THE scene is Paris, the Imperial Paris, but not a quarter that is fashionable, wealthy, or much frequented by the tourist. It is the wild, slovenly, buoyant quarter of the Paris of the left bank, known as le Pays Latin—the Land of Latin. The quarter of frolic and genius, of vaulting ambition and limp money-bags, of generosity and meanness, of truth and hypocrisy; the quarter which supplies the France of the future with its mighty thinkers, the France of the passing with the forlorn hopes of its revolutions, the world—and the demi monde too—very often with its most brilliant and erratic meteors.
The time is the spring of 1866. The chestnut-tree, called the Twentieth of March, in the Champs Elysées, has shown its first blossoms. But the weather is cold and damp in spite of these deceitful blossoms: the skies weep, and chill winds blow sullenly along the Seine. It is just the weather to make the blaze of a ruddy fire a cheerful sight, and the hiss of the crackling logs a cheerful sound; but there is neither fire nor, indeed, grate or stove wherein to put it, in the cabinet numbered 37, on the fifth story of the Hôtel de Suez, in the Rue du Four, into which we ask the reader to penetrate. A portmanteau, whose half-opened lid betrays 'the poverty of the land,' lies in a corner, a shabby suit of man's wearing apparel hangs carelessly on a chair, and a head, thickly covered with hair, protrudes from the blankets in a little bed in a recess, and out of the mouth in this head protrudes a Turkish pipe of exaggerated length, and out of the same mouth at regular intervals filters a slender thread of smoke. The lips contract and open again, and no smoke comes. The head is elevated, the blankets thrown back, and the shoulders and torso of the smoker appear rising gradually from the bed till they are erect; the bowl of the Turkish pipe is regarded a moment deprecatingly (as if the pipe could have been kept alight without tobacco), and the lips move again, this time to soliloquy:
'Mr. Manus O'Hara, I have a great respect for your father's son: you come of a fine proud spend-thrift old Irish family; but I tell you what, my brilliant friend, if you don't replenish the exchequer I shall be obliged to cut your society. You're not in a position to pay any more visits to that interesting elderly female acquaintance of yours, your aunt.[1] Realize your position, sir, I beg of you. You're in a most confounded state of impecuniosity; you haven't a sou left, and I'm afraid your pipe is finally extinguished. Then, that delightful lady in the den of Cerberus below, who was one long smile when you and the sack,[2] now that you are en dèche,[3] is an eternal snarl like a very dog of Hades. When you had money you had a room on the first floor at thirty francs a month; now that you are poor she stuffs you into a garret on the fourth at thirty-five. Perdition catch it, Mr. O'Hara, it's very expensive to be poor. Without cash or credit! Charming position for a young man of genius! If you had a good suit of clothes you might have a chance of getting into the hôtel des haricots,[4] but with your present raiment there is no danger of your encouraging that horrible temptation of ingenuous youth known as running into debt. It's my private opinion you wouldn't get a box of matches on your solemn oath, let alone your word, at the present crisis in your chequered career. Good heavens! How cold it is! Without cash or credit. That's the burden of the litany. Shall I pray? Bah! Who could pray with hunger gnawing his vitals? Forty-two hours without food, and still without cash or credit to procure a bite.'
The head was dipped suddenly and violently under the blankets.
A long pause.
The bed-covering billows as if stirred by some strong agitation of the form beneath.
All is quiet again.
Now a stifled sound as of sobbing comes from under the blankets. They are forcibly flung back, and a pale face, one feverish flush on each cheek, emerges. The eyes flash with a sharp fitful light amid the quick-darting big tears, and the breast heaves with convulsive sobs. At length amid the sobs rise broken words:
'Too proud to beg, and not paid for working. Must I die, then? A hound is fed; 'tis only man is let perish by his fellow-beings!'
Silence again; and suddenly and startlingly on the air to the silence succeeds a mocking, hysterical laugh. The form springs from its recumbent position on to the bare floor, and approaches a small mirror fixed against the wall.
