Читать книгу In the Days of My Youth - Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards - Страница 20

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I left Rouen the day after my great adventure on the river, and Captain Dalrymple went with me to the station.

"You have my Paris address upon my card," he said, as we walked to and fro upon the platform. "It's just a bachelor's den, you know--and I shall be there in about a fortnight or three weeks. Come and look me up."

To which I replied that I was glad to be allowed to do so, and that I should "look him up" as soon as he came home. And so, with words of cordial good-will and a hearty shake of the hand, we parted.

Having started late in the evening, I arrived in Paris between four and five o'clock on a bright midsummer Sunday morning. I was not long delayed by the customs officers, for I carried but a scant supply of luggage. Having left this at an hotel, I wandered about till it should be time for breakfast. After breakfast I meant to dress and call upon Dr. Chéron.

The morning air was clear and cool. The sun shone brilliantly, and was reflected back with dazzling vividness from long vistas of high white houses, innumerable windows, and gilded balconies. Theatres, shops, cafés, and hotels not yet opened, lined the great thoroughfares. Triumphal arches, columns, parks, palaces, and churches succeeded one another in apparently endless succession. I passed a lofty pillar crowned with a conqueror's statue--a palace tragic in history--a modern Parthenon surrounded by columns, peopled with sculptured friezes, and approached by a flight of steps extending the whole width of the building. I went in, for the doors had just been opened, and a white-haired Sacristan was preparing the seats for matin service. There were acolytes decorating the altar with fresh flowers, and early devotees on their knees before the shrine of the Madonna. The gilded ornaments, the tapers winking in the morning light, the statues, the paintings, the faint clinging odors of incense, the hushed atmosphere, the devotional silence, the marble angels kneeling round the altar, all united to increase my dream of delight. I gazed and gazed again; wandered round and round; and at last, worn out with excitement and fatigue, sank into a chair in a distant corner of the Church, and fell into a heavy sleep. How long it lasted I know not; but the voices of the choristers and the deep tones of the organ mingled with my dreams. When I awoke the last worshippers were departing, the music had died into silence, the wax-lights were being extinguished, and the service was ended.

Again I went out into the streets; but all was changed. Where there had been the silence of early morning there was now the confusion of a great city. Where there had been closed shutters and deserted thoroughfares, there was the bustle of life, gayety, business, and pleasure. The shops blazed with jewels and merchandise; the stonemasons were at work on the new buildings; the lemonade venders, with their gay reservoirs upon their backs, were plying a noisy trade; the bill-stickers were papering boardings and lamp-posts with variegated advertisements; the charlatan, in his gaudy chariot, was selling pencils and penknives to the accompaniment of a hand-organ; soldiers were marching to the clangor of military music; the merchant was in his counting-house, the stock-broker at the Bourse, and the lounger, whose name is Legion, was sitting in the open air outside his favorite café, drinking chocolate, and yawning over the Charivari.

I thought I must be dreaming. I scarcely believed the evidence of my eyes. Was this Sunday? Was it possible that in our own little church at home--in our own little church, where we could hear the birds twittering outside in every interval of the quiet service--the old familiar faces, row beyond row, were even now upturned in reverent attention to the words of the preacher? Prince Bedreddin, transported in his sleep to the gates of Damascus, could scarcely have opened his eyes upon a foreign city and a strange people with more incredulous amazement.

I can now scarcely remember how that day of wonders went by. I only know that I rambled about as in a dream, and am vaguely conscious of having wandered through the gardens of the Tuilleries; of having found the Louvre open, and of losing myself among some of the upper galleries; of lying exhausted upon a bench in the Champs Elysées; of returning by quays lined with palaces and spanned by noble bridges; of pacing round and round the enchanted arcades of the Palais Royal; of wondering how and where I should find my hotel, and of deciding at last that I could go no farther without dining somehow. Wearied and half stupefied, I ventured, at length, into one of the large restaurants upon the Boulevards. Here I found spacious rooms lighted by superb chandeliers which were again reflected in mirrors that extended from floor to ceiling. Rows of small tables ran round the rooms, and a double line down the centre, each laid with its snowy cloth and glittering silver.

It was early when I arrived; so I passed up to the top of the room and appropriated a small table commanding a view of the great thoroughfare below. The waiters were slow to serve me; the place filled speedily; and by the time I had finished my soup, nearly all the tables were occupied. Here sat a party of officers, bronzed and mustachioed; yonder a group of laughing girls; a pair of provincials; a family party, children, governess and all; a stout capitalist, solitary and self content; a quatuor of rollicking commis-voyageurs; an English couple, perplexed and curious. Amused by the sight of so many faces, listening to the hum of voices, and watching the flying waiters bearing all kinds of mysterious dishes, I loitered over my lonely meal, and wished that this delightful whirl of novelty might last for ever. By and by a gentleman entered, walked up the whole length of the room in search of a seat, found my table occupied by only a single person, bowed politely, and drew his chair opposite mine.

He was a portly man of about forty-five or fifty years of age, with a broad, calm brow; curling light hair, somewhat worn upon the temples; and large blue eyes, more keen than tender. His dress was scrupulously simple, and his hands were immaculately white. He carried an umbrella little thicker than a walking-stick, and wrote out his list of dishes with a massive gold pencil. The waiter bowed down before him as if he were an habitué of the place.

