Читать книгу The Amazing City - John Frederick Macdonald - Страница 11

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It is a popular superstition that amongst the smaller French bourgeoisie one day is like another day, and all days are empty, colourless and banal. None of the joys of life—none of its shocks and surprises—up there in the Durands’ gloomy and oppressive fifth-floor appartement. From morning till night, infinite monotony, relieved only by Madame Durand’s periodical altercations with the concierge, the tradespeople, and deaf and dim-eyed old Amélie, the cook. The family newspaper is the Petit Journal, because of its two feuilletons. In a corner a little, damaged piano, upon which angular and elderly Mademoiselle Durand laboriously picks out the Polka des Joyeux and the Valse Bleue. In another corner Madame Durand knits away at a pink woollen shawl. And from a third corner M. Hippolyte Durand, in huge carpet slippers, tells his wife what has happened to him during the day.

The omnibus that took him to his office was full; his lunch consisted of navarin aux pommes and stewed pears; after leaving his bureau he played two games of dominoes with Dupont in the Café du Commerce, and the omnibus that brought him home was even fuller than that in which he travelled to business.

“There should be more omnibuses in Paris,” remarks Madame Durand.

“And how odious are the conductors!” exclaims elderly and embittered Mademoiselle Durand from the piano.

Then lights out at eleven o’clock, and the dull, dreamless sleep of the unimaginative, the worthy.

However, this popularly conceived idea of the life and mind of the smaller French bourgeoisie is something of a libel. Their existence is not eternally uneventful, nor their temperament hopelessly colourless. Now and again the dim, oppressive fifth-floor appartements are shaken by “Affairs” quite as exciting and incoherent in their own way as those that have convulsed the Palace of Justice and Chamber of Deputies. There was once a Dreyfus Affair. There were also the Syveton and Steinheil Affairs. All three caused the Parisians (who dearly love imbroglios and incoherencies) to exclaim: “C’est le comble!”—in colloquial English: “It’s the limit!”

But, in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris, there rages to-day an Affair that must be awarded the first place amongst all other Affairs for sheer confusion, dizziness and irresponsibility.

Thus:

Three weeks ago M. Henri Bouzon, a stout, middle-aged bourgeois, bought a dozen new collars from a “general” clothing establishment known as “The Joy of the Gentleman.” In due course the collars went to the laundry, but twelve other collars were returned in their place, and these M. Bouzon rejected. A second lot of collars—again somebody else’s. Then a third wrong delivery, and a fourth. By the time a fifth contingent had arrived M. Bouzon was collarless and desperate.

“Once again, these are not my collars,” he cried. “But as they fit me, I will keep them.”

Next day, appearance of Madame Martin, the blanchisseuse, in a state of emotion. The fifth contingent of collars belonged to a M. Aristide Dubois, who was clamouring for them. He had acquired them only recently at “The Paradise of the Bachelor,” and was furious at their loss.

“Bother Aristide Dubois,” shouted M. Bouzon. “Where are my own dozen collars from ‘The Joy of the Gentleman’? Return them and I will give up the Dubois collars—which I am wearing.”

Despair of the blanchisseuse. She searched and searched for the Bouzon collars, but in vain; and tearfully, then frantically did she implore Henri Bouzon to be “amiable” and “gentil” and surrender up the collars of Aristide Dubois.

“He is a terrible man—such a temper,” pleaded the blanchisseuse. “I had to tell him you were wearing his collars, and he threatened to call on you and tear them off your neck.”

“Let him come,” cried M. Bouzon. Then, following Madame Martin out on to the staircase he shouted over the banisters: “And tell Dubois from me that he is a brigand and a bandit.”

Inevitably, the concierges and tradespeople of Montparnasse got to hear of the dispute. It was discussed in doorways and at street corners, and in her steamy blanchisserie Madame Martin held little levees of the Montparnasse servants, who took the story home to their masters and mistresses, who in their turn became garrulous and excited over the Dubois and Bouzon collars. Then, one memorable afternoon, Aristide Dubois—another stout and middle-aged bourgeois—called upon Henri Bouzon. And the following dialogue took place:—

“Sir, you are wearing the collars I bought recently at ‘The Paradise of the Bachelor.’”

“Sir, I have no wish to speak to you, and I beg you to withdraw.”

“Monsieur, vous aurez de mes nouvelles.”

That was all, but it caused a commotion in Montparnasse. Aristide Dubois’ last words, “Sir, you will hear from me,” signified nothing less than a duel. Yes; Bouzon and Dubois on the field of honour, sword or pistol in hand, with doctors in attendance! “Both of them are terrible men,” related Madame Martin, whose blanchisserie now became a popular place of rendez-vous. “Impossible to reason with them. They will fight to the death.” Equally sought after were the respective concierges of the Dubois and Bouzon families, and the tradespeople who served them.

