A tall young fellow, fair-haired and bearded to the nose, interrupted him:
"What"s your name, my friend?"
The notary, quite scared, said:
"I am M. Saval."
A voice exclaimed:
"You mean Baptiste."
A woman said:
"Let the poor waiter alone! You"ll end by making him get angry. He"s paid to wait on us, and not to be laughed at by us."
Then, M. Saval noticed that each guest had brought his own provisions. One held a bottle of wine, and the other a pie. This one had a loaf of bread, and one a ham.
The tall, fair young fellow placed in his hands an enormous sausage, and gave orders:
"Here, go and arrange the sideboard in the corner over there. Put the bottles at the left and the provisions at the right."
Saval, getting quite distracted, exclaimed: "But, messieurs, I am a notary!"
There was a moment"s silence and then a wild outburst of laughter. One suspicious gentleman asked:
"How came you to be here?"
He explained, telling about his project of going to the opera, his departure from Vernon, his arrival in Paris, and the way in which he had spent the evening.
They sat around him to listen to him; they greeted him with words of applause, and called him Scheherazade.
Romantin did not return. Other guests arrived. M. Saval was presented to them so that he might begin his story over again. He declined; they forced him to relate it. They seated and tied him on one of three chairs between two women who kept constantly filling his gla.s.s. He drank; he laughed; he talked; he sang, too. He tried to waltz with his chair, and fell on the ground.
From that moment, he forgot everything. It seemed to him, however, that they undressed him, put him to bed, and that he was nauseated.
When he awoke, it was broad daylight, and he lay stretched with his feet against a cupboard, in a strange bed.
An old woman with a broom in her hand was glaring angrily at him. At last, she said:
"Clear out, you blackguard! Clear out! What right has anyone to get drunk like this?"
He sat up in bed, feeling very ill at ease. He asked:
"Where am I?"
"Where are you, you dirty scamp? You are drunk. Take your rotten carca.s.s out of here as quick as you can-and lose no time about it!"
He wanted to get up. He found that he was in no condition to do so. His clothes had disappeared. He blurted out:
"Madame, I--Then he remembered. What was he to do? He asked:
"Did Monsieur Romantin come back?"
The doorkeeper shouted:
"Will you take your dirty carca.s.s out of this, so that he at any rate may not catch you here?"
M. Saval said, in a state of confusion:
"I haven"t got my clothes; they have been taken away from me."
He had to wait, to explain his situation, give notice to his friends, and borrow some money to buy clothes. He did not leave Paris till evening. And when people talk about music to him in his beautiful drawing-room in Vernon, he declares with an air of authority that painting is a very inferior art.
ORIGINAL SHORT STORIES, Vol. 6.
GUY DE MAUPa.s.sANT ORIGINAL SHORT STORIES Translated by ALBERT M. C. McMASTER, B.A.
A. E. HENDERSON, B.A.
MME. QUESADA and Others
VOLUME VI.
THAT COSTLY RIDE
The household lived frugally on the meager income derived from the husband"s insignificant appointments. Two children had been born of the marriage, and the earlier condition of the strictest economy had become one of quiet, concealed, shamefaced misery, the poverty of a n.o.ble family-which in spite of misfortune never forgets its rank.
Hector de Gribelin had been educated in the provinces, under the paternal roof, by an aged priest. His people were not rich, but they managed to live and to keep up appearances.
At twenty years of age they tried to find him a position, and he entered the Ministry of Marine as a clerk at sixty pounds a year. He foundered on the rock of life like all those who have not been early prepared for its rude struggles, who look at life through a mist, who do not know how to protect themselves, whose special apt.i.tudes and faculties have not been developed from childhood, whose early training has not developed the rough energy needed for the battle of life or furnished them with tool or weapon.
His first three years of office work were a martyrdom.
He had, however, renewed the acquaintance of a few friends of his family -elderly people, far behind the times, and poor like himself, who lived in aristocratic streets, the gloomy thoroughfares of the Faubourg Saint-Germain; and he had created a social circle for himself.
Strangers to modern life, humble yet proud, these needy aristocrats lived in the upper stories of sleepy, old-world houses. From top to bottom of their dwellings the tenants were t.i.tled, but money seemed just as scarce on the ground floor as in the attics.
Their eternal prejudices, absorption in their rank, anxiety lest they should lose caste, filled the minds and thoughts of these families once so brilliant, now ruined by the idleness of the men of the family. Hector de Gribelin met in this circle a young girl as well born and as poor as himself and married her.
They had two children in four years.