It was not long before we fell into conversation. I do not remember which spoke first; but we talked of Paris--or rather, I talked and he listened; for, what with the excitement and fatigue of the day, and what with the half bottle of champagne which I had magnificently ordered, I found myself gifted with a sudden flood of words, and ran on, I fear, not very discreetly.

A few civil rejoinders, a smile, a bow, an assent, a question implied rather than spoken, sufficed to draw from me the particulars of my journey. I told everything, from my birthplace and education to my future plans and prospects; and the stranger, with a frosty humor twinkling about his eyes, listened politely. He was himself particularly silent; but he had the art of provoking conversation while quietly enjoying his own dinner. When this was finished, however, he leaned back in his chair, sipped his claret, and talked a little more freely.

"And so," said he, in very excellent English, "you have come to Paris to finish your studies. But have you no fear, young gentleman, that the attractions of so gay a city may divert your mind from graver subjects? Do you think that, when every pleasure may be had for the seeking, you will be content to devote yourself to the dry details of an uninteresting profession?"

"It is not an uninteresting profession," I replied. "I might perhaps have preferred the church or the law; but having embarked in the study of medicine, I shall do my best to succeed in it."

The stranger smiled.

"I am glad," he said, "to see you so ambitious. I do not doubt that you will become a shining light in the brotherhood of Esculapius."

"I hope so," I replied, boldly. "I have studied closer than most men of my age, already."

He smiled again, coughed doubtfully, and insisted on filling my glass from his own bottle.

"I only fear," he said, "that you will be too diffident of your own merits. Now, when you call upon this Doctor … what did you say was his name?"

"Chéron," I replied, huskily.

"True, Chéron. Well, when you meet him for the first time you will, perhaps, be timid, hesitating, and silent. But, believe me, a young man of your remarkable abilities should be self-possessed. You ought to inspire him from the beginning with a suitable respect for your talents."

"That's precisely the line I mean to take," said I, boastfully. "I'll--I'll astonish him. I'm afraid of nobody--not I!"

The stranger filled my glass again. His claret must have been very strong or my head very weak, for it seemed to me, as he did so, that all the chandeliers were in motion.

"Upon my word," observed he, "you are a young man of infinite spirit."

"And you," I replied, making an effort to bring the glass steadily to my lips, "you are a capital fellow--a clear-sighted, sensible, capital fellow. We'll be friends."

He bowed, and said, somewhat coldly,

"I have no doubt that we shall become better acquainted."

"Better acquainted, indeed!--we'll be intimate!" I ejaculated, affectionately. "I'll introduce you to Dalrymple--you'll like him excessively. Just the fellow to delight you."

"So I should say," observed the stranger, drily.

"And as for you and myself, we'll--we'll be Damon and … what's the other one's name?"

"Pythias," replied my new acquaintance, leaning back in his chair, and surveying me with a peculiar and very deliberate stare. "Exactly so--Damon and Pythias! A charming arrangement."

"Bravo! Famous! And now we'll have another bottle of wine."

"Not on my account, I beg," said the gentleman firmly. "My head is not so cool as yours."

Cool, indeed, and the room whirling round and round, like a teetotum!

"Oh, if you won't, I won't," said I confusedly; "but I--I could--drink my share of another bottle, I assure you, and not--feel the slightest. … "

"I have no doubt on that point," said my neighbor, gravely; "but our French wines are deceptive, Mr. Arbuthnot, and you might possibly suffer some inconvenience to-morrow. You, as a medical man, should understand the evils of dyspepsia."

"Dy--dy--dyspepsia be hanged," I muttered, dreamily. "Tell me, friend--by the by, I forget your name. Friend what?"

"Friend Pythias," returned the stranger, drily. "You gave me the name yourself."

"Ay, but your real name?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"One name is as good as another," said he, lightly. "Let it be Pythias, for the present. But you were about to ask me some question?"

"About old Chéron," I said, leaning both elbows on the table, and speaking very confidentially. "Now tell me, have you--have you any notion of what he is like? Do you--know--know anything about him?"

"I have heard of him," he replied, intent for the moment on the pattern of his wine-glass.

"Clever?"

"That is a point upon which I could not venture an opinion. You must ask some more competent judge."

"Come, now," said I, shaking my head, and trying to look knowing; "you--you know what I mean, well enough. Is he a grim old fellow? A--a--griffin, you know! Come, is he a gr--r--r--riffin?"

My words had by this time acquired a distressing, self-propelling tendency, and linked themselves into compounds of twenty and thirty syllables.

My vis-à-vis smiled, bit his lip, then laughed a dry, short laugh.

"Really," he said, "I am not in a position to reply to your question; but upon the whole, I should say that Dr. Chéron was not quite a griffin. The species, you see, is extinct."

I roared with laughter; vowed I had never heard a better joke in my life; and repeated his last words over and over, like a degraded idiot as I was. All at once a sense of deadly faintness came upon me. I turned hot and cold by turns, and lifting my hand to my head, said, or tried to say:--

"Room's--'bominably--close!"

"We had better go," he replied promptly. "The air will do you good. Leave me to settle for our dinners, and you shall make it right with me by-and-by."

He did so, and we left the room. Once out in the open air I found myself unable to stand. He called a fiacre; almost lifted me in; took his place beside me, and asked the name of my hotel.

I had forgotten it; but I knew that it was opposite the railway station, and that was enough. When we arrived, I was on the verge of insensibility. I remember that I was led up-stairs by two waiters, and that the stranger saw me to my room. Then all was darkness and stupor.