The young man found it impossible, therefore, to be effusive with anyone; and he was constantly looking forward to an invitation from the Dambreuses.
On New Year"s Day, he sent them visiting-cards, but received none in return.
He made his way back to the office of _L"Art Industriel_.
A third time he returned to it, and at last saw Arnoux carrying on an argument with five or six persons around him. He scarcely responded to the young man"s bow; and Frederick was wounded by this reception. None the less he cogitated over the best means of finding his way to her side.
His first idea was to come frequently to the shop on the pretext of getting pictures at low prices. Then he conceived the notion of slipping into the letter-box of the journal a few "very strong" articles, which might lead to friendly relations. Perhaps it would be better to go straight to the mark at once, and declare his love? Acting on this impulse, he wrote a letter covering a dozen pages, full of lyric movements and apostrophes; but he tore it up, and did nothing, attempted nothing--bereft of motive power by his want of success.
Above Arnoux"s shop, there were, on the first floor, three windows which were lighted up every evening. Shadows might be seen moving about behind them, especially one; this was hers; and he went very far out of his way in order to gaze at these windows and to contemplate this shadow.
A negress who crossed his path one day in the Tuileries, holding a little girl by the hand, recalled to his mind Madame Arnoux"s negress.
She was sure to come there, like the others; every time he pa.s.sed through the Tuileries, his heart began to beat with the antic.i.p.ation of meeting her. On sunny days he continued his walk as far as the end of the Champs-elysees.
Women seated with careless ease in open carriages, and with their veils floating in the wind, filed past close to him, their horses advancing at a steady walking pace, and with an unconscious see-saw movement that made the varnished leather of the harness crackle. The vehicles became more numerous, and, slackening their motion after they had pa.s.sed the circular s.p.a.ce where the roads met, they took up the entire track. The horses" manes and the carriage lamps were close to each other. The steel stirrups, the silver curbs and the bra.s.s rings, flung, here and there, luminous points in the midst of the short breeches, the white gloves, and the furs, falling over the blazonry of the carriage doors. He felt as if he were lost in some far-off world. His eyes wandered along the rows of female heads, and certain vague resemblances brought back Madame Arnoux to his recollection. He pictured her to himself, in the midst of the others, in one of those little broughams like Madame Dambreuse"s brougham.
But the sun was setting, and the cold wind raised whirling clouds of dust. The coachmen let their chins sink into their neckcloths; the wheels began to revolve more quickly; the road-metal grated; and all the equipages descended the long sloping avenue at a quick trot, touching, sweeping past one another, getting out of one another"s way; then, at the Place de la Concorde, they went off in different directions. Behind the Tuileries, there was a patch of slate-coloured sky. The trees of the garden formed two enormous ma.s.ses violet-hued at their summits. The gas-lamps were lighted; and the Seine, green all over, was torn into strips of silver moire, near the piers of the bridges.
He went to get a dinner for forty-three sous in a restaurant in the Rue de la Harpe. He glanced disdainfully at the old mahogany counter, the soiled napkins, the dingy silver-plate, and the hats hanging up on the wall.
Those around him were students like himself. They talked about their professors, and about their mistresses. Much he cared about professors!
Had he a mistress? To avoid being a witness of their enjoyment, he came as late as possible. The tables were all strewn with remnants of food.
The two waiters, worn out with attendance on customers, lay asleep, each in a corner of his own; and an odour of cooking, of an argand lamp, and of tobacco, filled the deserted dining-room. Then he slowly toiled up the streets again. The gas lamps vibrated, casting on the mud long yellowish shafts of flickering light. Shadowy forms surmounted by umbrellas glided along the footpaths. The pavement was slippery; the fog grew thicker, and it seemed to him that the moist gloom, wrapping him around, descended into the depths of his heart.
He was smitten with a vague remorse. He renewed his attendance at lectures. But as he was entirely ignorant of the matters which formed the subject of explanation, things of the simplest description puzzled him. He set about writing a novel ent.i.tled _Sylvio, the Fisherman"s Son_. The scene of the story was Venice. The hero was himself, and Madame Arnoux was the heroine. She was called Antonia; and, to get possession of her, he a.s.sa.s.sinated a number of n.o.blemen, and burned a portion of the city; after which achievements he sang a serenade under her balcony, where fluttered in the breeze the red damask curtains of the Boulevard Montmartre.
The reminiscences, far too numerous, on which he dwelt produced a disheartening effect on him; he went no further with the work, and his mental vacuity redoubled.
After this, he begged of Deslauriers to come and share his apartment.
They might make arrangements to live together with the aid of his allowance of two thousand francs; anything would be better than this intolerable existence. Deslauriers could not yet leave Troyes. He urged his friend to find some means of distracting his thoughts, and, with that end in view, suggested that he should call on Senecal.
Senecal was a mathematical tutor, a hard-headed man with republican convictions, a future Saint-Just, according to the clerk. Frederick ascended the five flights, up which he lived, three times in succession, without getting a visit from him in return. He did not go back to the place.
He now went in for amusing himself. He attended the b.a.l.l.s at the Opera House. These exhibitions of riotous gaiety froze him the moment he had pa.s.sed the door. Besides, he was restrained by the fear of being subjected to insult on the subject of money, his notion being that a supper with a domino, entailing considerable expense, was rather a big adventure.
