Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (11 page)

The crowd soon broke up of its own accord. A number of people bared their heads and bowed towards the esteemed Professor Samuel Rondelot, who, wrapped in his big frock-coat, with his silver spectacles held up high in the air, and breathing hard from his asthma, was advancing at an easy pace, on his way to deliver his lecture. This man was one of the judicial glories of the nineteenth century, the rival of the Zachariæs and the Ruhdorffs. His new status of peer of France had in no way modified his external demeanour. He was known to be poor, and was treated with profound respect.

Meanwhile, at the lower end of the square, some persons cried out:

“Down with Guizot!”

“Down with Pritchard!”
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“Down with the ones who sold out!”

“Down with Louis Philippe!”

The crowd swayed to and fro, and, pressing against the gate of the courtyard, which was shut, prevented the professor from going further. He stopped in front of the staircase. He stood on the lowest of three steps. He spoke; the loud murmurs of the throng drowned his voice. Although at another time they might love him, they hated him now, for he was the representative of authority. Every time he tried to make himself understood, the outcries began anew. He gestured with great energy to induce the students to follow him. He was answered by protests from all sides. He shrugged his shoulders disdainfully, and plunged into the passage. Martinon took advantage of the situation and disappeared at the same moment.

 

“What a coward!” said Frédéric.

“He was prudent,” returned the other.

There was an outburst of applause from the crowd, who saw the professor’s retreat as a victory. From every window, faces, filled with curiosity, looked out. Some of those in the crowd struck up the “Marseillaise;” others proposed to go to Béranger’s house.

“To Laffitte’s house!”

“To Chateaubriand’s house!”

“To Voltaire’s house!” yelled the young man with the fair moustache.
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The policemen tried to circulate, saying in the mildest way:

“Move on, messieurs! Move on!”

Somebody exclaimed:

“Down with the slaughterers!”

This was a regular out cry since the troubles of September. Everyone echoed it. The guardians of the law were hooted and hissed. They began to grow pale. One of them could endure it no longer, and, seeing a short young man approaching too closely, laughed in his face, and pushed him back so roughly, that he tumbled over on his back some five yards away, in front of a wine-merchant’s shop. All made way; but almost immediately afterwards the policeman rolled on the ground himself, felled by a blow from a species of Hercules, whose hair hung down like a bundle of tow under an oilskin cap.

Having stopped for a few minutes at the corner of the Rue Saint-Jacques, he had very quickly laid down a large case, which he had been carrying, in order to make a spring at the policeman, and, holding down the officer, punched his face unmercifully. The other policemen rushed to the rescue of their comrade. The terrible shop-assistant was so powerfully built that it took four of them at least to get the better of him. Two of them shook him, while keeping a grip on his collar; two others pulled his arms; a fifth dug his knee in his ribs; and all of them called him “brigand,” “assassin,” “rioter.” With his chest bare, and his clothes in rags, he protested that he was innocent; he could not, in cold blood, look at a child receiving a beating.

“My name is Dussardier. I’m employed at Messieurs Valincart Brothers’ lace and fancy warehouse, in the Rue de Cléry. Where’s my case? I want my case!” He kept repeating:

“Dussardier, Rue de Cléry. My case!”

However, he became quiet, and, with a stoical air, allowed himself to be led towards the guard-house in the Rue Descartes. A flood of people came rushing after him. Frédéric and the young man with the moustache walked immediately behind, full of admiration for the shopman, and indignant at the violence of power.

As they advanced, the crowd became less thick.

The policemen from time to time turned round, with threatening looks; and the rowdies, no longer having anything to do, and the spectators not having anything to look at, all drifted away little by little. The passers-by, who met the procession, as they came along, stared at Dussardier, and in loud tones, made abusive remarks about him. One old woman, at her own door, bawled out that he had stolen a loaf of bread from her. This unjust accusation increased the wrath of the two friends. At length, they reached the guard-house. Only about twenty persons were now left in the crowd, and the sight of the soldiers was enough to disperse them.

Frédéric and his companion boldly asked to have the man who had just been imprisoned set free. The sentinel threatened, if they persisted, to throw them into jail too. They said they had to see the commander of the guard-house, and stated their names, and the fact that they were law-students, declaring that the prisoner was one also.

 

They were ushered into a room perfectly bare, in which, amid an atmosphere of smoke, four benches lined the roughly-plastered walls. At the far end a window slid open. Then appeared the sturdy face of Dussardier, who, with his hair all tousled, his honest little eyes, and his broad snout, suggested to one’s mind in a confused sort of way the appearance of a good dog.

“Don’t you recognise us?” said Hussonnet.

This was the name of the young man with the moustache.

“Why—” stammered Dussardier.

“Don’t play the fool any further,” returned the other. “We know that you are, just like ourselves, a law-student.”

In spite of their winks, Dussardier failed to understand. He appeared to be collecting his thoughts; then, suddenly:

“Has my case been found?”

Frédéric raised his eyes, feeling discouraged.

Hussonnet, however, said promptly:

“Ah! your case, in which you keep your lecture notes? Yes, yes, don’t worry about it!”

They made further pantomimic signs with greater energy, till Dussardier at last realised that they had come to help him; and he held his tongue, fearing that he might get them into trouble. Besides, he experienced a kind of shame at seeing himself raised to the social rank of student, and to an equality with those young men who had such white hands.

“Do you wish to send any message to anyone?” asked Frédéric.

“No, thanks, to nobody.”

“But your family?”

He lowered his head without replying; the poor fellow was a bastard. The two friends stood quite astonished at his silence.

“Have you anything to smoke?” was Frédéric’s next question.

