The novels, romances, and memoirs of Alphonse Daudet (18 page)

Night has fallen during this discussion, and the bells of Saint-Germain chime joyously, as if to celebrate Daniel Eyssette's entrance into the French Academy. — " Come to dinner ! " says my Mother Jacques, and, very proud of being seen with an academician, he carries me off to a creamery in the Rue Saint-Benoit.

It is a little restaurant for the poor, and has a table-d'hote at the back for the habitual customers. We sit down in the first room, in the midst of threadbare famished people, who scrape their plates silently. " They are almost all of them men of letters," said Jacques to me in a whisper. I cannot help making some melancholy reflections on the subject to myself, but I take care not to communicate them to Jacques, for fear of cooling his enthusiasm.

The dinner is a merry one. M. Daniel Eyssette

(of the French Academy) is in high spirits and has an excellent appetite. When the meal is over the two hasten back to climb their tower; and while the academician smokes his pipe, astride of the window-sill, Jacques sits at his table, absorbed in a complicated sum that seems to trouble him greatly. He bites his nails, moves restlessly about in his chair, counts upon his fingers; then, suddenly, he jumps up with a cry of triumph.

" Bravo ! I have succeeded."

" In what, Jacques?"

" In settling our budget, my boy. And I can tell you it was n't easy. Think of it! Sixty francs a month for us both to live on."

" Why sixty? I thought you had a hundred from the Marquis."

" Yes, but I must send forty francs out of that to Mme. Eyssette, for the rebuilding of the hearth. There are sixty francs left. We pay fifteen francs for our room; as you see, that's not dear, only I must make the bed myself"

" I will make it too, Jacques."

" No, no; it would not be proper for an academician. But let us return to the budget. Fifteen francs for our room, five francs for charcoal; — only five francs, because I go myself to get it every month at the depots where they sell it; there are forty francs left. Let us say thirty francs for your food. You will dine at the creamery where we went this evening; it is fifteen sous without dessert, and you saw that it was pretty

good. There are five sous left for your lunch, is that enough? "

" Of course it is."

" We have still ten francs. I allow seven francs for washing. What a pity I have no time ! If I had, I should go to the boat myself. Three francs remain that I shall use in this way: thirty sous for my lunches; oh, yes indeed ! you know I get a good dinner with the Marquis every day and don't need such substantial lunches as you. The last thirty sous are for small outlays, tobacco, stamps, and other unforeseen expenses. That just makes up our sixty francs. Don't you think I have reckoned well? "

And Jacques, full of enthusiasm begins to skip about the room; then, he stops, all at once, in consternation.

" Oh, dear me! I must go over the budget again, — I have forgotten something."

"What's that?"

" The candle. How can you work in the evening without a candle? It is a necessary expense, and will come at least to five francs a month. How shall I get hold of those five francs? The money I send home is sacred and under no pretext— Oh, here I have it! March is coming, and with it, spring, warmth and sunshine."

"Well, Jacques?"

" Well, Daniel, when it is warm, we don't need coal : we change the five francs' worth of coal into five francs' worth of candles, and the problem is solved. I was surely born to be minister of

finance. What do you say? This time, the budget stands on its legs, and I think we have forgotten nothing. Of course, there is still the question of shoes and clothes, but I know what I am going to do. My evenings are always free after eight o'clock and I mean to look for a place as bookkeeper with some small tradesman. I am sure Pierrotte will find one for me easily."

" Come now, Jacques, you seem to be very intimate with Pierrotte. Do you go there often?"

" Yes, very often. They have music in the evenings."

" What, is Pierrotte a musician? "

" No, not he; his daughter is."

" His daughter! He has a daughter then? Ah, ha, Jacques! Is Mdlle. Pierrotte pretty?"

" Oh! You are asking too many questions at once, little Daniel. I will answer you another time. It is late now; let us go to bed."

And to hide the embarrassment my questions caused him, Jacques begins to turn down the sheets of the bed with the care of an old maid.

It is a single iron bedstead, exactly like the one we used both to sleep in at Lyons in the Rue Lanterne.

"Do you remember, Jacques, our little bed in the Rue Lanterne, when we read novels on the sly, and our father shouted to us from his room, at the top of his voice: * Put out your light directly, or I will get up.'"

Jacques remembered that, and also many other things. In the midst of their recollections, mid-

night strikes at Saint-Germain, and the boys have not yet thought of going to sleep.