That laugh again.
'Ha, ha! Manus, my boy, die game!' and with the expression of this advice, or rather intention, calm seems to come to the troubled spirit of our poor friend. He takes his clothes off the chair and dresses himself, keeping up a jeering comment of self-ridicule, as he puts on each shabby article of attire.
'Ha! my pretty paper collar, I must turn you. You'll never die a heretic. By Jove! paper collars were a great invention: they emancipate the lord of creation from the thraldom of the washerwoman. Better to face the free sky than to pine in this stuffy cell. Your toilette is finished, Manus, my friend, and now to pass under the Caudine forks.'
The Caudine forks was the term he applied to the passage leading by the concierge's narrow office to the open street—a humiliating passage enough, it is made, to any man of proud spirit and slim purse by the voluble Parisian concierge, the warder of the entrance to the lodging-house. The concierge is a perennial fountain of gossip, the demon of grasp personified, and is popularly supposed always to have a daughter at the Conservatory of Music. Watching his opportunity, crouched at the bottom of the dark stairs, O'Hara bolted at a mad rush through the hall, and never ceased running until he had gained the Boulevard St. Michel, after traversing the intervening Rue de l'Ecole de Médecine.
He stopped a minute, laughed, tightened the belt which supported his trousers, cried in a light voice, 'Blockade safely run!' and resumed his way rapidly along the boulevard till he came to the quay, then turned to the right, past Notre Dame, until he reached the Pont d'Archevêche, whereat he stopped. The Morgue was near—gloomy receptacle of the unclaimed dead, sent to their God before their time by crime, starvation, or despair, or by some of the accidents which often-times cut short the span of the happiest human life. He looked at it with a desperate, desponding, forlorn look for a little time, and then broke out as if in sequence of some train of thought:
'No; it's no use thinking of it. I couldn't do it. If it weren't for the immortality of the soul, and that inconvenient religious training I've got! Now if I were a Pagan, I could freely end my woes in that silent river; but I'm a Christian, and must suffer them, and curse my kind.'
A mournful yet affectionate whine at his feet attracted his attention. He looked down. A lank, ugly cur, of unassignable breed, but unmistakably currish—a rank, unmitigated cur, with melancholy visage and moist eyes—returned the look.
'Poor dog, you, too, have hunger in your face. The world has deserted you!'
The dog whined again, and rubbed his thin sides familiarly and confidently against the bottom of O'Hara's trousers.
'Alas! friend, I am like yourself—a wretched, friendless dog. Your imploring looks are lost on me, though, Heaven knows, I would relieve you if I could. Haud ignara mali miseris succurrere disco. Faith! the gender is wrong there. My grammar is going with everything else. I suppose I should have said ignarus.'
He faintly smiled at the notion.
'But I have nothing—absolutely nothing,' running his hand expressively across his waistcoat-pockets. It stopped—his face lit up joyfully; then fell. 'Blessed,' continued he, 'are those who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed,' and slowly putting his hand into the pocket he extracted, with difficulty, a silver piece of ten sous. He looked at it steadily, almost incredulously, then at the dog. 'Come, my friend,' he cried, 'companion in misfortune, you must share my luck.' And five minutes afterwards O'Hara and his dumb acquaintance might be seen in the nearest crêmerie, O'Hara munching a roll of bread and the houseless dog greedily lapping a bowl of hot milk.
And both of them looked very happy dogs.
WHEN the stray dog had finished his welcome repast, licking the sides of the bowl which had contained it with a gusto which many a dyspeptic favourite, fondled on the velvet cushion of my lady, and carried about by my lady's footman, would have envied, O'Hara began to talk with him; yes, to talk with him—and the dog answered him, as far as eyes and tail could speak.
'Well, my poor fellow, you seem to like that!'
The dog curled his tail and licked his lips.
'What's your name? You don't know, nor where you were born. You're as ignorant as Topsy.'
The dog sought the ground with his eyes.