It seemed to him, however, that he must needs love her. Sometimes he used to wake up with his heart full of hope, dressed himself carefully as if he were going to keep an appointment, and started on interminable excursions all over Paris. Whenever a woman was walking in front of him, or coming in his direction, he would say: "Here she is!" Every time it was only a fresh disappointment. The idea of Madame Arnoux strengthened these desires. Perhaps he might find her on his way; and he conjured up dangerous complications, extraordinary perils from which he would save her, in order to get near her.
So the days slipped by with the same tiresome experiences, and enslavement to contracted habits. He turned over the pages of pamphlets under the arcades of the Odeon, went to read the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ at the cafe, entered the hall of the College de France, and for an hour stopped to listen to a lecture on Chinese or political economy. Every week he wrote long letters to Deslauriers, dined from time to time with Martinon, and occasionally saw M. de Cisy. He hired a piano and composed German waltzes.
One evening at the theatre of the Palais-Royal, he perceived, in one of the stage-boxes, Arnoux with a woman by his side. Was it she? The screen of green taffeta, pulled over the side of the box, hid her face. At length, the curtain rose, and the screen was drawn aside. She was a tall woman of about thirty, rather faded, and, when she laughed, her thick lips uncovered a row of shining teeth. She chatted familiarly with Arnoux, giving him, from time to time, taps, with her fan, on the fingers. Then a fair-haired young girl with eyelids a little red, as if she had just been weeping, seated herself between them. Arnoux after that remained stooped over her shoulder, pouring forth a stream of talk to which she listened without replying. Frederick taxed his ingenuity to find out the social position of these women, modestly attired in gowns of sober hue with flat, turned-up collars.
At the close of the play, he made a dash for the pa.s.sages. The crowd of people going out filled them up. Arnoux, just in front of him, was descending the staircase step by step, with a woman on each arm.
Suddenly a gas-burner shed its light on him. He wore a c.r.a.pe hat-band.
She was dead, perhaps? This idea tormented Frederick"s mind so much, that he hurried, next day, to the office of _L"Art Industriel_, and paying, without a moment"s delay, for one of the engravings exposed in the window for sale, he asked the shop-a.s.sistant how was Monsieur Arnoux.
The shop-a.s.sistant replied:
"Why, quite well!"
Frederick, growing pale, added:
"And Madame?"
"Madame, also."
Frederick forgot to carry off his engraving.
The winter drew to an end. He was less melancholy in the spring time, and began to prepare for his examination. Having pa.s.sed it indifferently, he started immediately afterwards for Nogent.
He refrained from going to Troyes to see his friend, in order to escape his mother"s comments. Then, on his return to Paris at the end of the vacation, he left his lodgings, and took two rooms on the Quai Napoleon which he furnished. He had given up all hope of getting an invitation from the Dambreuses. His great pa.s.sion for Madame Arnoux was beginning to die out.
CHAPTER IV.
The Inexpressible She!
One morning, in the month of December, while going to attend a law lecture, he thought he could observe more than ordinary animation in the Rue Saint-Jacques. The students were rushing precipitately out of the cafes, where, through the open windows, they were calling one another from one house to the other. The shop keepers in the middle of the footpath were looking about them anxiously; the window-shutters were fastened; and when he reached the Rue Soufflot, he perceived a large a.s.semblage around the Pantheon.
Young men in groups numbering from five to a dozen walked along, arm in arm, and accosted the larger groups, which had stationed themselves here and there. At the lower end of the square, near the railings, men in blouses were holding forth, while policemen, with their three-cornered hats drawn over their ears, and their hands behind their backs, were strolling up and down beside the walls making the flags ring under the tread of their heavy boots. All wore a mysterious, wondering look; they were evidently expecting something to happen. Each held back a question which was on the edge of his lips.
Frederick found himself close to a fair-haired young man with a prepossessing face and a moustache and a tuft of beard on his chin, like a dandy of Louis XIII."s time. He asked the stranger what was the cause of the disorder.
"I haven"t the least idea," replied the other, "nor have they, for that matter! "Tis their fashion just now! What a good joke!"
And he burst out laughing. The pet.i.tions for Reform, which had been signed at the quarters of the National Guard, together with the property-census of Humann and other events besides, had, for the past six months, led to inexplicable gatherings of riotous crowds in Paris, and so frequently had they broken out anew, that the newspapers had ceased to refer to them.
"This lacks graceful outline and colour," continued Frederick"s neighbour. "I am convinced, messire, that we have degenerated. In the good epoch of Louis XI., and even in that of Benjamin Constant, there was more mutinousness amongst the students. I find them as pacific as sheep, as stupid as greenhorns, and only fit to be grocers. Gadzooks!
And these are what we call the youth of the schools!"
He held his arms wide apart after the fashion of Frederick Lemaitre in _Robert Macaire_.
"Youth of the schools, I give you my blessing!"
After this, addressing a rag picker, who was moving a heap of oyster-sh.e.l.ls up against the wall of a wine-merchant"s house:
"Do you belong to them--the youth of the schools?"
The old man lifted up a hideous countenance in which one could trace, in the midst of a grey beard, a red nose and two dull eyes, bloodshot from drink.
"No, you appear to me rather one of those men with patibulary faces whom we see, in various groups, liberally scattering gold. Oh, scatter it, my patriarch, scatter it! Corrupt me with the treasures of Albion! Are you English? I do not reject the presents of Artaxerxes! Let us have a little chat about the union of customs!"
Frederick felt a hand laid on his shoulder. It was Martinon, looking exceedingly pale.
"Well!" said he with a big sigh, "another riot!"