were forgetting your roll and the chocolate! My child,

once more, I repeat, don't take anything at the inns; they'd make you

pay for the slightest thing ten times what it is worth."

Oscar would fain have seen his mother farther off as she stuffed the

bread and chocolate into his pocket. The scene had two witnesses,--two

young men a few years older than Oscar, better dressed than he,

without a mother hanging on to them, whose actions, dress, and ways

all betokened that complete independence which is the one desire of a

lad still tied to his mother's apron-strings.

"He said MAMMA!" cried one of the new-comers, laughing.

The words reached Oscar's ears and drove him to say, "Good-bye,

mother!" in a tone of terrible impatience.

Let us admit that Madame Clapart spoke too loudly, and seemed to wish

to show to those around them her tenderness for the boy.

"What is the matter with you, Oscar?" asked the poor hurt woman. "I

don't know what to make of you," she added in a severe tone, fancying

herself able to inspire him with respect,--a great mistake made by

those who spoil their children. "Listen, my Oscar," she said, resuming

at once her tender voice, "you have a propensity to talk, and to tell

all you know, and all that you don't know; and you do it to show off,

with the foolish vanity of a mere lad. Now, I repeat, endeavor to keep

your tongue in check. You are not sufficiently advanced in life, my

treasure, to be able to judge of the persons with whom you may be

thrown; and there is nothing more dangerous than to talk in public

conveyances. Besides, in a diligence well-bred persons always keep

silence."

The two young men, who seemed to have walked to the farther end of the

establishment, here returned, making their boot-heels tap upon the

paved passage of the porte-cochere. They might have heard the whole of

this maternal homily. So, in order to rid himself of his mother, Oscar

had recourse to an heroic measure, which proved how vanity stimulates

the intellect.

"Mamma," he said, "you are standing in a draught, and you may take

cold. Besides, I am going to get into the coach."

The lad must have touched some tender spot, for his mother caught him

to her bosom, kissed him as if he were starting upon a long journey,

and went with him to the vehicle with tears in her eyes.

"Don't forget to give five francs to the servants when you come away,"

she said; "write me three times at least during the fifteen days;

behave properly, and remember all that I have told you. You have linen

enough; don't send any to the wash. And above all, remember Monsieur

Moreau's kindness; mind him as you would a father, and follow his

advice."

As he got into the coach, Oscar's blue woollen stockings became

visible, through the action of his trousers which drew up suddenly,

also the new patch in the said trousers was seen, through the parting

of his coat-tails. The smiles of the two young men, on whom these

signs of an honorable indigence were not lost, were so many fresh

wounds to the lad's vanity.

"The first place was engaged for Oscar," said the mother to Pierrotin.

"Take the back seat," she said to the boy, looking fondly at him with

a loving smile.

Oh! how Oscar regretted that trouble and sorrow had destroyed his

mother's beauty, and that poverty and self-sacrifice prevented her

from being better dressed! One of the young men, the one who wore top-

boots and spurs, nudged the other to make him take notice of Oscar's

mother, and the other twirled his moustache with a gesture which

signified,--

"Rather pretty figure!"

"How shall I ever get rid of mamma?" thought Oscar.

"What's the matter?" asked Madame Clapart.

Oscar pretended not to hear, the monster! Perhaps Madame Clapart was

lacking in tact under the circumstances; but all absorbing sentiments

have so much egotism!

"Georges, do you like children when travelling?" asked one young man

of the other.

"Yes, my good Amaury, if they are weaned, and are named Oscar, and

have chocolate."

These speeches were uttered in half-tones to allow Oscar to hear them

or not hear them as he chose; his countenance was to be the weather-

gauge by which the other young traveller could judge how much fun he

might be able to get out of the lad during the journey. Oscar chose

not to hear. He looked to see if his mother, who weighed upon him like

a nightmare, was still there, for he felt that she loved him too well

to leave him so quickly. Not only did he involuntarily compare the

dress of his travelling companion with his own, but he felt that his

mother's toilet counted for much in the smiles of the two young men.

"If they would only take themselves off!" he said to himself.

Instead of that, Amaury remarked to Georges, giving a tap with his

cane to the heavy wheel of the coucou:

"And so, my friend, you are really going to trust your future to this

fragile bark?"

"I must," replied Georges, in a tone of fatalism.

Oscar gave a sigh as he remarked the jaunty manner in which his

companion's hat was stuck on one ear for the purpose of showing a

magnificent head of blond hair beautifully brushed and curled; while

he, by order of his step-father, had his black hair cut like a

clothes-brush across the forehead, and clipped, like a soldier's,

close to the head. The face of the vain lad was round and chubby and

bright with the hues of health, while that of his fellow-traveller was

long, and delicate, and pale. The forehead of the latter was broad,

and his chest filled out a waistcoat of cashmere pattern. As Oscar

admired the tight-fitting iron-gray trousers and the overcoat with its

frogs and olives clasping the waist, it seemed to him that this

romantic-looking stranger, gifted with such advantages, insulted him

by his superiority, just as an ugly woman feels injured by the mere

sight of a pretty one. The click of the stranger's boot-heels offended

his taste and echoed in his heart. He felt as hampered by his own

clothes (made no doubt at home out of those of his step-father) as

that envied young man seemed at ease in his.

"That fellow must have heaps of francs in his trousers pocket,"

thought Oscar.

The young man turned round. What were Oscar's feelings on beholding a

gold chain round his neck, at the end of which no doubt was a gold

watch! From that moment the young man assumed, in Oscar's eyes, the

proportions of a personage.

Living in the rue de la Cerisaie since 1815, taken to and from school

by his step-father, Oscar had no other points of comparison since his

adolescence than the poverty-stricken household of his mother. Brought

up strictly, by Moreau's advice, he seldom went to the theatre, and

then to nothing better than the Ambigu-Comique, where his eyes could

see little elegance, if indeed the eyes of a child riveted on a

melodrama were likely to examine the audience. His step-father still

wore, after the fashion of the Empire, his watch in the fob of his

trousers, from which there depended over his abdomen a heavy gold

chain, ending in a bunch of heterogeneous ornaments, seals, and a

watch-key with a round top and flat sides, on which was a landscape in

mosaic. Oscar, who considered that old-fashioned finery as the "ne

plus ultra" of adornment, was bewildered by the present revelation of

superior and negligent elegance. The young man exhibited, offensively,

a pair of spotless gloves, and seemed to wish to dazzle Oscar by

twirling with much grace a gold-headed switch cane.

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.