Читать книгу The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter - Henri Murger - Страница 9

ONE evening in Lent Rodolphe went home early intending to work. But scarcely had he sat down and dipped his pen in the ink when he was disturbed by an unusual sound. Applying his ear to the indiscreet partition wall, he could hear and distinguish perfectly well an onomatopoetic dialogue carried on principally in kisses in the next room.

“Confound it!” thought Rodolphe as he glanced at the clock. “It is early yet, and my fair neighbour is a Juliet who seldom permits her Romeo to depart with the lark. It is impossible to work to-night.” So taking up his hat he sallied forth.

As he stepped into the porter’s lodge to hang up his key, he found the portress half imprisoned by the arm of a gallant. The poor woman was so overcome that it was fully five minutes before she could pull the door-string.

“It is a fact,” mused Rodolphe, “there are moments when portresses become mere women.”

He opened the street door, and lo! in the corner, a fireman and a cook-maid were exchanging a preliminary token of affection, standing there holding each other by the hand.

“Egad!” cried he, as he thought of the warrior and his stalwart companion, “here be heretics, who scarcely so much as know that Lent has begun.” And he made for the lodging of a friend in the neighbourhood.

“If Marcel is at home, we will spend the evening in abusing Colline,” said he to himself. “One must do something, after all.”

After a vigorous rapping, the door at length stood ajar, and a young man simply dressed in little but a shirt and a pair of eye-glasses put his head out.

“I cannot ask you to come in,” said this person.

“Why not?” demanded Rodolphe.

“There!” said Marcel, as a feminine head appeared from behind a curtain, “that is my answer.”

“And not a handsome one,” was Rodolphe’s retort after the door had been shut in his face. “So,” said he to himself when he turned into the street, “what next? Suppose I go to Colline’s? We could put in the time abusing Marcel.”

But as Rodolphe traversed the Rue de l’Ouest, a dark street and little frequented at any time, he perceived a shadowy figure prowling about in a melancholy manner, muttering rimes between its teeth.

“Hey day!” said Rodolphe, “who is this Sonnet, dancing attendance here? Why, Colline!”

“Why, Rodolphe! Where are you going?”

“To your rooms.”

“You will not find me there.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Waiting.”

“And for what?”

“Ha!” cried Colline, breaking into mock-heroics. “For what does one wait, when one is twenty years old, and there are stars in heaven and songs in the air?”

“Speak in prose.”

“I am waiting for a lady.”

“Good night,” returned Rodolphe, and he made off, talking to himself. “Bless me! is it St. Cupid’s Day, and can I scarcely take a step without jostling a pair of lovers? This is scandalous and immoral! What can the police be doing?”

As the Luxembourg Gardens were still open, Rodolphe took the short cut across them. All along the quieter alleys he saw mysterious couples with their arms about each other flit before him, as if scared away by the sound of his footsteps, to seek, in the language of the poet, the double sweetness of silence and shade.

“It is an evening out of a novel,” said Rodolphe; but the languorous charm grew upon him in spite of himself, and sitting down on a bench, he looked sentimentally up at the moon.

After a time he felt as if some feverish dream had taken possession of him. It seemed to him that the marble population of gods and heroes were coming down from their pedestals to pay their court to their neighbours the goddesses and heroines of the gardens; indeed, he distinctly heard the big Hercules singing a madrigal to Velleda, and thought that the Druidess’s tunic looked unusually short. From his seat on the bench he watched the swan in the fountain glide across towards a nymph on the bank.

“Good!” thought Rodolphe, prepared to believe in the whole heathen mythology. “There goes Jupiter to a tryst with Leda! If only the police do not interfere!”

Resting his forehead on his hands, he deliberately pushed further into the briar-rose wood of sentimentality. But at the finest point in his dream Rodolphe was suddenly awakened by a tap on the shoulder from a policeman.

“Time to go out, sir,” said the man.

“A good thing too,” thought Rodolphe. “If I had stayed here for another five minutes I should have had more vergiss-mein-nicht in my heart than ever grew on the banks of the Rhine, or even in Alphonse Karr’s novels.” And he made all haste out of the Luxembourg Gardens, humming in his deep bass voice a sentimental tune which he regarded as the lover’s “Marseillaise.”

