"Sh! I know what I mean. Ah! if Capucine wasn't a friend of mine!"

"Adelaide! Adelaide! I think that's a green 'bus coming; come here, quick!"

The servant left the office, with her basket. Monsieur Cherami greeted her with an affable bow, which she barely acknowledged, muttering:

"Bah! there goes the rest of our money! I wonder if that man's coming to dine with us? If he is, there'll never be enough to eat."

"Are you going into the country, Madame Capucine?"

"Yes, monsieur; we're going to Romainville."

"Have you bought a summer house, a villa, in that neighborhood?"

"No, monsieur; my Aunt Duponceau has a little place there, and we're going to pa.s.s Sunday with her."

"You begin the day before, I see."

"She made me promise to come Sat.u.r.day with the children. Capucine will join us to-morrow."

"Ah! he isn't with you?"

"It wasn't possible; we can't all leave at once, on account of the business; it's stretching a point for me to go away with my servant."

"But you have your clerk?"

"Monsieur Ballot? Oh! yes, he's still with us; we're very lucky to have him--a very intelligent fellow, and full of ideas."

Monsieur Cherami smiled maliciously, as he replied:

"Yes, yes, I saw at once that he attended to your business very well.

I'm sure that you'll push that young man ahead."

"Oh! he'll push himself all right. He's coming to Romainville to-morrow with my husband."

"The party'll be complete, then; but, meanwhile, you are without an escort to give you his arm, to look out for you."

"There is no danger on this little trip."

"A lovely woman is always in danger. All the men are tempted to carry her off. They don't always yield to the temptation, but they feel it, I promise you. Pardieu! I have my cue--a charming plan suggests itself to my mind: suppose I go with you to Romainville? Your Aunt Duponceau won't be sorry to see me, I'm sure. Indeed, I believe she urged me one day to go to see her in the country--yes, she certainly did. What do you think of that plan, lovely creature?"

Madame Capucine, having carefully scrutinized her friend's costume, seemed not at all anxious to take with her to the country a cavalier whose attire would not do her honor; and so, instead of answering his question, she observed:

"By the way, Monsieur Cherami, my husband told me, if I should happen to meet you, to remind you of that little bill--you know, eh? It's for some flannel vests, and it's been running a long while. You promised to pay it; I believe it's about a hundred and thirty francs."

Monsieur Cherami made a wry face, and struck his hat with his hand, muttering:

"Oh! madame, I know very well that I owe you a small account, a trifle, a mere nothing; but I have had much more important matters than that to think about."

"It's been running at least three years."

"What if it were twenty years! it's a trifle, none the less."

"Madame, madame! they're calling our numbers; there are some seats."

"Ah! mon Dieu! I must go. Come, Aristoloche; come, I say. Bonjour!

Monsieur Cherami; think of us when you have time. Mon Dieu! I don't say it to hurry you, you know. Here I am, conductor."

Madame Capucine and her boys ran after the servant, and soon all four were in the omnibus.

"There are two more seats, mesdemoiselles," said the clerk to the two grisettes, who also had numbers for Belleville; but Mademoiselle Laurette shook her head.

"Thanks," she replied; "we'll give up our chance; we'll wait for the next; I don't travel with fish. In a boat, it's all right; but in a carriage it scents you up too much."

As for Monsieur Cherami, he had hardly responded to Madame Capucine's farewell; he looked after her with a disdainful air, saying:

"What a beast that haberdasher is! to talk to me about the balance of an account, in the street, in broad daylight, when I am kind enough to pay her compliments and to call her two little brats pretty! Go and sell your cotton nightcaps, you Hottentot Venus! for that woman strikes me as a caricature of Venus. Fine stuff her flannel vests are made of; I've only worn them three years, and they're torn already! I see plainly enough why you don't care to have me go to Aunt Duponceau's--that might interfere with your little tete-a-tetes with your clerk Ballot. Oh! poor Capucine! when I told that huge woman that her husband ought to be hunchbacked, she knew what I meant. However, I'd be glad to know where I shall dine to-day; indeed, to express my meaning more frankly, for I can afford to be frank with myself, I would like to know if I shall dine at all to-day."

VI

MONSIEUR CHERAMI

It is a very sad thing to have reached the point where one wonders whether one will have any dinner. And yet there are every day in Paris people who find themselves in that predicament; but it is comforting to know that such people generally end by dining; some very meagrely, to be sure, others moderately well, and others very well indeed and as if they were still prosperous. Those who succeed in dining well generally accomplish that end by some stratagem, by some new exertion of the imagination, which, however, must well-nigh have exhausted its ingenuity. What seems to me most surprising is that they dine gayly, with an excellent appet.i.te, and with no concern for the morrow. One becomes accustomed to everything, they say; if that is philosophy, I do not envy the philosophers.

Especially when one has fallen into adversity by his own fault, his misconduct, his dissipated life, it would seem that adversity must be most painful, most bitter, most difficult to endure, and that shame must be his constant companion.