'I must give you a name. Suppose I call you Chance, to mark how I found you; or Bran, like the dog in Ossian; or Hector—no, that's too bumptious a name, and you're no bully.'
The dog wisely shook his head, as if he looked on the idea of bullyism with pity.
'Let me see; egad, I'll naturalize you! I think you have a very Irish face—an honest, open, grateful face—and I'll call you Pat.'
The dog wagged his tail joyfully, stood on his hind legs, and stretched out a paw.
'Wonderful creature! can it be that I have hit on your name? Well, Pat'—again the tail wagged—'if you belonged to a rich family you would be housed, perhaps, in that hospital for indisposed gentlemen of your breed I see advertised on a kiosk near the Palais Royal; but, because you really want a friend and a crust, you are left without either. That's the way with the world, Pat,[5] and you're a vagabond, though goodness knows you're ugly enough to be a pet. I declare you're as ill-favoured as any pug I ever met sitting on a Brussels hearthrug, if it were not for that face.'
The dog gave an assenting bark.
'But we mustn't be stopping here too long, Pat, though our time isn't very precious. George Francis Train says the next best thing to money is the suspicion of money, and I say the next best thing to occupation is the suspicion of occupation; and, by my word, they lock you up for having no occupation in England, though you may be wearing the soles off your feet to get one. In the great world they go to the theatre or the opera or the circus after dinner to promote digestion, and I think I know where we can enjoy ourselves cheaply after our banquet. Hi! Pat, come along.'
And, rising, our friend retraced his steps towards the bridge, stopping for a moment at a tobacco-shop, where he purchased and lit a cigar at a sou, at the same time giving loud expression to his regret that he had forgotten his Turkish pipe.
'We must be economic, you know, and tobacco goes farther than a weed,' and seeming mentally to calculate the state of his finances—'three sous for milk and two for bread, five, that leaves five'—previous to hazarding the investment.
The open space in front of the Morgue is a favourite 'pitch' of the mountebanks who earn their livelihood on Paris streets. At the time our pair made their appearance, it was occupied by a number of the tribe in full swing. In one corner a low-sized, deformed figure, recalling the Quasimodo whom Victor Hugo's genius has made historic in connection with the neighbouring church of Notre Dame, was appealing to a crowd of bystanders to jerk ten sous more into the ring, and he would transfer the hump on his back to his breast. O'Hara did not wait for the tardy money to come in; he had no taste for the crooked talents of the posture-master.
A group in another corner surrounded a tanned fellow, with long hair and an eye like an onyx, who beat time on a drum, as he chanted a merry skit on a Paris by-word of the season—'Avez-vous vu Lambert?' to the air of 'Maman, le mal que j'ai,' while the woman who accompanied him sold copies of it by the sheaf to laughing workmen, soldiers, and nursery-maids.
But by far the largest assemblage was drawn to a stout acrobat in faded tights, which might have been washed at some remote era, bedizened with spangles that revealed a faint tradition of glitter. He had an amazing flow of impudent 'patter,' this acrobat, and let it spout uninterruptedly as he flung up little metal rings, in quick succession, high in the air, catching them as they fell on a tin cone, strapped to his forehead, in the fashion of a unicorn's horn. Sometimes he missed them, and they slapped with a crack on his skull, and rolled off behind by a bald channel, which frequent misadventure of the kind had worn in his hair. But the spectators were as highly amused when he failed as when he succeeded—indeed, more so, if the truth must be told—for had they not a hit and a miss together? When the cone was encircled with rings, he flung up a monster potato, impaling it on the spike as it descended, amid the acclamations of his admirers.
'Come along, Pat,' said O'Hara; 'here is something more in our line,' as he passed to another group, before which the owner of a troop of educated dogs and cats was performing.