" Come, good-night," says Jacques, resolutely.

But in five minutes I hear him burst out laughing under the coverlet.

"What are you laughing at, Jacques?"

" I am laughing at the Abb6 Micou ; you know, the Abb6 Micou at the school for choir-boys. Don't you remember him?"

•' I should think I did ! "

And here we are laughing and laughing, and chattering and chattering. This time, it is I who am reasonable, and say:

" We must go to sleep."

But a moment afterwards, I begin again :

"And Rouget, Jacques ; Rouget at the factory. Can you remember him?"

Thereupon, fresh bursts of laughter, and endless talk.

Suddenly a loud rap shakes the wall on my side of the bed. General consternation.

" It is the White-Cuckoo," whispers Jacques in my ear.

" The White-Cuckoo ! What's that ? "

" Hush! not so loud. The White-Cuckoo is our neighbor, and she probably objects to our keeping her awake."

"Tell me, Jacques! What an odd name our neighbor has! The White-Cuckoo! Is she young?"

"You may judge for yourself, my boy. Sooner or later you will meet her on the stairs. But in

the meanwhile, let us go to sleep quickly, or otherwise the White-Cuckoo may be angry again."

Forthwith, Jacques blows out the candle, and M. Daniel Eyssette (of the French Academy) goes to sleep on his brother's shoulder as he used to do when he was ten years old.

CHAPTER V.

THE WHITE-CUCKOO AND THE LADY OF THE FIRST FLOOR.

On the Place of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, in the corner where the church is> to the left, and on the level of the roofs, there is a little window that makes my heart ache every time I look at it. It is the window of our old room; and, even to-day, when I pass that way, it seems to me that the Daniel of that time is still up there, seated at his desk opposite the window-pane, smiling with pity as he sees in the street the Daniel of to-day, sad and already bent in stature.

Ah, old clock of Saint-Germain-des-Pres ! What happy hours you struck for me when I lived up there with my Mother Jacques! Could not you strike again for me some of those hours of youth and valour? I was so happy, then, and I worked with so much zest!

In the morning we rose at daylight. Jacques immediately attended to the housekeeping. He went to fetch the water, swept the room, and put my table in order. I myself had not the right to touch anything. If I said: "Jacques, will you let me help you ? " Jacques burst out laughing: " You don't mean it, Daniel. And how about the lady

of the first floor?" These few words, big with allusion, shut my mouth.

This is the reason:

During the first days of our life together, it was I who undertook to go down to fetch water from the court. At any other hour of the day, I should not have dared, but in the morning, everybody was still asleep and there was no risk to my vanity of my being met on the stairs, carrying a pitcher. I ran down as soon as I woke, half-dressed. The court-yard was deserted at that hour. Sometimes, a groom in a red jacket was cleaning his harness near the pump. It was the coachman of the lady who lived on the first floor, a very elegant young Creole, who attracted much attention in the house. This man's presence was enough to disconcert me; when he was there, I felt mortified, and, pumping as fast as possible, went back with my pitcher half-filled. Once upstairs, I thought myself very foolish, but this did not prevent me from being quite as embarrassed next day if I caught sight of the red jacket in the court-yard. Now, one morning that I had had the good luck to avoid the formidable jacket, I was going gayly upstairs with my pitcher full, when, as I reached the first floor, I found myself face to face with a lady coming down. It was the lady of the first floor.

Erect and haughty, her eyes bent over a book, she was walking slowly along, in a floating mass of silken draperies. At first sight, she seemed beautiful to me, although a trifle pale, and what

especially struck me was a little white scar in the corner of her mouth, just above the lip. As the lady passed in front of me, she lifted her eyes. I was standing against the wall, flushed and ashamed, with my pitcher in my hand. Only think of it! To be caught thus like a water-carrier, uncombed, dripping, my neck bare, and my shirt half-open — what a humiliation ! I could have wished for the earth to swallow me. The lady looked straight in my face for a moment, with the air of an indulgent queen, and then, smiling slightly, passed on. When I reached our room I was furious. I told my adventure to Jacques, who made a great deal of fun of my vanity; but the next day he took the pitcher, and went down without saying anything. After that, he continued to go down every morning, and, in spite of my remorse, I let him do it. I was too much afraid of meeting the lady of the first floor again.