Half an hour after, in some unexplained way, he found himself at the “Prado,” sitting at a table with a glass of punch before him, and chatting with a tall young fellow, famous for his nose—a feature which possessed the singular quality of looking aquiline in profile and like a snub nose when seen full face; a nose of noses—not without sense, with a sufficient experience of love affairs to be able to give sound counsel in such cases and to do a friend a good turn.

“So you are in love?” Alexandre Schaunard (the owner of the nose) was saying.

“Yes, my dear boy. It came on quite suddenly just now, like a bad toothache in your heart.”

“Pass the tobacco,” said Alexandre.

“Imagine it!” continued Rodolphe. “I have met nothing but lovers for the past two hours—men and women by twos and twos. I took it into my head to go into the Luxembourg, and there I saw all sorts of phantasmagoria, which stirred my heart in an extraordinary way, and set me composing elegies. I bleat and I coo—I am being metamorphosed; I am half lamb, half pigeon. Just look at me; I must be covered with wool and feathers!”

“What can you have been drinking?” Alexandre put in impatiently. “You are hoaxing me, that is what it is.”

“I am quite cool and composed, I assure you,” said Rodolphe. “That is, I am not; but I am going to inform you that I long for a mate. Man should not live alone, you see, Alexandre; in a word, you must help me to find a wife. . . . We will take a turn round the dancing saloon, and you must go to the first girl that I point out to you, and tell her that I am in love with her.”

“Why don’t you go and tell her so yourself?” returned Alexandre in his splendid nasal bass.

“Eh, my dear boy! I assure you I have quite forgotten how these things are done. Friends have always written the opening chapters of all my love stories for me; sometimes they have even done the conclusions too. But I never could begin myself!”

“If you know how to end, it will do,” said Alexandre; “but I know what you mean. I have seen a girl with a taste for the oboe; you might perhaps suit her.”

“Oh,” answered Rodolphe, “I should like her to wear white gloves, and she should have blue eyes.”

“Oh, confound it! Blue eyes? I don’t say no; but gloves! You cannot have everything at once, you know. Still, let us go to the aristocratic quarters.”

“There!” said Rodolphe, as they entered the room frequented by the more fashionable portion of the assemblage—“there is someone who seems a very pleasant girl.” He pointed out a rather fashionably dressed damsel in a corner.

“Good!” returned Alexandre. “Keep a little bit in the background; I will go hurl the firebrand of passion for you. When the time comes I will call you.”

Alexandre talked with the girl for about ten minutes. Every now and again she burst into a merry peal of laughter, and ended by flinging Rodolphe a glance which meant plainly enough, “Come, your advocate has gained your cause.”

“Go, the victory is ours!” said Alexandre. “The little creature is not hardhearted, there is no doubt about it; but you had better look harmless and simple to begin with.”

“I stand in no need of that recommendation.”

“Then pass me a little tobacco,” said Alexandre, “and go and sit over there with her.”

“Oh, dear, how funny your friend is!” began the damsel, when Rodolphe seated himself beside her. “He talks like a hunting horn.”

“That is because he is a musician,” answered Rodolphe.

Two hours later Rodolphe and his fair companion stopped before a house in the Rue Saint Denis.

“I live here,” she said.

“Well, dear Louise, when shall I see you again, and where?”

“At your own house, to-morrow evening at eight o’clock.”

“Really?”

“Here is my promise,” said Louise, offering two fresh young cheeks, the ripe fruit of youth and health, of which Rodolphe took his fill at leisure. Then he went home intoxicated to madness.

“Ah!” he cried as he strode to and fro in his room, “it must not pass off thus; I positively must write some poetry.”

Next morning his porter found some thirty pieces of paper lying about the room, with the following solitary line majestically inscribed at the head of each (otherwise blank) sheet—

“O Love! O Love! thou prince of youth!”

That morning Rodolphe, contrary to his usual habit, had awaked very early, and though he had slept very little, he got up at once.

“Ah, broad daylight already!” he cried. “Why, twelve hours to wait! What shall I do to fill those twelve 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.”