'This is M'sieu Rigolo,' cried the showman, as he placed one chair reversed on another, and taking a poor cat, that looked as if it couldn't get up an emotion at a family of mice round a Stilton cheese, balanced its claws consecutively lengthwise and crosswise on the upstanding legs. When the cat had been sufficiently tortured it was dismissed, to its evident satisfaction, to the basket which served as green-room to the perambulating theatre.
'Present yourself, M'sieu Romulus,' cried the showman, and a poodle of remarkably subdued mien reluctantly entered the arena, much as a slave who was devoted to the lions might have done in the old Roman times. M'sieu Romulus had not the boldness of his illustrious namesake of antiquity, but he had more than his sagacity. His strong point lay in detecting the most amorous man, the most beautiful lady, the greatest idler and so-forth in the surrounding company. The showman, putting a card in his mouth, asked him to point out such a one. Romulus stood up in the attitude dogs are wont when asked to beg, moved carefully round and finally trotted off in the way he should go, and dropped the card at the feet of the chosen person.
Romulus was dismissed in his turn to the green-room, and the showman called for Mademoiselle. The call was responded to by one of the saddest short-eared dogs ever seen, girt round the middle with a miniature crinoline which made the creature a grotesque caricature of a woman in the prevailing fashion as she hopped into the circle painfully on her hind-legs.
'Salut, Ma'amselle!' said the showman; 'we want to see you dance a minuet,' and he commenced playing on a pandean pipe. But Ma'amselle did not dance long. Pat, who had been watching the whole performance with canine amazement from between O'Hara's legs, suddenly rushed in, extended his paws and lowered his head in front of the disguised member of his species, and barked a good-natured bark. Ma'amselle dropped on all fours, and looked up inquisitively at the showman's face. The showman flung his pandean pipe at Pat's snout, and the poor intruder ran howling round the amused throng. No one would make room for him to escape, until at last a short thickset man, in a long frieze coat caught him, pulled him to himself, and cried to the showman, in a foreign accent, 'It is not French to strike a dog for gallantry; he simply entered because he didn't like to see Ma'amselle dance without a partner. Didn't you see him make his bow?'
'Pardon me, sir,' said O'Hara, who had been shut out from the inner circle by the forward rush, as he made his way to the friendly stranger; 'but I believe I am the next of kin to this unfortunate animal.'
'Have him, sir, and welcome,' said he in the frieze. 'I never like to see an animal struck that can't strike back for itself.'
'Thanks, sir,' said O'Hara, and then, turning to Pat, he continued, speaking this time in English, 'Come, my companion, we'll leave that brute of a showman: every dog has his day, and perhaps you'll have yours yet.'
The stranger looked after the pair sharply as they turned towards a crowd where a little old man was expatiating on the marvellous abilities of Madame La Blague, the celebrated clairvoyante, and muttered something between his teeth. The celebrated clairvoyante was seated on a chair in the centre of a crowd, her eyes bandaged like those of the figure of Justice, and her hands crossed on her lap in the attitude of Patience on the monument.
'Now then, messieurs,' said the little old man, 'take a ticket and have your fortune told. Only ten centimes. Tell me your hopes, your fears, your desires, and madame will at once read the answer in the Book of Fate when I ask her.'
'Hark you, friend, I want my fortune told.'
It was the man in frieze who spoke. He had moved up after O'Hara and the dog.
'Take a ticket, sir, and wait your turn,' squeaked the little old man.
'Is it so? That's a thing I never do. Ten centimes, you charge; now I'll give ten francs—that's a thousand centimes—if madame is able to return me a single true answer to five plain questions I'll put to her myself.'
'I'll try, at all events, sir,' said the woman with bandaged eyes.
'I like that. To start—how old am I?'
'Forty-four,' answered the woman, after a pause.
'You don't flatter. I'm between the thirties and the forties still. Guess again—what's my disposition?'
'Impatient,' was the immediate answer.
'You've got to earn the money yet. My profession?'
'Soldier.'
'What regiment?'
'The Foreign Legion.'
'Ha! Then you've found out I'm a foreigner. From what country, pray?'
'From Ireland.'