When we had finished with the housekeeping, Jacques went off to his Marquis, and I did not see him again till evening. I passed my days all alone by myself with the Muse, or with what I was pleased to call the Muse. From morning till night the window remained open in front of my table, and there, from morning till night I strung rhymes together. From time to time, a house-sparrow came to drink from my gutter; after looking at me saucily for a moment, he went to tell the others what I was doing, and I heard the noise of their little claws on the slates. The bells of Saint-Germain, too, made me visits, several times a day. I

liked to have them come to see me. They entered clamorously through the window, and filled the room with music. Sometimes the glad and crazy chimes flung in their semiquavers, and again, the notes of solemn melancholy knells fell one by one like tears. Then there were the Angclics: the midday Angehis, an archangel clothed in shining raiment, who came to me resplendent with light; and the evening Angelus, a sad seraph who slipped down a ray of moonlight, and made the room chill as he shook out his great wings.

I received no other visits save those of the sparrows, and the bells. Who should have come to see me? No one knew me. At the creamery in the Rue Saint-Benoit, I was always careful to sit at a little table apart from the rest ; I ate quickly, with my eyes on my plate; then when I had finished my meal, I took my hat furtively, and went home with all speed. I never had a walk or any kind of amusement; I did not even go to hear the music at the Luxembourg. This abnormal shyness, which I had inherited from my mother, was still farther increased by the dilapidation of my costume, and the wretched india-rubbers that we had not been able to replace. I was afraid and ashamed in the streets ; I should have liked never to leave my tower. Sometimes, however, on those charming dewy evenings of spring in Paris, I met troops of students in high spirits, and the sight of them going off, arm in arm, with their broad hats, pipes and sweethearts, gave me some new ideas. Then I would fly up my fi\'e flights very quickly, light

my candle, and set furiously to work until Jacques' arrival.

When Jacques came, the aspect of the room changed. It was all cheer, noise and stir. We sang, laughed, and asked each other news of the day. "Have you done good work?" Jacques would say to me; "is your poem progressing?" Then he related some new invention of his original Marquis, drew out of his pocket some sweets he had saved from the dessert for me, enjoying the pleasure with which I ate them. After this, I would return to my rhyming-table. Jacques walked up and down the room several times, and when he thought me quite absorbed, slipped out, saying: " Since you are working, I will go over there for a minute." Over there meant at Pierrotte's, and if you have not already guessed why Jacques \NQn\.overtherc so often, you must be very stupid. I understood it all, from the first day, merely from seeing him smoothe his hair before the glass and tie his cravat three or four times over, before he started ; but to avoid embarrassing him, I pretended not to suspect anything, and was content with laughing to myself as I thought of all this.

When Jacques had gone, I devoted myself to my rhymes. At that hour there was no longer the slightest noise ; my friends the sparrows and the Atigelus had all gone to bed. It was a complete tete-a-tete with the Muse. Toward nine o'clock, I heard a step on the stairs, — a little wooden staircase that served as a continuation to the grand one. — It was Mdlle. White-Cuckoo, our

neighbor, going to her room. From that moment I could work no more. My mind wandered shamelessly to my neighbor, and would not leave her. Who could the mysterious VVhite-Cuckoo be? It was impossible for me to obtain the least information about her. If I asked Jacques, he would put on a little sly look and say:

"What? Haven't you met our glorious neighbor yet?" But he never explained farther. I thought: "He does not want me to know her; she is probably a grisette of the Latin Quarter." This idea kindled my fancy. I imagined a fresh, young, joyous thing, — a grisette in fact. There was nothing about her that did not seem to me full of charm, even to the name of White-Cuckoo, one of those fond pet-names like Musette or Mimi-Pinson. At all events, my neighbor was a very demure and well-behaved Musette, a Musette of Nanterre, who came home every evening at the same hour and always alone. This I knew, because on several consecutive evenings, at the time of her arrival I had applied my ear to the partition. I heard invariably the same thing: at first, the sound of a bottle uncorked and corked repeatedly; then, after a minute, bang! the fall of a very heavy body on the floor ; and immediately, a little thin, very shrill voice, like that of a sick cricket, singing an unknown air that consisted of three notes, sad enough to make one cry. There were words to this air, but I could not distinguish them, except these incomprehensible syllables: Tolocototig7ian, iolocotatignan ! which recurred at intervals in the