The discussion spreading, all Montparnasse soon found itself indirectly and chaotically mixed up in the Affair of the Collars. It was Collars in a hundred bourgeois homes, in cafés, in the shady Luxembourg Gardens, even amongst the enormous, apoplectic cochers on the cab-ranks.

“I am for Dubois,” declared some.

“Henri Bouzon has my sympathy,” announced others. “It is the most distracting of affairs,” agreed everybody. Thus, fame of Henri Bouzon and Aristide Dubois! After fifty years of obscurity, there they were—suddenly—the Men of the Hour. Such was their importance, their renown, that when they appeared in the Montparnasse streets people nudged one another and whispered:

“Here comes Henri Bouzon.”

And: “There goes Aristide Dubois.”

... Such has been the state of Montparnasse during the last three weeks, and to-day that usually tranquil neighbourhood is literally convulsed by the Affair of the Collars. No duel has taken place: but MM. Dubois and Bouzon exchange lurid letters, in which they call one another “traitors,” and “Apaches,” and “sinister assassins.” Thus, shades of the Dreyfus Affair and of the Affairs Syveton and Steinheil! Here, in the Café du Dôme, sits M. Bouzon, surrounded by Bouzonites. There, in the Café de la Rotonde, M. Dubois and his own supporters are established,—and in both places, night after night, hot controversies rage, the marble tables are thumped, and MM. Dubois and Bouzon are severally applauded and toasted by their admirers. Become celebrities, they have blossomed out into silk hats and frock coats, and the waiters bow before them, and the café proprietors actually address them as “cher maître.” At times they dramatically exclaim: “Ah, my poor head! This affair is destroying me: but I will fight to the last,” and there are murmurs of sympathy, which MM. Bouzon and Dubois (always in their respective cafés) acknowledge with the condescension of a Briand or a Delcassé or a Clemenceau. For, most indisputably, they are great public characters. The post brings them letters of congratulation or abuse; the policemen salute them: and “The Paradise of the Bachelor” has named a collar after Aristide Dubois, whilst “The Joy of the Gentleman” has issued the intimation: “For ease, chic, durability, wear the Collar Bouzon.” Then, to live up to their renown as the Men of the Hour, MM. Dubois and Bouzon go about with bulky portfolios under their arms, and a grim, determined expression. “They are doing too much. They will certainly collapse. It is even worse than the Dreyfus Affair,” says Montparnasse. And, exclaims Madame Martin, in her steamy and crowded blanchisserie: “Terrible men! I have tried to make peace between them by offering them all kinds of collars. I have even declared myself ready to buy them collars out of my own pocket. But they only go red in the face, and shout, and won’t hear a word.”

And now—in the words of the journalists—a “sensational development.” It is announced, breathlessly, hysterically by Madame Martin, that at last she has traced the dozen missing collars, bought by M. Bouzon at “The Joy of the Gentleman,” to the bourgeois fifth-floor appartement of a M. Alexandre Dupont. He has been wearing them all these weeks. And he refuses to surrender them. And he, too, is a “terrible man.” And he has called M. Dubois a “convict,” and M. Bouzon “le dernier des misérables.” And, if they come within his reach, he will hurl both of them into the Seine.

“Le comble” [the limit], gasps Montparnasse. All over the neighbourhood goes the statement that M. Alexandre Dupont bought his dozen collars at that other Montparnasse clothing establishment, “The One Hundred Thousand Supreme Shirts.”

“The man Alexandre Dupont is as great a scoundrel as the man Aristide Dubois,” cries M. Bouzon to his admiring supporters in the Café du Dôme.

“It is impossible to determine which of the two is the more infamous and diabolical, the creature Bouzon or the lunatic Dupont,” shouts M. Dubois, amidst the cheers of his followers in the Café de la Rotonde.

“Bouzon and Dubois—I consign them to the Seine and the Morgue,” storms Alexandre Dupont, addressing his newly gathered partisans in the Café du Repos.

Out comes that other “general” clothing establishment, “The One Hundred Thousand Supreme Shirts,” with the announcement: “The Only Collar in Paris is the Collar Dupont.”

“All three of them are terrible,” affirms Madame Martin to her audience in the stifling blanchisserie.

“The collars of Bouzon, then the collars of Dubois, and next the collars of Dupont—but where have they all gone to? Where are we? What is going to happen!” cries, emotionally and distractedly, Montparnasse.

Nobody knows. Nobody will ever know. But Bouzon, Dubois and Dupont, so obscure three weeks ago, are the Men of the Hour in Montparnasse to-day. And one of the three will, almost indubitably, represent Montparnasse in the Hôtel de Ville after the next Municipal Election,—then be promoted to the Chamber of Deputies—then will eloquently, passionately inform the Palais Bourbon that Incoherency is the Peril of the Present Age.