He felt about, then drew forth from the depths of one of his pockets the remains of a pipe—a beautiful pipe, made of white talc with a shank of blackwood, a silver cover, and an amber mouthpiece.

For the last three years he had been engaged in completing this masterpiece. He had been careful to keep the bowl of it constantly thrust into a kind of sheath of chamois, to smoke it as slowly as possible, without ever letting it lie on any cold stone surface, and to hang it up every evening over the head of his bed. And now he shook out the fragments of it into his hand, the nails of which were covered with blood, and with his chin sunk on his chest, his pupils fixed and dilated, he contemplated the ruins of the object that had yielded him such delight with a look of unutterable sadness.

“Suppose we give him some cigars, eh?” said Hussonnet in a whisper, making a gesture as if he were reaching for them.

Frédéric had already laid down a cigar-holder, which was full, on the edge of the hatch.

“Pray take this. Good-bye! Cheer up!”

Dussardier flung himself on the two hands that were held out towards him. He pressed them frantically, his voice choked with sobs.

“What? For me!—for me!”

The two friends tore themselves away from the effusive display of gratitude which he made, and went off to lunch together at the Café Tabourey, in front of the Luxembourg gardens.

While cutting up the beefsteak, Hussonnet informed his companion that he did work for the fashion journals, and created catchphrases for
L’ Art Industriel.

“At Jacques Arnoux’s establishment?” said Frédéric.

“Do you know him?”

“Yes!—no!—that is to say, I have seen him—I have met him.”

He carelessly asked Hussonnet if he sometimes saw Arnoux’s wife.

“From time to time,” the Bohemian replied.

Frédéric did not venture to follow up his enquiries. This man henceforth would occupy an important place in his life. He paid the lunch-bill without any protest on the other’s part.

There was a bond of mutual sympathy between them; they gave one another their respective addresses, and Hussonnet cordially invited Frédéric to accompany him to the Rue de Fleurus.

They had reached the middle of the garden, when Arnoux’s clerk, holding his breath, twisted his features into a hideous grimace, and began to crow like a cock. Thereupon all the cocks in the vicinity responded with prolonged “cock-a-doodle-doos.”

“It is a signal,” explained Hussonnet.

They stopped close to the Theatre Bobino, in front of a house to which they had to find their way through an alley. In the skylight of a garret, between the nasturtiums and the sweet peas, a young woman showed herself, bare-headed, in her stays, her two arms resting on the edge of the roof-gutter.

“Good-day, my angel! good-day, my pet!” said Hussonnet, sending her kisses.

He made the barrier fly open with a kick, and disappeared.

Frédéric waited for him all week long. He did not venture to call at Hussonnet’s residence, lest it might look as if he were in a hurry to get a lunch in return for the one he had paid for. But he sought the clerk all over the Latin Quarter. He came across him one evening, and brought him to his apartment on the Quai Napoleon.

They had a long chat, opening their hearts to each other. Hussonnet yearned after the glory and the profits of the theatre. He collaborated in the writing of vaudeville shows which were not accepted, “had heaps of plans,” could turn a couplet; he sang out for Frédéric a few of the verses he had composed. Then, noticing on one of the shelves a volume of Hugo and another of Lamartine, he broke out into sarcastic criticisms of the romantic school.
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These poets had neither good sense nor correct grammar, and, above all, were not French! He prided himself on his knowledge of the language, and analysed the most beautiful phrases with that snarling severity, that academic taste which persons of playful temperament exhibit when they are discussing serious art.

Frédéric’s sensibilities were wounded, and he felt a desire to cut the discussion short. Why not risk asking the question on which his happiness depended? He asked this literary youth whether it would be possible to get an introduction into the Arnoux’s house.

It was declared to be quite easy, and they settled on the following day.

Hussonnet failed to keep the appointment, and on three subsequent occasions he did not turn up. One Saturday, about four o‘clock, he made his appearance. But, taking advantage of the cab into which they had got, he drew up in front of the Theatre Français to get a box-ticket, stopped at a tailor’s shop, then at a dressmaker’s, and wrote notes in the concierge’s lodge. At last they came to the Boulevard Montmartre. Frédéric passed through the shop, and went up the staircase. Arnoux recognised him through the glass-partition in front of his desk, and while continuing to write he stretched out his hand and laid it on Frédéric’s shoulder.

Five or six persons, standing up, filled the narrow room, which was lighted by a single window looking out on the yard, a sofa of brown damask wool occupying the interior of an alcove between two door-curtains of similar material. Upon the mantelpiece, covered with old papers, there was a bronze Venus. Two candelabra, garnished with rose-coloured candles, flanked it, one at each side. At the right, near a filing cabinet, a man, seated in an armchair, was reading the newspaper, with his hat on. The walls were hidden from view beneath an array of prints and pictures, precious engravings or sketches by contemporary masters, adorned with dedications testifying the most sincere affection for Jacques Arnoux.

“You’ve been getting on well all this time?” said he, turning round to Frédéric.

And, without waiting for an answer, he asked Hussonnet in a low tone:

“What is your friend’s name?” Then, raising his voice:

“Take a cigar out of the box on the filing cabinet.”

The office of
L
Art Industriel,
situated in the center of Paris, was a convenient meeting place, a neutral ground wherein rivalries elbowed each other familiarly. On this day among those present were Anténor Braive, who painted portraits of kings; Jules Burrieu, who by his sketches was beginning to familiarize people with the wars in Algeria;
^l
the caricaturist Sombary, the sculptor Vourdat, and others. And not a single one of them corresponded with the student’s preconceived ideas. Their manners were simple, their talk free and easy. The mystic Lovarias told an obscene story; and the inventor of Oriental landscape, the famous Dittmer, wore a knitted shirt under his waistcoat, and went home on the omnibus.