Those who are really victims of the injustice of fate, or of the stupidity of their contemporaries, can, at all events, hold their heads erect and refrain from blushing because of their poverty. Such were Homer, who was not appreciated during his life; Plautus, who was reduced to the necessity of turning a potter's wheel; Xylander, who sold his work on Dion Ca.s.sius to obtain a crust of bread; Lelio Girardi, author of a curious history of the Greek and Latin poets, who was reduced to a similar extremity; Usserius, too, a learned chronologist; Cornelius Agrippa, who wrote on the vanity of learning, and the excellent qualities of womankind; and the ill.u.s.trious Miguel Cervantes, to whom we owe the admirable romance of _Don Quixote_.

We may add to this list Paul Borghese, who died of hunger; Ta.s.so, who lived a whole week on a crown, which someone loaned him: true, he ceased to be poor, but only on the eve of his death; Aldus Manutius, who was so poor that he became bankrupt simply by borrowing money enough to ship his library from Venice to Rome, whither he had been summoned; Cardinal Bentivoglio, to whom we owe the history of the civil wars of Flanders: he did not leave enough to pay for his burial; Baudoin, translator of almost all the Latin authors; Vauglas, the grammarian; Du Ryer, author of tragedies, and translator of the Koran; all these lived in indigence.

But we will pause here; examples are not lacking, but they would carry us too far; and then, they are not cheerful, and are out of our usual line; it was Monsieur Cherami's plight which induced us to cite so many.

Let us now return to that gentleman.

Monsieur Cherami, whom we have seen so poorly dressed, and uncertain as to whether he will have any dinner, had once occupied a brilliant position, and had been noted for his dress, his bearing, and his gallant adventures. His father, who had been an eminent figure in the magistracy during the Consulate, had no other child. Arthur (such was Monsieur Cherami's baptismal name) had been petted, fondled, worshipped, spoiled, and his parents had proposed to make a great man of him. Poor parents!

who believe that they can make their son an eminent personage, just as they would make him a tailor or a bootmaker. Arthur did become great, but in stature only. They sent him to school and gave him an excellent education; young Cherami learned readily enough; he was intelligent and quick-witted; he became especially strong in such elegant accomplishments as fencing, riding, and gymnastics; but he had the greatest aversion for serious work of every sort, and when his parents asked him: "Do you want to be a lawyer, a doctor, a man of letters, a broker, or a general?" Arthur replied: "I prefer to walk on the boulevards and smoke big eight-sou cigars."

This reply, which left nothing to be desired in the way of frankness, indicated a most generous inclination to consume the fortune which his parents had so laboriously ama.s.sed in business, and which, in fact, they left to their beloved son without undue delay. At the age of twenty-two, Arthur, who had as yet done nothing else than promenade and smoke, found himself an orphan and possessed of thirty-five thousand francs a year.

Thereupon, he abandoned himself to his taste for pleasure, augmented by a very keen penchant for the fair s.e.x; and the fair s.e.x is never ungrateful to a rich and open-handed man. Arthur was not handsome: his crooked nose, his small eyes, and his pointed chin, did not tend to make him a very attractive youth; however, the women told him again and again that he was charming, adorable, irresistible, and he believed it. We are so ready to believe anything that flatters our self-esteem! And yet, Arthur was no fool; indeed, he had his share of wit; but he was totally lacking in common sense, and without common sense, wit, as a general rule, serves no other purpose than to make one do foolish things. La Rochefoucauld makes this reflection with respect to women; for my part, I consider it perfectly applicable to both s.e.xes.

At thirty years, Beau Cherami had spent, consumed, swallowed, his entire inheritance. But he had been noted for his costumes, his horses, his conquests, his love affairs. Eight years to run through a fortune worth thirty-five thousand francs a year--that is not such a very rapid pace; we often see young men who use up three times as much in much less time; to be sure, young Arthur did not gamble on the Bourse.

Being obliged then to sell his furniture, horses, and silverware, Cherami lived some time longer on the product of the sale; but his friends already began to find him less clever and amiable, and the women no longer called him their handsome Arthur. That was because he could no longer make them beautiful presents; and instead of loaning money to his friends and paying their shares of the expense of an orgy, he asked them to pay for him, and often applied to them for loans.

At thirty-five, Arthur was what these good friends of his called utterly _degomme_: in other words, ruined. After he had lived for some time on credit, his tailor, his shirtmaker, his bootmaker, refused to trust him any more; whereupon he was obliged to wear garments that were worn and faded, and eventually threadbare; hats that had turned from black to rusty; worn boots that were rarely polished. When Cherami, in this garb, said to one of his former acquaintances: "I have left my purse at home; lend me twenty francs, will you?" the acquaintance would make a wry face and loan him five francs instead of twenty, and sometimes nothing at all; for a man in a threadbare coat does not inspire confidence. We loan money to the rich, because we think that they will return it.